Fenwick's Career Part 22

'Eugenie!--tell me one thing!--you are in the same mind as ever about the divorce?'

She made a sign of a.s.sent.

'Just the same. I am Albert's wife--unless he himself asks me to release him--and then the release would only be--for him.'

'You are too hard on yourself, Eugenie!' cried Lord Findon. 'I vow you are! You set an impossible standard.'

'I am his wife'--she repeated, gently--'while he lives. And if he sent for me--at any hour of the day or night--I would go.'

Lord Findon gave an angry sigh.

'You can't wonder, Eugenie,' he said, impetuously, 'that I often wish his death.'

A shudder ran through her.

'Don't, papa! Never, never wish that. He loves life so.'

'Yes!--now that he has ruined yours.'

'He didn't mean to,' she said, almost inaudibly. 'You know what I think.'

Lord Findon restrained himself. In his eyes there was no excuse whatever for his scoundrel of a son-in-law, who after six years of marriage had left his wife for an actress, and was now living with another woman of his own cla.s.s, a Comtesse S., ten years older than himself. He knew that Eugenie believed her husband to be insane; as for him, he had never admitted anything of the kind. But if it comforted her to believe it, let her, for Heaven's sake, believe it--poor child!

So he said nothing--as he paced up and down--and Eugenie finished the rearrangement of the roses. Then she turned to him, smiling.

'You didn't know I saw Elsie yesterday?'

'Did she confide in you?'

'Oh, that--long ago! The poor child's dreadfully in love.'

'Then it's a great responsibility,' said Lord Findon, gravely. 'How is he going to satisfy her?'

'Only too easily. She would marry him blindly--on any terms.'

There was a short silence. Then Eugenie gathered up the letter she had been reading when her father entered.

'Let's talk of something else, papa! Do you know that I've had a very interesting letter from Mr. Fenwick this afternoon?'

Lord Findon stared.

'Fenwick? What on earth does he write to you about?'

'Oh! this is not the first time by a long way!' said Eugenie, smiling.

'He began it in March, when he thought he had offended me--by being rude to Arthur.'

'So he was--abominably rude. But what can one expect? He hasn't had the bringing-up of a gentleman--and there you are. That kind of thing will out.'

'I wonder whether it matters--to a genius?' said Eugenie, musing.

'It matters to everybody!' cried Lord Findon. 'Gentlefolk, my dear, say what you will, are the result of a long natural selection--and you can't make 'em in a hurry.'

'And what about genius? You will admit, papa, that a good many gentlefolk in the world go to one genius!'

The light was still good enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs.

However, he tried to keep it up.

'Genius?' he said, humming and hawing--'genius? How do we know what it is--or who has it? Everybody's so diabolically clever nowadays. Take my advice, Eugenie--I know you want to play Providence to that young fellow--you think you'll civilise him, and that kind of thing; but I warn you--he hasn't got breeding enough to stand it.'

Eugenie drew a long breath.

'Well, don't scold me, papa--if I try--I must'--her voice escaped her, and she began again, firmly--'I must have something to fill up.'

'Fill up what?'

She looked round to make sure that the servants had finished clearing away the tea, and that they were alone.

'The days--and the hours,' she said, softly. 'One must have something to think of.'

Lord Findon frowned.

'He will fall in love with you, Eugenie--and then where shall we be?'

He heard a laugh--very sweet--very feminine, yet, to his ear, very forlorn.

'I'll take care of that. We'll find him a wife, too, papa--when he "arrives." We shall be in practice--you and I.'

Lord Findon sprang up.

'Here he is!' he said, with very evident agitation.

The p.r.o.noun clearly had no reference to Fenwick. Eugenie sat motionless, looking into the fire, her hands on her knee. Lord Findon listened a moment.

'I'm going to my room. Eugenie!--if I could be the slightest use--'

'Dear papa!' she looked up, smiling. 'It's very simple.'

With a muttered exclamation, Lord Findon walked to the further end of the drawing-room, and vanished through an inner door.

The footman announced 'Mr. Welby.'

As soon as the door was shut, Eugenie rose.

Welby hurriedly approached her. 'You say in your note that you have something important to tell me?'

She made a sign of a.s.sent, and as he grasped her hand, she allowed herself a moment's pause. Her eyes rested--just perceptibly--on the face of the man whose long devotion to her, expressed through every phase of delicate and pa.s.sionate service, had brought them both at last to that point where feeling knows itself--where illusions die away--and the deep foundations of our life appear.

Welby's dark face quivered. In the touch of his friend's hand, in the look of her eyes there was that which told him that she had bidden him to no common meeting. The air between them was in an instant alive with memories. Days of first youth; youth's high impressions of great and lovely things; all the innocent, stingless joys of art and travel, of happy talk and ripening faculty, of pure ambitions, hero-wors.h.i.+ps, compa.s.sions, shared and mutually enkindled: these were for ever intertwined with their thoughts of each other.