Читать книгу The Two Carnations - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

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Ursula had danced, under her brother's orders, twice more with Mr. Wedderburn before she contrived, under the plea of fatigue, to escape to the dowager who was her chaperon for the evening, and there, under shelter of the spreading skirts of that lady who was deep in a game of faro, to unfasten her cherished bunch of roses.

She was not in the least uncertain as to who had sent them to her, and she untied the pink ribbon with a tremble of expectancy. At last he had found a means to write to her; at last he had been able to do what her instinct told her he had been endeavouring to do since she had first met him at St. James's—outwit her brother and his ally, Mr. Wedderburn.

Seated on the low gilt settee, out of sight for once of Sir Harry, she felt a delicious sense of freedom and relief, and as the roses fell apart on her lap her heart was beating fast with joy and anticipation.

The music was playing a coranto; the sound of it came enchantingly into the card-room, together with the swish of skirts and the tap of high heels. Ursula sorted out the roses with delicate fingers. Nothing but the deep glossy leaves met her intent gaze.

A chill of disappointment ran through her. She searched again—nothing.

The dowager looked round, to see her seated with her lap full of scattered red roses.

"La, child!" she cried; "what is this?"

Ursula smiled; she was very pale.

"Nothing, madam; they are but some flowers I—thought to wear—"

The old lady returned to her play, and Ursula picked the roses up one by one and bound them together again. Had he sent them? Surely his glance at them when he saw them on her lap was sufficient without the evidence of the pink ribbon. What then did his message mean?

She noticed that her violet brocade and the shining floor were covered with crimson petals; the message had been literally true—the roses, though the first of the year, were overblown and falling. Had she the meaning now? A shock sent the blood to her heart, and made her lips tremble. Was it possible that he meant that this was the end of the season and of his attendance, that his feelings were dying with the early roses, that he took an insolent adieu of her with these flowers and this message?

She sat quite still with the bruised bouquet in her hands, and the petals all about her, not seeing the card players nor hearing the dance music.

It had swept over her, with a rush of agony, that no one had ever spoken any good to her of the Marquis de Champlain.

Her brother openly, and Mr. Wedderburn indirectly, and with a calm carelessness more convincing than Sir Harry's downright abuse, had always referred to the young Frenchman as a trifler, a mere frivolous man of fashion, for ever playing the cavalier servant to some beauty, a man known in Paris as a ruined rake and a hanger-on of wealthy relations; and everyone else who had ever mentioned him to her had done so slightingly, with some cold reference to foreigners in general and Frenchmen in particular.

These things had had no effect on Ursula; she did not believe them, and she had her own idea of the Marquis and her own instinctive conviction of how he stood in his own country. But now suddenly, as she sat holding his falling roses, all these words and glances returned to her with bitter force—even little remarks that she thought she had forgotten.

Was it possible that she, in ignoring all these warnings, and permitting—aye, encouraging—the young Frenchman's attendance through a whole season, had been preparing a great humiliation for herself? Had all her private and intense convictions been wrong, and were the hateful warnings, that she had despised and laughed at, right?

The horrid reflection came to her that she knew nothing of him. What proof had she that he was incapable of laughing at her and making her laughable? How could she tell that this message—she blushed crimson as the fateful roses themselves to think how public it had been—was not a delicate insult, telling her she was getting too direct and sincere in her glances and favours and that for his part he was tired?

She rose with a great bitterness in her heart and left the flowers on the settee; her next dance was to be with the Marquis. She resolved she would not stand up in the middle of the long room with him, to be observed and gossiped over—and he could not have meant anything but a slight by sending her so crudely-made a bouquet composed of common and dying flowers hastily picked; so she called them now in her angry thoughts, though they had seemed beautiful as love itself when he had glanced at them on her lap.

When the Marquis came to claim her hand for the minuet he found her deep in conversation with her brother, and received a cold excuse to the effect that she was tired.

He saw that she was not carrying the roses, and he left her with a sad and sinking heart.

Meanwhile Mr. Wedderburn, unusually pale, but also with an unusually brilliant sparkle in his fine grey eyes, approached Miss Brent.

"So you have abandoned your bouquet?" he said.

"Why should I carry it?"

"You did—for a couple of hours, madam."

She bit her lip.

"Well, I was tired of it." She hated this man, but the Marquis was standing near, observing her, and therefore her usual courtesy deepened into friendliness. She smiled coquettishly and waved her large lace and chicken-skin fan.

"Do you know who sent it to you, Miss Brent?" he asked directly.

She looked at him straightly, lifting her head with a proud little movement that shook back the long fair powdered curls from her shoulders.

"You know all I know. You heard what Timor said."

His eyes were as steady as hers.

"The message and the gift," he answered calmly yet sternly, "were impertinent; that is why I asked, for I should like to tell the sender so."

So he had noticed it. It had not been only her own foolish fancy.

She went very pale, but she nerved herself to answer lightly.

"I did not consider it impertinent," and added, smiling: "Neither am I in need of a champion, sir."

He took the rebuff in silence. After a little he asked her if she would dance this set with him.

She steadied herself not to show her anger.

"I have danced with you three times already, sir; and for this figure I was promised to the Marquis de Champlain, but have excused myself because I am very fatigued."

Again he was silent, but not as if he was blank of words but as if he had too much to say for the time and place.

Yet, silent as he was, the sense of his presence was acutely with Ursula; she did not find it easy to forget him, even though she was not looking at him and despite the fact that her heart was full of another.

Mr. Steven Wedderburn was not a man belonging to her set or to the fashion of town, but a City merchant of a wealth so princely that he could have bought up all Miss Brent's noble acquaintances and still been a rich man.

He was by birth as good as she—the descendant of an aristocratic house; but she affected to despise him as a tradesman, and certainly, she thought, beside such a fine gentleman as the Marquis he appeared commonplace indeed.

But she was looking at him with prejudiced eyes; there was, in reality, nothing either commonplace or ordinary about the vivid personality of Steven Wedderburn, and he had naturally the "grand manner," both in the City, where he was a power, and in the fashionable world into which Sir Harry Brent had introduced him. He was one of the richest commoners in England, and in his person graceful and charming, and, though habitually reserved and stately in his manner, of a quickness of movement, observation and understanding that betrayed inner and passionate fires, perhaps inner and passionate recklessness.

But Ursula saw none of these things; to her he was only a man from another world to whom her brother was under obligations as to money, and whom he was desirous of her marrying for this same money; a man who quietly but persistently courted her by look, word, and act, and who left her in no doubt as to how he intended to use the immense influence he had acquired over Sir Harry, both through the purse and the intellect.

Accordingly, she hated him, and often vowed in that heart that was wholly given to another that never—no, never—should he ever come even to touching her hand with more warmth than a chance cavalier of an evening.

She endured him because she had to endure her brother's friend; till now she had endured him cheerfully, for she had been waiting for the Marquis to give the signal—to carry her off openly before the disappointed schemers.

But now, when her first doubts of her undeclared lover were poisoning her heart, she felt not mere contempt and half-amused aversion to Steven Wedderburn, but an active hate, such as one might feel to a despised enemy who suddenly gains an ascendancy.

He, sitting immobile and quiet in his glowing red velvet, was fully aware of the feeling that held her silent; with the sure and sharpened instincts of a great passion he knew the thoughts and sensations of the object of his constant adoration. He knew that Ursula loved the Marquis, perhaps as strongly as he, Wedderburn, loved her; he knew that this love was returned, and he was resolved that his passion should override their two passions opposing it.

He looked at the pale proud profile, the slender shape of the silent woman beside him; he looked at the haughty figure of the young Marquis with whom she should have been dancing, standing equally pale and silent against the opposite wall watching the dancers with clouded eyes, and he put his hand to his heart and felt, under the stiff velvet of his coat, the shape of the stolen letter in his inner pocket.

He had read the letter through twice and knew almost every word of it by heart, but he felt not a spark of pity for either of those whom he had wronged, only a deep and exulting triumph. Presently he rose and took his leave, and crossed over to the only other lady in the room in whom he had the least interest—Sophia Compton, the younger daughter of a younger son, dowerless, not opulent in beauty, clever and enamoured of him; this last fact that he had coldly divined and coldly made use of was the one thing that attracted him to her; not because of flattered vanity or because he designed to make a fool of her—indeed, his whole being was too occupied with Ursula for that—but because she-was a clever woman and able to be of service to him in a world where he had few friends.

He led her out to the minuet, and when it was over he escorted her into one of the deep arched recesses of the windows, and said, fixing on her his deep, resolute, and sparkling eyes:

"Miss Compton, I wish you to obtain for me that striped carnation that Miss Brent is wearing."

She looked at him swiftly and her lip curled.

"Still on that chase?" she asked mockingly and unfurled her black lace fan between them.

"You know," he answered calmly, "that it is not one I am likely to forgo."

Sophia smiled—not pleasantly; her bronze-coloured hair glittered even through the thick powder, and her dark brown eyes glittered behind her thick lashes.

"All the world can see that she is in love with the Marquis de Champlain."

"I know." He looked at her in a quiet, masterful fashion. "Will you procure for me the striped carnation?"

"Is she not more likely to give it to you?" she taunted him.

"Will you do this for me?" he repeated.

She knew she would; she knew she always did these little services for him; always gave him advice, news and hints. She was playing a long game; she meant to win him in the end; she was quite sure that she would—quite sure that he would never win Ursula Brent; and she was prepared to do anything even to help him in his quite useless pursuit of the other woman. It was a means, the only one she had at present, of keeping him interested in her; if she refused to be of use to him she was well aware that she would lose even the small amount of regard he had for her. She laughed gaily and rather cynically, as if she was humouring a foolish boy, and presently went over to Miss Brent who was still seated where Mr. Wedderburn had left her, but with her brother at her side, and gracefully sank on the red rout seat next her.

"La, Miss Brent!" she exclaimed at once, smoothing out her rich satin skirts, "what a curious flower you are wearing! Why, I have been looking for just such a one to copy in my needlework. May I beg for that when the ball is over?"

Ursula did not like Sophia Compton, but she was instinctively obliging to every one, and now too dispirited to care about anything; since she had refused to dance with the Marquis she was tired of the ball, weary of everything.

"Why, you can have it now, madam, and with pleasure," she answered politely, detaching it from her bodice. "I f ear it is somewhat crushed by my laces." Sophia thanked her carelessly, and after a decent interval returned to Mr. Wedderburn, to whom she gave the bloom with a languid air and a scornful little smile.

He thanked her gravely.

It was getting late; the yawning gallants and sleepy ladies were departing, the musicians were packing away their instruments in the gallery, and the pearl-coloured light of dawn was slipping between the heavy curtain of the tall windows.

Ursula and her brother rose to take their leave.

Mr. Wedderburn, from the other end of the room, watched them; he held the striped carnation behind his back.

From the ante-chamber came the Marquis de Champlain looking weary and dull; at sight of Mr. Wedderburn he drew up and for a second the rivals faced each other.

"Where is Sir Harry?" asked the Marquis haughtily. "I have a letter for him."

He held it out as he spoke.

"I will be your messenger, my lord," answered Mr. Wedderburn serenely, "or, if you wish, you may deliver it yourself. Sir Harry is over there with Miss Brent."

With the slightest inclination of the head the Marquis was turning on his heel when Mr. Wedderburn, looking after him with smiling eyes of hate, said:

"One moment, my lord. I have a pleasant duty to perform; Miss Brent commanded me to give you this flower."

He held out the striped carnation that the Marquis had asked might be his answer if his suit was refused.