Читать книгу A Mad Marriage - May Agnes Fleming - Страница 20
ОглавлениеMADAME FELICIA.
way beyond the stately and stuccoed palaces of Belgravia, beyond the noise and bustle of the city, the fashion and gayety of the West End, Mr. Locksley, the artist, stands watching the afternoon sun drop out of sight beyond the green lanes, and quaint, pretty gardens of old Brompton. His lodgings are here in a quiet, gray cottage, all overgrown with sweetbrier, climbing roses, and honeysuckle. It is here he has painted the picture that is to be his stepping-stone to fame and fortune, "How the Night Fell."
He stands leaning with folded arms upon the low wicket-gate, among the lilac trees and rose-bushes in the old-fashioned, sweet-smelling, neglected garden, smoking a little black meerschaum, his friend and solace for the past sixteen years. Profound stillness reigns. In the west the sunset sky is all rose and gold light; above him, pale primrose, eastward, opal gray. A thrush sings, its sweet pathetic song in an elm-tree near, and artist eye and ear and soul drink in all the tender hush and loveliness of the May eventide—unconsciously, though, for his thoughts are far afield.
Two years have passed since this man's return to England from foreign lands, and during these two years he has looked forward to one thing, half in hope, half in dread, half in longing. That thing has come to pass. It is yesterday's rencounter with Lucia, Lady Dynely. She is of his kin, and he has yearned to look once more upon a kindred face, to hear once more a familiar voice—yearned yet dreaded it too; for recognition is the one thing he most wishes to avoid. The past is dead and buried, and he with it. The world that knew him once, knows him no more. It is a past of shame and pain, of sorrow and disgrace. It is all over and done with—buried in oblivion with the name he then bore. In that world few things are remembered long; a nine days' wonder; then the waters close over the drowning wretch's head, and all is at an end.
In the park, lying back listless and elegant in her silks and laces, he has seen Lady Dynely often during the past season; face to face never before. He stands thinking dreamily of yesterday's meeting, as he leans across the gate and smokes, and of his invitation of to-night.
"She did not know me," he thinks; "and yet I could see it, something familiar struck her, too. Sixteen years of exile—twelve of hard campaigning in India and America—would change most men out of all knowledge. They think me dead beside—so I have been told. Well, better so; and yet, dead in life—it is not a pleasant thought."
The blue, perfumy smoke curls up in the evening air; the thrush pipes its pensive lay. He pauses in his train of thought to listen and watch, with artist eye for coloring, the gorgeous masses of painted cloud in the western sky.
"This Terry Dennison," he muses again, "who can he be, and how came Lucia to adopt him? It was not her way to take odd philanthropic whims. A distant connection of the late viscount's—humph! That is easily enough believed, since he resembles sufficiently the late viscount, red hair and all, to be his own son. His own son!" Mr. Locksley pauses suddenly; "his own son! Well, why not?"
There is no answer to this. The serenade of the thrush grows fainter, the rosy after-glow is fading out in pale blue gray, the moon shows its crystal crescent over the elm-tree. His pipe goes out, and he puts it in his pocket.
"France Forrester, too," he says to himself; "the baby daughter of my old Canadian friend, the general, grown to womanhood—Mrs. Caryll's adopted daughter and heiress, vice Gordon Caryll, cashiered. They will marry her to Eric Dynely, I suppose, and unite Caryllynne and the Abbey. A handsome girl and a spirited—too good, by all odds, for that dandified young Apollo, as I saw him last at Naples. A girl with brains in that handsome, uplifted head, and a will of her own, or that square-cut mouth and resolute little chin belie her character. Still, I suppose, a young fellow as faultlessly good-looking as Lord Eric needs no additional virtues, and your women with brains are mostly the greatest fools in matters matrimonial."
With which cynical wind-up Mr. Locksley pulls out his watch and glances at the hour. Eight. If he means to attend my lady's "At Home" it is time to get into regulation costume and start.
"I shall be an idiot for my pains," he growls, "running the chance of recognition, and only invited as the newest lion in the Bohemian menagerie. And yet it is pleasant to look in Lucia's familiar face once more—to make one again in that half-forgotten world. Besides"—he adds this rather irrelevantly as he starts up—"Miss Forrester interests me. What a face that would be to paint!"
He turns to enter the house—then stops. A phaeton with two black, fiery-eyed steeds, whirls up to where he stands, the reins are flung to the groom, and a gentleman springs down, lifts his hat and accosts him.
"Mr. Locksley!"
He is a small, elderly, yellow man, shrivelled and foreign-looking, with glittering, beady-black eyes. Beneath the light summer overcoat he wears the artist catches sight of a foreign order on the breast. He speaks the name, too, with a marked accent, as he stands, and bows and smiles.
"My name is Locksley," the artist replies.
The small, yellow man hands him his card. "Prince Cæsare Di Venturini," Mr. Locksley reads, and recognizes his interlocutor immediately. The prince is perfectly familiar to him by sight, though for the moment he had been unable to place him. He is a Neapolitan, the scion of an impoverished princely house, and a political exile.
"At your excellency's service," Mr. Locksley says, looking up inquiringly; "in what way can I have the pleasure of serving you?"
"That picture, 'How the Night Fell,' is yours, monsieur?"
Mr. Locksley bows.
"It is not sold?"
"It is not."
"It is for sale?"
Mr. Locksley bows again.
"It is not yet disposed of. Good! Then, monsieur, a lady friend of mine desires to do herself the pleasure of becoming its purchaser, and I am commissioned as her agent to treat with the artist. Its price?"
Mr. Locksley names the price, and inquires, rather surprised at the suddenness and rapidity of this business transaction, if the Prince Di Venturini will not come in.
"No, no—it is but the matter of a moment—he will not detain Mr. Locksley." He produces a blank check and pen there and then, scrawls for a second upon it, then with a low bow, a smile that shows a row of glittering teeth, passes it across the little gate. The next instant he has leaped lightly into the phaeton, and the fiery-eyed, coal-black horses, that look as though they had but lately left the Plutonian stables, dash away through the dewy darkness. Mr. Locksley stands with his breath nearly taken from him by the bewildering swiftness of this unexpected barter, and looks at the check in his hand. It is for the amount named—the signature is his excellency's own, but he had said the picture was for a lady.
"Who can she be, I wonder?" thinks the artist, pocketing the check and going into the house; "a personage of rank, or—stay! this popular danseuse from over the water, whose name rings the changes through London, and whose beauty and whose dancing are the talk of the town. The Prince is known to be the most devoted of her devotees—some men lay heavy odds he'll marry her. I must drop in, by the by, some night at the Bijou, and look at her. So, my picture is sold at my own price. Lady Dynely's fashionable doors are thrown open to me—surely a turn in fortune's wheel, this."
He laughs slightly. He is the possessor of more money this evening than he has owned any time the past sixteen years. In the days that are gone he has known poverty in its bitterest shape, the bitter poverty of a man born to the purple and fallen from his high estate.
He divested himself of his picturesque, paint-stained, velvet blouse, and got himself into a dress-coat and tie. All the while he kept wondering vaguely who had purchased his picture. "If by any chance the Prince is present at Lady Dynely's, I will inquire," he thought, as he pocketed his latch-key and left the house; "I really should like to know."
He really would, no doubt. Interested as he was in this unknown lady, he would have been more interested probably had he been present in the academy that afternoon.
The rooms, as usual, were filled; as usual, too, the centre of attraction was "How the Night Fell." Very shortly after the doors were thrown open there had entered a lady and gentleman—whose entrance created a sensation, and who divided the interest with the pet picture of the year. The gentleman was the Neapolitan Prince, the lady the most popular danseuse in London, Madame Felicia.
She came moving slowly through the throng, seeing and enjoying the sensation she created, a plump, rather petite beauty, her dark face lit by two wonderful eyes, long, sleepy, yellow-black. She was of a beauty, in a dark way, simply perfect, and she was dressed in the perfection of taste. A silver-gray silk, with here and there vivid dashes of scarlet and touches of rare old lace, the masterpiece of a masculine mantua maker of the Rue de la Paix. Every eye turned to gaze after this lionne of Coulisses, the most perfect dancer they said that ever bounded before the footlights since the days of Taglioni. The Prince hung devotedly upon her lightest word, but she turned impatiently away from him, glancing with a scornful little air of disdain along the walls.
"Always the same," she said, pettishly; "simpering women, glowering women, wax-doll misses with yellow hair and china-blue eyes, insipid as their own nursery bread and butter. Bah! why does one take the trouble to come at all?"
"Will madame condescend to look at that?"
He led her before the picture—the group surrounding it fell back a little. She lifted her eyes, bored, disdainful, then—a sudden stillness came over her from head to foot. All languor, all ennui, fled from her face, its rich coloring faded—she grew ashen gray to the very lips. So for the space of fully five minutes she stood.
"How does madame find it?" the suave voice of the Italian asked.
She neither moved nor answered. She never took her eyes from the picture. Slowly life and color returned to her face, slowly into the great topaz eyes, sleepy and half-closed like a panther's, there came a vivid light. One small gloved hand crushed her catalogue unconsciously—as if fascinated she stood there and gazed.
"Thou art pleased with the picture then, madame?" Di Venturini said, softly, in French.
"Pleased with it?" she repeated, a slow, curious smile dawning on her lips. "Prince, I must have that picture!"
"But, if it is already sold? True, the star is not affixed, but——"
"I must have that picture!" madame repeated, with a flash of the black eyes; "sold or not, I still must have it. How do they call the artist?" She looked at the catalogue. "'G. Locksley.' The name is new—is it not, Prince?"
"Altogether new, madame. If you really wish it, I will discover this M. Locksley and purchase the picture if still in the market."
"I do wish it, Monsieur Prince. That picture I must have though it cost half a fortune. 'How the Night Fell!'"
She turned back to it, and looked and looked as though she could never look enough.
"It is an odd fancy," said Prince Di Venturini, after a pause; "an absurd one, you may think, madame, but the face of that woman in the picture is very like yours. Not one half so lovely, but very like, nevertheless. Does madame perceive it?"
"Does madame not?" madame responded, that slow, sleepy smile still on her lips. "Who could fail? And yet, mon Prince, you cannot fancy me with that expression, can you? He is leaving her—is it not? and her heart is breaking. Bah! it is like the egotism of men, they desert us and we die—or so they think! Prince, that picture must be mine before I sleep. You hear?"
"And live but to obey!" with a most profound bow; "the picture shall be yours!"
He escorted her to her carriage.
At sunset across the gate of the Brompton cottage the bargain was struck, and "How the Night Fell" became the property of Madame Felicia, the actress.
