CHAPTER IX. CUT FOR PARTNERS.
Beware equally of a sudden friend and a slow enemy.
A wise man had said of Cipriani de Lloseta that had he not been a Count he would have been a great musician. He had that singular facility with any instrument which is sometimes given to musical persons in recompense for voicelessness. The Count spoke like one who could sing, but his throat was delicate, and so the world lost a great singer. Of most instruments he spoke with a half-concealed contempt. But of the violin he said nothing. He was not a man to turn the conversational overflow upon self-evident facts.
He invariably brought his violin to Grosvenor Gardens when Mrs. Harrington invited him, in her commanding way, to dine. It amused Mrs. Harrington to accompany his instrument on the piano. Her music was of the accompanying order. It was heartless and correct. Some of us, by the way, have friends of this same order, and, like Mrs. Harrington’s music, they are not in themselves either interesting or pleasant.
The piano stood in the inner drawing-room, and thither the Count and Mrs. Harrington repaired when the gentlemen had joined the ladies. In the larger drawing-room Luke was fortunate enough to secure a seat near to Agatha--quite near, and a long way from Mrs. Ingham-Baker, digestively asleep in an armchair.
He did not exactly know how this arrangement was accomplished--it seemed to come. Possibly Agatha knew.
Mrs. Harrington struck a keynote and began playing the prelude of a piece well known to them both.
“Why did you not tell me that you were going to Spain?” she asked somewhat tersely, under cover of her own chords.
“Had I known that it would interest you--” murmured De Lloseta, tightening his bow. There was a singular gleam in his eye. The gleam that one sees in the eye of a dog which has been thrashed, telling the wise that one day the dog will turn.
“I am always interested,” said the grey lady slowly, “in Spain--and even in Mallorca.”
She used the Spanish name of the island with the soft roll in the throat that English people rarely acquire. He was prepared for it, standing with raised bow, looking past her iron-grey head to the music. She glanced back over her shoulder into his face with the cruel cat-like love of torture that some people possess. Far away in the distant wisdom of Providence it had been decreed that this woman should have no child less clever than herself to tease into hopelessness.
The Spaniard laid his magic bow to the strings, leaving her to follow. He tucked the violin against his collar with a little caressing motion of his chin, and in a few moments he seemed to forget all else than the voice of the instrument. There are a few musicians who can give to a violin the power of speech. They can make the instrument tell some story--not a cheery tale, but rather like the story that dogs tell us sometimes--a story which seems to have a sequence of its own, and to be quite intelligible to its teller; but to us it is only comprehensible in part, like a tale that is told dramatically in a tongue unknown.
The Count stood up and played with no fine frenzy, no rolling eyes, no swaying form; for such are the signs of a hopeless effort, hung out by the man who has heard the story and tries in vain to tell it himself.
Even Agatha was outdone, for Luke drifted off into absent-mindedness, and after a little effort she left him to return at his own time. She listened to the music herself, but it did not seem to touch her. For sound ascends, and this was already above Agatha Ingham-Baker’s head. The piece over, Mrs. Harrington selected another.
“You did not go across to Mallorca?” she inquired, in a voice that did not reach the other room. “No,” he answered, “I did not go across to Mallorca.”
He stepped back a pace to move a chair which was too near to him, and the movement made it impossible for her to continue the conversation without raising her voice. She countered at once by rising and laying the music aside.
“I am too tired for more,” she said. “You must ask Agatha to accompany you. She plays beautifully. I have it from her mother!”
Mrs. Harrington stood for a moment looking into the other room. Luke and Agatha were talking together with some animation.
“I have been very busy lately,” she said conversationally. “Perhaps you have failed to notice that I have had this room redecorated?”
He looked round the apartments with a smile, which somehow conveyed a colossal contempt. “Very charming,” he said.
“It was done by a good man and cost a round sum.” She paused, looking at him with a mocking glance. “In fact, I am rather in need of money. My balance at the bank is not so large as I could wish.”
The Count’s dark eyes rested on her face with the small gleam in their depths which has already been noted.
“I am not good at money matters,” he said. “But, so far as I recollect, you have already exceeded our--”
“Possibly.”
“And, unless my memory plays me false, there was a distinct promise that this should not occur again. Perhaps a lady’s promise--”
“Possibly.”
The Count contented himself with a derisive laugh beneath his breath, and waited for her to speak again. This she did as she moved towards the other room.
“I think five hundred pounds would suffice--at present. Agatha,” she continued, raising her voice, “come and play the Count’s accompaniment. He finds fault with me to-night.”
“No. I only suggested a little più lento! You take it too fast.”
“Ah! Well, I want to talk to Luke. Come, Agatha.”
“I tremble at the thought of my own temerity,” said Miss Ingham-Baker, as she seated herself on a music-stool with a great rustle of silks and considerable play of her white arms.
“Are you bold?” inquired the Count, with impenetrable suavity.
“I am--to attempt your accompaniments. I expect to be found fault with.”
“It will at all events be a novelty,” he answered, setting the music in order.
The Spaniard opened the music-book and indicated the page. Agatha dashed at it with characteristic confidence, and the voice of the violin came singing softly into the melody. It was a better performance than the last. Agatha’s playing was much less correct, but as she went on she forgot herself, and she put something into the accompaniment which Mrs. Harrington had left out. It was not time, neither was it a stricter attention to the composer’s instructions. It was only a possibility, after all.
In the other room Mrs. Ingham-Baker slumbered still. Mrs. Harrington, unmoved in her grey silk dress, was talking with her usual incisiveness, and Luke was listening gravely. When the piece was done, Mrs. Harrington said over her shoulder--
“Go on. You get on splendidly together.”
And she returned to her conversation with Luke.
The Count looked through his music.
“How devoted she is to her nephews!” said Agatha, tapping the ivory keyboard with a dainty finger.
“Yes.”
“And apparently to both alike.”
There was a little flicker beneath the Count’s lowered eyelids.
“Apparently so,” he answered, with assumed hesitation.
Agatha continued playfully, tapping the ivory notes with her middle finger--the others being gracefully curled.
“You speak as if you doubted the impartiality.”
“I am happy to say I always doubt a woman’s impartiality.”
She laughed and drew the stool nearer to the piano. It would have been easier to drift away into the conversational channel of vague generality which he opened up. He waited with some curiosity.
“Do you think there is a preference?” she said, falling into his small trap.
“Ah! There you ask me something that is beyond my poor powers of discrimination. Mrs. Harrington does not wear her feelings on her sleeve. She is difficult.”
“Very,” admitted Agatha, with a little sigh.
“I am naturally interested in the FitzHenrys,” she went on after a little pause, with baffling frankness. “You see, we were children together.”
“So I understand. I too am interested in them--merely because I like them.”
“I am afraid,” continued Agatha, tentatively turning the pages of the music which he had set before her, speaking as if she was only half thinking of what she was saying--“I am afraid that Mrs. Harrington is the sort of person to do an injustice. She almost told my mother that she intended to leave all her money to one of them.”
Again that little flicker of the Count’s patient eyelids.
“Indeed!” he said. “To which one?”
Agatha shrugged her shoulders and began playing. “That is not so much the question. It is the principle--the injustice - that one objects to.”
“Of course,” murmured De Lloseta, with a little nod. “Of course.”
They went on playing, and in the other room Mrs. Harrington talked to Luke. Mrs. Ingham-Baker appeared to slumber, but her friend and hostess suspected her of listening. She therefore raised her voice at intervals, knowing the exquisite torture of unsatisfied curiosity, and Mrs. Ingham-Baker heard the word “Fitz,” and the magic syllables “money,” more than once, but no connecting phrase to soothe her aching mental palate.
“And is your life a hard one?” Mrs. Harrington was asking. She had been leading up to this question for some time--inviting his confidence, seeking the extent of her own power. A woman is not content with possessing power; she wishes to see the evidence of it in the lives of others.
“No,” answered Luke, unconsciously disappointing her; “I cannot say that it is.”
He was strictly, sternly on his guard. There was not the faintest possibility of his ever forgiving this woman.
“And you are getting on in your career?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Mrs. Harrington’s grey eyes rested on his face searchingly.
“Perhaps I could help you,” she said, “with my small influence, or--or by other means.”
“Thank you,” he said again without anger, serene in his complete independence.
Mrs. Harrington frowned. A dream passed through her mind--a great desire. What if she could crush this man’s pride? For his six years’ silence had never ceased to gall her. What if she could humble him so completely that he would come asking the help she so carelessly offered?
With a woman’s instinct she hit upon the only possible means of attaining this end. She did not pause to argue that a nature such as Luke’s would never ask anything for itself--that it is precisely such as he who have no pride when they ask for another, sacrificing even that for that other’s sake.
Following her own thoughts, Mrs. Harrington looked pensively into the room where Agatha was sitting. The girl was playing, with a little frown of concentration. The wonderful music close to her ear was busy arousing that small possibility. Agatha did not know that any one was looking at her. The two pink shades of the piano candles cast a becoming light upon her face and form.
Mrs. Harrington’s eyes came surreptitiously round. Luke also was looking at Agatha. And a queer little smile hovered across Mrs. Harrington’s lips. The dream was assuming more tangible proportions. Mrs. Harrington began to see her way; already her inordinate love of power was at work. She could not admit even to herself that Luke FitzHenry had escaped her. Women never know when they have had enough.
“How long are you to be in London?” she asked, with a sudden kindness.
“Only a fortnight.”
“Well, you must often come and see me. I shall have the Ingham-Bakers staying with me a few weeks longer. It is dull for poor Agatha with only two old women in the house. Come to lunch to-morrow, and we can do something in the afternoon.”
“Thank you very much,” said Luke.
“You will come?”
“I should like nothing better.”
And so the music went on--and the game. Some played a losing game from the beginning, and others played without quite knowing the stake. Some held to certain rules, while others made the rules as they went along--as children do--ignorant of the tears that must inevitably follow. But Fate placed all the best cards in Mrs. Harrington’s hand.
Luke and the Count Cipriani de Lloseta went out of the house together. They walked side by side for some yards while a watchful hansom followed.
“Can I give you a lift?” said De Lloseta at length. “I am going down to the Peregrinator’s.”
“Thanks, no. I shall go straight to my rooms. I have not had my clothes off for three nights.”
“Ah, you sailors! I am going down to have my half-hour over a book to compose my mind.”
“Do you read much?”
De Lloseta called the cab with a jerk of his head. Before stepping into it he looked keenly into his companion’s face.
“Yes, a good deal. I read somewhere, lately, that it is never wise to accept favours from a woman; she will always have more than her money’s worth. Good-night.”
And he drove away.