CHAPTER XXIV
It happened on the afternoon of that same day that Eliza Hart, in pursuance of her domestic avocations, had occasion to go into Mr. Farge's room on the first floor to lay out a new coverlet on his bed. When, as thus, compelled to enter the apartments of either of the gentlemen guests of the establishment it was her practice to leave the door half open, as a concession to propriety in the abstract and a testimony to her own discretion in the concrete. The handsome mahogany doors of Cedar Lodge, unhappily painted white by some vandal of a former inhabitant, being heavy were hung on a rising hinge. Hence, when half open, a space of some three inches was left between the back of the door and the jamb, through which it was easy to get a good view of the hall or the landing unobserved. Little Mr. Farge professed a warm predilection for gay colours, and Eliza had selected the new bedspread with an eye to this fact. It was of bright raspberry-red cotton twill, enriched with a broad printed border in a flowing design of lemon-yellow tulips and bottle-green leaves. The salesman, in exhibiting it to her, had described it as "very chaste and pleasing." Eliza herself qualified it as "tasty"; and had just disposed it, much to her own satisfaction, upon the young man's bed, when her attention was arrested by the tones of an unknown feminine voice in the hall below. Shortly afterwards she heard Frederick, the valet's large footsteps hurtling upstairs at a double, followed by a prolonged and leisurely whispering of silken skirts. Here, clearly, was a matter into which, for the reputation of Cedar Lodge, it was desirable to look without delay. Eliza, therefore, moved to the near side of the door, and, through the three-inch aperture afforded by the rising hinge, raked the landing with a vigilant eye.
The door of Mr. Iglesias's sitting-room immediately opposite stood open. In the doorway Frederick indulged in explanatory gesticulation. While, slowly ascending the last treads of the stairs, was a lady of unmistakable elegance, arrayed in a large black hat with drooping plumes to it, a sable cape—the price of which, Eliza felt assured, ran easily into three figures—and a black cloth dress in the cut of which she read the last word of contemporary fashion. Arrived at the stair-head the intruder stood still, calmly surveying her surroundings, presenting, as she turned her head, a pale face, very red lips, and eyes—so at least it appeared to the vigilant orbs of Eliza—quite immodestly large and lustrous, melancholy and somehow extremely impertinent, too. Then Mr. Iglesias emerged from his sitting-room, an expression upon his countenance which startled Eliza. She very certainly had never seen it before. For a moment the lady looked up at him, as though silently asking some question. Then she patted him lightly upon the back, and passed into the sitting-room hand in hand with him, while Frederick with his best flourish closed the door.
"Well, of all the things!" cried Eliza, half aloud; and, oblivious both of discretion and of the new raspberry-red cotton twill coverlet, she backed, and sat, plump, upon the edge of the bed. Just then, as she asserted in subsequently recounting this remarkable incident, you might have knocked her down with a feather.
"Of all the things!" she repeated, after an interval of breathless amazement. "And how long has this been going on, I should like to know? So that is the reason of a certain gentleman's iciness, and his stand-offish high-mightiness. Well, I never! And poor darling Peachie, so trustful and confiding all the time; not that she need fear comparison with anybody.—Bah! the serpent."
Nevertheless she was deeply impressed, and fell into a vein of furious speculation as to who this unlooked-for smart lady might be. Then, suddenly remembering the highly compromising nature of her own existing position sitting not only in the lively little Farge's bed-chamber, but actually upon his bed, she rose with embarrassment and haste, and made her way downstairs to the offices—treading circumspectly in dread of creaking boards—to interview Frederick. But from that functionary she obtained scant information.
"Zee lady she ask for Mr. Iglesias. I tell her I go to find him. I put her in zee drawing-room."
"Quite right, Frederick,"—this encouragingly from Eliza.
"But she no stay zere. She come again out quick. She not any name, not any visiting card give; only write somezing, very fast, on a piece of paper and screw it togezzer. Zen she not wait till I return, but behind me upstairs chase."
So there was nothing for it, as the great Eliza perceived, but to retire to the drawing-room, and—Mrs. Porcher happened to be out—note the hour and, with the door discreetly half open, await the descent of the intruder from the floor above.
"I can just catch darling Peachie, too," she said to herself, "and draw her aside. To meet such a person unexpectedly, on the stairs or in the hall, would be enough to make her turn quite faint."