CHAPTER VII
“The same: three days later.” So, in theatrical parlance, we lift the curtain on a scene the replica of that introduced in the second chapter of this Comedy of Errors. It was all as before, even to the parted figures—only with this difference: somewhat equidistant between the two sat Mrs. Davis.
That, though an addition seeming insignificant, had all the latent force in it of a barrel of gunpowder with an unlighted fuse attached. The moment might come when, the match being applied, the whole of that artificial stuff of obmutescence would be blown in a flash to the winds.
Mrs. Moll was perhaps herself a little conscious of the volcano on which she was perched. Yet it would be doing her an injustice to hint that she either felt or showed any perturbation. While fully realizing that her position was in the last degree precarious, the thrill of the thing, the exercise of the mental agility needed to prevent, or at least postpone, that final catastrophe, was compensation enough, while it lasted, to reconcile her to her utmost danger. And in the meanwhile she was having, in the slang of to-day, the time of her life. Lapt in a perfumed luxury, which was as foreign as it was agreeable to her nature, and enjoying it none the less because it was stolen fruit, soon to be consumed; like a born actress living in her part, but like an astute woman keeping an unsleeping eye to the business side of her engagement, she gave herself wholly to the situation, and endeavoured to extract from it the best that mischief and ingenuity could devise. Morally, she was in her own eyes merely the naughty little tertium quid needed in a drama of love and jealousy to effect a certain purpose of separation.
And, incidentally, she regarded the feelings of no one. The play was the thing, and nothing outside it mattered. She was not, personally, taken with his lordship, while, professionally, she coquetted with, and, as she supposed, captivated him. If, in the course of those antics, he should be so obsessed as to propose to make her his mistress in actual fact, she might possibly, for reasons of self-interest, be induced to accept. But she was quite contented without. The entertainment to her lay in the successful management of the double deception which was to end by procuring Hamilton the fruit of his elaborate intrigue. She was not jealous of him, though he was the man, handsome and daring, for her fancy. They were small souls akin, and she would like to please him, if only to hear his praise.
My lord read, my lady worked, and Mrs. Davis sat with her hands on her lap and yawned. When she addressed either, it had to be with a careful view to maintaining with each the fiction that she was the other’s friend—a task not to be under-estimated for its difficulty, and, indeed, only rendered possible by the stubborn avoidance by the two, in replying to her, of any reference to her position in the house as the guest of one of them. But their mutual pride was in that her safety. For any self-betrayal they invited, designedly or undesignedly, she might actually have been their known and accepted visitor. They spoke not so much to her as through her—shafts designed by each to gall the other. It was for her usefulness in that respect that my lady had condescended to condone her presence, and even to the extent of some verbal interchanges. As a medium, transmitting the bitter intercourse of soul with soul, she had her negative virtues.
It was evening, and the girandoles were all a sparkling haze of light. There was no company but these three; for his lordship had of late shown a peevish avoidance of his friends, and his implied intimation of a desire for solitude had been generally respected—infinitely to the disgust of his young Countess, who, never wedded to domestic dullness, found in this infliction of it, under the circumstances, an intolerably aggravated grievance. She sat like a figure of fate, distilling frost.
Moll, leaning back in her chair, linked her hands behind her head, stretched deliciously, gave a prodigious yawn, and rattling her little heels on the floor, came erect again, and looked in a collapsed way at her ladyship.
“Sure, you’d find stitching easier, wouldn’t you,” she said, “if you took off that black sling of a thing.” (The injured wife still advertised her hurt on occasion.)
“No,” answered the lady shortly, pursing her lips. “I shouldn’t.”