He turned his back upon the dancers, and went out into the garden. His soul was wrung with jealousy, yet he could watch no longer. There was too much pain—there were too many bitter memories of shame, and loss, and ignominy evoked by that infernal picture. If he had been free he would have asserted his authority as Lesbia's future husband; he would have taken her away from the Orleans; he would have told her plainly and frankly that Don Gomez was no fit person for her to know; and he would have so planned that they two should never meet again. But Horace Smithson was not free. He was bound hand and foot by those fetters which the chain of past events had forged—stern facts which the man himself may forget, or try to forget, but which other people never forget. There is generally some dark spot in the history of such men as Smithson—men who climb the giddiest heights of this world with that desperate rapidity which implies many a perilous leap from crag to crag, many a moraine skimmed over, and many an awful gulf spanned by a hair-breadth bridge. Mr. Smithson's history was not without such spots; and the darkest of all had relation to his career in Cuba. The story had been known by very few—perhaps completely known only by one man; and that man was Gomez de Montesma.
For the last fifteen years the most fervent desire of Horace Smithson's heart had been the hope that tropical nature, in any one of her various disagreeable forms, would be obliging enough to make an end of Gomez. But the forces of nature had not worked on Mr. Smithson's side. No loathsome leprosy had eaten his enemy's flesh; neither cayman nor crocodile, neither Juba snake nor poisonous spider had marked him for its prey. The tropical sun had left him unsmitten. He had lived and he had prospered; and he was here, like a guilty conscience incarnate, to spoil Horace Smithson's peace.
'I must be diplomatic,' Smithson said to himself, as he walked up and down an avenue of Irish yews, in a solitary part of the grounds, smoking his cigarette, and hearing the music swell and sink in the distance. 'I will give her a hint as to that man's character, and I will keep them apart as much as I can. But if he forces himself upon me there is no help for it. I cannot afford to be uncivil to him.'
'Cannot afford' in this instance meant 'dare not,' and Horace Smithson's thoughts as he paced the yew-tree walk were full of gloom.
During that long meditation he made up his mind on one point, namely, that, let him suffer what pangs he might, he must not betray his jealousy. To do that would be to lower himself in Lesbia's eyes, and to play into his rival's hand; for a jealous man is almost always contemptible in the sight of his mistress. He would carry himself as if he were sure of her fidelity; and this very confidence, with a woman of honour, a girl reared as Lesbia had been reared, would render it impossible for her to betray him. He would show himself high-minded, confident, generous, chivalrous, even; and he would trust to chance for the issue. Chance was Mr. Smithson's only idea of Divinity; and Chance had hitherto been kind to him. There had been dark hours in his life, but the darkness had not lasted long; and the lucky accidents of his career had been of a nature to beguile him into the belief that among the favourites of Destiny he stood first and foremost.
While Mr. Smithson mused thus, alone and in the darkness, Montesma and Lady Lesbia were wandering arm in arm in another and lovelier part of the grounds, where golden lights were scattered like Cuban fire-flies among the foliage of seringa and magnolia, arbutus and rhododendron, while at intervals a sudden flush of rosier light was shed over garden and river, as if by enchantment, surprising a couple here and there in the midst of a flirtation which had begun in darkness.
The grounds were lovely in the balmy atmosphere of a July night, the river gliding with mysterious motion under the stars, great masses of gloom darkening the stream with an almost awful look where the woods of Petersham and Ham House cast their dense shadows on the water. Don Gomez and his companion wandered by the river side to a spot where a group of magnolias sheltered them from the open lawn, and where there were some rustic chairs close to the balustrade which protected the parapet. In this spot, which was a kind of island, divided from the rest of the grounds by the intervening road, they found themselves quite alone, and in the midst of a summer stillness which was broken only by the low, lazy ripple of the tide running seawards. The lights of Richmond looked far away, and the little town with its variety of levels had an Italian air in the distance.
From the ballroom, faint and fitful, came the music of a waltz.
'I'm afraid I've brought you too far,' said Don Gomez.
'On the contrary, it is a relief to get away from the lights and the people. How delicious this river is! I was brought up on the shores of a lake; but after all a lake is horribly tame. Its limits are always staring one in the face. There is no room for one's imagination to wander. Now a river like this suggests an infinity of possibilities, drifting on and on and on into undiscovered regions, by ever-varying shores. I feel to-night as if I should like to step into that little boat yonder,' pointing to a light skiff bobbing gently up and down with the tide, at the bottom of a flight of steps, 'and let the stream take me wherever it chose.'