The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Isabey, with a strong and increasing interest, watched Angela slyly. She was so unsophisticated and had led the life so like the snowdrops in the garden that things overimpressed her. She listened with her heart upon her lips to the verses which Isabey repeated, and her color came and went with an almost painful rapidity. The latter-day French poets had been until then an unopened book to her, and the effect upon her was overmastering. They introduced her into a whole new world of passionate feeling, and it seemed to her that Isabey, who had opened the gateway into that garden of the soul, was the most dazzling man on earth.

Isabey saw this, for Angela was easily read. It was a new problem for him, these young feminine creatures, who cultivate their emotions and live upon them; who cleverly simulate intellect, but who are at bottom all feeling; who can listen, unmoved, to the tale of Troy Town, but who blush and tremble at a canzonet which tells the story of a kiss. When Angela listened with rapt attention or when, as presently, she spoke freely and gayly, Isabey thought her handsome, although not strictly beautiful, nor likely to become so. But what freshness, what unconscious grace was hers! She might have been one of Botticelli’s nymphs, with the woods and fields her natural haunts and proper setting.

When the quartet turned homeward through the purple dusk, Angela felt as if the familiar, everyday world were steeped in a glow, new and strange and iridescent. Isabey had given her the first view of art as art, of music, of world-beauty, and hers was a soul thirsty for all these things.

He seemed to her the most accomplished man on earth. She knew well enough, however, that Isabey was not a man merely of accomplishments. If that had been the case she would not have been so impressed by those accomplishments. But she knew that he was a man of parts intrusted with serious business, and it was this which made his graces and his charm so captivating.

Lyddon, too, was a man of parts, but Lyddon was awkward beyond words; was bored by music, and although he could repeat with vigor and earnestness the sonorous verse of Rome and Greece, it was too grave, too ancient, too much overlaid with the weight of centuries to appeal to Angela as did this modern poetry.

The instinct of concealment, which is the salvation of women, kept Angela from showing too obviously the spell cast upon her by Isabey. It was noticeable, however, that she was more animated than usual.

When supper was over, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine, contrary to their usual custom, went to the old study with the rest of the household and their guest. Colonel Tremaine was deeply interested in what Isabey had to tell him of the military situation at the South, and Angela listened in a way which showed she was accustomed to hearing and understanding serious things.

Isabey found out in a dozen ways that the study was quite as much Angela’s habitat as anyone’s. There was her little chair in a corner with her small writing table; above it were the books which were peculiarly hers, besides her childish library of four or five volumes. The flowerpots in the windows were hers, and when Richard Tremaine, pulling her pretty pink ear, declared that he would throw the flowerpots out of the window, Angela boldly responded that the study belonged as much to her as to him, and that she would have as many flowerpots in it as she pleased.

At half past nine o’clock the great bell rang for prayers, and the whole family and all of the house servants were assembled as usual in the big library.

Isabey liked this patriarchal custom of family prayers and listened with interest to Colonel Tremaine’s reading of the Gospel for the day, and Mrs. Tremaine’s soft and reverent voice in her extemporary prayer. He noticed, however, the strange omission of Neville’s name, and when the point came where it might have been mentioned, there was a little pause, and Mrs. Tremaine placed her hand upon her heart, as if she felt a knife within a wound. Perhaps she made a silent prayer for Neville, whose unspoken name was in the mind of each present. Isabey glanced toward Angela and observed her face suddenly change. She raised her downcast eyes, and stood up for a moment or two, then sat down again. In truth, Angela experienced a shock of remorse and amazement. She, Neville Tremaine’s wife, had scarcely thought of him since she had first seen Isabey that day, nor had Neville, at any moment of her life, absorbed her attention as had this newcomer to Harrowby.