They walked on quickly to Bruton Street. The dogs made conversation impossible. If they were on the chain it was one long battle between them and their leader. If they were let loose, it seemed to Sir Wilfrid that they ranged every area on the march, and attacked all elderly gentlemen and most errand-boys.
"Do you always take them out?" he asked, when both he and his companion were crimson and out of breath.
"Always."
"Do you like dogs?"
"I used to. Perhaps some day I shall again."
"As for me, I wish they had but one neck!" said Sir Wilfrid, who had but just succeeded in dragging Max, the bigger of the two, out of the interior of a pastry-cook"s hand-cart which had been rashly left with doors open for a few minutes in the street, while its responsible guardian was gossiping in an adjacent kitchen. Mademoiselle Julie meanwhile was wrestling with Nero, the younger, who had dived to the very heart of a peculiarly unsavory dust-box, standing near the entrance of a mews.
"So you commonly go through the streets of London in this whirlwind?"
asked Sir Wilfrid, again, incredulous, when at last they had landed their charges safe at the Bruton Street door.
"Morning and evening," said Mademoiselle Julie, smiling. Then she addressed the butler: "Tell Lady Henry, please, that I shall be at home in half an hour."
As they turned westward, the winter streets were gay with lights and full of people. Sir Wilfrid was presently conscious that among all the handsome and well-dressed women who brushed past them, Mademoiselle Le Breton more than held her own. She reminded him now not so much of her mother as of Marriott Dalrymple. Sir Wilfrid had first seen this woman"s father at Damascus, when Dalrymple, at twenty-six, was beginning the series of Eastern journeys which had made him famous. He remembered the brillance of the youth; the power, physical and mental, which radiated from him, making all things easy; the scorn of mediocrity, the incapacity for subordination.
"I should like you to understand," said the lady beside him, "that I came to Lady Henry prepared to do my very best."
"I am sure of that," said Sir Wilfrid, hastily recalling his thoughts from Damascus. "And you must have had a very difficult task."
Mademoiselle Le Breton shrugged her shoulders.
"I knew, of course, it must be difficult. And as to the drudgery of it--the dogs, and that kind of thing--nothing of that sort matters to me in the least. But I cannot be humiliated before those who have become my friends, entirely because Lady Henry wished it to be so."
"Lady Henry at first showed you every confidence?"
"After the first month or two she put everything into my hands--her household, her receptions, her letters, you may almost say her whole social existence. She trusted me with all her secrets." ("No, no, my dear lady," thought Sir Wilfrid.) "She let me help her with all her affairs. And, honestly, I did all I could to make her life easy."
"That I understand from herself."
"Then why," cried Mademoiselle Le Breton, turning round to him with sudden pa.s.sion--"why couldn"t Lady Henry leave things alone? Are devotion, and--and the kind of qualities she wanted, so common? I said to myself that, blind and helpless as she was, she should lose nothing.
Not only should her household be well kept, her affairs well managed, but her salon should be as attractive, her Wednesday evenings as brilliant, as ever. The world was deserting her; I helped her to bring it back. She cannot live without social success; yet now she hates me for what I have done. Is it sane--is it reasonable?"
"She feels, I suppose," said Sir Wilfrid, gravely, "that the success is no longer hers."
"So she says. But will you please examine that remark? When her guests a.s.semble, can I go to bed and leave her to grapple with them? I have proposed it often, but of course it is impossible. And if I am to be there I must behave, I suppose, like a lady, not like the housemaid.
Really, Lady Henry asks too much. In my mother"s little flat in Bruges, with the two or three friends who frequented it, I was brought up in as good society and as good talk as Lady Henry has ever known."
They were pa.s.sing an electric lamp, and Sir Wilfrid, looking up, was half thrilled, half repelled by the flashing energy of the face beside him. Was ever such language on the lips of a paid companion before? His sympathy for Lady Henry revived.
"Can you really give me no clew to the--to the sources of Lady Henry"s dissatisfaction?" he said, at last, rather coldly.
Mademoiselle Le Breton hesitated.
"I don"t want to make myself out a saint," she said, at last, in another voice and with a humility which was, in truth, hardly less proud than her self-a.s.sertion. "I--I was brought up in poverty, and my mother died when I was fifteen. I had to defend myself as the poor defend themselves--by silence. I learned not to talk about my own affairs. I couldn"t afford to be frank, like a rich English girl. I dare say, sometimes I have concealed things which had been better made plain. They were never of any real importance, and if Lady Henry had shown any consideration--"
Her voice failed her a little, evidently to her annoyance. They walked on without speaking for a few paces. "Never of any real importance?" Sir Wilfrid wondered.
Their minds apparently continued the conversation though their lips were silent, for presently Julie Le Breton said, abruptly:
"Of course I am speaking of matters where Lady Henry might have some claim to information. With regard to many of my thoughts and feelings, Lady Henry has no right whatever to my confidence."
"She gives us fair warning," thought Sir Wilfrid.
Aloud he said:
"It is not a question of thoughts and feelings, I understand, but of actions."
"Like the visit to the Duncombes"?" said Mademoiselle Le Breton, impatiently. "Oh, I quite admit it--that"s only one of several instances Lady Henry might have brought forward. You see, she led me to make these friendships; and now, because they annoy her, I am to break them. But she forgets. Friends are too--too new in my life, too precious--"
Again the voice wavered. How it thrilled and penetrated! Sir Wilfrid found himself listening for every word.
"No," she resumed. "If it is a question of renouncing the friends I have made in her house, or going--it will be going. That may as well be quite clear."
Sir Wilfrid looked up.
"Let me ask you one question, mademoiselle."
"Certainly. Whatever you like."
"Have you ever had, have you now, any affection for Lady Henry?"
"Affection? I could have had plenty. Lady Henry is most interesting to watch. It is magnificent, the struggles she makes with her infirmities."
Nothing could have been more agreeable than the modulation of these words, the pa.s.sage of the tone from a first note of surprise to its grave and womanly close. Again, the same suggestions of veiled and vibrating feeling. Sir Wilfrid"s nascent dislike softened a little.
"After all," he said, with gentleness, "one must make allowance for old age and weakness, mustn"t one?"
"Oh, as to that, you can"t say anything to me that I am not perpetually saying to myself," was her somewhat impetuous reply. "Only there is a point when ill-temper becomes not only tormenting to me but degrading to herself.... Oh, if you only knew!"--the speaker drew an indignant breath. "I can hardly bring myself to speak of such _miseres_. But everything excites her, everything makes her jealous. It is a grievance that I should have a new dress, that Mr. Montresor should send me an order for the House of Commons, that Evelyn Crowborough should give me a Christmas present. Last Christmas, Evelyn gave me these furs--she is the only creature in London from whom I would accept a farthing or the value of a farthing."
She paused, then rapidly threw him a question:
"Why, do you suppose, did I take it from her?"
"She is your kinswoman," said Wilfrid, quietly.
"Ah, you knew that! Well, then, mayn"t Evelyn be kind to me, though I am what I am? I reminded Lady Henry, but she only thought me a mean parasite, sponging on a d.u.c.h.ess for presents above my station. She said things hardly to be forgiven. I was silent. But I have never ceased to wear the furs."
With what imperious will did the thin shoulders straighten themselves under the folds of chinchilla! The cloak became symbolic, a flag not to be struck.
"I never answer back, please understand--never," she went on, hurriedly.
"You saw to-day how Lady Henry gave me her orders. There is not a servant in the house with whom she would dare such a manner. Did I resent it?"
"You behaved with great forbearance. I watched you with admiration."
"Ah, _forbearance!_ I fear you don"t understand one of the strangest elements in the whole case. I am _afraid_ of Lady Henry, mortally afraid! When she speaks to me I feel like a child who puts up its hands to ward off a blow. My instinct is not merely to submit, but to grovel.
When you have had the youth that I had, when you have existed, learned, amused yourself on sufferance, when you have had somehow to maintain yourself among girls who had family, friends, money, name, while you--"