"Yes, I rode well, otherwise I shouldn"t regret it." Katherine smiled with even more a.s.surance under the added intensity of the _pince-nez_.
"You enjoy the excelling, then, more than the feeling."
"That sounds vain; I certainly shouldn"t feel pleasure if I were conscious of playing second fiddle to anybody."
"A very vain young lady," Odd"s smile was quite alertly interested, "and a self-conscious young lady, too."
"Yes, rather, I think," Katherine owned; frankness became her, "but I am very conscious of everything, myself included. I am merely one among the many phenomena that come under my notice, and, as I am the nearest of them all, naturally the most intimately interesting. Every one is self-conscious, Mr. Odd, if they have any personality at all."
"And you are clever," Peter pursued, in a tone of enumeration, his smile becoming definitely humorous as he added: "And I am very impudent."
Katherine was not sure that she had made just the effect she had aimed for, but certainly Mr. Odd would give her credit for frankness.
It was agreed that he should come for tea the next afternoon.
"After five," Katherine said; "Hilda doesn"t get in till so late; and I know that Hilda is the _clou_ of the occasion."
"Does Hilda take her painting so seriously as all that?"
"She doesn"t care about anything, _anything_ else," Katherine said gravely, adding, still gravely, "Hilda is very, very lovely."
"I hope you weren"t too much disappointed," Lady---- said to Odd, just before he was going; "is she not a charming girl?"
"She really is; the disappointment was only comparative. It was Hilda whom I knew so well. The dearest little girl."
"I have not seen much of her," Lady---- said, with some vagueness of tone. "I have called on Mrs. Archinard, a very sweet woman, clever, too; but the other girl was never there. I don"t fancy she is much help to her mother, you know, as Katherine is. Katherine goes about, brings people to see her mother, makes a _milieu_ for her; such a sad invalid she is, poor dear! But Hilda is wrapt up in her work, I believe. Rather a pity, don"t you think, for a girl to go in so seriously for a fad like that? She paints very nicely, to be sure; I fancy it all goes into that, you know."
"What goes into that?" Odd asked, conscious of a little temper; all seemed combined to push Hilda more and more into a slightly derogatory and very mysterious background.
"Well, she is not so clever as her sister. Katherine can entertain a roomful of people. Grace, tact, sympathy, the impalpable something that makes success of the best kind, Katherine has it."
Katherine"s friendly, breezy frankness had certainly amused and interested Odd at the dinner-table, but Lady ----"s remarks now produced in him one of those quick and unreasoning little revulsions of feeling by which the judgments of a half-hour before are suddenly reversed.
Katherine"s cleverness was that of the majority of the girls he took down to dinner, rather _voulu_, ba.n.a.l, tiresome. Odd felt that he was unjust, also that he was a little cross.
"There are some clevernesses above entertaining a roomful of people.
After all, success isn"t the test, is it?"
Lady---- smiled, an unconvinced smile--
"You should be the last person to say that."
"I?" Odd made no attempt to contradict the evident flattery of his hostess" tones, but his e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n meant to himself a volume of negatives. If success were the test, he was a sorry failure.
He was making his way out of the room when Captain Archinard stopped him.
"I have hardly had one word with you, Odd," said the Captain, whose high-bridged nose and finely set eyes no longer saved his face from its fundamental look of peevish pettiness. "Mrs. Brooke is going to take Katherine home. It"s a fine night, won"t you walk?"
Odd accepted the invitation with no great satisfaction; he had never found the Captain sympathetic. After lifting their hats to Mrs. Brooke and Katherine as they drove out of the Emba.s.sy Courtyard, the two men turned into the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore together.
"We are not far from you, you know," the Captain said--"Rue Pierre Charron; you said you were in the Marboeuf quarter, didn"t you? We are rather near the Trocadero, uphill, so I"ll leave you at the door of your hotel."
They lit cigars and walked on rather silently. The late October night was pleasantly fresh, and the Champs Elysees, as they turned into it, almost empty between the upward sweep of its line of lights.
"Ten years is a jolly long time," remarked Captain Archinard, "and a jolly lot of disagreeable things may happen in ten years. You knew we"d left the Priory, of course?"
"I was very sorry to hear it."
"Devilish hard luck. It wasn"t a choice of evils, though, if that is any consolation; it was that or starvation."
"As bad as that?"
"Just as bad; the horses went first, and then some speculations--safe enough they seemed, and, sure enough, went wrong. So that, with one thing and another, I hardly knew which way to turn. To tell the truth, I simply can"t go back to England. I have a vague idea of a perfect fog of creditors. I have been able to let the Priory, but the place is mortgaged up to the hilt; and devilish hard work it is to pay the interest; and hard luck it is altogether," the Captain repeated.
"Especially hard on a man like me. My wife is perfectly happy. I keep all worry from her; she doesn"t know anything about my troubles; she lives as she has always lived. I make that a point, sacrifice myself rather than deprive her of one luxury." The tone in which the Captain alluded to his privations rather made Peter doubt their reality. "And the two children live as they enjoy it most; a very jolly time they have of it. But what is my life, I ask you?" The Captain"s voice was very resentful. Odd almost felt that he in some way was to blame for the good gentleman"s unhappy situation. "What is my life, I ask you? I go dragging from post to pillar with stale politics in the morning, and five o"clock tea in gra.s.s widows" drawing-rooms for all distraction.
Paris is full of gra.s.s widows," he added, with an even deepened resentment of tone; "and I never cared much about the play, and French actresses are so deuced ugly, at least I find them so, even if I cared about that sort of thing, which I never did--much," and the Captain drew disconsolately at his cigar, taking it from his lips to look at the tip as they pa.s.sed beneath a lamp.
"I can hardly afford myself tobacco any longer," he declared, "smokable tobacco. Thought I"d economize on these, and they"re beastly, like all economical things!" And the Captain cast away the cigar with a look of disgust.
Peter offered him a subst.i.tute.
"You are a lucky dog, Odd, to come to contrasts," the Captain paused to shield his lighted match as he applied it to the fresh cigar; "I don"t see why things should be so deuced uneven in this world. One fellow born with a silver spoon in his mouth--and you"ve got a turn for writing, too; once one"s popular, that"s the best paying thing going, I suppose--and the other hunted all over Europe, through no fault of his own either. Rather hard, I think, that the man who doesn"t need money should be born with a talent for making it."
"It certainly isn"t just."
"d.a.m.ned unjust."
Odd felt that he was decidedly a culprit, and smiled as he smoked and walked beside the rebellious Captain. He was rather sorry for him. Odd had wide sympathies, and found whining, feeble futility pathetic, especially as there was a certain amount of truth in the Captain"s diatribes, the old eternal truth that things are not evenly divided in this badly managed world. It would be kinder to immediately offer the loan for which the Captain was evidently paving the way to a request.
But he reflected that the display of such quickness of comprehension might make the request too easy; and in the future the Captain might profit by a discovered weakness a little too freely. He would let him ask. And the Captain was not long in coming to the point. He was in a devilish tight place, positively couldn"t afford a pair of boots (Peter"s eyes involuntarily sought the Captain"s feet, neatly shod in social patent-leather), could Odd let him have one hundred pounds? (The Captain was frank enough to make no mention of repayment) etc., etc.
Peter cut short the explanation with a rather unwise manifestation of sympathetic comprehension; the Captain went upstairs with him to his room when the hotel was reached, and left it with a check for 3000 francs in his pocket; the extra 500 francs were the price of Peter"s readiness.
CHAPTER II
It rained next day, and Peter took a _fiacre_ from the Bibliotheque Nationale, where he had spent the afternoon diligently, and drove through the gray evening to the Rue Pierre Charron. It was just five when he got there, and already almost dark. There were four flights to be ascended before one reached the Archinards" apartment; four steep and rather narrow flights, for the house was not one of the larger newer ones, and there was no lift. Wilson, whom Odd remembered at Allersley, opened the door to him. Captain Archinard had evidently not denuded himself of a valet when he had parted with his horses; that sacrifice had probably seemed too monstrous, but Peter wondered rather whether Wilson"s wages were ever paid, and thought it more probable that a mistaken fidelity attached him to his master. In view of year-long arrears, he might have found it safer to stay with a future possibility of payment than, by leaving, put an end forever to even the hope of compensation.
The little entrance was very pretty, and the drawing-room, into which Peter was immediately ushered, even prettier. Evidently the Archinards had brought their own furniture, and the Archinards had very good taste.
The pale gray-greens of the room were charming. Peter noticed appreciatively the Copenhagen vases filled with white flowers; he could find time for appreciation as he pa.s.sed to Mrs. Archinard"s sofa, for no one else was in the room, a fact of which he was immediately and disappointedly aware. Mrs. Archinard was really improved. Her husband"s monetary embarra.s.sments had made even less impression on her than upon the surroundings, for though the little salon was very pretty, it was not the Priory drawing-room, and Mrs. Archinard was, if anything, plumper and prettier than when Peter had last seen her.
"This is really quite too delightful! Quite too delightful, Mr. Odd!"
Mrs. Archinard"s slender hand pressed his with seemingly affectionate warmth. "Katherine told us this morning about the _rencontre_. I was expecting you, as you see. Ten years! It seems impossible, really impossible!" Still holding his hand, she scanned his face with her sad and pretty smile. "I could hardly realize it, were it not that your books lie here beside me, living symbols of the years."
Peter indeed saw, on the little table by the sofa, the familiar bindings.
"I asked Katherine to get them out, so that I might look over them again; strengthen my impression of your personality, join all the links before meeting you again. Dear, dear little books!" Mrs. Archinard laid her hand, with its one great emerald ring, on the "Dialogues," which was uppermost. "Sit down, Mr. Odd; no, on this chair. The light falls on your face so. Yes, your books are to me among the most exquisite art productions of our age. Pater is more _etincellant_--a style too jewelled perhaps--one wearies of the chain of rather heartless beauty; but in your books one feels the heart, the aroma of life--a chain of flowers, flowers do not weary. Your personality is to me very sympathetic, Mr. Odd, very sympathetic."