Elizabeth's Pretenders/Part 2/Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX.

"What do you think of this new Englishman?" asked Hatty of her brother, a day or two after his arrival. She was still confined to her room.

"Oh! he is better than the other. I would rather trust him of the two, though he has a bad manner—like most Englishmen. But he is clever, I suppose."

"Does she seem to like him?"

"She? Do you mean Miss Shaw? I am sure I don't know. Either he or that fellow George are always buzzing about her. I should say that, of the two, she preferred George."

"She certainly was annoyed at Mr. Elton's coming here."

"She told you so?"

"Have you heard if Mr. George is really going away?"

"No. It does not much signify. If it is not he, it will be another—dancing attendance on her."

"She sees nothing of Monsieur Doucet, I am sure, now?"

"Naturally. But, as I told her the other day, she will throw one after the other to the wolves—these Englishmen with the rest, in time."

"You are very unjust to my friend, Ally. You want to make out that she is a flirt. She is nothing of the kind. She is ignorant of the world, and chooses, theoretically, to believe, or to fancy she believes, that all men are alike—bad. But, as she has to associate with them, she gets as much amusement out of their society as she can."

"She certainly contrives to get a good deal, in one way or another. But don't let us begin the old story over again, Hatty. Miss Shaw and I have nothing in common. I did something for her once; it was not much—still it was something. According to you, she is well able to take care of herself. I do not trouble myself more about her. I certainly am not going to join the crowd of her admirers."

"I think your tone is very unchivalrous," returned his sister, severely. "You make no allowance for the girl's youth. She behaved foolishly about that horrid Monsieur Doucet, I admit. But what did it amount to? Ignorance of Frenchmen's ideas and conduct towards women. As soon as she saw her mistake———"

"She did not see it for a very long time."

"Possibly. But as soon as she did see it, she exposed him courageously—more as one of our own countrywomen would have done than most English girls, I fancy; and has probably incurred his lasting enmity in consequence."

He was silent for a moment.

"The subject is of no importance—to me. But may I ask you to say truthfully whether she did or did not encourage this fellow George in a curious way for a girl who believes all men are reprobates—passing tbe days almost entirely alone with him at Foutainebleau?"

"If she passed the days alone with him, whose fault was that?" cried Hatty, flaring up in her friend's defence. "You were huffed because she had more sympathy with his way of painting than with yours (of course she is all wrong, but that has nothing to do with it); and so you stalked off by yourself, and of course I followed you."

"She showed very plainly she didn't want me, either then or later."

"I am not surprised. You made yourself very disagreeable. You, who have a finer intelligence, and could make yourself so much more charming than any one here if you choose—you provoke me. Ally! If Miss Shaw avoids you, if she dislikes you, as you choose to imagine, all I can say is—I am not surprised."

Her excitement had brought a red spot into her cheek, and she lay back on the sofa, coughing.

Though he tried to appear unconcerned, there was a certain irritation in his tone as he replied, "Why worry yourself about your friend and me? We don't suit. I am not made, as you know, for this sort of life—bandying empty nothings with these French people. I suppose I am disagreeable—I can't pretend. And this girl, who begins by being an icicle, and ends by thawing before every man who—who chooses to make up to her—frankly, she makes me angry. She is a fine creature, I admit, and I am glad that you and she should be friends. But intimacy between two women is different from intimacy between man and woman. Just because this one has a charm which has won you, I think her dangerous—to a man. She seems to me to go about seeking whom she may devour. I don't mean to be devoured."

"Has she made the smallest sign of wishing to devour you?" asked his sister, sarcastically, raising her head. "No! Your own words convict you. You say she showed very plainly she did not want you—that she does not like you———"

"Only because I do not pay her the attention she expects, and is used to receive."

"You argue in a vicious circle. You are cold and stiff in your manner to her; and when she returns your lead, as any girl of spirit would, you say she does not like you; but she is dangerous, and you are not going to be devoured. You take yourself too seriously, Alaric—you really do."

"I am sorry you think so, Hatty," he said gravely; "for you are the one person in the world who loves me, and whose opinion I care for. If you think me a vain fool———"

"No, no, no!" she cried remorsefully, and seized his hand in both hers. "I never meant that. There is no one in the world like you, Ally—no one so good and high-minded and unselfish. Only you don't make allowance for poor weak human nature, including yourself."

"I don't know what you are driving at, Hatty. If I am not a fool—and I do not think I am, though very far from being the Phœnix you imagine me—but if I am not a fool, why am I to 'make allowances' for myself? Why do you say I take myself too seriously?"

"You are over-sensitive, as so many of our countrymen are; and too critical of yourself, as well as of others. You very seldom let yourself go. Your reticence is positively a disease, in a mixed company. With Miss Shaw you never seem perfectly at your ease."

"I am not."

"There! You own it. And why, pray?"

"She expects more attention from men than I choose to give, and therefore she receives whatever I say with a certain antagonism. I feel it—I know it. If I criticize her work, she thanks me; but she at once goes and follows George's advice rather than mine."

Hatty made a queer little grimace. "Jealous, eh? That is promising!"

"Jealous! Not the least. This young Englishman—his views of art, his glibness, his spirits—it all suits her better than I ever could. I do not enter into the competition, you see. Neither you nor I care for this Mr. George; but that does not affect the question."

"Are you quite sure? Well, no one can open her eyes as to your superiority over every other man here but yourself." Here she lay back with a look of exhaustion; then added, a moment later, "I cannot bear that my brother and the only woman-friend I have should stand thus aloof. Good night, Ally. I am so tired; I must crawl into bed now. God bless you!"

He left her with a sore heart. Not that he realized how ill she was. She was always delicate, always catching cold; he had given up being alarmed as to her condition. But her words had stirred him. His position, he told himself, was a strong one; but, defend it as he might, Hatty's attack had destroyed some of its bulwarks. She had said his conduct was not "chivalrous" towards a young girl. That word started a new train of self-examination. He knew that on one occasion he had acted chivalrously on her behalf, where many men would have hesitated to interfere in what did not concern them. But had his thoughts about her always been those that the strong protector should have for the young and weak? She loved admiration, and she was stubborn. She paid no attention to what he said, and was even saucy at times. But then, upon the other hand, she was very young, and ignorant—her cleverness notwithstanding. Was Hatty right; and had he shown no chivalry in his intolerance of her aggravating ways, in his assumption that she tried to "devour" every man she came near? That was not chivalrous, he owned. It was a declaration begotten of jealousy. Yes, Hatty was right. He recognized now, though he would not admit to his sister, that a strong personal feeling coloured all his thoughts about this English girl.

He slept very little that night, and found in the morning—the first cold one of the autumn—that Hatty was no better. Her cough had kept her awake, she said, and she felt unequal to the exertion of dressing. Alaric went off to the studio, and soon afterwards Elizabeth paid her a visit. She did not stay long with her friend, for she saw that talking made Hatty cough; but, on ascending the stair to her atelier, she stopped before Baring's door.

It was not premeditated. A sudden impulse made her knock. He opened the door, and his surprise at seeing her was manifest.

"Mr. Baring," she began at once, as she stepped over the threshold, "I think Hatty ought to see a doctor. She is very weak and feverish, and her cough is certainly worse."

"She has been so often like this—in fact, nearly all last winter she was a prisoner. I am afraid you will not persuade her to see a doctor."

"May I send for one on my own acconnt, and take all the responsibility?"

"No; I could not allow that." A flush rose to his face as he spoke. "If you consider it necessary, I will send for one; but I am afraid she will be annoyed. She can't bear doctors."

"Never mind that. You can put all the blame on me. I am sure she ought to have advice."

"She shall have it." He questioned her truthful eyes. "She only complained to me of feeling tired. What did she say to you?"

"It is not what she said; it is her look, her feverish hands, and that constant cough. You know of a good doctor?"

"Yes; there is a good American here, in whom I have every confidence. I will go to him at once. Thank you for coming, Miss Shaw. I am afraid you think me very churlish. My sister says I am; but I appreciate your kindness in coming to me all the more, as it must have been disagreeable to you."

"I did not think whether it was agreeable or disagreeable," she replied, with something like irritability; while Baring instantly wished he could recall his foolish speech. (Hatty would have twitted him with it, and justly.) Elizabeth continued, as she moved towards the door, "I felt you ought to know that your sister is really ill. Men are slower to recognize the gravity of illness than women. That is all." And she passed out quickly, shutting the door behind her, before he could find another word to say.

Elizabeth was at her friend's bedside that afternoon when the doctor came. Miss Baring received him with less reluctance than Elizabeth expected. She left the room presently, but lay in wait on the stairs for him as he passed out.

"Mr. Baring is not in the house," she said, "but would like to hear your opinion of his sister's case more frankly, perhaps, than you would give it to her herself, and I have promised to report it to him."

"She requires very great care—and warmth. She should not pass the winter in Paris. I have told her so."

Elizabeth's countenance fell.

"But what is she to do? Her brother can't leave his work. Perhaps in a warmer apartment———?"

"I will see her again in a day or two. If my present view of her case is confirmed, no change of apartment would be of any avail. The air of Paris is too keen for any one in her state."

He bowed, and passed down the stairs. Elizabeth turned into the sick-room.

Miss Baring's head was buried in the pillow; ahe was sobbing. Emotion had always seemed so foreign to the American woman's nature, that Elizabeth was frightened.

"What is the matter, dear Hatty?" she asked quickly, bending over the bed, and laying her hand gently on her shoulder.

"He says I ought to go to the South! And I can't—I can't—I won't leave him. If I am as ill as that, I had better die here. He—he has made so many sacrifices for me already. Think of the expense! And to be parted from him, and all alone! No! I won't leave him. He is all I have in the world—I won't leave him!"

"You are exciting yourself needlessly, dear," said Elizabeth after an interval, which was filled by Hatty's racking cough. "The doctor will not pronounce decidedly till he sees you again. When he does so, it will be time enough to talk of what we will or will not do."

"We?" The girl turned her white tear-stained face, and fixed her prominent short-sighted eyes on her friend.

"Yes—we. If you had to go away for a time, I should accompany you. I would not let you go alone."

"What! and throw up your classes, and everything? Oh, Lizzie! I couldn't let you do that."

"We won't talk about it, then, till the time comes. Perhaps it never may come. Now I am going out to get the prescription he left made up for you."

When she quitted the apothecary's half an hour later, she walked on the quay, going towards the Champs de Mars. In her black dress, with a thick veil, she was not likely to attract attention, and she wanted to be alone; she had no heart to return to Monsieur D———'s class that day. It was astonishing how attached she had grown to this American girl in the short space of three months. Nothing but this would have made her decide, on the spur of the moment, that she would not let Hatty leave Paris alone. She had suddenly awoke to the conscionsness that afternoon that the girl was seriously ill—far more ill than her brother imagined, or than Elizabeth herself had conjectured, when begging him to send for a doctor. It would be a sacrifice to leave her work; she did not deny it. But she was not a girl to shrink from a sacrifice where her affections were concerned. Alaric Baring would certainly be unable to accompany his sister. His daily bread depended on his following his profession, and what could he do at some dead-alive health resort? If there ever was a moment to prove that her friendship was not one of mere words, it was now.

She had reached this stage in her reflections, when one of the yellow, white-hatted fiacres, which are always supplied with hot-water tins for the feet, passed her. She did not see a face thrust out of the window, but was conscious that the fiacre pulled up immediately, and that some one jumped out. The next minute she heard Lord Robert's voice at her elbow.

"Just come from the Embassy, Miss Shaw. Heard a piece of news there may interest you. You don't mind my walking with you, I hope?"

"No. I am going home. What is your news?"

"Colonel Wybrowe is going to be married to the great American heiress, Miss Krupp. Five million dollars!"

"It doesn't interest me in the least, Lord Robert."

"You used to be a great friend of his."

"No; I never was that."

"Not when he sat to you, morning after morning, and you were angry because I wouldn't admire him?"

With a smiling impertinence not lost on him, she replied, "Nothing you could— or better, nothing you would—say could make me angry, I am sure. I am not especially interested in all the models that sit to me, whether handsome or not—least of all in Colonel Wybrowe."

"That is a consolation to a man who could never be your model. Ugliness has its advantages."

"Has it?" she inquired, with a wicked air of innocence. "What are they?"

"If one has any success"—he waited to adjust the clasp of his sentence, then snapped it with—"one knows it is not due to one's exterior."

'It must be delightful to be beautiful," she said irrelevantly, as she walked vigorously along, inhaling the sharp October air. "I sometimes think I would rather be beautiful than anything."

"May I say—that is foolish? I care so little for regular rule-and-measure beauty; I remember saying so to you once before."

"I was not thinking of you. Lord Robert. Beauty is an attraction about which there can be no mistake. There are so many mistakes about other attractions."

"Such as what? Don't understand you."

"Oh, such as cleverness, or good temper, or—or—or money. All these things—I mean the belief in them—may deceive a man: beauty can't. There it is, undeniable."

"But not necessarily attractive."

"No, not necessarily. But if I were beautiful, and—had nothing else to recommend me, I should know, at least, that the man who made up to me was genuinely in love."

He was struck back for a moment, but recovered himself quickly.

"And you would really value that sort of love? Sort of thing that dies out in the honeymoon—and then, where are you? You're awfully young, Miss Shaw, and know nothing of life—nothing! Look at a man's character—that's the main thing. If it stands high, and he has got brains, and—and—that you like him, you've a better chance of happiness with him, believe me, than with your love-at-first-sighter!"

"Perhaps." There was a mischievous twinkle in her eye, only he could not see it through her veil, as she went on. "I am thinking of founding a college for women-artists, and endowing it. It will take the greater part of my fortune; but I shall live there myself, which I shall love, and paint all day—which will be much nicer than leading a stupid life in the world."

"If you take such a mad step, you will regret it, all your days," he fired off sharply.

"I don't think so. I know so very well what I don't want. That is one step in advance towards being happy, isn't it?"

"Not always at your time of life. What is it you don't want?"

"A great position in London, constant society, country-houses; and, more than all, I should hate official life. All the talk about 'party,' all the political intriguery, would bore me dreadfully."

"You are unjust to yourself—unjust to public life. Low elements in it, I grant. But not entirely made up of them. There is such a thing as patriotism. If you were married to a man with the welfare of his country at heart—a man strenuous to use his talents for the public good—you would not take such a contemptuous view of a political career. You might get to think that the life of an orator whose eloquence influences the destiny of a people, is not so very inferior in interest to that of a painter or a poet!"

He spoke with an irritability which rasped the ear. And Elizabeth, while she in no way repented of her plain speaking, hastened to apply such salve as she could to his wounded vanity.

"I do not take a contemptuous view of a political career; you mistake me. I know it is a very important and useful one, and I honour men who devote their energies to the public good. But, personally speaking, I should dislike to lead the sort of life that belonging to a public man would entail. I am quite unfitted for it, and have no social ambition."

"There is a social ambition that is vulgar, and another that is not," he replied, by no means soothed, for he saw the object of his ambition which he had pursued so obstinately growing more and more intangible. "The ambition to live surrounded by whatever is best worth knowing—you will have that some day, if yon haven't it now. 'Position' affords facilities for this. It is one of the few advantages left to 'position' nowadays. But it is a definite one—one which I suspect you would find wanting among your women-artists. They'll talk nothing but 'shop.'"

"Oh, I hope not!" laughed Elizabeth, as they reached the door of the pension. "But, anyway, I had rather have to listen to a 'shop' which I understand, than to a 'shop' which I don't!"

Lord Robert Elton uttered a quick ejaculation of impatience. Had he taken all this trouble to be defeated? It looked like it.