CHAPTER XVI.

At a few minutes after half-past one on the following day, Minna rang the bell of the large, demure-looking door of a large, well-kept, and equally demure-looking house in a good street off one of the most fashionable squares. ‘Lodgings,’ perhaps, but evidently first-rate ones, both as to accommodation and, probably, price.

A man-servant opened the door. Mrs. Marchmont was at home. He led Minna upstairs to the drawing-room, announced her, and departed. It was a large, handsome, tastefully furnished London drawing-room, having very little about it of the usual serpent’s trail. Fulvia rose from a low chair which stood beside a small table covered with newspapers and periodicals.

‘It is very good of you to come. Put off your mantle--so. When I have a friend with me, I hate to see her looking as if next moment she would be going away. And your hat--so. You are not changed one bit, cara signora,’ she added, with more warmth and approachableness of manner than she had yet displayed. Minna said little. Her heart was very full.

Fulvia led her to a sofa near the window, placed her there, and sat down beside her. She was exquisitely dressed in a sort of morning gown of muslin, lace and ribbons. One portion of her bargain at any rate had been kept, the side of luxury, of which Fulvia had spoken with assumed enthusiasm to Minna, when she had first made her her confidant on the subject of her engagement. There was a sumptuousness in the young woman’s entire appearance which was carried out to the minutest details of her attire and its appointments. Minna looked at her, and her artist’s eye, as well as that of human affection, took it all in, and contrasted it with the little blue woollen frock of former days.

‘We will have lunch first, and then go to see my husband,’ said Fulvia, and to Minna, in whom the recollection of the past was so vivid, it was a mystery how she could utter those two words, ‘my husband,’ and wear that slight, cool smile, look at her interlocutor with those clear, limpid eyes, and carry herself with such unembarrassed ease.

Lunch was announced, and they went downstairs. They were alone, and they talked about a great many things. Fulvia appeared to be very candid, very cheerful, and very indifferent. She told Minna of many things that ‘they’ had done at different times since her marriage. The only peculiarity which Minna noticed about her conversation was that it never referred to anything earlier than two or three years back. As to the first year or two of her marriage, or what she had done or seen then, or where she had been, she was absolutely silent, except that once she casually mentioned having been in Australia; and when Minna incautiously asked when, she said, with a sudden freezing coolness of tone, ‘Oh, it was about four years ago.’

They seemed to have passed a good deal of time at Vienna, perhaps the most absolutely frivolous capital in Europe, as Minna recollected. There, from Fulvia’s account, they had met personages a good deal connected with politics and diplomacy, and she, at least, had made a success in rather exclusive circles. She spoke with regret of not having been able to devote herself to this life.

‘I should like a political life,’ she said; ‘I should like a political salon very much. You see, anyone like me, young and strong, and with an active, inquiring mind’--she laughed a little--‘with a great deal of money and no children, is really in need of something to do with her time. There are several occupations and pastimes which such a woman may take to. I have thought of them all. She may go in for society and utter frivolity, or for being a _femme incomprise_, or for literature, or art, or mysterious fascination, which means lovers, or for politics. I have come to the conclusion that politics are the least risky, the most satisfying, and at the same time the most exciting of these pursuits. And I had just brought my husband round to my way of thinking. He had decided to settle in England, and look out for a constituency. Of course he would have had to buy it, but those things can generally be managed; we should have lived chiefly here, in London, and then--we should have seen. Just when it was decided, he was overtaken by this illness, and there is an end of it all.’

‘Temporarily?’ hazarded Minna.

‘Altogether. We shall have to live in the country, and I dread it, I must say. I have got so accustomed to excitement, of one kind or another, that I shall be very badly off without it. I do not deceive myself as to our position--not in the least. In London, people like us may conquer and hold fast a certain kind of standing--if we do not mind how much money we spend. In the country--in the county, which, of course, is the only part of the country worth considering--it is quite different. More difficult, slower, more subject to mortifying ups and downs than in town. No, I dread the country. It will be a _vera seccatura_ to have to live there.’

Minna did not like the tone of all this.

But she had nothing to say to it. It all looked as if her little Fulvia had been hardened into a woman of the world; and if so, what wonder? Perhaps it had not been in her nature to be elevated by such an experience. Perhaps it was better that she should have developed into this, than sunk into a lifeless, spiritless thing, without nerve to meet her life.

Lunch over, Fulvia rose.

‘I shall have to drag you upstairs,’ she said. ‘The whole of the second-floor is given up to him, and I have my bedroom higher still. This way!’

Silently Minna followed her, and they mounted the stairs to the second-floor. Fulvia tapped at the door of a front-room. It was opened at once by a man-servant.

‘Is Mr. Marchmont ready to see us?’ asked Fulvia. ‘I sent him word I was bringing a friend.’

‘Quite ready, madam. He has been expecting you,’ said the man, throwing open the door and announcing her.

‘Come, will you?’ said Fulvia, looking back for a second towards Minna, whose heart beat uncomfortably fast as the recollection came rushing over her of the agony, the fainting, the despair she had witnessed five years ago; of the exceeding bitter cry which had gone forth from the girl Fulvia Dietrich, before she had, all shivering with terror, but strung up to the last pitch of self-abnegation, left her mother’s room to become Fulvia Marchmont. The scene would not go out of Minna’s mind, in spite of the woman she now saw before her--well, strong, and full of life, and most certainly not crushed, visibly at any rate.

She followed, as she had been bidden to do. Fulvia walked straight up to where, with its head towards a large, pleasantly-shaded window, stood a luxurious invalid’s couch. It was broad and soft, padded, with the most cunning contrivances for giving ease to limbs tired or diseased. Over it was spread a quilted silken coverlet of some gorgeous Eastern pattern. Under this coverlet was, presumably, a human figure, because at the head of the couch there was a snowy white pillow, adorned with lace frills and ruchings; and on the pillow reclined a head. The head must, in the nature of things, be connected with limbs, but so small and shrivelled and shrunken were those limbs that no outline of them was to be seen under the billowy-looking cover.

The face, which was turned in their direction as they came in, was such a strange, distorted, withered-looking little countenance as Minna did not remember ever to have seen before. The mouth was drawn down at one side in a ridiculously grotesque way. One eyelid had drooped, and would not be raised. The eye that still possessed its power looked eagerly and suspiciously at them, with the glance which Minna remembered so well--sharp, mistrustful and restless. The rest of the face she would hardly have recognised. It was that of a premature septuagenarian--of a septuagenarian who suffered, and whose sufferings had wrought no good, or nobility, or sweetness in his nature, which, in fact, had been ruined and rotten, and hopelessly warped, or ever the sufferings had begun.

‘Good-morning!’ said Fulvia, in a clear, cool voice as she walked towards him.

‘Good-morning, my dear, good-morning. I thought you were never coming.’

He feebly stretched out his skinny little left hand, and held it towards her without paying any attention to her visitor. She just touched the hand with the tips of her fingers, and then, turning, said:

‘Here is Mrs. Hastings. You remember her at Rome. She was very kind to me, and she did a bust of me--do you remember? She has been having lunch with me.’

The grotesque head made a grotesque kind of inclination on hearing these words. Minna was forced herself to come forward and say:

‘I am sorry you are so much out of health.’

‘Oh, a mere temporary thing--a kind of sunstroke, or something of that sort,’ said the voice she remembered so well. That was hardly altered at all. ‘Where did you meet Mrs. Marchmont? Was it an accident, or did you know we were here?’ he continued impatiently.

Minna was glad of the torrent of questions, which she proceeded to answer categorically.

He did not pay much attention to what she said to him, but continued to follow with his eyes every movement of his wife, as she moved hither and thither about the room. Minna began to realize something of the facts of the case. The man into whose power Fulvia had been sold while still a child was now a miserable, hopeless invalid, as helplessly in her power as she had been in his. She was strong. She had force of character and stamina of constitution. She had inherited her mother’s strong will and her father’s mental ability. She had got over the horrors and miseries of the first stage--slavery. The reins had now fallen into her hands, and she had grasped them firmly. She had not the least intention of letting them go. That she felt the faintest spark of affection for this wretched little mummy on the couch, even in this helpless invalid condition, Minna could not for an instant believe. Everything about her, in her attitude, her look, her manner, in the tone of her voice, in the deliberate calm glance she cast upon the face that so eagerly followed her every movement, spoke of the complete mastery she enjoyed, of the unlimited power she exercised. She had evidently conquered in the fight--there must have been a fight with herself as well as with him--conquered fully and without reserve. No victory is bloodless, either materially or metaphorically; no possession is gained without a price having to be paid for it, sooner or later. At what price had Fulvia gained her victory? Minna wondered. What had she given up in return for the power she had acquired?

Such questions rushed vaguely and hastily through her mind, as she tried to reply to Marchmont’s questions, seeing plainly that he was not listening, and that he thought her presence a frightful bore. Fulvia presently seated herself near to them, and observed coolly:

‘I told you what Mrs. Hastings had said about there being a place near to her which was to let. I told you last night. Did you think about it at all?’

‘A place to let--oh yes! Yes, I thought about it. It’s such a confoundedly long way from London to where you live, Mrs. Hastings,’ he said restlessly.

‘No place in England is far from London now,’ replied Minna. ‘It only takes six hours--not quite as much by a flying express.’

‘No--no; that’s true. Fulvia seems to have quite set her mind on going to see this place. She says she’s going with you when you leave London. When do you leave London?’

‘In less than a week now.’

‘Ah, well! if she says she will go, she will go,’ said Marchmont; ‘and, as she says, the more perfect quiet I have, the sooner I am likely to get well. It is very provoking to be laid up in this way.’

Evidently his thoughts were entirely centred on himself and his sensations. Fulvia, not he, would decide upon where they were to go in order that he might have the ‘perfect quiet’ he spoke of. They sat with him for half an hour, and then Minna thought she must go. Fulvia said she would go downstairs with her, but promised Marchmont to return and read the newspapers to him. Minna unwillingly exerted herself to shake hands with him. He wished her good-bye with a restless, wandering glance which settled nowhere except on his wife.

The two women parted. Fulvia came all the way downstairs with her guest, a proceeding which, Minna instinctively felt, was very unusual on her part. She supposed she might take it as a compliment, or even as a mark of affection. A meeting was arranged for a few days hence at the house of Minna’s friends, and Fulvia added:

‘He was quite right in saying that I said I should go with you to look at this house. Would you take me?’

‘Wouldn’t I, my dear! I wish you would go there.’

Fulvia smiled.

‘I really am thinking about it. Though I haven’t seen it, it is the first thing I have heard of which has in the least attracted me. By the time I see you again I shall have made up my mind, and will let you know.’

‘I think she will have made up her mind to come,’ said Minna to herself, as she went away.