CHAPTER II

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE

"Yes, I have returned. I am here, veritably here, _chère Madame et amie_. At last I have effected my escape from the Land of Egypt and the House of Bondage--and such a bondage! Ah! it is an incredibly happy thing to be back!"

Adrian permitted himself to hold his hostess's hand some seconds longer than is demanded by strict etiquette. His face was as glad as a spring morning. Tender gallantry lurked in his eyes. His voice had a ring of joy irrepressible. His aspect was at once that of suppliant and of conqueror. And this whole brilliant effect was infectious, finding readier and more sympathetic reflection in Madame St. Leger's expression and humor than she at all intended or bargained for. For the moment, indeed, the charm and the rush of it came near sweeping her off her feet. She ceased to subscribe to theory, ceased to reason, yielded to spontaneous feeling, practice claiming her--the secular and delightful practice of he being man, she woman, and of both being fearless, high-spirited, beautifully human, and beautifully young.

"In any case the House of Bondage has not disagreed with you," she said, gaily. "For I have never seen you looking more admirably well."

"Ah! you must not put that down to the credit of the House of Bondage, but to the fact of my entrancing escape from it, to the fact that once more I am here--here--with you." As he spoke Adrian glanced round the dear rose-red-and-canvas-colored room. He wished to make sure that, in every detail, he found it precisely as he had left it, every article of furniture, every picture, every ornament in its accustomed position. He felt jealous of the minutest change of object or of place. "No, nothing is altered, nothing," he said, answering his own thought aloud in the greatness of his content.

Gabrielle abstained from comment. She owned herself moved, excited, uplifted, by the joyful atmosphere which his presence exhaled. Indeed, that presence affected her far more deeply than she had anticipated, catching her imagination and emotions as in the dazzling meshes of a golden net. Some men are gross, some absurd, some unspeakably tedious when in love. Adrian was very certainly neither of these objectionable things. He struck, indeed, an almost perfect note. And that was just where the danger came in, just why she dared not let this interview continue at the enthusiastic level. She might suffer the charm of it too comprehensively, and--for already she began to reason again--that would entail regret, and, only too likely, worse than regret.

So, steeling herself against the insidious charm which so worked on and quickened her, she moved away from the vacant place before the fire, where she had been standing with Adrian Savage, sat down in her high-backed, rose-cushioned chair and picked up the bundle of white lawn and lace lying on the little table beside it. She needed protection--whether from him or from herself she did not quite care to inquire--and reckoned it wiser to put a barrier of actual space and barrier of sobering employment between herself and this inconveniently moving returned guest and lover. She refused to be taken by storm.

But Adrian's buoyancy of spirit was not so easily to be crushed.

"Ah! only that was needed," he declared, "to complete my satisfaction--that you should place yourself thus and shake out your pretty needlework. It procures me the welcome belief that no time has really been lost or wasted; it almost convinces me that I have not been away at all. You cannot conceive what pleasure, what happiness it gives me, to be here, to see you again. But now that I am able to observe you calmly, _chère Madame_--"

"Yes, calmly, calmly," she put in, without raising her eyes from her stitching. "How I value, how I appreciate calm!"

"Do you not appear a little tired, a little pale?"

"Very possibly," she answered. "I have been troubled about my mother recently. The extreme cold affected her circulation. For some days we were in grave anxiety. Her vitality is low. Indeed, I have passed through some trying hours."

"And I was ignorant of her illness, ignorant of your anxiety! Why did you not write and tell me?"

"Does not the difficulty of answering letters one has never received occur to you?" Gabrielle inquired, mildly. "And it was not I, you know, who volunteered to write."

The young man had drawn a chair up to the near side of the little table. Now he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, both hands extended, as one who offers a petition.

"Do not reproach me with my silence or I shall be broken-hearted," he said. "My inclination was to write reams to you, volumes. I did, in fact, begin many letters. But I restrained myself. I destroyed them. To have sent them would have been selfish and indiscreet. I was bound, by my promise to you at parting, not to allude to the subject which most vitally touches my happiness. And I found over there so much which was perplexing and sad. I asked myself what right I had to inflict upon you a recital of melancholy impressions and events. I came to the conclusion that I really had none."

Madame St. Leger looked at him sideways from between half-closed eyelids. The dimple showed in her cheek, but her smile was distinctly ironic.

"Why not admit that I was right in foretelling that you would find those shadowy ladies, and your mission to them, of absorbing interest? It occupied your time and thoughts to the exclusion of all else--now, was it not so? Was I not right?"

"Yes and no, _chère Madame_," he answered, presently, slowly and with so perceptible a change of tone that his hearer was startled to the point of finding it difficult to go on with her needlework.

Adrian sat silently watching her. The singular character of her beauty, both in its subtlety and suggestion of a reserve of moral force, had never been more evident to him. More than ever, in each gesture, in the long, suave lines of her body and limbs shrouded in clinging black, in the gleam of her furrowed hair as she turned or bent her charming head, in the abiding provocation and mystery of her eyes and lips, did she appear to him unique and infinitely desirable. Watching her, he inclined to become lyrical and cry aloud his worship in heroic fashion, careless of twentieth-century decorum and restraint. But if her room, the material frame and setting of that beauty, to his immense content remained unchanged in every particular, her attitude of mind, to his immense discontent, evidently remained unchanged likewise. In the first surprise of his arrival she had yielded somewhat, catching alight from his flame. But with a determined hand she shut down those sympathetic fires, becoming obdurate as before. He could feel her will sensibly stiffening against his own; and this at once hurt him shrewdly and whipped up passion, preaching a reckless war of conquest, bidding him disregard promises, bidding him speak and thunder down opposition by sheer law of the strongest. In every man worth the name temptation must arise, at moments, to beat the defiant beloved object into an obedient and docile jelly--the defiant beloved object, it may confidently be added, would regard any man as unworthy of serious consideration did it not. But, in Adrian's case, sitting watching her now, though such temptation did very really arise, its duration was brief. Less primitive counsels prevailed. She was far from kind and he was hotly in love; but he was also the child of his age, and a fine gentleman at that, to whom, given time for reflection, berserker methods must inevitably present themselves as both unworthy and ludicrous. So, if she condemned him to play a waiting game, he would bow to her ruling and play it. He had considerable capital of self-confidence to draw upon. In as far as the ultimate issues were concerned he wasn't a bit afraid--as yet. He could afford, so he believed, to wait. Only, since tormenting was about, all the fun of that amiable pastime shouldn't be on her side. And to this end now he would make her speak first.

He remained silent, therefore, still observing her, until the color deepened in the round of her cheeks, and the stitches were set less regularly in the white work, while uneasiness gained on her causing her presently to look up.

"Yes and no?" she said, "yes and no? That is nothing of an answer. I am all attention. I am curious to hear your explanation. And then--yes and no--what next?"

"This," he replied, "that on nearer acquaintance the two ladies proved anything but shadowy. They proved, in some respects, even a little tremendous. Far from being absorbed in them, I came alarmingly near being absorbed by them--which is a very different matter."

"Ah, that is interesting. You did not like them?"

"I really cannot say. They both--but particularly the elder sister, my cousin Joanna--were new to my experience. I do not feel that I have even yet placed them in my mind. The members of all nations above a certain social level can meet on common ground. It is below that level national tendencies and eccentricities actually declare themselves. I went over, strong in the conceit of ignorance. I supposed I knew all about it and should find myself quite at home. I was colossally mistaken. The manners and mental attitude of the provincial middle-class English were a revelation to me of the blighting effects of a sea frontier and a Puritan descent. The men have but three subjects of conversation--politics, games, and their own importance. The women"--Adrian paused, looking full at Madame St. Leger--"I am very, very sorry for the women. Ah! dear Madame," he added, "let us return devout thanks that we were born on this side, the humane, the amiable, the artistic side of the Channel, you and I. For they are really a very uncomfortable people those middle-class Anglo-Saxons. Until I spent this age-long three weeks among them I had no conception what a convinced Catholic--in sentiment, if not, to my shame, altogether in practice--and thorough-paced Latin I was!"

During the above harangue Gabrielle's hands remained idle. He was really very good, meeting her thus half-way in the suppression of the personal and amatory note. She was obliged to him, of course; yet, in honest truth, was she so very much pleased by his readiness to take the hint? She could not but ask herself that--and then hurry away, so to speak, from the answer, her fingers in her pretty ears. His cue was an intelligent exchange of ideas then? An excellent one!--She stopped her ears more resolutely.--She, too, would be intelligent.

"Increased faith and increased patriotism as the result of your journey! How admirable! Clearly it is highly beneficial to one's morale to cross the Channel. Were it rather later in the year, and were the weather less inclement, I should be disposed to take the little cure, without delay, myself."

"It would not suit you in the least," Adrian asserted. "You would dislike it all quite enormously."

Gabrielle St. Leger at the Tower House! The idea produced in him a violent unreasoning repulsion, as though she ran some actual physical danger. Heaven forbid!

"I should not go with any purpose of enjoyment, but rather as a penance, hoping the dislike of what I found over there might heighten my appreciation of all my blessings here at home."

Whereupon Adrian, careless of diplomacy, clutched at his chance.

"Then you are not so entirely satisfied, _chère Madame et amie_," he cried, laughing a little in his eagerness, "not so utterly happy and content!"

"Is one ever as devout, ever as patriotic, as one ought to be?" she asked, gravely.

"Or as sincere?" he returned, with corresponding gravity.

The hot color deepened in the young woman's face, and she picked up her needlework again quickly.

"I--insincere?" she asked. "Is not that precisely why you find me slightly vexatious, my dear Mr. Savage, that I am only too sincere, a veritable model of sincerity?"

And she rose, gracious, smiling, to receive another guest.

"Ah! _ma toute belle_, how are you, and how is the poor, darling mother? Better? Thank God for that! But still in her room? Dear! dear! Yet, after all, what can one expect? In such weather convalescence must necessarily be protracted. I am forced to come and ask for news in person since you refuse to have a telephone. Just consider the many annoying intrusions, such as the present, which that useful instrument would spare you!"

Anastasia Beauchamp, overdressed and genial as ever, interspersed these remarks with the unwinding of voluminous fox furs, all heads and tails and feebly dangling paws, the kissing of her hostess on either cheek, and finally a hand-shake to Adrian.

"So you are restored to us, my dear Savage," she continued. "I am more than delighted to see you, though at this moment I am well aware that delight is not reciprocated.--There, there, it is superfluous to perjure yourself by a denial.--And you are back just in time to write a scathing criticism of your _protégé_ M. Dax's exhibition, in the Review. Here is matter for sincere congratulation, for, believe me, very plain speaking is demanded. The newspapers are afraid of him. They cringe. Their pusillanimity is disgusting. Really this time he has broken his own record! It is just these things which create a wrong impression and bring France into bad odor with other nations. He is a traitor to the best traditions of the art of this country. I deplore it from that point of view. His exhibition is a scandal. The correctional police should step in."

"You have yourself visited the exhibition, dear Anastasia?" Madame St. Leger inquired, demurely.

"Naturally, I have been to see it. Don't I see everything which is going? Isn't that my acknowledged little hobby, my dear? Then, too, where does the benefit of increasing age come in unless you claim the privileges of indiscretion conferred by it? Still, even in senile indiscretion, one should observe a decent limit. I went alone, absolutely alone, to inspect those abominable productions. I wore a thick veil, too, and--I blushed behind it. Needless to relate, I now and then quivered with laughter. One is but human after all, and to be human is also to be diverted by impropriety. But I could have whipped myself for laughing, even though quite alone and behind the veil. Go and judge for yourself whether I am not justified in my disgust, my dear Savage. And as for you, _ma toute belle_, do not, I implore you, go at all--unless you have had the misfortune to do so already--even though going would effectually cure you of any kindness you may entertain toward the artist--an end, in my poor opinion, greatly to be desired."

"I have not seen M. Dax's exhibition, nor have I seen M. Dax himself for some length of time," Gabrielle remarked, quietly.

"You have dropped him? I rejoice to hear it. A man of so villainous an imagination is unfit to approach you."

"I will not say that I have dropped him." As she spoke she was aware that Adrian looked keenly, inquiringly at her. And this displeased her, as an intrusion upon her liberty of action. "M. Dax has a charming devotion to my little Bette," she continued. "No one whom I know is so perfect a playfellow to children. His sympathy with them is extraordinary. He understands their tastes and pleasures, and is unwearied in his kindness to them. Only, perhaps, his games are a little overstimulating, overexciting. After his last visit my poor Bette suffered from agitating dreams and awoke in the night frightened and crying. I had difficulty in soothing her."

"Praiseworthy babe, how profoundly right are her instincts!" Miss Beauchamp declared, fervently. "But, Heaven help us, what's this!" she added, under her breath. "Perfidious infant, how these praiseworthy babies can fool one!"

She nodded and beckoned to Adrian, still speaking under her breath.

"As you value my friendship, don't go, on no account go, my dear Savage. Come and sit here by me and tell me about your time in England. Like the chivalrous young man you are, stick to me. Supply me with a valid excuse for remaining. For, manners or no manners, I am resolved not to leave her alone with that depraved little horror. I am resolved to outstay him."

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