be as one that knoweth, and yet holdeth his tongue.
“and, of course, you know every one in the room?” dora was saying to her cousin as the orchestra struck suddenly into “god bless the prince of wales.”
“good gracious, no!” miss mazerod replied; and both young ladies stood up to curtsey to the royal party.
it was the great artistic soirée of the year, and crowds of nobodies jostled each other in their mad desire to deceive whosoever might be credulous into the belief that they were somebodies.
“of course,” said dora, when they were seated again, and the strains of the welsh air had been suppressed “by desire,” “they may be very great swells; i have no doubt they are in their particular way; but they do not look it.”
miss mazerod looked round critically.
“some of them,” she said, “are frame-makers, a good many of them, with big bills in high places. others are actresses—very great actresses off the stage. do you see that tall girl there, with a supercilious expression which she does not know is apt to remind one of a housemaid scorning a milkman's love on the area steps? she is a great actress, who will not take small engagements, and is not offered large ones. she is an actress 'pour se faire photographier.'”
“and this is the cream of london society?” said dora, looking round her with considerable amusement.
“society,” returned her cousin, “is not allowed to stand for cream now. it is stirred up with a spoon, silver-gilt, and the skim milk gets hopelessly mixed up with the cream. that young man who is now talking to the actress person is not what he looks. he is, as a matter of fact, the scion of a noble house, who models in clay atrociously.”
“and the gorgeous person he is turning his back upon?”
“one of his models.”
“of clay?”
“essentially so.”
and miss mazerod broke off into a happy laugh. hers was not the bitterness of plainness or insignificance, but something infinitely more suggestive. it was, indeed, not bitterness at all, but light-hearted contempt, which is, perhaps, the deepest contempt there is.
“who is the wretched woman with no backbone draped in rusty black?” asked dora.
“my dear! that is one of the great lady artists of the age. she lectures to factory girls or something, and she paints limp females snuffling over tiger-lilies. her ideal woman has that sort of droop of the throat—i imagine she-tries to teach it to the factory. she objects to backbone.”
miss mazerod, who possessed a very firm little specimen of the adjunct mentioned, drew herself up and smiled commiseratingly.
“then,” said dora, “i feel quite consoled about my sketches.”
for the first time miss mazerod looked serious.
“dora,” she said, “i often wonder whether it would be profane to mention in one's prayers a little gratitude for not having an artistic soul. there are lots of women like that in the world, especially in london. they pretend that they think themselves superior to men, but they know in their hearts that they are inferior to women. for they have not something that women ought to have—no, dolly, no brown studies here; you must not dream here!”
dora, with a light laugh, came back from her mental wanderings to find herself looking at a face which caught her attention at once. it was the face of a man—brown, self-contained, with unhappy eyes and a long drooping nose.
“who is that man?” she inquired at once. “now, he is quite different from the rest. he is about the only person who is not furtively finding out how much attention he has succeeded in attracting.”
“yes, that is a man with a purpose.”
“what purpose?” inquired dora.
“i don't know; i shouldn't think any one knows.”
“he knows,” suggested dora.
“yes, he knows.”
miss mazerod was looking at the mechanism of her fan with a demure expression on lips shaped for happiness. a dark young man was elbowing his way through the mixed crowd towards them.
“what is his name?” asked dora, who was still looking at the man with a purpose.
“general seymour michael.”
“the indian man?”
“yes.”
there was a little pause, during which miss mazerod glanced in the direction of the younger man, who had been detained by a stout lady with a purple dress and a depressed daughter.
“i should like to know him,” said dora.
“nothing easier,” replied her cousin, still absorbed in the fan. “i know him quite well.”
“he is looking at you now.”
miss mazerod looked up and bowed with a little jerk, as if she felt too young to be stately; one of those bows that say “come here.”
at this moment the younger man came up and shook hands effusively with dora, slowly with miss mazerod.
“jack,” said that young lady, “i have just beamed on general michael, who is behind you. i want to introduce him to dora.”
jack seemed to think this an excellent idea, and stepped aside with alacrity.
seymour michael came forward with his pleasant smile. he certainly was one of the most distinguished-looking men in the room, with a brilliant ribbon across his breast, and that smart, well-brushed general effect which stamps the successful soldier.
“when did you come back to england?” inquired edith mazerod, whose father had worked with this man in india.
“i—oh! i have been home six months,” he replied, shaking hands with a subtle empressemant which was more effective than words.
“on leave?”
“no. laid on the shelf.”
he stood upright, drawing himself up with ironical emphasis, as if to show as plainly as possible that there were many years of life and work in him yet.
edith mazerod laughed, the careless passing laugh of inattention.
“dora,” she said, “may i introduce general michael? my cousin.”
she rose, and seymour michael prepared to take the vacant seat. the youth called jack was making signs with his eyebrows, and in attempting to decipher his meaning she forgot to mention dora's name.
“you will be sorry for this,” said seymour michael, sitting down. “you will not thank your cousin.”
“why?” inquired dora, prepared to like him, possibly because he had a brown face and wore his hair cut short.
“because,” he replied, “i am hopelessly new to this work.”
“so am i,” replied dora; “i don't even know what pictures to look at and what to ignore. so i dare not look at the walls at all.”
“that is precisely my position, only i am worse. you know how to behave in polite circles; i don't. you have a slightly tired look, as if this sort of thing wearied you by reason of its monotony.”
“have i? i am sorry for that.”
“no, there is no reason to be sorry. they all have it.”
“but,” protested dora, “i am not one of them. i am only aping the romans.”
“you do it well; i shall study your method. you do it better than edith mazerod.”
“edith is young—hopelessly, enviably young. do you know them well?”
“yes, i knew them in india.”
“of course; i forgot.”
he turned and looked at her sharply. sometimes his own reputation, far from being a happiness, gave him cause for misgiving. a man with an unclean record cannot well be sure that all the details he would wish suppressed have been suppressed. there was a little pause, during which they both watched the self-satisfied throng moving in and out, here and there, full of a restless desire to be observed.
it was seymour michael who spoke first. true to his mixed blood, he sought to make himself safe.
“excuse me,” he said, “but edith mazerod did not mention your name; may i ask it?”
“dora glynde!”
she saw him start. she saw a sudden wavering gleam in his eyes which in another man she would have set down to fear.
“miss dora glynde,” he repeated; and the expression of his face was so serene again that the look which had passed away from it began already to present itself to her memory as a conception of her own brain.
“when i was younger and shyer,” he said, with a singular haste, “i was afraid to ask a lady her name when i did not catch it, and—and i frequently regretted not having had the courage to do so.”
she recollected it all afterwards—every word, every pause. but then, as so frequently happens, knowledge aided her memory, and added significance to every detail.
“are you staying with the mazerods?” he asked.
“yes, i am being shown life. i am doing a season. to-night is part of my education. to-morrow, i believe, we go to hurlingham; the next day to a charity bazaar, and so on. i believe i am getting on very well. aunt mary is pleased with me. but i still stare about me, and show visible disappointment when i am presented to a literary celebrity or some other person of newspaper renown.”
“celebrities in the flesh are disappointing.”
“not only that, but i find that many of them are just a little common. not quite what we in the country call gentlemen.”
“ah! miss glynde, you forget that art rises superior to class distinctions.”
“yes, but artists don't; and artists' wives don't rise at all. i think you are to be congratulated. in your profession there are fewer persons 'superior to class distinction.'”
this was a subject which seymour michael dreaded. he was ignorant of how much dora might know. he had suspected from the first that jem agar's desire that she should know the truth had been a mere matter of sentiment; but the fact of meeting her at this public festivity, gay and in colours, shook this theory from its foundation. he disliked edith mazerod, because he suspected that his own early career had probably been discussed in her hearing, and her easy lightness of heart was to him as incomprehensible as it was suspicious. dora he rather feared without knowing why.
“i suppose you know india well?” she said, looking straight in front of her.
“too well,” was the reply, with a sharp sidelong glance.
he was right. at that moment dora might have been one of these habituées of rout and ballroom. she was very pale and looked tired out.
“i went out there thirty years ago,” he continued, “into the mutiny. from that time to this india has been killing my friends.”
there was a little pause. she knew that in the natural course of events it was almost certain that this man knew jem personally. it would have been easy to mention his name; but the wound was too fresh, her heart was too sore to bear the sting of hearing him discussed.
for a second seymour michael hovered on the brink. his lips almost framed the name. good almost triumphed over evil.
and the girl sitting there—broken-hearted, quiet and strong, as only women can be—never knew how near she was. sometimes it seems as if the cruelty of fate were unnecessary, as if the word too little or the word too much, which has the power to alter a whole life, were withheld or spoken merely to further a providential experiment.
“yes,” said michael, “i hate india.”
and the spell was broken, the moment lost for ever. seymour michael had kept silence, and elsewhere, perhaps, at that very moment his doom was spoken. who can tell? we are offered chances—we are, if you will, the puppets of an experiment—and surely there must be a moment which decides.
dora was conscious of having miscalculated her own strength. she had led him on to the dangerous ground, but it was with relief that she saw him step back. she did not dare to lead him to it again.
it was not long before he left her, on the timely arrival of another friend.
the introduction brought about by miss mazerod did not seem to have been an entire success, for they parted gravely and without a word expressing the hope of meeting again. and yet dora liked him, for he was strong and purposeful, such as she would have had all men. she wanted to know more of him. she wanted to be admitted further into the knowledge which she knew to be his.
seymour michael was conscious of a feeling of discomfort, no less disquieting by reason of its vagueness. he had a nervous sensation of being surrounded by something—something in the nature of a chain, piecing itself together, link by link—something that was slowly closing in upon him.
