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A Prince of Sinners, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Part 1 - Chapter 19. The Marquis Mephistopheles |
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_ PART I CHAPTER XIX. THE MARQUIS MEPHISTOPHELES "I am so sorry," she said, softly, "our last evening is spoilt." He shook his head with an effort at gaiety. "Let us conspire," he said. "You and I at least will make a struggle." "I am afraid," she said, "that it would be hopeless. Mother is an absolute wreck, and I saw Lord Arranmore go into the library just now with that terrible white look under his eyes. I saw it once before. Ugh!" "After all," he said, "it only means that we shall be honest. Cheerfulness to-night could only be forced." She laughed softly into his eyes. "How correct!" she murmured. "You are improving fast." He turned and looked at her, slim and graceful in her white muslin gown, her fair hair brushed back from her forehead with a slight wave, but drooping low over her ears, a delicate setting for her piquant face. The dark brown eyes, narrowing a little towards the lids, met his with frank kindliness, her mouth quivered a little as though with the desire to break away into a laugh. The slight duskiness of her cheeks--she had lived for three years in Italy and never worn a veil--pleased him better than the insipidity of pink and white, and the absence of jewelry--she wore neither bracelet nor rings gave her an added touch of distinction, which restless youth finds something so much harder to wear than sedate middle age. The admiration grew in his eyes. She was charming. The lips broke away at last. "After all," she murmured, "I think that I shall enjoy myself this evening. You are looking all sorts of nice things at me." "My eyes," he answered, "are more daring than my lips." "And you call yourself a lawyer?" "Is that a challenge? Well, I was thinking that you looked charming." "Is that all? I have a looking-glass, you know." "And I shall miss you--very much." She suddenly avoided his eyes, but it was for a second only. Yet Brooks was himself conscious of the significance of that second. He set his teeth hard. "The days here," he said, slowly, "have been very pleasant. It has all been--such a different life for me. A few months ago I knew no one except a few of the Medchester people, and was working hard to make a modest living. Sometimes I feel here as though I were a modern Aladdin. There is a sense of unreality about Lord Arranmore's extraordinary kindness to me. To-night, more than ever, I cannot help feeling that it is something like a dream which may pass away at any moment." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Lord Arranmore is not an impulsive person," she said. "He must have had some reason for being so decent to you." "Yes, as regards the management of his affairs perhaps," Brooks answered. "But why he should ask me here, and treat me as though I were his social equal and all that sort of thing--well, you know that is a puzzle, isn't it?" "Well, I don't know," she answered. "Lord Arranmore is not exactly the man to be a slave to, or even to respect, the conventional, and your being--what you are, naturally makes you a pleasant companion to him--and his guests. No, I don't think that it is strange." "You are very flattering," he said, smiling. "Not in the least," she assured him. "Now-a-days birth seems to be rather a handicap than otherwise to the making of the right sort of people. I am sure there are more impossibilities in the peerage than in the nouveaux riches. I know heaps of people who because their names are in Debrett seem to think that manners are unnecessary, and that they have a sort of God-sent title to gentility." Brooks laughed. "Why," he said, "you are more than half a Radical." "It is your influence," she said, demurely. "It will soon pass away," he sighed. "To-morrow you will be back again amongst your friends." She sighed. "Why do one's friends bore one so much more than other people's?" she exclaimed. "When one thinks of it," he remarked, "you must have been very bored here. Why, for the last fortnight there have been no other visitors in the house." "There have been compensations," she said. "Tell me about them!" he begged. She laughed up at him. "If I were to say the occasional visits of Mr. Kingston Brooks, would you be conceited?" "It would be like putting my vanity in a hothouse," he answered, "but I would try and bear it." "Well, I will say it, then!" He turned and looked at her with a sudden seriousness. Some consciousness of the change in his mood seemed to be at once communicated to her. Her eyes no longer met his. She moved a little on one side and took up an ornament from an ormolu table. "I wish that you meant it," he murmured. "I do!" she whispered, almost under her breath. Brooks suddenly forgot many things, but Nemesis intervened. There was the sound of much rustling of silken skirts, and--Lady Caroom's poodle, followed by herself, came round the angle of the drawing-room. "My dear Sybil," she exclaimed, "do come and tie Balfour's ribbon for me. Marie has no idea of making a bow spread itself out, and pink is so becoming to him. Thanks, dear. Where is our host? I thought that I was late." Lord Arranmore entered as she spoke. His evening dress, as usual, was of the most severely simple type. To-night its sombreness was impressive. With such a background his pallor seemed almost waxen-like. He offered his arm to Lady Caroom. "I was not sure," he said, with a lightness which seemed natural enough, "whether to-night I might not have to dine alone whilst you poor people sat and played havoc with the shreds of my reputation. Groves, the cabinet Johannesburg and the '84 Heidsieck--though I am afraid," he added, looking down at his companion, "that not all the wine in my cellar could make this feast of farewells a cheerful one." "Farewell celebrations of all sorts are such a mistake," Lady Caroom murmured. "We have been so happy here too." "You brought the happiness with you," Lord Arranmore said, "and you take it away with you. Enton will be a very dull place when you are gone. "Your own stay here is nearly up, is it not?" Lady Caroom asked. "Very nearly. I expect to go to Paris next week--at latest the week after, in time at any rate for Bernhardt's new play. So I suppose we shall soon all be scattered over the face of the earth." "Except me," Brooks interposed, ruefully. "I shall be the one who will do the vegetating." Lady Caroom laughed softly. "Foolish person! You will be within two hours of London. You none of you have the slightest idea as to the sort of place we are going to. We are a day's journey from anywhere. The morning papers are twenty-four hours late. The men drink port wine, and the women sit round the fire in the drawing-room after dinner and wait--and wait--and wait. Oh, that awful waiting. I know it so well. And it isn't much better when the men do come. They play whist instead of bridge, and a woman in the billiard-room is a lost soul. Our hostess always hides my cue directly I arrive, and pretends that it has been lost. By the bye, what a dear little room this is, Arranmore. We haven't dined here before, have we?" Lord Arranmore shook his head. He held up his wineglass thoughtfully as though criticizing the clearness of the amber fluid. "No!" he said. "I ordered dinner to be served in here because over our dessert I propose to offer you a novel form of entertainment." "How wonderful," Sybil said. "Will it be very engrossing? Will it help us to forget?" He looked at her with a smile. "That depends," he said, "how anxious you are to forget." She looked hastily away. For a moment Brooks met her eyes, and his heart gave an unusual leap. Lady Caroom watched them both thoughtfully, and then turned to their host. "You have excited our curiosity, Arranmore. You surely don't propose to keep us on tenterhooks all through dinner?" "It will give a fillip to your appetite." "My appetite needs no fillip. It is disgraceful to try and make me eat more than I do already. I am getting hideously stout. I found my maid in tears to-night because I positively could not get into my most becoming bodice." "If you possess a more becoming one than this," Lord Arranmore said, with a bow, "it is well for our peace of mind that you cannot wear it." "That is a very pretty subterfuge, but a subterfuge it remains," Lady Caroom answered. "Now be candid. I love candour. What are you going to do to amuse us?" He shook his head. "Do not spoil my effect. The slightest hint would make everything seem tame. Brooks, I insist upon it that you try my Johannesburg. It was given to my grandfather by the Grand Duke of Shleistein. Groves!" Brooks submitted willingly enough, for the wine was wonderful. Sybil leaned over so that their heads almost touched. "Look at our host," she whispered. "What does he remind you of?" Brooks glanced across the table, brilliant with its burden of old silver, of cut-glass and hothouse flowers. Lord Arranmore's face, notwithstanding his ready flow of conversation, seemed unusually still and white--the skin drawn across the bones, even the lips pallid. The sombreness of his costume, the glitter in his eyes, the icy coldness of his lack of coloring, though time after time he set down his wineglass empty, were curiously impressive. Brooks looked back into her face, his eyes full of question. "Mephistopheles," she whispered. "He is absolutely weird to-night. If he sat and looked at me and we were alone I should shriek." Lord Arranmore lifted a glass of champagne to the level of his head and looked thoughtfully around the table. "Come," he said, "a toast-to ourselves. Singly? Collectively. Lady Caroom, I drink to the delightful memories with which you have peopled Enton. Sybil, may you charm society as your mother has done. Brooks, your very good health. May your entertainment this evening be a welcome one. "We will drink to all those things," Lady Caroom declared, "with enthusiasm. But I am afraid your good wishes for Sybil are beyond any hope of realization. She is far too honest to flourish in society. She will probably marry a Bishop or a Cabinet Minister, and become engrossed in theology or politics. You know how limiting that sort of thing is. I am in deadly fear that she may become humdrum. A woman who really studies or knows anything about anything can never be a really brilliant woman." "You--" "Oh, I pass for being intelligent because I parade my ignorance so, just as Sophie Mills is considered a paragon of morality because she is always talking about running off with one of the boys in her husband's regiment. It is a gigantic bluff, you know, but it comes off. Most bluffs do come off if one is only daring enough." "You must tell them that up at Redcliffe," Lord Arranmore remarked. Sybil laughed heartily. "Redcliffe is the one place where mother is dumb," she declared. "Up there they look upon her as a stupid but well-meaning person. She is absolutely afraid to open her mouth." "They are so absurdly literal," Lady Caroom sighed, helping herself to an infinitesimal portion of a wonderful savoury. "Don't talk about the place. I know I shall have an attack of nerves there." "Mother always gets nerves if she mayn't talk," Sybil murmured. "You're an undutiful daughter," Lady Caroom declared. "If I do talk I never say anything, so nobody need listen unless they like. About this entertainment, Arranmore. Are you going to make the wineglass disappear and the apples fly about the room a la Maskelyne and Cook? I hope our share in it consists in sitting down." Arranmore turned to the butler behind his chair. "Have coffee and liqueur served here, Groves, and bring some cigarettes. Then you can send the servants away and leave us alone." The man bowed. "Very good, your lordship." Lord Arranmore looked around at his guests. "The entertainment," he said, "will incur no greater hardship upon you than a little patience. I am going to tell you a story." _ |
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