Book 1 - Chapter 4. A Bunch Of Violets

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_ BOOK ONE CHAPTER IV. A BUNCH OF VIOLETS

Kendricks rose slowly to his feet. Julien was looking toward the door with a frown upon his face. While they stood there the knocking was repeated, still soft but a little more insistent. Julien hesitated no longer.

"I think," Kendricks said dryly, "that you had better see who is there."

The door was already opened. Julien seemed suddenly transformed into a graven image. He said nothing, merely gazing at the woman who walked calmly past him into the room. Kendricks, who also recognized her, withdrew his pipe from his mouth. This was a situation indeed! The woman, with her hands inside her muff, looked from one to the other of the two men.

"Am I interrupting a very important interview?" she asked calmly. "If not, perhaps you could spare me five minutes of your time, Sir Julien?"

Kendricks recovered himself at once.

"I'll wait for you downstairs, Julien," he declared.

He caught up his hat and departed, closing the door after him. Julien was still motionless.

"Well?" she began.

He drew a little breath. He was beginning to regain his self-possession.

"My dear Mrs. Carraby," he said, "with your wonderful knowledge of the world and its ways, will you permit me to point out that your presence here is a little embarrassing to me and might, under certain circumstances, be a good deal more embarrassing to you?"

Mrs. Carraby smiled. She stood where the sunlight touched her brown hair and her quiet, pale face. She was one of those women who are never afraid of the light. Her face was of that strange, self-contained nature, colorless, apparently, yet capable of strange and rapid changes. Just now the last glow of sunlight seemed to have found a skein of gold in her hair, a queer gleam of light in her eyes. She stood there looking at the man whom she had come to visit.

"Julien," she said, "I wanted a few words with you."

It was impossible for him to remain altogether unmoved. Whatever else might be the truth, she had risked most of the things that were dear to her in life by this visit.

"Mrs. Carraby," he declared, "I am entirely at your service. If you think that any useful purpose can be served by words between you and me, I would only point out, for your own sake, that your visit is, to say the least of it, unwise. These are bachelor chambers."

"You know very well," she replied calmly, "that it was my only chance of speaking with you. If I had sent for you, you would not have come. If I had spoken to you in the street, you would have passed me by--quite rightly. This was my only chance. That is why I have come to you."

"If you think it worth the risk," he remarked gravely, "pray continue."

She shrugged her shoulders very slightly.

"Who can tell what is worth the risk?"

"You have at least excited my curiosity," he admitted, leaning a little towards her. "I cannot conceive what it is that you want to say to me."

She lifted her eyes to his, and though there was nothing unusual about them--there were few people, indeed, who could tell you what color they were--men seldom forgot it when Mrs. Carraby looked at them steadily.

"I do not know, myself," she said. "I do not know why I have come."

Julien laughed unnaturally.

"Pray be seated," he begged. "Would you like to examine my curios or my photographs? I must apologize for the condition of my room. You see, you happen to be the first woman who has ever crossed its threshold."

"That," she remarked, "rather interests me. Still, it is only what I should have expected. No, I do not think that I will sit down. I am trying to ask myself exactly why I have come."

"If you can answer that question," Julien said grimly, "you will appease a very natural curiosity on my part. It is not like you."

"Quite true," she assented. "It is not like me. I have run a great risk in coming here and it is not my metier to run risks. And now that I am here I do not know why I have come. This has been an impulse and this is an hour outside my life. I am trying to understand it. Come here, Julien." He came unwillingly to her side. She held out her hand, but he shook his head.

"Mabel," he said, "you and I do not need to mince words. To-night I am celebrating the ruin of my career. I am leaving England within a few hours. I have you to thank for what has happened. Yet you come to me, you hold out your hand. You must forgive me--I am afraid I am dull."

"No," she replied, "you are not dull. Your feelings towards me are obvious and very natural. Mine towards you I am not so sure of. It is not because I did not understand you that I came here to-night. It is because I did not understand myself. May I go on?"

"Why not?" he answered. "I am at your service."

"From the days of my boarding-school," she continued, "I have known only one Mabel. In her girlhood she had all that she could get out of life and turned everything she could to her own ends. A marriage was arranged for her--you see, I was half a Jewess and my husband was half a Jew, and things are done like that with us. The marriage opened the door to a fresh set of ambitions. For the last few years I have trodden a well-worn path. It was I who advised my husband to refuse a baronetcy. It was I who won his first election. I see that my photographs are in all the illustrated papers, that his speeches are properly recorded, that my visiting list moves within the correct limits. These things have spelt life. To the fulfillment of my husband's ambitions there was one obstacle. That obstacle was you. In life one schemes. It was my husband's wish that I should make myself agreeable to you, even to the extent of a flirtation."

She raised her eyes.

"Your obedience to your husband is most touching," he said.

"It is true, I suppose," she went on, "that we have flirted. I looked upon it as the means to an end. The end came. I played my cards quite ruthlessly, I gathered in the reward. I got your letter, I handed it to my husband. Your career was finished, my husband's begun."

"This is most interesting," Julien muttered.

"Is it?" she answered. "I suppose it should have been an hour of triumph with me. It simply isn't. I have come to a place in my life which I don't understand. When I told myself that it was over, that I had flirted with you, that I had won your friendship and your confidence, betrayed you, ruined you for a peerage and that my husband should take office, I should surely have been satisfied! It was for that I had worked. I gave my husband the letter and I watched him walk off in triumph. Since then I have not been myself. I have come to you, Julien, to ask if there is no other end possible to this?"

Once more she raised her eyes. Julien came a step nearer to her. They were standing now face to face.

"All of a sudden," she murmured, "I looked back and I saw the way I have lived and the way I am living and the life that spreads itself out before me. I saw myself a peeress, I saw myself receiving my husband's guests, I saw the gratification of all those ambitions which have seemed to me so wonderful. And I locked the door and I shrieked and it seemed to me that there was a new thing and a new thought in my life. I have done you a hideous wrong, Julien. There is only one way I can set it right. There is only one moment in which it can be done, and that moment is now. Tomorrow I shall be back again. For this one hour I see the truth. I am a very rich woman, Julien. My husband's future, indeed, is largely bound up with my wealth. Remember that in all I have done I have been his agent. He hates you, has hated you from the first because you were a gentleman and he never was. This is my one moment of madness in a perfectly well-ordered life."

One of her hands stole from her muff, stole out half-hesitatingly towards him. Julien took it in his and raised it to his lips. Then he looked her in the eyes.

"Dear Mabel," he said, "you are forgiven. I understand perfectly the reasons for your coming. Go back to your husband, wear your coronet and receive his guests with a free conscience. I forgive you."

Her hand slipped back into her muff. She began to tremble a little.

"As for me," he went on, "I played the fool and I pay willingly. I was engaged to marry a very charming girl who believed in me and whom I cared for as much as it was possible for me to care for anything outside my career. I flirted with you because it was a piquant thing to do. You were a woman whom other men found difficult, you were the wife of a man whom I despised and who was trying all the time to undermine my position. I sacrificed my self-respect every time I crossed your threshold. To-day I pay. I am willing. As for you, Mabel, your visit here shall square things between us. I wish you the best of luck. You must let me ring for my servant. He will find you a taxicab."

He moved toward the bell. Mrs. Carraby, with her hands inside her muff, stood exactly as though she were part of the furniture of the room. With his finger upon the ivory disc, he hesitated. She was not looking towards him and her eyes were half closed.

"Perhaps," he suggested, "you would rather find your way out alone? I will not offer my escort, for obvious reasons."

She turned slowly round.

"Do not ring," she ordered sharply. "Come here."

He came at once towards her. She took both his hands in hers, she leaned towards him. She was a tall woman and they were very nearly the same height.

"Julien," she whispered, "is this all that you have to say to me?"

"It is more," Julien replied frankly, "than I expected ever to have to say to you again in this world. What do you expect? You don't think that I am the kind of man to--but that is absurd! Come. We'll part friends, if you like. Here's my hand."

"We must part, then?" she said.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Unless a walking tour in Normandy for a month appeals to you. You see, I am going to take a holiday, and I have a fancy that our ideas on the subject of holidays might not exactly agree."

"A holiday," she repeated. "I am not sure--do you know, Julien, I sometimes believe that I have never had a holiday in my life?"

He looked at her doubtingly.

"After all," she continued, "can't you see that I have come here to ask you one question? You are different from the people I have known intimately and the people with whom I have been brought up, different from my husband. You know what my life has been. I have told you just now that the great doubt has come to me within the last few days. Won't you tell me what I want to know? Is there anything better, anything greater, anything more wonderful in life than these things which I have known, these ambitions, this social struggle? Tell me, Julien, is there anything else? Can you tell me how and where to find it?"

Once more her fingers had crept out of her muff.

Her hands were upon his shoulders, she seemed to be drawing him to her. Julien kissed her lightly on the forehead.

"For you, my dear Mabel," he decided, "I should say that there was nothing better. A leopard cannot change its spots. The life into which you have been brought and for which you have qualified so admirably, is the only life which would suit you. If you fancy sometimes in your dreams, or in your waking hours, that you hear cries and calls from another country, don't listen to them. You would never be happy outside the world you know of. You see, one who has made such a failure of life himself is yet well able to advise. Forgive me."

The telephone on his writing table was ringing. He turned aside to answer it. It was a question regarding the whereabouts of some papers at the office and it took him a few minutes to explain. When he set the receiver back and turned around, he was alone. There was nothing to remind him of her visit but a bunch of violets which seemed to have fallen from her muff, and the faint perfume from them. He took them up, smelt them for a moment, and flung them lightly into the hearth. Then he touched his bell.

"My hat, stick and gloves, Richards," he ordered. "Bring my things to Charing-Cross at half-past eight. Have them registered only to Boulogne. You understand?"

"Perfectly, sir," the man replied.

Julien glanced once more around his sitting-room. The little bunch of violets was smouldering upon the hearth. In a sense they seemed to him symbolical.

"Kendricks is right," he muttered. "It is the women who play the devil with our lives!" _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 5. A Sentimental Episode

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 3. A Ruined Career

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