God's Playthings 8

God's Playthings 8

“Tell me about yourself,” he said, “and how you come to be here alone.”

 

She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train

and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade.

 

“It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for

the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over

my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house

of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—”

 

She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke.

 

“—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my

eyes, so—”

 

Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn

tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness.

 

“—and one led me by the hand, thus—”

 

Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage.

 

“—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand

guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was

not very long before he was tired of me.”

 

She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently.

 

Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised

crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style.

 

An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays

of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that

was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt,

fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a

red rose.

 

“As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon

got tired of me.”

 

“_Carina_, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you

and Venice.”

 

“You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an

orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met

you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.”

 

“I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you

when I am dying.”

 

She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the

balcony.

 

“Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked.

 

He followed her.

 

Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola

cushioned in sapphire blue floated.

 

The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the

light boat forward between the palaces.

 

“This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said.

 

She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at

him over the feather tips.

 

“The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I

was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—”

 

Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and

gold into darkness.

 

“They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—”

 

The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see,

the lady rise and step out.

 

Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he

stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his

wrist drew him through a doorway.

 

“My husband is coming back to-morrow,” the voice continued. “Oh,

Philip, I am afraid!”

 

He put his free hand to his sword.

 

“That is foolish of you,” he said. “I am here.”

 

“But you have begun to cease to care,” her voice wailed, “and you will

go away.”

 

As she spoke a door opened to her right, and she released his wrist; he

followed her into a little boudoir charmingly hung with straw-coloured

silk.

 

The Duke remembered it very well; he turned to the woman.

 

She was now a pale blonde wrapped in an embroidered mob and wearing

dazzling little silver slippers.

 

Her face was tear-stained and her eyes pleading.

 

“Paris was terrible after you left,” she said. “Why did you go? You

tired so soon.”

 

“You have remarked that,” he returned, “twice, I think, before.”

 

She began to cry.

 

“Do not you love me any more, Philip?”

 

“I have come back to you,” he answered; “but my head is rather

confused. And, Madame, you are spoiling your complexion with these

tears.”

 

“Hush!” she cried.

 

She ran to the dainty hangings that concealed the door, raised them,

and listened.

 

“Some one is coming!”

 

She hastened back to him and half dragged, half pushed him to a secret

door; as she touched a spring it flew open, and he stepped with a

laugh into the concealment of a dark secret room that was filled with

a bitter, pungent perfume. He closed his eyes; there was a heaviness

in his head; he could not tell how long he had been closed in when the

sliding panel was drawn.

 

“It was a false alarm after all,” said the woman.

 

Her black hair hung dishevelled on her brocade gown, her hollow face

was pale and her eyes stormy.

 

“Did you say that you must leave Bois-le-Duc to-morrow?” she demanded

hoarsely.

 

She held a candle in a pewter stick in her right hand and her left

clasped her dress together over her palpitating bosom.

 

“The Prince gave me leave to return to England,” he answered.

 

He stepped from his concealment into a room with polished walls,

furnished heavily and well.

 

“You would not betray him after he has given you a Dukedom–you would

not forsake me?” she asked anxiously.

 

“Do you not trust me?” he asked lightly.

 

“Oh yes, I trusted you. But you went away.”

 

“Always the same!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Have I not been faithful

to return to you now?”

 

She began to laugh.

 

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful!”

 

He laughed too, and the echo was long and loud.

 

He went to the door and opened it on dark stairs; without looking back

he descended.

 

The first landing blazed with the light of a thousand candles; a

magnificent doorway with portals flung wide invited him into a

gorgeous ballroom, where splendidly dressed people moved to and fro to

the melody of violin and harp.

 

Philip Wharton entered; in a little alcove to his right he found the

woman waiting for him.

 

The diamonds sparkled red and blue as if her flesh was on fire; her

powdered locks were piled high, and the billows of her violet dress

spread wide on the settee where she sat.

 

She laughed.

 

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful! And you are leaving Vienna to-morrow!”

 

He seated himself on the small portion of the brocade her spreading

skirts had left uncovered.

 

His nostrils distended to drink in the perfumed air, and his eyes

sparkled; his whole spirit became animated in the congenial atmosphere

of a court–a luxurious court.

 

“And I must really die and leave all this,” he complained.

 

He looked at the lady and smiled; but her face was very grave.

 

“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a

glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily

lit by coloured lanterns. She took the Duke’s arm, and they passed

along the prim paths between avenues of clipped limes and box bushes.

 

For some while she did not speak; then she whispered–

 

“It is strange to see you at Kensington again, my lord.” Her voice

sounded as if it was full of tears. “Strange to think that you must leave again so soon.”