“I am satisfied. But if you did not care for her she cared for you. She could not have looked as she looked today—her whole face lighting up with rapture—if she had not loved you. Only love can smile like that. But I won’t tease you. The thought of her shall never again come between us.”
“So be it, Eve. We have had our much ado about nothing. We will give Signora Vivanti a holiday. Sophy will be with you tomorrow, and will want no end of amusement—exhibitions all day and a theatre every night, with an evening party afterwards. I know what country cousins—or country sisters are. Besides, it will be Sophy’s début, and she will expect to make an impression.”
“I hope she will not be too fine,” said Eve, remembering Sophy’s strivings to be smart under difficulties.
“She will be as fine as the finest, be sure of that. She will expect matrimonial offers—to be a success in her first season. Why don’t you marry her to Sefton?”
“I don’t like Mr. Sefton.”
“But Sophy might like him, and he is rich and well born. If he is not a gentleman that is his own fault—not any flaw in his pedigree.”
XXIV
“Poor Kind Wild Eyes So Dashed with Light Quick Tears”
Sophy arrived next day with portentous punctuality, in time for luncheon, intent on pleasure, and dressed in a style which she believed in as the very latest Parisian fashion; for this damsel credited herself with an occult power of knowing what was “in” and what was “out,” and, with no larger horizon than a country church and an occasional rustic garden-party, set up as an authority upon dress, and gave her instructions to the village dressmaker, who made up ladies’ own materials, and worked at ladies’ houses, with the air of a Kate Reilly directing an apprentice.
Eve had been very generous, and Sophy’s costume was a great advance upon those days when Lady Hartley had talked of the sisters as Colonel Marchant’s burlesque troupe. Eve had sent down a big parcel of materials from a West End draper’s, the newest and the best, and Sophy had exercised her fingers and her taste in the confection of stylish garments; yet it must be owned there was an unmistakable air of home dressmaking—of fabrications suggested by answers to correspondents in a ladies’ newspaper—about those smart gowns, jackets, capes, and fichus which Sophy wore with such satisfaction. This showed itself most in an unconscious exaggeration of every fashion; just as a woman who rouges exceeds the bloom of natural carnations. Sophy’s Medici collars were higher than anybody else’s. The military collar of Sophy’s homemade tailor gown was an instrument of torture. Sophy’s waistcoats and sleeves were more mannish and sporting than anything the West End tailors had produced for Eve. In a word, there was a touch of Sophy’s personality about every garment; just as in every picture there is the individuality of the painter.
But Sophy, flushed with the delights of a London season, was quite pretty enough to be forgiven a little provincialism in her dress and manners, and she was well received by Eve’s friends.
It was good for Eve that she should be obliged to exert herself in order to amuse Sophy, and that the sweet solitude of two was no longer possible for her and Vansittart.
He said nothing further about his wife’s need of repose. He was glad to see her occupied from morning till long past midnight, showing Sophy what our ancestors used to call “the town;” but which now includes a wide range of the suburbs, and occasional garden-parties as far off as Marlow or Hatfield. He was glad of anything which could distract his wife’s thoughts from too deep a consideration of his relations with Signora Vivanti, and he encouraged Sophy in every form of dissipation, until he found, to his annoyance, that an evening had been allotted to the Apollo.
The fame of Haroun Alraschid and of Signora Vivanti’s beauty and talent had penetrated beyond Haslemere, and Sophy had written to her sister imploring her to secure places for an evening during her visit. A box had been taken six weeks in advance, and Eve, who was always indulged in every theatrical fancy, had not thought it necessary to inform her husband of the fact.
To forbid the occupation of that box would have been too marked an exercise of authority; to absent himself from the party would have made Eve uneasy; so he went with his wife and sister-in-law, and saw Lisa on the stage for the first time since he had watched her in the chorus at Covent Garden.
The box was one of the best in the house, and very near the stage. Vansittart felt assured that Lisa would recognize his wife and would see him standing behind her chair; and with a young woman of Lisa’s temperament he knew not what form that recognition might assume.
Fortunately Lisa had now become too much of an artist to do anything which would take her “out of the picture.” She gave Vansittart one little look which told him he was seen in the shadow where he stood; and for the rest she was no longer Lisa, the Venetian, but Haroun’s devoted slave-girl, bought from a cruel master, during one of Haroun’s nocturnal explorations of the city, and following him ever after with a devoted love, watchful, ubiquitous, his guardian angel in every danger, his resource and protection in every seriocomic dilemma. Her singing, her acting, were alike instinct with passion and genius, a genius unspoiled by that higher culture which is too apt to bring self-consciousness and over-elaboration in its train, and so to miss all broad and spontaneous effects.
