CHAPTER XI
Every day, from ten in the forenoon to twelve, Mademoiselle Sczympliça practiced or neglected the pianoforte, according to her mood, whilst her mother discussed household matters with the landlady, and accompanied her to market. On the second morning after the conversazione, Madame went out as usual. No sooner had she disappeared in the direction of Tottenham Court Road than Adrian Herbert crossed from the opposite angle of the square, and knocked at the door of the house she had just left.
Whilst he waited on the doorstep, he could hear the exercise Aurélie was playing within. It was a simple affair, such as he had often heard little girls call “five-finger” exercises; and was slowly and steadily continued as if the player never meant to stop. The door was opened by a young woman, who, not expecting visitors at that hour, and being in a slatternly condition, hid her hand in her apron when she saw Adrian.
“Will you ask Miss Szczympliça whether she can see me, if you please.”
The servant hesitated, and then went into the parlor, closing the door behind her. Presently she came out, and said with some embarrassment, “Maddim Chimpleetsa is not at home, sir.”
“I know that,” said he. “Tell mademoiselle that I have a special reason for calling at this hour, and that I beg her to see me for a few moments.” He put his hand into his pocket for half-a-crown as he spoke; but the maid was gone before he had made up his mind to give it to her. Bribing a servant jarred his sense of honor.
“If it’s very particular, madamazel says will you please to walk in,” said she, returning.
Adrian followed her to the parlor, a lofty, spacious apartment with old fashioned wainscoting and a fireplace framed in white marble, carved with vases and garlands. The piano stood in the middle of the room; and the carpet was rolled up in a corner, so as not to deaden the resonance of the boards. Aurélie was standing by the piano, looking at him with a curious pucker of her shrewd face.
“I hope you are not angry with me,” said Herbert, with such evident delight in merely seeing her that she lowered her eyelids. “I know I have interrupted your practicing; and I have even watched to see madame go out before coming to you. But I could not endure another day like yesterday.”
Aureélie hesitated; then seated herself and motioned him to a chair, which he drew close to her. “What was the the matter yesterday?” she said, coquetting in spite of herself.
“It was a day of uncertainty as to the meaning of the change in your manner towards me at Harley Street on Monday, after I had left you for a few minutes.”
Aurélie made a little grimace, but did not look at him. “Why should I change?” she said.
“That is what I ask you. You did change — somebody had been telling you tales about me; and you believed them.” Aurélie’s eyes lightened hopefully. “Will you not charge me openly with whatever has displeased you; and so give me an opportunity to explain.”
“You must have strange customs in England,” she said, her eyes flashing again, this time with anger. “What right have I to charge you with anything? What interest have I in your affairs?”
“Aurélie,” he exclaimed, astonished: “do you not know that I love you like a madman?”
“You never told me so,” she said. “Do Englishwomen take such things for granted?” She blushed as she said so, and immediately bent her face into her hands; laughed a little and cried a little in a breath. This lasted only an instant; for, hearing Herbert’s chair drawn rapidly to the side of hers, she sat erect, and checked him by a movement of her wrist.
“Monsieur Herbert: according to our ideas in my country a declaration of love is always accompanied by an offer of marriage. Do you then offer me your love, and reserve your hand for Miss Sutherland?”
“You are unjust to yourself and to me, Aurélie. I offered you only my love because I could think of nothing else. I do not expect you to love me as blindly as I love you; but will you consent to be my wife? I feel — I know by instinct that there can be no more unhappiness for me in the world if you will only call me your dearest friend.” He said this in a moment of intoxication, produced by an accidental touch of her sleeve against his hand.
Aurélie became pensive. “No doubt you are our dear friend, Monsieur Herbert, We have not many friends. I do not find that there is any such thing as love”
“You do not care for me.” he said, dejected.
“Indeed, you must not think so,” she said quickly. “You have been so kind to us, though we are strangers. For we are strangers, are we not? You hardly know us. And you are so foreign!”
“I! I have not a drop of foreign blood in my veins. You are not accustomed to England yet. I hope you not think me too cold. Oh! I am jealous of all your countrymen!”
“You need not be, Heaven knows! We have few friends in Poland.”
“Aurélie do you know that you are saving ‘we,’ and ‘us,’ as if you did not understand that I love you alone — that I am here, not as a friend of your family, but as suitor to yourself, blind to the existence of any other person in the universe. In your presence I feel as if I were alone in some gallery of great pictures, or listening in a beautiful valley to the singing of angels, yet with some indescribable rapture added to that feeling. Since I saw you, all my old dreams and enthusiasms have come to life again. You can blot them out forever, or make them everlasting with one word. Do you love me?”
She turned hesitatingly towards him, but waited to say, “And it is then wholly false what Madame Feepson said that night?”
“What did she say?” demanded Herbert, turning red with disappointment.
She drew back, and looked earnestly at him. “Madame said,” she replied in a low voice, “that Miss Sutherland was your affianced.”
“Let me explain,” said Adrian, embarrassed. She rose at once, shocked. “Explain!” she repeated. “Oh, Monsieur, yes or no?”
“Yes, then, since you will not listen to me,” he said, with some dignity. She sat down again, slowly, looking round as if for counsel.
“What shall you not think of me if I listen now?” she said, speaking for the first time in English.
“I shall think that you love me a little, perhaps. You have condemned me on a very superficial inference, Aurélie. Engagements are not irrevocable in England. May I tell you the truth about Miss Sutherland?”
Aurélie shook her head doubtfully, and said nothing. But she listened.
“I became engaged to her more than two — nearly three years ago. As I told you, her elder brother, Mr Phipson’s son-in-law, is a great friend of mine; and through him I came to know her very intimately. I owe it to her to confess that her friendship sustained me through a period of loneliness and discouragement, a period in which my hand was untrained, and my acquaintances, led by my mother, were loud in their contempt for my ability as an artist and my perverseness and selfishness in throwing away opportunities of learning banking and stockbroking. Miss Sutherland is very clever and well read. She set herself to study painting with ardor when I brought it under her notice, and soon became a greater enthusiast than I. She probably exaggerated my powers as an artist: at all events I have no doubt that she gave me credit for much of the good influence upon her that was really wrought by her new acquaintance with the handiwork of great men. However that may be, we were united in our devotion to art; and I was deeply grateful to her for being my friend when I had no other. I was so lonely that, in my fear of losing her, I begged her to betroth herself to me. She consented without hesitation, though my circumstances necessitated a long engagement. That engagement has never been formally dissolved, but fulfillment of it is now impossible. Long before I saw you and found out for the first time what love really is, our relations