Bettina Von Hutten

“ She, however, who had been the object of more strong passions than many women ever even hear of, knew although, or possibly because, she had never before cared a jot for any man, that her time had come, and that for her love must be a perilous thing. She had once been called a stormy petrel, and now as, racked with the agony of her resolve, she sat through the interminable dinner, she recalled the name, and smiled bitterly to herself. Yes, she was a stormy petrel, and she had no right to ruin Victor Joyselle and his family. ”

“ No. Ah, Victor, you know that I love you. You must know that. And yet I have promised to marry him. What are we to do?"
Through the open windows came the sounds of laughter and loud talk, and someone was playing snatches of a waltz on a violin.
Brigit, feeling that things outside her own control had hastened an inevitable crisis, stood waiting with the immobility of one consciously in the hands of Fate.
At last Joyselle came to her and took her in his arms. "Tell me that you love me," he whispered, "and then—I can bear anything." ”

“ The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves them—for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"
Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she could make him love her almost in a moment. ”

“ Brigit suffered tortures as she sat watching Joyselle. It was, then, as she had feared. He was going to be strong and make everyone miserable.
If she had been asked to propose any kind of a plan for the future, her answer would have been, when denuded of side issues and fantasy, simply that she could see nothing better than simple drifting. As yet she could not anticipate, and it roused in her a kind of jealousy that Joyselle had so soon begun to think of Théo. ”

“ Come back to your lover who sighs for you, to your old adoring Beau-papa who longs to see again the face of his beautiful child. Joyselle."
"Brigit—you must go."
Brigit poked at a clump of moss among the tangled roots of the tree under which they sat, and sulked.
"You must, dear. And—you must buck up and break the engagement. It isn't fair," continued Pam, energetically, "to go on stealing their love."
"I stealing their love!—I! And what has he done to me, pray? Do you know that I haven't slept more than an hour at a time, for months? ”

“ Brigit stood in an upper window looking down as the crowd assorted itself and settled down on the benches by the tables. In a few moments Théo would fetch her and conduct her to the arbour where twelve people were to be seated; at present he was bustling about making himself agreeable to everybody, laughing with those few children who, being over twelve, were present, helping the old or unwieldly to dispose of themselves comfortably, darting to and fro, looking strangely out of place among the good people with whom he felt so thoroughly at home. ”

“ Suddenly he rose and seizing her arm roughly, gave her another cue, which she remorselessly and instantly took.
"There is someone else," he cried, utterly forgetting that the very day before she had loved him madly, "you love some other man. Tell me who it is!"
And with the extraordinary fortitude common to fanatics and furious women, she smiled and answered:
"Perhaps! Tout passe, mon cher."
It was a cheap and melodramatic bit of acting, and any unprejudiced onlooker must have seen the agony in her face, but Joyselle was blinded by his own pain and fled from the room without another word. ”

“ She walked with unusual rapidity for a woman, climbing the path without relaxing her gait or losing her breath. The sharp, damp air brought to her face colour that Carron had been unable to call up. He was, poor wretch, so utterly secondary to her, that he was as little important as the long-forgotten spider. It was Joyselle who occupied her thoughts, whom her mental eyes saw, as she walked steadily seawards, as plainly as if he had been with her. ”

“ I am not so rich, but I am rich. And, ah, I love you—je t'aime."
Poor Pontefract, leaning back in his big Mercedes trying to realise his bliss, was jilted before Brigit had spoken a word. Like a flash, his image seemed to stand before her, beside the delightful boy-man whose youth and niceness pleaded so strongly to her. She did not consider that breaking her word was not fair play, she had no thought of pity for Pontefract. She loved nobody, and therefore thought solely of herself. This boy was right. She would be happier with him than with poor, old, fat Ponty. ”

“ It was five o'clock and a dark afternoon, so that the room was full of shadows.
Suddenly Tommy turned and looked at her.
"Brigit," he asked, recognising her for the first time, "are you in love with Joyselle?"
For a full minute she could not answer, and then said very gently, "Darling Tommy—you know me?"
"Yes, yes, of course I know you. But—are you? Carron and mother think so."
"Do they, Tommy? Well—I love him dearly—and so do you, don't you?"
"I don't mean that," he returned, with a gesture of impatience; "I mean the way people are who are going to marry each other." ”

“ It was like his father's voice, and like his father's when he was impatient and superficially stirred.
"A wonderful person, am I not?" she laughed, picking up her hat and putting it on, dashing a great cruel-looking hat-pin apparently straight through her brain. "I am also a hungry person, Théo. Are we to have food? I suppose no one will be awake for hours!"
It was indeed too early to hope for coffee, so they amused themselves by wandering up and down the stairs, throwing burning paper down the famous oubliette, and crossing perilously narrow ledges hand-in-hand. ”

“ Joyselle should see her with his own eyes, as a man sees a woman, not as a father sees a daughter. And he should see her as a man sees a marvellously beautiful woman!
Satisfied with the conclusion to which she had come, she lay down and slept for an hour, after which, the enigmatic smile on her lips bringing into predominance the resemblance to the portrait in the Luxembourg, she dressed, with more care than she had ever devoted to that process in all her five-and-twenty years of life. ”

“ Lady Kingsmead pursed her mouth thoughtfully.
"That may be," she admitted. "I've thought for some time that something was in the air——"
Breaking off, she glanced hastily at him. The old habit of telling him her thoughts as they came to her was still strong, but this was not her Gerald Carron. This was a new man of whom she knew little. For this much wisdom she had learned: that every new love makes a new man of a man.
And this Carron, with his wild eyes, was no person to confide in.
"Come, buck up, old thing," she said, with an affectation of brusque good-humour: "you haven't been sleeping. ”

“ For a moment the father in him dominated the mere man, and his eloquence was great as he reproached her.
"No—no, I am not cruel," she answered cruelly, her anger reinforced by a wave of jealousy anent Théo, "but as I do not love him, why should I marry him? And this kind of thing had far better cease. After all, you care for him far more than you care for me."
"Grand Dieu!"
"Yes, of course you do," she went on in the tone of gentle, unimpassioned reason that women sometimes use in violent anger, to the utter amazement and undoing of their male opponents. ”

“ My mother, with whom I have been on fairly decent terms since Tommy has been ill, is hopeless. Gerald Carron shot himself to-day, and mother, just, I honestly believe, to indulge her own taste for sentimental scenes, turned on me about him and pretended to believe a story he told her just before I left Pont Street—that I was Joyselle's mistress, in fact. If she believed the story I would forgive her, though it is not true, but I cannot forgive the kind of mind that can amuse itself with such vulgar melodrama. I have always disliked my mother, and now I simply cannot bear her any longer. ”

“ It is pleasant to wake to the sound of exquisite—and sufficiently distant—music. It is also pleasant to wake to the odour of good—and sufficiently distant—coffee.
The morning after her remarkable arrival in Golden Square Brigit Mead awoke to both these pleasant things. Somewhere downstairs someone was playing a simple, plaintive air on a violin, and still further away someone was making coffee—delicious coffee. ”

“ At about half-past eleven an idea occurred to her. She wanted an omelet. Like the first time. And she must borrow an apron and help make the omelet; and it must be full of little savoury green things, and be flopped in the long-handled frying-pan.
"But your dress!" cried Madame Joyselle, in horror.
"An apron, and I will twist up the tail of the dragon and pin it at the waist, and—oh, come, come, come, it will be such fun!"
Down the stairs they ran, the three, leaving Madame Joyselle to turn out all but one light, and to put another log on the dying fire. ”

“ Her upbringing had been such that she really believed herself to be as yet quite guiltless of anything more than an almost inevitable deceit, and even when she did regret the deceit, the thought that she was going to marry Théo gave her instant comfort, as though she were contemplating some noble act of atonement.
"Victor is very good now," she thought, turning her flat, hard pillow, "and I am much less nervous and irritable. Things always do straighten themselves out, I suppose—for those who know how to wait. Mere waiting does no good, it's the knowing how that counts. ”

“ The world is abominable. I hate everybody. I hate you. I hate God. The only way I can forget is to take morphine, and it is beginning to go back on me. Sometimes I don't feel it at all. And it is only the last of many friends to desert me——"
There were four pages of this, growing more and more incoherent, and then at the last, the writer went on, his writing suddenly larger and more distinct, as if he had taken pains to render it legible:
"I am going to die, Brigit, so good-bye. If you would have married me I should not have done this. It is all your fault. Gerald Carron." ”

“ Madame Joyselle, however, gave a gentle chuckle, and continued: "He was his most terrific yesterday! Like a lion with no self-control; it was very ridiculous."
Brigit started. Terrible, yes, but—it struck her as very unfitting for the great man's plain little wife to find him ridiculous. And Félicité, as her husband always called her, saw her start, and understood.
"Ah, yes, to you he is the great artist as well as Théo's father—hein? To me he is, of course, just—my husband. All men are, they say, different, but surely all husbands are much alike."
"There are certainly very few men like—him." ”

“ That love, like everything else, must go through a series of mathematically exact evolutions, Joyselle of course, in his present frame of mind, could not realise. To him, as to every lover, the happenings and exigencies of his situation seemed those of pure hazard, and this phase, as he listened to his wife's interpretation of it, appeared to him absolutely the result of a chance quarrel with Brigit.
"She is distressed and very tragic about it all," continued Félicité. "Of course she would be tragic; it is her nature. She no doubt believes that she will never get over it. ”