Chapter IV: IDA

Preceded by Clare, and accompanied by Violet, Trevor Chute entered the apartment of Ida Beverley, a species of little drawing-room, appropriated to her own use, and where, when not driving in the Park, she spent most of the day, apart from everyone.

Ere they entered, Clare again touched his arm lightly, and whispered,

'Be careful in all you say.'

'Be assured that I shall.'

'Thanks, for poor Ida looks as though she would never smile again.'

Though warned by these words to expect some marked change in the beautiful coquette who had been the sun of Beverley's life, and who had taken nearly all the life out of the less luckless Jerry Vane, the visitor was greatly shocked by the appearance of Ida, who rose from her easy-chair to receive him with the saddest of smiles on one of the sweetest of faces--Ida, who had the richest and brightest auburn hair in London, and the 'most divine complexion in the same big village by the Thames,' as Beverley used to boast many a time and oft, when he and Trevor were far, far away from home and her.

Her beauty had become strangely ethereal; her complexion purer, even, and more waxen than ever; her eyes seemed larger, but clearer, more lustrous, and filled at times with a far-seeing expression, and they were long-lashed and heavily lidded.

Her hands seemed very thin and white, yet so pink in the palms.

To Trevor Chute she had the appearance of one in consumption; but strange to say, poor Jerry Vane, who still loved her so well, saw nothing of all this, even when meeting her at intervals.

She received Trevor Chute with outstretched hands, and with an _empressement_ which, perhaps, her elder sister envied; she invited him to sit close by her side, and to tell her all he knew, all he could remember, and every detail of Beverley's last hours; but to do this, after the warning he had received from Clare, required all the tact, ingenuity, and delicacy that Chute was master of.

She had become composed and calm during the past months; but now the proffered relics brought so vividly and painfully before her the individuality of the dead, the handsome young husband she had lost, that a heavy outburst of anguish was the result, as all expected.

There were rings, each of which had its own story; a miniature of herself, with a lock of her auburn hair behind it; there were his medals and his Victoria cross, gained by an act of bravery among the hills, his sword and sash: all were kissed with quivering lips, commented on, and wept over again and again, not noisily or obstreperously, but with a quiet, gentle, subdued, and ladylike grief that proved very touching, especially in one so young and so beautiful in her deep crape dress; and Trevor Chute, as he observed all this, began to think that even yet his friend Vane's chances of regaining the widow's heart were of the slightest kind.

'I knew, Trevor Chute,' said she, after a pause, 'that I should never, never see him again!'

'How?' he asked.

'Because in the dawn of that morning when--when he died, I dreamt of him, and he showed me the ring you have brought--the gipsy ring I gave him, broken in two, as it now is.'

'The tiger's teeth did that.'

'It is true,' said Clare. 'She was sleeping with me, and started up in tears and agitation to tell me of her dream and of the ring.'

Trevor Chute's mind went back to that time when the pale face of the dead man looked so sad in the half-darkened bungalow, while the drums beat merrily in the square without; the last words of Beverley came back to him, and could it be, as he had often said, that he and Ida were indeed _en rapport_, and had a spiritual and unseen link between them?

It began to seem so now.

Then, fearing that his visit was somewhat protracted, he rose, yet lingeringly, to go.

'Dear Captain Chute--Trevor we all called you once,' said Ida, taking his hand in both of hers, while Clare drew a little way back, 'you will call again and see us?'

'It is better that I should not,' replied Chute, in a voice that became agitated in spite of himself; 'you know all the circumstances, Ida, under which we parted,' he added, in a lower voice.

'You will surely come again and see _me_?' she urged.

'If the family were out of town,' Chute was beginning.

'Trevor,' said the widow, passionately, 'love me as if--as if I were your sister; for you were more than a friend--yes, a very brother--to my poor Beverley, and I must be as your sister.'

Clare's eyes met those of Chute for an instant, and then were dropped on the carpet; but she did not blush, as another might have done, at all this speech implied or suggested, for her face grew very pale, and then, feeling the dire necessity of saying something, she muttered, falteringly:

'You will surely call and see papa, after--after----'

'What, Miss Collingwood?'

'Your long absence from this country.'

'It has seemed somewhat of an eternity to me.'

She trembled as he added, in a gentle, yet cold manner:

'Excuse me, but it were better to pay my first visit to him at his club.'

Chute, who had been all tenderness to Ida, could not help this manner to Clare, for Violet's remarks about Desmond seemed to corroborate those of Vane.

Unstable of purpose, he held Clare's hand, and she permitted him to do so, with a slow, regretful clasp. Why should he not do so, and why should she withdraw her slender fingers?

As he descended the staircase, he heard the name of the Honourable Harvey Desmond announced with his card, and the rivals passed each other in the marble vestibule, the former with the easy air of a daily, at least a frequent, visitor; the other with that of one whose mission was over.

'On what terms are he and Clare if the clubs link their names together?' thought Trevor, bitterly and sadly, as he came forth.

Did she, after all, love himself still?

He was almost inclined to flatter himself that she did so.

Worldly or monetary matters were unchanged between them, as at that cruel time when he lost her; so perhaps he had only returned to London to stand idly by and see her become the wife of Desmond!

After all that had passed between them, after all that seemed gone for ever, after the bitterness and mortification he had endured, the years of hopeless separation in a distant land, he could scarcely realize, while walking along the sunny and crowded pavement of Piccadilly, the assured fact that he had again seen and spoken with Clare Collingwood; and that the whole interview had not been one of those day-dreams in which, when in Beverley's society, he had been so often wont to indulge when quartered far up country in the burning East.

Then he recalled the cold terms of that letter in which her father--a hard and heartless, frivolous and luxurious man of the world, with much of aristocratic snobbery in his composition--had bluntly informed him that the engagement between him and Clare was ended for ever, and _why_; and he resolved that neither at the baronet's club nor anywhere else would he waste a calling card upon him; and in this pleasant mood of mind he hailed a hansom and drove to the rooms of his friend Jerry Vane.