A Passionate Pilgrim.
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INTENDING to sail for America in the early part
of June, I determined to spend the interval of
six weeks in England, of which I had dreamed much
but as yet knew nothing. I had formed in Italy and
France a resolute preference for old inns, deeming that
what they sometimes cost the ungratified body they
repay the delighted mind. On my arrival in London,
therefore, I lodged at a certain antique hostelry far to
the east of Temple Bar, deep in what I used to denominate
the Johnsonian city. Here, on the first evening
of my stay, I descended to the little coffee-room and
bespoke my dinner of the genius of decorum, in the
person of the solitary waiter. No sooner had I crossed
the threshold of this apartment than I felt I had
mown the first swath in my golden-ripe crop of British
“impressions.” The coffee-room of the Red-Lion, like
so many other places and things I was destined to
see in England, seemed to have been waiting for long
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years, with just that sturdy sufferance of time written
on its visage, for me to come and gaze, ravished but
unamazed.
The latent preparedness of the American mind for
even the most delectable features of English life is a
fact which I never fairly probed to its depths. The
roots of it are so deeply buried in the virgin soil of
our primary culture, that, without some great upheaval
of experience, it would be hard to say exactly when
and where and how it begins. It makes an American's
enjoyment of England an emotion more fatal and
sacred than his enjoyment, say, of Italy or Spain. I
had seen the coffee-room of the Red-Lion years ago, at
home, — at Saragossa, Illinois, — in books, in visions,
in dreams, in Dickens, in Smollett, and Boswell. It
was small, and subdivided into six small compartments
by a series of perpendicular screens of mahogany,
something higher than a man's stature, furnished on
either side with a narrow uncushioned ledge, denominated
in ancient Britain a seat. In each of the little
dining-boxes thus immutably constituted was a small
table, which in crowded seasons was expected to accommodate
the several agents of a fourfold British
hungriness. But crowded seasons had passed away
from the Red-Lion forever. It was crowded only with
memories and ghosts and atmosphere. Round the
room there marched, breast-high, a magnificent
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panelling of mahogany, so dark with time and so polished
with unremitted friction, that by gazing awhile into its
lucid blackness I fancied I could discern the lingering
images of a party of gentlemen in periwigs and short-clothes,
just arrived from York by the coach. On the
dark yellow walls, coated by the fumes of English coal,
of English mutton, of Scotch whiskey, were a dozen
melancholy prints, sallow-toned with age, — the Derby
favorite of the year 1807, the Bank of England, her
Majesty the Queen. On the floor was a Turkey carpet,—
as old as the mahogany, almost, as the Bank of
England, as the Queen, — into which the waiter in his
lonely revolutions had trodden so many massive soot-flakes
and drops of overflowing beer, that the glowing
looms of Smyrna would certainly not have recognized
it. To say that I ordered my dinner of this superior
being would be altogether to misrepresent the process,
owing to which, having dreamed of lamb and spinach,
and a charlotte-russe, I sat down in penitence to a mutton-chop
and a rice pudding. Bracing my feet against
the cross-beam of my little oaken table, I opposed to
the mahogany partition behind me that vigorous dorsal
resistance which expresses the old-English idea of repose.
The sturdy screen refused even to creak; but
my poor Yankee joints made up the deficiency. While
I was waiting for my chop there came into the room a
person whom I took to be my sole fellow-lodger. He
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seemed, like myself, to have submitted to proposals
for dinner; the table on the other side of my partition
had been prepared to receive him. He walked up to
the fire, exposed his back to it, consulted his watch,
and looked apparently out of the window, but really
at me. He was a man of something less than middle
age and more than middle stature, though indeed you
would have called him neither young nor tall. He was
chiefly remarkable for his exaggerated leanness. His
hair, very thin on the summit of his head, was dark,
short, and fine. His eye was of a pale, turbid gray,
unsuited, perhaps, to his dark hair and brow, but not
altogether out of harmony with his colorless, bilious
complexion. His nose was aquiline and delicate; beneath
it hung a thin, comely, dark mustache. His
mouth and chin were meagre and uncertain of outline;
not vulgar, perhaps, but weak. A cold, fatal, gentlemanly
weakness, indeed, seemed expressed in his attenuated
person. His eye was restless and deprecating;
his whole physiognomy, his manner of shifting his
weight from foot to foot, the spiritless droop of his
head, told of exhausted purpose, of a will relaxed. His
dress was neat and careful, with an air of half-mourning.
I made up my mind on three points: he was
unmarried, he was ill, he was not an Englishman. The
waiter approached him, and they murmured momentarily
in barely audible tones. I heard the words
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“claret,” “sherry,” with a tentative inflection, and
finally “beer,” with a gentle affirmative. Perhaps he
was a Russian in reduced circumstances; he reminded
me of a certain type of Russian which I had met on
the Continent. While I was weighing this hypothesis,—
for you see I was interested, — there appeared a
short, brisk man with reddish-brown hair, a vulgar
nose, a sharp blue eye, and a red beard, confined to
his lower jaw and chin. My impecunious Russian was
still standing on the rug, with his mild gaze bent on
vacancy; the other marched up to him, and with his
umbrella gave him a playful poke in the concave frontage
of his melancholy waistcoat. “A penny-ha'penny
for your thoughts!” said the new-comer.
His companion uttered an exclamation, stared, then
laid his two hands on the other's shoulders. The
latter looked round at me keenly, compassing me in
a momentary glance. I read in its own high light
that this was an American eyebeam; and with such
confidence that I hardly needed to see its owner, as
he prepared, with his friend, to seat himself at the
table adjoining my own, take from his overcoat-pocket
three New York papers and lay them beside his plate.
As my neighbors proceeded to dine, I became conscious
that, through no indiscretion of my own, a large
portion of their conversation made its way over the
top of our dividing partition and mingled its savor
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with that of my simple repast. Occasionally their
tone was lowered, as with the intention of secrecy;
but I heard a phrase here and a phrase there distinctly
enough to grow very curious as to the burden
of the whole, and, in fact, to succeed at last in guessing
it. The two voices were pitched in an unforgotten
key, and equally native to our Cisatlantic air; they
seemed to fall upon the muffled medium of surrounding
parlance as the rattle of pease on the face of a
drum. They were American, however, with a difference;
and I had no hesitation in assigning the lighter
and softer of the two to the pale, thin gentleman,
whom I decidedly preferred to his comrade. The
latter began to question him about his voyage.
“Horrible, horrible! I was deadly sick from the
hour we left New York.”
“Well, you do look considerably reduced,” his friend
affirmed.
“Reduced! I 've been on the verge of the grave.
I have n't slept six hours in three weeks.” This was
said with great gravity. “Well, I have made the
voyage for the last time.”
“The deuce you have! You mean to stay here
forever?”
“Here, or somewhere! It 's likely to be a short
forever.”
There was a pause; after which: “You 're the
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same cheerful old boy, Searle. Going to die to-morrow,
eh?”
“I almost wish I were.”
“You 're not in love with England, then? I 've
heard people say at home that you dressed and talked
and acted like an Englishman. But I know Englishmen,
and I know you. You 're not one of them,
Searle, not you. You 'll go under here, sir; you 'll
go under as sure as my name is Simmons.”
Following this, I heard a sudden clatter, as of the
dropping of a knife and fork. “Well, you 're a delicate
sort of creature, Simmons! I have been wandering
about all day in this accursed city, ready to
cry with home-sickness and heart-sickness and every
possible sort of sickness, and thinking, in the absence
of anything better, of meeting you here this evening,
and of your uttering some syllable of cheer and comfort,
and giving me some feeble ray of hope. Go
under? Am I not under now? I can't sink lower,
except to sink into my grave!”
Mr. Simmons seems to have staggered a moment
under this outbreak of passion. But the next,
“Don't cry, Searle,” I heard him say. “Remember
the waiter. I 've grown Englishman enough for
that. For heaven's sake, don't let us have any feelings.
Feelings will do nothing for you here. It 's
best to come to the point. Tell me in three words
what you expect of me.”
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I heard another movement, as if poor Searle had
collapsed in his chair. “Upon my word, Simmons,
you are inconceivable. You got my letter?”
“Yes, I got your letter. I was never sorrier to
get anything in my life.”
At this declaration Mr. Searle rattled out an oath,
which it was well perhaps that I but partially heard.
“John Simmons,” he cried, “what devil possesses
you? Are you going to betray me here in a foreign
land, to turn out a false friend, a heartless rogue?”
“Go on, sir,” said sturdy Simmons. “Pour it all
out. I 'll wait till you have done. — Your beer is
very bad,” to the waiter. “I 'll have some more.”
“For God's sake, explain yourself!” cried Searle.
There was a pause, at the end of which I heard
Mr. Simmons set down his empty tankard with emphasis.
“You poor morbid man,” he resumed, “I
don't want to say anything to make you feel sore.
I pity you. But you must allow me to say that
you have acted like a blasted fool!”
Mr. Searle seemed to have made an effort to compose
himself. “Be so good as to tell me what was
the meaning of your letter.”
“I was a fool, myself, to have written that letter.
It came of my infernal meddlesome benevolence. I
had much better have let you alone. To tell you
the plain truth, I never was so horrified in my life
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as when I found that on the strength of that letter
you had come out here to seek your fortune.”
“What did you expect me to do?”
“I expected you to wait patiently till I had made
further inquiries and had written to you again.”
“You have made further inquiries now?”
“Inquiries! I have made assaults.”
“And you find I have no claim?”
“No claim to call a claim. It looked at first as
if you had a very pretty one. I confess the idea
took hold of me —”
“Thanks to your preposterous benevolence!”
Mr. Simmons seemed for a moment to experience
a difficulty in swallowing. “Your beer is undrinkable,”
he said to the waiter. “I 'll have some brandy.—
Come, Searle,” he resumed, “don't challenge me
to the arts of debate, or I 'll settle right down on
you. Benevolence, as I say, was part of it. The
reflection that if I put the thing through it would be
a very pretty feather in my cap and a very pretty
penny in my purse was part of it. And the satisfaction
of seeing a poor nobody of a Yankee walk
right into an old English estate was a good deal of
it. Upon my word, Searle, when I think of it, I
wish with all my heart that, erratic genius as you
are, you had a claim, for the very beauty of it! I
should hardly care what you did with the confounded
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property when you got it. I could leave you alone to
turn it into Yankee notions, — into ducks and drakes,
as they call it here. I should like to see you stamping
over it and kicking up its sacred dust in their very
faces!”
“You don't know me, Simmons!” said Searle, for
all response to this untender benediction.
“I should be very glad to think I did n't, Searle.
I have been to no small amount of trouble for you.
I have consulted by main force three first-rate men.
They smile at the idea. I should like you to see
the smile negative of one of these London big-wigs.
If your title were written in letters of fire, it would
n't stand being sniffed at in that fashion. I sounded
in person the solicitor of your distinguished kinsman.
He seemed to have been in a manner forewarned
and forearmed. It seems your brother George, some
twenty years ago, put forth a feeler. So you are
not to have the glory of even frightening them.”
“I never frightened any one,” said Searle. “I
should n't begin at this time of day. I should approach
the subject like a gentleman.”
“Well, if you want very much to do something
like a gentleman, you 've got a capital chance. Take
your disappointment like a gentleman.”
I had finished my dinner, and I had become keenly
interested in poor Mr. Searle's mysterious claim;
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so interested that it was vexatious to hear his emotions
reflected in his voice without noting them in
his face. I left my place, went over to the fire, took
up the evening paper, and established a post of observation
behind it.
Lawyer Simmons was in the act of choosing a
soft chop from the dish, — an act accompanied by a
great deal of prying and poking with his own personal
fork. My disillusioned compatriot had pushed
away his plate; he sat with his elbows on the table,
gloomily nursing his head with his hands. His
companion stared at him a moment, I fancied half
tenderly; I am not sure whether it was pity or
whether it was beer and brandy. “I say, Searle,”—
and for my benefit, I think, taking me for an
impressible native, he attuned his voice to something
of a pompous pitch, — “in this country it is
the inestimable privilege of a loyal citizen, under
whatsoever stress of pleasure or of pain, to make a
point of eating his dinner.”
Searle disgustedly gave his plate another push.
“Anything may happen, now!” he said. “I don't
care a straw.”
“You ought to care. Have another chop, and you
will care. Have some brandy. Take my advice!”
Searle from between his two hands looked at him.
“I have had enough of your advice!” he said.
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“A little more,” said Simmons, mildly; “I sha' n't
trouble you again. What do you mean to do?”
“Nothing.”
“O, come!”
“Nothing, nothing, nothing!”
“Nothing but starve. How about your money?”
“Why do you ask? You don't care.”
“My dear fellow, if you want to make me offer
you twenty pounds, you set most clumsily about it.
You said just now I don't know you. Possibly!
There is, perhaps, no such enormous difference between
knowing you and not knowing you. At any
rate, you don't know me. I expect you to go
home.”
“I won't go home! I have crossed the ocean for
the last time.”
“What is the matter? Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I 'm afraid! `I thank thee, Jew, for teaching
me that word!”'
“You 're more afraid to go than to stay?”
“I sha' n't stay. I shall die.”
“O, are you sure of that?”
“One can always be sure of that.”
Mr. Simmons started and stared: his mild cynic had
turned grim stoic. “Upon my soul,” he said, “one
would think that Death had named the day!”
“We have named it, between us.”
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This was too much even for Mr. Simmons's easy
morality. “I say, Searle,” he cried, “I 'm not more of
a stickler than the next man, but if you are going to
blaspheme, I shall wash my hands of you. If you 'll
consent to return home with me by the steamer of the
23d, I 'll pay your passage down. More than that, I 'll
pay your wine bill.”
Searle meditated. “I believe I never willed anything
in my life,” he said; “but I feel sure that I have
willed this, that I stay here till I take my leave for a
newer world than that poor old New World of ours.
It 's an odd feeling, — I rather like it! What should
I do at home?”
“You said just now you were homesick.”
“So I was — for a morning. But have n't I been
all my life long sick for Europe? And now that I 've
got it, am I to cast it off again? I 'm much obliged to
you for your offer. I have enough for the present. I
have about my person some forty pounds' worth of
British gold and the same amount, say, of Yankee vitality.
They 'll last me out together! After they are
gone, I shall lay my head in some English churchyard;
beside some ivied tower, beneath an English yew.”
I had thus far distinctly followed the dialogue; but
at this point the landlord came in, and, begging my
pardon, would suggest that No. 12, a most superior
apartment, having now been vacated, it would give him
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pleasure, etc. The fate of No. 12 having been decreed,
I transferred my attention back to my friends. They
had risen to their feet; Simmons had put on his overcoat;
he stood polishing his rusty black hat with his
napkin. “Do you mean to go down to the place?” he
asked.
“Possibly. I have dreamed of it so much I should
like to see it.”
“Shall you call on Mr. Searle?”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Something has just occurred to me,” Simmons pursued,
with an unhandsome grin, as if Mephistopheles
were playing at malice. “There 's a Miss Searle, the
old man's sister.”
“Well?” said the other, frowning.
“Well, sir! suppose, instead of dying, you should
marry!”
Mr. Searle frowned in silence. Simmons gave him
a tap on the stomach. “Line those ribs a bit first!”
The poor gentleman blushed crimson and his eyes filled
with tears. “You are a coarse brute,” he said. The
scene was pathetic. I was prevented from seeing the
conclusion of it by the reappearance of the landlord,
on behalf of No. 12. He insisted on my coming to
inspect the premises. Half an hour afterwards I was
rattling along in a Hansom toward Covent Garden,
where I heard Madame Bosio in the Barber of Seville.
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On my return from the opera I went into the coffee-room,
vaguely fancying I might catch another glimpse
of Mr. Searle. I was not disappointed. I found him
sitting before the fire, with his head fallen on his
breast, sunk in the merciful stupor of tardy sleep. I
looked at him for some moments. His face, pale and
refined in the dim lamplight, impressed me with an
air of helpless, ineffective delicacy. They say fortune
comes while we sleep. Standing there I felt benignant
enough to be poor Mr. Searle's fortune. As I walked
away, I perceived amid the shadows of one of the little
dining stalls which I have described the lonely everdressed
waiter, dozing attendance on my friend, and
shifting aside for a while the burden of waiterhood. I
lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard, in which,
upon a time, the coaches and postchaises found space
to turn and disgorge. Above the upward vista of the
enclosing galleries, from which lounging lodgers and
crumpled chambermaids and all the picturesque domesticity
of an antique tavern must have watched the
great entrances and exits of the posting and coaching
drama, I descried the distant lurid twinkle of the London
constellations. At the foot of the stairs, enshrined
in the glittering niche of her well-appointed bar, the
landlady sat napping like some solemn idol amid votive
brass and plate.
The next morning, not finding the innocent object of
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my benevolent curiosity in the coffee-room, I learned
from the waiter that he had ordered breakfast in
bed. Into this asylum I was not yet prepared to
pursue him. I spent the morning running about
London, chiefly on business, but snatching by the
way many a vivid impression of its huge metropolitan
interest. Beneath the sullen black and gray of
that hoary civic world the hungry American mind
detects the magic colors of association. As the afternoon
approached, however, my impatient heart began
to babble of green fields; it was of English meadows
I had chiefly dreamed. Thinking over the suburban
lions, I fixed upon Hampton Court. The day was the
more propitious that it yielded just that dim, subaqueous
light which sleeps so fondly upon the English
landscape.
At the end of an hour I found myself wandering
through the multitudinous rooms of the great palace.
They follow each other in infinite succession, with
no great variety of interest or aspect, but with a sort
of regal monotony, and a fine specific flavor. They
are most exactly of their various times. You pass
from great painted and panelled bedchambers and closets,
anterooms, drawing-rooms, council-rooms, through
king's suite, queen's suite, and prince's suite, until
you feel as if you were strolling through the appointed
hours and stages of some decorous
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monarchical day. On one side are the old monumental upholsteries,
the vast cold tarnished beds and canopies,
with the circumference of disapparelled royalty attested
by a gilded balustrade, and the great carved
and yawning chimney-places, where dukes-in-waiting
may have warmed their weary heels; on the other
side, in deep recesses, the immense windows, the
framed and draped embrasures where the sovereign
whispered and favorites smiled, looking out on the
terraced gardens and the misty glades of Bushey Park.
The dark walls are gravely decorated by innumerable
dark portraits of persons attached to Court and State,
more especially with various members of the Dutchlooking
entourage of William of Orange, the restorer
of the palace; with good store, too, of the lily-bosomed
models of Lely and Kneller. The whole tone
of this long-drawn interior is immensly sombre, prosaic,
and sad. The tints of all things have sunk to a cold
and melancholy brown, and the great palatial void
seems to hold no stouter tenantry than a sort of pungent
odorous chill. I seemed to be the only visitor.
I held ungrudged communion with the formal genius
of the spot. Poor mortalized kings! ineffective lure
of royalty! This, or something like it, was the
murmured burden of my musings. They were interrupted
suddenly by my coming upon a person standing
in devout contemplation before a simpering countess
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of Sir Peter Lely's creation. On hearing my footstep
this person turned his head, and I recognized my
fellow-lodger at the Red-Lion. I was apparently recognized
as well; I detected an air of overture in his
glance. In a few moments, seeing I had a catalogue,
he asked the name of the portrait. On my
ascertaining it, he inquired, timidly, how I liked
the lady.
“Well,” said I, not quite timidly enough, perhaps,
“I confess she seems to me rather a light piece of
work.”
He remained silent, and a little abashed, I think.
As we strolled away he stole a sidelong glance of
farewell at his leering shepherdess. To speak with
him face to face was to feel keenly that he was
weak and interesting. We talked of our inn, of
London, of the palace; he uttered his mind freely,
but he seemed to struggle with a weight of depression.
It was a simple mind enough, with no great
culture, I fancied, but with a certain appealing
native grace. I foresaw that I should find him a
true American, full of that perplexing interfusion
of refinement and crudity which marks the American
mind. His perceptions, I divined, were delicate;
his opinions, possibly, gross. On my telling him
that I too was an American, he stopped short and
seemed overcome with emotion: then silently
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passing his arm into my own, he suffered me to lead
him through the rest of the palace and down into
the gardens. A vast gravelled platform stretches itself
before the basement of the palace, taking the
afternoon sun. A portion of the edifice is reserved
as a series of private apartments, occupied by state
pensioners, reduced gentlewomen in receipt of the
Queen's bounty, and other deserving persons. Many
of these apartments have their little private gardens;
and here and there, between their verdure-coated walls,
you catch a glimpse of these dim horticultural closets.
My companion and I took many a turn up and
down this spacious level, looking down on the antique
geometry of the lower garden and on the stoutly woven
tapestry of vine and blossom which muffles the foundations
of the huge red pile. I thought of the various
images of old-world gentility, which, early and late,
must have strolled upon that ancient terrace and felt
the great protecting quietude of the solemn palace.
We looked through an antique grating into one of
the little private gardens, and saw an old lady with
a black mantilla on her head, a decanter of water in
one hand and a crutch in the other, come forth, followed
by three little dogs and a cat, to sprinkle a
plant. She had an opinion, I fancied, on the virtue
of Queen Caroline. There are few sensations so exquisite
in life as to stand with a companion in a
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foreign land and inhale to the depths of your consciousness
the alien savor of the air and the tonic
picturesqueness of things. This common relish of
local color makes comrades of strangers. My companion
seemed oppressed with vague amazement.
He stared and lingered and scanned the scene with
a gentle scowl. His enjoyment appeared to give
him pain. I proposed, at last, that we should dine
in the neighborhood and take a late train to town.
We made our way out of the gardens into the adjoining
village, where we found an excellent inn.
Mr. Searle sat down to table with small apparent
interest in the repast, but gradually warming to his
work, he declared at the end of half an hour that
for the first time in a month he felt an appetite.
“You 're an invalid?” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “A hopeless one!”
The little village of Hampton Court stands clustered
about the broad entrance of Bushey Park.
After we had dined we lounged along into the hazy
vista of the great avenue of horse-chestnuts. There
is a rare emotion, familiar to every intelligent traveller,
in which the mind, with a great passionate
throb, achieves a magical synthesis of its impressions.
You feel England; you feel Italy. The reflection
for the moment has an extraordinary poignancy.
I had known it from time to time in Italy,
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and had opened my soul to it as to the spirit of
the Lord. Since my arrival in England I had been
waiting for it to come. A bottle of excellent Burgundy
at dinner had perhaps unlocked to it the
gates of sense; it came now with a conquering
tread. Just the scene around me was the England
of my visions. Over against us, amid the deep-hued
bloom of its ordered gardens, the dark red palace, with
its formal copings and its vacant windows, seemed to
tell of a proud and splendid past; the little village
nestling between park and palace, around a patch of
turfy common, with its tavern of gentility, its ivytowered
church, its parsonage, retained to my modernized
fancy the lurking semblance of a feudal hamlet.
It was in this dark composite light that I had read all
English prose; it was this mild moist air that had
blown from the verses of English poets; beneath these
broad acres of rain-deepened greenness a thousand
honored dead lay buried.
“Well,” I said to my friend, “I think there is no
mistake about this being England. We may like it
or not, it 's positive! No more dense and stubborn
fact ever settled down on an expectant tourist. It
brings my heart into my throat.”
Searle was silent. I looked at him; he was looking
up at the sky, as if he were watching some visible
descent of the elements. “On me too,” he said, “it 's
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settling down!” Then with a forced smile: “Heaven
give me strength to bear it!”
“O mighty world,” I cried, “to hold at once so rare
an Italy and so brave an England!”
“To say nothing of America,” added Searle.
“O,” I answered, “America has a world to herself!”
“You have the advantage over me,” my companion
resumed, after a pause, “in coming to all this with
an educated eye. You already know the old. I have
never known it but by report. I have always fancied
I should like it. In a small way at home, you know,
I have tried to stick to the old. I must be a conservative
by nature. People at home — a few people —
used to call me a snob.”
“I don't believe you were a snob,” I cried. “You
look too amiable.”
He smiled sadly. “There it is,” he said. “It 's the
old story! I 'm amiable! I know what that means!
I was too great a fool to be even a snob! If I had
been I should probably have come abroad earlier in
life — before — before —” He paused, and his head
dropped sadly on his breast.
The bottle of Burgundy had loosened his tongue.
I felt that my learning his story was merely a question
of time. Something told me that I had gained his
confidence and he would unfold himself. “Before you
lost your health,” I said.
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“Before I lost my health,” he answered. “And my
property, — the little I had. And my ambition. And
my self-esteem.”
“Come!” I said. “You shall get them all back.
This tonic English climate will wind you up in a
month. And with the return of health, all the rest
will return.”
He sat musing, with his eyes fixed on the distant
palace. “They are too far gone, — self-esteem especially!
I should like to be an old genteel pensioner,
lodged over there in the palace, and spending my days
in maundering about these classic haunts. I should
go every morning, at the hour when it gets the sun,
into that long gallery where all those pretty women of
Lely's are hung, — I know you despise them! — and
stroll up and down and pay them compliments. Poor,
precious, forsaken creatures! So flattered and courted
in their day, so neglected now! Offering up their
shoulders and ringlets and smiles to that inexorable
solitude!”
I patted my friend on the shoulder. “You shall be
yourself again yet,” I said.
Just at this moment there came cantering down the
shallow glade of the avenue a young girl on a fine
black horse, — one of those lovely budding gentlewomen,
perfectly mounted and equipped, who form to
American eyes the sweetest incident of English
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
scenery. She had distanced her servant, and, as she came
abreast of us, turned slightly in her saddle and looked
back at him. In the movement she dropped her whip.
Drawing in her horse, she cast upon the ground a
glance of maidenly alarm. “This is something better
than a Lely,” I said. Searle hastened forward, picked
up the whip, and removing his hat with an air of great
devotion, presented it to the young girl. Fluttered
and blushing, she reached forward, took it with softly
murmured gratitude, and the next moment was bounding
over the elastic turf. Searle stood watching her;
the servant, as he passed us, touched his hat. When
Searle turned toward me again, I saw that his face
was glowing with a violent blush. “I doubt of your
having come abroad too late!” I said, laughing.
A short distance from where we had stopped was an
old stone bench. We went and sat down on it and
watched the light mist turning to sullen gold in the
rays of the evening sun. “We ought to be thinking
of the train back to London, I suppose,” I said at last.
“O, hang the train!” said Searle.
“Willingly! There could be no better spot than
this to feel the magic of an English twilight.” So we
lingered, and the twilight lingered around us, — a light
and not a darkness. As we sat, there came trudging
along the road an individual whom, from afar, I recognized
as a member of the genus “tramp.” I had read
-- 031 --
[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]
of the British tramp, but I had never yet encountered
him, and I brought my historic consciousness to bear
upon the present specimen. As he approached us he
slackened pace and finally halted, touching his cap.
He was a man of middle age, clad in a greasy bonnet,
with greasy ear-locks depending from its sides. Round
his neck was a grimy red scarf, tucked into his waistcoat;
his coat and trousers had a remote affinity with
those of a reduced hostler. In one hand he had a
stick; on his arm he bore a tattered basket, with a
handful of withered green stuff in the bottom. His
face was pale, haggard, and degraded beyond description, —
a singular mixture of brutality and finesse.
He had a history. From what height had he fallen,
from what depth had he risen? Never was a form of
rascally beggarhood more complete. There was a
merciless fixedness of outline about him which filled
me with a kind of awe. I felt as if I were in the presence
of a personage, — an artist in vagrancy.
“For God's sake, gentlemen,” he said, in that raucous
tone of weather-beaten poverty suggestive of
chronic sore-throat exacerbated by perpetual gin, —
“for God's sake, gentlemen, have pity on a poor ferncollector!” —
turning up his stale dandelions. “Food
has n't passed my lips, gentlemen, in the last three
days.”
We gaped responsive, in the precious pity of
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
guileless Yankeeism. “I wonder,” thought I, “if half a
crown would be enough?” And our fasting botanist
went limping away through the park with a mystery
of satirical gratitude superadded to his general mystery.
“I feel as if I had seen my doppel-ganger,” said
Searle. “He reminds me of myself. What am I but
a tramp?”
Upon this hint I spoke. “What are you, my
friend?” I asked. “Who are you?”
A sudden blush rose to his pale face, so that I feared
I had offended him. He poked a moment at the
sod with the point of his umbrella, before answering.
“Who am I?” he said at last. “My name is Clement
Searle. I was born in New York. I have lived in
New York. What am I? That 's easily told. Nothing!
I assure you, nothing.”
“A very good fellow, apparently,” I protested.
“A very good fellow! Ah, there it is! You 've said
more than you mean. It 's by having been a very good
fellow all my days that I 've come to this. I have
drifted through life. I 'm a failure, sir, — a failure as
hopeless and helpless as any that ever swallowed up
the slender investments of the widow and the orphan.
I don't pay five cents on the dollar. Of what I was to
begin with no memory remains. I have been ebbing
away, from the start, in a steady current which, at
-- 033 --
[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]
forty, has left this arid sand-bank behind. To begin
with, certainly, I was not a fountain of wisdom. All
the more reason for a definite channel, — for will and
purpose and direction. I walked by chance and sympathy
and sentiment. Take a turn through New York
and you 'll find my tattered sympathies and sentiments
dangling on every bush and fluttering in every breeze;
the men to whom I lent money, the women to whom I
made love, the friends I trusted, the dreams I cherished,
the poisonous fumes of pleasure, amid which
nothing was sweet or precious but the manhood they
stifled! It was my fault that I believed in pleasure
here below. I believe in it still, but as I believe in
God and not in man! I believed in eating your cake
and having it. I respected Pleasure, and she made a
fool of me. Other men, treating her like the arrant
strumpet she is, enjoyed her for the hour, but kept
their good manners for plain-faced Business, with the
larger dowry, to whom they are now lawfully married.
My taste was to be delicate; well, perhaps I
was so! I had a little money; it went the way of
my little wit. Here in my pocket I have forty pounds
of it left. The only thing I have to show for my
money and my wit is a little volume of verses, printed
at my own expense, in which fifteen years ago I made
bold to sing the charms of love and idleness. Six
months since I got hold of the volume; it reads like
-- 034 --
[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]
the poetry of fifty years ago. The form is incredible.
I had n't seen Hampton Court then. When I was
thirty I married. It was a sad mistake, but a generous
one. The young girl was poor and obscure, but
beautiful and proud. I fancied she would make an
incomparable woman. It was a sad mistake! She
died at the end of three years, leaving no children.
Since then I have idled long. I have had bad habits.
To this impalpable thread of existence the current of
my life has shrunk. To-morrow I shall be high and
dry. Was I meant to come to this? Upon my
soul I was n't! If I say what I feel, you 'll fancy
my vanity quite equal to my folly, and set me
down as one of those dreary theorizers after the
fact, who draw any moral from their misfortunes
but the damning moral that vice is vice and that 's
an end of it. Take it for what it 's worth. I have
always fancied that I was meant for a gentler world.
Before heaven, sir, — whoever you are, — I 'm in practice
so absurdly tender-hearted that I can afford to
say it, — I came into the world an aristocrat. I was
born with a soul for the picturesque. It condemns
me, I confess; but in a measure, too, it absolves me.
I found it nowhere. I found a world all hard lines
and harsh lights, without shade, without composition,
as they say of pictures, without the lovely mystery
of color. To furnish color, I melted down the very
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
substance of my own soul. I went about with my
brush, touching up and toning down; a very pretty
chiaroscuro you 'll find in my track! Sitting here,
in this old park, in this old land, I feel — I feel that
I hover on the misty verge of what might have been!
I should have been born here and not there; here
my vulgar idleness would have been — don't laugh
now! — would have been elegant leisure. How it was
that I never came abroad is more than I can say. It
might have cut the knot; but the knot was too tight.
I was always unwell or in debt or entangled. Besides,
I had a horror of the sea, — with reason, heaven
knows! A year ago I was reminded of the existence
of an old claim to a portion of an English estate,
cherished off and on by various members of my family
for the past eighty years. It 's undeniably slender and
desperately hard to define. I am by no means sure
that to this hour I have mastered it. You look as
if you had a clear head. Some other time, if you 'll
consent, we 'll puzzle it out, such as it is, together.
Poverty was staring me in the face; I sat down and
got my claim by heart, as I used to get nine times
nine as a boy. I dreamed about it for six months,
half expecting to wake up some fine morning to hear
through a latticed casement the cawing of an English
rookery. A couple of months since there came out
here on business of his own a sort of half-friend of
-- 036 --
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
mine, a sharp New York lawyer, an extremely common
fellow, but a man with an eye for the weak point and
the strong point. It was with him yesterday that you
saw me dining. He undertook, as he expressed it, to
`nose round' and see if anything could be made of
this pretended right. The matter had never seriously
been taken up. A month later I got a letter from
Simmons, assuring me that things looked mighty well,
that he should be vastly amazed if I had n't a case.
I took fire in a humid sort of way; I acted, for the
first time in my life; I sailed for England. I have
been here three days: it seems three months. After
keeping me waiting for thirty-six hours, last evening
my precious Simmons makes his appearance and informs
me, with his mouth full of mutton, that I was
a blasted fool to have taken him at his word; that he
had been precipitate; that I had been precipitate; that
my claim was moonshine; and that I must do penance
and take a ticket for another fortnight of seasickness
in his agreeable society. My friend, my friend! Shall
I say I was disappointed? I 'm already resigned. I
doubted the practicability of my claim. I felt in my
deeper consciousness that it was the crowning illusion
of a life of illusions. Well, it was a pretty one. Poor
Simmons! I forgive him with all my heart. But for
him I should n't be sitting in this place, in this air,
with these thoughts. This is a world I could have
-- 037 --
[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]
loved. There 's a great fitness in its having been kept
for the last. After this nothing would have been tolerable.
I shall now have a month of it, I hope, and
I shall not have a chance to be disenchanted. There 's
one thing!” — and here, pausing, he laid his hand on
mine; I rose and stood before him, — “I wish it were
possible you should be with me to the end.”
“I promise you,” I said, “to leave you only at your
own request. But it must be on condition of your
omitting from your conversation this intolerable flavor
of mortality. The end! Perhaps it 's the beginning.”
He shook his head. “You don't know me. It 's a
long story. I 'm incurably ill.”
“I know you a little. I have a strong suspicion
that your illness is in great measure a matter of mind
and spirits. All that you 've told me is but another
way of saying that you have lived hitherto in yourself.
The tenement 's haunted! Live abroad! Take
an interest!”
He looked at me for a moment with his sad weak
eyes. Then with a faint smile: “Don't cut down a
man you find hanging. He has had a reason for it.
I 'm bankrupt.”
“O, health is money!” I said. “Get well, and the
rest will take care of itself. I 'm interested in your
claim.”
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
“Don't ask me to expound it now! It 's a sad
muddle. Let it alone. I know nothing of business.
If I myself were to take the matter in hand, I should
break short off the poor little silken thread of my
expectancy. In a better world than this I think I
should be listened to. But in this hard world there 's
small bestowal of ideal justice. There is no doubt, I
fancy, that, a hundred years ago, we suffered a palpable
wrong. But we made no appeal at the time, and
the dust of a century now lies heaped upon our
silence. Let it rest!”
“What is the estimated value of your interest?”
“We were instructed from the first to accept a
compromise. Compared with the whole property, our
utmost right is extremely small. Simmons talked of
eighty-five thousand dollars. Why eighty-five I 'm
sure I don't know. Don't beguile me into figures.”
“Allow me one more question. Who is actually in
possession?”
“A certain Mr. Richard Searle. I know nothing
about him.”
“He is in some way related to you?”
“Our great-grandfathers were half-brothers. What
does that make?”
“Twentieth cousins, say. And where does your
twentieth cousin live?”
“At Lockley Park, Herefordshire.”
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
I pondered awhile. “I 'm interested in you, Mr.
Searle,” I said. “In your story, in your title, such as
it is, and in this Lockley Park, Herefordshire. Suppose
we go down and see it.”
He rose to his feet with a certain alertness. “I
shall make a sound man of him, yet,” I said to
myself.
“I should n't have the heart,” he said, “to accomplish
the melancholy pilgrimage alone. But with you
I 'll go anywhere.”
On our return to London we determined to spend
three days there together, and then to go into the
country. We felt to excellent purpose the sombre
charm of London, the mighty mother-city of our
mighty race, the great distributing heart of our traditional
life. Certain London characteristics — monuments,
relics, hints of history, local moods and memories—
are more deeply suggestive to an American
soul than anything else in Europe. With an equal attentive
piety my friend and I glanced at these things.
Their influence on Searle was deep and singular.
His observation I soon perceived to be extremely
acute. His almost passionate relish for the old, the
artificial, and social, wellnigh extinct from its long
inanition, began now to tremble and thrill with a
tardy vitality. I watched in silent wonderment this
strange metaphysical renascence.
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
Between the fair boundaries of the counties of
Hereford and Worcester rise in a long undulation the
sloping pastures of the Malvern Hills. Consulting a
big red book on the castles and manors of England,
we found Lockley Park to be seated near the base
of this grassy range, — though in which county I
forget. In the pages of this genial volume, Lockley
Park and its appurtenances made a very handsome
figure. We took up our abode at a certain little wayside
inn, at which in the days of leisure the coach
must have stopped for lunch, and burnished pewters
of rustic ale been tenderly exalted to “outsides” athirst
with breezy progression. Here we stopped, for sheer
admiration of its steep thatched roof, its latticed windows,
and its homely porch. We allowed a couple
of days to elapse in vague, undirected strolls and
sweet sentimental observance of the land, before we
prepared to execute the especial purpose of our journey.
This admirable region is a compendium of the
general physiognomy of England. The noble friendliness
of the scenery, its subtle old-friendliness, the
magical familiarity of multitudinous details, appealed
to us at every step and at every glance. Deep in our
souls a natural affection answered. The whole land, in
the full, warm rains of the last of April, had burst into
sudden perfect spring. The dark walls of the hedgerows
had turned into blooming screens; the sodden
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
verdure of lawn and meadow was streaked with a
ranker freshness. We went forth without loss of time
for a long walk on the hills. Reaching their summits,
you find half England unrolled at your feet. A dozen
broad counties, within the vast range of your vision,
commingle their green exhalations. Closely beneath
us lay the dark, rich flats of hedgy Worcestershire and
the copse-checkered slopes of rolling Hereford, white
with the blossom of apples. At widely opposite points
of the large expanse two great cathedral towers rise
sharply, taking the light, from the settled shadow
of their circling towns, — the light, the ineffable English
light! “Out of England,” cried Searle, “it 's but
a garish world!”
The whole vast sweep of our surrounding prospect
lay answering in a myriad fleeting shades the cloudy
process of the tremendous sky. The English heaven
is a fit antithesis to the complex English earth. We
possess in America the infinite beauty of the blue;
England possesses the splendor of combined and animated
clouds. Over against us, from our station on
the hills, we saw them piled and dissolved, compacted
and shifted, blotting the azure with sullen rain spots,
stretching, breeze-fretted, into dappled fields of gray,
bursting into a storm of light or melting into a drizzle
of silver. We made our way along the rounded
summits of these well-grazed heights, — mild, breezy
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
inland downs, — and descended through long-drawn
slopes of fields, green to cottage doors, to where a
rural village beckoned us from its seat among the
meadows. Close beside it, I admit, the railway shoots
fiercely from its tunnel in the hills; and yet there
broods upon this charming hamlet an old-time quietude
and privacy, which seems to make it a violation
of confidence to tell its name so far away. We struck
through a narrow lane, a green lane, dim with its
height of hedges; it led us to a superb old farm-house,
now jostled by the multiplied lanes and roads
which have curtailed its ancient appanage. It stands
in stubborn picturesqueness, at the receipt of sad-eyed
contemplation and the sufferance of “sketches.” I
doubt whether out of Nuremberg — or Pompeii! —
you may find so forcible an image of the domiciliary
genius of the past. It is cruelly complete; its bended
beams and joists, beneath the burden of its gables,
seem to ache and groan with memories and regrets.
The short, low windows, where lead and glass combine
in equal proportions to hint to the wondering stranger
of the mediæval gloom within, still prefer their darksome
office to the grace of modern day. Such an old
house fills an American with an indefinable feeling of
respect. So propped and patched and tinkered with
clumsy tenderness, clustered so richly about its central
English sturdiness, its oaken vertebrations, so
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
humanized with ages of use and touches of beneficent affection,
it seemed to offer to our grateful eyes a small,
rude synthesis of the great English social order. Passing
out upon the high-road, we came to the common
browsing-patch, the “village green” of the tales of our
youth. Nothing was wanting; the shaggy, mouse-colored
donkey, nosing the turf with his mild and
huge proboscis, the geese, the old woman, — the old
woman, in person, with her red cloak and her black
bonnet, frilled about the face and double-frilled beside
her decent, placid cheeks, — the towering ploughman
with his white smock-frock, puckered on chest and
back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big,
red, rural face. We greeted these things as children
greet the loved pictures in a story-book, lost and
mourned and found again. It was marvellous how
well we knew them. Beside the road we saw a
ploughboy straddle, whistling, on a stile. Gainsborough
might have painted him. Beyond the stile,
across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath lay,
like a thread of darker woof. We followed it from
field to field and from stile to stile. It was the way
to church. At the church we finally arrived, lost in
its rook-haunted churchyard, hidden from the work-day
world by the broad stillness of pastures, — a gray,
gray tower, a huge black yew, a cluster of village
graves, with crooked headstones, in grassy, low relief.
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[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
The whole scene was deeply ecclesiastical. My companion
was overcome.
“You must bury me here,” he cried. “It 's the
first church I have seen in my life. How it makes a
Sunday where it stands!”
The next day we saw a church of statelier proportions.
We walked over to Worcester, through such a
mist of local color, that I felt like one of Smollett's
pedestrian heroes, faring tavernward for a night of
adventures. As we neared the provincial city we saw
the steepled mass of the cathedral, long and high, rise
far into the cloud-freckled blue. And as we came
nearer still, we stopped on the bridge and viewed the
solid minster reflected in the yellow Severn. And
going farther yet we entered the town, — where surely
Miss Austen's heroines, in chariots and curricles, must
often have come a shopping for swan's-down boas and
high lace mittens; — we lounged about the gentle
close and gazed insatiably at that most soul-soothing
sight, the waning, wasting afternoon light, the visible
ether which feels the voices of the chimes, far aloft on
the broad perpendicular field of the cathedral tower;
saw it linger and nestle and abide, as it loves to do
on all bold architectural spaces, converting them graciously
into registers and witnesses of nature; tasted,
too, as deeply of the peculiar stillness of this clerical
precinct; saw a rosy English lad come forth and lock
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
the door of the old foundation school, which marries
its hoary basement to the soaring Gothic of the church,
and carry his big responsible key into one of the quiet
canonical houses; and then stood musing together on
the effect on one's mind of having in one's boyhood
haunted such cathedral shades as a King's scholar, and
yet kept ruddy with much cricket in misty meadows
by the Severn. On the third morning we betook ourselves
to Lockley Park, having learned that the greater
part of it was open to visitors, and that, indeed, on
application, the house was occasionally shown.
Within its broad enclosure many a declining spur
of the great hills melted into parklike slopes and dells.
A long avenue wound and circled from the outermost
gate through an untrimmed woodland, whence you
glanced at further slopes and glades and copses and
bosky recesses, — at everything except the limits of
the place. It was as free and wild and untended as
the villa of an Italian prince; and I have never seen
the stern English fact of property put on such an air
of innocence. The weather had just become perfect;
it was one of the dozen exquisite days of the English
year, — days stamped with a refinement of purity unknown
in more liberal climes. It was as if the mellow
brightness, as tender as that of the primroses which
starred the dark waysides like petals wind-scattered
over beds of moss, had been meted out to us by the
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
cubic foot, — tempered, refined, recorded! From this
external region we passed into the heart of the park,
through a second lodge-gate, with weather-worn gilding
on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where
the great trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed
along the bed of a woodland stream. Hence, before
us, we perceived the dark Elizabethan manor among
its blooming parterres and terraces.
“Here you can wander all day,” I said to Searle,
“like a proscribed and exiled prince, hovering about
the dominion of the usurper.”
“To think,” he answered, “of people having enjoyed
this all these years! I know what I am, — what
might I have been? What does all this make of
you?”
“That it makes you happy,” I said, “I should hesitate
to believe. But it 's hard to suppose that such a
place has not some beneficent action of its own.”
“What a perfect scene and background it forms!”
Searle went on. “What legends, what histories it
knows! My heart is breaking with unutterable visions.
There 's Tennyson's Talking Oak. What summer
days one could spend here! How I could lounge
my bit of life away on this shady stretch of turf!
Have n't I some maiden-cousin in yon moated grange
who would give me kind leave?” And then turning
almost fiercely upon me: “Why did you bring me
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
here? Why did you drag me into this torment of
vain regrets?”
At this moment there passed near us a servant
who had emerged from the gardens of the great
house. I hailed him and inquired whether we should
be likely to gain admittance. He answered that Mr.
Searle was away from home, and that he thought
it probable the housekeeper would consent to do
the honors of the mansion. I passed my arm into
Searle's. “Come,” I said. “Drain the cup, bittersweet
though it be. We shall go in.” We passed another
lodge-gate and entered the gardens. The house
was an admirable specimen of complete Elizabethan,
a multitudinous cluster of gables and porches, oriels
and turrets, screens of ivy and pinnacles of slate.
Two broad terraces commanded the great wooded
horizon of the adjacent domain. Our summons was
answered by the butler in person, solemn and tout
de noir habillé. He repeated the statement that Mr.
Searle was away from home, and that he would present
our petition to the housekeeper. We would be so
good, however, as to give him our cards. This request,
following so directly on the assertion that Mr. Searle
was absent, seemed to my companion not distinctly
pertinent. “Surely not for the housekeeper,” he said.
The butler gave a deferential cough. “Miss Searle
is at home.”
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
“Yours alone will suffice,” said Searle. I took out
a card and pencil, and wrote beneath my name, New
York. Standing with the pencil in my hand I felt
a sudden impulse. Without in the least weighing
proprieties or results, I yielded to it. I added above
my name, Mr. Clement Searle. What would come
of it?
Before many minutes the housekeeper attended us,—
a fresh rosy little old woman in a dowdy clean
cap and a scanty calico gown; an exquisite specimen
of refined and venerable servility. She had the
accent of the country, but the manners of the house.
Under her guidance we passed through a dozen
apartments, duly stocked with old pictures, old tapestry,
old carvings, old armor, with all the constituent
properties of an English manor. The pictures
were especially valuable. The two Vandykes, the trio
of rosy Rubenses, the sole and sombre Rembrandt,
glowed with conscious authenticity. A Claude, a
Murillo, a Greuze, and a Gainsborough hung gracious
in their chosen places. Searle strolled about silent,
pale, and grave, with bloodshot eyes and lips compressed.
He uttered no comment and asked no question.
Missing him, at last, from my side, I retraced
my steps and found him in a room we had just left,
on a tarnished silken divan, with his face buried in
his hands. Before him, ranged on an antique buffet,
-- 049 --
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was a magnificent collection of old Italian majolica;
huge platters radiant with their steady colors, jugs
and vases nobly bellied and embossed. There came
to me, as I looked, a sudden vision of the young English
gentleman, who, eighty years ago, had travelled
by slow stages to Italy and been waited on at his
inn by persuasive toymen. “What is it, Searle?” I
asked. “Are you unwell?”
He uncovered his haggard face and showed a burning
blush. Then smiling in hot irony: “A memory
of the past! I was thinking of a china vase that
used to stand on the parlor mantel-shelf while I was
a boy, with the portrait of General Jackson painted
on one side and a bunch of flowers on the other.
How long do you suppose that majolica has been
in the family?”
“A long time probably. It was brought hither in
the last century, into old, old England, out of old, old
Italy, by some old young buck of this excellent house
with a taste for chinoiseries. Here it has stood for a
hundred years, keeping its clear, firm hues in this
aristocratic twilight.”
Searle sprang to his feet. “I say,” he cried, “in
heaven's name take me away! I can't stand this.
Before I know it I shall do something I shall be
ashamed of. I shall steal one of their d—d majolicas.
I shall proclaim my identity and assert my rights!
-- 050 --
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I shall go blubbering to Miss Searle and ask her in
pity's name to keep me here for a month!”
If poor Searle could ever have been said to look
“dangerous,” he looked so now. I began to regret
my officious presentation of his name, and prepared
without delay to lead him out of the house. We
overtook the housekeeper in the last room of the
suite, a small, unused boudoir, over the chimney-piece
of which hung a noble portrait of a young man
in a powdered wig and a brocaded waistcoat. I was
immediately struck with his resemblance to my companion.
“This is Mr. Clement Searle, Mr. Searle's great-uncle,
by Sir Joshua Reynolds,” quoth the housekeeper.
“He died young, poor gentleman. He perished
at sea, going to America.”
“He 's the young buck,” I said, “who brought the
majolica out of Italy.”
“Indeed, sir, I believe he did,” said the housekeeper,
staring.
“He 's the image of you, Searle,” I murmured.
“He 's wonderfully like the gentleman, saving his
presence,” said the housekeeper.
My friend stood gazing. “Clement Searle — at sea—
going to America — ” he muttered. Then harshly,
to the housekeeper, “Why the deuce did he go to
America?”
-- 051 --
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“Why, indeed, sir? You may well ask. I believe
he had kinsfolk there. It was for them to come to
him.”
Searle broke into a laugh. “It was for them to
have come to him! Well, well,” he said, fixing his
eyes on the little old woman, “they have come to
him at last!”
She blushed like a wrinkled rose-leaf. “Indeed,
sir,” she said, “I verily believe that you are one of
us!”
“My name is the name of that lovely youth,” Searle
went on. “Kinsman, I salute you! Attend!” And
he grasped me by the arm. “I have an idea! He
perished at sea. His spirit came ashore and wandered
forlorn till it got lodgment again in my poor body.
In my poor body it has lived, homesick, these forty
years, shaking its rickety cage, urging me, stupid, to
carry it back to the scenes of its youth. And I never
knew what was the matter with me! Let me exhale
my spirit here!”
The housekeeper essayed a timorous smile. The
scene was embarrassing. My confusion was not allayed
when I suddenly perceived in the doorway the
figure of a lady. “Miss Searle!” whispered the housekeeper.
My first impression of Miss Searle was that
she was neither young nor beautiful. She stood with
a timid air on the threshold, pale, trying to smile, and
-- 052 --
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twirling my card in her fingers. I immediately bowed.
Searle, I think, gazed marvelling.
“If I am not mistaken,” said the lady, “one of you
gentlemen is Mr. Clement Searle.”
“My friend is Mr. Clement Searle,” I replied. “Allow
me to add that I alone am responsible for your
having received his name.”
“I should have been sorry not to receive it,” said
Miss Searle, beginning to blush. “Your being from
America has led me to — to interrupt you.”
“The interruption, madam, has been on our part.
And with just that excuse, — that we are from America.”
Miss Searle, while I spoke, had fixed her eyes on
my friend, as he stood silent beneath Sir Joshua's
portrait. The housekeeper, amazed and mystified,
took a liberty. “Heaven preserve us, Miss! It 's
your great-uncle's picture come to life.”
“I 'm not mistaken, then,” said Miss Searle. “We
are distantly related.” She had the aspect of an extremely
modest woman. She was evidently embarrassed
at having to proceed unassisted in her overture.
Searle eyed her with gentle wonder from head to foot.
I fancied I read his thoughts. This, then, was Miss
Searle, his maiden-cousin, prospective heiress of these
manorial acres and treasures. She was a person of
about thirty-three years of age, taller than most
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
women, with health and strength in the rounded amplitude
of her shape. She had a small blue eye, a
massive chignon of yellow hair, and a mouth at once
broad and comely. She was dressed in a lustreless
black satin gown, with a short train. Around her
neck she wore a blue silk handkerchief, and over
this handkerchief, in many convolutions, a string of
amber beads. Her appearance was singular; she was
large, yet not imposing; girlish, yet mature. Her
glance and accent, in addressing us, were simple, too
simple. Searle, I think, had been fancying some
proud cold beauty of five-and-twenty; he was relieved
at finding the lady timid and plain. His person
was suddenly illumined with an old disused gallantry.
“We are distant cousins, I believe. I am happy
to claim a relationship which you are so good as to
remember. I had not in the least counted on your
doing so.”
“Perhaps I have done wrong,” and Miss Searle
blushed anew and smiled. “But I have always known
of there being people of our blood in America, and I
have often wondered and asked about them; without
learning much, however. To-day, when this card was
brought me and I knew of a Clement Searle wandering
about the house like a stranger, I felt as if I
ought to do something. I hardly knew what! My
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
brother is in London. I have done what I think he
would have done. Welcome, as a cousin.” And
with a gesture, at once frank and shy, she put out
her hand.
“I 'm welcome indeed,” said Searle, taking it, “if
he would have done it half as graciously.”
“You 've seen the show,” Miss Searle went on.
“Perhaps now you 'll have some lunch.” We followed
her into a small breakfast-room, where a deep
bay-window opened on the mossy flags of the great
terrace. Here, for some moments, she remained
silent and shy, in the manner of a person resting
from a great effort. Searle, too, was formal and reticent,
so that I had to busy myself with providing
small-talk. It was of course easy to descant on the
beauties of park and mansion. Meanwhile I observed
our hostess. She had small beauty and scanty grace;
her dress was out of taste and out of season; yet
she pleased me well. There was about her a sturdy
sweetness, a homely flavor of the sequestered chatelaine
of feudal days. To be so simple amid this massive
luxury, so mellow and yet so fresh, so modest
and yet so placid, told of just the spacious leisure in
which I had fancied human life to be steeped in
many a park-circled home. Miss Searle was to the
Belle au Bois Dormant what a fact is to a fairy-tale,
an interpretation to a myth. We, on our side, were
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
to our hostess objects of no light scrutiny. The best
possible English breeding still marvels visibly at the
native American. Miss Searle's wonderment was
guileless enough to have been more overt and yet
inoffensive; there was no taint of offence indeed in
her utterance of the unvarying amenity that she had
met an American family on the Lake of Como whom
she would have almost taken to be English.
“If I lived here,” I said, “I think I should hardly
need to go away, even to the Lake of Como.”
“You might perhaps get tired of it. And then
the Lake of Como! If I could only go abroad
again!”
“You have been but once?”
“Only once. Three years ago my brother took me
to Switzerland. We thought it extremely beautiful.
Except for this journey, I have always lived here.
Here I was born. It 's a dear old place, indeed, and I
know it well. Sometimes I fancy I 'm a little tired.”
And on my asking her how she spent her time and
what society she saw, “It 's extremely quiet,” she went
on, proceeding by short steps and simple statements, in
the manner of a person summoned for the first time to
define her situation and enumerate the elements of her
life. “We see very few people. I don't think there
are many nice people hereabouts. At least we don't
know them. Our own family is very small. My
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
brother cares for little else but riding and books. He
had a great sorrow ten years ago. He lost his wife and
his only son, a dear little boy, who would have succeeded
him in the estates. Do you know that I 'm
likely to have them now? Poor me! Since his loss
my brother has preferred to be quite alone. I 'm sorry
he 's away. But you must wait till he comes back. I
expect him in a day or two.” She talked more and
more, with a rambling, earnest vapidity, about her circumstances,
her solitude, her bad eyes, so that she
could n't read, her flowers, her ferns, her dogs, and the
curate, recently inducted by her brother and warranted
sound orthodox, who had lately begun to light his altar
candles; pausing every now and then to blush in self-surprise,
and yet moving steadily from point to point
in the deepening excitement of temptation and occasion.
Of all the old things I had seen in England,
this mind of Miss Searle's seemed to me the oldest,
the quaintest, the most ripely verdant; so fenced and
protected by convention and precedent and usage; so
passive and mild and docile. I felt as if I were talking
with a potential heroine of Miss Burney. As she
talked, she rested her dull, kind eyes upon her kinsman
with a sort of fascinated stare. At last, “Did you
mean to go away,” she demanded, “without asking for
us?”
“I had thought it over, Miss Searle, and had
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
determined not to trouble you. You have shown me how
unfriendly I should have been.”
“But you knew of the place being ours and of our
relationship?”
“Just so. It was because of these things that I
came down here, — because of them, almost, that I
came to England. I have always liked to think of
them.”
“You merely wished to look, then? We don't pretend
to be much to look at.”
“You don't know what you are, Miss Searle,” said
my friend, gravely.
“You like the old place, then?”
Searle looked at her in silence. “If I could only
tell you,” he said at last.
“Do tell me! You must come and stay with us.”
Searle began to laugh. “Take care, take care,” he
cried. “I should surprise you. At least I should bore
you. I should never leave you.”
“O, you 'd get homesick for America!”
At this Searle laughed the more. “By the way,” he
cried to me, “tell Miss Searle about America!” And
he stepped through the window out upon the terrace,
followed by two beautiful dogs, a pointer and a young
stag-hound, who from the moment we came in had established
the fondest relation with him. Miss Searle
looked at him as he went, with a certain tender
-- 058 --
[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]
wonder in her eye. I read in her glance, methought, that
she was interested. I suddenly recalled the last words
I had heard spoken by my friend's adviser in London:
“Instead of dying you 'd better marry.” If Miss
Searle could be gently manipulated. O for a certain
divine tact! Something assured me that her heart was
virgin soil; that sentiment had never bloomed there.
If I could but sow the seed! There lurked within her
the perfect image of one of the patient wives of old.
“He has lost his heart to England,” I said. “He
ought to have been born here.”
“And yet,” said Miss Searle, “he 's not in the least
an Englishman.”
“How do you know that?”
“I hardly know how. I never talked with a foreigner
before; but he looks and talks as I have fancied
foreigners.”
“Yes, he 's foreign enough!”
“Is he married?”
“He 's a widower, — without children.”
“Has he property?”
“Very little.”
“But enough to travel?”
I meditated. “He has not expected to travel far,”
I said at last. “You know he 's in poor health.”
“Poor gentleman! So I fancied.”
“He 's better, though, than he thinks. He came
-- 059 --
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
here because he wanted to see your place before he
dies.”
“Poor fellow!” And I fancied I perceived in her
eye the lustre of a rising tear. “And he was going off
without my seeing him?”
“He 's a modest man, you see.”
“He 's very much of a gentleman.”
“Assuredly!”
At this moment we heard on the terrace a loud,
harsh cry. “It 's the great peacock!” said Miss Searle,
stepping to the window and passing out. I followed
her. Below us on the terrace, leaning on the parapet,
stood our friend, with his arm round the neck of the
pointer. Before him, on the grand walk, strutted a
splendid peacock, with ruffled neck and expanded tail.
The other dog had apparently indulged in a momentary
attempt to abash the gorgeous fowl; but at Searle's
voice he had bounded back to the terrace and leaped
upon the parapet, where he now stood licking his new
friend's face. The scene had a beautiful old-time air;
the peacock flaunting in the foreground, like the very
genius of antique gardenry; the broad terrace, which
flattered an innate taste of mine for all deserted promenades
to which people may have adjourned from formal
dinners, to drink coffee in old Sêvres, and where
the stiff brocade of women's dresses may have rustled
autumnal leaves; and far around us, with one leafy
-- 060 --
[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]
circle melting into another, the timbered acres of the
park. “The very beasts have made him welcome,” I
said, as we rejoined our companion.
“The peacock has done for you, Mr. Searle,” said his
cousin, “what he does only for very great people. A
year ago there came here a duchess to see my brother.
I don't think that since then he has spread his tail as
wide for any one else by a dozen feathers.”
“It 's not alone the peacock,” said Searle. “Just
now there came slipping across my path a little green
lizard, the first I ever saw, the lizard of literature!
And if you have a ghost, broad daylight though it be,
I expect to see him here. Do you know the annals of
your house, Miss Searle?”
“O dear, no! You must ask my brother for all
those things.”
“You ought to have a book full of legends and traditions.
You ought to have loves and murders and
mysteries by the roomful. I count upon it.”
“O Mr. Searle! We have always been a very well-behaved
family. Nothing out of the way has ever
happened, I think.”
“Nothing out of the way? O horrors! We have
done better than that in America. Why, I myself!” —
and he gazed at her a moment with a gleam of malice,
and then broke into a laugh. “Suppose I should turn
out a better Searle than you? Better than you, nursed
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
here in romance and picturesqueness. Come, don't
disappoint me. You have some history among you all,
you have some poetry. I have been famished all my
days for these things. Do you understand? Ah, you
can't understand! Tell me something! When I think
of what must have happened here! when I think of
the lovers who must have strolled on this terrace and
wandered through those glades! of all the figures and
passions and purposes that must have haunted these
walls! of the births and deaths, the joys and sufferings,
the young hopes and the old regrets, the intense
experience —” And here he faltered a moment, with
the increase of his vehemence. The gleam in his eye,
which I have called a gleam of malice, had settled into
a deep unnatural light. I began to fear he had become
over-excited. But he went on with redoubled passion.
“To see it all evoked before me,” he cried, “if the
Devil alone could do it, I 'd make a bargain with the
Devil! O Miss Searle, I 'm a most unhappy man!”
“O dear, O dear!” said Miss Searle.
“Look at that window, that blessed oriel!” And
he pointed to a small, protruding casement above us,
relieved against the purple brick-work, framed in chiselled
stone, and curtained with ivy.
“It 's my room,” said Miss Searle.
“Of course it 's a woman's room. Think of the forgotten
loveliness which has peeped from that window;
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
think of the old-time women's lives which have known
chiefly that outlook on this bosky world. O gentle
cousins! And you, Miss Searle, you 're one of them
yet.” And he marched towards her and took her
great white hand. She surrendered it, blushing to her
eyes, and pressing her other hand to her breast.
“You 're a woman of the past. You 're nobly simple.
It has been a romance to see you. It does n't matter
what I say to you. You did n't know me yesterday,
you 'll not know me to-morrow. Let me to-day do
a mad, sweet thing. Let me fancy you the soul of
all the dead women who have trod these terrace-flags,
which lie here like sepulchral tablets in the pavement
of a church. Let me say I worship you!” And he
raised her hand to his lips. She gently withdrew it,
and for a moment averted her face. Meeting her
eyes the next moment, I saw that they were filled
with tears. The Belle au Bois Dormant was awake.
There followed an embarrassed pause. An issue
was suddenly presented by the appearance of the butler
bearing a letter. “A telegram, Miss,” he said.
“Dear me!” cried Miss Searle, “I can't open a telegram.
Cousin, help me.”
Searle took the missive, opened it, and read aloud:
“I shall be home to dinner. Keep the American.”
-- --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
“KEEP the American!” Miss Searle, in compliance
with the injunction conveyed in her
brother's telegram (with something certainly of telegraphic
curtness), lost no time in expressing the pleasure
it would give her to have my companion remain.
“Really you must,” she said; and forthwith repaired
to the housekeeper, to give orders for the preparation
of a room.
“How in the world,” asked Searle, “did he know of
my being here?”
“He learned, probably,” I expounded, “from his
solicitor of the visit of your friend Simmons. Simmons
and the solicitor must have had another interview
since your arrival in England. Simmons, for
reasons of his own, has communicated to the solicitor
your journey to this neighborhood, and Mr. Searle,
learning this, has immediately taken for granted that
you have formally presented yourself to his sister.
He 's hospitably inclined, and he wishes her to do the
proper thing by you. More, perhaps! I have my little
theory that he is the very Phœnix of usurpers, that
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
his nobler sense has been captivated by the exposition
of the men of law, and that he means gracefully to
surrender you your fractional interest in the estate.”
“I give it up!” said my friend, musing. “Come
what come will!”
“You of course,” said Miss Searle, reappearing and
turning to me, “are included in my brother's invitation.
I have bespoken your lodging as well. Your
luggage shall immediately be sent for.”
It was arranged that I in person should be driven
over to our little inn, and that I should return with
our effects in time to meet Mr. Searle at dinner. On
my arrival, several hours later, I was immediately conducted
to my room. The servant pointed out to me
that it communicated by a door and a private passage
with that of my companion. I made my way along
this passage, — a low, narrow corridor, with a long
latticed casement, through which there streamed, upon
a series of grotesquely sculptured oaken closets and
cupboards, the lurid animating glow of the western
sun, — knocked at his door, and, getting no answer,
opened it. In an arm-chair by the open window sat
my friend, sleeping, with arms and legs relaxed and
head placidly reverted. It was a great relief to find
him resting from his rhapsodies, and I watched him
for some moments before waking him. There was a
faint glow of color in his cheek and a light parting of
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
his lips, as in a smile; something nearer to mental
soundness than I had yet seen in him. It was almost
happiness, it was almost health. I laid my hand on
his arm and gently shook it. He opened his eyes,
gazed at me a moment, vaguely recognized me, then
closed them again. “Let me dream, let me dream!”
he said.
“What are you dreaming about?”
A moment passed before his answer came. “About
a tall woman in a quaint black dress, with yellow hair,
and a sweet, sweet smile, and a soft, low, delicious
voice! I 'm in love with her.”
“It 's better to see her,” I said, “than to dream
about her. Get up and dress, and we shall go down
to dinner and meet her.”
“Dinner — dinner —” And he gradually opened his
eyes again. “Yes, upon my word, I shall dine!”
“You 're a well man!” I said, as he rose to his feet.
“You 'll live to bury Mr. Simmons.” He had spent
the hours of my absence, he told me, with Miss Searle.
They had strolled together over the park and through
the gardens and green-houses. “You must already be
intimate!” I said, smiling.
“She is intimate with me,” he answered. “Heaven
knows what rigmarole I 've treated her to!” They
had parted an hour ago, since when, he believed, her
brother had arrived.
-- 066 --
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The slow-fading twilight still abode in the great
drawing-room as we entered it. The housekeeper had
told us that this apartment was rarely used, there
being a smaller and more convenient one for the same
needs. It seemed now, however, to be occupied in
my comrade's honor. At the farther end of it, rising
to the roof, like a ducal tomb in a cathedral, was a
great chimney-piece of chiselled white marble, yellowed
by time, in which a light fire was crackling.
Before the fire stood a small short man with his hands
behind him; near him stood Miss Searle, so transformed
by her dress that at first I scarcely knew her.
There was in our entrance and reception something
profoundly chilling and solemn. We moved in silence
up the long room. Mr. Searle advanced slowly a
dozen steps to meet us. His sister stood motionless.
I was conscious of her masking her visage with a
large white tinselled fan, and of her eyes, grave and
expanded, watching us intently over the top of it.
The master of Lockley Park grasped in silence the
proffered hand of his kinsman, and eyed him from
head to foot, suppressing, I think, a start of surprise
at his resemblance to Sir Joshua's portrait. “This is
a happy day!” he said. And then turning to me
with a bow, “My cousin's friend is my friend.” Miss
Searle lowered her fan.
The first thing that struck me in Mr. Searle's
-- 067 --
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appearance was his short and meagre stature, which was
less by half a head than that of his sister. The second
was the preternatural redness of his hair and beard.
They intermingled over his ears and surrounded his
head like a huge lurid nimbus. His face was pale
and attenuated, like the face of a scholar, a dilettante,
a man who lives in a library, bending over books and
prints and medals. At a distance it had an oddly
innocent and youthful look; but on a nearer view it
revealed a number of finely etched and scratched
wrinkles, of a singularly aged and cunning effect. It
was the complexion of a man of sixty. His nose was
arched and delicate, identical almost with the nose
of my friend. In harmony with the effect of his hair
was that of his eyes, which were large and deep-set,
with a sort of vulpine keenness and redness, but full
of temper and spirit. Imagine this physiognomy —
grave and solemn in aspect, grotesquely solemn, almost,
in spite of the bushy brightness in which it was
encased — set in motion by a smile which seemed to
whisper terribly, “I am the smile, the sole and official,
the grin to command,” and you will have an imperfect
notion of the remarkable presence of our host; something
better worth seeing and knowing, I fancied as I
covertly scrutinized him, than anything our excursion
had yet introduced us to. Of how thoroughly I had
entered into sympathy with my companion and how
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
effectually I had associated my sensibilities with his,
I had small suspicion until, within the short five minutes
which preceded the announcement of dinner, I
distinctly perceived him place himself, morally speaking,
on the defensive. To neither of us was Mr. Searle,
as the Italians would say, sympathetic. I might have
fancied from her attitude that Miss Searle apprehended
our thoughts. A signal change had been wrought in
her since the morning; during the hour, indeed (as I
read in the light of the wondering glance he cast at
her), that had elapsed since her parting with her
cousin. She had not yet recovered from some great
agitation. Her face was pale and her eyes red with
weeping. These tragic betrayals gave an unexpected
dignity to her aspect, which was further enhanced by
the rare picturesqueness of her dress.
Whether it was taste or whether it was accident,
I know not; but Miss Searle, as she stood there,
half in the cool twilight, half in the arrested glow
of the fire as it spent itself in the vastness of its
marble cave, was a figure for a cunning painter.
She was dressed in the faded splendor of a beautiful
tissue of combined and blended silk and crape
of a tender sea-green color, festooned and garnished
and puffed into a massive bouillonnement; a piece
of millinery which, though it must have witnessed
a number of stately dinner, preserved still an
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
air of admirable elegance. Over her white shoulders
she wore an ancient web of the most precious and
venerable lace, and about her rounded throat a necklace
of heavy pearls. I went with her in to dinner,
and Mr. Searle, following with my friend, took his
arm (as the latter afterwards told me) and pretended
sportively to conduct him. As dinner proceeded, the
feeling grew within me that a drama had begun to
be played in which the three persons before me were
actors, each of a most exacting part. The part of my
friend, however, seemed the most heavily charged, and
I was filled with a strong desire that he should acquit
himself with honor. I seemed to see him summon
his shadowy faculties to obey his shadowy will.
The poor fellow sat playing solemnly at self-esteem.
With Miss Searle, credulous, passive, and pitying, he
had finally flung aside all vanity and propriety, and
shown her the bottom of his fantastic heart. But with
our host there might be no talking of nonsense nor
taking of liberties; there and then, if ever, sat a
double-distilled conservative, breathing the fumes of
hereditary privilege and security. For an hour, then,
I saw my poor friend turn faithfully about to speak
graciously of barren things. He was to prove himself
a sound American, so that his relish of this
elder world might seem purely disinterested. What
his kinsman had expected to find him, I know not;
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
but, with all his finely adjusted urbanity, he was
unable to repress a shade of annoyance at finding
him likely to speak graciously at all. Mr. Searle
was not the man to show his hand, but I think his
best card had been a certain implicit confidence that
this exotic parasite would hardly have good manners.
Our host, with great decency, led the conversation
to America, talking of it rather as if it were some
fabled planet, alien to the British orbit, lately proclaimed
indeed to have the proportion of atmospheric
gases required to support animal life, but not,
save under cover of a liberal afterthought, to be
admitted into one's regular conception of things.
I, for my part, felt nothing but regret that the
spheric smoothness of his universe should be strained
to cracking by the intrusion of our square shoulders.
“I knew in a general way,” said Mr. Searle, “of
my having relations in America; but you know one
hardly realizes those things. I could hardly more
have imagined people of our blood there, than I
could have imagined being there myself. There
was a man I knew at college, a very odd fellow, a
nice fellow too; he and I were rather cronies; I
think he afterwards went to America; to the Argentine
Republic, I believe. Do you know the Argentine
Republic? What an extraordinary name, by
the way! And then, you know, there was that
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great-uncle of mine whom Sir Joshua painted. He
went to America, but he never got there. He was
lost at sea. You look enough like him to have one
fancy he did get there, and that he has lived along
till now. If you are he, you 've not done a wise
thing to show yourself here. He left a bad name
behind him. There 's a ghost who comes sobbing
about the house every now and then, the ghost of
one against whom he wrought a great evil!”
“O brother!” cried Miss Searle, in simple horror.
“Of course you know nothing of such things,”
said Mr. Searle. “You 're too sound a sleeper to
hear the sobbing of ghosts.”
“I 'm sure I should like immensely to hear the
sobbing of a ghost!” said my friend, with the light
of his previous eagerness playing up into his eyes.
“Why does it sob? Unfold the wondrous tale.”
Mr. Searle eyed his audience for a moment gaugingly;
and then, as the French say, se receuillit, as if
he were measuring his own imaginative force.
He wished to do justice to his theme. With the
five finger-nails of his left hand nervously playing
against the tinkling crystal of his wineglass, and his
bright eye telling of a gleeful sense that, small and
grotesque as he sat there, he was for the moment
profoundly impressive, he distilled into our untutored
minds the sombre legend of his house. “Mr. Clement
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Searle, from all I gather, was a young man of great
talents but a weak disposition. His mother was left
a widow early in life, with two sons, of whom he was
the older and the more promising. She educated him
with the utmost fondness and care. Of course, when
he came to manhood she wished him to marry well.
His means were quite sufficient to enable him to overlook
the want of means in his wife; and Mrs. Searle
selected a young lady who possessed, as she conceived,
every good gift save a fortune, — a fine, proud, handsome
girl, the daughter of an old friend, — an old
lover, I fancy, of her own. Clement, however, as it
appeared, had either chosen otherwise or was as yet
unprepared to choose. The young lady discharged upon
him in vain the battery of her attractions; in vain
his mother urged her cause. Clement remained cold,
insensible, inflexible. Mrs. Searle possessed a native
force of which in its feminine branch the family seems
to have lost the trick. A proud, passionate, imperious
woman, she had had great cares and a number of law-suits;
they had given her a great will. She suspected
that her son's affections were lodged elsewhere, and
lodged amiss. Irritated by his stubborn defiance of
her wishes, she persisted in her urgency. The more
she watched him the more she believed that he loved
in secret. If he loved in secret, of course he loved
beneath him. He went about sombre, sullen, and
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preoccupied. At last, with the fatal indiscretion of an
angry woman, she threatened to bring the young lady
of her choice — who, by the way, seems to have been
no shrinking blossom — to stay in the house. A
stormy scene was the result. He threatened that if
she did so, he would leave the country and sail for
America. She probably disbelieved him; she knew
him to be weak, but she overrated his weakness. At
all events, the fair rejected arrived and Clement departed.
On a dark December day he took ship at
Southampton. The two women, desperate with rage
and sorrow, sat alone in this great house, mingling
their tears and imprecations. A fortnight later, on
Christmas eve, in the midst of a great snow-storm,
long famous in the country, there came to them a
mighty quickening of their bitterness. A young woman,
soaked and chilled by the storm, gained entrance
to the house and made her way into the presence of
the mistress and her guest. She poured out her tale.
She was a poor curate's daughter of Hereford. Clement
Searle had loved her; loved her all too well. She
had been turned out in wrath from her father's house;
his mother, at least, might pity her; if not for herself,
then for the child she was soon to bring forth. The
poor girl had been a second time too trustful. The
women, in scorn, in horror, with blows, possibly, turned
her forth again into the storm. In the storm she
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wandered, and in the deep snow she died. Her lover,
as you know, perished in that hard winter weather at
sea; the news came to his mother late, but soon
enough. We are haunted by the curate's daughter!”
There was a pause of some moments. “Ah, well
we may be!” said Miss Searle, with a great pity.
Searle blazed up into enthusiasm. “Of course you
know,” — and suddenly he began to blush violently, —
“I should be sorry to claim any identity with my
faithless namesake, poor fellow. But I shall be hugely
tickled if this poor ghost should be deceived by my
resemblance and mistake me for her cruel lover.
She 's welcome to the comfort of it. What one can do
in the case I shall be glad to do. But can a ghost
haunt a ghost? I am a ghost!”
Mr. Searle stared a moment, and then smiling
superbly: “I could almost believe you are!” he
said.
“O brother — cousin!” cried Miss Searle, with the
gentlest, yet most appealing dignity, “how can you
talk so horribly?”
This horrible talk, however, evidently possessed a
potent magic for my friend; and his imagination,
chilled for a while by the frigid contact of his kinsman,
began to glow again with its earlier fire. From
this moment he ceased to steer his cockle-shell, to
care what he said or how he said it, so long as he
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expressed his passionate satisfaction in the scene
about him. As he talked I ceased even mentally
to protest. I have wondered since that I should
not have resented the exhibition of so rank and
florid an egotism. But a great frankness for the
time makes its own law, and a great passion its
own channel. There was, moreover, an immense
sweetness in the manner of my friend's speech.
Free alike from either adulation or envy, the very
soul of it was a divine apprehension, an imaginative
mastery, free as the flight of Ariel, of the
poetry of his companions' situation and of the contrasted
prosiness of their attitude.
“How does the look of age come?” he demanded,
at dessert. “Does it come of itself, unobserved, unrecorded,
unmeasured? Or do you woo it and set
baits and traps for it, and watch it like the dawning
brownness of a meerschaum pipe, and nail it
down when it appears, just where it peeps out, and
light a votive taper beneath it and give thanks to
it daily? Or do you forbid it and fight it and
resist it, and yet feel it settling and deepening about
you, as irresistible as fate?”
“What the deuce is the man talking about?”
said the smile of our host.
“I found a gray hair this morning,” said Miss
Searle.
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“Good heavens! I hope you respected it,” cried
Searle.
“I looked at it for a long time in my little
glass,” said his cousin, simply.
“Miss Searle, for many years to come, can afford
to be amused at gray hairs,” I said.
“Ten years hence I shall be forty-three,” she answered.
“That 's my age,” said Searle. “If I had only
come here ten years ago! I should have had more
time to enjoy the feast, but I should have had less
of an appetite. I needed to get famished for it.”
“Why did you wait for the starving point?” asked
Mr. Searle. “To think of these ten years that we
might have been enjoying you!” And at the thought
of these wasted ten years Mr. Searle broke into a violent
nervous laugh.
“I always had a notion, — a stupid, vulgar notion,
if there ever was one, — that to come abroad
properly one ought to have a pot of money. My
pot was too nearly empty. At last I came with
my empty pot!”
Mr. Searle coughed with an air of hesitation.
“You 're a — you 're in limited circumstances?”
My friend apparently was vastly tickled to have
his bleak situation called by so soft a name. “Limited
circumstances!” he cried with a long, light
laugh; “I 'm in no circumstances at all!”
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“Upon my word!” murmured Mr. Searle, with
an air of being divided between his sense of the
indecency and his sense of the rarity of a gentleman
taking just that tone about his affairs. “Well—
well — well!” he added, in a voice which might
have meant everything or nothing; and proceeded,
with a twinkle in his eye, to finish a glass of wine.
His sparkling eye, as he drank, encountered mine
over the top of his glass, and, for a moment, we
exchanged a long deep glance, — a glance so keen
as to leave a slight embarrassment on the face of
each. “And you,” said Mr. Searle, by way of carrying
it off, “how about your circumstances?”
“O, his,” said my friend, “his are unlimited! He
could buy up Lockley Park!” He had drunk, I
think, a rather greater number of glasses of port —
I admit that the port was infinitely drinkable —
than was to have been desired in the interest of perfect
self-control. He was rapidly drifting beyond
any tacit dissuasion of mine. A certain feverish
harshness in his glance and voice warned me that
to attempt to direct him would simply irritate him.
As we rose from the table he caught my troubled
look. Passing his arm for a moment into mine,
“This is the great night!” he whispered. “The night
of fatality, the night of destiny!”
Mr. Searle had caused the whole lower region of
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the house to be thrown open and a multitude of lights
to be placed in convenient and effective positions.
Such a marshalled wealth of ancient candlesticks and
flambeaux I had never beheld. Niched against the
dark panellings, casting great luminous circles upon
the pendent stiffness of sombre tapestries, enhancing
and completing with admirable effect the vastness
and mystery of the ancient house, they seemed to
people the great rooms, as our little group passed
slowly from one to another, with a dim, expectant
presence. We had a delightful hour of it. Mr. Searle
at once assumed the part of cicerone, and — I had
not hitherto done him justice — Mr. Searle became
agreeable. While I lingered behind with Miss Searle,
he walked in advance with his kinsman. It was as
if he had said, “Well, if you want the old place,
you shall have it — metaphysically!” To speak vulgarly,
he rubbed it in. Carrying a great silver candlestick
in his left hand, he raised it and lowered it
and cast the light hither and thither, upon pictures
and hangings and bits of carving and a hundred
lurking architectural treasures. Mr. Searle knew his
house. He hinted at innumerable traditions and
memories, and evoked with a very pretty wit the
figures of its earlier occupants. He told a dozen
anecdotes with an almost reverential gravity and neatness.
His companion attended, with a sort of
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brooding intelligence. Miss Searle and I, meanwhile, were
not wholly silent.
“I suppose that by this time,” I said, “you and
your cousin are almost old friends.”
She trifled a moment with her fan, and then raising
her homely candid gaze: “Old friends, and at the
same time strangely new! My cousin, — my cousin,”—
and her voice lingered on the word, — “it seems
so strange to call him my cousin, after thinking
these many years that I had no cousin! He 's a
most singular man.”
“It 's not so much he as his circumstances that
are singular,” I ventured to say.
“I 'm so sorry for his circumstances. I wish I
could help him in some way. He interests me so
much.” And here Miss Searle gave a rich, mellow
sigh. “I wish I had known him a long time ago. He
told me that he is but the shadow of what he was.”
I wondered whether Searle had been consciously
playing upon the fancy of this gentle creature. If
he had, I believed he had gained his point. But in
fact, his position had become to my sense so charged
with opposing forces, that I hardly ventured wholly
to rejoice. “His better self just now,” I said, “seems
again to be taking shape. It will have been a good
deed on your part, Miss Searle, if you help to restore
him to soundness and serenity.”
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“Ah, what can I do?”
“Be a friend to him. Let him like you, let him
love you! You see in him now, doubtless, much to
pity and to wonder at. But let him simply enjoy
awhile the grateful sense of your nearness and dearness.
He will be a better and stronger man for it,
and then you can love him, you can respect him
without restriction.”
Miss Searle listened with a puzzled tenderness of
gaze. “It 's a hard part for poor me to play!”
Her almost infantine gentleness left me no choice
but to be absolutely frank. “Did you ever play any
part at all?” I asked.
Her eyes met mine, wonderingly; she blushed, as
with a sudden sense of my meaning. “Never! I
think I have hardly lived.”
“You 've begun now, perhaps. You have begun to
care for something outside the narrow circle of habit
and duty. (Excuse me if I am rather too outspoken:
you know I 'm a foreigner.) It 's a great moment:
I wish you joy!”
“I could almost fancy you are laughing at me.
I feel more trouble than joy.”
“Why do you feel trouble?”
She paused, with her eyes fixed on our two companions.
“My cousin's arrival,” she said at last, “is
a great disturbance.”
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“You mean that you did wrong in recognizing
him? In that case the fault is mine. He had no
intention of giving you the opportunity.”
“I did wrong, after a fashion! But I can't find
it in my heart to regret it. I never shall regret it!
I did what I thought proper. Heaven forgive me!”
“Heaven bless you, Miss Searle! Is any harm to
come of it? I did the evil; let me bear the brunt!”
She shook her head gravely. “You don't know
my brother!”
“The sooner I do know him, then, the better!”
And hereupon I felt a dull irritation which had been
gathering force for more than hour explode into sudden
wrath. “What on earth is your brother?” I
demanded. She turned away. “Are you afraid of
him?” I asked.
She gave me a tearful sidelong glance. “He 's
looking at me!” she murmured.
I looked at him. He was standing with his back
to us, holding a large Venetian hand-mirror, framed
in rococo silver, which he had taken from a shelf of
antiquities, in just such a position that he caught
the reflection of his sister's person. Shall I confess
it? Something in this performance so tickled my
sense of the picturesque, that it was with a sort of
blunted anger that I muttered, “The sneak!” Yet
I felt passion enough to urge me forward. It seemed
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to me that by implication I, too, was being covertly
watched. I should not be watched for nothing!
“Miss Searle,” I said, insisting upon her attention,
“promise me something.”
She turned upon me with a start and the glance
of one appealing from some great pain. “O, don't
ask me!” she cried. It was as if she were standing
on the verge of some sudden lapse of familiar ground
and had been summoned to make a leap. I felt
that retreat was impossible, and that it was the greater
kindness to beckon her forward.
“Promise me,” I repeated.
Still with her eyes she protested. “O, dreadful
day!” she cried, at last.
“Promise me to let him speak to you, if he should
ask you, any wish you may suspect on your brother's
part notwithstanding.”
She colored deeply. “You mean,” she said,—“you
mean that he — has something particular to say.”
“Something most particular!”
“Poor cousin!”
I gave her a deeply questioning look. “Well,
poor cousin! But promise me.”
“I promise,” she said, and moved away across the
long room and out of the door.
“You 're in time to hear the most delightful
story!” said my friend, as I rejoined the two
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gentlemen. They were standing before an old sombre portrait
of a lady in the dress of Queen Anne's time,
with her ill-painted flesh-tints showing livid in the
candlelight against her dark drapery and background.
“This is Mistress Margaret Searle, — a sort of Beatrix
Esmond, — who did as she pleased. She married a
paltry Frenchman, a penniless fiddler, in the teeth
of her whole family. Fair Margaret, my compliments!
Upon my soul, she looks like Miss Searle! Pray
go on. What came of it all?”
Mr. Searle looked at his kinsman for a moment with
an air of distaste for his boisterous homage, and of pity
for his crude imagination. Then resuming, with a
very effective dryness of tone: “I found a year ago, in
a box of very old papers, a letter from Mistress Margaret
to Cynthia Searle, her elder sister. It was dated
from Paris and dreadfully ill-spelled. It contained a
most passionate appeal for — a — for pecuniary assistance.
She had just been confined, she was starving,
and neglected by her husband; she cursed the day she
left England. It was a most dismal effusion. I never
heard that she found means to return.”
“So much for marrying a Frenchman!” I said, sententiously.
Mr. Searle was silent for some moments. “This was
the first,” he said, finally, “and the last of the family
who has been so d—d un-English!”
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“Does Miss Searle know her history?” asked my
friend, staring at the rounded whiteness of the lady's
heavy cheek.
“Miss Searle knows nothing!” said our host, with
zeal.
This utterance seemed to kindle in my friend a generous
opposing zeal. “She shall know at least the tale
of Mistress Margaret,” he cried, and walked rapidly
away in search of her.
Mr. Searle and I pursued our march through the
lighted rooms. “You've found a cousin,” I said, “with
a vengeance.”
“Ah, a vengeance?” said my host, stiffly.
“I mean that he takes as keen an interest in your
annals and possessions as yourself.”
“O, exactly so!” and Mr. Searle burst into resounding
laughter. “He tells me,” he resumed, in a moment,
“that he is an invalid. I should never have
fancied it.”
“Within the past few hours,” I said, “he 's a changed
man. Your place and your kindness have refreshed
him immensely.”
Mr. Searle uttered the little shapeless ejaculation
with which many an Englishman is apt to announce
the concussion of any especial courtesy of speech. He
bent his eyes on the floor frowningly, and then, to my
surprise, he suddenly stopped and looked at me with a
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penetrating eye. “I 'm an honest man!” he said. I
was quite prepared to assent; but he went on, with a
sort of fury of frankness, as if it was the first time in
his life that he had been prompted to expound himself,
as if the process was mightily unpleasant to him and
he was hurrying through it as a task. “An honest
man, mind you! I know nothing about Mr. Clement
Searle! I never expected to see him. He has been to
me a — a — ” And here Mr. Searle paused to select
a word which should vividly enough express what, for
good or for ill, his kinsman had been to him. “He
has been to me an amazement! I have no doubt he is
a most amiable man! You 'll not deny, however, that
he 's a very odd style of person. I 'm sorry he 's ill!
I 'm sorry he 's poor! He 's my fiftieth cousin! Well
and good! I 'm an honest man. He shall not have it
to say that he was not received at my house.”
“He, too, thank heaven! is an honest man!” I said,
smiling.
“Why the deuce, then,” cried Mr. Searle, turning
almost fiercely upon me, “has he established this
underhand claim to my property?”
This startling utterance flashed backward a gleam of
light upon the demeanor of our host and the suppressed
agitation of his sister. In an instant the jealous soul
of the unhappy gentleman revealed itself. For a moment
I was so amazed and scandalized at the directness
-- 086 --
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of his attack that I lacked words to respond. As soon
as he had spoken, Mr. Searle appeared to feel that he
had struck too hard a blow. “Excuse me, sir,” he hurried
on, “if I speak of this matter with heat. But I
have seldom suffered so grievous a shock as on learning,
as I learned this morning from my solicitor, the
monstrous proceedings of Mr. Clement Searle. Great
heaven, sir, for what does the man take me? He pretends
to the Lord knows what fantastic passion for my
place. Let him respect it, then. Let him, with his
tawdry parade of imagination, imagine a tithe of what
I feel. I love my estate; it 's my passion, my life,
myself! Am I to make a great hole in it for a beggarly
foreigner, a man without means, without proof,
a stranger, an adventurer, a Bohemian? I thought
America boasted that she had land for all men! Upon
my soul, sir, I have never been so shocked in my life.”
I paused for some moments before speaking, to allow
his passion fully to expend itself and to flicker up
again if it chose; for on my own part it seemed well
that I should answer him once for all. “Your really
absurd apprehensions, Mr. Searle,” I said at last, —
“your terrors, I may call them, — have fairly overmastered
your common-sense. You are attacking a
man of straw, a creature of base illusion; though I 'm
sadly afraid you have wounded a man of spirit and of
conscience. Either my friend has no valid claim on
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your estate, in which case your agitation is superfluous;
or he has a valid claim — ”
Mr. Searle seized my arm and glared at me, as I
may say; his pale face paler still with the horror of
my suggestion, his great keen eyes flashing, and his
flamboyant hair erect and quivering.
“A valid claim!” he whispered. “Let him try it!”
We had emerged into the great hall of the mansion
and stood facing the main doorway. The door stood
open into the porch, through whose stone archway I
saw the garden glittering in the blue light of a full
moon. As Mr. Searle uttered the words I have just
repeated, I beheld my companion come slowly up into
the porch from without, bareheaded, bright in the
outer moonlight, dark then in the shadow of the
archway, and bright again in the lamplight on the
threshold of the hall. As he crossed the threshold
the butler made his appearance at the head of the
staircase on our left, faltered visibly a moment on
seeing Mr. Searle; but then, perceiving my friend, he
gravely descended. He bore in his hand a small
plated salver. On the salver, gleaming in the light
of the suspended lamp, lay a folded note. Clement
Searle came forward, staring a little and startled, I
think, by some fine sense of a near explosion. The
butler applied the match. He advanced toward my
friend, extending salver and note. Mr. Searle made a
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[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
movement as if to spring forward, but controlled himself.
“Tottenham!” he shouted, in a strident voice.
“Yes, sir!” said Tottenham, halting.
“Stand where you are. For whom is that note?”
“For Mr. Clement Searle,” said the butler, staring
straight before him as if to discredit a suspicion of his
having read the direction.
“Who gave it to you?”
“Mrs. Horridge, sir.” (The housekeeper.)
“Who gave it Mrs. Horridge?”
There was on Tottenham's part just an infinitesimal
pause before replying.
“My dear sir,” broke in Searle, completely sobered
by the sense of violated courtesy, “is n't that rather
my business?”
“What happens in my house is my business; and
mighty strange things seem to be happening.” Mr.
Searle had become exasperated to that point that, a
rare thing for an Englishman, he compromised himself
before a servant.
“Bring me the note!” he cried. The butler
obeyed.
“Really, this is too much!” cried my companion,
affronted and helpless.
I was disgusted. Before Mr. Searle had time to
take the note, I possessed myself of it. “If you have
no regard for your sister,” I said, “let a stranger, at
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least, act for her.” And I tore the disputed thing
into a dozen pieces.
“In the name of decency,” cried Searle, “what does
this horrid business mean?”
Mr. Searle was about to break out upon him; but
at this moment his sister appeared on the staircase,
summoned evidently by our high-pitched and angry
voices. She had exchanged her dinner-dress for
a dark dressing-gown, removed her ornaments, and
begun to disarrange her hair, a heavy tress of which
escaped from the comb. She hurried downward, with
a pale, questioning face. Feeling distinctly that, for
ourselves, immediate departure was in the air, and
divining Mr. Tottenham to be a butler of remarkable
intuitions and extreme celerity, I seized the opportunity
to request him, sotto voce, to send a carriage
to the door without delay. “And put up our things,”
I added.
Our host rushed at his sister and seized the white
wrist which escaped from the loose sleeve of her
dress. “What was in that note?” he demanded.
Miss Searle looked first at its scattered fragments
and then at her cousin. “Did you read it?” she asked.
“No, but I thank you for it!” said Searle.
Her eyes for an instant communed brightly with
his own; then she transferred them to her brother's
face, where the light went out of them and left a
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[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
dull, sad patience. An inexorable patience he seemed
to find it: he flushed crimson with rage and the sense
of his unhandsomeness, and flung her away. “You 're
a child!” he cried. “Go to bed.”
In poor Searle's face as well the gathered serenity
was twisted into a sickened frown, and the reflected
brightness of his happy day turned to blank confusion.
“Have I been dealing these three hours with a
madman?” he asked plaintively.
“A madman, yes, if you will! A man mad with
the love of his home and the sense of its stability.
I have held my tongue till now, but you have been
too much for me. Who are you, what are you?
From what paradise of fools do you come, that you
fancy I shall cut off a piece of my land, my home,
my heart, to toss to you? Forsooth, I shall share
my land with you? Prove your infernal claim!
There is n't that in it!” And he kicked one of the
bits of paper on the floor.
Searle received this broadside gaping. Then turning
away, he went and seated himself on a bench
against the wall and rubbed his forehead amazedly.
I looked at my watch, and listened for the wheels of
our carriage.
Mr. Searle went on. “Was n't it enough that you
should have practised against my property? Need
you have come into my very house to practise against
my sister?”
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Searle put his two hands to his face. “Oh, oh, oh!”
he softly roared.
Miss Searle crossed rapidly and dropped on her
knees at his side.
“Go to bed, you fool!” shrieked her brother.
“Dear cousin,” said Miss Searle, “it 's cruel that
you are to have to think of us so!”
“O, I shall think of you!” he said. And he laid
a hand on her head.
“I believe you have done nothing wrong!” she
murmured.
“I 've done what I could,” her brother pursued.
“But it 's arrant folly to pretend to friendship when
this abomination lies between us. You were welcome
to my meat and my wine, but I wonder you
could swallow them. The sight spoiled my appetite!”
cried the furious little man, with a laugh.
“Proceed with your case! My people in London are
instructed and prepared.”
“I have a fancy,” I said to Searle, “that your
case has vastly improved since you gave it up.”
“Oho! you don't feign ignorance, then?” and he
shook his flaming chevelure at me. “It is very kind
of you to give it up!” And he laughed resoundingly.
“Perhaps you will also give up my sister!”
Searle sat in his chair in a species of collapse,
staring at his adversary. “O miserable man!” he
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moaned at last. “I fancied we had become such
friends!”
“Boh! you imbecile!” cried our host.
Searle seemed not to hear him. “Am I seriously
expected,” he pursued, slowly and painfully, —
“am I seriously expected — to — to sit here and defend
myself — to prove I have done nothing wrong?
Think what you please.” And he rose, with an effort,
to his feet. “I know what you think!” he
added, to Miss Searle.
The carriage wheels resounded on the gravel, and
at the same moment the footman descended with
our two portmanteaus. Mr. Tottenham followed him
with our hats and coats.
“Good God!” cried Mr. Searle; “you are not going
away!” This ejaculation, under the circumstances,
had a grand comicality which prompted me to
violent laughter. “Bless my soul!” he added; “of
course you are going.”
“It 's perhaps well,” said Miss Searle, with a great
effort, inexpressibly touching in one for whom great
efforts were visibly new and strange, “that I should
tell you what my poor little note contained.”
“That matter of your note, madam,” said her brother,
“you and I will settle together!”
“Let me imagine its contents,” said Searle.
“Ah! they have been too much imagined!” she
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answered simply. “It was only a word of warning.
I knew something painful was coming.”
Searle took his hat. “The pains and the pleasures
of this day,” he said to his kinsman, “I shall equally
never forget. Knowing you,” and he offered his hand
to Miss Searle, “has been the pleasure of pleasures.
I hoped something more was to come of it.”
“A deal too much has come of it!” cried our host,
irrepressibly.
Searle looked at him mildly, almost benignantly,
from head to foot; and then closing his eyes with
an air of sudden physical distress: “I 'm afraid so!
I can't stand more of this.” I gave him my arm,
and crossed the threshold. As we passed out I
heard Miss Searle burst into a torrent of sobs.
“We shall hear from each other yet, I take it!”
cried her brother, harassing our retreat.
Searle stopped and turned round on him sharply,
almost fiercely. “O ridiculous man!” he cried.
“Do you mean to say you shall not prosecute?”
screamed the other. “I shall force you to prosecute!
I shall drag you into court, and you shall be
beaten — beaten — beaten!” And this soft vocable
continued to ring in our ears as we drove away.
We drove, of course, to the little wayside inn
whence we had departed in the morning so unencumbered,
in all broad England, with either enemies
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or friends. My companion, as the carriage rolled
along, seemed utterly overwhelmed and exhausted.
“What a dream!” he murmured stupidly. “What
an awakening! What a long, long day! What a
hideous scene! Poor me! Poor woman!” When
we had resumed possession of our two little neighboring
rooms, I asked him if Miss Searle's note had
been the result of anything that had passed between
them on his going to rejoin her. “I found her on
the terrace, he said, “walking a restless walk in the
moonlight. I was greatly excited; I hardly know
what I said. I asked her, I think, if she knew the
story of Margaret Searle. She seemed frightened and
troubled, and she used just the words her brother
had used, `I know nothing.' For the moment, somehow,
I felt as a man drunk. I stood before her and
told her, with great emphasis, how sweet Margaret
Searle had married a beggarly foreigner, in obedience
to her heart and in defiance of her family. As
I talked the sheeted moonlight seemed to close about
us, and we stood in a dream, in a solitude, in a romance.
She grew younger, fairer, more gracious. I
trembled with a divine loquacity. Before I knew it
I had gone far. I was taking her hand and calling
her `Margaret!' She had said that it was impossible;
that she could do nothing; that she was a fool,
a child, a slave. Then, with a sudden huge
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conviction, I spoke of my claim against the estate. `It
exists, then?' she said. `It exists,' I answered, `but
I have foregone it. Be generous! Pay it from your
heart!' For an instant her face was radiant. `If
I marry you,' she cried, `it will repair the trouble.'
`In our marriage,' I affirmed, `the trouble will melt
away like a rain-drop in the ocean.' `Our marriage!'
she repeated, wonderingly; and the deep, deep ring
of her voice seemed to shatter the crystal walls of
our illusion. `I must think, I must think!' she
said; and she hurried away with her face in her
hands. I walked up and down the terrace for some
moments, and then came in and met you. This is
the only witchcraft I have used!”
The poor fellow was at once so excited and so exhausted
by the day's events, that I fancied he would
get little sleep. Conscious, on my own part, of a
stubborn wakefulness, I but partly undressed, set my
fire a blazing, and sat down to do some writing. I
heard the great clock in the little parlor below strike
twelve, one, half past one. Just as the vibration of
this last stroke was dying on the air the door of communication
into Searle's room was flung open, and my
companion stood on the threshold, pale as a corpse, in
his nightshirt, standing like a phantom against the
darkness behind him. “Look at me!” he said, in a
low voice, “touch me, embrace me, revere me! You
see a man who has seen a ghost!”
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“Great heaven, what do you mean?”
“Write it down!” he went on. “There, take your
pen. Put it into dreadful words. Make it of all
ghost-stories the ghostliest, the truest! How do I
look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red? Am
I speaking English? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?”
I confess, there came upon me, by contact, a great
supernatural shock. I shall always feel that I, too,
have seen a ghost. My first movement — I can't
smile at it even now — was to spring to the door,
close it with a great blow, and then turn the key upon
the gaping blackness from which Searle had emerged.
I seized his two hands; they were wet with perspiration.
I pushed my chair to the fire and forced him to
sit down in it. I kneeled down before him and held
his hands as firmly as possible. They trembled and
quivered; his eyes were fixed, save that the pupil
dilated and contracted with extraordinary force. I
asked no questions, but waited with my heart in my
throat. At last he spoke. “I 'm not frightened, but
I 'm — O, EXCITED! This is life! This is living!
My nerves — my heart — my brain! They are throbbing
with the wildness of a myriad lives! Do you
feel it? Do you tingle? Are you hot? Are you
cold? Hold me tight — tight — tight! I shall tremble
away into waves — waves — waves, and know the
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universe and approach my Maker!” He paused a
moment and then went on: “A woman — as clear as
that candle. — No, far clearer! In a blue dress, with
a black mantle on her head, and a little black muff.
Young, dreadfully pretty, pale and ill, with the sadness
of all the women who ever loved and suffered pleading
and accusing in her dead dark eyes. God knows I
never did any such thing! But she took me for my
elder, for the other Clement. She came to me here as
she would have come to me there. She wrung her
hands and spoke to me. `Marry me!' she moaned;
`marry me and right me!' I sat up in bed just as I
sit here, looked at her, heard her, — heard her voice
melt away, watched her figure fade away. Heaven
and earth! Here I am!”
I made no attempt either to explain my friend's
vision or to discredit it. It is enough that I felt for
the hour the irresistible contagion of his own agitation.
On the whole, I think my own vision was the more
interesting of the two. He beheld but the transient,
irresponsible spectre: I beheld the human subject,
hot from the spectral presence. Nevertheless, I soon
recovered my wits sufficiently to feel the necessity of
guarding my friend's health against the evil results of
excitement and exposure. It was tacitly established
that, for the night, he was not to return to his
room; and I soon made him fairly comfortable in his
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place by the fire. Wishing especially to obviate a
chill, I removed my bedding and wrapped him about
with multitudinous blankets and counterpanes. I
had no nerves either for writing or sleep; so I put
out my lights, renewed the fire, and sat down on the
opposite side of the hearth. I found a kind of solemn
entertainment in watching my friend. Silent, swathed
and muffled to his chin, he sat rigid and erect with
the dignity of his great adventure. For the most
part his eyes were closed; though from time to time
he would open them with a vast steady expansion
and gaze unblinking into the firelight, as if he again
beheld, without terror, the image of that blighted maid.
With his cadaverous, emaciated face, his tragic wrinkles,
intensified by the upward glow from the hearth,
his drooping black mustache, his transcendent gravity,
and a certain high fantastical air in the flickering alternations
of his brow, he looked like the vision-haunted
knight of La Mancha, nursed by the Duke and Duchess.
The night passed wholly without speech. Towards
its close I slept for half an hour. When I awoke
the awakened birds had begun to twitter. Searle sat
unperturbed, staring at me. We exchanged a long
look; I felt with a pang that his glittering eyes had
tasted their last of natural sleep. “How is it? are
you comfortable?” I asked.
He gazed for some time without replying. Then
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he spoke with a strange, innocent grandiloquence, and
with pauses between his words, as if an inner voice
were slowly prompting him. “You asked me, when
you first knew me, what I was. `Nothing,' I said, —
`nothing.' Nothing I have always deemed myself.
But I have wronged myself. I 'm a personage! I 'm
rare among men! I 'm a haunted man!”
Sleep had passed out of his eyes: I felt with a
deeper pang that perfect sanity had passed out of his
voice. From this moment I prepared myself for the
worst. There was in my friend, however, such an
essential gentleness and conservative patience, that to
persons surrounding him the worst was likely to come
without hurry or violence. He had so confirmed a
habit of good manners that, at the core of reason, the
process of disorder might have been long at work
without finding an issue. As morning began fully
to dawn upon us, I brought our grotesque vigil to an
end. Searle appeared so weak that I gave him my
hands to help him to rise from his chair; he retained
them for some moments after rising to his feet, from
an apparent inability to keep his balance. “Well,”
he said, “I 've seen one ghost, but I doubt of my living
to see another. I shall soon be myself as brave a
ghost as the best of them. I shall haunt Mr. Searle!
It can only mean one thing, — my near, dear death.”
On my proposing breakfast, “This shall be my
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breakfast!” he said; and he drew from his travelling-sack
a phial of morphine. He took a strong dose and
went to bed. At noon I found him on foot again,
dressed, shaved, and apparently refreshed. “Poor
fellow!” he said, “you have got more than you bargained
for, — a ghost-encumbered comrade. But it
won't be for long.” It immediately became a question,
of course, whither we should now direct our steps.
“As I have so little time,” said Searle, “I should
like to see the best, the best alone.” I answered that,
either for time or eternity, I had imagined Oxford to
be the best thing in England; and for Oxford in the
course of an hour we accordingly departed.
Of Oxford I feel small vocation to speak in detail.
It must long remain for an American one of the supreme
gratifications of travel. The impression it produces,
the emotions it stirs, in an American mind, are
too large and various to be compassed by words. It
seems to embody with undreamed completeness a kind
of dim and sacred ideal of the Western intellect, — a
scholastic city, an appointed home of contemplation.
No other spot in Europe, I imagine, extorts from our
barbarous hearts so passionate an admiration. A finer
pen than mine must enumerate the splendid devices by
which it performs this great office; I can bear testimony
only to the dominant tone of its effect. Passing
through the various streets in which the obverse
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longitude of the hoary college walls seems to maintain an
antique stillness, you feel this to be the most dignified
of towns. Over all, through all, the great corporate
fact of the University prevails and penetrates, like
some steady bass in a symphony of lighter chords, like
the mediæval and mystical presence of the Empire in
the linked dispersion of lesser states. The plain Gothic
of the long street-fronts of the colleges — blessed
seraglios of culture and leisure — irritate the fancy
like the blank harem-walls of Eastern towns. Within
their arching portals, however, you perceive more sacred
and sunless courts, and the dark verdure grateful
and restful to bookish eyes. The gray-green quadrangles
stand forever open with a noble and trustful hospitality.
The seat of the humanities is stronger in the
admonitory shadow of her great name than in a marshalled
host of wardens and beadles. Directly after
our arrival my friend and I strolled eagerly forth in
the luminous early dusk. We reached the bridge
which passes beneath the walls of Magdalen and saw
the eight-spired tower, embossed with its slender shaftings,
rise in temperate beauty, — the perfect prose of
Gothic, — wooing the eyes to the sky, as it was slowly
drained of day. We entered the little monkish doorway
and stood in that dim, fantastic outer court, made
narrow by the dominant presence of the great tower,
in which the heart beats faster, and the swallows niche
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more lovingly in the tangled ivy, I fancied, than elsewhere
in Oxford. We passed thence into the great
cloister, and studied the little sculptured monsters
along the entablature of the arcade. I was pleased to
see that Searle became extremely interested; but I
very soon began to fear that the influence of the place
would prove too potent for his unbalanced imagination.
I may say that from this time forward, with my unhappy
friend, I found it hard to distinguish between
the play of fancy and the labor of thought, and to fix
the balance between perception and illusion. He had
already taken a fancy to confound his identity with
that of the earlier Clement Searle; he now began to
speak almost wholly as from the imagined consciousness
of his old-time kinsman.
“This was my college, you know,” he said, “the noblest
in all Oxford. How often I have paced this gentle
cloister, side by side with a friend of the hour! My
friends are all dead, but many a young fellow as we
meet him, dark or fair, tall or short, reminds me of
them. Even Oxford, they say, feels about its massive
base the murmurs of the tide of time; there are things
eliminated, things insinuated! Mine was ancient Oxford, —
the fine old haunt of rank abuses, of precedent
and privilege. What cared I, who was a perfect gentleman,
with my pockets full of money? I had an
allowance of two thousand a year.”
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It became evident to me, on the following day, that
his strength had begun to ebb, and that he was unequal
to the labor of regular sight-seeing. He read my
apprehension in my eyes, and took pains to assure me
that I was right. “I am going down hill. Thank
heaven it 's an easy slope, coated with English turf
and with an English churchyard at the foot.” The
almost hysterical emotion produced by our adventure
at Lockley Park had given place to a broad, calm satisfaction,
in which the scene around us was reflected
as in the depths of a lucid lake. We took an afternoon
walk through Christ-Church Meadow, and at the
river-bank procured a boat, which I pulled up the
stream to Iffley and to the slanting woods of Nuneham, —
the sweetest, flattest, reediest stream-side landscape
that the heart need demand. Here, of course,
we encountered in hundreds the mighty lads of England,
clad in white flannel and blue, immense, fairhaired,
magnificent in their youth, lounging down the
current in their idle punts, in friendly couples or in
solitude possibly portentous of scholastic honors; or
pulling in straining crews and hoarsely exhorted from
the near bank. When, in conjunction with all this
magnificent sport, you think of the verdant quietude
and the silvery sanctities of the college gardens, you
cannot but consider that the youth of England have
their porridge well salted. As my companion found
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himself less and less able to walk, we repaired on
three successive days to these scholastic domains, and
spent long hours sitting in their greenest places. They
seemed to us the fairest things in England and the
ripest and sweetest fruits of the English system.
Locked in their antique verdure, guarded (as in the
case of New College) by gentle battlements of silver-gray,
outshouldering the matted leafage of centenary
vines, filled with perfumes and privacy and memories,
with students lounging bookishly on the turf (as if
tenderly to spare it the pressure of their boot-heels),
and with the great conservative presence of the college
front appealing gravely from the restless outer world,
they seem places to lie down on the grass in forever,
in the happy faith that life is all a vast old English
garden, and time an endless English afternoon. This
charmed seclusion was especially grateful to my friend,
and his sense of it reached its climax, I remember, on
the last afternoon of our three, as we sat dreaming in
the spacious garden of St. John's. The long college
façade here, perhaps, broods over the lawn with a more
effective air of property than elsewhere. Searle fell
into unceasing talk and exhaled his swarming impressions
with a tender felicity, compounded of the oddest
mixture of wisdom and folly. Every student who
passed us was the subject of an extemporized romance,
and every feature of the place the theme of a lyric
rhapsody.
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“Is n't it all,” he demanded, “a delightful lie?
Might n't one fancy this the very central point of the
world's heart, where all the echoes of the world's life
arrive only to falter and die? Listen! The air is thick
with arrested voices. It is well there should be such
places, shaped in the interest of factitious needs;
framed to minister to the book-begotten longing for a
medium in which one may dream unwaked, and believe
unconfuted; to foster the sweet illusion that all is well
in this weary world, all perfect and rounded, mellow
and complete in this sphere of the pitiful unachieved
and the dreadful uncommenced. The world 's made!
Work 's over! Now for leisure! England 's safe!
Now for Theocritus and Horace, for lawn and sky!
What a sense it all gives one of the composite life of
England, and how essential a factor of the educated,
British consciousness one omits in not thinking of Oxford!
Thank heaven they had the wit to send me here
in the other time. I 'm not much with it, perhaps; but
what should I have been without it? The misty spires
and towers of Oxford seen far off on the level have been
all these years one of the constant things of memory.
Seriously, what does Oxford do for these people? Are
they wiser, gentler, richer, deeper? At moments when
its massive influence surges into my mind like a tidal
wave, I take it as a sort of affront to my dignity. My
soul reverts to the naked background of our own
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education, the dead white wall before which we played our
parts. I assent to it all with a sort of desperate calmness;
I bow to it with a dogged pride. We are nursed
at the opposite pole. Naked come we into a naked
world. There is a certain grandeur in the absence of a
mise en scène, a certain heroic strain in those young
imaginations of the West, which find nothing made to
their hands, which have to concoct their own mysteries,
and raise high into our morning air, with a ringing
hammer and nails, the castles in which they dwell.
Noblesse oblige: Oxford obliges. What a horrible thing
not to respond to such obligations. If you pay the
pious debt to the last farthing of interest, you may
go through life with her blessing; but if you let it
stand unhonored, you are a worse barbarian than we!
But for better or worse, in a myriad private hearts,
think how she must be loved! How the youthful sentiment
of mankind seems visibly to brood upon her!
Think of the young lives now taking color in her corridors
and cloisters. Think of the centuries' tale of
dead lads, — dead alike with the close of the young
days to which these haunts were a present world and
the ending of the larger lives which a sterner mother-scene
has gathered into her massive history! What
are those two young fellows kicking their heels over
on the grass there? One of them has the Saturday
Review; the other — upon my soul — the other has
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Artemus Ward! Where do they live, how do they
live, to what end do they live? Miserable boys! How
can they read Artemus Ward under those windows of
Elizabeth? What do you think loveliest in all Oxford?
The poetry of certain windows. Do you see
that one yonder, the second of those lesser bays, with
the broken mullion and open casement? That used to
be the window of my fidus Achates, a hundred years
ago. Remind me to tell you the story of that broken
mullion. Don't tell me it 's not a common thing to
have one's fidus Achates at another college. Pray, was
I pledged to common things? He was a charming
fellow. By the way, he was a good deal like you.
Of course his cocked hat, his long hair in a black
ribbon, his cinnamon velvet suit, and his flowered
waistcoat made a difference! We gentlemen used to
wear swords.”
There was something surprising and impressive in
my friend's gushing magniloquence. The poor disheartened
loafer had turned rhapsodist and seer. I
was particularly struck with his having laid aside
the diffidence and shy self-consciousness which had
marked him during the first days of our acquaintance.
He was becoming more and more a disembodied observer
and critic; the shell of sense, growing daily
thinner and more transparent, transmitted the tremor
of his quickened spirit. He revealed an unexpected
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faculty for becoming acquainted with the lounging
gownsmen whom we met in our vague peregrinations.
If I left him for ten minutes, I was sure to find
him, on my return, in earnest conversation with some
affable wandering scholar. Several young men with
whom he had thus established relations invited him
to their rooms and entertained him, as I gathered,
with boisterous hospitality. For myself, I chose not
to be present on these occasions; I shrunk partly
from being held in any degree responsible for his
vagaries, and partly from witnessing that painful
aggravation of them which I feared might be induced
by champagne and youthful society. He reported
these adventures with less eloquence than I had
fancied he might use; but, on the whole, I suspect
that a certain method in his madness, a certain firmness
in his most melting bonhomie, had insured him
perfect respect. Two things, however, became evident,—
that he drank more champagne than was good for
him, and that the boyish grossness of his entertainers
tended rather, on reflection, to disturb in his mind
the pure image of Oxford. At the same time it
completed his knowledge of the place. Making the
acquaintance of several tutors and fellows, he dined
in Hall in half a dozen colleges, and alluded afterwards
to these banquets with a sort of religious
unction. One evening, at the close of one of these
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entertainments, he came back to the hotel in a cab,
accompanied by a friendly student and a physician,
looking deadly pale. He had swooned away on leaving
table, and had remained so stubbornly unconscious
as to excite great alarm among his companions.
The following twenty-four hours, of course, he spent
in bed; but on the third day he declared himself
strong enough to go out. On reaching the street his
strength again forsook him, and I insisted upon his
returning to his room. He besought me with tears
in his eyes not to shut him up. “It 's my last
chance,” he said. “I want to go back for an hour
to that garden of St. John's. Let me look and feel;
to-morrow I die.” It seemed to me possible that
with a Bath-chair the expedition might be accomplished.
The hotel, it appeared, possessed such a convenience:
it was immediately produced. It became
necessary hereupon that we should have a person to
propel the chair. As there was no one available on
the spot, I prepared to perform the office; but just
as Searle had got seated and wrapped (he had come
to suffer acutely from cold), an elderly man emerged
from a lurking-place near the door, and, with a
formal salute, offered to wait upon the gentleman.
We assented, and he proceeded solemnly to trundle
the chair before him. I recognized him as an individual
whom I had seen lounging shyly about the
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hotel doors, at intervals during our stay, with a depressed
air of wanting employment and a hopeless
doubt of finding any. He had once, indeed, in a
half-hearted way, proposed himself as an amateur
cicerone for a tour through the colleges; and I now,
as I looked at him, remembered with a pang that I
had declined his services with untender curtness.
Since then, his shyness, apparently, had grown less
or his misery greater; for it was with a strange,
grim avidity that he now attached himself to our
service. He was a pitiful image of shabby gentility
and the dinginess of “reduced circumstances.” He
imparted an original force to the term “seedy.” He
was, I suppose, some fifty years of age; but his pale,
haggard, unwholesome visage, his plaintive, drooping
carriage, and the irremediable decay of his apparel,
seemed to add to the burden of his days and experience.
His eyes were bloodshot and weak-looking,
his handsome nose had turned to purple, and his
sandy beard, largely streaked with gray, bristled with
a month's desperate indifference to the razor. In all
this rusty forlornness there lurked a visible assurance
of our friend's having known better days. Obviously,
he was the victim of some fatal depreciation in the
market value of pure gentility. There had been
something terribly pathetic in the way he fiercely
merged the attempt to touch the greasy rim of his
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antiquated hat into a rounded and sweeping bow, as
from jaunty equal to equal. Exchanging a few
words with him as we went along, I was struck
with the refinement of his tone.
“Take me by some long roundabout way,” said
Searle, “so that I may see as many college walls as
possible.”
“You can wander without losing your way?” I
asked of our attendant.
“I ought to be able to, sir,” he said, after a moment,
with pregnant gravity. And as we were passing Wadham
College, “That 's my college, sir,” he added.
At these words, Searle commanded him to stop and
come and stand in front of him. “You say that is
your college?” he demanded.
“Wadham might deny me, sir; but Heaven forbid I
should deny Wadham. If you 'll allow me to take you
into the quad, I 'll show you my windows, thirty years
ago!”
Searle sat staring, with his huge, pale eyes, which
now had come to usurp the greatest place in his
wasted visage, filled with wonder and pity. “If you 'll
be so kind,” he said, with immense politeness. But
just as this degenerate son of Wadham was about to
propel him across the threshold of the court, he turned
about, disengaged his hands, with his own hand, from
the back of the chair, drew him alongside of him and
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turned to me. “While we are here, my dear fellow,”
he said, “be so good as to perform this service. You
understand?” I smiled sufferance at our companion,
and we resumed our way. The latter showed us his
window of thirty years ago, where now a rosy youth in
a scarlet smoking-fez was puffing a cigarette in the
open lattice. Thence we proceeded into the little garden,
the smallest, I believe, and certainly the sweetest
of all the bosky resorts in Oxford. I pushed the chair
along to a bench on the lawn, wheeled it about toward
the façade of the college, and sat down on the grass.
Our attendant shifted himself mournfully from one
foot to the other. Searle eyed him open-mouthed.
At length he broke out: “God bless my soul, sir, you
don't suppose that I expect you to stand! There 's an
empty bench.”
“Thank you,” said our friend, bending his joints to
sit.
“You English,” said Searle, “are really fabulous!
I don't know whether I most admire you or despise
you! Now tell me: who are you? what are you?
what brought you to this?”
The poor fellow blushed up to his eyes, took off his
hat, and wiped his forehead with a ragged handkerchief.
“My name is Rawson, sir. Beyond that, it 's a
long story.”
“I ask out of sympathy,” said Searle. “I have a
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fellow-feeling! You 're a poor devil; I 'm a poor
devil too.”
“I 'm the poorer devil of the two,” said the stranger,
with a little emphatic nod of the head.
“Possibly. I suppose an English poor devil is the
poorest of all poor devils. And then, you have fallen
from a height. From Wadham College as a gentleman
commoner (is that what they called you?) to Wadham
College as a Bath-chair man! Good heavens, man,
the fall 's enough to kill you!”
“I did n't take it all at once, sir. I dropped a bit
one time and a bit another.”
“That 's me, that 's me!” cried Searle, clapping his
hands.
“And now,” said our friend, “I believe I can't
drop further.”
“My dear fellow,” and Searle clasped his hand
and shook it, “there 's a perfect similarity in our
lot.”
Mr. Rawson lifted his eyebrows. “Save for the
difference of sitting in a Bath-chair and walking behind
it!”
“O, I 'm at my last gasp, Mr. Rawson.”
“I 'm at my last penny, sir.”
“Literally, Mr. Rawson?”
Mr. Rawson shook his head, with a world of vague
bitterness. “I have almost come to the point,” he
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said, “of drinking my beer and buttoning my coat
figuratively; but I don't talk in figures.”
Fearing that the conversation had taken a turn
which might seem to cast a rather fantastic light upon
Mr. Rawson's troubles, I took the liberty of asking
him with great gravity how he made a living.
“I don't make a living,” he answered, with tearful
eyes, “I can't make a living. I have a wife and three
children, starving, sir. You would n't believe what I
have come to. I sent my wife to her mother's, who
can ill afford to keep her, and came to Oxford a week
ago, thinking I might pick up a few half-crowns by
showing people about the colleges. But it 's no use.
I have n't the assurance. I don't look decent. They
want a nice little old man with black gloves, and a
clean shirt, and a silver-headed stick. What do I
look as if I knew about Oxford, sir?”
“Dear me,” cried Searle, “why did n't you speak to
us before?”
“I wanted to; half a dozen times I have been on
the point of it. I knew you were Americans.”
“And Americans are rich!” cried Searle, laughing.
“My dear Mr. Rawson, American as I am, I 'm living
on charity.”
“And I 'm not, sir! There it is. I 'm dying for
the want of charity. You say you 're a pauper; it
takes an American pauper to go bowling about in a
Bath-chair. America 's an easy country.”
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“Ah me!” groaned Searle. “Have I come to Wadham
gardens to hear the praise of America?”
“Wadham gardens are very well!” said Mr. Rawson;
“but one may sit here hungry and shabby, so
long as one is n't too shabby, as well as elsewhere.
You 'll not persuade me that it 's not an easier thing
to keep afloat yonder than here. I wish I were there,
that 's all!” added Mr. Rawson, with a sort of feeble-minded
energy. Then brooding for a moment on his
wrongs: “Have you a brother? or you, sir? It matters
little to you. But it has mattered to me with a
vengeance! Shabby as I sit here, I have a brother
with his five thousand a year. Being a couple of years
my senior, he gorges while I starve. There 's England
for you! A very pretty place for him!”
“Poor England!” said Searle, softly.
“Has your brother never helped you?” I asked.
“A twenty-pound note now and then! I don't say
that there have not been times when I have sorely
tried his generosity. I have not been what I should.
I married dreadfully amiss. But the devil of it is
that he started fair and I started foul; with the
tastes, the desires, the needs, the sensibilities of a
gentleman, — and nothing else! I can't afford to live
in England.”
“This poor gentleman,” said I, “fancied a couple of
months ago that he could n't afford to live in America.”
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“I 'd change chances with him!” And Mr. Rawson
gave a passionate slap to his knee.
Searle reclined in his chair with his eyes closed and
his face twitching with violent emotion. Suddenly he
opened his eyes with a look of awful gravity. “My
friend,” he said, “you 're a failure! Be judged!
Don't talk about chances. Don't talk about fair starts
and foul starts. I 'm at that point myself that I have
a right to speak. It lies neither in one's chance nor
one's start to make one a success; nor in anything
one's brother can do or can undo. It lies in one's will!
You and I, sir, have had none; that 's very plain!
We have been weak, sir; as weak as water. Here we
are, sitting staring in each other's faces and reading
our weakness in each other's eyes. We are of no
account!”
Mr. Rawson received this address with a countenance
in which heartfelt conviction was oddly mingled
with a vague suspicion that a proper self-respect
required him to resent its unflattering candor. In the
course of a minute a proper self-respect yielded to the
warm, comfortable sense of his being understood, even
to his light dishonor. “Go on, sir, go on,” he said.
“It 's wholesome truth.” And he wiped his eyes with
his dingy handkerchief.
“Dear me!” cried Searle. “I 've made you cry.
Well! we speak as from man to man. I should be
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glad to think that you had felt for a moment the
side-light of that great undarkening of the spirit
which precedes — which precedes the grand illumination
of death.”
Mr. Rawson sat silent for a moment, with his eyes
fixed on the ground and his well-cut nose more deeply
tinged by the force of emotion. Then at last, looking
up: “You 're a very good-natured man, sir; and you 'll
not persuade me that you don't come of a good-natured
race. Say what you please about a chance; when a
man 's fifty, — degraded, penniless, a husband and
father, — a chance to get on his legs again is not to
be despised. Something tells me that my chance is
in your country, — that great home of chances. I can
starve here, of course; but I don't want to starve.
Hang it, sir, I want to live. I see thirty years of life
before me yet. If only, by God's help, I could spend
them there! It 's a fixed idea of mine. I 've had it
for the last ten years. It 's not that I 'm a radical.
I 've no ideas! Old England 's good enough for me,
but I 'm not good enough for old England. I 'm a
shabby man that wants to get out of a room full of
staring gentlefolks. I 'm forever put to the blush.
It 's a perfect agony of spirit. Everything reminds
me of my younger and better self. O, for a cooling,
cleansing plunge into the unknowing and the unknown!
I lie awake thinking of it.”
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Searle closed his eyes and shivered with a long-drawn
tremor which I hardly knew whether to take
for an expression of physical or of mental pain. In
a moment I perceived it was neither. “O my country,
my country, my country!” he murmured in a broken
voice; and then sat for some time abstracted and
depressed. I intimated to our companion that it was
time we should bring our séance to a close, and he,
without hesitating, possessed himself of the little handrail
of the Bath-chair and pushed it before him. We
had got half-way home before Searle spoke or moved.
Suddenly in the High Street, as we were passing in
front of a chop-house, from whose open doors there
proceeded a potent suggestion of juicy joints and suet
puddings, he motioned us to halt. “This is my last
five pounds,” he said, drawing a note from his pocket-book.
“Do me the favor, Mr. Rawson, to accept it.
Go in there and order a colossal dinner. Order a
bottle of Burgundy and drink it to my immortal
health!” Mr. Rawson stiffened himself up and received
the gift with momentarily irresponsive fingers.
But Mr. Rawson had the nerves of a gentleman. I
saw the titillation of his pointed finger-tips as they
closed upon the crisp paper; I noted the fine tremor
in his empurpled nostril as it became more deeply
conscious of the succulent flavor of the spot. He
crushed the crackling note in his palm with a convulsive
pressure.
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“It shall be Chambertin!” he said, jerking a spasmodic
bow. The next moment the door swung behind
him.
Searle relapsed into his feeble stupor, and on reaching
the hotel I helped him to get to bed. For the
rest of the day he lay in a half-somnolent state, without
motion or speech. The doctor, whom I had constantly
in attendance, declared that his end was near.
He expressed great surprise that he should have lasted
so long; he must have been living for a month on a
cruelly extorted strength. Toward evening, as I sat
by his bedside in the deepening dusk, he aroused
himself with a purpose which I had vaguely felt gathering
beneath his quietude. “My cousin, my cousin,”
he said, confusedly. “Is she here?” It was the first
time he had spoken of Miss Searle since our exit from
her brother's house. “I was to have married her,”
he went on. “What a dream! That day was like a
string of verses — rhymed hours. But the last verse
is bad measure. What 's the rhyme to `love'?
Above! Was she a simple person, a sweet person?
Or have I dreamed it? She had the healing gift; her
touch would have cured my madness. I want you to
do something. Write three lines, three words: `Good
by; remember me; be happy.”' And then, after a
long pause: “It 's strange a man in my condition
should have a wish. Need a man eat his breakfast
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before his hanging? What a creature is man! what
a farce is life! Here I lie, worn down to a mere
throbbing fever-point; I breathe and nothing more,
and yet I desire! My desire lives. If I could see
her! Help me out with it and let me die.”
Half an hour later, at a venture, I despatched a note
to Miss Searle: “Your cousin is rapidly dying. He
asks to see you.” I was conscious of a certain unkindness
in doing so. It would bring a great trouble, and
no power to face the trouble. But out of her distress
I fondly hoped a sufficient energy might be born. On
the following day my friend's exhaustion had become
so total that I began to fear that his intelligence
was altogether gone. But towards evening he rallied
awhile, and talked in a maundering way about many
things, confounding in a ghastly jumble the memories
of the past weeks and those of bygone years. “By
the way,” he said suddenly, “I have made no will. I
have n't much to bequeath. Yet I 've something.”
He had been playing listlessly with a large signet-ring
on his left hand, which he now tried to draw off. “I
leave you this,” working it round and round vainly, “if
you can get it off. What mighty knuckles! There
must be such knuckles in the mummies of the Pharaohs.
Well, when I 'm gone! Nay, I leave you something
more precious than gold, — the sense of a great
kindness. But I have a little gold left. Bring me
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those trinkets.” I placed on the bed before him several
articles of jewelry, relics of early elegance: his
watch and chain, of great value, a locket and seal, some
shirt-buttons and scarf-pins. He trifled with them
feebly for some moments, murmuring various names
and dates associated with them. At last, looking up
with a sudden energy, “What 's become of Mr. Rawson?”
“You want to see him?”
“How much are these things worth?” he asked,
without heeding me. “How much would they bring?”
And he held them up in his weak hands. “They have
a great weight. Two hundred pounds? I am richer
than I thought! Rawson — Rawson — you want to
get out of this awful England.”
I stepped to the door and requested the servant,
whom I kept in constant attendance in the adjoining
sitting-room, to send and ascertain if Mr. Rawson was
on the premises. He returned in a few moments, introducing
our shabby friend. Mr. Rawson was pale,
even to his nose, and, with his suppressed agitation, had
an air of great distinction. I led him up to the bed.
In Searle's eyes, as they fell on him, there shone for a
moment the light of a high fraternal greeting.
“Great God!” said Mr. Rawson, fervently.
“My friend,” said Searle, “there is to be one American
the less. Let there be one the more. At the
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worst, you 'll be as good a one as I. Foolish me!
Take these trinkets; let them help you on your way.
They are gifts and memories, but this is a better use.
Heaven speed you! May America be kind to you.
Be kind, at the last, to your own country!”
“Really, this is too much; I can't,” our friend protested
in a tremulous voice. “Do get well, and I 'll
stop here!”
“Nay; I 'm booked for my journey, you for yours.
I hope you don't suffer at sea.”
Mr. Rawson exhaled a groan of helpless gratitude,
appealing piteously from so awful a good fortune.
“It 's like the angel of the Lord,” he said, “who bids
people in the Bible to rise and flee!”
Searle had sunk back upon his pillow, exhausted: I
led Mr. Rawson back into the sitting-room, where in
three words I proposed to him a rough valuation of our
friend's trinkets. He assented with perfect good breeding;
they passed into my possession and a second
bank-note into his.
From the collapse into which this beneficent interview
had plunged him, Searle gave few signs of being
likely to emerge. He breathed, as he had said, and
nothing more. The twilight deepened: I lit the
night-lamp. The doctor sat silent and official at the
foot of the bed; I resumed my constant place near
the head. Suddenly Searle opened his eyes widely.
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“She 'll not come,” he murmured. “Amen! she 's an
English sister.” Five minutes passed. He started
forward. “She has come, she is here!” he whispered.
His words conveyed to my mind so absolute an assurance,
that I lightly rose and passed into the sitting-room.
At the same moment, through the opposite
door, the servant introduced a lady. A lady, I say;
for an instant she was simply such; tall, pale, dressed
in deep mourning. The next moment I had uttered
her name — “Miss Searle!” She looked ten years
older.
She met me, with both hands extended, and an
immense question in her face. “He has just spoken
your name,” I said. And then, with a fuller consciousness
of the change in her dress and countenance:
“What has happened?”
“O death, death!” said Miss Searle. “You and I
are left.”
There came to me with her words a sort of sickening
shock, the sense of poetic justice having been
grimly shuffled away. “Your brother?” I demanded.
She laid her hand on my arm, and I felt its pressure
deepen as she spoke. “He was thrown from his horse
in the park. He died on the spot. Six days have
passed. — Six months!”
She took my arm. A moment later we had entered
the room and approached the bedside. The doctor
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withdrew. Searle opened his eyes and looked at her
from head to foot. Suddenly he seemed to perceive
her mourning. “Already!” he cried, audibly; with
a smile, as I believe, of pleasure.
She dropped on her knees and took his hand.
“Not for you, cousin,” she whispered. “For my
poor brother.”
He started in all his deathly longitude as with a
galvanic shock. “Dead! he dead! Life itself!” And
then, after a moment, with a slight rising inflection:
“You are free?”
“Free, cousin. Sadly free. And now — now — with
what use for freedom?”
He looked steadily a moment into her eyes, dark in
the heavy shadow of her musty mourning veil. “For
me,” he said, “wear colors!”
In a moment more death had come, the doctor had
silently attested it, and Miss Searle had burst into
sobs.
We buried him in the little churchyard in which
he had expressed the wish to lie; beneath one of the
mightiest of English yews and the little tower than
which none in all England has a softer and hoarier
gray. A year has passed. Miss Searle, I believe, has
begun to wear colors.
-- -- p617-128
The Last of the Valerii.
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I HAD had occasion to declare more than once that
if my god-daughter married a foreigner I should
refuse to give her away. And yet when the young
Conte Valerio was presented to me, in Rome, as her
accepted and plighted lover, I found myself looking at
the happy fellow, after a momentary stare of amazement,
with a certain paternal benevolence; thinking,
indeed, that from the picturesque point of view (she
with her yellow locks and he with his dusky ones),
they were a strikingly well-assorted pair. She brought
him up to me half proudly, half timidly, pushing him
before her, and begging me with one of her dovelike
glances to be very polite. I don't know that I am
particularly addicted to rudeness; but she was so
deeply impressed with his grandeur that she thought
it impossible to do him honor enough. The Conte
Valerio's grandeur was doubtless nothing for a young
American girl, who had the air and almost the habits
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of a princess, to sound her trumpet about; but she
was desperately in love with him, and not only her
heart, but her imagination, was touched. He was
extremely handsome, and with a more significant sort
of beauty than is common in the handsome Roman
race. He had a sort of sunken depth of expression,
and a grave, slow smile, suggesting no great quickness
of wit, but an unimpassioned intensity of feeling which
promised well for Martha's happiness. He had little
of the light, inexpensive urbanity of his countrymen,
and more of a sort of heavy sincerity in his gaze which
seemed to suspend response until he was sure he understood
you. He was perhaps a little stupid, and I fancied
that to a political or æsthetic question the response
would be particularly slow. “He is good, and strong,
and brave,” the young girl however assured me; and
I easily believed her. Strong the Conte Valerio certainly
was; he had a head and throat like some of the
busts in the Vatican. To my eye, which has looked at
things now so long with the painter's purpose, it was
a real perplexity to see such a throat rising out of the
white cravat of the period. It sustained a head as
massively round as that of the familiar bust of the
Emperor Caracalla, and covered with the same dense
sculptural crop of curls. The young man's hair grew
superbly; it was such hair as the old Romans must
have had when they walked bareheaded and bronzed
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about the world. It made a perfect arch over his low,
clear forehead, and prolonged itself on cheek and chin
in a close, crisp beard, strong with its own strength and
unstiffened by the razor. Neither his nose nor his
mouth was delicate; but they were powerful, shapely,
and manly. His complexion was of a deep glowing
brown which no emotion would alter, and his large,
lucid eyes seemed to stare at you like a pair of polished
agates. He was of middle stature, and his chest
was of so generous a girth that you half expected to
hear his linen crack with its even respirations. And
yet, with his simple human smile, he looked neither
like a young bullock nor a gladiator. His powerful
voice was the least bit harsh, and his large, ceremonious
reply to my compliment had the massive sonority
with which civil speeches must have been uttered in
the age of Augustus. I had always considered my
god-daughter a very American little person, in all
delightful meanings of the word, and I doubted if
this sturdy young Latin would understand the transatlantic
element in her nature; but, evidently, he
would make her a loyal and ardent lover. She seemed
to me, in her blond prettiness, so tender, so appealing,
so bewitching, that it was impossible to believe he had
not more thoughts for all this than for the pretty fortune
which it yet bothered me to believe that he must,
like a good Italian, have taken the exact measure of.
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His own worldly goods consisted of the paternal estate,
a villa within the walls of Rome, which his scanty
funds had suffered to fall into sombre disrepair. “It 's
the Villa she 's in love with, quite as much as the
Count,” said her mother. “She dreams of converting
the Count; that 's all very well. But she dreams of
refurnishing the Villa!”
The upholsterers were turned into it, I believe, before
the wedding, and there was a great scrubbing and
sweeping of saloons and raking and weeding of alleys
and avenues. Martha made frequent visits of inspection
while these ceremonies were taking place; but one
day, on her return, she came into my little studio with
an air of amusing horror. She had found them scraping
the sarcophagus in the great ilex-walk; divesting it
of its mossy coat, disincrusting it of the sacred green
mould of the ages! This was their idea of making the
Villa comfortable. She had made them transport it to
the dampest place they could find; for, next after that
slow-coming, slow-going smile of her lover, it was the
rusty complexion of his patrimonial marbles that she
most prized. The young Count's conversion proceeded
less rapidly, and indeed I believe that his betrothed
brought little zeal to the affair. She loved him so
devoutly that she believed no change of faith could
better him, and she would have been willing for his
sake to say her prayers to the sacred Bambino at
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Epiphany. But he had the good taste to demand no
such sacrifice, and I was struck with the happy promise
of a scene of which I was an accidental observer.
It was at St. Peter's, one Friday afternoon, during the
vesper service which takes place in the chapel of the
Choir. I met my god-daughter wandering happily on
her lover's arm, her mother being established on her
camp-stool near the chapel door. The crowd was collected
thereabouts, and the body of the church was
empty. Now and then the high voices of the singers
escaped into the outer vastness and melted slowly
away in the incense-thickened air. Something in the
young girl's step and the clasp of her arm in her lover's
told me that her contentment was perfect. As she
threw back her head and gazed into the magnificent
immensity of vault and dome, I felt that she was in
that enviable mood in which all consciousness revolves
on a single centre, and that her sense of the splendors
around her was one with the ecstasy of her trust.
They stopped before that sombre group of confessionals
which proclaims so portentously the world's sinfulness,
and Martha seemed to make some almost passionate
protestation. A few minutes later I overtook them.
“Don't you agree with me, dear friend,” said the
Count, who always addressed me with the most affectionate
deference, “that before I marry so pure and
sweet a creature as this, I ought to go into one of
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those places and confess every sin I ever was guilty
of, — every evil thought and impulse and desire of my
grossly evil nature?”
Martha looked at him, half in deprecation, half in
homage, with a look which seemed at once to insist
that her lover could have no vices, and to plead that,
if he had, there would be something magnificent in
them. “Listen to him!” she said, smiling. “The list
would be long, and if you waited to finish it, you
would be late for the wedding! But if you confess
your sins for me, it 's only fair I should confess mine
for you. Do you know what I have been saying to
Camillo?” she added, turning to me with the half-filial
confidence she had always shown me and with a rosy
glow in her cheeks; “that I want to do something
more for him than girls commonly do for their lovers,—
to take some step, to run some risk, to break some
law, even! I 'm willing to change my religion, if he
bids me. There are moments when I 'm terribly tired
of simply staring at Catholicism; it will be a relief to
come into a church to kneel. That 's, after all, what
they are meant for! Therefore, Camillo mio, if it casts
a shade across your heart to think that I 'm a heretic,
I 'll go and kneel down to that good old priest who
has just entered the confessional yonder and say to
him, `My father, I repent, I abjure, I believe. Baptize
me in the only faith.”'
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“If it 's as a compliment to the Count,” I said, “it
seems to me he ought to anticipate it by turning Protestant.”
She had spoken lightly and with a smile, and yet
with an undertone of girlish ardor. The young man
looked at her with a solemn, puzzled face and shook
his head. “Keep your religion,” he said. “Every one
his own. If you should attempt to embrace mine, I 'm
afraid you would close your arms about a shadow.
I 'm a poor Catholic! I don't understand all these
chants and ceremonies and splendors. When I was a
child I never could learn my catechism. My poor old
confessor long ago gave me up; he told me I was a
good boy but a pagan! You must not be a better
Catholic than your husband. I don't understand your
religion any better, but I beg you not to change it for
mine. If it has helped to make you what you are,
it must be good.” And taking the young girl's hand,
he was about to raise it affectionately to his lips; but
suddenly remembering that they were in a place unaccordant
with profane passions, he lowered it with a
comical smile. “Let us go!” he murmured, passing
his hand over his forehead. “This heavy atmosphere
of St. Peter's always stupefies me.”
They were married in the month of May, and
we separated for the summer, the Contessa's mamma
going to illuminate the domestic circle in New
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York with her reflected dignity. When I returned
to Rome in the autumn, I found the young couple
established at the Villa Valerio, which was being
gradually reclaimed from its antique decay. I begged
that the hand of improvement might be lightly laid
on it, for as an unscrupulous old genre painter, with
an eye to “subjects,” I preferred that ruin should
accumulate. My god-daughter was quite of my way
of thinking, and she had a capital sense of the
picturesque. Advising with me often as to projected
changes, she was sometimes more conservative than
myself; and I more than once smiled at her archæ
ological zeal, and declared that I believed she had
married the Count because he was like a statue of
the Decadence. I had a constant invitation to spend
my days at the Villa, and my easel was always
planted in one of the garden-walks. I grew to have
a painter's passion for the place, and to be intimate
with every tangled shrub and twisted tree, every
moss-coated vase and mouldy sarcophagus and sad,
disfeatured bust of those grim old Romans who could
so ill afford to become more meagre-visaged. The
place was of small extent; but though there were
many other villas more pretentious and splendid, none
seemed to me more deeply picturesque, more romantically
idle and untrimmed, more encumbered with precious
antique rubbish, and haunted with half-historic
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echoes. It contained an old ilex-walk in which I
used religiously to spend half an hour every day, —
half an hour being, I confess, just as long as I could
stay without beginning to sneeze. The trees arched
and intertwisted here along their dusky vista in the
quaintest symmetry; and as it was exposed uninterruptedly
to the west, the low evening sun used
to transfuse it with a sort of golden mist and play
through it — over leaves and knotty boughs and
mossy marbles — with a thousand crimson fingers.
It was filled with disinterred fragments of sculpture, —
nameless statues and noseless heads and roughhewn
sarcophagi, which made it deliciously solemn.
The statues used to stand there in the perpetual
twilight like conscious things, brooding on their gathered
memories. I used to linger about them, half
expecting they would speak and tell me their stony
secrets, — whisper heavily the whereabouts of their
mouldering fellows, still unrecovered from the soil.
My god-daughter was idyllically happy and absolutely
in love. I was obliged to confess that even
rigid rules have their exceptions, and that now and
then an Italian count is an honest fellow. Camillo
was one to the core, and seemed quite content to
be adored. Their life was a childlike interchange of
caresses, as candid and unmeasured as those of a
shepherd and shepherdess in a bucolic poem. To
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stroll in the ilex-walk and feel her husband's arm
about her waist and his shoulder against her cheek;
to roll cigarettes for him while he puffed them in
the great marble-paved rotunda in the centre of the
house; to fill his glass from an old rusty red amphora, —
these graceful occupations satisfied the young
Countess.
She rode with him sometimes in the grassy shadow
of aqueducts and tombs, and sometimes suffered him
to show his beautiful wife at Roman dinners and
balls. She played dominos with him after dinner,
and carried out in a desultory way a daily scheme
of reading him the newspapers. This observance was
subject to fluctuations caused by the Count's invincible
tendency to go to sleep, — a failing his wife never
attempted to disguise or palliate. She would sit and
brush the flies from him while he lay picturesquely
snoozing, and, if I ventured near him, would place
her finger on her lips and whisper that she thought
her husband was as handsome asleep as awake. I
confess I often felt tempted to reply to her that he
was at least as entertaining, for the young man's
happiness had not multiplied the topics on which he
readily conversed. He had plenty of good sense, and
his opinions on practical matters were always worth
having. He would often come and sit near me while
I worked at my easel and offer a friendly criticism.
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His taste was a little crude, but his eye was excellent,
and his measurement of the resemblance between some
point of my copy and the original as trustworthy as
that of a mathematical instrument. But he seemed
to me to have either a strange reserve or a strange
simplicity; to be fundamentally unfurnished with
“ideas.” He had no beliefs nor hopes nor fears, —
nothing but senses, appetites, and serenely luxurious
tastes. As I watched him strolling about looking at
his finger-nails, I often wondered whether he had
anything that could properly be termed a soul, and
whether good health and good-nature were not the
sum of his advantages. “It 's lucky he 's good-natured,”
I used to say to myself; “for if he were
not, there is nothing in his conscience to keep him
in order. If he had irritable nerves instead of quiet
ones, he would strangle us as the infant Hercules
strangled the poor little snakes. He 's the natural
man! Happily, his nature is gentle; I can mix my
colors at my ease.” I wondered what he thought
about and what passed through his mind in the sunny
leisure which seemed to shut him in from that modern
work-a-day world of which, in spite of my passion
for bedaubing old panels with ineffective portraiture
of mouldy statues against screens of box, I still flattered
myself I was a member. I went so far as to
believe that he sometimes withdrew from the world
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altogether. He had moods in which his consciousness
seemed so remote and his mind so irresponsive
and dumb, that nothing but a powerful caress or a
sudden violence was likely to arouse him. Even his
lavish tenderness for his wife had a quality which I
but half relished. Whether or no he had a soul
himself, he seemed not to suspect that she had one.
I took a godfatherly interest in what it had not always
seemed to me crabbed and pedantic to talk of as her
moral development. I fondly believed her to be a
creature susceptible of the finer spiritual emotions.
But what was becoming of her spiritual life in this
interminable heathenish honeymoon? Some fine day
she would find herself tired of the Count's beaux yeux
and make an appeal to his mind. She had, to my
knowledge, plans of study, of charity, of worthily playing
her part as a Contessa Valerio, — a position as to
which the family records furnished the most inspiring
examples. But if the Count found the newspapers
soporific, I doubted if he would turn Dante's pages
very fast for his wife, or smile with much zest at
the anecdotes of Vasari. How could he advise her,
instruct her, sustain her? And if she became a
mother, how could he share her responsibilities? He
doubtless would assure his little son and heir a stout
pair of arms and legs and a magnificent crop of curls,
and sometimes remove his cigarette to kiss a dimpled
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spot; but I found it hard to picture him lending his
voice to teach the lusty urchin his alphabet or his
prayers, or the rudiments of infant virtue. One accomplishment
indeed the Count possessed which
would make him an agreeable playfellow: he carried
in his pocket a collection of precious fragments of
antique pavement, — bits of porphyry and malachite
and lapis and basalt, — disinterred on his own soil
and brilliantly polished by use. With these you
might see him occupied by the half-hour, playing the
simple game of catch-and-toss, ranging them in a
circle, tossing them in rotation, and catching them on
the back of his hand. His skill was remarkable; he
would send a stone five feet into the air, and pitch
and catch and transpose the rest before he received
it again. I watched with affectionate jealousy for
the signs of a dawning sense, on Martha's part, that
she was the least bit strangely mated. Once or
twice, as the weeks went by, I fancied I read them,
and that she looked at me with eyes which seemed
to remember certain old talks of mine in which I
had declared — with such verity as you please — that
a Frenchman, an Italian, a Spaniard, might be a very
good fellow, but that he never really respected the
woman he pretended to love. For the most part,
however, these dusky broodings of mine spent themselves
easily in the charmed atmosphere of our
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romantic home. We were out of the modern world and
had no business with modern scruples. The place
was so bright, so still, so sacred to the silent, imperturbable
past, that drowsy contentment seemed a natural
law; and sometimes when, as I sat at my work,
I saw my companions passing arm-in-arm across the
end of one of the long-drawn vistas, and, turning
back to my palette, found my colors dimmer for the
radiant vision, I could easily believe that I was some
loyal old chronicler of a perfectly poetical legend.
It was a help to ungrudging feelings that the Count,
yielding to his wife's urgency, had undertaken a series
of systematic excavations. To excavate is an expensive
luxury, and neither Camillo nor his latter forefathers
had possessed the means for a disinterested
pursuit of archæology. But his young wife had persuaded
herself that the much-trodden soil of the Villa
was as full of buried treasures as a bride-cake of plums,
and that it would be a pretty compliment to the
ancient house which had accepted her as mistress, to
devote a portion of her dowry to bringing its mouldy
honors to the light. I think she was not without a
fancy that this liberal process would help to disinfect
her Yankee dollars of the impertinent odor of trade.
She took learned advice on the subject, and was soon
ready to swear to you, proceeding from irrefutable
premises, that a colossal gilt-bronze Minerva
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mentioned by Strabo was placidly awaiting resurrection
at a point twenty rods from the northwest angle of
the house. She had a couple of grotesque old antiquaries
to lunch, whom having plied with unwonted
potations, she walked off their legs in the grounds;
and though they agreed on nothing else in the world,
they individually assured her that properly conducted
researches would probably yield an unequalled harvest
of discoveries. The Count had been not only indifferent,
but even averse, to the scheme, and had more than
once arrested his wife's complacent allusions to it by
an unaccustomed acerbity of tone. “Let them lie, the
poor disinherited gods, the Minerva, the Apollo, the
Ceres you are so sure of finding,” he said, “and don't
break their rest. What do you want of them? We
can't worship them. Would you put them on pedestals
to stare and mock at them? If you can't believe
in them, don't disturb them. Peace be with them!”
I remember being a good deal impressed by a vigorous
confession drawn from him by his wife's playfully declaring
in answer to some remonstrances in this strain
that he was absolutely superstitious. “Yes, by Bacchus,
I am superstitious!” he cried. “Too much so,
perhaps! But I 'm an old Italian, and you must take
me as you find me. There have been things seen and
done here which leave strange influences behind!
They don't touch you, doubtless, who come of another
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race. But they touch me, often, in the whisper of
the leaves and the odor of the mouldy soil and the
blank eyes of the old statues. I can't bear to look
the statues in the face. I seem to see other strange
eyes in the empty sockets, and I hardly know what
they say to me. I call the poor old statues ghosts.
In conscience, we 've enough on the place already,
lurking and peering in every shady nook. Don't
dig up any more, or I won't answer for my wits!”
This account of Camillo's sensibilities was too fantastic
not to seem to his wife almost a joke; and
though I imagined there was more in it, he made a
joke so seldom that I should have been sorry to cut
short the poor girl's smile. With her smile she carried
her point, and in a few days arrived a kind of archæological
detective, with a dozen workmen armed with
pickaxes and spades. For myself, I was secretly vexed
at these energetic measures; for, though fond of disinterred
statues, I disliked the disinterment, and deplored
the profane sounds which were henceforth to jar upon
the sleepy stillness of the gardens. I especially objected
to the personage who conducted the operations;
an ugly little dwarfish man who seemed altogether a
subterranean genius, an earthy gnome of the underworld,
and went prying about the grounds with a malicious
smile which suggested more delight in the
money the Signor Conte was going to bury than in the
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expected marbles and bronzes. When the first sod
had been turned, the Count's mood seemed to alter,
and his curiosity got the better of his scruples. He
sniffed delightedly the odor of the humid earth, and
stood watching the workmen, as they struck constantly
deeper, with a kindling wonder in his eyes. Whenever
a pickaxe rang against a stone he would utter a
sharp cry, and be deterred from jumping into the
trench only by the little explorer's assurance that it
was a false alarm. The near prospect of discoveries
seemed to act upon his nerves, and I met him more
than once strolling restlessly among his cedarn alleys,
as if at last he had fallen a thinking. He took me by
the arm and made me walk with him, and discoursed
ardently of the chance of a “find.” I rather marvelled
at his sudden zeal, and wondered whether he had an
eye to the past or to the future, — to the beauty of possible
Minervas and Apollos or to their market value.
Whenever the Count would come and denounce his
little army of spadesmen for a set of loitering vagabonds,
the little explorer would glance at me with a
sarcastic twinkle which seemed to hint that excavations
were a snare. We were kept some time in suspense,
for several false beginnings were made. The
earth was probed in the wrong places. The Count
began to be discouraged and to prolong his abbreviated
siesta. But the little expert, who had his own ideas,
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shrewdly continued his labors; and as I sat at my
easel I heard the spades ringing against the dislodged
stones. Now and then I would pause, with an uncontrollable
acceleration of my heart-beats. “It may
be,” I would say, “that some marble masterpiece is
stirring there beneath its lightening weight of earth!
There are as good fish in the sea....! I may be
summoned to welcome another Antinous back to fame,—
a Venus, a Faun, an Augustus!”
One morning it seemed to me that I had been hearing
for half an hour a livelier movement of voices than
usual; but as I was preoccupied with a puzzling bit
of work, I made no inquiries. Suddenly a shadow fell
across my canvas, and I turned round. The little explorer
stood beside me, with a glittering eye, cap in
hand, his forehead bathed in perspiration. Resting in
the hollow of his arm was an earth-stained fragment
of marble. In answer to my questioning glance he
held it up to me, and I saw it was a woman's shapely
hand. “Come!” he simply said, and led the way to
the excavation. The workmen were so closely gathered
round the open trench that I saw nothing till he
made them divide. Then, full in the sun and flashing
it back, almost, in spite of her dusky incrustations, I
beheld, propped up with stones against a heap of earth,
a majestic marble image. She seemed to me almost
colossal, though I afterwards perceived that she was of
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perfect human proportions. My pulses began to throb,
for I felt she was something great, and that it was
great to be among the first to know her. Her marvellous
beauty gave her an almost human look, and her
absent eyes seemed to wonder back at us. She was
amply draped, so that I saw that she was not a Venus.
“She 's a Juno,” said the excavator, decisively; and
she seemed indeed an embodiment of celestial supremacy
and repose. Her beautiful head, bound with a
single band, could have bent only to give the nod of
command; her eyes looked straight before her; her
mouth was implacably grave; one hand, outstretched,
appeared to have held a kind of imperial wand, the
arm from which the other had been broken hung at
her side with the most classical majesty. The workmanship
was of the rarest finish; and though perhaps
there was a sort of vaguely modern attempt at character
in her expression, she was wrought, as a whole, in
the large and simple manner of the great Greek period.
She was a masterpiece of skill and a marvel of preservation.
“Does the Count know?” I soon asked, for I
had a guilty sense that our eyes were taking something
from her.
“The Signor Conte is at his siesta,” said the explorer,
with his sceptical grin. “We don't like to
disturb him.”
“Here he comes!” cried one of the workmen, and
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we made way for him. His siesta had evidently been
suddenly broken, for his face was flushed and his
hair disordered.
“Ah, my dream — my dream was right, then!” he
cried, and stood staring at the image.
“What was your dream?” I asked, as his face
seemed to betray more dismay than delight.
“That they 'd found a Juno; and that she rose
and came and laid her marble hand on mine. Eh?”
said the Count, excitedly.
A kind of awe-struck, guttural a-ah! burst from
the listening workmen.
“This is the hand!” said the little explorer, holding
up his perfect fragment. “I 've had it this half-hour,
so it can't have touched you.”
“But you 're apparently right as to her being a
Juno,” I said. “Admire her at your leisure.” And
I turned away; for if the Count was superstitious, I
wished to leave him free to relieve himself. I repaired
to the house to carry the news to my god-daughter,
whom I found slumbering — dreamlessly,
it appeared — over a great archæological octavo.
“They 've touched bottom,” I said. “They 've found
a Juno of Praxiteles at the very least!” She dropped
her octavo, and rang for a parasol. I described the
statue, but not graphically, I presume, for Martha
gave a little sarcastic grimace.
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“A long, fluted peplum?” she said. “How very
odd! I don't believe she 's beautiful.”
“She 's beautiful enough, figlioccia mia,” I answered,
“to make you jealous.”
We found the Count standing before the resurgent
goddess in fixed contemplation, with folded arms. He
seemed to have recovered from the irritation of his
dream, but I thought his face betrayed a still deeper
emotion. He was pale, and gave no response as his
wife caressingly clasped his arm. I 'm not sure,
however, that his wife's attitude was not a livelier
tribute to the perfection of the image. She had been
laughing at my rhapsody as we walked from the
house, and I had bethought myself of a statement
I had somewhere seen, that women lacked the perception
of the purest beauty. Martha, however,
seemed slowly to measure our Juno's infinite stateliness.
She gazed a long time silently, leaning against
her husband, and then stepped half timidly down on
the stones which formed a rough base for the figure.
She laid her two rosy, ungloved hands upon the stony
fingers of the goddess, and remained for some moments
pressing them in her warm grasp, and fixing
her living eyes upon the inexpressive brow. When
she turned round her eyes were bright with an admiring
tear, — a tear which her husband was too deeply
absorbed to notice. He had apparently given orders
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that the workmen should be treated to a cask of wine,
in honor of their discovery. It was now brought and
opened on the spot, and the little explorer, having
drawn the first glass, stepped forward, hat in hand, and
obsequiously presented it to the Countess. She only
moistened her lips with it and passed it to her husband.
He raised it mechanically to his own; then
suddenly he stopped, held it a moment aloft, and
poured it out slowly and solemnly at the feet of the
Juno.
“Why, it 's a libation!” I cried. He made no answer,
and walked slowly away.
There was no more work done that day. The laborers
lay on the grass, gazing with the native Roman
relish of a fine piece of sculpture, but wasting no wine
in pagan ceremonies. In the evening the Count paid
the Juno another visit, and gave orders that on the
morrow she should be transferred to the Casino. The
Casino was a deserted garden-house, built in not ungraceful
imitation of an Ionic temple, in which Camillo's
ancestors must often have assembled to drink cool
syrups from Venetian glasses, and listen to learned
madrigals. It contained several dusty fragments of
antique sculpture, and it was spacious enough to enclose
that richer collection of which I began fondly to
regard the Juno as but the nucleus. Here, with short
delay, this fine creature was placed, serenely upright,
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a reversed funereal cippus forming a sufficiently solid
pedestal. The little explorer, who seemed an expert
in all the offices of restoration, rubbed her and scraped
her with mysterious art, removed her earthy stains,
and doubled the lustre of her beauty. Her mellow
substance seemed to glow with a kind of renascent
purity and bloom, and, but for her broken hand, you
might have fancied she had just received the last
stroke of the chisel. Her fame remained no secret.
Within two or three days half a dozen inquisitive conoscenti
posted out to obtain sight of her. I happened
to be present when the first of these gentlemen (a German
in blue spectacles, with a portfolio under his arm)
presented himself at the Villa. The Count, hearing
his voice at the door, came forward and eyed him coldly
from head to foot.
“Your new Juno, Signor Conte,” began the German,
“is, in my opinion, much more likely to be a
certain Proserpine —”
“I 've neither a Juno nor a Proserpine to discuss
with you,” said the Count, curtly. “You 're misinformed.”
“You 've dug up no statue?” cried the German.
“What a scandalous hoax!”
“None worthy of your learned attention. I 'm
sorry you should have the trouble of carrying your
little note-book so far.” The Count had suddenly
become witty!
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“But you 've something, surely. The rumor is
running through Rome.”
“The rumor be damned!” cried the Count, savagely.
“I 've nothing, — do you understand? Be so good
as to say so to your friends.”
The answer was explicit, and the poor archæologist
departed, tossing his flaxen mane. But I pitied him,
and ventured to remonstrate with the Count. “She
might as well be still in the earth, if no one is to
see her,” I said.
“I 'm to see her: that 's enough!” he answered
with the same unnatural harshness. Then, in a moment,
as he caught me eying him askance in troubled
surprise, “I hated his great portfolio. He was going
to make some hideous drawing of her.”
“Ah, that touches me,” I said. “I too have been
planning to make a little sketch.”
He was silent for some moments, after which he
turned and grasped my arm, with less irritation, but
with extraordinary gravity. “Go in there towards
twilight,” he said, “and sit for an hour and look at
her. I think you 'll give up your sketch. If you
don't, my good old friend, — you 're welcome!”
I followed his advice, and, as a friend, I gave up
my sketch. But an artist is an artist, and I secretly
longed to attempt one. Orders strictly in accordance
with the Count's reply to our German friend were
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given to the servants, who, with an easy Italian conscience
and a gracious Italian persuasiveness, assured
all subsequent inquirers that they had been regrettably
misinformed. I have no doubt, indeed, that, in
default of larger opportunity, they made condolence
remunerative. Further excavation was, for the present,
suspended, as implying an affront to the incomparable
Juno. The workmen departed, but the little
explorer still haunted the premises and sounded the
soil for his own entertainment. One day he came to
me with his usual ambiguous grimace. “The beautiful
hand of the Juno,” he murmured; “what has
become of it?”
“I 've not seen it since you called me to look at
her. I remember when I went away it was lying
on the grass near the excavation.”
“Where I placed it myself! After that it disappeared.
Ecco!”
“Do you suspect one of your workmen? Such a
fragment as that would bring more scudi than most
of them ever looked at.”
“Some, perhaps, are greater thieves than the others.
But if I were to call up the worst of them and accuse
him, the Count would interfere.”
“He must value that beautiful hand, nevertheless.”
The little expert in disinterment looked about him
and winked. “He values it so much that he himself
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purloined it. That 's my belief, and I think that the
less we say about it the better.”
“Purloined it, my dear sir? After all, it 's his
own property.”
“Not so much as that comes to! So beautiful a
creature is more or less the property of every one;
we 've all a right to look at her. But the Count
treats her as if she were a sacro-sanct image of the
Madonna. He keeps her under lock and key, and
pays her solitary visits. What does he do, after all?
When a beautiful woman is in stone, all he can do
is to look at her. And what does he do with that
precious hand? He keeps it in a silver box; he has
made a relic of it!” And this cynical personage
began to chuckle grotesquely and walked away.
He left me musing uncomfortably, and wondering
what the deuce he meant. The Count certainly
chose to make a mystery of the Juno, but this
seemed a natural incident of the first rapture of possession.
I was willing to wait for a free access to
her, and in the mean time I was glad to find that
there was a limit to his constitutional apathy. But
as the days elapsed I began to be conscious that his
enjoyment was not communicative, but strangely cold
and shy and sombre. That he should admire a marble
goddess was no reason for his despising mankind;
yet he really seemed to be making invidious
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comparisons between us. From this untender proscription
his charming wife was not excepted. At moments
when I tried to persuade myself that he was neither
worse nor better company than usual, her face condemned
my optimism. She said nothing, but she wore
a constant look of pathetic perplexity. She sat at times
with her eyes fixed on him with a kind of imploring
curiosity, as if pitying surprise held resentment yet
awhile in check. What passed between them in
private, I had, of course, no warrant to inquire. Nothing,
I imagined, — and that was the misery! It was
part of the misery, too, that he seemed impenetrable
to these mute glances, and looked over her head
with an air of superb abstraction. Occasionally he
noticed me looking at him in urgent deprecation,
and then for a moment his heavy eye would sparkle,
half, as it seemed, in defiant irony and half with a
strangely stifled impulse to justify himself. But from
his wife he kept his face inexorably averted; and
when she approached him with some persuasive caress,
he received it with an ill-concealed shudder. I
inwardly protested and raged. I grew to hate the
Count and everything that belonged to him. “I was
a thousand times right,” I cried; “an Italian count
may be mighty fine, but he won't wear! Give us
some wholesome young fellow of our own blood,
who 'll play us none of these dusky old-world tricks.
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Painter as I am, I 'll never recommend a picturesque
husband!” I lost my pleasure in the Villa, in the
purple shadows and glowing lights, the mossy marbles
and the long-trailing profile of the Alban Hills.
My painting stood still; everything looked ugly. I
sat and fumbled with my palette, and seemed to be
mixing mud with my colors. My head was stuffed
with dismal thoughts; an intolerable weight seemed
to lie upon my heart. The Count became, to my
imagination, a dark efflorescence of the evil germs
which history had implanted in his line. No wonder
he was foredoomed to be cruel. Was not cruelty a
tradition in his race, and crime an example? The
unholy passions of his forefathers stirred blindly in
his untaught nature and clamored dumbly for an
issue. What a heavy heritage it seemed to me, as I
reckoned it up in my melancholy musings, the Count's
interminable ancestry! Back to the profligate revival
of arts and vices, — back to the bloody medley of
mediæval wars, — back through the long, fitfully glaring
dusk of the early ages to its ponderous origin in
the solid Roman state, — back through all the darkness
of history it seemed to stretch, losing every
feeblest claim on my sympathies as it went. Such a
record was in itself a curse; and my poor girl had
expected it to sit as lightly and gratefully on her
consciousness as her feather on her hat! I have
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little idea how long this painful situation lasted. It
seemed the longer from my god-daughter's continued
reserve, and my inability to offer her a word of consolation.
A sensitive woman, disappointed in marriage,
exhausts her own ingenuity before she takes
counsel. The Count's preoccupations, whatever they
were, made him increasingly restless; he came and
went at random, with nervous abruptness; he took
long rides alone, and, as I inferred, rarely went through
the form of excusing himself to his wife; and still, as
time went on, he came no nearer explaining his mystery.
With the lapse of time, however, I confess that
my apprehensions began to be tempered with pity.
If I had expected to see him propitiate his urgent
ancestry by a crime, now that his native rectitude
seemed resolute to deny them this satisfaction, I felt
a sort of grudging gratitude. A man could n't be so
gratuitously sombre without being unhappy. He had
always treated me with that antique deference to
a grizzled beard for which elderly men reserve the
flower of their general tenderness for waning fashions,
and I thought it possible he might suffer me to lay
a healing hand upon his trouble. One evening, when
I had taken leave of my god-daughter and given her
my useless blessing in a silent kiss, I came out and
found the Count sitting in the garden in the mild
starlight, and staring at a mouldy Hermes, nestling
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in a clump of oleander. I sat down by him and informed
him roundly that his conduct needed an explanation.
He half turned his head, and his dark pupil
gleamed an instant.
“I understand,” he said, “you think me crazy!”
And he tapped his forehead.
“No, not crazy, but unhappy. And if unhappiness
runs its course too freely, of course, our poor wits are
sorely tried.”
He was silent awhile, and then, “I 'm not unhappy!”
he cried abruptly. “I 'm prodigiously happy.
You would n't believe the satisfaction I take in sitting
here and staring at that old weather-worn Hermes.
Formerly I used to be afraid of him: his frown used
to remind me of a little bushy-browed old priest who
taught me Latin and looked at me terribly over the
book when I stumbled in my Virgil. But now it
seems to me the friendliest, jolliest thing in the
world, and suggests the most delightful images. He
stood pouting his great lips in some old Roman's
garden two thousand years ago. He saw the sandalled
feet treading the alleys and the rose-crowned
heads bending over the wine; he knew the old feasts
and the old worship, the old Romans and the old gods.
As I sit here he speaks to me, in his own dumb way,
and describes it all! No, no, my friend, I 'm the
happiest of men!”
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I had denied that I thought he was crazy, but I
suddenly began to suspect it, for I found nothing reassuring
in this singular rhapsody. The Hermes, for
a wonder, had kept his nose; and when I reflected
that my dear Countess was being neglected for this
senseless pagan block, I secretly promised myself to
come the next day with a hammer and deal him
such a lusty blow as would make him too ridiculous
for a sentimental tête-à-tête. Meanwhile, however, the
Count's infatuation was no laughing matter, and I expressed
my sincerest conviction when I said, after a
pause, that I should recommend him to see either a
priest or a physician.
He burst into uproarious laughter. “A priest!
What should I do with a priest, or he with me? I
never loved them, and I feel less like beginning than
ever. A priest, my dear friend,” he repeated, laying
his hand on my arm, “don't set a priest at
me, if you value his sanity! My confession would
frighten the poor man out of his wits. As for a doctor,
I never was better in my life; and unless,” he
added abruptly, rising, and eying me askance, “you
want to poison me, in Christian charity I advise you
to leave me alone.”
Decidedly, the Count was unsound, and I had no
heart, for some days, to go back to the Villa. How
should I treat him, what stand should I take, what
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course did Martha's happiness and dignity demand?
I wandered about Rome, revolving these questions,
and one afternoon found myself in the Pantheon. A
light spring shower had begun to fall, and I hurried
for refuge into the great temple which its Christian
altars have but half converted into a church. No
Roman monument retains a deeper impress of ancient
life, or verifies more forcibly those prodigious beliefs
which we are apt to regard as dim fables. The huge
dusky dome seems to the spiritual ear to hold a
vague reverberation of pagan worship, as a gathered
shell holds the rumor of the sea. Three or four persons
were scattered before the various altars; another
stood near the centre, beneath the aperture in the
dome. As I drew near I perceived this was the
Count. He was planted with his hands behind him,
looking up first at the heavy rain-clouds, as they
crossed the great bull's-eye, and then down at the
besprinkled circle on the pavement. In those days
the pavement was rugged and cracked and magnificently
old, and this ample space, in free communion
with the weather, had become as mouldy and mossy
and verdant as a strip of garden soil. A tender
herbage had sprung up in the crevices of the slabs,
and the little microscopic shoots were twinkling in
the rain. This great weather-current, through the uncapped
vault, deadens most effectively the customary
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odors of incense and tallow, and transports one to
a faith that was on friendly terms with nature. It
seemed to have performed this office for the Count;
his face wore an indefinable expression of ecstasy,
and he was so rapt in contemplation that it was
some time before he noticed me. The sun was struggling
through the clouds without, and yet a thin rain
continued to fall and came drifting down into our
gloomy enclosure in a sort of illuminated drizzle.
The Count watched it with the fascinated stare of a
child watching a fountain, and then turned away,
pressing his hand to his brow, and walked over to
one of the ornamental altars. Here he again stood
staring, but in a moment wheeled about and returned
to his former place. Just then he recognized me,
and perceived, I suppose, the puzzled gaze I must
have fixed on him. He saluted me frankly with his
hand, and at last came toward me. I fancied that he
was in a kind of nervous tremor and was trying to
appear calm.
“This is the best place in Rome,” he murmured.
“It 's worth fifty St. Peters'. But do you know I
never came here till the other day? I left it to the
forestieri. They go about with their red books, and
read about this and that, and think they know it.
Ah! you must feel it, — feel the beauty and fitness
of that great open skylight. Now, only the wind and
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the rain, the sun and the cold, come down; but of old—
of old” — and he touched my arm and gave me a
strange smile — “the pagan gods and goddesses used
to come sailing through it and take their places at
their altars. What a procession, when the eyes of
faith could see it! Those are the things they have
given us instead!” And he gave a pitiful shrug. “I
should like to pull down their pictures, overturn their
candlesticks, and poison their holy-water!”
“My dear Count,” I said gently, “you should tolerate
people's honest beliefs. Would you renew the
Inquisition, and in the interest of Jupiter and Mercury?”
“People would n't tolerate my belief, if they guessed
it!” he cried. “There 's been a great talk about the
pagan persecutions; but the Christians persecuted as
well, and the old gods were worshipped in caves and
woods as well as the new. And none the worse for
that! It was in caves and woods and streams, in earth
and air and water, they dwelt. And there — and here,
too, in spite of all your Christian lustrations — a son
of old Italy may find them still!”
He had said more than he meant, and his mask had
fallen. I looked at him hard, and felt a sudden outgush
of the compassion we always feel for a creature
irresponsibly excited. I seemed to touch the source
of his trouble, and my relief was great, for my
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discovery made me feel like bursting into laughter. But
I contented myself with smiling benignantly. He
looked back at me suspiciously, as if to judge how far
he had betrayed himself; and in his glance I read,
somehow, that he had a conscience we could take hold
of. In my gratitude, I was ready to thank any gods
he pleased. “Take care, take care,” I said, “you 're
saying things which if the sacristan there were to hear
and report —!” And I passed my hand through his
arm and led him away.
I was startled and shocked, but I was also amused
and comforted. The Count had suddenly become for
me a delightfully curious phenomenon, and I passed
the rest of the day in meditating on the strange ineffaceability
of race-characteristics. A sturdy young
Latin I had called Camillo; sturdier, indeed, than I
had dreamed him! Discretion was now misplaced, and
on the morrow I spoke to my god-daughter. She had
lately been hoping, I think, that I would help her to
unburden her heart, for she immediately gave way to
tears and confessed that she was miserable. “At first,”
she said, “I thought it was all fancy, and not his tenderness
that was growing less, but my exactions that
were growing greater. But suddenly it settled upon
me like a mortal chill, — the conviction that he had
ceased to care for me, that something had come between
us. And the puzzling thing has been the want
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of possible cause in my own conduct, or of any sign that
there is another woman in the case. I have racked my
brain to discover what I had said or done or thought
to displease him! And yet he goes about like a man
too deeply injured to complain. He has never uttered
a harsh word or given me a reproachful look. He has
simply renounced me. I have dropped out of his
life.”
She spoke with such an appealing tremor in her
voice that I was on the point of telling her that I had
guessed the riddle, and that this was half the battle.
But I was afraid of her incredulity. My solution was
so fantastic, so apparently far-fetched, so absurd, that I
resolved to wait for convincing evidence. To obtain
it, I continued to watch the Count, covertly and cautiously,
but with a vigilance which disinterested curiosity
now made intensely keen. I returned to my
painting, and neglected no pretext for hovering about
the gardens and the neighborhood of the Casino. The
Count, I think, suspected my designs, or at least my
suspicions, and would have been glad to remember just
what he had suffered himself to say to me in the Pantheon.
But it deepened my interest in his extraordinary
situation that, in so far as I could read his deeply
brooding face, he seemed to have grudgingly pardoned
me. He gave me a glance occasionally, as he passed
me, in which a sort of dumb desire for help appeared
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to struggle with the instinct of mistrust. I was willing
enough to help him, but the case was prodigiously delicate,
and I wished to master the symptoms. Meanwhile
I worked and waited and wondered. Ah! I
wondered, you may be sure, with an interminable wonder;
and, turn it over as I would, I could n't get used
to my idea. Sometimes it offered itself to me with
a perverse fascination which deprived me of all wish to
interfere. The Count took the form of a precious psychological
study, and refined feeling seemed to dictate
a tender respect for his delusion. I envied him the
force of his imagination, and I used sometimes to close
my eyes with a vague desire that when I opened them
I might find Apollo under the opposite tree, lazily kissing
his flute, or see Diana hurrying with long steps
down the ilex-walk. But for the most part my host
seemed to me simply an unhappy young man, with an
unwholesome mental twist which should be smoothed
away as speedily as possible. If the remedy was to
match the disease, however, it would have to be an ingenious
compound!
One evening, having bidden my god-daughter good
night, I had started on my usual walk to my lodgings
in Rome. Five minutes after leaving the villa-gate I
discovered that I had left my eye-glass — an object
in constant use — behind me. I immediately remembered
that, while painting, I had broken the string
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which fastened it round my neck, and had hooked it
provisionally upon a twig of a flowering-almond tree
within arm's reach. Shortly afterwards I had gathered
up my things and retired, unmindful of the glass; and
now, as I needed it to read the evening paper at the
Caffè Greco, there was no alternative but to retrace my
steps and detach it from its twig. I easily found it,
and lingered awhile to note the curious night-aspect of
the spot I had been studying by daylight. The night
was magnificent, and full-charged with the breath of
the early Roman spring. The moon was rising fast and
flinging her silver checkers into the heavy masses of
shadow. Watching her at play, I strolled farther and
suddenly came in sight of the Casino.
Just then the moon, which for a moment had been
concealed, touched with a white ray a small marble
figure which adorned the pediment of this rather factitious
little structure. Its sudden illumination suggested
that a rarer spectacle was at hand, and that the
same influence must be vastly becoming to the imprisoned
Juno. The door of the Casino was, as usual,
locked, but the moonlight was flooding the high-placed
windows so generously that my curiosity became obstinate—
and inventive. I dragged a garden-seat round
from the portico, placed it on end, and succeeded in
climbing to the top of it and bringing myself abreast
of one of the windows. The casement yielded to my
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pressure, turned on its hinges, and showed me what
I had been looking for, — Juno visited by Diana. The
beautiful image stood bathed in the radiant flood and
shining with a purity which made her most persuasively
divine. If by day her mellow complexion suggested
faded gold, her substance now might have
passed for polished silver. The effect was almost terrible;
beauty so eloquent could hardly be inanimate.
This was my foremost observation. I leave you to
fancy whether my next was less interesting. At some
distance from the foot of the statue, just out of the
light, I perceived a figure lying flat on the pavement,
prostrate apparently with devotion. I can hardly tell
you how it completed the impressiveness of the scene
It marked the shining image as a goddess indeed, and
seemed to throw a sort of conscious pride into her
stony mask. I of course immediately recognized this
recumbent worshipper as the Count, and while I stood
gazing, as if to help me to read the full meaning of
his attitude, the moonlight travelled forward and covered
his breast and face. Then I saw that his eyes
were closed, and that he was either asleep or swooning.
Watching him attentively, I detected his even
respirations, and judged there was no reason for alarm.
The moonlight blanched his face, which seemed already
pale with weariness. He had come into the presence
of the Juno in obedience to that fabulous passion of
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which the symptoms had so wofully perplexed us, and,
exhausted either by compliance or resistance, he had
sunk down at her feet in a stupid sleep. The bright
moonshine soon aroused him, however; he muttered
something and raised himself, vaguely staring. Then
recognizing his situation, he rose and stood for some
time gazing fixedly at the glowing image with an
expression which I fancied was not that of wholly
unprotesting devotion. He uttered a string of broken
words of which I was unable to catch the meaning,
and then, after another pause and a long, melancholy
moan, he turned slowly to the door. As rapidly and
noiselessly as possible I descended from my post of
vigilance and passed behind the Casino, and in a moment
I heard the sound of the closing lock and of
his departing footsteps.
The next day, meeting the little antiquarian in the
grounds, I shook my finger at him with what I meant
he should consider portentous gravity. But he only
grinned like the malicious earth-gnome to which I
had always compared him, and twisted his mustache
as if my menace was a capital joke. “If you dig any
more holes here,” I said, “you shall be thrust into the
deepest of them, and have the earth packed down on
top of you. We have made enough discoveries, and
we want no more statues. Your Juno has almost
ruined us.”
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He burst out laughing. “I expected as much,” he
cried; “I had my notions!”
“What did you expect?”
“That the Signor Conte would begin and say his
prayers to her.”
“Good heavens! Is the case so common? Why
did you expect it?”
“On the contrary, the case is rare. But I 've fumbled
so long in the monstrous heritage of antiquity,
that I have learned a multitude of secrets; learned that
ancient relics may work modern miracles. There 's
a pagan element in all of us, — I don't speak for
you, illustrissimi forestieri, — and the old gods have
still their worshippers. The old spirit still throbs
here and there, and the Signor Conte has his share
of it. He 's a good fellow, but, between ourselves,
he 's an impossible Christian!” And this singular
personage resumed his impertinent hilarity.
“If your previsions were so distinct,” I said,
“you ought to have given me a hint of them. I
should have sent your spadesmen walking.”
“Ah, but the Juno is so beautiful!”
“Her beauty be blasted! Can you tell me what
has become of the Contessa's? To rival the Juno,
she 's turning to marble herself.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, but the Juno
is worth fifty thousand scudi!”
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“I 'd give a hundred thousand,” I said, “to have
her annihilated. Perhaps, after all, I shall want you
to dig another hole.”
“At your service!” he answered, with a flourish;
and we separated.
A couple of days later I dined, as I often did,
with my host and hostess, and met the Count face
to face for the first time since his prostration in
the Casino. He bore the traces of it, and sat plunged
in sombre distraction. I fancied that the path of
the antique faith was not strewn with flowers, and
that the Juno was becoming daily a harder mistress
to serve. Dinner was scarcely over before he rose
from table and took up his hat. As he did so,
passing near his wife, he faltered a moment, stopped
and gave her — for the first time, I imagine — that
vaguely imploring look which I had often caught.
She moved her lips in inarticulate sympathy and
put out her hands. He drew her towards him,
kissed her with a kind of angry ardor, and strode
away. The occasion was propitious, and further delay
unnecessary.
“What I have to tell you is very strange,” I
said to the Countess, “very fantastic, very incredible.
But perhaps you 'll not find it so bad as you feared.
There is a woman in the case! Your enemy is the
Juno. The Count — how shall I say it?—the Count
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takes her au sérieux.” She was silent; but after a
moment she touched my arm with her hand, and
I knew she meant that I had spoken her own belief.
“You admired his antique simplicity: you see
how far it goes. He has reverted to the faith of
his fathers. Dormant through the ages, that imperious
statue has silently aroused it. He believes in
the pedigrees you used to dog's-ear your School Mythology
with trying to get by heart. In a word,
dear child, Camillo is a pagan!”
“I suppose you 'll be terribly shocked,” she answered,
“if I say that he 's welcome to any faith, if
he will only share it with me. I 'll believe in Jupiter,
if he 'll bid me! My sorrow 's not for that:
let my husband be himself! My sorrow is for the
gulf of silence and indifference that has burst open between
us. His Juno 's the reality; I 'm the fiction!”
“I 've lately become reconciled to this gulf of silence,
and to your fading for a while into a fiction.
After the fable, the moral! The poor fellow has but
half succumbed: the other half protests. The modern
man is shut out in the darkness with his incomparable
wife. How can he have failed to feel —
vaguely and grossly if it must have been, but in
every throb of his heart — that you are a more perfect
experiment of nature, a riper fruit of time, than
those primitive persons for whom Juno was a terror
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and Venus an example? He pays you the compliment
of believing you an inconvertible modern. He
has crossed the Acheron, but he has left you behind,
as a pledge to the present. We 'll bring him
back to redeem it. The old ancestral ghosts ought
to be propitiated when a pretty creature like you
has sacrificed the fragrance of her life. He has
proved himself one of the Valerii; we shall see to
it that he is the last, and yet that his decease
shall leave the Conte Camillo in excellent health.”
I spoke with confidence which I had partly felt,
for it seemed to me that if the Count was to be
touched, it must be by the sense that his strange
spiritual excursion had not made his wife detest him.
We talked long and to a hopeful end, for before I
went away my god-daughter expressed the desire to
go out and look at the Juno. “I was afraid of her
almost from the first,” she said, “and have hardly
seen her since she was set up in the Casino. Perhaps
I can learn a lesson from her, — perhaps I can
guess how she charms him!”
For a moment I hesitated, with the fear that we
might intrude upon the Count's devotions. Then, as
something in the poor girl's face suggested that she
had thought of this and felt a sudden impulse to
pluck victory from the heart of danger, I bravely
offered her my arm. The night was cloudy, and on
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this occasion, apparently, the triumphant goddess was
to depend upon her own lustre. But as we approached
the Casino I saw that the door was ajar, and that there
was lamplight within. The lamp was suspended in
front of the image, and it showed us that the place
was empty. But the Count had lately been there.
Before the statue stood a roughly extemporized altar,
composed of a nameless fragment of antique marble,
engraved with an illegible Greek inscription. We
seemed really to stand in a pagan temple, and we
gazed at the serene divinity with an impulse of spiritual
reverence. It ought to have been deepened, I
suppose, but it was rudely checked, by our observing
a curious glitter on the face of the low altar. A second
glance showed us it was blood!
My companion looked at me in pale horror, and
turned away with a cry. A swarm of hideous conjectures
pressed into my mind, and for a moment I
was sickened. But at last I remembered that there
is blood and blood, and the Latins were posterior to
the cannibals.
“Be sure it 's very innocent,” I said; “a lamb, a kid,
or a sucking calf!” But it was enough for her nerves
and her conscience that it was a crimson trickle, and
she returned to the house in sad agitation. The rest
of the night was not passed in a way to restore her
to calmness. The Count had not come in, and she
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sat up for him from hour to hour. I remained with
her and smoked my cigar as composedly as I might;
but internally I wondered what in horror's name had
become of him. Gradually, as the hours wore away,
I shaped a vague interpretation of these dusky portents, —
an interpretation none the less valid and devoutly
desired for its being tolerably cheerful. The
blood-drops on the altar, I mused, were the last instalment
of his debt and the end of his delusion. They
had been a happy necessity, for he was, after all, too
gentle a creature not to hate himself for having shed
them, not to abhor so cruelly insistent an idol. He
had wandered away to recover himself in solitude,
and he would come back to us with a repentant heart
and an inquiring mind! I should certainly have believed
all this more easily, however, if I could have
heard his footstep in the hall. Toward dawn, scepticism
threatened to creep in with the gray light, and
I restlessly betook myself to the portico. Here in a
few moments I saw him cross the grass, heavy-footed,
splashed with mud, and evidently excessively tired.
He must have been walking all night, and his face
denoted that his spirit had been as restless as his body.
He paused near me, and before he entered the house
he stopped, looked at me a moment, and then held
out his hand. I grasped it warmly, and it seemed to
me to throb with all that he could not utter.
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“Will you see your wife?” I asked.
He passed his hand over his eyes and shook his
head. “Not now — not yet — some time!” he answered.
I was disappointed, but I convinced her, I think,
that he had cast out the devil. She felt, poor girl, a
pardonable desire to celebrate the event. I returned
to my lodging, spent the day in Rome, and came
back to the Villa toward dusk. I was told that the
Countess was in the grounds. I looked for her
cautiously at first, for I thought it just possible I
might interrupt the natural consequences of a reconciliation;
but failing to meet her, I turned toward
the Casino, and found myself face to face with the
little explorer.
“Does your excellency happen to have twenty yards
of stout rope about him?” he asked gravely.
“Do you want to hang yourself for the trouble
you 've stood sponsor to?” I answered.
“It 's a hanging matter, I promise you. The Countess
has given orders. You 'll find her in the Casino.
Sweet-voiced as she is, she knows how to make her
orders understood.”
At the door of the Casino stood half a dozen of
the laborers on the place, looking vaguely solemn,
like outstanding dependants at a superior funeral.
The Countess was within, in a position which was an
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answer to the surveyor's riddle. She stood with her
eyes fixed on the Juno, who had been removed from
her pedestal and lay stretched in her magnificent length
upon a rude litter.
“Do you understand?” she said. “She 's beautiful,
she 's noble, she 's precious, but she must go back!”
And, with a passionate gesture, she seemed to indicate
an open grave.
I was hugely delighted, but I thought it discreet
to stroke my chin and look sober. “She 's worth fifty
thousand scudi.”
She shook her head sadly. “If we were to sell
her to the Pope and give the money to the poor, it
would n't profit us. She must go back, — she must
go back! We must smother her beauty in the dreadful
earth. It makes me feel almost as if she were
alive; but it came to me last night with overwhelming
force, when my husband came in and refused to
see me, that he 'll not be himself as long as she is
above ground. To cut the knot we must bury her!
If I had only thought of it before!”
“Not before!” I said, shaking my head in turn.
“Heaven reward our sacrifice now!”
The little surveyor, when he reappeared, seemed
hardly like an agent of the celestial influences, but
he was deft and active, which was more to the point.
Every now and then he uttered some half-articulate
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lament, by way of protest against the Countess's
cruelty; but I saw him privately scanning the recumbent
image with an eye which seemed to foresee
a malicious glee in standing on a certain unmarked
spot on the turf and grinning till people stared. He
had brought back an abundance of rope, and having
summoned his assistants, who vigorously lifted the
litter, he led the way to the original excavation,
which had been left unclosed with the project of
further researches. By the time we reached the
edge of the grave the evening had fallen and the
beauty of our marble victim was shrouded in a
dusky veil. No one spoke, — if not exactly for shame,
at least for regret. Whatever our plea, our performance
looked, at least, monstrously profane. The ropes
were adjusted and the Juno was slowly lowered into
her earthy bed. The Countess took a handful of earth
and dropped it solemnly on her breast. “May it lie
lightly, but forever!” she said.
“Amen!” cried the little surveyor with a strange
mocking inflection; and he gave us a bow, as he departed,
which betrayed an agreeable consciousness of
knowing where fifty thousand scudi were buried. His
underlings had another cask of wine, the result of
which, for them, was a suspension of all consciousness,
and a subsequent irreparable confusion of memory
as to where they had plied their spades.
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The Countess had not yet seen her husband, who
had again apparently betaken himself to communion
with the great god Pan. I was of course unwilling
to leave her to encounter alone the results of her
momentous deed. She wandered into the drawing-room
and pretended to occupy herself with a bit of
embroidery, but in reality she was bravely composing
herself for an “explanation.” I took up a book, but
it held my attention as feebly. As the evening wore
away I heard a movement on the threshold and saw
the Count lifting the tapestried curtain which masked
the door, and looking silently at his wife. His eyes
were brilliant, but not angry. He had missed the
Juno — and drawn a long breath! The Countess
kept her eyes fixed on her work, and drew her silken
stitches like an image of wifely contentment. The
image seemed to fascinate him: he came in slowly,
almost on tiptoe, walked to the chimney-piece, and
stood there in a sort of rapt contemplation. What
had passed, what was passing, in his mind, I leave
to your own apprehension. My god-daughter's hand
trembled as it rose and fell, and the color came into
her cheek. At last she raised her eyes and sustained
the gaze in which all his returning faith seemed concentrated.
He hesitated a moment, as if her very
forgiveness kept the gulf open between them, and
then he strode forward, fell on his two knees and
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buried his head in her lap. I departed as the Count
had come in, on tiptoe.
He never became, if you will, a thoroughly modern
man; but one day, years after, when a visitor to whom
he was showing his cabinet became inquisitive as to
a marble hand, suspended in one of its inner recesses,
he looked grave and turned the lock on it. “It is
the hand of a beautiful creature,” he said, “whom I
once greatly admired.”
“Ah, — a Roman?” said the gentleman, with a
smirk.
“A Greek,” said the Count, with a frown.
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Eugene Pickering.
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IT was at Homburg, several years ago, before the
gaming had been suppressed. The evening was
very warm, and all the world was gathered on the
terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it, to
listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world,
rather, for the crowd was equally dense in the gaming-rooms,
around the tables. Everywhere the crowd was
great. The night was perfect, the season was at its
height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long
shafts of unnatural light into the dusky woods, and
now and then, in the intervals of the music, one might
almost hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic
call of the croupiers rise above the watching silence
of the saloons. I had been strolling with a friend, and
we at last prepared to sit down. Chairs, however, were
scarce. I had captured one, but it seemed no easy
matter to find a mate for it. I was on the point of
giving up in despair and proposing an adjournment to
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the damask divans of the Kursaal, when I observed
a young man lounging back on one of the objects of
my quest, with his feet supported on the rounds of
another. This was more than his share of luxury,
and I promptly approached him. He evidently belonged
to the race which has the credit of knowing
best, at home and abroad, how to make itself comfortable;
but something in his appearance suggested that
his present attitude was the result of inadvertence
rather than egotism. He was staring at the conductor
of the orchestra and listening intently to the
music. His hands were locked round his long legs,
and his mouth was half open, with rather a foolish
air. “There are so few chairs,” I said, “that I must
beg you to surrender this second one.” He started,
stared, blushed, pushed the chair away with awkward
alacrity, and murmured something about not having
noticed that he had it.
“What an odd-looking youth!” said my companion,
who had watched me, as I seated myself beside
her.
“Yes, he 's odd-looking; but what is odder still is
that I 've seen him before, that his face is familiar to
me, and yet that I can't place him.” The orchestra
was playing the Prayer from Der Freischütz, but Weber's
lovely music only deepened the blank of memory.
Who the deuce was he? where, when, how, had I
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known him? It seemed extraordinary that a face
should be at once so familiar and so strange. We
had our backs turned to him, so that I could not look
at him again. When the music ceased, we left our
places and I went to consign my friend to her mamma
on the terrace. In passing, I saw that my young
man had departed; I concluded that he only strikingly
resembled some one I knew. But who in the
world was it he resembled? The ladies went off to
their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into
the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at
roulette. Gradually, I filtered through to the inner
edge, near the table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling
friend stationed opposite to me. He was watching
the game, with his hands in his pockets; but,
singularly enough, now that I observed him at my
leisure, the look of familiarity quite faded from his
face. What had made us call his appearance odd was
his great length and leanness of limb, his long, white
neck, his blue, prominent eyes, and his ingenuous,
unconscious absorption in the scene before him. He
was not handsome, certainly, but he looked peculiarly
amiable; and if his overt wonderment savored a trifle
of rurality, it was an agreeable contrast to the hard,
inexpressive masks about him. He was the verdant
offshoot, I said to myself, of some ancient, rigid stem;
he had been brought up in the quietest of homes, and
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was having his first glimpse of life. I was curious to
see whether he would put anything on the table; he
evidently felt the temptation, but he seemed paralyzed
by chronic embarrassment. He stood gazing at the
rattling cross-fire of losses and gains, shaking his loose
gold in his pocket, and every now and then passing
his hand nervously over his eyes.
Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play
to have many thoughts for each other; but before long
I noticed a lady who evidently had an eye for her
neighbors as well as for the table. She was seated
about half-way between my friend and me, and I
presently observed that she was trying to catch his
eye. Though at Homburg, as people said, “one could
never be sure,” I yet doubted whether this lady was
one of those whose especial vocation it was to catch
a gentleman's eye. She was youthful rather than
elderly, and pretty rather than plain; indeed, a few
minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought her
wonderfully pretty. She had a charming gray eye and
a good deal of blond hair, disposed in picturesque disorder;
and though her features were meagre and her
complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental,
artificial gracefulness. She was dressed in white muslin
very much puffed and frilled, but a trifle the worse
for wear, relieved here and there by a pale blue ribbon.
I used to flatter myself on guessing at people's
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nationality by their faces, and, as a rule, I guessed
aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived,
was a German, — such a German, somehow,
as I had seen imaged in literature. Was she not a
friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a
muse, a priestess of æsthetics, — something in the
way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however,
were speedily merged in wonderment as to what
my different friend was making of her. She caught
his eye at last, and raising an ungloved hand, covered
altogether with blue-gemmed rings, — turquoises, sapphires,
and lapis, — she beckoned him to come to her.
The gesture was executed with a sort of practised
coolness and accompanied with an appealing smile.
He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to suppose
that the invitation was addressed to him; then,
as it was immediately repeated, with a good deal of
intensity, he blushed to the roots of his hair, wavered
awkwardly, and at last made his way to the lady's
chair. By the time he reached it he was crimson
and wiping his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief.
She tilted back, looked up at him with the same smile,
laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said something,
interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the
head. She was asking him, evidently, if he had ever
played, and he was saying no. Old players have a
fancy that when luck has turned her back on them,
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they can put her into good-humor again by having
their stakes placed by an absolute novice. Our young
man's physiognomy had seemed to his new acquaintance
to express the perfection of inexperience, and,
like a practical woman, she had determined to make
him serve her turn. Unlike most of her neighbors,
she had no little pile of gold before her, but she drew
from her pocket a double napoleon, put it into his
hand, and bade him place it on a number of his own
choosing. He was evidently filled with a sort of
delightful trouble; he enjoyed the adventure, but he
shrank from the hazard. I would have staked the
coin on its being his companion's last; for, although
she still smiled intently as she watched his hesitation,
there was anything but indifference in her pale,
pretty face. Suddenly, in desperation, he reached over
and laid the piece on the table. My attention was
diverted at this moment by my having to make way
for a lady with a great many flounces, before me, to
give up her chair to a rustling friend to whom she had
promised it; when I again looked across at the lady
in white muslin, she was drawing in a very goodly
pile of gold with her little blue-gemmed claw. Good
luck and bad, at the Homburg tables, were equally
undemonstrative, and this fair adventuress rewarded
her young friend for the sacrifice of his innocence
with a single, rapid, upward smile. He had innocence
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enough left, however, to look round the table with a
gleeful, conscious laugh, in the midst of which his
eyes encountered my own. Then, suddenly, the familiar
look which had vanished from his face flickered
up unmistakably; it was the boyish laugh of a boyhood's
friend. Stupid fellow that I was, I had been
looking at Eugene Pickering!
Though I lingered on for some time longer, he
failed to recognize me. Recognition, I think, had
kindled a smile in my own face; but, less fortunate
than he, I suppose my smile had ceased to be boyish.
Now that luck had faced about again, his companion
played for herself, — played and won hand over hand.
At last she seemed disposed to rest on her gains, and
proceeded to bury them in the folds of her muslin.
Pickering had staked nothing for himself, but as he
saw her prepare to withdraw, he offered her a double
napoleon and begged her to place it. She shook her
head with great decision, and seemed to bid him put
it up again; but he, still blushing a good deal, urged
her with awkward ardor, and she at last took it from
him, looked at him a moment fixedly, and laid it on
a number. A moment later the croupier was raking
it in. She gave the young man a little nod which
seemed to say, “I told you so”; he glanced round
the table again and laughed; she left her chair,
and he made a way for her through the crowd.
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Before going home I took a turn on the terrace and
looked down on the esplanade. The lamps were out,
but the warm starlight vaguely illumined a dozen
figures scattered in couples. One of these figures, I
thought, was a lady in a white dress.
I had no intention of letting Pickering go without
reminding him of our old acquaintance. He had been
a very droll boy, and I was curious to see what had
become of his drollery. I looked for him the next
morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last
discovered his whereabouts. But he was out, the
waiter said; he had gone to walk an hour before. I
went my way, confident that I should meet him in
the evening. It was the rule with the Homburg
world to spend its evenings at the Kursaal, and Pickering,
apparently, had already discovered a good reason
for not being an exception. One of the charms
of Homburg is the fact that of a hot day you may
walk about for a whole afternoon in unbroken shade.
The umbrageous gardens of the Kursaal mingle with
the charming Hardtwald, which, in turn, melts away
into the wooded slopes of the Taunus Mountains.
To the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for
an hour through mossy glades and the still, perpendicular
gloom of the fir woods. Suddenly, on the
grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a young
man stretched at his length in the sun-checkered
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shade and kicking his heels toward a patch of blue
sky. My step was so noiseless on the turf, that before
he saw me, I had time to recognize Pickering
again. He looked as if he had been lounging there
for some time; his hair was tossed about as if he
had been sleeping; on the grass near him, beside
his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived
me he jerked himself forward, and I stood
looking at him without elucidating, — purposely, to
give him a chance to recognize me. He put on his
glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up
at me with an air of general trustfulness, but without
a sign of knowing me. So at last I introduced
myself. Then he jumped up and grasped my hands
and stared and blushed and laughed and began a
dozen random questions, ending with a demand as
to how in the world I had known him.
“Why, you 're not changed so utterly,” I said, “and,
after all, it 's but fifteen years since you used to do
my Latin exercises for me.”
“Not changed, eh?” he answered, still smiling, and
yet speaking with a sort of ingenuous dismay.
Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been
in those Latin days a victim of juvenile irony. He
used to bring a bottle of medicine to school and
take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and
every day at two o'clock, half an hour before the rest
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of us were liberated, an old nurse with bushy eyebrows
came and fetched him away in a carriage.
His extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his
bottle of medicine, which suggested a vague analogy
with the phial of poison in the tragedy, caused him
to be called Juliet. Certainly, Romeo's sweetheart
hardly suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing
joke in Verona. Remembering these things, I
hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was
still the same good fellow who used to do my Latin
for me. “We were capital friends, you know,” I
went on, “then and afterwards.”
“Yes, we were very good friends,” he said, “and
that makes it the stranger I should n't have known
you. For you know as a boy I never had many
friends, nor as a man either. You see,” he added,
passing his hand over his eyes, “I 'm dazed and bewildered
at finding myself for the first time — alone.”
And he jerked back his shoulders nervously and
threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted
position. I wondered whether the old nurse
with the bushy eyebrows had remained attached to
his person up to a recent period, and discovered
presently that, virtually at least, she had. We had
the whole summer day before us, and we sat down
on the grass together and overhauled our old memories.
It was as if we had stumbled upon an ancient
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cupboard in some dusky corner, and rummaged out
a heap of childish playthings, — tin soldiers and torn
story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is
what we remembered, between us.
He had made but a short stay at school, — not
because he was tormented, for he thought it so fine
to be at school at all that he held his tongue at
home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine
bottle; but because his father thought he was
learning bad manners. This he imparted to me in
confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased
my oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who
had appeared to me, in glimpses, as a sort of high-priest
of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower, —
a fact which seemed to produce in him a
sort of preternatural concentration of parental dignity.
He was a majestic man, with a hooked nose,
a keen, dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions
of his own as to how a boy — or his boy, at any
rate — should be brought up. First and foremost,
he was to be a “gentleman”; which seemed to mean,
chiefly, that he was always to wear a muffler and
gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread
and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment,
seemed hostile to these observances, and Eugene
was taken home again, to be moulded into
urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was
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provided for him, and a single select companion was
prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell upon me,
born as I was under quite another star; my parents
were appealed to, and I was allowed for a few
months to have my lessons with Eugene. The tutor,
I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene
was treated like a prince, while I got all the questions
and the raps with the ruler. And yet I remember
never being jealous of my happier comrade,
and striking up, for the time, a huge boyish friendship.
He had a watch and a pony and a great
store of picture-books, but my envy of these luxuries
was tempered by a vague compassion, which left me
free to be generous. I could go out to play alone,
I could button my jacket myself, and sit up till I
was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a step
without a prior petition, or spend half an hour in
the garden without a formal report of it when he
came in. My parents, who had no desire to see me
inoculated with importunate virtues, sent me back to
school at the end of six months. After that I never
saw Eugene. His father went to live in the country,
to protect the lad's morals, and Eugene faded, in
reminiscence, into a pale image of the depressing
effects of education. I think I vaguely supposed
that he would melt into thin air, and indeed began
gradually to doubt of his existence and to regard
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him as one of the foolish things one ceased to believe
in as one grew older. It seemed natural that
I should have no more news of him. Our present
meeting was my first assurance that he had really
survived all that muffling and coddling.
I observed him now with a good deal of interest, for
he was a rare phenomenon, — the fruit of a system
persistently and uninterruptedly applied. He struck
me, in a fashion, like certain young monks I had seen
in Italy; he had the same candid, unsophisticated
cloister-face. His education had been really almost
monastic. It had found him, evidently, a very compliant,
yielding subject; his gentle, affectionate spirit
was not one of those that need to be broken. It had
bequeathed him, now that he stood on the threshold
of the great world, an extraordinary freshness of impression
and alertness of desire, and I confess that, as
I looked at him and met his transparent blue eye, I
trembled for the unwarned innocence of such a soul.
I became aware, gradually, that the world had already
wrought a certain work upon him and roused him to a
restless, troubled self-consciousness. Everything about
him pointed to an experience from which he had been
debarred; his whole organism trembled with a dawning
sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This appealing
tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept
shifting himself about on the grass, thrusting his hands
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through his hair, wiping a light perspiration from his
forehead, breaking out to say something and rushing
off to something else. Our sudden meeting had
greatly excited him, and I saw that I was likely to
profit by a certain overflow of sentimental fermentation.
I could do so with a good conscience, for all this
trepidation filled me with a great friendliness.
“It 's nearly fifteen years, as you say,” he began,
“since you used to call me `butter-fingers' for always
missing the ball. That 's a long time to give an account
of, and yet they have been, for me, such eventless,
monotonous years, that I could almost tell their
history in ten words. You, I suppose, have had all
kinds of adventures and travelled over half the world.
I remember you had a turn for deeds of daring; I used
to think you a little Captain Cook in roundabouts, for
climbing the garden fence to get the ball, when I had
let it fly over. I climbed no fences then or since. You
remember my father, I suppose, and the great care he
took of me? I lost him some five months ago. From
those boyish days up to his death we were always
together. I don't think that in fifteen years we spent
half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country,
winter and summer, seeing but three or four people. I
had a succession of tutors, and a library to browse
about in; I assure you I 'm a tremendous scholar. It
was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for
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a young man grown, but I never knew it. I was perfectly
happy.” He spoke of his father at some length
and with a respect which I privately declined to emulate.
Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a cold
egotist, unable to conceive of any larger vocation for
his son than to became a mechanical reflection of himself.
“I know I 've been strangely brought up,” said
my friend, “and that the result is something grotesque;
but my education, piece by piece, in detail, became one
of my father's personal habits, as it were. He took a
fancy to it at first through his intense affection for my
mother and the sort of worship he paid her memory.
She died at my birth, and as I grew up, it seems that I
bore an extraordinary likeness to her. Besides, my
father had a great many theories; he prided himself on
his conservative opinions; he thought the usual American
laissez aller in education was a very vulgar practice,
and that children were not to grow up like dusty
thorns by the wayside. So you see,” Pickering went
on, smiling and blushing, and yet with something of
the irony of vain regret, “I 'm a regular garden plant.
I 've been watched and watered and pruned, and, if
there is any virtue in tending, I ought to take the
prize at a flower-show. Some three years ago my
father's health broke down and he was kept very
much within doors. So, although I was a man grown,
I lived altogether at home. If I was out of his sight
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for a quarter of an hour he sent for me. He had
severe attacks of neuralgia, and he used to sit at his
window, basking in the sun. He kept an opera-glass
at hand, and when I was out in the garden he used to
watch me with it. A few days before his death, I was
twenty-seven years old, and the most innocent youth,
I suppose, on the continent. After he died I missed
him greatly,” Pickering continued, evidently with no
intention of making an epigram. “I stayed at home,
in a sort of dull stupor. It seemed as if life offered
itself to me for the first time, and yet as if I did n't
know how to take hold of it.”
He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which
increased as he talked, and there was a singular contrast
between the meagre experience he described and
a certaint radiant intelligence which I seemed to perceive
in his glance and tone. Evidently, he was a
clever fellow, and his natural faculties were excellent.
I imagined he had read a great deal, and recovered, in
some degree, in restless intellectual conjecture, the
freedom he was condemned to ignore in practice. Opportunity
was now offering a meaning to the empty
forms with which his imagination was stored, but it
appeared to him dimly, through the veil of his personal
diffidence.
“I 've not sailed round the world, as you suppose,”
I said, “but I confess I envy you the novelties you
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are going to behold. Coming to Homburg, you have
plunged in medias res.”
He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an
allusion, and hesitated a moment. “Yes, I know it.
I came to Bremen in the steamer with a very friendly
German, who undertook to initiate me into the glories
and mysteries of the fatherland. At this season, he
said, I must begin with Homburg. I landed but a
fortnight ago, and here I am.” Again he hesitated, as
if he were going to add something about the scene at
the Kursaal; but suddenly, nervously, he took up the
letter which was lying beside him, looked hard at the
seal with a troubled frown, and then flung it back on
the grass with a sigh.
“How long do you expect to be in Europe?” I
asked.
“Six months, I supposed when I came. But not so
long — now!” And he let his eyes wander to the
letter again.
“And where shall you go — what shall you do?”
“Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday.
But now it is different.”
I glanced at the letter interrogatively, and he gravely
picked it up and put it into his pocket. We talked for
a while longer, but I saw that he had suddenly become
preoccupied; that he was apparently weighing an impulse
to break some last barrier of reserve. At last
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he suddenly laid his hand on my arm, looked at me
a moment appealingly, and cried, “Upon my word, I
should like to tell you everything.”
“Tell me everything, by all means,” I answered,
smiling. “I desire nothing better than to lie here in
the shade and hear everything.”
“Ah, but the question is, will you understand it?
No matter; you think me a queer fellow already. It 's
not easy, either, to tell you what I feel, — not easy for
so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how many ways
he 's queer!” He got up and walked away a moment,
passing his hand over his eyes, then came back rapidly
and flung himself on the grass again. “I said just
now I always supposed I was happy; it 's true; but
now that my eyes are open, I see I was only stultified.
I was like a poodle-dog, led about by a blue
ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on slops. It
was not life; life is learning to know one's self, and in
that sense I 've lived more in the past six weeks than
in all the years that preceded them. I 'm filled with
this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps rising to my
head like the fumes of strong wine. I find I 'm an
active, sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with
passions, with possible convictions, — even with what
I never dreamed of, a possible will of my own! I find
there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and women
to form a thousand relations with. It all lies
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there like a great surging sea, where we must plunge
and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves. I
stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing,
wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet
afraid of the water. The world beckons and smiles
and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, that
I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems
to hold me back. I 'm full of impulses, but, somehow,
I 'm not full of strength. Life seems inspiring
at certain moments, but it seems terrible and unsafe;
and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself
with merciless forces, when I have learned so well
how to stand aside and let them pass. Why should n't
I turn my back upon it all and go home to — what
awaits me? — to that sightless, soundless country life,
and long days spent among old books? But if a man
is weak, he does n't want to assent beforehand to his
weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there
may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is there
comes and comes again this irresistible impulse to take
my plunge, to let myself swing, to go where liberty
leads me.” He paused a moment, fixing me with his
excited eyes, and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible
smile at his intensity. “`Swing ahead, in
heaven's name,' you want to say, `and much good may
it do you.' I don't know whether you are laughing at
my trepidation or at what possibly strikes you as my
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depravity. I doubt,” he went on gravely, “whether I
have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have,
I 'm sure I sha' n't prosper in it. I honestly believe I
may safely take out a license to amuse myself. But
it is n't that I think of, any more than I dream of
playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty
words to me; what I long for is knowledge, — some
other knowledge than comes to us in formal, colorless,
impersonal precept. You would understand all this
better if you could breathe for an hour the musty indoor
atmosphere in which I have always lived. To
break a window and let in light and air, — I feel as if
at last I must act!”
“Act, by all means, now and always, when you
have a chance,” I answered. “But don't take things
too hard, now or ever. Your long seclusion makes you
think the world better worth knowing than you 're
likely to find it. A man with as good a head and
heart as yours has a very ample world within himself,
and I 'm no believer in art for art, nor in what's called
`life' for life's sake. Nevertheless, take your plunge,
and come and tell me whether you 've found the pearl
of wisdom.” He frowned a little, as if he thought my
sympathy a trifle meagre. I shook him by the hand
and laughed. “The pearl of wisdom,” I cried, “is
love; honest love in the most convenient concentration
of experience! I advise you to fall in love.” He
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gave me no smile in response, but drew from his
pocket the letter of which I 've spoken, held it up,
and shook it solemnly. “What is it?” I asked.
“It 's my sentence!”
“Not of death, I hope!”
“Of marriage.”
“With whom?”
“With a person I don't love.”
This was serious. I stopped smiling and begged
him to explain.
“It 's the singular part of my story,” he said at
last. “It will remind you of an old-fashioned romance.
Such as I sit here, talking in this wild way,
and tossing off invitations to destiny, my destiny is
settled and sealed. I 'm engaged, — I 'm given in
marriage. It 's a bequest of the past, — the past I
never said nay to! The marriage was arranged by
my father, years ago, when I was a boy. The young
girl's father was his particular friend; he was also a
widower, and was bringing up his daughter, on his
side, in the same rigid seclusion in which I was
spending my days. To this day, I 'm unacquainted
with the origin of the bond of union between our
respective progenitors. Mr. Vernor was largely engaged
in business, and I imagine that once upon a
time he found himself in a financial strait and was
helped through it by my father's coming forward with
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a heavy loan, on which, in his situation, he could offer
no security but his word. Of this my father was quite
capable. He was a man of dogmas, and he was sure
to have a precept adapted to the conduct of a gentleman
toward a friend in pecuniary embarrassment.
What's more, he was sure to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor,
I believe, got on his feet, paid his debt, and owed
my father an eternal gratitude. His little daughter
was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to
bring her up to be the wife of his benefactor's son.
So our fate was fixed, parentally, and we have been
educated for each other. I 've not seen my betrothed
since she was a very plain-faced little girl in a sticky
pinafore, hugging a one-armed doll — of the male sex,
I believe — as big as herself. Mr. Vernor is in what 's
called the Eastern trade, and has been living these
many years at Smyrna. Isabel has grown up there
in a white-walled garden, in an orange grove, between
her father and her governess. She is a good deal my
junior; six months ago she was seventeen; when she
is eighteen we 're to marry!”
He related all this calmly enough, without the accent
of complaint, dryly rather and doggedly, as if he
were weary of thinking of it. “It 's a romance indeed,”
I said, “for these dull days, and I heartily
congratulate you. It 's not every young man who
finds, on reaching the marrying age, a wife kept in
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cotton for him. A thousand to one Miss Vernor is
charming; I wonder you don't post off to Smyrna.”
“You 're joking,” he answered, with a wounded air,
“and I am terribly serious. Let me tell you the rest.
I never suspected this tender conspiracy till something
less than a year ago. My father, wishing to provide
against his death, informed me of it, solemnly. I was
neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as I remember,
with a sort of emotion which varied only in
degree from that with which I could have hailed the
announcement that he had ordered me a dozen new
shirts. I supposed that it was under some such punctual,
superterrestrial dispensation as this that all young
men were married. Novels and poems indeed said
otherwise; but novels and poems were one thing and
life was another. A short time afterwards he introduced
me to a photograph of my predestined, who has
a pretty, but an extremely inanimate face. After this
his health failed rapidly. One night I was sitting, as
I habitually sat for hours, in his dimly lighted room,
near his bed, to which he had been confined for a
week. He had not spoken for some time, and I supposed
he was asleep, but happening to look at him I
saw his eyes wide open and fixed on me strangely.
He was smiling benignantly, intensely, and in a moment
he beckoned to me. Then, on my going to him—
`I feel that I sha' n't last long,' he said, `but I am
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willing to die when I think how comfortably I have
arranged your future.' He was talking of death, and
anything but grief at that moment was doubtless impious
and monstrous; but there came into my heart
for the first time a throbbing sense of being overgoverned.
I said nothing, and he thought my silence
was all sorrow. `I sha' n't live to see you married,'
he went on, `but since the foundation is laid, that
little signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I
have never had a thought but for your own personal
advantage. To foresee your future, in its main outline,
to know to a certainty that you 'll be safely domiciled
here, with a wife approved by my judgment, cultivating
the moral fruit of which I have sown the seed, —
this will content me. But, my son, I wish to clear
this bright vision from the shadow of a doubt. I
believe in your docility; I believe I may trust the
salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I
must remember that when I am removed, you will
stand here alone, face to face with a myriad nameless
temptations to perversity. The fumes of unrighteous
pride may rise into your brain and tempt
you, in the interest of a vain delusion which it
will call your independence, to shatter the edifice
I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask
you for a promise, — the solemn promise you owe my
condition.' And he grasped my hand. `You will
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follow the path I have marked; you will be faithful
to the young girl whom an influence as devoted as that
which has governed your own young life has moulded
into everything amiable; you will marry Isabel Vernor.
' There was something portentous in this rigid
summons. I was frightened. I drew away my hand
and asked to be trusted without any such terrible vow.
My reluctance startled my father into a suspicion that
the vain delusion of independence had already been
whispering to me. He sat up in his bed and looked
at me with eyes which seemed to foresee a lifetime
of odious ingratitude. I felt the reproach; I feel it
now. I promised! And even now I don't regret my
promise nor complain of my father's tenacity. I feel,
somehow, as if the seeds of ultimate rest had been
sown in those unsuspecting years, — as if after many
days I might gather the mellow fruit. But after many
days! I 'll keep my promise, I 'll obey; but I want
to live first!”
“My dear fellow, you 're living now. All this
passionate consciousness of your situation is a very
ardent life. I wish I could say as much for my
own.”
“I want to forget my situation. I want to spend
three months without thinking of the past or the
future, grasping whatever the present offers me.
Yesterday, I thought I was in a fair way to sail with
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the tide. But this morning comes this memento!”
And he held up his letter again.
“What is it?”
“A letter from Smyrna.”
“I see you have not yet broken the seal.”
“No, nor do I mean to, for the present. It contains
bad news.”
“What do you call bad news?”
“News that I 'm expected in Smyrna in three weeks.
News that Mr. Vernor disapproves of my roving about
the world. News that his daughter is standing expectant
at the altar.”
“Is n't this pure conjecture?”
“Conjecture, possibly, but safe conjecture. As soon
as I looked at the letter, something smote me at the
heart. Look at the device on the seal, and I 'm sure
you 'll find it 's Tarry not!” And he flung the letter
on the grass.
“Upon my word, you had better open it,” I said.
“If I were to open it and read my summons, do you
know what I should do? I should march home and
ask the Oberkellner how one gets to Smyrna, pack my
trunk, take my ticket, and not stop till I arrived. I
know I should; it would be the fascination of habit.
The only way, therefore, to wander to my rope's end
is to leave the letter unread.”
“In your place,” I said, “curiosity would make me
open it.”
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He shook his head. “I have no curiosity! For
these many weeks the idea of my marriage has ceased
to be a novelty, and I have contemplated it mentally
in every possible light. I fear nothing from that side,
but I do fear something from conscience. I want my
hands tied. Will you do me a favor? Pick up the
letter, put it into your pocket, and keep it till I ask
you for it. When I do, you may know that I am at
my rope's end.”
I took the letter, smiling. “And how long is your
rope to be? The Homburg season does n't last forever.”
“Does it last a month? Let that be my season! A
month hence you 'll give it back to me.”
“To-morrow, if you say so. Meanwhile, let it rest in
peace!” And I consigned it to the most sacred interstice
of my pocket-book. To say that I was disposed
to humor the poor fellow would seem to be saying that
I thought his demand fantastic. It was his situation,
by no fault of his own, that was fantastic, and he was
only trying to be natural. He watched me put away
the letter, and when it had disappeared gave a soft sigh
of relief. The sigh was natural, and yet it set me
thinking. His general recoil from an immediate responsibility
imposed by others might be wholesome
enough; but if there was an old grievance on one side,
was there not possibly a new-born delusion on the
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other? It would be unkind to withhold a reflection
that might serve as a warning; so I told him, abruptly,
that I had been an undiscovered spectator, the night
before, of his exploits at roulette.
He blushed deeply, but he met my eyes with the
same radiant frankness.
“Ah, you saw then,” he cried, “that wonderful
lady?”
“Wonderful she was indeed. I saw her afterwards,
too, sitting on the terrace in the starlight. I imagine
she was not alone.”
“No, indeed, I was with her — for nearly an hour.
Then I walked home with her.”
“Verily! And did you go in?”
“No, she said it was too late to ask me; though in
a general way, she declared she did not stand upon
ceremony.”
“She did herself injustice. When it came to losing
your money for you, she made you insist.”
“Ah, you noticed that too?” cried Pickering, still
quite unconfused. “I felt as if the whole table was
staring at me; but her manner was so gracious and
reassuring that I concluded she was doing nothing unusual.
She confessed, however, afterwards, that she is
very eccentric. The world began to call her so, she
said, before she ever dreamed of it, and at last finding
that she had the reputation, in spite of herself, she
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resolved to enjoy its privileges. Now, she does what
she chooses.”
“In other words, she is a lady with no reputation to
lose?”
Pickering seemed puzzled, and smiled a little. “Is
n't that what you say of bad women?”
“Of some — of those who are found out.”
“Well,” he said, still smiling, “I have n't yet found
out Madame Blumenthal.”
“If that 's her name, I suppose she 's German.”
“Yes; but she speaks English so well that you
might almost doubt it. She is very clever. Her husband
's dead.”
I laughed, involuntarily, at the conjunction of these
facts, and Pickering's clear glance seemed to question
my mirth. “You have been so bluntly frank with
me,” I said, “that I too must be frank. Tell me, if
you can, whether this clever Madame Blumenthal,
whose husband is dead, has given an edge to your desire
for a suspension of communication with Smyrna.”
He seemed to ponder my question, unshrinkingly.
“I think not,” he said, at last. “I 've had the desire
for three months; I 've known Madame Blumenthal for
less than twenty-four hours.”
“Very true. But when you found this letter of
yours on your plate at breakfast, did you seem for a
moment to see Madame Blumenthal sitting opposite?”
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“Opposite?” he repeated, frowning gently.
“Opposite, my dear fellow, or anywhere in the
neighborhood. In a word, does she interest you?”
“Very much!” he cried, with his frown clearing
away.
“Amen!” I answered, jumping up with a laugh.
“And now, if we are to see the world in a month,
there is no time to lose. Let us begin with the Hardtwald.”
Pickering rose, and we strolled away into the forest,
talking of lighter things. At last we reached the edge
of the wood, sat down on a fallen log, and looked out
across an interval of meadow at the long wooded waves
of the Taunus. What my friend was thinking of, I
can't say; I was revolving his quaint history and letting
my wonderment wander away to Smyrna. Suddenly
I remembered that he possessed a portrait of
the young girl who was waiting for him there in a
white-walled garden. I asked him if he had it with
him. He said nothing, but gravely took out his
pocket-book and drew forth a small photograph. It
represented, as the poet says, a simple maiden in her
flower, — a slight young girl, with a certain childish
roundness of contour. There was no ease in her posture;
she was standing, stiffly and shyly, for her likeness;
she wore a short-waisted white dress; her arms
hung at her sides and her hands were clasped in
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front; her head was bent downward a little, and her
dark eyes fixed. But her awkwardness was as pretty
as that of some angular seraph in a mediæval carving,
and in her sober gaze there seemed to lurk the questioning
gleam of childhood. “What is this for?” her
charming eyes appeared to ask; “why have I been
decked, for this ceremony, in a white frock and amber
beads?”
“Gracious powers!” I said to myself; “what an
enchanting thing is innocence!”
“That portrait was taken a year and a half ago,”
said Pickering, as if with an effort to be perfectly just.
“By this time, I suppose, she looks a little wiser.”
“Not much, I hope,” I said, as I gave it back.
“She 's lovely!”
“Yes, poor girl, she 's lovely — no doubt!” And he
put the thing away without looking at it.
We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly:
“My dear fellow,” I said, “I should take some
satisfaction in seeing you immediately leave Homburg.”
“Immediately?”
“To-day — as soon as you can get ready.”
He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he
blushed. “There 's something I 've not told you,” he
said; “something that your saying that Madame Blumenthal
has no reputation to lose has made me half
afraid to tell you.”
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“I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has
asked you to come and check her numbers for her at
roulette again.”
“Not at all!” cried Pickering, with a smile of
triumph. “She says that she plays no more, for the
present. She has asked me to come and take tea with
her this evening.”
“Ah, then,” I said, very gravely, “of course you
can't leave Homburg.”
He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as
if he were expecting me to laugh. “Urge it strongly,”
he said in a moment. “Say it 's my duty, — command
me.”
I did n't quite understand him, but, feathering the
shaft with a harmless expletive, I told him that unless
he followed my advice, I would never speak to him
again.
He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground
with his stick. “Good!” he cried. “I wanted an
occasion to break a rule, — to leap an obstacle. Here
it is! I stay!”
I made him a mock bow for his energy. “That 's
very fine,” I said; “but now, to put you in a proper
mood for Madame Blumenthal's tea, we 'll go and listen
to the band play Schubert under the lindens.”
And we walked back through the woods.
I went to see Pickering the next day, at his inn,
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and on knocking, as directed, at his door, was surprised
to hear the sound of a loud voice within. My knock
remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced myself.
I found no company, but I discovered my friend walking
up and down the room and apparently declaiming
to himself from a little volume bound in white vellum.
He greeted me heartily, threw his book on the table,
and said that he was taking a German lesson.
“And who is your teacher?” I asked, glancing at
the book.
He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered,
after an instant's delay, “Madame Blumenthal.”
“Indeed! Has she written a grammar?” I inquired.
“It 's not a grammar; it 's a tragedy.” And he
handed me the book.
I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, in a very
large margin, a Trauerspiel in five acts, entitled Cleopatra.
There were a great many marginal corrections
and annotations, apparently from the author's hand;
the speeches were very long, and there was an inordinate
number of soliloquies by the heroine. One
of them, I remember, toward the end of the play,
began in this fashion:—
“What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation
but deception? — reality that pales before the
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light of one's dreams, as Octavia's dull beauty fades
beside mine? But let me believe in some intenser
bliss and seek it in the arms of death!”
“It seems decidedly passionate,” I said. “Has the
tragedy ever been acted?”
“Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells
me that she had it played at her own house in
Berlin, and that she herself undertook the part of
the heroine.”
Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort
to sharpen his perception of the ridiculous, but it
seemed to me an unmistakable sign of his being
under the charm, that this information was very
soberly offered. He was preoccupied, and irresponsive
to my experimental observations on vulgar topics,—
the hot weather, the inn, the advent of Adelina
Patti. At last he uttered his thoughts, and announced
that Madame Blumenthal had turned out
an extraordinarily interesting woman. He seemed to
have quite forgotten our long talk in the Hardtwald,
and betrayed no sense of this being a confession that
he had taken his plunge and was floating with the
current. He only remembered that I had spoken
slightingly of the lady and hinted that it behooved
me to amend my opinion. I had received the day
before so strong an impression of a sort of spiritual
fastidiousness in my friend's nature, that on hearing
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now the striking of a new hour, as it were, in his
consciousness, and observing how the echoes of the
past were immediately quenched in its music, I said
to myself that it had certainly taken a delicate hand
to regulate that fine machinery. No doubt Madame
Blumenthal was a clever woman. It is a good German
custom, at Homburg, to spend the hour preceding
dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten;
Mozart and Beethoven, for organisms in which
the interfusion of soul and sense is peculiarly mysterious,
are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite.
Pickering and I conformed, as we had done the day
before, to the fasion, and when we were seated
under the trees, he began to expatiate on his friend's
merits.
“I don't know whether she is eccentric or not,”
he said; “to me every one seems eccentric, and it 's
not for me, yet awhile, to measure people by my
narrow precedents. I never saw a gaming-table in
my life before, and supposed that a gamester was, of
necessity, some dusky villain with an evil eye. In
Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people play at
roulette as they play at billiards, and her own venerable
mother originally taught her the rules of the
game. It is a recognized source of subsistence for
decent people with small means. But I confess
Madame Blumenthal might do worse things than
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play roulette, and yet make them harmonious and
beautiful. I have never been in the habit of thinking
positive beauty the most excellent thing in a
woman. I have always said to myself that if my
heart was ever to be captured it would be by a sort
of general grace, — a sweetness of motion and tone,—
on which one could count for soothing impressions,
as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly
in tune. Madame Blumenthal has it, — this
grace that soothes and satisfies; and it seems the
more perfect that it keeps order and harmony in a
character really passionately ardent and active. With
her multifarious impulses and accomplishments nothing
would be easier than that she should seem restless
and over-eager and importunate. You will know
her, and I leave you to judge whether she does.
She has every gift, and culture has done everything
for each. What goes on in her mind, I of course
can't say; what reaches the observer — the admirer—
is simply a penetrating perfume of intelligence,
mingled with a penetrating perfume of sympathy.”
“Madame Blumenthal,” I said, smiling, “might be
the loveliest woman in the world, and you the object
of her choicest favors, and yet what I should
most envy you would be, not your peerless friend,
but your beautiful imagination.”
“That 's a polite way of calling me a fool,” said
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Pickering. “You 're a sceptic, a cynic, a satirist! I
hope I shall be a long time coming to that.”
“You 'll make the journey fast if you travel by
express trains. But pray tell me, have you ventured
to intimate to Madame Blumenthal your high opinion
of her?”
“I don't know what I may have said. She listens
even better than she talks, and I think it possible
I may have made her listen to a great deal
of nonsense. For after the first few words I exchanged
with her I was conscious of an extraordinary
evaporation of all my old diffidence. I have,
in truth, I suppose,” he added, in a moment, “owing
to my peculiar circumstances, a great accumulated
fund of unuttered things of all sorts to get rid of.
Last evening, sitting there before that lovely woman,
they came swarming to my lips. Very likely I
poured them all out. I have a sense of having
enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and
of seeing her lovely eyes shining through it opposite
to me, like stars above a miasmatic frog-pond.”
And here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke
off into an ardent parenthesis, and declared that
Madame Blumenthal's eyes had something in them
that he had never seen in any others. “It was
a jumble of crudities and inanities,” he went on,
“which must have seemed to her terribly farcical;
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but I feel the wiser and the stronger, somehow, for
having poured them out before her; and I imagine
I might have gone far without finding another woman
in whom such an exhibition would have provoked
so little of mere cold amusement.”
“Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary,” I surmised,
“entered into your situation with warmth.”
“Exactly so, — the greatest! She 's wise, she knows,
she has felt, she has suffered, and now she understands!”
“She told you, I imagine, that she understood you
to a t, and she offered to be your guide, philosopher,
and friend.”
“She spoke to me,” Pickering answered, after a
pause, “as I had never been spoken to before, and she
offered me, in effect, formally, all the offices of a
woman's friendship.”
“Which you as formally accepted?”
“To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but
allow ne to say I don't care!” Pickering cried, with
an air of genial aggression which was the most inoffensive
thing in the world. “I was very much moved;
I was, in fact, very much excited. I tried to say
something, but I could n't; I had had plenty to say
before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last
I took refuge in an abrupt retreat.”
“Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your
pocket!”
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“Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she
came in. Afterwards she kindly offered to read German
aloud with me, for the accent, two or three times
a week. `What shall we begin with?' she asked.
`With this!' I said, and held up the book. And she
let me take it to look it over.”
I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I
had been, I might have had my claws clipped by
Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that Madame
Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to
introduce me. Among the foolish things which, according
to his own account, he had uttered, were some
generous words in my praise, to which she had civilly
replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I
begged that the introduction should not be immediate.
I wished, on the one hand, to let Pickering work
out his destiny without temptation, on my part, to
play providence; and, on the other hand, I had at
Homburg a group of friends with whom for another
week I had promised to spend my leisure hours. For
some days I saw little of Pickering, though we met at
the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the park. I
watched, in spite of my desire to let him alone, for the
signs and portents of the world's action upon him, —
of that portion of the world, in especial, which Madame
Blumenthal had gathered up into her comprehensive
soul. He seemed very happy, and gave me in a dozen
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ways an impression of increased self-confidence and
maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always,
after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I
asked myself what experience could really do, that
seclusion had not, to make it bright and fine. Every
now and then I was struck with his deep enjoyment
of some new spectacle, — often trifling enough, — something
foreign, local, picturesque, some detail of manner,
some accident of scenery; and of the infinite freedom
with which he felt he could go and come and rove
and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion,
an awakening, a coming to manhood in a graver fashion;
as one might arrive somewhere, after delays, in
some quiet after-hour which should transmute disappointment
into gratitude for the preternatural vividness
of first impressions. Each time I met him he
spoke a little less of Madame Blumenthal, but let me
know generally that he saw her often, and continued
to admire her — tremendously! I was forced to admit
to myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she was
really the ruling star of this serene efflorescence, she
must be a very fine woman. Pickering had the air
of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the feet
of an austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift
dangling about some supreme incarnation of
levity.
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MADAME BLUMENTHAL seemed, for the time,
to have abjured the Kursaal, and I never
caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently,
was an interesting study; she wished to pursue
it undiverted.
She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the
opera, where from my chair I perceived her in a box,
looking extremely pretty. Adelina Patti was singing,
and after the rising of the curtain I was occupied with
the stage; but on looking round when it fell for the
entr' acte, I saw that the authoress of Cleopatra had
been joined by her young admirer. He was sitting a
little behind her, leaning forward, looking over her
shoulder, and listening, while she, slowly moving her
fan to and fro and letting her eye wander over the
house, was apparently talking of this person and that.
No doubt she was saying sharp things; but Pickering
was not laughing; his eyes were following her covert
indications; his mouth was half open, as it always was
when he was interested; he looked intensely serious.
I was glad that, having her back to him, she was
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unable to see how he looked. It seemed the proper
moment to present myself and make her my bow;
but just as I was about to leave my place, a gentleman,
whom in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance,
came to occupy the next chair. Recognition and
mutual greetings followed, and I was forced to postpone
my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not
sorry, for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer
would be just the man to give me a fair prose version
of Pickering's lyrical tributes to his friend. He was
an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about
Europe a great deal, in a series of small diplomatic
posts. England especially he had often visited, and
he spoke the language almost without accent. I had
once spent three rainy days with him in the house
of an English friend in the country. He was a sharp
observer and a good deal of a gossip; he knew a little
something about every one, and about some people
everything. His knowledge on social matters generally
had the flavor of all German science; it was
copious, minute, exhaustive. “Do tell me,” I said, as
we stood looking round the house, “who and what is
the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind
her.”
“Who?” he answered, dropping his glass. “Madame
Blumenthal! What? It would take long to
say. Be introduced; it's easily done; you 'll find her
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[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]
charming. Then, after a week, you 'll tell me what
she is.”
“Perhaps I should n't. My friend there has known
her a week, and I don't think he is yet able to give
an accurate account of her.”
He raised his glass again, and after looking awhile,
“I 'm afraid your friend is a little — what do you
call it? — a little `soft.' Poor fellow! he 's not the
first. I 've never known this lady that she had not
some eligible youth hovering about in some such
attitude as that, undergoing the softening process.
She looks wonderfully well, from here. It 's extraordinary
how those women last!”
“You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about
`those women,' that Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed,
for duration, in a certain dilution of respectability?”
“Yes and no. The sort of atmosphere that surrounds
her is entirely of her own making. There is
no reason, in her antecedents, that people should
lower their voice when they speak of her. But some
women are never at their ease till they have given
some odd twist or other to their position before the
world. The attitude of upright virtue is unbecoming,
like sitting too straight in a fauteuil. Don't ask me
for opinions, however; content yourself with a few
facts, and an anecdote. Madame Blumenthal is
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Prussian, and very well born. I remember her mother,
an old Westphalian Grafin, with principles marshalled
out like Frederick the Great's grenadiers. She was
poor, however, and her principles were an insufficient
dowry for Anastasia, who was married very young
to a shabby Jew, twice her own age. He was supposed
to have money, but I 'm afraid he had less
than was nominated in the bond, or else that his
pretty young wife spent it very fast. She has been
a widow these six or eight years, and living, I imagine,
in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion. I suppose
she is some thirty-four or five years old. In
winter one hears of her in Berlin, giving little suppers
to the artistic rabble there; in summer one often
sees her across the green table at Ems and Wiesbaden.
She 's very clever, and her cleverness has
spoiled her. A year after her marriage she published
a novel, with her views on matrimony, in the
George Sand manner, but really out-Heroding Herod.
No doubt she was very unhappy; Blumenthal was
an old beast. Since then she has published a lot of
stuff, — novels and poems and pamphlets on every
conceivable theme, from the conversion of Lola Montez,
to the Hegelian philosophy. Her talk is much
better than her writing. Her radical theories on
matrimony made people think lightly of her at a
time when her rebellion against it was probably only
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theoretic. She had a taste for spinning fine phrases,
she drove her shuttle, and when she came to the
end of her yarn, she found that society had turned
its back. She tossed her head, declared that at last
she could breathe the air of freedom, and formally
announced her adhesion to an `intellectual' life. This
meant unlimited camaraderie with scribblers and
daúbers, Hegelian philosophers and Hungarian pianists
waiting for engagements. But she has been admired
also by a great many really clever men; there
was a time, in fact, when she turned a head as well
set on its shoulders as this one!” And Niedermeyer
tapped his forehead. “She has a great charm, and,
literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for all that,
I 'm not going to speak to her; I 'm not going near
her box. I 'm going to leave her to say, if she does
me the honor to observe the omission, that I too
have gone over to the Philistines. It 's not that; it
is that there is something sinister about the woman.
I 'm too old to have it frighten me, but I 'm good-natured
enough to have it pain me. Her quarrel
with society has brought her no happiness, and her
outward charm is only the mask of a dangerous discontent.
Her imagination is lodged where her heart
should be! So long as you amuse it, well and good;
she 's radiant. But the moment you let it flag, she 's
capable of dropping you without a pang. If you
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land on your feet, you 're so much the wiser, simply;
but there have been two or three, I believe, who
have almost broken their necks in the fall.”
“You 're reversing your promise,” I said, “and giving
me an opinion, but not an anecdote.”
“This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine
made her acquaintance in Berlin, and though he was
no longer a young man and had never been what 's
called a susceptible one, he took a great fancy to
Madame Blumenthal. He 's a major in the Prussian
artillery, — grizzled, grave, a trifle severe, a man every
way firm in the faith of his fathers. It 's a proof of
Anastasia's charm that such a man should have got
into the way of calling on her every day for a month.
But the major was in love, or next door to it! Every
day that he called he found her scribbling away at a
little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper.
She used to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for
a quarter of an hour, till she had finished her chapter;
she was writing a novel, and it was promised to a publisher.
Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name
of the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had
never read a work of fiction in his life, but he knew
by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's literature, when
put forth in pink covers, was subversive of several
respectable institutions. Besides, he did n't believe in
women knowing how to write at all, and it irritated
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him to see this inky goddess scribbling away under
his nose for the press; irritated him the more that, as
I say, he was in love with her and that he ventured to
believe she had a kindness for his years and his honors.
And yet she was not such a woman as he could
easily ask to marry him. The result of all this was
that he fell into the way of railing at her intellectual
pursuits and saying he should like to run his sword
through her pile of papers. A woman was clever
enough when she could guess her husband's wishes,
and learned enough when she could spell out her
prayer-book. At last, one day, Madame Blumenthal
flung down her pen and announced in triumph that
she had finished her novel. Clorinda had danced her
dance. The major, by way of congratulating her, declared
that her novel was coquetry and vanity and that
she propagated vicious paradoxes on purpose to make a
noise in the world and look picturesque and passionate.
He added, however, that he loved her in spite of her
follies, and that if she would formally abjure them he
would as formally offer her his hand. They say that in
certain cases women like being frightened and snubbed.
I don't know, I 'm sure; I don't know how much
pleasure, on this occasion, was mingled with Anastasia's
wrath. But her wrath was very quiet, and the major
assured me it made her look terribly handsome. `I
have told you before,' she says, `that I write from an
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inner need. I write to unburden my heart, to satisfy
my conscience. You call my poor efforts coquetry,
vanity, the desire to produce a sensation. I can prove
to you that it is the quiet labor itself I care for, and
not the world's more or less flattering attention to it!'
And seizing the manuscript of Clorinda she thrust it
into the fire. The major stands staring, and the first
thing he knows she is sweeping him a great courtesy
and bidding him farewell forever. Left alone and
recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the
embers and then proceeds to thump vigorously at the
lady's door. But it never opened, and from that day
to the day three months ago when he told me the tale,
he had not beheld her again.
“By Jove, it 's a striking story,” I said. “But the
question is, what does it prove?”
“Several things. First (what I was careful not to
tell my friend), that Madame Blumenthal cared for
him a trifle more than he supposed; second, that he
cares for her more than ever; third, that the performance
was a master stroke, and that her allowing him
to force an interview upon her again is only a question
of time.”
“And last?” I asked.
“This is another anecdote. The other day, Unter
den Linden, I saw on a bookseller's counter a little
pink-covered romance: Sophronia, by Madame
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Blumenthal. Glancing through it, I observed an extraordinary
abuse of asterisks; every two or three pages
the narrative was adorned with a portentous blank,
crossed with a row of stars.”
“Well, but poor Clorinda?” I objected, as Niedermeyer
paused.
“Sophronia, my dear fellow, is simply Clorinda renamed
by the baptism of fire. The fair author comes
back, of course, and finds Clorinda tumbled upon the
floor, a good deal scorched, but on the whole more
frightened than hurt. She picks her up, brushes her
off, and sends her to the printer. Wherever the flames
had burnt a hole, she swings a constellation! But if
the major is prepared to drop a penitent tear over the
ashes of Clorinda, I sha' n't whisper to him that the
urn is empty.”
Even Adelina Patti's singing, for the next half-hour,
but half availed to divert me from my quickened curiosity
to behold Madame Blumenthal face to face. As
soon as the curtain had fallen again, I repaired to her
box and was ushered in by Pickering with zealous
hospitality. His glowing smile seemed to say to me,
“Ay, look for yourself, and adore!” Nothing could
have been more gracious than the lady's greeting, and
I found, somewhat to my surprise, that her prettiness
lost nothing on a nearer view. Her eyes indeed were
the finest I have ever seen, — the softest, the deepest,
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the most intensely responsive. In spite of something
faded and jaded in her physiognomy, her movements,
her smile, and the tone of her voice, especially when
she laughed, had an almost girlish frankness and spontaneity.
She looked at you very hard with her radiant
gray eyes, and she indulged in talking in a superabundance
of restless, zealous gestures, as if to make you
take her meaning in a certain very particular and rather
superfine sense. I wondered whether after a while
this might not fatigue one's attention; then, meeting
her charming eyes, I said, No! not for ages, at least
She was very clever, and, as Pickering had said, she
spoke English admirably. I told her, as I took my
seat beside her, of the fine things I had heard about
her from my friend, and she listened, letting me run
on some time, and exaggerate a little, with her fine
eyes fixed full upon me. “Really?” she suddenly
said, turning short round upon Pickering, who stood
behind us, and looking at him in the same way, “is
that the way you talk about me?”
He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly
began to laugh; it was then I observed how
sweet her voice was in laughter. We talked after
this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented
her on her excellent English, and asked
if she had learned it in England.
“Heaven forbid!” she cried. “I 've never been
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there and wish never to go. I should never get on
with the — ” I wondered what she was going to say;
the fogs, the smoke, or whist with six-penny stakes?—
“I should never get on,” she said, “with the Aristocracy!
I 'm a fierce democrat, I 'm not ashamed of
it. I hold opinions which would make my ancestors
turn in their graves. I was born in the lap of feudalism.
I 'm a daughter of the crusaders. But I 'm a
revolutionist! I have a passion for freedom, — boundless,
infinite, ineffable freedom. It 's to your great
country I should like to go. I should like to see
the wonderful spectacle of a great people free to do
everything it chooses, and yet never doing anything
wrong!”
I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom
and our virtue had their limits, and she turned quickly
about and shook her fan with a dramatic gesture at
Pickering. “No matter, no matter!” she cried, “I
should like to see the country which produced that
wonderful young man. I think of it as a sort of
Arcadia, — a land of the golden age. He 's so delightfully
innocent! In this stupid old Germany, if
a young man is innocent, he 's a fool; he has no
brains; he 's not a bit interesting. But Mr. Pickering
says the most naïf things, and after I have laughed
five minutes at their simplicity, it suddenly occurs
to me that they are very wise, and I think them
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over for a week. True!” she went on, nodding at
him. “I call them inspired solecisms, and I treasure
them up. Remember that when I next laugh at
you!”
Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe
that he was in a state of beatific exaltation which
weighed Madame Blumenthal's smiles and frowns in
an equal balance. They were equally hers; they were
links alike in the golden chain. He looked at me
with eyes that seemed to say, “Did you ever hear such
wit? Did you ever see such grace?” I imagine he
was but vaguely conscious of the meaning of her
words; her gestures, her voice and glance, made an
irresistible harmony. There is something painful in
the spectacle of absolute inthralment, even to an excellent
cause. I gave no response to Pickering's challenge,
but embarked upon some formal tribute to the
merits of Adelina Patti's singing. Madame Blumenthal,
as became a “revolutionist,” was obliged to confess
that she could see no charm in it; it was meagre,
it was trivial, it lacked soul. “You must know that
in music, too,” she said, “I think for myself!” And
she began with a great many flourishes of her fan to
expound what it was she thought. Remarkable things,
doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst
of the exposition, the curtain rose again. “You can't
be a great artist without a great passion!” Madame
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Blumenthal was affirming. Before I had time to assent,
Madame Patti's voice rose wheeling like a skylark,
and rained down its silver notes. “Ah, give me
that art,” I whispered, “and I 'll leave you your passion!”
And I departed for my own place in the orchestra.
I wondered afterwards whether the speech had
seemed rude, and inferred that it had not, on receiving
a friendly nod from the lady, in the lobby, as the
theatre was emptying itself. She was on Pickering's
arm, and he was taking her to her carriage. Distances
are short in Homburg, but the night was rainy, and
Madame Blumenthal exhibited a very pretty satinshod
foot as a reason why, though but a penniless
creature, she should not walk home. Pickering left us
together a moment while he went to hail the vehicle,
and my companion seized the opportunity, as she said,
to beg me to be so very kind as to come and see her.
It was for a particular reason! It was reason enough
for me, of course I answered, that I could grasp at the
shadow of a permission. She looked at me a moment
with that extraordinary gaze of hers, which seemed so
absolutely audacious in its candor, and answered that I
paid more compliments than our young friend there,
but that she was sure I was not half so sincere. “But
it 's about him I want to talk,” she said. “I want to
ask you many things: I want you to tell me all about
him. He interests me, but you see my sympathies
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are so intense, my imagination is so lively, that I don't
trust my own impressions. They have misled me more
than once!” And she gave a little tragic shudder.
I promised to come and compare notes with her, and
we bade her farewell at her carriage door. Pickering
and I remained awhile, walking up and down the long
glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had not taken many
steps before I became aware that I was beside a man
in the very extremity of love. “Is n't she wonderful?”
he asked, with an implicit confidence in my
sympathy which it cost me some ingenuity to elude.
If he was really in love, well and good! For although,
now that I had seen her, I stood ready to confess to
large possibilities of fascination on Madame Blumenthal's
part, and even to certain possibilities of sincerity
of which I reserved the precise admeasurement, yet it
seemed to me less ominous to have him give the reins
to his imagination than it would have been to see him
stand off and cultivate an “admiration” which should
pique itself on being discriminating. It was on his
fundamental simplicity that I counted for a happy
termination of his experiment, and the former of these
alternatives seemed to me to prove most in its favor.
I resolved to hold my tongue and let him run his
course. He had a great deal to say about his happiness,
about the days passing like hours, the hours like
minutes, and about Madame Blumenthal being a “
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revelation.” “She was nothing to-night!” he said; “nothing
to what she sometimes is in the way of brilliancy,—
in the way of repartee. If you could only hear her
when she tells her adventures!”
“Adventures?” I inquired. “Has she had adventures?”
“Of the most wonderful sort!” cried Pickering, with
rapture. “She has n't vegetated, like me! She has
lived in the tumult of life. When I listen to her
reminiscences, it 's like hearing the opening tumult of
one of Beethoven's symphonies, as it loses itself in a
triumphant harmony of beauty and faith!”
I could only bow, but I desired to know before we
separated what he had done with that troublesome
conscience of his. “I suppose you know, my dear
fellow,” I said, “that you 're simply in love. That 's
what they call your state of mind.”
He replied with a brightening eye, as if he were
delighted to hear it. “So Madame Blumenthal told
me,” he cried, “only this morning!” And seeing, I
suppose, that I was slightly puzzled, “I went to drive
with her,” he continued; “we drove to Königstein, to
see the old castle. We scrambled up into the heart
of the ruin and sat for an hour in one of the crumbling
old courts. Something in the solemn stillness
of the place unloosed my tongue; and while she sat
on an ivied stone, on the edge of the plunging wall, I
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stood there and made a speech. She listened to me,
looking at me, breaking off little bits of stone and
letting them drop down into the valley. At last she
got up and nodded at me two or three times silently,
with a smile, as if she were applauding me for a solo
on the violin. `You 're in love,' she said. `It 's a
perfect case!' And for some time she said nothing
more. But before we left the place she told me that
she owed me an answer to my speech. She thanked
me heartily, but she was afraid that if she took me
at my word she would be taking advantage of my
inexperience. I had known few women, I was too
easily pleased, I thought her better than she really
was. She had great faults; I must know her longer
and find them out; I must compare her with other
women, — women younger, simpler, more innocent,
more ignorant; and then if I still did her the honor
to think well of her, she would listen to me again.
I told her that I was not afraid of preferring any
woman in the world to her, and then she repeated,
`Happy man, happy man! you 're in love, you 're in
love!”'
I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of
days later, in some agitation of thought. It has been
proved that there are, here and there, in the world,
such people as sincere attitudinizers; certain characters
cultivate fictitious emotions in perfect good faith.
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Even if this clever lady enjoyed poor Pickering's bedazzlement,
it was conceivable that, taking vanity and
charity together, she should care more for his welfare
than for her own entertainment; and her offer to
abide by the result of hazardous comparison with
other women was a finer stroke than her fame — and
indeed than probability — had seemed to foreshadow.
She received me in a shabby little sitting-room, littered
with uncut books and newspapers, many of
which I saw at a glance were French. One side of it
was occupied by an open piano, surmounted by a jar
full of white roses. They perfumed the air; they
seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering's
devotion. Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this
devotion was reading the Revue des Deux Mondes.
The purpose of my visit was not to admire Madame
Blumenthal on my own account, but to ascertain how
far I might safely leave her to work her will upon my
friend. She had impugned my sincerity the evening
of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to
abstain from compliments and not to place her on her
guard against my penetration. It is needless to narrate
our interview in detail; indeed, to tell the perfect
truth, I was punished for my ambition to read
her too clearly by a temporary eclipse of my own
perspicacity. She sat there so questioning, so perceptive,
so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal, that
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I was quite ready at the end of half an hour to shake
hands with Pickering on her being a wonderful woman.
I have never liked to linger, in memory, on
that half-hour. The result of it was to prove that
there were many more things in the composition of a
woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her
imagination in the place of her heart, than were
dreamt of in my philosophy. Yet, as I sat there
stroking my hat and balancing the account between
nature and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very
competent philosopher. She had said she wished me
to tell her everything about our friend, and she questioned
me, categorically, as to his family, his fortune,
his antecedents, and his character. All this was natural
in a woman who had received a passionate declaration
of love, and it was expressed with an air of
charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there
was really no mistake about his being a supremely
fine fellow, and that if I chose to be explicit, I might
deepen her conviction to disinterested ecstasy, which
might have almost inspired me to invent a good
opinion, if I had not had one at hand. I told her
that she really knew Pickering better than I did, and
that until we met at Homburg, I had not seen him
since he was a boy.
“But he talks to you freely,” she answered; “I know
you 're his confidant. He has told me certainly a
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great many things, but I always feel as if he were
keeping something back; as if he were holding something
behind him, and showing me only one hand at
once. He seems often to be hovering on the edge of
a secret. I have had several friendships in my life,—
thank Heaven! but I have had none more dear to
me than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the
painful sense of my friend being half afraid of me; of
his thinking me terrible, strange, perhaps a trifle out
of my wits. Poor me! If he only knew what a plain
good soul I am, and how I only want to know him
and befriend him!”
These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity
which made mistrust seem cruel. How much better
I might play providence over Pickering's experiments
with life, if I could engage the fine instincts of this
charming woman on the providential side! Pickering's
secret was, of course, his engagement to Miss
Vernor; it was natural enough that he should have
been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame
Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl's
face had not faded from my memory; I could n't rid
myself of the fancy that in going further Pickering
might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal's professions
seemed a virtual promise to agree with me,
and after a momentary hesitation I said that my friend
had, in fact, a substantial secret, and that it appeared
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to me enlightened friendship to put her into possession
of it. In as few words as possible I told her that
Pickering stood pledged by filial piety to marry a
young lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my
story; when I had finished it there was a faint flush
of excitement in each of her cheeks. She broke out
into a dozen exclamations of admiration and compassion.
“What a wonderful tale — what a romantic situation!
No wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless
and unsatisfied; no wonder he wished to put off
the day of submission. And the poor little girl at
Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like
the heroine of an Eastern tale! She would give the
world to see her photograph; did I think Mr. Pickering
would show it to her? But never fear; she
would ask nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous
story, and if she had invented it herself, people
would have said it was absurdly improbable.” She
left her seat and took several turns about the room,
smiling to herself and uttering little German cries of
wonderment. Suddenly she stopped before the piano
and broke into a little laugh; the next moment she
buried her face in the great bouquet of roses. It was
time I should go, but I was indisposed to leave her
without obtaining some definite assurance that, as far
as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl at
Smyrna more than the young man at Homburg.
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“Of course you appreciate,” I said, rising, “my hopes
in telling you all this.”
She had taken one of the roses from the vase and
was arranging it in the front of her dress. Suddenly,
looking up, “Leave it to me, leave it to me!” she
cried. “I 'm interested!” And with her little blue-gemmed
hand she tapped her forehead. “I 'm interested, —
don't interfere!”
And with this I had to content myself. But more
than once, for the day following, I repented of my
zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a white
rose in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too
human. In the evening, at the Kursaal, I looked
for Pickering, but he was not visible, and I reflected
that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate,
seemed to Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing
a cooling-term to his passion. Very late, as I
was turning away, I saw him arrive, — with no small
satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know
immediately in what way I had attempted to serve
him. But he straightway passed his arm through
my own and led me off toward the gardens. I saw
that he was too excited to allow me prior speech.
“I 've burnt my ships!” he cried, when we were
out of earshot of the crowd. “I 've told her everything.
I 've insisted that it 's simple torture for me
to wait, with this idle view of loving her less. It 's
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well enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong
enough now to override her reluctance. I 've cast
off the millstone from round my neck. I care for
nothing, I know nothing but that I love her with
every pulse of my being, — and that everything
else has been a hideous dream, from which she
may wake me into blissful morning with a single
word!”
I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him
gravely. “You have told her, you mean, of your engagement
to Miss Vernor?”
“The whole story! I 've given it up, — I 've thrown
it to the winds. I 've broken utterly with the past.
It may rise in its grave and give me its curse, but
it can't frighten me now. I 've a right to be happy.
I 've a right to be free, I 've a right not to bury
myself alive. It was n't I who promised! I was n't
born then. I myself, my soul, my mind, my option,—
all this is but a month old! Ah,” he went on,
“if you knew the difference it makes, — this having
chosen and broken and spoken! I 'm twice the man
I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her;
there was a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge
and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the
midst of my love. But now I 'm afraid of nothing
but of being too happy.”
I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence.
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But he paused a moment, and took off his hat and
fanned himself. “Let me perfectly understand,” I
said at last. “You 've asked Madame Blumenthal
to be your wife?”
“The wife of my intelligent choice.”
“And does she consent?”
“She asks three days to decide.”
“Call it four! She has known your secret since
this morning. I 'm bound to let you know I told
her.”
“So much the better!” cried Pickering, without
apparent resentment or surprise. “It 's not a brilliant
offer for such a woman, and in spite of what I
have at stake I feel that it would be brutal to press
her.”
“What does she say,” I asked in a moment, “to
your breaking your promise?”
Pickering was too much in love for false shame.
“She tells me,” he answered bravely, “that she loves
me too much to find courage to condemn me. She
agrees with me that I have a right to be happy. I
ask no exemption from the common law. What I
claim is simply freedom to try to be!”
Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion
that I had expected Madame Blumenthal to
make use of my information. But the matter now
was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was
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to bid my companion not work himself into a fever
over either fortune.
The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on
whom, after our talk at the opera, I had left a card.
We gossiped awhile, and at last he said suddenly:
“By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda.
The major is in Homburg!”
“Indeed!” said I. “Since when?”
“These three days.”
“And what is he doing?”
“He seems,” said Niedermeyer with a laugh, “to be
chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal.
That is, I went with him the morning of
his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would
suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I
hope it was received.”
“I can assure you it was,” I cried. “I saw the
lady fairly nestling her head in it. But I advise
the major not to build upon that. He has a rival.”
“Do you mean the soft young man of the other
night?”
“Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness
seems to have served him. He has offered her everything,
and she has not yet refused it.” I had handed
my visitor a cigar and he was puffing it in silence.
At last he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to
Madame Blumenthal; and, on my affirmative, inquired
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what I thought of her. “I 'll not tell you,” I said,
“or you 'll call me soft.”
He knocked away his ashes, eying me askance.
“I 've noticed your friend about,” he said, “and even
if you had not told me, I should have known he was
in love. After he has left his adored, his face wears
for the rest of the day the expression with which he
has risen from her feet, and more than once I 've felt
like touching his elbow, as you would that of a man
who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his
overshoes. You say he has offered our friend everything;
but, my dear fellow, he has n't everything to
offer her. He 's as amiable, evidently, as the morning,
but madame has no taste for daylight.”
“I assure you,” said I, “Pickering is a very interesting
fellow.”
“Ah, there it is! Has n't he some story or other?
is n't he an orphan, or natural child, or consumptive,
or contingent heir to great estates? She 'll read his
little story to the end, and close the book very tenderly
and smooth down the cover, and then, when he
least expects it, she 'll toss it into the dusty limbo of
all her old romances. She 'll let him dangle, but she 'll
let him drop!”
“Upon my word,” I cried with heat, “if she does,
she 'll be a very unprincipled little creature!”
Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never said
she was a saint!”
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Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared
to take his simple word for this consummation,
and in the evening I received a communication which
fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and
it ran as follows:—
“My dear Friend, — I have every hope of being
happy, but I am to go to Wiesbaden to learn my fate.
Madame Blumenthal goes thither this afternoon to
spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany
her. Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of
the event.
“E. P.”
One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers
is to dine in rotation at the different tables d'hôtes. It
so happened that, a couple of days later, Niedermeyer
took pot-luck at my hotel and secured a seat beside
my own. As we took our places I found a letter on
my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost
no time in opening it. It contained but three lines:—
“I 'm happy — I 'm accepted — an hour ago. I can
hardly believe it 's your poor old
“E. P.”
I placed the note before Niedermeyer: not exactly
in triumph, but with the alacrity of all privileged confutation.
He looked at it much longer than was
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needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I
felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school
of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing
it back, “Has your friend mentioned,” he asked, “Madame
Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?”
“You look very wise. I give it up!” said I.
“She 's gone there to make the major follow her.
He went by the next train.”
“And has the major, on his side, dropped you
a line?”
“He 's not a letter-writer.”
“Well,” said I, pocketing my letter, “with this
document in my hand I 'm bound to reserve my
judgment. We 'll have a bottle of Johannisberg,
and drink to the triumph of virtue.”
For a whole week more I heard nothing from
Pickering, — somewhat to my surprise, and, as the
days went by, not a little to my discomposure. I had
expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in
an occasional brief bulletin, and his silence was possibly
an indication that it had been clouded. At
last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received
no answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired
to his former lodging at Homburg, where I
thought it possible he had left property which he
would sooner or later send for. There I learned that
he had indeed just telegraphed from Cologne for
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his baggage. To Cologne I immediately despatched
a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause
of his silence. The next day I received three words
in answer, — a simple, uncommented request that I
would come to him. I lost no time, and reached
him in the course of a few hours. It was dark
when I arrived, and the city was sheeted in a cold,
autumnal rain. Pickering had stumbled, with an indifference
which was itself a symptom of distress,
on a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him
sitting over a smouldering fire in a vast, dingy chamber,
which looked as if it had grown gray with watching
the ennui of ten generations of travellers. Looking
at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he
was in extreme tribulation. He was pale and haggard;
his face was five years older. Now, at least,
in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life.
I was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly
to bitterness; but I spared him all importunate
curiosity, and let him take his time. I assented,
tacitly, to the symptoms of his trouble, and
we made for a while a feeble effort to discuss the
picturesqueness of Cologne. At last he rose and
stood a long time looking into the fire, while I
slowly paced the length of the dusky room.
“Well!” he said as I came back; “I wanted
knowledge, and I certainly know something I did n't
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a month ago.” And herewith, calmly and succinctly
enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related
the history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly
on details; he evidently never was to gush as freely
again as he had done during the prosperity of his
suit. He had been accepted one evening, as explicitly
as his imagination could desire, and had gone
forth in his rapture and roamed about till nearly
morning in the gardens of the Conversation House,
taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer
night into his confidence. “It 's worth it all, almost,”
he said, “to have been wound up for an hour to that
celestial pitch. No man, I 'm sure, can ever know it
but once.” The next morning he had repaired to
Madame Blumenthal's lodging and had been met, to
his amazement, by a naked refusal to see him. He
had strode about for a couple of hours — in another
mood — and then had returned to the charge. The
servant handed him a three-cornered note; it contained
these words: “Leave me alone to-day; I 'll give you
ten minutes to-morrow evening.” Of the next thirty-six
hours he could give no coherent account, but at
the appointed time Madame Blumenthal had received
him. Almost before she spoke there had come to
him a sense of the depth of his folly in supposing
he knew her. “One has heard all one's
days,” he said, “of people removing the mask; it 's
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one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there
she stood with her mask in her hand. Her face,” he
went on gravely, after a pause, — “her face was horrible!”
“I give you ten minutes,” she had said, pointing
to the clock. “Make your scene, tear your hair,
brandish your dagger!” And she had sat down and
folded her arms. “It 's not a joke,” she cried, “it 's
dead earnest; let 's get through with it. You 're dismissed!
Have you nothing to say?” He had stammered
some frantic demand for an explanation; and
she had risen and come near him, looking at him
from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more excited
than she wished to have him see. “I 've done
with you!” she said with a smile; “you ought to
have done with me! It has all been delightful, but
there are excellent reasons why it should come to an
end.” “You 've been playing a part, then,” he had
gasped out; “you never cared for me?” “Yes; till
I knew you; till I saw how far you 'd go. But now
the story 's finished; we 've reached the dénouement.
We 'll close the book and be good friends.” “To see
how far I would go?” he had repeated. “You led
me on, meaning all the while to do this?” “I led
you on, if you will. I received your visits in season
and out! Sometimes they were very entertaining;
sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you
were such a very curious case of — what shall I call
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it? — of enthusiasm, that I determined to take good
and bad together. I wanted to make you commit
yourself unmistakably. I should have preferred not
to bring you to this place: but that too was necessary.
Of course I can't marry you; I can do better.
Thank your fate for it. You 've thought wonders
of me for a month, but your good-humor would n't
last. I 'm too old and too wise; you 're too young
and too foolish. It seems to me that I 've been very
good to you; I 've entertained you to the top of
your bent, and, except perhaps that I 'm a little
brusque just now, you 've nothing to complain of. I
would have let you down more gently if I could
have taken another month to it; but circumstances
have forced my hand. Abuse me, revile me, if you
like. I 'll make every allowance!” Pickering listened
to all this intently enough to perceive that, as
if by some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground
had broken away at his feet, and that he must recoil.
He turned away in dumb amazement. “I don't know
how I seemed to be taking it,” he said, “but she
seemed really to desire — I don't know why — something
in the way of reproach and vituperation. But
I could n't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I
was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air, —
to shake her off and come to my senses. `Have
you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she cried, as
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I stood with my hand on the door. `Have n't I
treated you to talk enough?' I believe I answered.
`You 'll write to me then, when you get home?' `I
think not,' said I. `Six months hence, I fancy, you 'll
come and see me!' `Never!' said I. `That 's a
confession of stupidity,' she answered. `It means
that, even on reflection, you 'll never understand the
philosophy of my conduct.' The word `philosophy'
seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled.
`I 've given you,' she went on, `all that you gave
me. Your passion was an affair of the head.' `I
only wish you had told me sooner,' I exclaimed, `that
you considered it so!' And I went my way. The
next day I came down the Rhine. I sat all day on
the boat, not knowing where I was going, where to
get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed
to me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw
the cathedral towers here looming over the city. They
seemed to say something to me, and when the boat
stopped, I came ashore. I 've been here a week: I
have n't slept at night, — and yet it has been a week
of rest!”
It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to
recover, and that his own philosophy, if left to take
its time, was adequate to the occasion. After his
story was told I recurred to his grievance but once, —
that evening, later, as we were about to separate for
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the night. “Suffer me to say,” I said, “that there
was some truth in her account of your relations. You
were using her, intellectually, and all the while, without
your knowing it, she was using you. It was
diamond cut diamond. Her needs were the more
superficial and she came to an end first.” He frowned
and turned uneasily away, but he offered no denial.
I waited a few moments, to see if he would remember,
before we parted, that he had a claim to make
upon me. But he seemed to have forgotten it.
The next day we strolled about the picturesque old
city, and of course, before long, went into the cathedral.
Pickering said little; he seemed intent upon
his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar near
a chapel, in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving
him to his meditations, I wandered through the church.
When I came back I saw he had something to say.
But before he had spoken, I laid my hand on his
shoulder and looked at him with a significant smile.
He slowly bent his head and dropped his eyes, with
a mixture of assent and humility. I drew forth his
letter from where it had lain untouched for a month,
placed it silently on his knee, and left him to deal
with it alone.
Half an hour later I returned to the same place,
but he had gone, and one of the sacristans, hovering
about and seeing me looking for Pickering, said he
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thought he had left the church. I found him in his
gloomy chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and
down. I should doubtless have been at a loss to say
just what effect I expected his letter to produce; but
his actual aspect surprised me. He was flushed, excited,
a trifle irritated.
“Evidently,” I said, “you 've read your letter.”
“I owe you a report of it,” he answered. “When
I gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice.”
“You called it a `summons,' I remember.”
“I was a great fool! It 's a release!”
“From your engagement?”
“From everything! The letter, of course, is from
Mr. Vernor. He desires to let me know at the earliest
moment, that his daughter, informed for the first time
a week before of what was expected of her, positively
refuses to be bound by the contract or to assent to
my being bound. She had been given a week to
reflect and had spent it in inconsolable tears. She
had resisted every form of persuasion; from compulsion,
writes Mr. Vernor, he naturally shrinks. The
young lady considers the arrangement `horrible.' After
accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she
presumes at last to have a taste of her own. I confess
I 'm surprised; I had been given to believe that she
was idiotically passive and would remain so to the
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end of the chapter. Not a bit! She has insisted
on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates
that in case of non-compliance she threatens
him with an attack of brain fever. Mr. Vernor condoles
with me handsomely, and lets me know that
the young lady's attitude has been a great shock to
his own nerves. He adds that he will not aggravate
such regret as I may do him the honor to entertain,
by any allusion to his daughter's charms and to the
magnitude of my loss, and he concludes with the hope
that, for the comfort of all concerned, I may already
have amused my fancy with other `views.' He reminds
me in a postscript that, in spite of this painful
occurrence, the son of his most valued friend will
always be a welcome visitor at his house. I am free,
he observes; I have my life before me; he recommends
an extensive course of travel. Should my
wanderings lead me to the East, he hopes that no
false embarrassment will deter me from presenting
myself at Smyrna. He will insure me at least a
friendly reception. It 's a very polite letter.”
Polite as the letter was, Pickering seemed to find
no great exhilaration in having this famous burden
so handsomely lifted from his conscience. He fell
a-brooding over his liberation in a manner which you
might have deemed proper to a renewed sense of
bondage. “Bad news” he had called his letter
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originally; and yet, now that its contents proved to be in
flat contradiction to his foreboding, there was no impulsive
voice to reverse the formula and declare the
news was good. The wings of impulse in the poor
fellow had of late been terribly clipped. It was an
obvious reflection, of course, that if he had not been
so doggedly sure of the matter a month before, and
had gone through the form of breaking Mr. Vernor's
seal, he might have escaped the purgatory of Madame
Blumenthal's blandishments. But I left him to moralize
in private; I had no desire, as the phrase is, to
rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were following
another train; I was saying to myself that if to those
gentle graces of which her young visage had offered
to my fancy the blooming promise, Miss Vernor added
in this striking measure the capacity for magnanimous
action, the amendment to my friend's career had been
less happy than the rough draught. Presently, turning
about, I saw him looking at the young lady's
photograph. “Of course, now,” he said, “I have no
right to keep it!” And before I could ask for another
glimpse of it, he had thrust it into the fire.
“I am sorry to be saying it just now,” I observed
after a while, “but I should n't wonder if Miss Vernor
were a lovely creature.”
“Go and find out,” he answered gloomily. “The
coast is clear. My part,” he presently added, “is to
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forget her. It ought n't to be hard. But don't you
think,” he went on suddenly, “that for a poor fellow
who asked nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in
a quiet corner, it has been rather a cruel pushing
about?”
Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the
right to demand a clean page on the book of fate, and
a fresh start. Mr. Vernor's advice was sound; he
should seek diversion in the grand tour of Europe. If
he would allow it to the zeal of my sympathy, I would
go with him on his way. Pickering assented without
enthusiasm; he had the discomfited look of a man
who, having gone to some cost to make a good appearance
in a drawing-room, should find the door suddenly
shammed in his face. We started on our journey,
however, and little by little his enthusiasm returned.
He was too capable of enjoying fine things to remain
permanently irresponsive, and after a fortnight spent
among pictures and monuments and antiquities, I felt
that I was seeing him for the first time in his best and
healthiest mood. He had had a fever and then he had
had a chill; the pendulum had swung right and left
in a manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at
last, it was working back to an even, natural beat.
He recovered in a measure the generous eloquence
with which he had fanned his flame at Homburg, and
talked about things with something of the same
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passionate freshness. One day when I was laid up at the
inn at Bruges with a lame foot, he came home and
treated me to a rhapsody about a certain meek-faced
virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder
sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal.
He had his dull days and his sombre moods, — hours
of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and go
without remonstrance, because I fancied they always
left him a trifle more alert and resolute. One evening,
however, he sat hanging his head in so doleful a fashion
that I took the bull by the horns and told him he had
by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and
owed it to himself to banish that woman forever from
his thoughts.
He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush:
“That woman?” he said. “I was not thinking of
Madame Blumenthal!”
After this I gave another construction to his melancholy.
Taking him with his hopes and fears, at the
end of six weeks of active observation and keen
sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be.
We made our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight
at Venice. There something happened which I
had been confidently expecting; I had said to myself
that it was merely a question of time. We had
passed the day at Torcello, and came floating back in
the glow of the sunset, with measured oar-strokes.
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“I 'm well on the way,” Pickering said; “I think I 'll
go!”
We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally
asked him, Where? His answer was delayed by our
getting in to the Piazzetta. I stepped ashore first and
then turned to help him. As he took my hand he
met my eyes, consciously, and it came: “To Smyrna!”
A couple of days later he started. I had risked the
conjecture that Miss Vernor was a lovely creature, and
six months afterwards he wrote me that I was right.
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The Madonna of the Future.
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WE had been talking about the masters who had
achieved but a single masterpiece, — the artists
and poets who but once in their lives had known
the divine afflatus, and touched the high level of the
best. Our host had been showing us a charming little
cabinet picture by a painter whose name we had never
heard, and who, after this one spasmodic bid for fame,
had apparently relapsed into fatal mediocrity. There
was some discussion as to the frequency of this phenomenon;
during which, I observed, H— sat silent,
finishing his cigar with a meditative air, and looking
at the picture, which was being handed round the table.
“I don't know how common a case it is,” he said at
last, “but I 've seen it. I 've known a poor fellow who
painted his one masterpiece, and” — he added with a
smile — “he did n't even paint that. He made his bid
for fame, and missed it.” We all knew H— for a
clever man who had seen much of men and manners,
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and had a great stock of reminiscences. Some one immediately
questioned him further, and while I was engrossed
with the raptures of my neighbor over the little
picture, he was induced to tell his tale. If I were to
doubt whether it would bear repeating, I should only
have to remember how that charming woman, our
hostess, who had left the table, ventured back in rustling
rose-color, to pronounce our lingering a want of
gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, had sunk
into her chair in spite of our cigars, and heard the story
out so graciously, that when the catastrophe was
reached she glanced across at me, and showed me a
tender tear in each of her beautiful eyes.
It relates to my youth, and to Italy: two fine things!
(H— began.) I had arrived late in the evening at
Florence, and while I finished my bottle of wine at
supper, had fancied that, tired traveller though I was,
I might pay the city a finer compliment than by going
vulgarly to bed. A narrow passage wandered darkly
away out of the little square before my hotel, and
looked as if it bored into the heart of Florence. I
followed it, and at the end of ten minutes emerged
upon a great piazza, filled only with the mild autumn
moonlight. Opposite rose the Palazzo Vecchio, like
some huge civic fortress, with the great bell-tower
springing from its embattled verge like a
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mountain-pine from the edge of a cliff. At its base, in its projected
shadow, gleamed certain dim sculptures which I
wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the
left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus,
shining through the dusky air like some embodied
Defiance. In a moment I recognized him as Michael
Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from
his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed
beneath the high, light loggia, which opposes
the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead
masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and
graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out
with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the
slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you
may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in
memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of
these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered some
irrepressible commonplace of praise, for, as if provoked
by my voice, a man rose from the steps of the loggia,
where he had been sitting in the shadow, and addressed
me in good English, — a small, slim personage, clad in a
sort of black velvet tunic (as it seemed), and with a mass
of auburn hair, which gleamed in the moonlight, escaping
from a little mediæval berretta. In a tone of the
most insinuating deference, he asked me for my “impressions.”
He seemed picturesque, fantastic, slightly
unreal. Hovering there in this consecrated
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neighborhood, he might have passed for the genius of æsthetic
hospitality, — if the genius of æsthetic hospitality were
not commonly some shabby little custode, flourishing a
calico pocket-handkerchief, and openly resentful of the
divided franc. This fantasy was made none the less
plausible by the brilliant tirade with which he greeted
my embarrassed silence.
“I 've known Florence long, sir, but I 've never
known her so lovely as to-night. It 's as if the ghosts
of her past were abroad in the empty streets. The
present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a
dream made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling
up in couples to pass judgment on the last performance
of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should come
in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what
they say. The plainest burgher of them, in his cap
and gown, had a taste in the matter! That was the
prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and
his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places
bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the
evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying
each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom,
holding it up to the great models and to the dim
idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness
and dimness. The days of illumination are gone!
But do you know I fancy — I fancy,” — and he grew
suddenly almost familiar in this visionary fervor, —
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“I fancy the light of that time rests upon us here for
an hour! I have never seen the David so grand, the
Perseus so fair! Even the inferior productions of
John of Bologna and of Baccio Bandinelli seem to
realize the artist's dream. I feel as if the moonlit air
were charged with the secrets of the masters, and as
if, standing here in religious contemplation, we might—
we might witness a revelation!” Perceiving at this
moment, I suppose, my halting comprehension reflected
in my puzzled face, this interesting rhapsodist paused
and blushed. Then with a melancholy smile, “You
think me a moonstruck charlatan, I suppose. It 's not
my habit to hang about the piazza and pounce upon
innocent tourists. But to-night, I confess, I 'm under
the charm. And then, somehow, I fancied you, too,
were an artist!”
“I 'm not an artist, I 'm sorry to say, as you must
understand the term. But pray make no apologies.
I am also under the charm; your eloquent reflections
have only deepened it.”
“If you 're not an artist, you 're worthy to be one!”
he rejoined, with a bow. “A young man who arrives
at Florence late in the evening, and, instead of going
prosaically to bed, or hanging over the travellers' book
at his hotel, walks forth without loss of time to pay
his devoirs to the beautiful, is a young man after my
own heart!”
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The mystery was suddenly solved; my friend was
an American! He must have been, to take the picturesque
so prodigiously to heart. “None the less so,
I trust,” I answered, “if the young man is a sordid
New-Yorker.”
“New-Yorkers,” he solemnly proclaimed, “have been
munificent patrons of art!”
For a moment I was alarmed. Was this midnight
revery mere Yankee enterprise, and was he simply a
desperate brother of the brush who had posted himself
here to extort an “order” from a sauntering tourist?
But I was not called to defend myself. A great brazen
note broke suddenly from the far-off summit of the
bell-tower above us and sounded the first stroke of
midnight. My companion started, apologized for detaining
me, and prepared to retire. But he seemed to
offer so lively a promise of further entertainment, that
I was indisposed to part with him, and suggested that
we should stroll homeward together. He cordially assented,
so we turned out of the Piazza, passed down
before the statued arcade of the Uffizi, and came out
upon the Arno. What course we took I hardly remember,
but we roamed slowly about for an hour,
my companion delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched
æsthetic lecture. I listened in puzzled fascination,
and wondered who the deuce he was. He confessed
with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake
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to his American origin. “We are the disinherited
of Art!” he cried. “We are condemned to be superficial!
We are excluded from the magic circle. The
soil of American perception is a poor little barren,
artificial deposit. Yes! we are wedded to imperfection.
An American, to excel, has just ten times as
much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper
sense. We have neither taste, nor tact, nor force.
How should we have them? Our crude and garish
climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the
constant pressure about us of unlovely circumstance,
are as void of all that nourishes and prompts and inspires
the artist, as my sad heart is void of bitterness
in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual
exile.”
“You seem fairly at home in exile,” I answered,
“and Florence seems to me a very pretty Siberia. But
do you know my own thought? Nothing is so idle as
to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportanity,
of inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy
part is to do something fine! There 's no law in
our glorious Constitution against that. Invent, create,
achieve! No matter if you 've to study fifty times as
much as one of these! What else are you an artist
for? Be you our Moses,” I added, laughing, and laying
my hand on his shoulder, “and lead us out of the
house of bondage!”
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“Golden words, — golden words, young man!” he
cried, with a tender smile. “`Invent, create, achieve!'
Yes, that 's our business: I know it well. Don't take
me, in Heaven's name, for one of your barren complainers, —
querulous cynics who have neither talent
nor faith! I 'm at work!” — and he glanced about
him and lowered his voice as if this were a quite
peculiar secret, — “I 'm at work night and day. I 've
undertaken a creation! I 'm no Moses; I 'm only a
poor, patient artist; but it would be a fine thing if I
were to cause some slender stream of beauty to flow
in our thirsty land! Don't think me a monster of
conceit,” he went on, as he saw me smile at the avidity
with which he adopted my fantasy; “I confess that
I 'm in one of those moods when great things seem
possible! This is one of my nervous nights, — I dream
waking! When the south-wind blows over Florence
at midnight, it seems to coax the soul from all the fair
things locked away in her churches and galleries; it
comes into my own little studio with the moonlight,
and sets my heart beating too deeply for rest. You
see I am always adding a thought to my conception!
This evening I felt that I could n't sleep unless I had
communed with the genius of Michael!”
He seemed deeply versed in local history and tradition,
and he expatiated con amore on the charms of
Florence. I gathered that he was an old resident, and
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that he had taken the lovely city into his heart. “I
owe her everything,” he declared. “It 's only since
I came here that I have really lived, intellectually.
One by one, all profane desires, all mere worldly aims,
have dropped away from me, and left me nothing but
my pencil, my little note-book” (and he tapped his
breast-pocket), “and the worship of the pure masters,—
those who were pure because they were innocent,
and those who were pure because they were strong!”
“And have you been very productive all this
time?” I asked, with amenity.
He was silent awhile before replying. “Not in
the vulgar sense!” he said, at last. “I have chosen
never to manifest myself by imperfection. The good
in every performance I have reabsorbed into the generative
force of new creations; the bad — there 's always
plenty of that — I have religiously destroyed.
I may say, with some satisfaction, that I have not
added a mite to the rubbish of the world. As a proof
of my conscientiousness,” — and he stopped short, and
eyed me with extraordinary candor, as if the proof
were to be overwhelming, — “I 've never sold a picture!
`At least no merchant traffics in my heart!'
Do you remember the line in Browning? My little
studio has never been profaned by superficial, feverish,
mercenary work. It 's a temple of labor, but of leisure!
Art is long. If we work for ourselves, of course
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we must hurry. If we work for her, we must often
pause. She can wait!”
This had brought us to my hotel door, somewhat to
my relief, I confess, for I had begun to feel unequal
to the society of a genius of this heroic strain. I left
him, however, not without expressing a friendly hope
that we should meet again. The next morning my
curiosity had not abated; I was anxious to see him by
common daylight. I counted upon meeting him in one
of the many æsthetic haunts of Florence, and I was
gratified without delay. I found him in the course
of the morning in the Tribune of the Uffizi, — that
little treasure-chamber of perfect works. He had
turned his back on the Venus de' Medici, and with his
arms resting on the railing which protects the pictures,
and his head buried in his hands, he was lost in the
contemplation of that superb triptych of Andrea Mantegna, —
a work which has neither the material splendor
nor the commanding force of some of its neighbors,
but which, glowing there with the loveliness of patient
labor, suits possibly a more constant need of the soul.
I looked at the picture for some time over his shoulder;
at last, with a heavy sigh, he turned away and
our eyes met. As he recognized me a deep blush rose
to his face; he fancied, perhaps, that he had made a
fool of himself overnight. But I offered him my hand
with a frankness which assured him I was not a
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scoffer. I knew him by his ardent chevelure; otherwise
he was much altered. His midnight mood was
over, and he looked as haggard as an actor by daylight.
He was far older than I had supposed, and he had less
bravery of costume and gesture. He seemed the quite
poor, patient artist he had proclaimed himself, and the
fact that he had never sold a picture was more obvious
than glorious. His velvet coat was threadbare, and his
short slouched hat, of an antique pattern, revealed a
rustiness which marked it an “original,” and not one
of the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his
craft affect. His eye was mild and heavy, and his expression
singularly gentle and acquiescent; the more
so for a certain pallid leanness of visage which I hardly
knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius
or to a meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared
his brow and brought back his eloquence.
“And this is your first visit to these enchanted
halls?” he cried. “Happy, thrice happy youth!”
And taking me by the arm, he prepared to lead me
to each of the pre-eminent works in turn and show me
the cream of the gallery. But before we left the Mantegna,
he pressed my arm and gave it a loving look.
“He was not in a hurry,” he murmured. “He knew
nothing of `raw Haste, half-sister to Delay'!” How
sound a critic my friend was I am unable to say, but
he was an extremely amusing one; overflowing with
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opinions, theories, and sympathies, with disquisition
and gossip and anecdote. He was a shade too sentimental
for my own sympathies, and I fancied he was
rather too fond of superfine discriminations and of discovering
subtle intentions in the shallow felicities of
chance. At moments, too, he plunged into the sea of
metaphysics and floundered awhile in waters too deep
for intellectual security. But his abounding knowledge
and happy judgment told a touching story of long
attentive hours in this worshipful company; there was
a reproach to my wasteful saunterings in so devoted a
culture of opportunity. “There are two moods,” I
remember his saying, “in which we may walk through
galleries, — the critical and the ideal. They seize us
at their pleasure, and we can never tell which is to
take its turn. The critical mood, oddly, is the genial
one, the friendly, the condescending. It relishes the
pretty trivialities of art, its vulgar clevernesses, its
conscious graces. It has a kindly greeting for anything
which looks as if, according to his light, the
painter had enjoyed doing it, — for the little Dutch
cabbages and kettles, for the taper fingers and breezy
mantles of late-coming Madonnas, for the little bluehilled
pastoral, sceptical Italian landscapes. Then
there are the days of fierce, fastidious longing, —
solemn church-feasts of the intellect, — when all vulgar
effort and all petty success is a weariness, and
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everything but the best — the best of the best —
disgusts. In these hours we are relentless aristocrats
of taste. We 'll not take Michael for granted, we 'll
not swallow Raphael whole!”
The gallery of the Uffizi is not only rich in its
possessions, but peculiarly fortunate in that fine architectural
accident, as one may call it, which unites
it — with the breadth of river and city between them—
to those princely chambers of the Pitti Palace. The
Louvre and the Vatican hardly give you such a sense
of sustained enclosure as those long passages projected
over street and stream to establish a sort of inviolate
transition between the two palaces of art. We passed
along the gallery in which those precious drawings
by eminent hands hang chaste and gray above the
swirl and murmur of the yellow Arno, and reached
the ducal saloons of the Pitti. Ducal as they are, it
must be confessed that they are imperfect as showrooms,
and that, with their deep-set windows and their
massive mouldings, it is rather a broken light that
reaches the pictured walls. But here the masterpieces
hang thick, and you seem to see them in a luminous
atmosphere of their own. And the great saloons, with
their superb dim ceilings, their outer wall in splendid
shadow, and the sombre opposite glow of mellow canvas
and dusky gilding, make, themselves, almost as
fine a picture as the Titians and Raphaels they
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imperfectly reveal. We lingered briefly before many a
Raphael and Titian; but I saw my friend was impatient,
and I suffered him at last to lead me directly to
the goal of our journey, — the most tenderly fair of
Raphael's Virgins, the Madonna in the Chair. Of all
the fine pictures of the world, it seemed to me this is
the one with which criticism has least to do. None betrays
less effort, less of the mechanism of effect and of
the irrepressible discord between conception and result,
which shows dimly in so many consummate works.
Graceful, human, near to our sympathies as it is, it
has nothing of manner, of method, nothing, almost, of
style; it blooms there in rounded softness, as instinct
with harmony as if it were an immediate exhalation
of genius. The figure melts away the spectator's mind
into a sort of passionate tenderness which he knows
not whether he has given to heavenly purity or to
earthly charm. He is intoxicated with the fragrance
of the tenderest blossom of maternity that ever bloomed
on earth.
“That 's what I call a fine picture,” said my companion,
after we had gazed awhile in silence. “I
have a right to say so, for I 've copied it so often and
so carefully that I could repeat it now with my eyes
shut. Other works are of Raphael: this is Raphael
himself. Others you can praise, you can qualify, you
can measure, explain, account for: this you can only
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love and admire. I don't know in what seeming he
walked among men, while this divine mood was upon
him; but after it, surely, he could do nothing but die;
this world had nothing more to teach him. Think
of it awhile, my friend, and you 'll admit that I 'm
not raving. Think of his seeing that spotless image,
not for a moment, for a day, in a happy dream, as a
restless fever-fit, not as a poet in a five minutes'
frenzy, time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal
stanza, but for days together, while the slow
labor of the brush went on, while the foul vapors of
life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension,
fixed, radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a
master, certainly! But ah, what a seer!”
“Don't you imagine,” I answered, “that he had a
model, and that some pretty young woman —”
“As pretty a young woman as you please! It
does n't diminish the miracle! He took his hint, of
course, and the young woman, possibly, sat smiling
before his canvas. But, meanwhile, the painter's idea
had taken wings. No lovely human outline could
charm it to vulgar fact. He saw the fair form made
perfect; he rose to the vision without tremor, without
effort of wing; he communed with it face to
face, and resolved into finer and lovelier truth the
purity which completes it as the perfume completes
the rose. That 's what they call idealism; the word 's
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vastly abused, but the thing is good. It 's my own
creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna, model at once
and muse, I call you to witness that I too am an
idealist!”
“An idealist, then,” I said, half jocosely, wishing to
provoke him to further utterance, “is a gentleman who
says to Nature in the person of a beautiful girl, `Go
to, you 're all wrong! Your fine is coarse, your bright
is dim, your grace is gaucherie. This is the way you
should have done it!' Is n't the chance against
him?”
He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving
the genial flavor of my sarcasm, he smiled gravely.
“Look at that picture,” he said, “and cease your irreverent
mockery! Idealism is that! There 's no
explaining it; one must feel the flame! It says
nothing to Nature, or to any beautiful girl, that
they 'll not both forgive! It says to the fair woman,
`Accept me as your artist-friend, lend me your
beautiful face, trust me, help me, and your eyes shall
be half my masterpiece!' No one so loves and respects
the rich realities of nature as the artist whose imagination
caresses and flatters them. He knows what a
fact may hold (whether Raphael knew, you may judge
by his portrait behind us there, of Tommaso Inghirami);
but his fancy hovers above it, as Ariel above
the sleeping prince. There is only one Raphael, but
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an artist may still be an artist. As I said last night,
the days of illumination are gone; visions are rare;
we have to look long to see them. But in meditation
we may still woo the ideal; round it, smooth it, perfect
it. The result — the result” (here his voice faltered
suddenly, and he fixed his eyes for a moment on
the picture; when they met my own again they were
full of tears) — “the result may be less than this; but
still it may be good, it may be great!” he cried with
vehemence. “It may hang somewhere, in after years,
in goodly company, and keep the artist's memory
warm. Think of being known to mankind after some
such fashion as this! of hanging here through the slow
centuries in the gaze of an altered world, living on and
on in the cunning of an eye and hand that are part of
the dust of ages, a delight and a law to remote generations;
making beauty a force and purity an example!”
“Heaven forbid!” I said, smiling, “that I should
take the wind out of your sails; but does n't it occur
to you that beside being strong in his genius,
Raphael was happy in a certain good faith of which
we have lost the trick? There are people, I know,
who deny that his spotless Madonnas are anything
more than pretty blondes of that period, enhanced by
the Raphaelesque touch, which they declare is a profane
touch. Be that as it may, people's religious and
æsthetic needs went hand in hand, and there was, as I
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may say, a demand for the Blessed Virgin, visible and
adorable, which must have given firmness to the artist's
hand. I 'm afraid there is no demand now.”
My companion seemed painfully puzzled; he shivered,
as it were, in this chilling blast of scepticism.
Then shaking his head with sublime confidence:
“There is always a demand!” he cried; “that ineffable
type is one of the eternal needs of man's
heart; but pious souls long for it in silence, almost
in shame. Let it appear, and this faith grows brave.
How should it appear in this corrupt generation? It
can't be made to order. It could, indeed, when the
order came, trumpet-toned, from the lips of the Church
herself, and was addressed to genius panting with inspiration.
But it can spring now only from the soil of
passionate labor and culture. Do you really fancy
that while, from time to time, a man of complete artistic
vision is born into the world, that image can perish?
The man who paints it has painted everything.
The subject admits of every perfection, — form, color,
expression, composition. It can be as simple as you
please, and yet as rich, as broad and pure, and yet as
full of delicate detail. Think of the chance for flesh
in the little naked, nestling child, irradiating divinity;
of the chance for drapery in the chaste and ample garment
of the mother! Think of the great story you
compress into that simple theme! Think, above all,
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of the mother's face and its ineffable suggestiveness, of
the mingled burden of joy and trouble, the tenderness
turned to worship, and the worship turned to far-seeing
pity! Then look at it all in perfect line and lovely
color, breathing truth and beauty and mastery!”
“Anch' io son pittore!” I cried. “Unless I 'm mistaken,
you 've a masterpiece on the stocks. If you put
all that in, you 'll do more than Raphael himself did.
Let me know when your picture is finished, and
wherever in the wide world I may be, I 'll post back
to Florence and make my bow to — the Madonna of
the future!”
He blushed vividly and gave a heavy sigh, half of
protest, half of resignation. “I don't often mention
my picture, in so many words. I detest this modern
custom of premature publicity. A great work needs
silence, privacy, mystery even. And then, do you
know, people are so cruel, so frivolous, so unable to
imagine a man's wishing to paint a Madonna at this
time of day, that I 've been laughed at, — laughed at,
sir!” And his blush deepened to crimson. “I don't
know what has prompted me to be so frank and trustful
with you. You look as if you would n't laugh at
me. My dear young man,” — and he laid his hand on
my arm, — “I 'm worthy of respect. Whatever my
talents may be, I 'm honest. There 's nothing grotesque
in a pure ambition, or in a life devoted to it!”
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There was something so sternly sincere in his look
and tone, that further questions seemed impertinent.
I had repeated opportunity to ask them, however; for
after this we spent much time together. Daily, for a
fortnight, we met by appointment, to see the sights.
He knew the city so well, he had strolled and lounged
so often through its streets and churches and galleries,
he was so deeply versed in its greater and lesser memories,
so imbued with the local genius, that he was an
altogether ideal valet de place, and I was glad enough
to leave my Murray at home, and gather facts and
opinions alike from his gossiping commentary. He
talked of Florence like a lover, and admitted that it
was a very old affair; he had lost his heart to her at
first sight. “It 's the fashion to talk of all cities as
feminine,” he said, “but, as a rule, it 's a monstrous
mistake. Is Florence of the same sex as New York,
as Chicago? She 's the sole true woman of them all;
one feels towards her as a lad in his teens feels to
some beautiful older woman with a `history.' It 's a
sort of aspiring gallantry she creates.” This disinterested
passion seemed to stand my friend in stead of
the common social ties; he led a lonely life, apparently,
and cared for nothing but his work. I was duly
flattered by his having taken my frivolous self into his
favor, and by his generous sacrifice of precious hours,
as they must have been, to my society. We spent
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many of these hours among those early paintings in
which Florence is so rich, returning ever and anon
with restless sympathies to wonder whether these tender
blossoms of art had not a vital fragrance and savor
more precious than the full-fruited knowledge of the
later works. We lingered often in the sepulchral
chapel of San Lorenzo, and watched Michael Angelo's
dim-visaged warrior sitting there like some awful
Genius of Doubt and brooding behind his eternal
mask upon the mysteries of life. We stood more
than once in the little convent chambers where Fra
Angelico wrought as if an angel indeed had held his
hand, and gathered that sense of scattered dews and
early bird-notes which makes an hour among his
relics seem like a morning stroll in some monkish
garden. We did all this and much more, — wandered
into dark chapels, damp courts, and dusty palacerooms,
in quest of lingering hints of fresco and lurking
treasures of carving.
I was more and more impressed with my companion's
prodigious singleness of purpose. Everything was
a pretext for some wildly idealistic rhapsody or revery.
Nothing could be seen or said that did not end
sooner or later in a glowing discourse on the true,
the beautiful, and the good. If my friend was not a
genius, he was certainly a monomaniac; and I found
as great a fascination in watching the odd lights and
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shades of his character as if he had been a creature
from another planet. He seemed, indeed, to know
very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether
in his own little province of art. A creature more
unsullied by the world it is impossible to conceive,
and I often thought it a flaw in his artistic character
that he had n't a harmless vice or two. It amused me
vastly at times to think that he was of our shrewd
Yankee race; but, after all, there could be no better
token of his American origin than this high æsthetic
fever. The very heat of his devotion was a sign of
conversion; those born to European opportunity manage
better to reconcile enthusiasm with comfort. He
had, moreover, all our native mistrust for intellectual
discretion and our native relish for sonorous superlatives.
As a critic he was vastly more generous than
just, and his mildest terms of approbation were “stupendous,”
“transcendent,” and “incomparable.” The small
change of admiration seemed to him no coin for a gentleman
to handle; and yet, frank as he was intellectually,
he was, personally, altogether a mystery. His
professions, somehow, were all half-professions, and
his allusions to his work and circumstances left something
dimly ambiguous in the background. He was
modest and proud, and never spoke of his domestic
matters. He was evidently poor; yet he must have
had some slender independence, since he could afford
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to make so merry over the fact that his culture of
ideal beauty had never brought him a penny. His
poverty, I supposed, was his motive for neither inviting
me to his lodging nor mentioning its whereabouts.
We met either in some public place or at my hotel,
where I entertained him as freely as I might without
appearing to be prompted by charity. He seemed
always hungry, which was his nearest approach to a
“redeeming vice.” I made a point of asking no impertinent
questions, but, each time we met, I ventured
to make some respectful allusion to the magnum opus,
to inquire, as it were, as to its health and progress.
“We 're getting on, with the Lord's help,” he would
say with a grave smile. “We 're doing well. You see
I have the grand advantage that I lose no time.
These hours I spend with you are pure profit.
They 're suggestive! Just as the truly religious soul
is always at worship, the genuine artist is always in
labor. He takes his property wherever he finds it,
and learns some precious secret from every object
that stands up in the light. If you but knew the
rapture of observation! I gather with every glance
some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get
home, I pour out my treasures into the lap of my
Madonna. O, I 'm not idle! Nulla dies sine lines.”
I was introduced in Florence to an American lady
whose drawing-room had long formed an attractive
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place of reunion for the foreign residents. She lived
on a fourth floor, and she was not rich; but she
offered her visitors very good tea, little cakes at
option, and conversation not quite to match. Her
conversation had mainly an æsthetic flavor, for Mrs.
Coventry was famously “artistic.” Her apartment was
a sort of Pitti Palace au petit pied. She possessed
“early masters” by the dozen, — a cluster of Peruginos
in her dining-room, a Giotto in her boudoir, an Andrea
del Sarto over her parlor chimney-piece. Backed
by these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics,
majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs
showing angular saints on gilded panels, our hostess
enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the
arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature
copy of the Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her
ear quietly one evening I asked her whether she
knew that remarkable man, Mr. Theobald.
“Know him!” she exclaimed; “know poor Theobald!
All Florence knows him, his flame-colored locks, his
black velvet coat, his interminable harangues on the
beautiful, and his wondrous Madonna that mortal eye
has never seen, and that mortal patience has quite
given up expecting.”
“Really,” I cried, “you don't believe in his Madonna?”
“My dear ingenuous youth,” rejoined my shrewd
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friend, “has he made a convert of you? Well, we all
believed in him once; he came down upon Florence and
took the town by storm. Another Raphael, at the
very least, had been born among men, and poor, dear
America was to have the credit of him. Had n't he the
very hair of Raphael flowing down on his shoulders?
The hair, alas, but not the head! We swallowed him
whole, however; we hung upon his lips and proclaimed
his genius on the house-tops. The women were all
dying to sit to him for their portraits and be made immortal,
like Leonardo's Joconde. We decided that his
manner was a good deal like Leonardo's, — mysterious
and inscrutable and fascinating. Mysterious it certainly
was; mystery was the beginning and the end of it.
The months passed by, and the miracle hung fire; our
master never produced his masterpiece. He passed
hours in the galleries and churches, posturing, musing,
and gazing; he talked more than ever about the beautiful,
but he never put brush to canvas. We had all
subscribed, as it were, to the great performance; but
as it never came off, people began to ask for their
money again. I was one of the last of the faithful; I
carried devotion so far as to sit to him for my head.
If you could have seen the horrible creature he made
of me, you would admit that even a woman with no
more vanity than will tie her bonnet straight must
have cooled off then. The man did n't know the very
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alphabet of drawing! His strong point, he intimated,
was his sentiment; but is it a consolation, when one has
been painted a fright, to know it has been done with
peculiar gusto? One by one, I confess, we fell away
from the faith, and Mr. Theobald did n't lift his little
finger to preserve us. At the first hint that we were
tired of waiting and that we should like the show to
begin, he was off in a huff. `Great work requires time,
contemplation, privacy, mystery! O ye of little faith!'
We answered that we did n't insist on a great work; that
the five-act tragedy might come at his convenience;
that we merely asked for something to keep us from
yawning, some inexpensive little lever de rideau. Hereupon
the poor man took his stand as a genius misconceived
and persecuted, an âme méconnue, and washed
his hands of us from that hour! No, I believe he does
me the honor to consider me the head and front of the
conspiracy formed to nip his glory in the bud, — a bud
that has taken twenty years to blossom. Ask him if
he knows me, and he 'd tell you I 'm a horribly ugly
old woman who has vowed his destruction because he
would n't paint her portrait as a pendant to Titian's
Flora. I fancy that since then he has had none but
chance followers, innocent strangers like yourself, who
have taken him at his word. The mountain 's still in
labor; I 've not heard that the mouse has been born.
I pass him once in a while in the galleries, and he fixes
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his great dark eyes on me with a sublimity of indifference,
as if I were a bad copy of a Sassoferrato! It is
a long time ago now that I heard that he was making
studies for a Madonna who was to be a résumé of all
the other Madonnas of the Italian school, — like that
antique Venus who borrowed a nose from one great
image and an ankle from another. It 's certainly a
masterly idea. The parts may be fine, but when
I think of my unhappy portrait I tremble for the
whole. He has communicated this striking idea under
the pledge of solemn secrecy to fifty chosen
spirits, to every one he has ever been able to button-hole
for five minutes. I suppose he wants to get
an order for it, and he 's not to blame; for Heaven
knows how he lives. I see by your blush,” my hostess
frankly continued, “that you have been honored
with his confidence. You need n't be ashamed, my
dear young man; a man of your age is none the
worse for a certain generous credulity. Only allow
me to give you a word of advice: keep your credulity
out of your pockets! Don't pay for the picture
till it 's delivered. You 've not been treated to a
peep at it, I imagine. No more have your fifty predecessors
in the faith. There are people who doubt
whether there is any picture to be seen. I fancy, myself,
that if one were to get into his studio, one would
find something very like the picture in that tale of
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Balzac's, — a mere mass of incoherent scratches and
daubs, a jumble of dead paint!”
I listened to this pungent recital in silent wonder.
It had a painfully plausible sound, and was
not inconsistent with certain shy suspicions of my
own. My hostess was a clever woman, and presumably
a generous one. I determined to let my judgment
wait upon events. Possibly she was right;
but if she was wrong, she was cruelly wrong! Her
version of my friend's eccentricities made me impatient
to see him again and examine him in the
light of public opinion. On our next meeting, I
immediately asked him if he knew Mrs. Coventry.
He laid his hand on my arm and gave me a sad
smile. “Has she taxed your gallantry at last?” he
asked. “She 's a foolish woman. She 's frivolous
and heartless, and she pretends to be serious and
kind. She prattles about Giotto's second manner
and Vittoria Colonna's liaison with `Michael,' — one
would think that Michael lived across the way and
was expected in to take a hand at whist, — but she
knows as little about art, and about the conditions
of production, as I know about Buddhism. She
profanes sacred words,” he added more vehemently,
after a pause. “She cares for you only as some
one to hand teacups in that horrible mendacious
little parlor of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos!
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If you can't dash off a new picture every three days,
and let her hand it round among her guests, she tells
them in plain English you 're an impostor!”
This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry's accuracy
was made in the course of a late afternoon
walk to the quiet old church of San Miniato, on
one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city,
from whose gate you are guided to it by a stony
and cypress-bordered walk, which seems a most fitting
avenue to a shrine. No spot is more propitious
to lingering repose* than the broad terrace in
front of the church, where, lounging against the parapet,
you may glance in slow alternation from the
black and yellow marbles of the church façade,
seamed and cracked with time and wind-sown with
a tender flora of its own, down to the full domes
and slender towers of Florence and over to the blue
sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into
whose hollow the little treasure-city has been dropped.
I had proposed, as a diversion from the painful memories
evoked by Mrs. Coventry's name, that Theobald
should go with me the next evening to the
opera, where some rarely played work was to be
given. He declined, as I had half expected, for I
had observed that he regularly kept his evenings in
reserve, and never alluded to his manner of
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passing them. “You have reminded me before,” I said,
smiling, “of that charming speech of the Florentine
painter in Alfred de Musset's Lorenzaccio: `I do
no harm to any one. I pass my days in my studio.
On Sunday, I go to the Annunziata or to Santa Maria;
the monks think I have a voice; they dress me in a white
gown and a red cap, and I take a share in the choruses,
sometimes I do a little solo: these are the only times I go
into public. In the evening, I visit my sweetheart; when
the night is fine, we pass it on her balcony.' I don't
know whether you have a sweetheart, or whether she
has a balcony. But if you 're so happy, it 's certainly
better than trying to find a charm in a third-rate
prima donna.”
He made no immediate response, but at last he
turned to me solemnly. “Can you look upon a beautiful
woman with reverent eyes?”
“Really,” I said, “I don't pretend to be sheepish,
but I should be sorry to think I was impudent.” And
I asked him what in the world he meant. When at
last I had assured him that I could undertake to temper
admiration with respect, he informed me, with an
air of religious mystery, that it was in his power to
introduce me to the most beautiful woman in Italy.
“A beauty with a soul!”
“Upon my word,” I cried, “you 're extremely fortunate.
I shall rejoice to witness the conjunction.”
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“This woman's beauty,” he answered, “is a lesson, a
morality, a poem! It 's my daily study.”
Of course, after this, I lost no time in reminding
him of what, before we parted, had taken the shape of
a promise. “I feel somehow,” he had said, “as if it
were a sort of violation of that privacy in which I have
always contemplated her beauty. This is friendship,
my friend. No hint of her existence has ever fallen
from my lips. But with too great a familiarity we are
apt to lose a sense of the real value of things, and you
perhaps will throw some new light upon it and offer a
fresher interpretation.” We went accordingly by appointment
to a certain ancient house in the heart of
Florence, — the precinct of the Mercato Vecchio, —
and climbed a dark, steep staircase to the very summit
of the edifice. Theobald's beauty seemed as jealously
exalted above the line of common vision as the Belle
aux Cheveux d'Or in her tower-top. He passed without
knocking into the dark vestibule of a small apartment,
and, flinging open an inner door, ushered me
into a small saloon. The room seemed mean and
sombre, though I caught a glimpse of white curtains
swaying gently at an open window. At a table, near
a lamp, sat a woman dressed in black, working at a
piece of embroidery. As Theobald entered, she looked
up calmly, with a smile; but seeing me, she made a
movement of surprise, and rose with a kind of stately
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grace. Theobald stepped forward, took her hand and
kissed it, with an indescribable air of immemorial
usage. As he bent his head, she looked at me askance,
and I thought she blushed.
“Behold the Serafina!” said Theobald, frankly, waving
me forward. “This is a friend, and a lover of the
arts,” he added, introducing me. I received a smile, a
courtesy, and a request to be seated.
The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of
a generous Italian type and of a great simplicity of
demeanor. Seated again at her lamp, with her embroidery,
she seemed to have nothing whatever to say.
Theobald, bending towards her in a sort of Platonic
ecstasy, asked her a dozen paternally tender questions
as to her health, her state of mind, her occupations,
and the progress of her embroidery, which he examined
minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some
portion of an ecclesiastical vestment, — yellow satin
wrought with an elaborate design of silver and gold.
She made answer in a full, rich voice, but with a
brevity which I hesitated whether to attribute to native
reserve or to the profane constraint of my presence.
She had been that morning to confession; she
had also been to market, and had bought a chicken
for dinner. She felt very happy; she had nothing to
complain of, except that the people for whom she was
making her vestment, and who furnished her materials,
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should be willing to put such rotten silver thread into
the garment, as one might say, of the Lord. From
time to time, as she took her slow stitches, she raised
her eyes and covered me with a glance which seemed
at first to denote a placid curiosity, but in which, as
I saw it repeated, I thought I perceived the dim
glimmer of an attempt to establish an understanding
with me at the expense of our companion. Meanwhile,
as mindful as possible of Theobald's injunction
of reverence, I considered the lady's personal claims
to the fine compliment he had paid her.
That she was indeed a beautiful woman I perceived,
after recovering from the surprise of finding her without
the freshness of youth. Her beauty was of a sort
which, in losing youth, loses little of its essential
charm, expressed for the most part as it was in form
and structure, and, as Theobald would have said, in
“composition.” She was broad and ample, low-browed
and large-eyed, dark and pale. Her thick brown hair
hung low beside her cheek and ear, and seemed to
drape her head with a covering as chaste and formal
as the veil of a nun. The poise and carriage of her
head was admirably free and noble, and the more
effective that their freedom was at moments discreetly
corrected by a little sanctimonious droop, which harmonized
admirably with the level gaze of her dark
and quiet eye. A strong, serene physical nature and
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the placid temper which comes of no nerves and no
troubles seemed this lady's comfortable portion. She
was dressed in plain dull black, save for a sort of dark
blue kerchief which was folded across her bosom and
exposed a glimpse of her massive throat. Over this
kerchief was suspended a little silver cross. I admired
her greatly, and yet with a large reserve. A certain
mild intellectual apathy belonged properly to her type
of beauty, and had always seemed to round and enrich
it; but this bourgeoise Egeria, if I viewed her right,
betrayed a rather vulgar stagnation of mind. There
might have been once a dim, spiritual light in her
face; but it had long since begun to wane. And
furthermore, in plain prose, she was growing stout.
My disappointment amounted very nearly to complete
disenchantment when Theobald, as if to facilitate my
covert inspection, declaring that the lamp was very
dim and that she would ruin her eyes without more
light, rose and fetched a couple of candles from the
mantel-piece, which he placed lighted on the table.
In this brighter illumination I perceived that our hostess
was decidedly an elderly woman. She was neither
haggard nor worn nor gray; she was simply coarse.
The “soul” which Theobald had promised seemed
scarcely worth making such a point of; it was no
deeper mystery than a sort of matronly mildness of
lip and brow. I would have been ready even to declare
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that that sanctified bend of the head was nothing
more than the trick of a person constantly working
at embroidery. It occurred to me even that it was
a trick of a less innocent sort; for, in spite of the
mellow quietude of her wits, this stately needlewoman
dropped a hint that she took the situation rather less
au sérieux than her friend. When he rose to light
the candles, she looked across at me with a quick,
intelligent smile and tapped her forehead with her
forefinger; then, as from a sudden feeling of compassionate
loyalty to poor Theobald, I preserved a blank
face, she gave a little shrug and resumed her work.
What was the relation of this singular couple?
Was he the most ardent of friends or the most reverent
of lovers? Did she regard him as an eccentric
youth whose benevolent admiration of her beauty
she was not ill-pleased to humor at this small cost
of having him climb into her little parlor and gossip
of summer nights? With her decent and sombre
dress, her simple gravity, and that fine piece of priestly
needlework, she looked like some pious lay-member of
a sisterhood, living by special permission outside her
convent walls. Or was she maintained here aloft by
her friend in comfortable leisure, so that he might
have before him the perfect, eternal type, uncorrupted
and untarnished by the struggle for existence? Her
shapely hands, I observed, were very fair and white;
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they lacked the traces of what is called “honest
toil.”
“And the pictures, how do they come on?” she
asked of Theobald, after a long pause.
“Finely, finely! I have here a friend whose sympathy
and encouragement give me new faith and
ardor.”
Our hostess turned to me, gazed at me a moment
rather inscrutably, and then tapping her forehead
with the gesture she had used a minute before, “He
has a magnificent genius!” she said, with perfect
gravity.
“I 'm inclined to think so,” I answered, with a
smile.
“Eh, why do you smile?” she cried. “If you
doubt it, you must see the bambino!” And she took
the lamp and conducted me to the other side of the
room, where on the wall, in a plain black frame,
hung a large drawing in red chalk. Beneath it was
festooned a little bowl for holy-water. The drawing
represented a very young child, entirely naked, half
nestling back against his mother's gown, but with
his two little arms outstretched, as if in the act of
benediction. It was executed with singular freedom
and power, and yet seemed vivid with the sacred
bloom of infancy. A sort of dimpled elegance and
grace, mingled with its boldness, recalled the touch
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of Correggio. “That 's what he can do!” said my
hostess. “It 's the blessed little boy whom I lost.
It 's his very image, and the Signor Teobaldo gave
it me as a gift. He has given me many things
beside!”
I looked at the picture for some time and admired
it vastly. Turning back to Theobald, I assured him
that if it were hung among the drawings in the Uffizi
and labelled with a glorious name, it would hold its
own. My praise seemed to give him extreme pleasure;
he pressed my hands, and his eyes filled with
tears. It moved him apparently with the desire to
expatiate on the history of the drawing, for he rose
and made his adieux to our companion, kissing her
hand with the same mild ardor as before. It occurred
to me that the offer of a similar piece of gallantry
on my own part might help me to know what
manner of woman she was. When she perceived
my intention, she withdrew her hand, dropped her
eyes solemnly, and made me a severe courtesy. Theobald
took my arm and led me rapidly into the
street.
“And what do you think of the divine Serafina?”
he cried with fervor.
“It 's certainly good solid beauty!” I answered.
He eyed me an instant askance, and then seemed
hurried along by the current of remembrance. “You
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should have seen the mother and the child together,
seen them as I first saw them, — the mother with
her head draped in a shawl, a divine trouble in her
face, and the bambino pressed to her bosom. You
would have said, I think, that Raphael had found
his match in common chance. I was coming in, one
summer night, from a long walk in the country, when
I met this apparition at the city gate. The woman
held out her hand. I hardly knew whether to say,
`What do you want?' or to fall down and worship.
She asked for a little money. I saw that she was
beautiful and pale. She might have stepped out of
the stable of Bethlehem! I gave her money and
helped her on her way into the town. I had guessed
her story. She, too, was a maiden mother, and she
had been turned out into the world in her shame.
I felt in all my pulses that here was my subject
mavellously realized. I felt like one of the old convent
artists who had had a vision. I rescued the
poor creatures, cherished them, watched them as I
would have done some precious work of art, some
lovely fragment of fresco discovered in a mouldering
cloister. In a month — as if to deepen and consecrate
the pathos of it all — the poor little child died.
When she felt that he was going, she held him up
to me for ten minutes, and I made that sketch. You
saw a feverish haste in it, I suppose; I wanted to
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spare the poor little mortal the pain of his position.
After that, I doubly valued the mother. She is the
simplest, sweetest, most natural creature that ever
bloomed in this brave old land of Italy. She lives
in the memory of her child, in her gratitude for the
scanty kindness I have been able to show her, and
in her simple religion! She 's not even conscious of
her beauty; my admiration has never made her vain.
Heaven knows I 've made no secret of it. You must
have observed the singular transparency of her expression,
the lovely modesty of her glance. And was
there ever such a truly virginal brow, such a natural
classic elegance in the wave of the hair and the arch
of the forehead? I 've studied her; I may say I
know her. I 've absorbed her little by little; my
mind is stamped and imbued, and I have determined
now to clinch the impression; I shall at last invite
her to sit for me!”
“`At last, — at last'?” I repeated, in much amazement.
“Do you mean that she has never done so
yet?”
“I 've not really had — a — a sitting,” said Theobald,
speaking very slowly. “I 've taken notes, you
know; I 've got my grand fundamental impression.
That 's the great thing! But I 've not actually had
her as a model, posed and draped and lighted, before
my easel.”
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What had become for the moment of my perception
and my tact I am at a loss to say; in their absence,
I was unable to repress headlong exclamation. I was
destined to regret it. We had stopped at a turning,
beneath a lamp. “My poor friend,” I exclaimed, laying
my hand on his shoulder, “you 've dawdled!
She 's an old, old woman — for a Madonna!”
It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never
forget the long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain with
which he answered me. “Dawdled — old, old!” he
stammered. “Are you joking?”
“Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take
the woman for twenty?”
He drew a long breath and leaned against a house,
looking at me with questioning, protesting, reproachful
eyes. At last, starting forward, and grasping my arm:
“Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly
old? Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?”
Then at last I understood the immensity of his
illusion; how, one by one, the noiseless years had
ebbed away, and left him brooding in charmed inaction,
forever preparing for a work forever deferred.
It seemed to me almost a kindness now to tell him
the plain truth. “I should be sorry to say you 're
blind,” I answered, “but I think you 're deceived.
You 've lost time in effortless contemplation. Your
friend was once young and fresh and virginal; but, I
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protest, that was some years ago. Still, she has de
beaux restes? By all means make her sit for you!” I
broke down; his face was too horribly reproachful.
He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief
mechanically over his forehead. “De beaux
restes? I thank you for sparing me the plain English.
I must make up my Madonna out of de beaux restes!
What a masterpiece she 'll be! Old — old! Old —
old!” he murmured.
“Never mind her age,” I cried, revolted at what I
had done, “never mind my impression of her! You
have your memory, your notes, your genius. Finish
your picture in a month. I proclaim it beforehand a
masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for it any sum you
may choose to ask.”
He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me.
“Old — old!” he kept stupidly repeating. “If she is
old, what am I? If her beauty has faded, where —
where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have
I worshipped too long, — have I loved too well?”
The charm, in truth, was broken. That the chord of
illusion should have snapped at my light, accidental
touch showed how it had been weakened by excessive
tension. The poor fellow's sense of wasted time, of
vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his soul
in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head
and burst into tears.
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I led him homeward with all possible tenderness,
but I attempted neither to check his grief, to restore
his equanimity, nor to unsay the hard truth. When
we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come in.
“We 'll drink a glass of wine,” I said, smiling, “to the
completion of the Madonna.”
With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for
a moment with a formidably sombre frown, and then
giving me his hand, “I 'll finish it,” he cried, “in a
month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it
here!” And he tapped his forehead. “Of course
she 's old! She can afford to have it said of her, — a
woman who has made twenty years pass like a twelvemonth!
Old — old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!”
I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he
waved me back and walked away with an air of resolution,
whistling and swinging his cane. I waited a
moment, and then followed him at a distance, and saw
him proceed to cross the Santa Trinità Bridge. When
he reached the middle, he suddenly paused, as if his
strength had deserted him, and leaned upon the parapet
gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep
him in sight; I confess that I passed ten very nervous
minutes. He recovered himself at last, and went his
way, slowly and with hanging head.
That I should have really startled poor Theobald into
a bolder use of his long-garnered stores of knowledge
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and taste, into the vulgar effort and hazard of production,
seemed at first reason enough for his continued
silence, and absence; but as day followed day without
his either calling or sending me a line, and without my
meeting him in his customary haunts, in the galleries,
in the chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between the
Arno-side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which,
along the drive of the Cascine, throws the fair occupants
of barouche and phaeton into such becoming
relief, — as for more than a week I got neither tidings
nor sight of him, I began to fear that I had fatally
offended him, and that, instead of giving wholesome
impetus to his talent, I had brutally paralyzed it. I
had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My
stay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was
important that, before resuming my journey, I should
assure myself of the truth. Theobald, to the last, had
kept his lodging a mystery, and I was altogether at
a loss where to look for him. The simplest course
was to make inquiry of the beauty of the Mercato
Vecchio, and I confess that unsatisfied curiosity as to
the lady herself counselled it as well. Perhaps I had
done her injustice, and she was as immortally fresh
and fair as he conceived her. I was, at any rate, anxious
to behold once more the ripe enchantress who
had made twenty years pass as a twelvemonth. I repaired
accordingly, one moning, to her abode, climbed
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the interminable staircase, and reached her door. It
stood ajar, and as I hesitated whether to enter, a little
serving-maid came clattering out with an empty kettle,
as if she had just performed some savory errand. The
inner door, too, was open; so I crossed the little vestibule
and entered the room in which I had formerly
been received. It had not its evening aspect. The
table, or one end of it, was spread for a late breakfast,
and before it sat a gentleman, — an individual, at least,
of the male sex, — dealing justice upon a beefsteak
and onions, and a bottle of wine. At his elbow, in
friendly proximity, was placed the lady of the house.
Her attitude, as I entered, was not that of an enchantress.
With one hand she held in her lap a plate of
smoking maccaroni; with the other she had lifted high
in air one of the pendulous filaments of this succulent
compound, and was in the act of slipping it gently
down her throat. On the uncovered end of the table,
facing her companion, were ranged half a dozen small
statuettes, of some snuff-colored substance resembling
terra-cotta. He, brandishing his knife with ardor, was
apparently descanting on their merits.
Evidently I darkened the door. My hostess dropped
her maccaroni — into her mouth, and rose hastily with
a harsh exclamation and a flushed face. I immediately
perceived that the Signora Serafina's secret was
even better worth knowing than I had supposed, and
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that the way to learn it was to take it for granted.
I summoned my best Italian, I smiled and bowed
and apologized for my intrusion; and in a moment,
whether or no I had dispelled the lady's irritation, I
had, at least, stimulated her prudence. I was welcome,
she said; I must take a seat. This was another
friend of hers, — also an artist, she declared with a
smile which was almost amiable. Her companion
wiped his mustache and bowed with great civility.
I saw at a glance that he was equal to the situation.
He was presumably the author of the statuettes on
the table, and he knew a money-spending forestiere
when he saw one. He was a small, wiry man, with
a clever, impudent, tossed-up nose, a sharp little black
eye, and waxed ends to his mustache. On the side
of his head he wore jauntily a little crimson velvet
smoking-cap, and I observed that his feet were encased
in brilliant slippers. On Serafina's remarking
with dignity that I was the friend of Mr. Theobald,
he broke out into that fantastic French of which
Italians are so insistently lavish, and declared with
fervor that Mr. Theobald was a magnificent genius.
“I 'm sure I don't know,” I answered with a shrug.
“If you 're in a position to affirm it, you have the
advantage of me. I 've seen nothing from his hand
but the bambino yonder, which certainly is fine.”
He declared that the bambino was a masterpiece, a
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pure Correggio. It was only a pity, he added with a
knowing laugh, that the sketch had not been made on
some good bit of honeycombed old panel. The stately
Serafina hereupon protested that Mr. Theobald was
the soul of honor, and that he would never lend himself
to a deceit. “I 'm not a judge of genius,” she said,
“and I know nothing of pictures. I 'm but a poor
simple widow; but I know that the Signor Teobaldo
has the heart of an angel and the virtue of a saint.
He 's my benefactor,” she added sententiously. The
after-glow of the somewhat sinister flush with which
she had greeted me still lingered in her cheek, and
perhaps did not favor her beauty; I could not but
fancy it a wise custom of Theobald's to visit her only
by candlelight. She was coarse, and her poor adorer
was a poet.
“I have the greatest esteem for him,” I said; “it is
for this reason that I have been uneasy at not seeing
him for ten days. Have you seen him? Is he perhaps
ill?”
“Ill! Heaven forbid!” cried Serafina, with genuine
vehemence.
Her companion uttered a rapid expletive, and reproached
her with not having been to see him. She
hesitated a moment; then she simpered the least bit
and bridled. “He comes to see me — without reproach!
But it would not be the same for me to go
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to him, though, indeed, you may almost call him a man
of holy life.”
“He has the greatest admiration for you,” I said.
“He would have been honored by your visit.”
She looked at me a moment sharply. “More admiration
than you. Admit that!” Of course I protested
with all the eloquence at my command, and
my mysterious hostess then confessed that she had
taken no fancy to me on my former visit, and that,
Theobald not having returned, she believed I had poisoned
his mind against her. “It would be no kindness
to the poor gentleman, I can tell you that,” she
said. “He has come to see me every evening for
years. It 's a long friendship! No one knows him as
well as I.”
“I don't pretend to know him, or to understand
him,” I said. “He 's a mystery! Nevertheless, he
seems to me a little —” And I touched my forehead
and waved my hand in the air.
Serafina glanced at her companion a moment, as if
for inspiration. He contented himself with shrugging
his shoulders, as he filled his glass again. The padrona
hereupon gave me a more softly insinuating smile than
would have seemed likely to bloom on so candid a
brow. “It 's for that that I love him!” she said.
“The world has so little kindness for such persons. It
laughs at them, and despises them, and cheats them.
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He is too good for this wicked life! It 's his fancy
that he finds a little Paradise up here in my poor
apartment. If he thinks so, how can I help it? He
has a strange belief — really, I ought to be ashamed to
tell you — that I resemble the Blessed Virgin: Heaven
forgive me! I let him think what he pleases, so long
as it makes him happy. He was very kind to me
once, and I am not one that forgets a favor. So I
receive him every evening civilly, and ask after his
health, and let him look at me on this side and that!
For that matter, I may say it without vanity, I was
worth looking at once! And he 's not always amusing,
poor man! He sits sometimes for an hour without
speaking a word, or else he talks away, without stopping,
on art and nature, and beauty and duty, and fifty
fine things that are all so much Latin to me. I beg
you to understand that he has never said a word to me
that I might n't decently listen to. He may be a little
cracked, but he 's one of the saints.”
“Eh!” cried the man, “the saints were all a little
cracked!”
Serafina, I fancied, left part of her story untold; but
she told enough of it to make poor Theobald's own
statement seem intensely pathetic in its exalted simplicity.
“It 's a strange fortune, certainly,” she went
on, “to have such a friend as this dear man, — a friend
who 's less than a lover and more than a friend.” I
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glanced at her companion, who preserved an impenetrable
smile, twisted the end of his mustache, and disposed
of a copious mouthful. Was he less than a
lover? “But what will you have?” Serafina pursued.
“In this hard world one must n't ask too many questions;
one must take what comes and keep what one
gets. I 've kept my good friend for twenty years, and
I do hope that, at this time of day, Signore, you 've not
come to turn him against me!”
I assured her that I had no such design, and that I
should vastly regret disturbing Mr. Theobald's habits
or convictions. On the contrary, I was alarmed about
him, and I should immediately go in search of him.
She gave me his address and a florid account of her
sufferings at his non-appearance. She had not been
to him, for various reasons; chiefly because she was
afraid of displeasing him, as he had always made such
a mystery of his home. “You might have sent this
gentleman!” I ventured to suggest.
“Ah,” cried the gentleman, “he admires the Signora
Serafina, but he would n't admire me.” And then,
confidentially, with his finger on his nose, “He 's a
purist!”
I was about to withdraw, on the promise that I
would inform the Signora Serafina of my friend's condition,
when her companion, who had risen from table
and girded his loins apparently for the onset, grasped
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me gently by the arm, and led me before the row of
statuettes. “I perceive by your conversation, signore,
that you are a patron of the arts. Allow me to request
your honorable attention for these modest products
of my own ingenuity. They are brand-new, fresh from
my atelier, and have never been exhibited in public.
I have brought them here to receive the verdict of
this dear lady, who is a good critic, for all she may
pretend to the contrary. I am the inventor of this
peculiar style of statuette, — of subject, manner, material,
everything. Touch them, I pray you; handle
them; you need n't fear. Delicate as they look, it is
impossible they should break! My various creations
have met with great success. They are especially
admired by Americans. I have sent them all over
Europe, — to London, Paris, Vienna! You may have
observed some little specimens in Paris, on the Boulevard,
in a shop of which they constitute the specialty.
There is always a crowd about the window. They
form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf
of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty
woman. You could n't make a prettier present to a
person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless
joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but,
between ourselves, is n't classic art sometimes rather
a bore? Caricature, burlesque, la charge, as the French
say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and
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pencil. Now, it has been my inspiration to introduce
it into statuary. For this purpose I have invented a
peculiar plastic compound which you will permit me
not to divulge. That 's my secret, signore! It 's as
light, you perceive, as cork, and yet as firm as alabaster!
I frankly confess that I really pride myself as
much on this little stroke of chemical ingenuity as
upon the other element of novelty in my creations, —
my types. What do you say to my types, signore?
The idea is bold; does it strike you as happy? Cats
and monkeys, — monkeys and cats, — all human life
is there! Human life, of course, I mean, viewed with
the eye of the satirist! To combine sculpture and
satire, signore, has been my unprecedented ambition.
I flatter myself that I have not egregiously failed.”
As this jaunty Juvenal of the chimney-piece delivered
himself of his persuasive allocution, he took
up his little groups successively from the table, held
them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with
his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly with his
head on one side. They consisted each of a cat
and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously
sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a
certain sameness of motive, and illustrated chiefly
the different phases of what, in delicate terms, may
be called gallantry and coquetry; but they were
strikingly clever and expressive, and were at once
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very perfect cats and monkeys and very natural men
and women. I confess, however, that they failed to
amuse me. I was doubtless not in a mood to enjoy
them, for they seemed to me peculiarly cynical and
vulgar. Their imitative felicity was revolting. As I
looked askance at the complacent little artist, brandishing
them between finger and thumb, and caressing them
with an amorous eye, he seemed to me himself little
more than an exceptionally intelligent ape. I mustered
an admiring grin, however, and he blew another
blast. “My figures are studied from life! I
have a little menagerie of monkeys whose frolics
I contemplate by the hour. As for the cats, one has
only to look out of one's back window! Since I
have begun to examine these expressive little brutes,
I have made many profound observations. Speaking,
signore, to a man of imagination, I may say that my
little designs are not without a philosophy of their
own. Truly, I don't know whether the cats and
monkeys imitate us, or whether it 's we who imitate
them.” I congratulated him on his philosophy, and
he resumed: “You will do me the honor to admit
that I have handled my subjects with delicacy. Eh,
it was needed, signore! I have been free, but not
too free — eh? Just a hint, you know! You may see
as much or as little as you please. These little
groups, however, are no measure of my invention.
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If you will favor me with a call at my studio, I
think that you will admit that my combinations are
really infinite. I likewise execute figures to command.
You have perhaps some little motive, — the
fruit of your philosophy of life, signore, — which
you would like to have interpreted. I can promise
to work it up to your satisfaction; it shall be as
malicious as you please! Allow me to present you
with my card, and to remind you that my prices
are moderate. Only sixty francs for a little group like
that. My statuettes are as durable as bronze, — œre
perennius, signore, — and, between ourselves, I think
they are more amusing!”
As I pocketed his card, I glanced at Madonna
Serafina, wondering whether she had an eye for contrasts.
She had picked up one of the little couples
and was tenderly dusting it with a feather broom.
What I had just seen and heard had so deepened
my compassionate interest in my deluded friend, that
I took a summary leave, and made my way directly to
the house designated by this remarkable woman. It
was in an obscure corner of the opposite side of the
town, and presented a sombre and squalid appearance.
An old woman in the doorway, on my inquiring for
Theobald, ushered me in with a mumbled blessing and
an expression of relief at the poor gentleman having a
friend. His lodging seemed to consist of a single room
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at the top of the house. On getting no answer to my
knock, I opened the door, supposing that he was absent;
so that it gave me a certain shock to find him
sitting there helpless and dumb. He was seated near
the single window, facing an easel which supported a
large canvas. On my entering, he looked up at me
blankly, without changing his position, which was that
of absolute lassitude and dejection, his arms loosely
folded, his legs stretched before him, his head hanging
on his breast. Advancing into the room, I perceived
that his face vividly corresponded with his attitude.
He was pale, haggard, and unshaven, and his dull and
sunken eye gazed at me without a spark of recognition.
I had been afraid that he would greet me with fierce
reproaches, as the cruelly officious patron who had
turned his peace to bitterness, and I was relieved to
find that my appearance awakened no visible resentment.
“Don't you know me?” I asked, as I put out
my hand. “Have you already forgotten me?”
He made no response, kept his position stupidly,
and left me staring about the room. It spoke most
plaintively for itself. Shabby, sordid, naked, it contained,
beyond the wretched bed, but the scantiest
provision for personal comfort. It was bedroom at
once and studio, — a grim ghost of a studio. A few
dusty casts and prints on the walls, three or four old
canvases turned face inward, and a rusty-looking
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colorbox formed, with the easel at the window, the sum of
its appurtenances. The place savored horribly of poverty.
Its only wealth was the picture on the easel,
presumably the famous Madonna. Averted as this
was from the door, I was unable to see its face; but
at last, sickened by the vacant misery of the spot, I
passed behind Theobald, eagerly and tenderly. I can
hardly say that I was surprised at what I found, — a
canvas that was a mere dead blank, cracked and discolored
by time. This was his immortal work! Though
not surprised, I confess I was powerfully moved, and I
think that for five minutes I could not have trusted
myself to speak. At last, my silent nearness affected
him; he stirred and turned, and then rose and looked
at me with a slowly kindling eye. I murmured some
kind, ineffective nothings about his being ill and needing
advice and care, but he seemed absorbed in the
effort to recall distinctly what had last passed between
us. “You were right,” he said with a pitiful smile,
“I 'm a dawdler! I 'm a failure! I shall do nothing
more in this world. You opened my eyes; and, though
the truth is bitter, I bear you no grudge. Amen! I 've
been sitting here for a week, face to face with the truth,
with the past, with my weakness and poverty and
nullity. I shall never touch a brush! I believe I 've
neither eaten nor slept. Look at that canvas!” he
went on, as I relieved my emotion in the urgent
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request that he would come home with me and dine.
“That was to have contained my masterpiece! Is n't
it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all
here.” And he tapped his forehead with that mystic
confidence which had marked the gesture before.
“If I could only transpose them into some brain
that had the hand, the will! Since I 've been sitting
here taking stock of my intellects, I 've come
to believe that I have the material for a hundred
masterpieces. But my hand is paralyzed now, and
they 'll never be painted. I never began! I waited
and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my
life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was
growing, it was dying. I 've taken it all too hard!
Michael Angelo did n't when he went at the Lorenzo!
He did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal.
That 's mine!” And he pointed with a gesture
I shall never forget at the empty canvas. “I suppose
we 're a genus by ourselves in the providential
scheme, — we talents that can't act, that can't do nor
dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and promises,
in study, in visions! But our visions, let me tell you,”
he cried, with a toss of his head, “have a way of
being brilliant, and a man has n't lived in vain who
has seen the things I have! Of course you 'll not
believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth
is all I have to show for them; but to convince
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you, to enchant and astound the world, I need only
the hand of Raphael. I have his brain. A pity,
you 'll say, I have n't his modesty! Ah, let me babble
now; it 's all I have left! I 'm the half of a
genius! Where in the wide world is my other half?
Lodged perhaps in the vulgar soul, the cunning, ready
fingers of some dull copyist or some trivial artisan
who turns out by the dozen his easy prodigies of
touch! But it 's not for me to sneer at him; he
at least does something. He 's not a dawdler! Well
for me if I had been vulgar and clever and reckless,
if I could have shut my eyes and dealt my
stroke!”
What to say to the poor fellow, what to do for
him, seemed hard to determine; I chiefly felt that
I must break the spell of his present inaction, and
remove him from the haunted atmosphere of the
little room it seemed such cruel irony to call a studio.
I cannot say I persuaded him to come out
with me; he simply suffered himself to be led, and
when we began to walk in the open air I was able
to measure his pitifully weakened condition. Nevertheless,
he seemed in a certain way to revive, and
murmured at last that he would like to go to the
Pitti Gallery. I shall never forget our melancholy
stroll through those gorgeous halls, every picture on
whose walls seemed, even to my own sympathetic
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vision, to glow with a sort of insolent renewal of
strength and lustre. The eyes and lips of the great
portraits seemed to smile in ineffable scorn of the
dejected pretender who had dreamed of competing
with their triumphant authors; the celestial candor,
even, of the Madonna in the Chair, as we paused
in perfect silence before her, was tinged with the
sinister irony of the women of Leonardo. Perfect
silence indeed marked our whole progress, — the
silence of a deep farewell; for I felt in all my
pulses, as Theobald, leaning on my arm, dragged one
heavy foot after the other, that he was looking his
last. When we came out, he was so exhausted
that, instead of taking him to my hotel to dine, I
called a carriage and drove him straight to his own
poor lodging. He had sunk into an extraordinary
lethargy; he lay back in the carriage, with his eyes
closed, as pale as death, his faint breathing interrupted
at intervals by a sudden gasp, like a smothered
sob or a vain attempt to speak. With the help of
the old woman who had admitted me before, and
who emerged from a dark back court, I contrived to
lead him up the long steep staircase and lay him on
his wretched bed. To her I gave him in charge,
while I prepared in all haste to seek a physician.
But she followed me out of the room with a pitiful
clasping of her hands.
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“Poor, dear, blessed gentleman,” she murmured;
“is he dying?”
“Possibly. How long has he been thus?”
“Since a night he passed ten days ago. I came
up in the morning to make his poor bed, and found
him sitting up in his clothes before that great canvas
he keeps there. Poor, dear, strange man, he
says his prayers to it! He had not been to bed,
nor since then properly! What has happened to
him? Has he found out about the Serafina?” she
whispered with a glittering eye and a toothless grin.
“Prove at least that one old woman can be faithful,”
I said, “and watch him well till I come back.”
My return was delayed, through the absence of the
English physician on a round of visits, and my vainly
pursuing him from house to house before I overtook
him. I brought him to Theobald's bedside none too
soon. A violent fever had seized our patient, and
the case was evidently grave. A couple of hours
later I knew that he had brain-fever. From this
moment I was with him constantly, but I am far
from wishing to describe his illness. Excessively
painful to witness, it was happily brief. Life burned
out in delirium. A certain night that I passed at
his pillow, listening to his wild snatches of regret, of
aspiration, of rapture and awe at the phantasmal pictures
with which his brain seemed to swarm, recurs
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to my memory now like some stray page from a lost
masterpiece of tragedy. Before a week was over we
had buried him in the little Protestant cemetery on
the way to Fiesole. The Signora Serafina, whom I
had caused to be informed of his illness, had come
in person, I was told, to inquire about its progress;
but she was absent from his funeral, which was
attended by but a scanty concourse of mourners.
Half a dozen old Florentine sojourners, in spite of
the prolonged estrangement which had preceded his
death, had felt the kindly impulse to honor his grave.
Among them was my friend Mrs. Coventry, whom I
found, on my departure, waiting at her carriage door
at the gate of the cemetery.
“Well,” she said, relieving at last with a significant
smile the solemnity of our immediate greeting,
“and the great Madonna? Have you seen her, after
all?”
“I 've seen her,” I said; “she 's mine, — by bequest.
But I shall never show her to you.”
“And why not, pray?”
“My dear Mrs. Coventry, you 'd not understand
her!”
“Upon my word, you 're polite.”
“Excuse me; I 'm sad and vexed and bitter.”
And with reprehensible rudeness, I marched away.
I was excessively impatient to leave Florence; my
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friend's dark spirit seemed diffused through all things.
I had packed my trunk to start for Rome that night,
and meanwhile, to beguile my unrest, I aimlessly
paced the streets. Chance led me at last to the
church of San Lorenzo. Remembering poor Theobald's
phrase about Michael Angelo, — “He did his
best at a venture,” — I went in and turned my steps
to the chapel of the tombs. Viewing in sadness the
sadness of its immortal treasures, I fancied, while I
stood there, that the scene demanded no ampler commentary.
As I passed through the church again to
depart, a woman, turning away from one of the sidealtars,
met me face to face. The black shawl depending
from her head draped picturesquely the handsome
visage of Madonna Serafina. She stopped as she recognized
me, and I saw that she wished to speak.
Her eye was bright and her ample bosom heaved in
a way that seemed to portend a certain sharpness of
reproach. But the expression of my own face, apparently,
drew the sting from her resentment, and she
addressed me in a tone in which bitterness was tempered
by a sort of dogged resignation. “I know it
was you, now, that separated us,” she said. “It was
a pity he ever brought you to see me! Of course,
you could n't think of me as he did. Well, the Lord
gave him, the Lord has taken him. I 've just paid for
a nine days' mass for his soul. And I can tell you
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this, signore, I never deceived him. Who put it into
his head that I was made to live on holy thoughts
and fine phrases? It was his own fancy, and it
pleased him to think so. Did he suffer much?” she
added more softly, after a pause.
“His sufferings were great, but they were short.”
“And did he speak of me?” She had hesitated and
dropped her eyes; she raised them with her question,
and revealed in their sombre stillness a gleam of feminine
confidence which, for the moment, revived and
illumined her beauty. Poor Theobald! Whatever
name he had given his passion, it was still her fine
eyes that had charmed him.
“Be contented, madam,” I answered, gravely.
She dropped her eyes again and was silent. Then
exhaling a full, rich sigh, as she gathered her shawl
together: “He was a magnificent genius!”
I bowed, and we separated.
Passing through a narrow side-street on my way
back to my hotel, I perceived above a doorway a sign
which it seemed to me I had read before. I suddenly
remembered that it was identical with the superscription
of a card that I had carried for an hour in my
waistcoat-pocket. On the threshold stood the ingenious
artist whose claims to public favor were thus distinctly
signalized, smoking a pipe in the evening air,
and giving the finishing polish with a bit of rag to
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one of his inimitable “combinations.” I caught the
expressive curl of a couple of tails. He recognized
me, removed his little red cap with a most obsequious
bow, and motioned me to enter his studio. I
returned his bow and passed on, vexed with the apparition.
For a week afterwards, whenever I was
seized among the ruins of triumphant Rome with
some peculiarly poignant memory of Theobald's transcendent
illusions and deplorable failure, I seemed
to hear a fantastic, impertinent murmur, “Cats and
monkeys, monkeys and cats; all human life is
there!”
eaf617n1* 1869.
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-- -- p617-331
the Romance of Certain Old Clothes.
[figure description] Page 328.[end figure description]
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TOWARD the middle of the eighteenth century
there lived in the Province of Massachusetts
a widowed gentlewoman, the mother of three children.
Her name is of little account: I shall take
the liberty of calling her Mrs. Willoughby, — a name,
like her own, of a highly respectable sound. She had
been left a widow after some six years of marriage,
and had devoted herself to the care of her progeny.
These young persons grew up in a manner to reward
her zeal and to gratify her fondest hopes. The first-born
was a son, whom she had called Bernard, after
his father. The others were daughters, — born at an
interval of three years apart. Good looks were traditional
in the family, and this youthful trio were
not likely to allow the tradition to perish. The boy
was of that fair and ruddy complexion and of that
athletic mould which in those days (as in these) were
the sign of genuine English blood, — a frank,
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affectionate young fellow, a deferential son, a patronizing
brother, and a steadfast friend. Clever, however, he
was not; the wit of the family had been apportioned
chiefly to his sisters. Mr. Willoughby had been a
great reader of Shakespeare, at a time when this
pursuit implied more liberality of taste than at the
present day, and in a community where it required
much courage to patronize the drama even in the
closet; and he had wished to record his admiration
of the great poet by calling his daughters out of his
favorite plays. Upon the elder he had bestowed the
romantic name of Viola; and upon the younger, the
more serious one of Perdita, in memory of a little
girl born between them, who had lived but a few
weeks.
When Bernard Willoughby came to his sixteenth
year, his mother put a brave face upon it, and prepared
to execute her husband's last request. This
had been an earnest entreaty that, at the proper age,
his son should be sent out to England, to complete
his education at the University of Oxford, which had
been the seat of his own studies. Mrs. Willoughby
fancied that the lad's equal was not to be found in
the two hemispheres, but she had the antique wifely
submissiveness. She swallowed her sobs, and made
up her boy's trunk and his simple provincial outfit,
and sent him on his way across the seas. Bernard
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[figure description] Page 331.[end figure description]
was entered at his father's college, and spent five
years in England, without great honor, indeed, but
with a vast deal of pleasure and no discredit. On
leaving the University he made the journey to France.
In his twenty-third year he took ship for home, prepared
to find poor little New England (New England
was very small in those days) an utterly intolerable
place of abode. But there had been changes at home,
as well as in Mr. Bernard's opinions. He found his
mother's house quite habitable, and his sisters grown
into two very charming young ladies, with all the
accomplishments and graces of the young women of
Britain, and a certain native-grown gentle brusquerie
and wildness, which, if it was not an accomplishment,
was certainly a grace the more. Bernard privately
assured his mother that his sisters were fully a match
for the most genteel young women in England; whereupon
poor Mrs. Willoughby, you may be sure, bade
them hold up their heads. Such was Bernard's opinion,
and such, in a tenfold higher degree, was the opinion
of Mr. Arthur Lloyd. This gentleman, I hasten
to add, was a college-mate of Mr. Bernard, a young
man of reputable family, of a good person and a
handsome inheritance; which latter appurtenance he
proposed to invest in trade in this country. He and
Bernard were warm friends; they had crossed the ocean
together, and the young American had lost no time in
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[figure description] Page 332.[end figure description]
presenting him at his mother's house, where he had
made quite as good an impression as that which he
had received, and of which I have just given a hint.
The two sisters were at this time in all the freshness
of their youthful bloom; each wearing, of course, this
natural brilliancy in the manner that became her best.
They were equally dissimilar in appearance and character.
Viola, the elder, — now in her twenty-second
year, — was tall and fair, with calm gray eyes and
auburn tresses; a very faint likeness to the Viola of
Shakespeare's comedy, whom I imagine as a brunette
(if you will), but a slender, airy creature, full of the
softest and finest emotions. Miss Willoughby, with
her candid complexion, her fine arms, her majestic
height, and her slow utterance, was not cut out for
adventures. She would never have put on a man's
jacket and hose; and, indeed, being a very plump
beauty, it is perhaps as well that she would not.
Perdita, too, might very well have exchanged the
sweet melancholy of her name against something more
in consonance with her aspect and disposition. She
was a positive brunette, short of stature, light of foot,
with a vivid dark brown eye. She had been from her
childhood a creature of smiles and gayety; and so far
from making you wait for an answer to your speech,
as her handsome sister was wont to do (while she
gazed at you with her somewhat cold gray eyes), she
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[figure description] Page 333.[end figure description]
had given you the choice of half a dozen, suggested
by the successive clauses of your proposition, before
you had got to the end of it.
The young girls were very glad to see their brother
once more; but they found themselves quite able to
maintain a reserve of good-will for their brother's
friend. Among the young men their friends and
neighbors, the belle jeunesse of the Colony, there were
many excellent fellows, several devoted swains, and
some two or three who enjoyed the reputation of
universal charmers and conquerors. But the homebred
arts and the somewhat boisterous gallantry of
those honest young colonists were completely eclipsed
by the good looks, the fine clothes, the punctilious
courtesy, the perfect elegance, the immense information,
of Mr. Arthur Lloyd. He was in reality no
paragon; he was an honest, resolute, intelligent young
man, rich in pounds sterling, in his health and comfortable
hopes, and his little capital of uninvested
affections. But he was a gentleman; he had a handsome
face; he had studied and travelled; he spoke
French, he played on the flute, and he read verses
aloud with very great taste. There were a dozen
reasons why Miss Willoughby and her sister should
forthwith have been rendered fastidious in the choice
of their male acquaintance. The imagination of woman
is especially adapted to the various small
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conventions and mysteries of polite society. Mr. Lloyd's
talk told our little New England maidens a vast deal
more of the ways and means of people of fashion in
European capitals than he had any idea of doing. It
was delightful to sit by and hear him and Bernard
discourse upon the fine people and fine things they
had seen. They would all gather round the fire after
tea, in the little wainscoted parlor, — quite innocent
then of any intention of being picturesque or of being
anything else, indeed, than economical, and saving an
outlay in stamped papers and tapestries, — and the two
young men would remind each other, across the rug,
of this, that, and the other adventure. Viola and
Perdita would often have given their ears to know
exactly what adventure it was, and where it happened,
and who was there, and what the ladies had on; but
in those days a well-bred young woman was not expected
to break into the conversation of her own
movement or to ask too many questions; and the poor
girls used therefore to sit fluttering behind the more
languid — or more discreet — curiosity of their mother.
That they were both very fine girls Arthur Lloyd
was not slow to discover; but it took him some time to
satisfy himself as to the apportionment of their charms.
He had a strong presentiment — an emotion of a nature
entirely too cheerful to be called a foreboding —
that he was destined to marry one of them; yet he was
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unable to arrive at a preference, and for such a consummation
a preference was certainly indispensable,
inasmuch as Lloyd was quite too gallant a fellow to
make a choice by lot and be cheated of the heavenly
delight of falling in love. He resolved to take things
easily, and to let his heart speak. Meanwhile, he was
on a very pleasant footing. Mrs. Willoughby showed
a dignified indifference to his “intentions,” equally remote
from a carelessness of her daughters' honor and
from that odious alacrity to make him commit himself,
which, in his quality of a young man of property, he
had but too often encountered in the venerable dames
of his native islands. As for Bernard, all that he asked
was that his friend should take his sisters as his own;
and as for the poor girls themselves, however each may
have secretly longed for the monopoly of Mr. Lloyd's
attentions, they observed a very decent and modest
and contented demeanor.
Towards each other, however, they were somewhat
more on the offensive. They were good sisterly friends,
betwixt whom it would take more than a day for the
seeds of jealousy to sprout and bear fruit; but the
young girls felt that the seeds had been sown on the
day that Mr. Lloyd came into the house. Each made
up her mind that, if she should be slighted, she would
bear her grief in silence, and that no one should be any
the wiser; for if they had a great deal of love, they
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had also a great deal of pride. But each prayed in
secret, nevertheless, that upon her the glory might fall.
They had need of a vast deal of patience, of self-control,
and of dissimulation. In those days a young girl of
decent breeding could make no advances whatever, and
barely respond, indeed, to those that were made. She
was expected to sit still in her chair with her eyes on
the carpet, watching the spot where the mystic handkerchief
should fall. Poor Arthur Lloyd was obliged
to undertake his wooing in the little wainscoted parlor,
before the eyes of Mrs. Willoughby, her son, and
his prospective sister-in-law. But youth and love are
so cunning that a hundred signs and tokens might
travel to and fro, and not one of these three pair of
eyes detect them in their passage. The young girls
had but one chamber and one bed between them, and
for long hours together they were under each other's
direct inspection. That each knew that she was being
watched, however, made not a grain of difference in
those little offices which they mutually rendered, or
in the various household tasks which they performed
in common. Neither flinched nor fluttered beneath
the silent batteries of her sister's eyes. The only apparent
change in their habits was that they had less
to say to each other. It was impossible to talk about
Mr. Lloyd, and it was ridiculous to talk about anything
else. By tacit agreement they began to wear
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all their choice finery, and to devise such little implements
of coquetry, in the way of ribbons and top-knots
and furbelows as were sanctioned by indubitable
modesty. They executed in the same inarticulate
fashion an agreement of sincerity on these delicate
matters. “Is it better so?” Viola would ask, tying
a bunch of ribbons on her bosom, and turning about
from her glass to her sister. Perdita would look up
gravely from her work and examine the decoration.
“I think you had better give it another loop,” she
would say, with great solemnity, looking hard at her
sister with eyes that added, “upon my honor!” So
they were forever stitching and trimming their petticoats,
and pressing out their muslins, and contriving
washes and ointments and cosmetics, like the ladies
in the household of the Vicar of Wakefield. Some
three or four months went by; it grew to be mid-winter,
and as yet Viola knew that if Perdita had
nothing more to boast of than she, there was not
much to be feared from her rivalry. But Perdita by
this time, the charming Perdita, felt that her secret
had grown to be tenfold more precious than her sister's.
One afternoon Miss Willoughby sat alone before her
toilet-glass combing out her long hair. It was getting
too dark to see; she lit the two candles in their sockets
on the frame of her mirror, and then went to the
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window to draw her curtains. It was a gray December
evening; the landscape was bare and bleak, and
the sky heavy with snow-clouds. At the end of the
long garden into which her window looked was a wall
with a little postern door, opening into a lane. The
door stood ajar, as she could vaguely see in the gathering
darkness, and moved slowly to and fro, as if
some one were swaying it from the lane without. It
was doubtless a servant-maid. But as she was about
to drop her curtain, Viola saw her sister step within
the garden, and hurry along the path toward the
house. She dropped the curtain, all save a little
crevice for her eyes. As Perdita came up the path,
she seemed to be examining something in her hand,
holding it close to her eyes. When she reached the
house she stopped a moment, looked intently at the
object, and pressed it to her lips.
Poor Viola slowly came back to her chair, and sat
down before her glass, where, if she had looked at it
less abstractedly, she would have seen her handsome
features sadly disfigured by jealousy. A moment
afterwards the door opened behind her, and her sister
came into the room, out of breath, and her cheeks
aglow with the chilly air.
Perdita started. “Ah,” said she, “I thought you
were with our mother.” The ladies were to go to a
tea-party, and on such occasions it was the habit of
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one of the young girls to help their mother to dress.
Instead of coming in, Perdita lingered at the door.
“Come in, come in,” said Viola. “We 've more
than an hour yet. I should like you very much to
give a few strokes to my hair.” She knew that her
sister wished to retreat, and that she could see in
the glass all her movements in the room. “Nay, just
help me with my hair,” she said, “and I 'll go to
mamma.”
Perdita came reluctantly, and took the brush. She
saw her sister's eyes, in the glass, fastened hard upon
her hands. She had not made three passes, when Viola
clapped her own right hand upon her sister's left,
and started out of her chair. “Whose ring is that?”
she cried passionately, drawing her towards the light.
On the young girl's third finger glistened a little
gold ring, adorned with a couple of small rubies.
Perdita felt that she need no longer keep her secret,
yet that she must put a bold face on her avowal.
“It 's mine,” she said proudly.
“Who gave it to you?” cried the other.
Perdita hesitated a moment. “Mr. Lloyd.”
“Mr. Lloyd is generous, all of a sudden.”
“Ah no,” cried Perdita, with spirit, “not all of a
sudden. He offered it to me a month ago.”
“And you needed a month's begging to take it?”
said Viola, looking at the little trinket; which indeed
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was not especially elegant, although it was the best
that the jeweller of the Province could furnish. “I
should n't have taken it in less than two.”
“It is n't the ring,” said Perdita, “it 's what it
means!”
“It means that you 're not a modest girl,” cried
Viola. “Pray does your mother know of your conduct?
does Bernard?”
“My mother has approved my `conduct,' as you call
it. Mr. Lloyd has asked my hand, and mamma has
given it. Would you have had him apply to you,
sister?”
Viola gave her sister a long look, full of passionate
envy and sorrow. Then she dropped her lashes on
her pale cheeks and turned away. Perdita felt that
it had not been a pretty scene; but it was her sister's
fault. But the elder girl rapidly called back her
pride, and turned herself about again. “You have
my very best wishes,” she said, with a low curtsey.
“I wish you every happiness, and a very long life.”
Perdita gave a bitter laugh. “Don't speak in that
tone,” she cried. “I 'd rather you cursed me outright.
Come, sister,” she added, “he could n't marry both
of us.”
“I wish you very great joy,” Viola repeated mechanically,
sitting down to her glass again, “and a very
long life, and plenty of children.”
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There was something in the sound of these words
not at all to Perdita's taste. “Will you give me a
year, at least?” she said. “In a year I can have one
little boy, — or one little girl at least. If you 'll give
me your brush again I 'll do your hair.”
“Thank you,” said Viola. “You had better go to
mamma. It is n't becoming that a young lady with a
promised husband should wait on a girl with none.”
“Nay,” said Perdita, good-humoredly, “I have Arthur
to wait upon me. You need my service more
than I need yours.”
But her sister motioned her away, and she left the
room. When she had gone poor Viola fell on her
knees before her dressing-table, buried her head in her
arms, and poured out a flood of tears and sobs. She
felt very much the better for this effusion of sorrow.
When her sister came back, she insisted upon helping
her to dress, and upon her wearing her prettiest things.
She forced upon her acceptance a bit of lace of her
own, and declared that now that she was to be married
she should do her best to appear worthy of her lover's
choice. She discharged these offices in stern silence;
but, such as they were, they had to do duty as an
apology and an atonement; she never made any other.
Now that Lloyd was received by the family as an
accepted suitor, nothing remained but to fix the wedding-day.
It was appointed for the following April,
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and in the interval preparations were diligently made
for the marriage. Lloyd, on his side, was busy with
his commercial arrangements, and with establishing
a correspondence with the great mercantile house to
which he had attached himself in England. He was
therefore not so frequent a visitor at Mrs. Willoughby's
as during the months of his diffidence and irresolution,
and poor Viola had less to suffer than she
had feared from the sight of the mutual endearments
of the young lovers. Touching his future sister-in-law,
Lloyd had a perfectly clear conscience. There
had not been a particle of sentiment uttered between
them, and he had not the slightest suspicion that she
coveted anything more than his fraternal regard. He
was quite at his ease; life promised so well, both domestically
and financially. The lurid clouds of revolution
were as yet twenty years beneath the horizon, and that
his connubial felicity should take a tragic turn it was
absurd, it was blasphemous, to apprehend. Meanwhile
at Mrs. Willoughby's there was a greater rustling of
silks, a more rapid clicking of scissors and flying of
needles, than ever. Mrs. Willoughby had determined
that her daughter should carry from home the most
elegant outfit that her money could buy, or that the
country could furnish. All the sage women in the
county were convened, and their united taste was
brought to bear on Perdita's wardrobe. Viola's
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situation, at this moment, was assuredly not to be envied.
The poor girl had an inordinate love of dress, and the
very best taste in the world, as her sister perfectly well
knew. Viola was tall, she was stately and sweeping,
she was made to carry stiff brocade and masses of
heavy lace, such as belong to the toilet of a rich man's
wife. But Viola sat aloof, with her beautiful arms
folded and her head averted, while her mother and
sister and the venerable women aforesaid worried and
wondered over their materials, oppressed by the multitude
of their resources. One day there came in a beautiful
piece of white silk, brocaded with celestial blue
and silver, sent by the bridegroom himself, — it not
being thought amiss in those days that the husband
elect should contribute to the bride's trousseau. Perdita
was quite at loss to imagine a fashion which should
do sufficient honor to the splendor of the material.
“Blue 's your color, sister, more than mine,” she said,
with appealing eyes. “It 's a pity it 's not for you.
You 'd know what to do with it.”
Viola got up from her place and looked at the great
shining fabric as it lay spread over the back of a chair.
Then she took it up in her hands and felt it, — lovingly,
as Perdita could see, — and turned about toward
the mirror with it. She let it roll down to her feet,
and flung the other end over her shoulder, gathering it
in about her waist with her white arm bare to the
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elbow. She threw back her head, and looked at her
image, and a hanging tress of her auburn hair fell upon
the gorgeous surface of the silk. It made a dazzling
picture. The women standing about uttered a little
“Ah!” of admiration. “Yes, indeed,” said Viola, quietly,
“blue is my color.” But Perdita could see that her
fancy had been stirred, and that she would now fall to
work and solve all their silken riddles. And indeed
she behaved very well, as Perdita, knowing her insatiable
love of millinery, was quite ready to declare. Innumerable
yards of lustrous silk and satin, of muslin,
velvet, and lace, passed through her cunning hands,
without a word of envy coming from her lips. Thanks
to her industry, when the wedding-day came Perdita
was prepared to espouse more of the vanities of life
than any fluttering young bride who had yet challenged
the sacramental blessing of a New England divine.
It had been arranged that the young couple should
go out and spend the first days of their wedded life at
the country house of an English gentleman, — a man
of rank and a very kind friend to Lloyd. He was
an unmarried man; he professed himself delighted to
withdraw and leave them for a week to their billing
and cooing. After the ceremony at church, — it had
been performed by an English parson, — young Mrs.
Lloyd hastened back to her mother's house to change
her wedding gear for a riding-dress. Viola helped her
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to effect the change, in the little old room in which
they had been fond sisters together. Perdita then hurried
off to bid farewell to her mother, leaving Viola
to follow. The parting was short; the horses were at
the door and Arthur impatient to start. But Viola
had not followed, and Perdita hastened back to her
room, opening the door abruptly. Viola, as usual, was
before the glass, but in a position which caused the
other to stand still, amazed. She had dressed herself
in Perdita's cast-off wedding veil and wreath, and on
her neck she had hung the heavy string of pearls
which the young girl had received from her husband
as a wedding-gift. These things had been hastily laid
aside, to await their possessor's disposal on her return
from the country. Bedizened in this unnatural garb,
Viola stood at the mirror, plunging a long look into
its depths, and reading Heaven knows what audacious
visions. Perdita was horrified. It was a hideous image
of their old rivalry come to life again. She made
a step toward her sister, as if to pull off the veil and
the flowers. But catching her eyes in the glass, she
stopped.
“Farewell, Viola,” she said. “You might at least
have waited till I had got out of the house.” And
she hurried away from the room.
Mr. Lloyd had purchased in Boston a house which,
in the taste of those days, was considered a marvel
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of elegance and comfort; and here he very soon
established himself with his young wife. He was
thus separated by a distance of twenty miles from
the residence of his mother-in-law. Twenty miles, in
that primitive era of roads and conveyances, were as
serious a matter as a hundred at the present day,
and Mrs. Willoughby saw but little of her daughter
during the first twelvemonth of her marriage. She
suffered in no small degree from her absence; and
her affliction was not diminished by the fact that
Viola had fallen into terribly low spirits and was
not to be roused or cheered but by change of air
and circumstances. The real cause of the young
girl's dejection the reader will not be slow to suspect.
Mrs. Willoughby and her gossips, however,
deemed her complaint a purely physical one, and
doubted not that she would obtain relief from the
remedy just mentioned. Her mother accordingly proposed
on her behalf a visit to certain relatives on
the paternal side, established in New York, who had
long complained that they were able to see so little
of their New England cousins. Viola was despatched
to these good people, under a suitable
escort, and remained with them for several months.
In the interval her brother Bernard, who had begun
the practice of the law, made up his mind to take
a wife. Viola came home to the wedding,
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apparently cured of her heartache, with honest roses and
lilies in her face, and a proud smile on her lips.
Arthur Lloyd came over from Boston to see his
brother-in-law married, but without his wife, who
was expecting shortly to present him with an heir.
It was nearly a year since Viola had seen him. She
was glad — she hardly knew why — that Perdita
had stayed at home. Arthur looked happy, but he
was more grave and solemn than before his marriage.
She thought he looked “interesting,” — for
although the word in its modern sense was not
then invented, we may be sure that the idea was.
The truth is, he was simply preoccupied with his
wife's condition. Nevertheless, he by no means failed
to observe Viola's beauty and splendor, and how she
quite effaced the poor little bride. The allowance
that Perdita had enjoyed for her dress had now been
transferred to her sister, who turned it to prodigious
account. On the morning after the wedding, he had
a lady's saddle put on the horse of the servant who
had come with him from town, and went out with
the young girl for a ride. It was a keen, clear
morning in January; the ground was bare and hard,
and the horses in good condition, — to say nothing
of Viola, who was charming in her hat and plume,
and her dark blue riding-coat, trimmed with fur.
They rode all the morning, they lost their way, and
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were obliged to stop for dinner at a farm-house.
The early winter dusk had fallen when they got
home. Mrs. Willoughby met them with a long face.
A messenger had arrived at noon from Mrs. Lloyd;
she was beginning to be ill, and desired her husband's
immediate return. The young man, at the
thought that he had lost several hours, and that
by hard riding he might already have been with
his wife, uttered a passionate oath. He barely consented
to stop for a mouthful of supper, but mounted
the messenger's horse and started off at a gallop.
He reached home at midnight. His wife had been
delivered of a little girl. “Ah, why were n't you
with me?” she said, as he came to her bedside.
“I was out of the house when the man came. I
was with Viola,” said Lloyd, innocently.
Mrs. Lloyd made a little moan, and turned about.
But she continued to do very well, and for a week
her improvement was uninterrupted. Finally, however,
through some indiscretion in the way of diet
or of exposure, it was checked, and the poor lady
grew rapidly worse. Lloyd was in despair. It very
soon became evident that she was breathing her last.
Mrs. Lloyd came to a sense of her approaching end,
and declared that she was reconciled with death.
On the third evening after the change took place
she told her husband that she felt she would not
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outlast the night. She dismissed her servants, and
also requested her mother to withdraw, — Mrs. Willoughly
having arrived on the preceding day. She
had had her infant placed on the bed beside her,
and she lay on her side, with the child against her
breast, holding her husband's hands. The night-lamp
was hidden behind the heavy curtains of the bed,
but the room was illumined with a red glow from
the immense fire of logs on the hearth.
“It seems strange to die by such a fire as that,”
the young woman said, feebly trying to smile. “If
I had but a little of such fire in my veins! But I 've
given it all to this little spark of mortality.” And
she dropped her eyes on her child. Then raising
them she looked at her husband with a long penetrating
gaze. The last feeling which lingered in her
heart was one of mistrust. She had not recovered
from the shock which Arthur had given her by telling
her that in the hour of her agony he had been
with Viola. She trusted her husband very nearly as
well as she loved him; but now that she was called
away forever, she felt a cold horror of her sister. She
felt in her soul that Viola had never ceased to envy
her good fortune; and a year of happy security had
not effaced the young girl's image, dressed in her
wedding garments, and smiling with coveted triumph.
Now that Arthur was to be alone, what might not
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Viola do? She was beautiful, she was engaging;
what arts might she not use, what impression might
she not make upon the young man's melancholy
heart? Mrs. Lloyd looked at her husband in silence.
It seemed hard, after all, to doubt of his constancy.
His fine eyes were filled with tears; his face was
convulsed with weeping; the clasp of his hands was
warm and passionate. How noble he looked, how
tender, how faithful and devoted! “Nay,” thought
Perdita, “he 's not for such as Viola. He 'll never
forget me. Nor does Viola truly care for him; she
cares only for vanities and finery and jewels.” And
she dropped her eyes on her white hands, which her
husband's liberality had covered with rings, and on
the lace ruffles which trimmed the edge of her nightdress.
“She covets my rings and my laces more than
she covets my husband.”
At this moment the thought of her sister's rapacity
seemed to cast a dark shadow between her and the
helpless figure of her little girl. “Arthur,” she said,
“you must take off my rings. I shall not be buried
in them. One of these days my daughter shall wear
them, — my rings and my laces and silks. I had
them all brought out and shown me to-day. It 's a
great wardrobe, — there 's not such another in the
Province; I can say it without vanity now that I 've
done with it. It will be a great inheritance for my
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daughter, when she grows into a young woman.
There are things there that a man never buys twice,
and if they 're lost you 'll never again see the like.
So you 'll watch them well. Some dozen things I 've
left to Viola; I 've named them to my mother. I 've
given her that blue and silver; it was meant for
her; I wore it only once, I looked ill in it. But the
rest are to be sacredly kept for this little innocent.
It 's such a providence that she should be my color;
she can wear my gowns; she has her mother's eyes.
You know the same fashions come back every twenty
years. She can wear my gowns as they are. They 'll
lie there quietly waiting till she grows into them, —
wrapped in camphor and rose-leaves, and keeping
their colors in the sweet-scented darkness. She shall
have black hair, she shall wear my carnation satin.
Do you promise me, Arthur?”
“Promise you what, dearest?”
“Promise me to keep your poor little wife's old
gowns.”
“Are you afraid I 'll sell them?”
“No, but that they may get scattered. My mother
will have them properly wrapped up, and you shall
lay them away under a double-lock. Do you know
the great chest in the attic, with the iron bands?
There 's no end to what it will hold. You can lay
them all there. My mother and the housekeeper will
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do it, and give you the key. And you 'll keep the key
in your secretary, and never give it to any one but
your child. Do you promise me?”
“Ah, yes, I promise you,” said Lloyd, puzzled at the
intensity with which his wife appeared to cling to this
idea.
“Will you swear?” repeated Perdita.
“Yes, I swear.”
“Well — I trust you — I trust you,” said the poor
lady, looking into his eyes with eyes in which, if he
had suspected her vague apprehensions, he might have
read an appeal quite as much as an assurance.
Lloyd bore his bereavement soberly and manfully.
A month after his wife's death, in the course of
commerce, circumstances arose which offered him an
opportunity of going to England. He embraced it
as a diversion from gloomy thoughts. He was absent
nearly a year, during which his little girl was tenderly
nursed and cherished by her grandmother. On
his return he had his house again thrown open, and
announced his intention of keeping the same state as
during his wife's lifetime. It very soon came to be
predicted that he would marry again, and there were
at least a dozen young women of whom one may say
that it was by no fault of theirs that, for six months
after his return, the prediction did not come true.
During this interval he still left his little daughter
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in Mrs. Willoughby's hands, the latter assuring him
that a change of residence at so tender an age was
perilous to her health. Finally, however, he declared
that his heart longed for his daughter's presence, and
that she must be brought up to town. He sent his
coach and his housekeeper to fetch her home. Mrs.
Willoughby was in terror lest something should befall
her on the road; and, in accordance with this feeling,
Viola offered to ride along with her. She could return
the next day. So she went up to town with her little
niece, and Mr. Lloyd met her on the threshold of
his house, overcome with her kindness and with gratitude.
Instead of returning the next day, Viola stayed
out the week; and when at last she reappeared, she
had only come for her clothes. Arthur would not hear
of her coming home, nor would the baby. She cried
and moaned if Viola left her; and at the sight of her
grief Arthur lost his wits, and swore that she was
going to die. In fine, nothing would suit them but
that Viola should remain until the poor child had
grown used to strange faces.
It took two months to bring this consummation
about; for it was not until this period had elapsed
that Viola took leave of her brother-in-law. Mrs. Willoughby
had shaken her head over her daughter's absence;
she had declared that it was not becoming, and
that it was the talk of the town. She had reconciled
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herself to it only because, during the young girl's visit,
the household enjoyed an unwonted term of peace.
Bernard Willoughby had brought his wife home to
live, between whom and her sister-in-law there existed
a bitter hostility. Viola was perhaps no angel; but
in the daily practice of life she was a sufficiently good-natured
girl, and if she quarrelled with Mrs. Bernard,
it was not without provocation. Quarrel, however, she
did, to the great annoyance not only of her antagonist,
but of the two spectators of these constant altercations.
Her stay in the household of her brother-in-law, therefore,
would have been delightful, if only because it
removed her from contact with the object of her antipathy
at home. It was doubly — it was ten times —
delightful, in that it kept her near the object of her
old passion. Mrs. Lloyd's poignant mistrust had fallen
very far short of the truth. Viola's sentiment had
been a passion at first, and a passion it remained, —
a passion of whose radiant heat, tempered to the delicate
state of his feelings, Mr. Lloyd very soon felt the
influence. Lloyd, as I have hinted, was not a modern
Petrarch; it was not in his nature to practise an ideal
constancy. He had not been many days in the house
with his sister-in-law before he began to assure himself
that she was, in the language of that day, a devilish
fine woman. Whether Viola really practised those
insidious arts that her sister had been tempted to
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impute to her it is needless to inquire. It is enough to
say that she found means to appear to the very best
advantage. She used to seat herself every morning before
the great fireplace in the dining-room, at work
upon a piece of tapestry, with her little niece disporting
herself on the carpet at her feet, or on the train of
her dress, and playing with her woollen balls. Lloyd
would have been a very stupid fellow if he had remained
insensible to the rich suggestions of this charming
picture. He was prodigiously fond of his little girl,
and was never weary of taking her in his arms and
tossing her up and down, and making her crow with
delight. Very often, however, he would venture upon
greater liberties than the young lady was yet prepared
to allow, and she would suddenly vociferate her displeasure.
Viola would then drop her tapestry, and
put out her handsome hands with the serious smile of
the young girl whose virgin fancy has revealed to her
all a mother's healing arts. Lloyd would give up the
child, their eyes would meet, their hands would touch,
and Viola would extinguish the little girl's sobs upon
the snowy folds of the kerchief that crossed her bosom.
Her dignity was perfect, and nothing could be more
discreet than the manner in which she accepted her
brother-in-law's hospitality. It may be almost said,
perhaps, that there was something harsh in her reserve.
Lloyd had a provoking feeling that she was
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in the house, and yet that she was unapproachable.
Half an hour after supper, at the very outset of the
long winter evenings, she would light her candle,
and make the young man a most respectful curtsey,
and march off to bed. If these were arts, Viola was
a great artist. But their effect was so gentle, so
gradual, they were calculated to work upon the young
widower's fancy with such a finely shaded crescendo,
that, as the reader has seen, several weeks elapsed
before Viola began to feel sure that her return would
cover her outlay. When this became morally certain,
she packed up her trunk, and returned to her
mother's house. For three days she waited; on the
fourth Mr. Lloyd made his appearance, — a respectful
but ardent suitor. Viola heard him out with
great humility, and accepted him with infinite modesty.
It is hard to imagine that Mrs. Lloyd should
have forgiven her husband; but if anything might
have disarmed her resentment, it would have been
the ceremonious continence of this interview. Viola
imposed upon her lover but a short probation. They
were married, as was becoming, with great privacy,—
almost with secrecy, — in the hope perhaps, as was
waggishly remarked at the time, that the late Mrs.
Lloyd would n't hear of it.
The marriage was to all appearance a happy one,
and each party obtained what each had desired —
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Lloyd “a devilish fine woman,” and Viola — but Viola's
desires, as the reader will have observed, have
remained a good deal of a mystery. There were,
indeed, two blots upon their felicity; but time would,
perhaps, efface them. During the first three years
of her marriage Mrs. Lloyd failed to become a
mother, and her husband on his side suffered heavy
losses of money. This latter circumstance compelled
a material retrenchment in his expenditure, and Viola
was perforce less of a great lady than her sister
had been. She contrived, however, to sustain with
unbroken consistency the part of an elegant woman,
although it must be confessed that it required the
exercise of more ingenuity than belongs to your real
aristocratic repose. She had long since ascertained that
her sister's immense wardrobe had been sequestrated
for the benefit of her daughter, and that it lay languishing
in thankless gloom in the dusty attic. It
was a revolting thought that these exquisite fabrics
should await the commands of a little girl who sat
in a high chair and ate bread-and-milk with a wooden
spoon. Viola had the good taste, however, to say
nothing about the matter until several months had
expired. Then, at last, she timidly broached it to her
husband. Was it not a pity that so much finery
should be lost? — for lost it would be, what with colors
fading, and moths eating it up, and the change
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of fashions. But Lloyd gave so abrupt and peremptory
a negative to her inquiry, that she saw that
for the present her attempt was vain. Six months
went by, however, and brought with them new needs
and new fancies. Viola's thoughts hovered lovingly
about her sister's relics. She went up and looked
at the chest in which they lay imprisoned. There
was a sullen defiance in its three great padlocks
and its iron bands, which only quickened her desires.
There was something exasperating in its incorruptible
immobility. It was like a grim and grizzled
old household servant, who locks his jaws over a
family secret. And then there was a look of capacity
in its vast extent, and a sound as of dense fulness,
when Viola knocked its side with the toe of her little
slipper, which caused her to flush with baffled longing.
“It 's absurd,” she cried; “it 's improper, it 's wicked”;
and she forthwith resolved upon another attack
upon her husband. On the following day, after dinner,
when he had had his wine, she bravely began it.
But he cut her short with great sternness.
“Once for all, Viola,” said he, “it 's out of the
question. I shall be gravely displeased if you return
to the matter.”
“Very good,” said Viola. “I 'm glad to learn the
value at which I 'm held. Great Heaven!” she
cried, “I 'm a happy woman. It 's an agreeable
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thing to feel one's self sacrificed to a caprice!”
And her eyes filled with tears of anger and disappointment.
Lloyd had a good-natured man's horror of a woman's
sobs, and he attempted — I may say he condescended—
to explain. “It 's not a caprice, dear, it 's a
promise,” he said, — “an oath.”
“An oath? It 's a pretty matter for oaths! and
to whom, pray?”
“To Perdita,” said the young man, raising his eyes
for an instant, but immediately dropping them.
“Perdita, — ah, Perdita!' and Viola's tears broke
forth. Her bosom heaved with stormy sobs, — sobs
which were the long-deferred counterpart of the
violent fit of weeping in which she had indulged
herself on the night when she discovered her sister's
betrothal. She had hoped, in her better moments,
that she had done with her jealousy; but her
temper, on that occasion, had taken an ineffaceable
fold. “And pray, what right,” she cried, “had Perdita
to dispose of my future? What right had she to
bind you to meanness and cruelty? Ah, I occupy a
dignified place, and I make a very fine figure! I 'm
welcome to what Perdita has left! And what has she
left? I never knew till now how little! Nothing,
nothing, nothing.”
This was very poor logic, but it was very good
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passion. Lloyd put his arm around his wife's waist and
tried to kiss her, but she shook him off with magnificent
scorn. Poor fellow! he had coveted a “devilish
fine woman,” and he had got one. Her scorn was
intolerable. He walked away with his ears tingling, —
irresolute, distracted. Before him was his
secretary, and in it the sacred key which with his
own hand he had turned in the triple lock. He
marched up and opened it, and took the key from a
secret drawer, wrapped in a little packet which he
had sealed with his own honest bit of blazonry.
Teneo, said the motto, — “I hold.” But he was
ashamed to put it back. He flung it upon the table
beside his wife.
“Keep it!” she cried. “I want it not. I hate it!”
“I wash my hands of it,” cried her husband. “God
forgive me!”
Mrs. Lloyd gave an indignant shrug of her shoulders,
and swept out of the room, while the young
man retreated by another door. Ten minutes later
Mrs. Lloyd returned, and found the room occupied
by her little step-daughter and the nursery-maid.
The key was not on the table. She glanced at the
child. The child was perched on a chair with the
packet in her hands. She had broken the seal with
her own little fingers. Mrs. Lloyd hastily took possession
of the key.
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At the habitual supper-hour Arthur Lloyd came
back from his counting-room. It was the month of
June, and supper was served by daylight. The meal
was placed on the table, but Mrs. Lloyd failed to
make her appearance. The servant whom his master
sent to call her came back with the assurance that
her room was empty, and that the women informed
him that she had not been seen since dinner. They
had in truth observed her to have been in tears, and,
supposing her to be shut up in her chamber, had not
disturbed her. Her husband called her name in various
parts of the house, but without response. At last
it occurred to him that he might find her by taking
the way to the attic. The thought gave him a strange
feeling of discomfort, and he bade his servants remain
behind, wishing no witness in his quest. He reached
the foot of the staircase leading to the topmost flat,
and stood with his hand on the banisters, pronouncing
his wife's name. His voice trembled. He called
again, louder and more firmly. The only sound which
disturbed the absolute silence was a faint echo of his
own tones, repeating his question under the great
eaves. He nevertheless felt irresistibly moved to
ascend the staircase. It opened upon a wide hall,
lined with wooden closets, and terminating in a window
which looked westward, and admitted the last
rays of the sun. Before the window stood the great
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chest. Before the chest, on her knees, the young man
saw with amazement and horror the figure of his wife.
In an instant he crossed the interval between them,
bereft of utterance. The lid of the chest stood open,
exposing, amid their perfumed napkins, its treasure
of stuffs and jewels. Viola had fallen backward from
a kneeling posture, with one hand supporting her on
the floor and the other pressed to her heart. On her
limbs was the stiffness of death, and on her face, in
the fading light of the sun, the terror of something
more than death. Her lips were parted in entreaty,
in dismay, in agony; and on her bloodless brow and
cheeks there glowed the marks of ten hideous wounds
from two vengeful ghostly hands.
-- -- p617-366
Madame de Mauves.
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THE view from the terrace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye
is immense and famous. Paris lies spread
before you in dusky vastness, domed and fortified,
glittering here and there through her light vapors, and
girdled with her silver Seine. Behind you is a park
of stately symmetry, and behind that a forest, where
you may lounge through turfy avenues and light-checkered
glades, and quite forget that you are within
half an hour of the boulevards. One afternoon, however,
in mid-spring, some five years ago, a young man
seated on the terrace had chosen not to forget this.
His eyes were fixed in idle wistfulness on the mighty
human hive before him. He was fond of rural things,
and he had come to Saint-Germain a week before to
meet the spring half-way; but though he could boast
of a six months' acquaintance with the great city, he
never looked at it from his present standpoint without
a feeling of painfully unsatisfied curiosity. There were
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moments when it seemed to him that not to be there
just then was to miss some thrilling chapter of experience.
And yet his winter's experience had been
rather fruitless, and he had closed the book almost
with a yawn. Though not in the least a cynic, he
was what one may call a disappointed observer; and
he never chose the right-hand road without beginning
to suspect after an hour's wayfaring that the left would
have been the interesting one. He now had a dozen
minds to go to Paris for the evening, to dine at the
Café Brébant, and to repair afterwards to the Gymnase
and listen to the latest exposition of the duties of the
injured husband. He would probably have risen to
execute this project, if he had not observed a little
girl who, wandering along the terrace, had suddenly
stopped short and begun to gaze at him with round-eyed
frankness. For a moment he was simply amused,
for the child's face denoted helpless wonderment; the
next he was agreeably surprised. “Why, this is my
friend Maggie,” he said; “I see you have not forgotten
me.”
Maggie, after a short parley, was induced to seal
her remembrance with a kiss. Invited then to explain
her appearance at Saint-Germain, she embarked on a
recital in which the general, according to the infantine
method, was so fatally sacrificed to the particular, that
Longmore looked about him for a superior source of
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information. He found it in Maggie's mamma, who
was seated with another lady at the opposite end of
the terrace; so, taking the child by the hand, he led
her back to her companions.
Maggie's mamma was a young American lady, as
you would immediately have perceived, with a pretty
and friendly face and an expensive spring toilet. She
greeted Longmore with surprised cordiality, mentioned
his name to her friend, and bade him bring a chair
and sit with them. The other lady, who, though
equally young and perhaps even prettier, was dressed
more soberly, remained silent, stroking the hair of the
little girl, whom she had drawn against her knee.
She had never heard of Longmore, but she now perceived
that her companion had crossed the ocean with
him, had met him afterwards in travelling, and (having
left her husband in Wall Street) was indebted to him
for various small services.
Maggie's mamma turned from time to time and
smiled at her friend with an air of invitation; the
latter smiled back, and continued gracefully to say
nothing.
For ten minutes Longmore felt a revival of interest
in his interlocutress; then (as riddles are more amusing
than commonplaces) it gave way to curiosity about
her friend. His eyes wandered; her volubility was
less suggestive than the latter's silence.
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The stranger was perhaps not obviously a beauty
nor obviously an American, but essentially both, on a
closer scrutiny. She was slight and fair, and, though
naturally pale, delicately flushed, apparently with recent
excitement. What chiefly struck Longmore in
her face was the union of a pair of beautifully gentle,
almost languid gray eyes, with a mouth peculiarly expressive
and firm. Her forehead was a trifle more
expansive than belongs to classic types, and her thick
brown hair was dressed out of the fashion, which was
just then very ugly. Her throat and bust were
slender, but all the more in harmony with certain
rapid, charming movements of the head, which she
had a way of throwing back every now and then, with
an air of attention and a sidelong glance from her
dove-like eyes. She seemed at once alert and indifferent,
contemplative and restless; and Longmore very
soon discovered that if she was not a brilliant beauty,
she was at least an extremely interesting one. This
very impression made him magnanimous. He perceived
that he had interrupted a confidential conversation,
and he judged it discreet to withdraw, having
first learned from Maggie's mamma — Mrs. Draper —
that she was to take the six-o'clock train back to
Paris. He promised to meet her at the station.
He kept his appointment, and Mrs. Draper arrived
betimes, accompanied by her friend. The latter,
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however, made her farewells at the door and drove away
again, giving Longmore time only to raise his hat.
“Who is she?” he asked with visible ardor, as he
brought Mrs. Draper her tickets.
“Come and see me to-morrow at the Hôtel de
l'Empire,” she answered, “and I will tell you all about
her.” The force of this offer in making him punctual
at the Hôtel de l'Empire Longmore doubtless never
exactly measured; and it was perhaps well that he did
not, for he found his friend, who was on the point of
leaving Paris, so distracted by procrastinating milliners
and perjured lingères that she had no wits left for disinterested
narrative. “You must find Saint-Germain
dreadfully dull,” she said, as he was going. “Why
won't you come with me to London?”
“Introduce me to Madame de Mauves,” he answered,
“and Saint-Germain will satisfy me.” All he had
learned was the lady's name and residence.
“Ah! she, poor woman, will not make Saint-Germain
cheerful for you. She 's very unhappy.”
Longmore's further inquiries were arrested by the
arrival of a young lady with a bandbox; but he went
away with the promise of a note of introduction, to be
immediately despatched to him at Saint-Germain.
He waited a week, but the note never came; and he
declared that it was not for Mrs. Draper to complain
of her milliner's treachery. He lounged on the terrace
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and walked in the forest, studied suburban street life,
and made a languid attempt to investigate the records
of the court of the exiled Stuarts; but he spent most
of his time in wondering where Madame de Mauves
lived, and whether she never walked on the terrace.
Sometimes, he finally discovered; for one afternoon
toward dusk he perceived her leaning against the parapet,
alone. In his momentary hesitation to approach
her, it seemed to him that there was almost a shade of
trepidation; but his curiosity was not diminished by
the consciousness of this result of a quarter of an hour's
acquaintance. She immediately recognized him on his
drawing near, with the manner of a person unaccustomed
to encounter a confusing variety of faces. Her
dress, her expression, were the same as before; her
charm was there, like that of sweet music on a second
hearing. She soon made conversation easy by asking
him for news of Mrs. Draper. Longmore told her that
he was daily expecting news, and, after a pause, mentioned
the promised note of introduction.
“It seems less necessary now,” he said — “for me,
at least. But for you — I should have liked you to
know the flattering things Mrs. Draper would probably
have said about me.”
“If it arrives at last,” she answered, “you must
come and see me and bring it. If it does n't, you must
come without it.”
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Then, as she continued to linger in spite of the thickening
twilight, she explained that she was waiting for
her husband, who was to arrive in the train from Paris,
and who often passed along the terrace on his way
home. Longmore well remembered that Mrs. Draper
had pronounced her unhappy, and he found it convenient
to suppose that this same husband made her
so. Edified by his six months in Paris — “What else
is possible,” he asked himself, “for a sweet American
girl who marries an unclean Frenchman?”
But this tender expectancy of her lord's return undermined
his hypothesis, and it received a further
check from the gentle eagerness with which she turned
and greeted an approaching figure. Longmore beheld
in the fading light a stoutish gentleman, on the fair
side of forty, in a high light hat, whose countenance,
indistinct against the sky, was adorned by a fantastically
pointed mustache. M. de Mauves saluted his
wife with punctilious gallantry, and having bowed to
Longmore, asked her several questions in French. Before
taking his proffered arm to walk to their carriage,
which was in waiting at the terrace gate, she introduced
our hero as a friend of Mrs. Draper, and a fellow-countryman,
whom she hoped to see at home. M. de
Mauves responded briefly, but civilly, in very fair English,
and led his wife away.
Longmore watched him as he went, twisting his
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picturesque mustache, with a feeling of irritation which
he certainly would have been at a loss to account for.
The only conceivable cause was the light which M. de
Mauves's good English cast upon his own bad French.
For reasons involved apparently in the very structure
of his being, Longmore found himself unable to speak
the language tolerably. He admired and enjoyed it,
but the very genius of awkwardness controlled his
phraseology. But he reflected with satisfaction that
Madame de Mauves and he had a common idiom, and
his vexation was effectually dispelled by his finding on
his table that evening a letter from Mrs. Draper. It
enclosed a short, formal missive to Madame de Mauves,
but the epistle itself was copious and confidential.
She had deferred writing till she reached London,
where for a week, of course, she had found other
amusements.
“I think it is these distracting Englishwomen,” she
wrote, “with their green barege gowns and their white-stitched
boots, who have reminded me in self-defence
of my graceful friend at Saint-Germain and my
promise to introduce you to her. I believe I told you
that she was unhappy, and I wondered afterwards
whether I had not been guilty of a breach of confidence.
But you would have found it out for yourself,
and besides, she told me no secrets. She declared
she was the happiest creature in the world, and then,
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poor thing, she burst into tears, and I prayed to be
delivered from such happiness. It 's the miserable
story of an American girl, born to be neither a slave
nor a toy, marrying a profligate Frenchman, who believes
that a woman must be one or the other. The
silliest American woman is too good for the best foreigner,
and the poorest of us have moral needs a
Frenchman can't appreciate. She was romantic and
wilful, and thought Americans were vulgar. Matrimonial
felicity perhaps is vulgar; but I think nowadays
she wishes she were a little less elegant. M. de
Mauves cared, of course, for nothing but her money,
which he 's spending royally on his menus plaisirs. I
hope you appreciate the compliment I pay you when
I recommend you to go and console an unhappy wife.
I have never given a man such a proof of esteem, and
if you were to disappoint me I should renounce the
world. Prove to Madame de Mauves that an American
friend may mingle admiration and respect better
than a French husband. She avoids society and lives
quite alone, seeing no one but a horrible French sister-in-law.
Do let me hear that you have drawn
some of the sadness from that desperate smile of hers.
Make her smile with a good conscience.”
These zealous admonitions left Longmore slightly
disturbed. He found himself on the edge of a domestic
tragedy from which he instinctively recoiled. To
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call upon Madame de Mauves with his present knowledge
seemed a sort of fishing in troubled waters. He
was a modest man, and yet he asked himself whether
the effect of his attentions might not be to add to her
tribulation. A flattering sense of unwonted opportunity,
however, made him, with the lapse of time, more
confident, — possibly more reckless. It seemed a very
inspiring idea to draw the sadness from his fair countrywoman's
smile, and at least he hoped to persuade
her that there was such a thing as an agreeable American.
He immediately called upon her.
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SHE had been placed for her education, fourteen
years before, in a Parisian convent, by a widowed
mamma, fonder of Homburg and Nice than of letting
out tucks in the frocks of a vigorously growing daughter.
Here, besides various elegant accomplishments, —the art
of wearing a train, of composing a bouquet, of presenting
a cup of tea, — she acquired a certain turn of the
imagination which might have passed for a sign of
precocious worldliness. She dreamed of marrying a
title, — not for the pleasure of hearing herself called
Mme. la Vicomtesse (for which it seemed to her that
she should never greatly care), but because she had
a romantic belief that the best birth is the guaranty
of an ideal delicacy of feeling. Romances are rarely
shaped in such perfect good faith, and Euphemia's
excuse was in the radical purity of her imagination.
She was profoundly incorruptible, and she cherished
this pernicious conceit as if it had been a dogma
revealed by a white-winged angel. Even after experience
had given her a hundred rude hints, she found
it easier to believe in fables, when they had a certain
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nobleness of meaning, than in well-attested but sordid
facts. She believed that a gentleman with a long
pedigree must be of necessity a very fine fellow, and
that the consciousness of a picturesque family tradition
imparts an exquisite tone to the character. Noblesse
oblige, she thought, as regards yourself, and
insures, as regards your wife. She had never spoken
to a nobleman in her life, and these convictions were
but a matter of transcendent theory. They were the
fruit, in part, of the perusal of various ultramontane
works of fiction — the only ones admitted to the convent
library — in which the hero was always a legitimist
vicomte who fought duels by the dozen, but went
twice a month to confession; and in part of the perfumed
gossip of her companions, many of them filles
de haut lieu, who in the convent garden, after Sundays
at home, depicted their brothers and cousins as Prince
Charmings and young Paladins. Euphemia listened
and said nothing; she shrouded her visions of matrimony
under a coronet in religious mystery. She was
not of that type of young lady who is easily induced
to declare that her husband must be six feet high and
a little near-sighted, part his hair in the middle, and
have amber lights in his beard. To her companions
she seemed to have a very pallid fancy; and even the
fact that she was a spring of the transatlantic democracy
never sufficiently explained her apathy on social
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questions. She had a mental image of that son of
the Crusaders who was to suffer her to adore him,
but like many an artist who has produced a masterpiece
of idealization, she shrank from exposing it to
public criticism. It was the portrait of a gentleman
rather ugly than handsome, and rather poor than rich.
But his ugliness was to be nobly expressive, and his
poverty delicately proud. Euphemia had a fortune of
her own, which, at the proper time, after fixing on her
in eloquent silence those fine eyes which were to
soften the feudal severity of his visage, he was to
accept with a world of stifled protestations. One condition
alone she was to make, — that his blood should
be of the very finest strain. On this she would stake
her happiness.
It so chanced that circumstances were to give convincing
color to this primitive logic.
Though little of a talker, Euphemia was an ardent
listener, and there were moments when she fairly hung
upon the lips of Mademoiselle Marie de Mauves. Her
intimacy with this chosen schoolmate was, like most
intimacies, based on their points of difference. Mademoiselle
de Muves was very positive, very shrewd,
very ironical, very French, — everything that Euphemia
felt herself unpardonable in not being. During
her Sundays en ville she had examined the world
and judged it, and she imparted her impressions to
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our attentive heroine with an agreeable mixture of
enthusiasm and scepticism. She was moreover a
handsome and well-grown person, on whom Euphemia's
ribbons and trinkets had a trick of looking
better than on their slender proprietress. She had,
finally, the supreme merit of being a rigorous example
of the virtue of exalted birth, having, as she did,
ancestors honorably mentioned by Joinville and Commines,
and a stately grandmother with a hooked nose,
who came up with her after the holidays from a veritable
castel in Auvergne. It seemed to Euphemia
that these attributes made her friend more at home
in the world than if she had been the daughter of
even the most prosperous grocer. A certain aristocratic
impudence Mademoiselle de Mauves abundantly
possessed, and her raids among her friend's finery were
quite in the spirit of her baronial ancestors in the
twelfth century, — a spirit which Euphemia considered
but a large way of understanding friendship, — a
freedom from small deference to the world's opinions
which would sooner or later justify itself in acts of
surprising magnanimity. Mademoiselle de Mauves
perhaps enjoyed but slightly that easy attitude toward
society which Euphemia envied her. She proved herself
later in life such an accomplished schemer that
her sense of having further heights to scale must have
awakened early. Our heroine's ribbons and trinkets
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had much to do with the other's sisterly patronage,
and her appealing pliancy of character even more; but
the concluding motive of Marie's writing to her grandmamma
to invite Euphemia for a three weeks' holiday
to the castel in Auvergne, involved altogether superior
considerations. Mademoiselle de Mauves was indeed
at this time seventeen years of age, and presumably
capable of general views; and Euphemia, who was
hardly less, was a very well-grown subject for experiment,
besides being pretty enough almost to pre-assure
success. It is a proof of the sincerity of Euphemia's
aspirations that the castel was not a shock to her faith.
It was neither a cheerful nor a luxurious abode, but
the young girl found it as delightful as a play. It
had battered towers and an empty moat, a rusty drawbridge
and a court paved with crooked, grass-grown
slabs, over which the antique coach-wheels of the old
lady with the hooked nose seemed to awaken the
echoes of the seventeenth century. Euphemia was
not frightened out of her dream; she had the pleasure
of seeing it assume the consistency of a flattering presentiment.
She had a taste for old servants, old
anecdotes, old furniture, faded household colors, and
sweetly stale odors, — musty treasures in which the
Château de Mauves abounded. She made a dozen
sketches in water-colors, after her conventual pattern;
but sentimentally, as one may say, she was forever
sketching with a freer hand.
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Old Madame de Mauves had nothing severe but her
nose, and she seemed to Euphemia, as indeed she was,
a graciously venerable relic of a historic order of things.
She took a great fancy to the young American, who
was ready to sit all day at her feet and listen to
anecdotes of the bon temps and quotations from the
family chronicles. Madame de Mauves was a very
honest old woman, and uttered her thoughts with
antique plainness. One day, after pushing back Euphemia's
shining locks and blinking at her with some
tenderness from under her spectacles, she declared,
with an energetic shake of the head, that she did n't
know what to make of her. And in answer to the
young girl's startled blush, — “I should like to advise
you,” she said, “but you seem to me so all of a piece
that I am afraid that if I advise you, I shall spoil you.
It 's easy to see that you 're not one of us. I don't
know whether you 're better, but you seem to me to
listen to the murmur of your own young spirit, rather
than to the voice from behind the confessional or to
the whisper of opportunity. Young girls, in my day,
when they were stupid, were very docile, but when
they were clever, were very sly. You 're clever
enough, I imagine, and yet if I guessed all your
secrets at this moment, is there one I shold have
to frown at? I can tell you a wickeder one than
any you have discovered for yourself. If you expect
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to live in France, and you want to be happy, don't
listen too hard to that little voice I just spoke of, —
the voice that is neither the curé's nor the world's.
You 'll fancy it saying things that it won't help your
case to hear. They 'll make you sad, and when you 're
sad you 'll grow plain, and when you 're plain you 'll
grow bitter, and when you 're bitter you 'll be very
disagreeable. I was brought up to think that a
woman's first duty was to please, and the happiest
women I 've known have been the ones who performed
this duty faithfully. As you 're not a Catholic, I suppose
you can't be a dévote; and if you don't take life
as a fifty years' mass, the only way to take it is as a
game of skill. Listen: not to lose, you must, — I
don't say cheat; but don't be too sure your neighbor
won't, and don't be shocked out of your self-possession
if he does. Don't lose, my dear; I beseech you, don't
lose. Be neither suspicious nor credulous; but if you
find your neighbor peeping, don't cry out, but very
politely wait your own chance. I 've had my revanche
more than once in my day, but I 'm not sure that the
sweetest I could take against life as a whole would
be to have your blessed innocence profit by my experience.”
This was rather awful advice, but Euphemia understood
it too little to be either edified or frightened.
She sat listening to it very much as she would have
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listened to the speeches of an old lady in a comedy,
whose diction should picturesquely correspond to the
pattern of her mantilla and the fashion of her headdress.
Her indifference was doubly dangerous, for
Madame de Mauves spoke at the prompting of coming
events, and her words were the result of a somewhat
troubled conscience, — a conscience which told her at
once that Euphemia was too tender a victim to be
sacrificed to an ambition, and that the prosperity of
her house was too precious a heritage to be sacrificed
to a scruple. The prosperity in question had suffered
repeated and grievous breaches, and the house of De
Mauves had been pervaded by the cold comfort of an
establishment in which people were obliged to balance
dinner-table allusions to feudal ancestors against the
absence of side dishes; a state of things the more
regrettable as the family was now mainly represented
by a gentleman whose appetite was large, and who
justly maintained that its historic glories were not
established by underfed heroes.
Three days after Euphemia's arrival, Richard de
Mauves came down from Paris to pay his respects to
his grandmother, and treated our heroine to her first
encounter with a gentilhomme in the flesh. On coming
in he kissed his grandmother's hand, with a smile
which caused her to draw it away with dignity, and set
Euphemia, who was standing by, wondering what had
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happened between them. Her unanswered wonder
was but the beginning of a life of bitter perplexity, but
the reader is free to know that the smile of M. de
Mauves was a reply to a certain postscript affixed by
the old lady to a letter promptly addressed to him by
her granddaughter, after Euphemia had been admitted
to justify the latter's promises. Mademoiselle de
Mauves brought her letter to her grandmother for
approval, but obtained no more than was expressed in
a frigid nod. The old lady watched her with a sombre
glance as she proceeded to seal the letter, and suddenly
bade her open it again and bring her a pen.
“Your sister's flatteries are all nonsense,” she wrote;
“the young lady is far too good for you, mauvais sujet.
If you have a conscience you 'll not come and take
possession of an angel of innocence.”
The young girl, who had read these lines, made up a
little face as she redirected the letter; but she laid
down her pen with a confident nod, which might have
seemed to mean that, to the best of her belief, her
brother had not a conscience.
“If you meant what you said,” the young man whispered
to his grandmother on the first opportunity, “it
would have been simpler not to let her send the
letter!”
It was perhaps because she was wounded by this
cynical insinuation, that Madame de Mauves remained
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in her own apartment during a greater part of Euphemia's
stay, so that the latter's angelic innocence
was left entirely to the Baron's mercy. It suffered no
worse mischance, however, than to be prompted to intenser
eommunion with itself. M. de Mauves was the
hero of the young girl's romance made real, and so
completely accordant with this creature of her imagination,
that she felt afraid of him, very much as she
would have been of a supernatural apparition. He
was thirty-five years old, — young enough to suggest
possibilities of ardent activity, and old enough to have
formed opinions which a simple woman might deem it
an intellectual privilege to listen to. He was perhaps
a trifle handsomer than Euphemia's rather grim, Quixotic
ideal, but a very few days reconciled her to his
good looks, as they would have reconciled her to his
ugliness. He was quiet, grave, and eminently distinguished.
He spoke little, but his speeches, without
being sententious, had a certain nobleness of tone
which caused them to re-echo in the young girl's ears
at the end of the day. He paid her very little direct
attention, but his chance words — if he only asked her
if she objected to his cigarette — were accompanied by
a smile of extraordinary kindness.
It happened that shortly after his arrival, riding an
unruly horse, which Euphemia with shy admiration
had watched him mount in the castle yard, he was
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thrown with a violence which, without disparaging his
skill, made him for a fortnight an interesting invalid,
lounging in the library with a bandaged knee. To
beguile his confinement, Euphemia was repeatedly
induced to sing to him, which she did with a little
natural tremor in her voice, which might have passed
for an exquisite refinement of art. He never overwhelmed
her with compliments, but he listened with
unwandering attention, remembered all her melodies,
and sat humming them to himself. While his imprisonment
lasted, indeed, he passed hours in her company,
and made her feel not unlike some unfriended artist
who has suddenly gained the opportunity to devote a
fortnight to the study of a great model. Euphemia
studied with noiseless diligence what she supposed to
be the “character” of M. de Mauves, and the more she
looked the more fine lights and shades she seemed to
behold in this masterpiece of nature. M. de Mauves's
character indeed, whether from a sense of being generously
scrutinized, or for reasons which bid graceful
defiance to analysis, had never been so amiable; it
seemed really to reflect the purity of Euphemia's interpretation
of it. There had been nothing especially to
admire in the state of mind in which he left Paris, — a
hard determination to marry a young girl whose charms
might or might not justify his sister's account of them,
but who was mistress, at the worst, of a couple of
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hundred thousand francs a year. He had not counted out
sentiment; if she pleased him, so much the better;
but he had left a meagre margin for it, and he would
hardly have admitted that so excellent a match could
be improved by it. He was a placid sceptic, and it
was a singular fate for a man who believed in nothing
to be so tenderly believed in. What his original faith
had been he could hardly have told you; for as he
came back to his childhood's home to mend his fortunes
by pretending to fall in love, he was a thoroughly
perverted creature, and overlaid with more
corruptions than a summer day's questioning of his
conscience would have released him from. Ten years'
pursuit of pleasure, which a bureau full of unpaid bills
was all he had to show for, had pretty well stifled the
natural lad, whose violent will and generous temper
might have been shaped by other circumstances to a
result which a romantic imagination might fairly accept
as a late-blooming flower of hereditary honor.
The Baron's violence had been subdued, and he had
learned to be irreproachably polite; but he had lost
the edge of his generosity, and his politeness, which in
the long run society paid for, was hardly more than a
form of luxurious egotism, like his fondness for cambric
handkerchiefs, lavender gloves, and other fopperies
by which shopkeepers remained out of pocket. In
after years he was terribly polite to his wife. He had
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formed himself, as the phrase was, and the form prescribed
to him by the society into which his birth and
his tastes introduced him was marked by some peculiar
features. That which mainly concerns us is its classification
of the fairer half of humanity as objects not
essentially different — say from the light gloves one
soils in an evening and throws away. To do M. de
Mauves justice, he had in the course of time encountered
such plentiful evidence of this pliant, glove-like
quality in the feminine character, that idealism naturally
seemed to him a losing game.
Euphemia, as he lay on his sofa, seemed by no
means a refutation; she simply reminded him that
very young women are generally innocent, and that
this, on the whole, was the most charming stage of
their development. Her innocence inspired him with
profound respect, and it seemed to him that if he
shortly became her husband it would be exposed to a
danger the less. Old Madame de Mauves, who flattered
herself that in this whole matter she was being
laudably rigid, might have learned a lesson from his
gallant consideration. For a fortnight the Baron was
almost a blushing boy again. He watched from behind
the “Figaro,” and admired, and held his tongue.
He was not in the least disposed toward a flirtation;
he had no desire to trouble the waters he proposed
to transfuse into the golden cup of matrimony.
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Sometimes a word, a look, a movement of Euphemia's gave
him the oddest sense of being, or of seeming at least,
almost bashful; for she had a way of not dropping
her eyes, according to the mysterious virginal mechanism,
of not fluttering out of the room when she
found him there alone, of treating him rather as a
benignant than as a pernicious influence, — a radiant
frankness of demeanor, in fine, in spite of an evident
natural reserve, which it seemed equally graceless not
to make the subject of a compliment and indelicate
not to take for granted. In this way there was
wrought in the Baron's mind a vague, unwonted resonance
of soft impressions, as we may call it, which
indicated the transmutation of “sentiment” from a contingency
into a fact. His imagination enjoyed it; he
was very fond of music, and this reminded him of
some of the best he had ever heard. In spite of the
bore of being laid up with a lame knee, he was in a
better humor than he had known for months; he lay
smoking cigarettes and listening to the nightingales,
with the comfortable smile of one of his country neighbors
whose big ox should have taken the prize at a
fair. Every now and then, with an impatient suspicion
of the resemblance, he declared that he was
pitifully bête; but he was under a charm which braved
even the supreme penalty of seeming ridiculous. One
morning he had half an hour's tête-à-tête with his
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grandmother's confessor, a soft-voiced old abbé, whom,
for reasons of her own, Madame de Mauves had suddenly
summoned, and had left waiting in the drawing-room
while she rearranged her curls. His reverence,
going up to the old lady, assured her that M. le Baron
was in a most edifying state of mind, and a promising
subject for the operation of grace. This was a pious
interpretation of the Baron's momentary good-humor.
He had always lazily wondered what priests were good
for, and he now remembered, with a sense of especial
obligation to the abbé, that they were excellent for
marrying people.
A day or two after this he left off his bandages, and
tried to walk. He made his way into the garden and
hobbled successfully along one of the alleys; but in
the midst of his progress he was seized with a spasm
of pain which forced him to stop and call for help.
In an instant Euphemia came tripping along the path
and offered him her arm with the frankest solicitude.
“Not to the house,” he said, taking it; “farther on,
to the bosquet.” This choice was prompted by her
having immediately confessed that she had seen him
leave the house, had feared an accident, and had followed
him on tiptoe.
“Why did n't you join me?” he had asked, giving
her a look in which admiration was no longer disguised,
and yet felt itself half at the mercy of her
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replying that a jeune fille should not be seen following
a gentleman. But it drew a breath which filled its
lungs for a long time afterward, when she replied
simply that if she had overtaken him he might have
accepted her arm out of politeness, whereas she wished
to have the pleasure of seeing him walk alone.
The bosquet was covered with an odorous tangle of
blossoming vines, and a nightingale overhead was shaking
out love-notes with a profuseness which made the
Baron consider his own conduct the perfection of propriety.
“In America,” he said, “I have always heard that
when a man wishes to marry a young girl, he offers
himself simply, face to face, without any ceremony, —
without parents, and uncles, and cousins sitting round
in a circle.”
“Why, I believe so,” said Euphemia, staring, and too
surprised to be alarmed.
“Very well, then,” said the Baron, “suppose our
bosquet here to be America. I offer you my hand,
à l'Américaine. It will make me intensely happy to
have you accept it.”
Whether Euphemia's acceptance was in the American
manner is more than I can say; I incline to think
that for fluttering, grateful, trustful, softly - amazed
young hearts, there is only one manner all over the
world.
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That evening, in the little turret chamber which it
was her happiness to inhabit, she wrote a dutiful letter
to her mamma, and had just sealed it when she was
sent for by Madame de Mauves. She found this ancient
lady seated in her boudoir, in a lavender satin
gown, with all her candles lighted, as if to celebrate
her grandson's betrothal. “Are you very happy?”
Madame de Mauves demanded, making Euphemia sit
down before her.
“I 'm almost afraid to say so,” said the young girl,
“lest I should wake myself up.”
“May you never wake up, belle enfant,” said the
old lady, solemnly. “This is the first marriage ever
made in our family in this way, — by a Baron de
Mauves proposing to a young girl in an arbor, like
Jeannot and Jeannette. It has not been our way of
doing things, and people may say it wants frankness.
My grandson tells me he considers it the perfection
of frankness. Very good. I 'm a very old woman,
and if your differences should ever be as frank as your
agreement, I should n't like to see them. But I
should be sorry to die and think you were going to
be unhappy. You can't be, beyond a certain point;
because, though in this world the Lord sometimes
makes light of our expectations, he never altogether
ignores our deserts. But you 're very young and innocent,
and easy to deceive. There never was a man in
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the world — among the saints themselves — as good
as you believe the Baron. But he 's a galant homme
and a gentleman, and I 've been talking to him to-night.
To you I want to say this, — that you 're to
forget the worldly rubbish I talked the other day
about frivolous women being happy. It 's not the
kind of happiness that would suit you. Whatever
befalls you, promise me this: to be yourself. The
Baronne de Mauves will be none the worse for it.
Yourself, understand, in spite of everything, — bad
precepts and bad examples, bad usage even. Be persistently
and patiently yourself, and a De Mauves will
do you justice!”
Euphemia remembered this speech in after years, and
more than once, wearily closing her eyes, she seemed
to see the old woman sitting upright in her faded finery
and smiling grimly, like one of the Fates who sees
the wheel of fortune turning up her favorite event.
But at the moment it seemed to her simply to have
the proper gravity of the occasion; this was the way,
she supposed, in which lucky young girls were addressed
on their engagement by wise old women of
quality.
At her convent, to which she immediately returned,
she found a letter from her mother, which shocked her
far more than the remarks of Madame de Mauves.
Who were these people, Mrs. Cleve demanded, who
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had presumed to talk to her daughter of marriage without
asking her leave? Questionable gentlefolk, plainly;
the best French people never did such things.
Euphemia would return straightway to her convent,
shut herself up, and await her own arrival.
It took Mrs. Cleve three weeks to travel from Nice
to Paris, and during this time the young girl had no
communication with her lover beyond accepting a bouquet
of violets, marked with his initials and left by a
female friend. “I 've not brought you up with such
devoted care,” she declared to her daughter at their
first interview, “to marry a penniless Frenchman. I
will take you straight home, and you will please to
forget M. de Mauves.”
Mrs. Cleve received that evening at her hotel a visit
from the Baron which mitigated her wrath, but failed
to modify her decision. He had very good manners,
but she was sure he had horrible morals; and Mrs.
Cleve, who had been a very good-natured censor on
her own account, felt a genuine spiritual need to sacrifice
her daughter to propriety. She belonged to that
large class of Americans who make light of America in
familiar discourse, but are startled back into a sense of
moral responsibility when they find Europeans taking
them at their word. “I know the type, my dear,” she
said to her daughter with a sagacious nod. “He 'll not
beat you; sometimes you 'll wish he would.”
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Euphemia remained solemnly silent; for the only
answer she felt capable of making her mother was that
her mind was too small a measure of things, and that
the Baron's “type” was one which it took some mystical
illumination to appreciate. A person who confounded
him with the common throng of her watering-place
acquaintance was not a person to argue with.
It seemed to Euphemia that she had no cause to plead;
her cause was in the Lord's hands and her lover's.
M. de Mauves had been irritated and mortified by
Mrs. Cleve's opposition, and hardly knew how to handle
an adversary who failed to perceive that a De
Mauves of necessity gave more than he received. But
he had obtained information on his return to Paris
which exalted the uses of humility. Euphemia's fortune,
wonderful to say, was greater than its fame, and
in view of such a prize, even a De Mauves could afford
to take a snubbing.
The young man's tact, his deference, his urbane insistence,
won a concession from Mrs. Cleve. The engagement
was to be suspended and her daughter was
to return home, be brought out and receive the homage
she was entitled to, and which would but too surely
take a form dangerous to the Baron's suit. They were
to exchange neither letters, nor mementos, nor messages;
but if at the end of two years Euphemia had
refused offers enough to attest the permanence of her
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attachment, he should receive an invitation to address
her again.
This decision was promulgated in the presence of the
parties interested. The Baron bore himself gallantly,
and looked at the young girl, expecting some tender
protestation. But she only looked at him silently in
return, neither weeping, nor smiling, nor putting out
her hand. On this they separated; but as the Baron
walked away, he declared to himself that, in spite of
the confounded two years, he was a very happy fellow,—
to have a fiancée who, to several millions of francs,
added such strangely beautiful eyes.
How many offers Euphemia refused but scantily
concerns us, — and how the Baron wore his two years
away. He found that he needed pastimes, and, as
pastimes were expensive, he added heavily to the
list of debts to be cancelled by Euphemia's millions.
Sometimes, in the thick of what he had once called
pleasure with a keener conviction than now, he put
to himself the case of their failing him after all; and
then he remembered that last mute assurance of her
eyes, and drew a long breath of such confidence as he
felt in nothing else in the world save his own punctuality
in an affair of honor.
At last, one morning, he took the express to Havre
with a letter of Mrs. Cleve's in his pocket, and ten
days later made his bow to mother and daughter in
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New York. His stay was brief, and he was apparently
unable to bring himself to view what Euphemia's
uncle, Mr. Butterworth, who gave her away at the
altar, called our great experiment in democratic self-government
in a serious light. He smiled at everything,
and seemed to regard the New World as a colossal
plaisanterie. It is true that a perpetual smile
was the most natural expression of countenance for a
man about to marry Euphemia Cleve.
-- --
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LONGMORE'S first visit seemed to open to him
so large an opportunity for tranquil enjoyment,
that he very soon paid a second, and, at the end of a
fortnight, had spent a great many hours in the little
drawing-room which Madame de Mauves rarely quitted
except to drive or walk in the forest. She lived in an
old-fashioned pavilion, between a high-walled court and
an excessively artificial garden, beyond whose enclosure
you saw a long line of tree-tops. Longmore liked
the garden, and in the mild afternoons used to move
his chair through the open window to the little terrace
which overlooked it, while his hostess sat just within.
After a while she came out and wandered through the
narrow alleys and beside the thin-spouting fountain,
and last introduced him to a little gate in the garden
wall, opening upon a lane which led into the forest.
Hitherward, more than once, she wandered with him,
bareheaded and meaning to go but twenty rods, but
always strolling good-naturedly farther, and often taking
a generous walk. They discovered a vast deal to
talk about, and to the pleasure of finding the hours
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tread inaudibly away, Longmore was able to add the
satisfaction of suspecting that he was a “resource” for
Madame de Mauves. He had made her acquaintance
with the sense, not altogether comfortable, that she
was a woman with a painful secret, and that seeking
her acquaintance would be like visiting at a house
where there was an invalid who could bear no noise.
But he very soon perceived that her sorrow, since sorrow
it was, was not an aggressive one; that it was not
fond of attitudes and ceremonies, and that her earnest
wish was to forget it. He felt that even if Mrs. Draper
had not told him she was unhappy, he would have
guessed it; and yet he could hardly have pointed to
his evidence. It was chiefly negative, — she never
alluded to her husband. Beyond this it seemed to
him simply that her whole being was pitched on a
lower key than harmonious Nature meant; she was
like a powerful singer who had lost her high notes.
She never drooped nor sighed nor looked unutterable
things; she indulged in no dusky sarcasms against
fate; she had, in short, none of the coquetry of unhappiness.
But Longmore was sure that her gentle
gayety was the result of strenuous effort, and that she
was trying to interest herself in his thoughts to escape
from her own. If she had wished to irritate his curiosity
and lead him to take her confidence by storm,
nothing could have served her purpose better than this
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ingenuous reserve. He declared to himself that there
was a rare magnanimity in such ardent self-effacement,
and that but one woman in ten thousand was capable
of merging an intensely personal grief in thankless
outward contemplation. Madame de Mauves, he instinctively
felt, was not sweeping the horizon for a
compensation or a consoler; she had suffered a personal
deception which had disgusted her with persons.
She was not striving to balance her sorrow with some
strongly flavored joy; for the present, she was trying
to live with it, peaceably, reputably, and without scandal, —
turning the key on it occasionally, as you would
on a companion liable to attacks of insanity. Longmore
was a man of fine senses and of an active imagination,
whose leading-strings had never been slipped.
He began to regard his hostess as a figure haunted by
a shadow which was somehow her intenser, more authentic
self. This hovering mystery came to have for
him an extraordinary charm. Her delicate beauty
acquired to his eye the serious cast of certain blank-browed
Greek statues, and sometimes, when his imagination,
more than his ear, detected a vague tremor in
the tone in which she attempted to make a friendly
question seem to have behind it none of the hollow
resonance of absent-mindedness, his marvelling eyes
gave her an answer more eloquent, though much less
to the point, than the one she demanded.
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She gave him indeed much to wonder about, and,
in his ignorance, he formed a dozen experimental
theories upon the history of her marriage. She had
married for love and staked her whole soul on it;
of that he was convinced. She had not married a
Frenchman to be near Paris and her base of supplies
of millinery; he was sure she had seen conjugal happiness
in a light of which her present life, with its
conveniences for shopping and its moral aridity, was
the absolute negation. But by what extraordinary
process of the heart — through what mysterious intermission
of that moral instinct which may keep
pace with the heart, even when that organ is making
unprecedented time — had she fixed her affections on
an arrogantly frivolous Frenchman? Longmore needed
no telling; he knew M. de Mauves was frivolous;
it was stamped on his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his
carriage. For French women Longmore had but a
scanty kindness, or at least (what with him was very
much the same thing) but a scanty gallantry; they
all seemed to belong to the type of a certain fine
lady to whom he had ventured to present a letter of
introduction, and whom, directly after his first visit
to her, he had set down in his note-book as “metallic.”
Why should Madame de Mauves have chosen
a French woman's lot, — she whose character had a
perfume which does n't belong to even the brightest
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metals? He asked her one day frankly if it had
cost her nothing to transplant herself, — if she was
not oppressed with a sense of irreconcilable difference
from “all these people.” She was silent awhile, and
he fancied that she was hesitating as to whether she
should resent so unceremonious an allusion to her
husband. He almost wished she would; it would
seem a proof that her deep reserve of sorrow had a
limit.
“I almost grew up here,” she said at last, “and it
was here for me that those dreams of the future took
shape that we all have when we cease to be very
young. As matters stand, one may be very American
and yet arrange it with one's conscience to live in
Europe. My imagination perhaps — I had a little
when I was younger — helped me to think I should
find happiness here. And after all, for a woman,
what does it signify? This is not America, perhaps,
about me, but it 's quite as little France. France
is out there, beyond the garden, in the town, in the
forest; but here, close about me, in my room and” —
she paused a moment — “in my mind, it 's a nameless
country of my own. It 's not her country,” she
added, “that makes a woman happy or unhappy.”
Madame Clairin, Euphemia's sister-in-law, might
have been supposed to have undertaken the graceful
task of making Longmore ashamed of his uncivil
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jottings about her sex and nation. Mademoiselle de
Mauves, bringing example to the confirmation of precept,
had made a remunerative match and sacrificed
her name to the millions of a prosperous and aspiring
wholesale druggist, — a gentleman liberal enough
to consider his fortune a moderate price for being
towed into circles unpervaded by pharmaceutic odors.
His system, possibly, was sound, but his own application
of it was unfortunate. M. Clairin's head was
turned by his good luck. Having secured an aristocratic
wife, he adopted an aristocratic vice and began
to gamble at the Bourse. In an evil hour he lost
heavily and staked heavily to recover himself. But
he overtook his loss only by a greater one. Then he
let everything go, — his wits, his courage, his probity, —
everything that had made him what his ridiculous
marriage had so promptly unmade. He walked
up the Rue Vivienne one day with his hands in his
empty pockets, and stood for half an hour staring confusedly
up and down the glittering boulevard. People
brushed against him, and half a dozen carriages almost
ran over him, until at last a policeman, who had been
watching him for some time, took him by the arm and
led him gently away. He looked at the man's cocked
hat and sword with tears in his eyes; he hoped he
was going to interpret to him the wrath of Heaven, —
to execute the penalty of his dead-weight of
-- 403 --
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self-abhorrence. But the sergent de ville only stationed him
in the embrasure of a door, out of harm's way, and
walked away to supervise a financial contest between
an old lady and a cabman. Poor M. Clairin had
only been married a year, but he had had time to
measure the lofty spirit of a De Mauves. When night
had fallen, he repaired to the house of a friend and
asked for a night's lodging; and as his friend, who
was simply his old head book-keeper and lived in a
small way, was put to some trouble to accommodate
him, — “You must excuse me,” Clairin said, “but I
can't go home. I 'm afraid of my wife!” Toward
morning he blew his brains out. His widow turned
the remnants of his property to better account than
could have been expected, and wore the very handsomest
mourning. It was for this latter reason, perhaps,
that she was obliged to retrench at other points
and accept a temporary home under her brother's
roof.
Fortune had played Madame Clairin a terrible trick,
but had found an adversary and not a victim. Though
quite without beauty, she had always had what is
called the grand air, and her air from this time forward
was grander than ever. As she trailed about in
her sable furbelows, tossing back her well-dressed
head, and holding up her vigilant eye-glass, she
seemed to be sweeping the whole field of society and
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asking herself where she should pluck her revenge.
Suddenly she espied it, ready made to her hand, in
poor Longmore's wealth and amiability. American
dollars and American complaisance had made her
brother's fortune; why should n't they make hers?
She overestimated Longmore's wealth and misinterpreted
his amiability; for she was sure that a man
could not be so contented without being rich, nor so
unassuming without being weak. He encountered her
advances with a formal politeness which covered a
great deal of unflattering discomposure. She made
him feel acutely uncomfortable; and though he was
at a loss to conceive how he could be an object of
interest to a shrewd Parisienne, he had an indefinable
sense of being enclosed in a magnetic circle, like the
victim of an incantation. If Madame Clairin could
have fathomed his Puritanic soul, she would have
laid by her wand and her book and admitted that he
was an impossible subject. She gave him a kind of
moral chill, and he never mentally alluded to her
save as that dreadful woman, — that terrible woman.
He did justice to her grand air, but for his pleasure
he preferred the small air of Madame de Mauves;
and he never made her his bow, after standing frigidly
passive for five minutes to one of her gracious overtures
to intimacy, without feeling a peculiar desire to
ramble away into the forest, fling himself down on
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the warm grass, and, staring up at the blue sky, forget
that there were any women in nature who did n't
please like the swaying tree-tops. One day, on his
arrival, she met him in the court and told him that
her sister-in-law was shut up with a headache, and
that his visit must be for her. He followed her into
the drawing-room with the best grace at his command,
and sat twirling his hat for half an hour. Suddenly
he understood her; the caressing cadence of her voice
was a distinct invitation to solicit the incomparable
honor of her hand. He blushed to the roots of his
hair and jumped up with uncontrollable alacrity; then,
dropping a glance at Madame Clairin, who sat watching
him with hard eyes over the edge of her smile, as
it were, perceived on her brow a flash of unforgiving
wrath. It was not becoming, but his eyes lingered
a moment, for it seemed to illuminate her character.
What he saw there frightened him, and he felt himself
murmuring, “Poor Madame de Mauves!” His
departure was abrupt, and this time he really went
into the forest and lay down on the grass.
After this he admired Madame de Mauves more
than ever; she seemed a brighter figure, dogged by a
darker shadow. At the end of a month he received a
letter from a friend with whom he had arranged a
tour through the Low Countries, reminding him of his
promise to meet him promptly at Brussels. It was
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only after his answer was posted that he fully measured
the zeal with which he had declared that the
journey must either be deferred or abandoned, — that
he could not possibly leave Saint-Germain. He took
a walk in the forest, and asked himself if this was
irrevocably true. If it was, surely his duty was to
march straight home and pack his trunk. Poor Webster,
who, he knew, had counted ardently on this
excursion, was an excellent fellow; six weeks ago he
would have gone through fire and water to join Webster.
It had never been in his books to throw overboard
a friend whom he had loved for ten years for a
married woman whom for six weeks he had — admired.
It was certainly beyond question that he was lingering
at Saint-Germain because this admirable married
woman was there; but in the midst of all this admiration
what had become of prudence? This was the
conduct of a man prepared to fall utterly in love. If
she was as unhappy as he believed, the love of such a
man would help her very little more than his indifference;
if she was less so, she needed no help and could
dispense with his friendly offices. He was sure, moreover,
that if she knew he was staying on her account,
she would be extremely annoyed. But this very feeling
had much to do with making it hard to go; her
displeasure would only enhance the gentle stoicism
which touched him to the heart. At moments, indeed,
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he assured himself that to linger was simply impertinent;
it was indelicate to make a daily study of such
a shrinking grief. But inclination answered that some
day her self-support would fail, and he had a vision
of this admirable creature calling vainly for help. He
would be her friend, to any length; it was unworthy
of both of them to think about consequences. But he
was a friend who carried about with him a muttering
resentment that he had not known her five years
earlier, and a brooding hostility to those who had anticipated
him. It seemed one of fortune's most mocking
strokes, that she should be surrounded by persons
whose only merit was that they threw the charm of
her character into radiant relief.
Longmore's growing irritation made it more and
more difficult for him to see any other merit than this
in the Baron de Mauves. And yet, disinterestedly, it
would have been hard to give a name to the portentous
vices which such an estimate implied, and there
were times when our hero was almost persuaded
against his finer judgment that he was really the most
considerate of husbands, and that his wife liked melancholy
for melancholy's sake. His manners were perfect,
his urbanity was unbounded, and he seemed never
to address her but, sentimentally speaking, hat in hand.
His tone to Longmore (as the latter was perfectly
aware) was that of a man of the world to a man not
-- 408 --
[figure description] Page 408.[end figure description]
quite of the world; but what it lacked in deference
it made up in easy friendliness. “I can't thank you
enough for having overcome my wife's shyness,” he
more than once declared. “If we left her to do as she
pleased, she would bury herself alive. Come often,
and bring some one else. She 'll have nothing to do
with my friends, but perhaps she 'll accept yours.”
The Baron made these speeches with a remorseless
placidity very amazing to our hero, who had an innocent
belief that a man's head may point out to him the
shortcomings of his heart and make him ashamed of
them. He could not fancy him capable both of neglecting
his wife and taking an almost humorous view
of her suffering. Longmore had, at any rate, an exasperating
sense that the Baron thought rather less of
his wife than more, for that very same fine difference
of nature which so deeply stirred his own sympathies.
He was rarely present during Longmore's visits, and
made a daily journey to Paris, where he had “business,”
as he once mentioned, — not in the least with a
tone of apology. When he appeared, it was late in the
evening, and with an imperturbable air of being on the
best of terms with every one and everything, which
was peculiarly annoying if you happened to have a
tacit quarrel with him. If he was a good fellow, he
was surely a good fellow spoiled. Something he
had, however, which Longmore vaguely envied — a
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[figure description] Page 409.[end figure description]
kind of superb positiveness — a manner rounded and
polished by the traditions of centuries — an amenity
exercised for his own sake and not his neighbors' —
which seemed the result of something better than a
good conscience — of a vigorous and unscrupulous
temperament. The Baron was plainly not a moral
man, and poor Longmore, who was, would have been
glad to learn the secret of his luxurious serenity.
What was it that enabled him, without being a monster
with visibly cloven feet, exhaling brimstone, to
misprize so cruelly a lovely wife, and to walk about
the world with a smile under his mustache? It was
the essential grossness of his imagination, which had
nevertheless helped him to turn so many neat compliments.
He could be very polite, and he could doubtless
be supremely impertinent; but he was as unable
to draw a moral inference of the finer strain, as a
school-boy who has been playing truant for a week to
solve a problem in algebra. It was ten to one he
did n't know his wife was unhappy; he and his brilliant
sister had doubtless agreed to consider their companion
a Puritanical little person, of meagre aspirations
and slender accomplishments, contented with
looking at Paris from the terrace, and, as an especial
treat, having a countryman very much like herself to
supply her with homely transatlantic gossip. M. de
Mauves was tired of his companion: he relished a
-- 410 --
[figure description] Page 410.[end figure description]
higher flavor in female society. She was too modest,
too simple, too delicate; she had too few arts, too little
coquetry, too much charity. M. de Mauves, some day,
lighting a cigar, had probably decided she was stupid.
It was the same sort of taste, Longmore moralized, as
the taste for Gérôme in painting, and for M. Gustave
Flaubert in literature. The Baron was a pagan and
his wife was a Christian, and between them, accordingly,
was a gulf. He was by race and instinct a grand
seigneur. Longmore had often heard of this distinguished
social type, and was properly grateful for an
opportunity to examine it closely. It had certainly a
picturesque boldness of outline, but it was fed from
spiritual sources so remote from those of which he felt
the living gush in his own soul, that he found himself
gazing at it, in irreconcilable antipathy, across a dim
historic mist. “I 'm a modern bourgeois,” he said,
“and not perhaps so good a judge of how far a pretty
woman's tongue may go at supper without prejudice to
her reputation. But I 've not met one of the sweetest
of women without recognizing her and discovering that
a certain sort of character offers better entertainment
than Thérésa's songs, sung by a dissipated duchess.
Wit for wit, I think mine carries me further.” It was
easy indeed to perceive that, as became a grand seigneur,
M. de Mauves had a stock of rigid notions. He
would not especially have desired, perhaps, that his
-- 411 --
[figure description] Page 411.[end figure description]
wife should compete in amateur operettas with the
duchesses in question, chiefly of recent origin; but he
held that a gentleman may take his amusement where
he finds it, that he is quite at liberty not to find it at
home; and that the wife of a De Mauves who should
hang her head and have red eyes, and allow herself to
make any other response to officious condolence than
that her husband's amusements were his own affair,
would have forfeited every claim to having her finger-tips
bowed over and kissed. And yet in spite of these
sound principles, Longmore fancied that the Baron was
more irritated than gratified by his wife's irreproachable
reserve. Did it dimly occur to him that it was
self-control and not self-effacement? She was a model
to all the inferior matrons of his line, past and to come,
and an occasional “scene” from her at a convenient
moment would have something reassuring, — would attest
her stupidity a trifle more forcibly than her inscrutable
tranquillity.
Longmore would have given much to know the
principle of her submissiveness, and he tried more
than once, but with rather awkward timidity, to sound
the mystery. She seemed to him to have been long
resisting the force of cruel evidence, and, though she
had succumbed to it at last, to have denied herself
the right to complain, because if faith was gone her
heroic generosity remained. He believed even that
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[figure description] Page 412.[end figure description]
she was capable of reproaching herself with having
expected too much, and of trying to persuade herself
out of her bitterness by saying that her hopes had
been illusions and that this was simply — life. “I
hate tragedy,” she once said to him; “I have a really
pusillanimous dread of moral suffering. I believe that—
without base concessions — there is always some
way of escaping from it. I had almost rather never
smile all my life than have a single violent explosion
of grief.” She lived evidently in nervous apprehension
of being fatally convinced, — of seeing to the end of
her deception. Longmore, when he thought of this,
felt an immense longing to offer her something of
which she could be as sure as of the sun in heaven.
-- --
[figure description] Page 413.[end figure description]
HIS friend Webster lost no time in accusing him
of the basest infidelity, and asking him what he
found at Saint-Germain to prefer to Van Eyck and
Hemling, Rubens and Rembrandt. A day or two after
the receipt of Webster's letter, he took a walk with
Madame de Mauves in the forest. They sat down on
a fallen log, and she began to arrange into a bouquet
the anemones and violets she had gathered. “I
have a letter,” he said at last, “from a friend whom
I some time ago promised to join at Brussels. The
time has come, — it has passed. It finds me terribly
unwilling to leave Saint-Germain.”
She looked up with the candid interest which she
always displayed in his affairs, but with no disposition,
apparently, to make a personal application of his words.
“Saint-Germain is pleasant enough,” she said; “but
are you doing yourself justice? Won't you regret in
future days that instead of travelling and seeing cities
and monuments and museums and improving your
mind, you sat here — for instance — on a log, pulling
my flowers to pieces?”
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[figure description] Page 414.[end figure description]
“What I shall regret in future days,” he answered
after some hesitation, “is that I should have sat here
and not spoken the truth on the matter. I am fond
of museums and monuments and of improving my
mind, and I 'm particularly fond of my friend Webster.
But I can't bring myself to leave Saint-Germain without
asking you a question. You must forgive me if
it 's unfortunate, and be assured that curiosity was
never more respectful. Are you really as unhappy as
I imagine you to be?”
She had evidently not expected his question, and
she greeted it with a startled blush. “If I strike you
as unhappy,” she said, “I have been a poorer friend
to you than I wished to be.”
“I, perhaps, have been a better friend of yours than
you have supposed. I 've admired your reserve, your
courage, your studied gayety. But I have felt the
existence of something beneath them that was more
you — more you as I wished to know you — than they
were; something that I have believed to be a constant
sorrow.”
She listened with great gravity, but without an air
of offence, and he felt that while he had been timorously
calculating the last consequences of friendship,
she had placidly accepted them. “You surprise me,”
she said slowly, and her blush still lingered. “But
to refuse to answer you would confirm an impression
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[figure description] Page 415.[end figure description]
which is evidently already too strong. An unhappiness
that one can sit comfortably talking about, is an
unhappiness with distinct limitations. If I were examined
before a board of commissioners for investigating
the felicity of mankind, I 'm sure I should be
pronounced a very fortunate woman.”
There was something delightfully gentle to him in
her tone, and its softness seemed to deepen as she
continued: “But let me add, with all gratitude for
your sympathy, that it 's my own affair altogether.
It need n't disturb you, Mr. Longmore, for I have
often found myself in your company a very contented
person.”
“You 're a wonderful woman,” he said, “and I admire
you as I never have admired any one. You 're
wiser than anything I, for one, can say to you; and
what I ask of you is not to let me advise or console
you, but simply thank you for letting me know you.”
He had intended no such outburst as this, but his
voice rang loud, and he felt a kind of unfamiliar joy
as he uttered it.
She shook her head with some impatience. “Let
us be friends, — as I supposed we were going to be, —
without protestations and fine words. To have you
making bows to my wisdom, — that would be real
wretchedness. I can dispense with your admiration
better than the Flemish painters can, — better than
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[figure description] Page 416.[end figure description]
Van Eyck and Rubens, in spite of all their worshippers.
Go join your friend, — see everything, enjoy
everything, learn everything, and write me an excellent
letter, brimming over with your impressions. I 'm
extremely fond of the Dutch painters,” she added with
a slight faltering of the voice, which Longmore had
noticed once before, and which he had interpreted as
the sudden weariness of a spirit self-condemned to play
a part.
“I don't believe you care about the Dutch painters
at all,” he said with an unhesitating laugh. “But I
shall certainly write you a letter.”
She rose and turned homeward, thoughtfully rearranging
her flowers as she walked. Little was said;
Longmore was asking himself, with a tremor in the
unspoken words, whether all this meant simply that
he was in love. He looked at the rooks wheeling
against the golden-hued sky, between the tree-tops,
but not at his companion, whose personal presence
seemed lost in the felicity she had created. Madame
de Mauves was silent and grave, because she was
painfully disappointed. A sentimental friendship she
had not desired; her scheme had been to pass with
Longmore as a placid creature with a good deal of
leisure, which she was disposed to devote to profitable
conversation of an impersonal sort. She liked him
extremely, and felt that there was something in him
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to which, when she made up her girlish mind that a
needy French baron was the ripest fruit of time, she
had done very scanty justice. They went through the
little gate in the garden wall and approached the
house. On the terrace Madame Clairin was entertaining
a friend, — a little elderly gentleman with a white
mustache, and an order in his button-hole. Madame
de Mauves chose to pass round the house into the
court; whereupon her sister-in-law, greeting Longmore
with a commanding nod, lifted her eye-glass and
stared at them as they went by. Longmore heard
the little old gentleman uttering some old-fashioned
epigram about “la vieille galanterie Française,” and
then, by a sudden impulse, he looked at Madame
de Mauves and wondered what she was doing in such
a world. She stopped before the house, without asking
him to come in. “I hope,” she said, “you 'll consider
my advice, and waste no more time at Saint-Germain.”
For an instant there rose to his lips some faded
compliment about his time not being wasted, but it
expired before the simple sincerity of her look. She
stood there as gently serious as the angel of disinterestedness,
and Longmore felt as if he should insult
her by treating her words as a bait for flattery. “I
shall start in a day or two,” he answered, “but I won't
promise you not to come back.”
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“I hope not,” she said simply. “I expect to be
here a long time.”
“I shall come and say good by,” he rejoined; on
which she nodded with a smile, and went in.
He turned away, and walked slowly homeward by
the terrace. It seemed to him that to leave her thus,
for a gain on which she herself insisted, was to know
her better and admire her more. But he was in a
vague ferment of feeling which her evasion of his
question half an hour before had done more to deepen
than to allay. Suddenly, on the terrace, he encountered
M. de Mauves, who was leaning against the
parapet finishing a cigar. The Baron, who, he fancied,
had an air of peculiar affability, offered him his fair,
plump hand. Longmore stopped; he felt a sudden
angry desire to cry out to him that he had the loveliest
wife in the world; that he ought to be ashamed
of himself not to know it; and that for all his shrewdness
he had never looked into the depths of her eyes.
The Baron, we know, considered that he had; but
there was something in Euphemia's eyes now that was
not there five years before. They talked for a while
about various things, and M. de Mauves gave a humorous
account of his visit to America. His tone was
not soothing to Longmore's excited sensibilities. He
seemed to consider the country a gigantic joke, and
his urbanity only went so far as to admit that it was
-- 419 --
[figure description] Page 419.[end figure description]
not a bad one. Longmore was not, by habit, an aggressive
apologist for our institutions; but the Baron's
narrative confirmed his worst impressions of French
superficiality. He had understood nothing, he had
felt nothing, he had learned nothing; and our hero,
glancing askance at his aristocratic profile, declared
that if the chief merit of a long pedigree was to
leave one so vaingloriously stupid, he thanked his stars
that the Longmores had emerged from obscurity in
the present century, in the person of an enterprising
lumber merchant. M. de Mauves dwelt of course on
that prime oddity of ours, — the liberty allowed to
young girls; and related the history of his researches
into the “opportunities” it presented to French noblemen, —
researches in which, during a fortnight's stay,
he seemed to have spent many agreeable hours. “I
am bound to admit,” he said, “that in every case I
was disarmed by the extreme candor of the young
lady, and that they took care of themselves to better
purpose than I have seen some mammas in France
take care of them.” Longmore greeted this handsome
concession with the grimmest of smiles, and damned
his impertinent patronage.
Mentioning at last that he was about to leave Saint-Germain,
he was surprised, without exactly being flattered,
by the Baron's quickened attention. “I 'm very
sorry,” the latter cried. “I hoped we had you for the
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[figure description] Page 420.[end figure description]
summer.” Longmore murmured something civil, and
wondered why M. de Mauves should care whether he
stayed or went. “You were a diversion to Madame de
Mauves,” the Baron added. “I assure you I mentally
blessed your visits.”
“They were a great pleasure to me,” Longmore said
gravely. “Some day I expect to come back.”
“Pray do,” and the Baron laid his hand urgently on
his arm. “You see I have confidence in you!” Longmore
was silent for a moment, and the Baron puffed
his cigar reflectively and watched the smoke. “Madame
de Mauves,” he said at last, “is a rather singular
person.”
Longmore shifted his position, and wondered whether
he was going to “explain” Madame de Mauves.
“Being as you are her fellow-countryman,” the
Baron went on, “I don't mind speaking frankly. She 's
just a little morbid, — the most charming woman in
the world, as you see, but a little fanciful, — a little
exaltée. Now you see she has taken this extraordinary
fancy for solitude. I can't get her to go anywhere, —
to see any one. When my friends present themselves
she 's polite, but she 's freezing. She does n't do herself
justice, and I expect every day to hear two or
three of them say to me, `Your wife 's jolie à croquer:
what a pity she has n't a little esprit.' You must
have found out that she has really a great deal. But
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[figure description] Page 421.[end figure description]
to tell the whole truth, what she needs is to forget
herself. She sits alone for hours poring over her
English books and looking at life through that terrible
brown fog which they always seem to me to fling over
the world. I doubt if your English authors,” the
Baron continued, with a serenity which Longmore
afterwards characterized as sublime, “are very sound
reading for young married women. I don't pretend to
know much about them; but I remember that, not long
after our marriage, Madame de Mauves undertook to
read me one day a certain Wordsworth, — a poet highly
esteemed, it appears, chez vous. It seemed to me that
she took me by the nape of the neck and forced my
head for half an hour over a basin of soupe aux choux,
and that one ought to ventilate the drawing-room before
any one called. But I suppose you know him, —
ce génie là. I think my wife never forgave me, and
that it was a real shock to her to find she had married
a man who had very much the same taste in literature
as in cookery. But you 're a man of general culture,”
said the Baron, turning to Longmore and fixing his
eyes on the seal on his watch-guard. “You can talk
about everything, and I 'm sure you like Alfred de
Musset as well as Wordsworth. Talk to her about
everything, Alfred de Musset included. Bah! I forgot
you 're going. Come back then as soon as possible and
talk about your travels. If Madame de Mauves too
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[figure description] Page 422.[end figure description]
would travel for a couple of months, it would do her
good. It would enlarge her horizon,” — and M. de
Mauves made a series of short nervous jerks with his
stick in the air, — “it would wake up her imagination.
She 's too rigid, you know, — it would show her that
one may bend a trifle without breaking.” He paused
a moment and gave two or three vigorous puffs. Then
turning to his companion again, with a little nod and a
confidential smile: — “I hope you admire my candor.
I would n't say all this to one of us.”
Evening was coming on, and the lingering light
seemed to float in the air in faintly golden motes.
Longmore stood gazing at these luminous particles; he
could almost have fancied them a swarm of humming
insects, murmuring as a refrain, “She has a great deal
of esprit, — she has a great deal of esprit.” “Yes, she
has a great deal,” he said mechanically, turning to the
Baron. M. de Mauves glanced at him sharply, as if to
ask what the deuce he was talking about. “She has
a great deal of intelligence,” said Longmore, deliberately,
“a great deal of beauty, a great many virtues.”
M. de Mauves busied himself for a moment in lighting
another cigar, and when he had finished, with a
return of his confidential smile, “I suspect you of
thinking,” he said, “that I don't do my wife justice.
Take care, — take care, young man; that 's a dangerous
assumption. In general, a man always does his
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wife justice. More than justice,” cried the Baron with
a laugh, — “that we keep for the wives of other
men!”
Longmore afterwards remembered it in favor of the
Baron's grace of address that he had not measured at
this moment the dusky abyss over which it hovered.
But a sort of deepening subterranean echo lingered on
his spiritual ear. For the present his keenest sensation
was a desire to get away and cry aloud that M. de
Mauves was an arrogant fool. He bade him an abrupt
good-night, which must serve also, he said, as good-by.
“Decidedly, then, you go?” said M. de Mauves,
almost peremptorily.
“Decidedly.”
“Of course you 'll come and say good by to Madame
de Mauves.” His tone implied that the omission would
be most uncivil; but there seemed to Longmore something
so ludicrous in his taking a lesson in consideration
from M. de Mauves, that he burst into a laugh.
The Baron frowned, like a man for whom it was a
new and most unpleasant sensation to be perplexed.
“You 're a queer fellow,” he murmured, as Longmore
turned away, not foreseeing that he would think him
a very queer fellow indeed before he had done with
him.
Longmore sat down to dinner at his hotel with his
usual good intentions; but as he was lifting his first
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glass of wine to his lips, he suddenly fell to musing and
set down his wine untasted. His revery lasted long, and
when he emerged from it, his fish was cold; but this
mattered little, for his appetite was gone. That evening
he packed his trunk with a kind of indignant
energy. This was so effective that the operation was
accomplished before bedtime, and as he was not in the
least sleepy, he devoted the interval to writing two
letters; one was a short note to Madame de Mauves,
which he intrusted to a servant, to be delivered the
next morning. He had found it best, he said, to leave
Saint-Germain immediately, but he expected to be
back in Paris in the early autumn. The other letter
was the result of his having remembered a day or
two before that he had not yet complied with Mrs.
Draper's injunction to give her an account of his
impressions of her friend. The present occasion seemed
propitious, and he wrote half a dozen pages. His
tone, however, was grave, and Mrs. Draper, on receiving
them, was slightly disappointed, — she would have
preferred a stronger flavor of rhapsody. But what
chiefly concerns us is the concluding sentences.
“The only time she ever spoke to me of her marriage,”
he wrote, “she intimated that it had been a perfect
love-match. With all abatements, I suppose most
marriages are; but in her case this would mean more,
I think, than in that of most women; for her love
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was an absolute idealization. She believed her husband
was a hero of rose-colored romance, and he turns
out to be not even a hero of very sad-colored reality.
For some time now she has been sounding her mistake,
but I don't believe she has touched the bottom
of it yet. She strikes me as a person who is begging
off from full knowledge, — who has struck a truce
with painful truth, and is trying awhile the experiment
of living with closed eyes. In the dark she
tries to see again the gilding on her idol. Illusion of
course is illusion, and one must always pay for it;
but there is something truly tragical in seeing an
earthly penalty levied on such divine folly as this.
As for M. de Mauves, he 's a Frenchman to his fingers'
ends; and I confess I should dislike him for this
if he were a much better man. He can't forgive his
wife for having married him too sentimentally and
loved him too well; for in some uncorrupted corner
of his being he feels, I suppose, that as she saw him,
so he ought to have been. It 's a perpetual vexation
to him that a little American bourgeoise should have
fancied him a finer fellow than he is, or than he at
all wants to be. He has n't a glimmering of real
acquaintance with his wife; he can't understand the
stream of passion flowing so clear and still. To tell
the truth, I hardly can myself; but when I see the
spectacle I can admire it furiously. M. de Mauves,
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at any rate, would like to have the comfort of feeling
that his wife was as corruptible as himself; and
you 'll hardly believe me when I tell you that he
goes about intimating to gentlemen whom he deems
worthy of the knowledge, that it would be a convenience
to him to have them make love to her.”
-- --
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ON reaching Paris, Longmore straightway purchased
a Murray's “Belgium,” to help himself to
believe that he would start on the morrow for Brussels;
but when the morrow came, it occurred to him that, by
way of preparation, he ought to acquaint himself more
intimately with the Flemish painters in the Louvre.
This took a whole morning, but it did little to hasten
his departure. He had abruptly left Saint-Germain,
because it seemed to him that respect for Madame de
Mauves demanded that he should allow her husband
no reason to suppose that he had understood him; but
now that he had satisfied this immediate need of delicacy,
he found himself thinking more and more ardently
of Euphemia. It was a poor expression of ardor
to be lingering irresolutely on the deserted boulevards,
but he detested the idea of leaving Saint-Germain five
hundred miles behind him. He felt very foolish, nevertheless,
and wandered about nervously, promising
himself to take the next train; but a dozen trains
started, and Longmore was still in Paris. This sentimental
tumult was more than he had bargained for,
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and, as he looked in the shop windows, he wondered
whether it was a “passion.” He had never been fond
of the word, and had grown up with a kind of horror
of what it represented. He had hoped that when he
fell in love, he should do it with an excellent conscience,
with no greater agitation than a mild general
glow of satisfaction. But here was a sentiment compounded
of pity and anger, as well as admiration, and
bristling with scruples and doubts. He had come
abroad to enjoy the Flemish painters and all others;
but what fair-tressed saint of Van Eyck or Memling
was so appealing a figure as Madame de Mauves? His
restless steps carried him at last out of the long villabordered
avenue which leads to the Bois de Boulogne.
Summer had fairly begun, and the drive beside the
lake was empty, but there were various loungers on
the benches and chairs, and the great café had an air
of animation. Longmore's walk had given him an appetite,
and he went into the establishment and demanded
a dinner, remarking for the hundredth time, as
he observed the smart little tables disposed in the open
air, how much better they ordered this matter in
France.
“Will monsieur dine in the garden, or in the salon?”
asked the waiter. Long more chose the garden; and
observing that a great vine of June roses was trained
over the wall of the house, placed himself at a table
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near by, where the best of dinners was served him on
the whitest of linen, in the most shining of porcelain.
It so happened that his table was near a window,
and that as he sat he could look into a corner of the
salon. So it was that his attention rested on a lady
seated just within the window, which was open, face
to face apparently to a companion who was concealed
by the curtain. She was a very pretty woman, and
Longmore looked at her as often as was consistent
with good manners. After a while he even began
to wonder who she was, and to suspect that she was
one of those ladies whom it is no breach of good manners
to look at as often as you like. Longmore, too,
if he had been so disposed, would have been the more
free to give her all his attention, that her own was
fixed upon the person opposite to her. She was what
the French call a belle brune, and though our hero, who
had rather a conservative taste in such matters, had no
great relish for her bold outlines and even bolder coloring,
he could not help admiring her expression of basking
contentment.
She was evidently very happy, and her happiness
gave her an air of innocence. The talk of her friend,
whoever he was, abundantly suited her humor, for she
sat listening to him with a broad, lazy smile, and interrupted
him occasionally, while she crunched her bonbons,
with a murmured response, presumably as broad,
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which seemed to deepen his eloquence. She drank a
great deal of champagne and ate an immense number
of strawberries, and was plainly altogether a person
with an impartial relish for strawberries, champagne,
and what she would have called bêtises.
They had half finished dinner when Longmore sat
down, and he was still in his place when they rose.
She had hung her bonnet on a nail above her chair,
and her companion passed round the table to take it
down for her. As he did so, she bent her head to
look at a wine stain on her dress, and in the movement
exposed the greater part of the back of a very
handsome neck. The gentleman observed it, and observed
also, apparently, that the room beyond them
was empty; that he stood within eyeshot of Longmore,
he failed to observe. He stooped suddenly and
imprinted a gallant kiss on the fair expanse. Longmore
then recognized M. de Mauves. The recipient of
this vigorous tribute put on her bonnet, using his flushed
smile as a mirror, and in a moment they passed
through the garden, on their way to their carriage.
Then, for the first time, M. de Mauves perceived
Longmore. He measured with a rapid glance the
young man's relation to the open window, and checked
himself in the impulse to stop and speak to him. He
contented himself with bowing with great gravity as
he opened the gate for his companion.
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That evening Longmore made a railway journey,
but not to Brussels. He had effectually ceased to
care about Brussels; the only thing he now cared
about was Madame de Mauves. The atmosphere of
his mind had had a sudden clearing up; pity and
anger were still throbbing there, but they had space
to rage at their pleasure, for doubts and scruples had
abruptly departed. It was little, he felt, that he
could interpose between her resignation and the unsparing
harshness of her position; but that little, if
it involved the sacrifice of everything that bound
him to the tranquil past, it seemed to him that he
could offer her with a rapture which at last made
reflection a wofully halting substitute for faith. Nothing
in his tranquil past had given such a zest to
consciousness as the sense of tending with all his
being to a single aim which bore him company on
his journey to Saint-Germain. How to justify his
return, how to explain his ardor, troubled him little.
He was not sure, even, that he wished to be understood;
he wished only to feel that it was by no fault
of his that Madame de Mauves was alone with the ugliness
of fate. He was conscious of no distinct desire
to “make love” to her; if he could have uttered the
essence of his longing, he would have said that he
wished her to remember that in a world colored gray
to her vision by disappointment, there was one vividly
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honest man. She might certainly have remembered
it, however, without his coming back to remind her;
and it is not to be denied that, as he packed his valise
that evening, he wished immensely to hear the sound
of her voice.
He waited the next day till his usual hour of calling, —
the late afternoon; but he learned at the door
that Madame de Mauves was not at home. The servant
offered the information that she was walking in
the forest. Longmore went through the garden and
out of the little door into the lane, and, after half an
hour's vain exploration, saw her coming toward him
at the end of a green by-path. As he appeared, she
stopped for a moment, as if to turn aside; then recognizing
him, she slowly advanced, and he was soon
shaking hands with her.
“Nothing has happened,” she said, looking at him
fixedly. “You 're not ill?”
“Nothing, except that when I got to Paris I found
how fond I had grown of Saint-Germain.”
She neither smiled nor looked flattered; it seemed
indeed to Longmore that she was annoyed. But he
was uncertain, for he immediately perceived that in
his absence the whole character of her face had altered.
It told him that something momentous had
happened. It was no longer self-contained melancholy
that he read in her eyes, but grief and
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agitation which had lately struggled with that passionate
love of peace of which she had spoken to him, and
forced it to know that deep experience is never peaceful.
She was pale, and she had evidently been shedding
tears. He felt his heart beating hard; he seemed
now to know her secrets. She continued to look at
him with a contracted brow, as if his return had given
her a sense of responsibility too great to be disguised
by a commonplace welcome. For some moments, as
he turned and walked beside her, neither spoke; then
abruptly, — “Tell me truly, Mr. Longmore,” she said,
“why you have come back.”
He turned and looked at her with an air which
startled her into a certainty of what she had feared.
“Because I 've learned the real answer to the question
I asked you the other day. You 're not happy, —
you 're too good to be happy on the terms offered you.
Madame de Mauves,” he went on with a gesture which
protested against a gesture of her own, “I can't be
happy if you 're not. I don't care for anything so long
as I see such a depth of unconquerable sadness in your
eyes. I found during three dreary days in Paris that
the thing in the world I most care for is this daily
privilege of seeing you. I know it 's absolutely brutal
to tell you I admire you; it 's an insult to you to treat
you as if you had complained to me or appealed to me.
But such a friendship as I waked up to there” — and he
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tossed his head toward the distant city — “is a potent
force, I assure you; and when forces are compressed
they explode. But if you had told me every trouble in
your heart, it would have mattered little; I could n't
say more than I must say now, — that if that in life
from which you 've hoped most has given you least,
my devoted respect will refuse no service and betray
no trust.”
She had begun to make marks in the earth with the
point of her parasol; but she stopped and listened to
him in perfect immobility. Rather, her immobility
was not perfect; for when he stopped speaking a faint
flush had stolen into her cheek. It told Longmore
that she was moved, and his first perceiving it was the
happiest instant of his life. She raised her eyes at
last, and looked at him with what at first seemed a
pleading dread of excessive emotion.
“Thank you — thank you!” she said, calmly enough;
but the next moment her own emotion overcame her
calmness, and she burst into tears. Her tears vanished
as quickly as they came, but they did Longmore a
world of good. He had always felt indefinably afraid
of her; her being had somehow seemed fed by a deeper
faith and a stronger will than his own; but her halfdozen
smothered sobs showed him the bottom of her
heart, and assured him that she was weak enough to be
grateful.
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“Excuse me,” she said; “I 'm too nervous to listen
to you. I believe I could have faced an enemy to-day,
but I can't endure a friend.”
“You 're killing yourself with stoicism, — that 's my
belief,” he cried. “Listen to a friend for his own sake,
if not for yours. I have never ventured to offer you
an atom of compassion, and you can't accuse yourself
of an abuse of charity.”
She looked about her with a kind of weary confusion
which promised a reluctant attention. But suddenly
perceiving by the wayside the fallen log on
which they had rested a few evenings before, she went
and sat down on it in impatient resignation, and looked
at Longmore, as he stood silent, watching her, with a
glance which seemed to urge that, if she was charitable
now, he must be very wise.
“Something came to my knowledge yesterday,” he
said as he sat down beside her, “which gave me a supreme
sense of your moral isolation. You are truth
itself, and there is no truth about you. You believe in
purity and duty and dignity, and you live in a world
in which they are daily belied. I sometimes ask myself
with a kind of rage how you ever came into such
a world, — and why the perversity of fate never let me
know you before.”
“I like my `world' no better than you do, and it was
not for its own sake I came into it. But what
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particular group of people is worth pinning one's faith
upon? I confess it sometimes seems to me that men
and women are very poor creatures. I suppose I 'm
romantic. I have a most unfortunate taste for poetic
fitness. Life is hard prose, which one must learn to
read contentedly. I believe I once thought that all
the prose was in America, which was very foolish.
What I thought, what I believed, what I expected,
when I was an ignorant girl, fatally addicted to falling
in love with my own theories, is more than I can begin
to tell you now. Sometimes, when I remember certain
impulses, certain illusions of those days, they take
away my breath, and I wonder my bedazzled visions
did n't lead me into troubles greater than any I have
now to lament. I had a conviction which you would
probably smile at if I were to attempt to express it to
you. It was a singular form for passionate faith to
take, but it had all of the sweetness and the ardor of
passionate faith. It led me to take a great step, and
it lies behind me now in the distance like a shadow
melting slowly in the light of experience. It has
faded, but it has not vanished. Some feelings, I am
sure, die only with ourselves; some illusions are as
much the condition of our life as our heart-beats.
They say that life itself is an illusion, — that this
world is a shadow of which the reality is yet to come.
Life is all of a piece, then, and there is no shame in
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being miserably human. As for my `isolation,' it
does n't greatly matter; it 's the fault, in part, of my
obstinacy. There have been times when I have been
frantically distressed, and, to tell you the truth, wretchedly
homesick, because my maid — a jewel of a maid—
lied to me with every second breath. There have
been moments when I have wished I was the daughter
of a poor New England minister, living in a little
white house under a couple of elms, and doing all the
housework.”
She had begun to speak slowly, with an air of
effort; but she went on quickly, as if talking were a
relief. “My marriage introduced me to people and
things which seemed to me at first very strange and
then very horrible, and then, to tell the truth, very
contemptible. At first I expended a great deal of
sorrow and dismay and pity on it all; but there
soon came a time when I began to wonder whether
it was worth one's tears. If I could tell you the
eternal friendships I 've seen broken, the inconsolable
woes consoled, the jealousies and vanities leading off
the dance, you would agree with me that tempers like
yours and mine can understand neither such losses nor
such compensations. A year ago, while I was in the
country, a friend of mine was in despair at the infidelity
of her husband; she wrote me a most tragical
letter, and on my return to Paris I went immediately
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to see her. A week had elapsed, and, as I had seen
stranger things, I thought she might have recovered
her spirits. Not at all; she was still in despair, — but
at what? At the conduct, the abandoned, shameless
conduct of Mme. de T. You 'll imagine, of course,
that Mme. de T. was the lady whom my friend's husband
preferred to his wife. Far from it; he had
never seen her. Who, then, was Mme. de T.? Mme.
de T. was cruelly devoted to M. de V. And who was
M. de V.? M. de V. — in two words, my friend was
cultivating two jealousies at once. I hardly know
what I said to her; something, at any rate, that she
found unpardonable, for she quite gave me up.
Shortly afterward my husband proposed we should
cease to live in Paris, and I gladly assented, for I
believe I was falling into a state of mind that made
me a detestable companion. I should have preferred
to go quite into the country, into Auvergne, where my
husband has a place. But to him Paris, in some degree,
is necessary, and Saint-Germain has been a sort of
compromise.”
“A sort of compromise!” Longmore repeated.
“That 's your whole life.”
“It 's the life of many people, of most people of
quiet tastes, and it is certainly better than acute distress.
One is at loss theoretically to defend a compromise;
but if I found a poor creature clinging to one
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from day to day, I should think it poor friendship to
make him lose his hold.” Madame de Mauves had
no sooner uttered these words than she smiled faintly,
as if to mitigate their personal application.
“Heaven forbid,” said Longmore, “that one should
do that unless one has something better to offer. And
yet I am haunted by a vision of a life in which you
should have found no compromises, for they are a perversion
of natures that tend only to goodness and rectitude.
As I see it, you should have found happiness
serene, profound, complete; a femme de chambre not a
jewel perhaps, but warranted to tell but one fib a day;
a society possibly rather provincial, but (in spite of
your poor opinion of mankind) a good deal of solid
virtue; jealousies and vanities very tame, and no particular
iniquities and adulteries. A husband,” he added
after a moment, — “a husband of your own faith and
race and spiritual substance, who would have loved
you well.”
She rose to her feet, shaking her head. “You are very
kind to go to the expense of visions for me. Visions
are vain things; we must make the best of the reality.”
“And yet,” said Longmore, provoked by what seemed
the very wantonness of her patience, “the reality, if
I 'm not mistaken, has very recently taken a shape
that keenly tests your philosophy.”
She seemed on the point of replying that his
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sympathy was too zealous; but a couple of impatient tears
in his eyes proved that it was founded on a devotion
to which it was impossible not to defer. “Philosophy?”
she said. “I have none. Thank Heaven!” she
cried, with vehemence, “I have none. I believe, Mr.
Longmore,” she added in a moment, “that I have
nothing on earth but a conscience, — it 's a good time
to tell you so, — nothing but a dogged, clinging, inexpugnable
conscience. Does that prove me to be indeed
of your faith and race, and have you one for which
you can say as much? I don't say it in vanity, for
I believe that if my conscience will prevent me from
doing anything very base, it will effectually prevent
me from doing anything very fine.”
“I am delighted to hear it,” cried Longmore. “We
are made for each other. It 's very certain I too shall
never do anything fine. And yet I have fancied that
in my case this inexpugnable organ you so eloquently
describe might be blinded and gagged awhile, in a fine
cause, if not turned out of doors. In yours,” he went
on with the same appealing irony, “is it absolutely
invincible?”
But her fancy made no concession to his sarcasm.
“Don't laugh at your conscience,” she answered gravely;
“that 's the only blasphemy I know.”
She had hardly spoken when she turned suddenly
at an unexpected sound, and at the same moment
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Longmore heard a footstep in an adjacent by-path
which crossed their own at a short distance from
where they stood.
“It 's M. de Mauves,” said Euphemia directly, and
moved slowly forward. Longmore, wondering how she
knew it, had overtaken her by the time her husband
advanced into sight. A solitary walk in the forest was
a pastime to which M. de Mauves was not addicted,
but he seemed on this occasion to have resorted to it
with some equanimity. He was smoking a fragrant
cigar, and his thumb was thrust into the armhole of
his waistcoat, with an air of contemplative serenity.
He stopped short with surprise on seeing his wife and
her companion, and Longmore considered his surprise
impertinent. He glanced rapidly from one to the
other, fixed Longmore's eye sharply for a single instant,
and then lifted his hat with formal politeness.
“I was not aware,” he said, turning to Madame de
Mauves, “that I might congratulate you on the return
of monsieur.”
“You should have known it,” she answered gravely,
“if I had expected Mr. Longmore's return.”
She had become very pale, and Longmore felt that
this was a first meeting after a stormy parting. “My
return was unexpected to myself,” he said. “I came
last evening.”
M. de Mauves smiled with extreme urbanity. “It 's
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needless for me to welcome you. Madame de Mauves
knows the duties of hospitality.” And with another
bow he continued his walk.
Madame de Mauves and her companion returned
slowly home, with few words, but, on Longmore's part
at least, many thoughts. The Baron's appearance had
given him an angry chill; it was a dusky cloud reabsorbing
the light which had begun to shine between
himself and his companion.
He watched Euphemia narrowly as they went, and
wondered what she had last had to suffer. Her husband's
presence had checked her frankness, but nothing
indicated that she had accepted the insulting meaning
of his words. Matters were evidently at a crisis between
them, and Longmore wondered vainly what it
was on Euphemia's part that prevented an absolute
rupture. What did she suspect? — how much did she
know? To what was she resigned? — how much had
she forgiven? How, above all, did she reconcile with
knowledge, or with suspicion, that ineradicable tenderness
of which she had just now all but assured him?
“She has loved him once,” Longmore said with a sinking
of the heart, “and with her to love once is to commit
one's being forever. Her husband thinks her too
rigid! What would a poet call it?”
He relapsed with a kind of aching impotence into
the sense of her being somehow beyond him,
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unattainable, immeasurable by his own fretful spirit. Suddenly
he gave three passionate switches in the air with his
cane, which made Madame de Mauves look round.
She could hardly have guessed that they meant that
where ambition was so vain, it was an innocent compensation
to plunge into worship.
Madame de Mauves found in her drawing-room the
little elderly Frenchman, M. de Chalumeau, whom
Longmore had observed a few days before on the terrace.
On this occasion, too, Madame Clairin was entertaining
him, but as his sister-in-law came in she
surrendered her post and addressed herself to our hero.
Longmore, at thirty, was still an ingenuous youth,
and there was something in this lady's large coquetry
which had the power of making him blush. He was
surprised at finding he had not absolutely forfeited her
favor by his deportment at their last interview, and a
suspicion of her meaning to approach him on another
line completed his uneasiness.
“So you 've returned from Brussels,” she said, “by
way of the forest.”
“I 've not been to Brussels. I returned yesterday
from Paris by the only way, — by the train.”
Madame Clairin stared and laughed. “I 've never
known a young man to be so fond of Saint-Germain.
They generally declare it 's horribly dull.”
“That 's not very polite to you,” said Longmore, who
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was vexed at his blushes, and determined not to be
abashed.
“Ah, what am I?” demanded Madame Clairin,
swinging open her fan. “I 'm the dullest thing here.
They 've not had your success with my sister-in-law.”
“It would have been very easy to have it. Madame
de Mauves is kindness itself.”
“To her own countrymen!”
Longmore remained silent; he hated the talk. Madame
Clairin looked at him a moment, and then turned
her head and surveyed Euphemia, to whom M. de Chalumeau
was serving up another epigram, which she
was receiving with a slight droop of the head and her
eyes absently wandering through the window. “Don't
pretend to tell me,” she murmured suddenly, “that
you 're not in love with that pretty woman.”
“Allons donc!” cried Longmore, in the best French
he had ever uttered. He rose the next minute, and
took a hasty farewell.
-- --
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HE allowed several days to pass without going
back; it seemed delicate not to appear to regard
his friend's frankness during their last interview
as a general invitation. This cost him a great effort,
for hopeless passions are not the most deferential; and
he had, moreover, a constant fear, that if, as he believed,
the hour of supreme “explanations” had come,
the magic of her magnanimity might convert M. de
Mauves. Vicious men, it was abundantly recorded,
had been so converted as to be acceptable to God,
and the something divine in Euphemia's temper would
sanctify any means she should choose to employ. Her
means, he kept repeating, were no business of his, and
the essence of his admiration ought to be to respect her
freedom; but he felt as if he should turn away into a
world out of which most of the joy had departed, if
her freedom, after all, should spare him only a murmured
“Thank you.”
When he called again he found to his vexation that
he was to run the gantlet of Madame Clairin's officious
hospitality. It was one of the first mornings of
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perfect summer, and the drawing-room, through the open
windows, was flooded with a sweet confusion of odors
and bird-notes which filled him with the hope that
Madame de Mauves would come out and spend half
the day in the forest. But Madame Clairin, with her
hair not yet dressed, emerged like a brassy discord in a
maze of melody.
At the same moment the servant returned with Euphemia's
regrets; she was indisposed and unable to see
Mr. Longmore. The young man knew that he looked
disappointed, and that Madame Clairin was observing
him, and this consciousness impelled her to give him a
glance of almost aggressive frigidity. This was apparently
what she desired. She wished to throw him off
his balance, and, if he was not mistaken, she had the
means.
“Put down your hat, Mr. Longmore,” she said, “and
be polite for once. You were not at all polite the
other day when I asked you that friendly question
about the state of your heart.”
“I have no heart — to talk about,” said Longmore,
uncompromisingly.
“As well say you 've none at all. I advise you to
cultivate a little eloquence; you may have use for it.
That was not an idle question of mine; I don't ask
idle questions. For a couple of months now that
you 've been coming and going among us, it seems to
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me that you have had very few to answer of any
sort.”
“I have certainly been very well treated,” said
Longmore.
Madame Clairin was silent a moment, and then —
“Have you never felt disposed to ask any?” she
demanded.
Her look, her tone, were so charged with roundabout
meanings that it seemed to Longmore as if even to
understand her would savor of dishonest complicity.
“What is it you have to tell me?” he asked, frowning
and blushing.
Madame Clairin flushed. It is rather hard, when
you come bearing yourself very much as the sibyl
when she came to the Roman king, to be treated as
something worse than a vulgar gossip. “I might tell
you, Mr. Longmore,” she said, “that you have as bad
a ton as any young man I ever met. Where have you
lived, — what are your ideas? I wish to call your
attention to a fact which it takes some delicacy to
touch upon. You have noticed, I supposed, that my
sister-in-law is not the happiest woman in the world.”
Longmore assented with a gesture.
Madame Clairin looked slightly disappointed at his
want of enthusiasm. Nevertheless — “You have formed,
I suppose,” she continued, “your conjectures on the
causes of her — dissatisfaction.”
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“Conjecture has been superfluous. I have seen the
causes — or at least a specimen of them — with my
own eyes.”
“I know perfectly what you mean. My brother, in
a single word, is in love with another woman. I don't
judge him; I don't judge my sister-in-law. I permit
myself to say that in her position I would have
managed otherwise. I would have kept my husband's
affection, or I would have frankly done without it,
before this. But my sister is an odd compound; I
don't profess to understand her. Therefore it is, in a
measure, that I appeal to you, her fellow-countryman.
Of course you 'll be surprised at my way of looking at
the matter, and I admit that it 's a way in use only
among people whose family traditions compel them
to take a superior view of things.” Madame Clairin
paused, and Longmore wondered where her family traditions
were going to lead her.
“Listen,” she went on. “There has never been a
De Mauves who has not given his wife the right to
be jealous. We know our history for ages back, and
the fact is established. It 's a shame if you like, but
it 's something to have a shame with such a pedigree.
The De Mauves are real Frenchmen, and their wives—
I may say it — have been worthy of them. You
may see all their portraits in our Château de Mauves;
every one of them an `injured' beauty, but not one
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of them hanging her head. Not one of them had the
bad taste to be jealous, and yet not one in a dozen
was guilty of an escapade, — not one of them was
talked about. There 's good sense for you! How they
managed — go and look at the dusky, faded canvases
and pastels, and ask. They were femmes d'esprit
When they had a headache, they put on a little rouge
and came to supper as usual; and when they had a
heart-ache, they put a little rouge on their hearts.
These are fine traditions, and it does n't seem to me
fair that a little American bourgeoise should come in
and interrupt them, and should hang her photograph,
with her obstinate little air penché, in the gallery of
our shrewd fine ladies. A De Mauves must be a De
Mauves. When she married my brother, I don't suppose
she took him for a member of a societé de bonnes
œuvres. I don't say we 're right; who is right? But
we 're as history has made us, and if any one is to
change, it had better be Madame de Mauves herself.”
Again Madame Clairin paused and opened and closed
her fan. “Let her conform!” she said, with amazing
audacity.
Longmore's reply was ambiguous; he simply said,
“Ah!”
Madame Clairin's pious retrospect had apparently
imparted an honest zeal to her indignation. “For a
long time,” she continued, “my sister has been taking
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the attitude of an injured woman, affecting a disgust
with the world, and shutting herself up to read the
`Imitation.' I've never remarked on her conduct, but
I 've quite lost patience with it. When a woman with
her prettiness lets her husband wander, she deserves
her fate. I don't wish you to agree with me — on the
contrary; but I call such a woman a goose. She must
have bored him to death. What has passed between
them for many months need n't concern us; what provocation
my sister has had — monstrous, if you wish —
what ennui my brother has suffered. It 's enough that
a week ago, just after you had ostensibly gone to
Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion.
She found a letter in his pocket — a photograph — a
trinket — que sais-je? At any rate, the scene was
terrible. I did n't listen at the keyhole, and I don't
know what was said; but I have reason to believe
that my brother was called to account as I fancy none
of his ancestors have ever been, — even by injured
sweethearts.”
Longmore had leaned forward in silent attention
with his elbows on his knees, and instinctively he
dropped his face into his hands. “Ah, poor woman!”
he groaned.
“Voilà!” said Madame Clairin. “You pity her.”
“Pity her?” cried Longmore, looking up with
ardent eyes and forgetting the spirit of Madame
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[figure description] Page 451.[end figure description]
Clairin's narrative in the miserable facts. “Don't
you?”
“A little. But I 'm not acting sentimentally; I 'm
acting politically. I wish to arrange things, — to see
my brother free to do at he chooses, — to see Euphemia
contented. Do you understand me?”
“Very well, I think. You 're the most immoral
person I 've lately had the privilege of conversing
with.”
Madame Clairin shrugged her shoulders. “Possibly.
When was there a great politician who was not immoral?”
“Nay,” said Longmore in the same tone. “You 're
too superficial to be a great politician. You don't
begin to know anything about Madame de Mauves.”
Madame Clairin inclined her head to one side, eyed
Longmore sharply, mused a moment, and then smiled
with an excellent imitation of intelligent compassion.
“It 's not in my interest to contradict you.”
“It would be in your interest to learn, Madame
Clairin,” the young man went on with unceremonious
candor, “what honest men most admire in a woman, —
and to recognize it when you see it.”
Longmore certainly did injustice to her talents for
diplomacy, for she covered her natural annoyance at
this sally with a pretty piece of irony. “So you are
in love!” she quietly exclaimed.
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Longmore was silent awhile. “I wonder if you
would understand me,” he said at last, “if I were to
tell you that I have for Madame de Mauves the most
devoted friendship?”
“You underrate my intelligence. But in that case
you ought to exert your influence to put an end to
these painful domestic scenes.”
“Do you suppose,” cried Longmore, “that she talks
to me about her domestic scenes?”
Madame Clairin stared. “Then your friendship is n't
returned?” And as Longmore turned away, shaking
his head, — “Now, at least,” she added, “she will have
something to tell you. I happen to know the upshot
of my brother's last interview with his wife.” Longmore
rose to his feet as a sort of protest against the
indelicacy of the position into which he was being
forced; but all that made him tender made him curious,
and she caught in his averted eyes an expression
which prompted her to strike her blow. “My brother
is monstrously in love with a certain person in
Paris; of course he ought not to be; but he would n't
be a De Mauves if he were not. It was this unsanctified
passion that spoke. `Listen, madam,' he cried
at last: `let us live like people who understand life!
It 's unpleasant to be forced to say such things outright,
but you have a way of bringing one down to the
rudiments. I 'm faithless, I 'm heartless, I 'm brutal,
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I 'm everything horrible, — it 's understood. Take your
revenge, console yourself; you 're too pretty a woman
to have anything to complain of. Here 's a handsome
young man sighing himself into a consumption for you.
Listen to the poor fellow, and you 'll find that virtue is
none the less becoming for being good-natured. You 'll
see that it 's not after all such a doleful world, and that
there is even an advantage in having the most impudent
of husbands.”' Madame Clairin paused; Longmore
had turned very pale. “You may believe it,” she
said; “the speech took place in my presence; things
were done in order. And now, Mr. Longmore,” — this
with a smile which he was too troubled at the moment
to appreciate, but which he remembered later with a
kind of awe, — “we count upon you!”
“He said this to her, face to face, as you say it to
me now?” Longmore asked slowly, after a silence.
“Word for word, and with the greatest politeness.”
“And Madame de Mauves — what did she say?”
Madame Clairin smiled again. “To such a speech
as that a woman says — nothing. She had been sitting
with a piece of needlework, and I think she had
not seen her husband since their quarrel the day
before. He came in with the gravity of an ambassador,
and I 'm sure that when he made his demande
en mariage his manner was not more respectful.
He only wanted white gloves!” said Madame
-- 454 --
[figure description] Page 454.[end figure description]
Clairin. “Euphemia sat silent a few moments drawing
her stitches, and then without a word, without
a glance, she walked out of the room. It was just
what she should have done!”
“Yes,” Longmore repeated, “it was just what she
should have done.”
“And I, left alone with my brother, do you know
what I said?”
Longmore shook his head. “Mauvais sujet!” he
suggested.
“`You 've done me the honor,' I said, `to take
this step in my presence. I don't pretend to qualify
it. You know what you 're about, and it 's your own
affair. But you may confide in my discretion.' Do
you think he has had reason to complain of it?”
She received no answer; Longmore was slowly turning
away and passing his gloves mechanically round
the band of his hat. “I hope,” she cried, “you 're
not going to start for Brussels!”
Plainly, Longmore was deeply disturbed, and Madame
Clairin might flatter herself on the success of
her plea for old-fashioned manners. And yet there
was something that left her more puzzled than satisfied
in the reflective tone with which he answered,
“No, I shall remain here for the present.” The processes
of his mind seemed provokingly subterranean,
and she would have fancied for a moment that he
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was linked with her sister in some monstrous conspiracy
of asceticism.
“Come this evening,” she boldly resumed. “The
rest will take care of itself. Meanwhile I shall take
the liberty of telling my sister-in-law that I have
repeated — in short, that I have put you au fait.”
Longmore started and colored, and she hardly knew
whether he was going to assent or demur. “Tell her
what you please. Nothing you can tell her will
affect her conduct.”
“Voyons! Do you mean to tell me that a woman,
young, pretty, sentimental, neglected — insulted, if you
will —? I see you don't believe it. Believe simply
in your own opportunity! But for heaven's
sake, if it 's to lead anywhere, don't come back with
that visage de croquemort. You look as if you were
going to bury your heart, — not to offer it to a pretty
woman. You 're much better when you smile. Come,
do yourself justice.”
“Yes,” he said, “I must do myself justice.” And
abruptly, with a bow, he took his departure.
-- --
[figure description] Page 456.[end figure description]
HE felt, when he found himself unobserved, in
the open air, that he must plunge into violent
action, walk fast and far, and defer the opportunity
for thought. He strode away into the forest, swinging
his cane, throwing back his head, gazing away into
the verdurous vistas, and following the road without
a purpose. He felt immensely excited, but he could
hardly have said whether his emotion was a pain or a
joy. It was joyous as all increase of freedom is joyous;
something seemed to have been knocked down
across his path; his destiny appeared to have rounded
a cape and brought him into sight of an open sea. But
his freedom resolved itself somehow into the need
of despising all mankind, with a single exception; and
the fact of Madame de Mauves inhabiting a planet
contaminated by the presence of this baser multitude
kept his elation from seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
But she was there, and circumstance now forced
them to be intimate. She had ceased to have what
men call a secret for him, and this fact itself brought
with it a sort of rapture. He had no prevision that
-- 457 --
[figure description] Page 457.[end figure description]
he should “profit,” in the vulgar sense, by the extraordinary
position into which they had been thrown; it
might be but a cruel trick of destiny to make hope a
harsher mockery and renunciation a keener suffering.
But above all this rose the conviction that she could do
nothing that would not deepen his admiration.
It was this feeling that circumstance — unlovely as
it was in itself — was to force the beauty of her character
into more perfect relief, that made him stride
along as if he were celebrating a kind of spiritual festival.
He rambled at random for a couple of hours,
and found at last that he had left the forest behind
him and had wandered into an unfamiliar region. It
was a perfectly rural scene, and the still summer day
gave it a charm for which its meagre elements but half
accounted.
Longmore thought he had never seen anything so
characteristically French; all the French novels
seemed to have described it, all the French landscapists
to have painted it. The fields and trees
were of a cool metallic green; the grass looked as if
it might stain your trousers, and the foliage your
hands. The clear light had a sort of mild grayness;
the sunbeams were of silver rather than gold. A great
red-roofed, high-stacked farm-house, with whitewashed
walls and a straggling yard, surveyed the high road,
on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of
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poplars. A narrow stream, half choked with emerald
rushes and edged with gray aspens, occupied the opposite
quarter. The meadows rolled and sloped away
gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed
by the continuous line of clipped and marshalled
trees. The prospect was not rich, but it had a frank
homeliness which touched the young man's fancy.
It was full of light atmosphere and diffused sunshine,
and if it was prosaic, it was soothing.
Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he
advanced along the road beneath the poplars. In
twenty minutes he came to a village which straggled
away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On
the left, at a stone's throw from the road, stood a
little pink-faced inn, which reminded him that he
had not breakfasted, having left home with a prevision
of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the
inn he found a brick-tiled parlor and a hostess in
sabots and a white cap, whom, over the omelette she
speedily served him, — borrowing license from the
bottle of sound red wine which accompanied it, —
he assured that she was a true artist. To reward his
compliment, she invited him to smoke his cigar in
her little garden behind the house.
Here he found a tonnelle and a view of ripening
crops, stretching down to the stream. The tonnelle
was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on a
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bench against the pink wall, in the sun, which was
not too hot. Here, as he rested and gazed and
mused, he fell into a train of thought which, in an
indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the
scene about him. His heart, which had been beating
fast for the past three hours, gradually checked
its pulses and left him looking at life with a rather
more level gaze. The homely tavern sounds coming
out through the open windows, the sunny stillness
of the fields and crops, which covered so much vigorous
natural life, suggested very little that was
transcendental, had very little to say about renunciation, —
nothing at all about spiritual zeal. They
seemed to utter a message from plain ripe nature, to
express the unperverted reality of things, to say that
the common lot is not brilliantly amusing, and that
the part of wisdom is to grasp frankly at experience,
lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was
for his falling a-wondering after this whether a deeply
wounded heart might be soothed and healed by such
a scene, it would be difficult to explain; certain it
is that, as he sat there, he had a waking dream of
an unhappy woman strolling by the slow-flowing
stream before him, and pulling down the blossoming
boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused, and
at last found himself feeling angry that he could not
somehow think worse of Madame de Mauves, — or at
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[figure description] Page 460.[end figure description]
any rate think otherwise. He could fairly claim that
in a sentimental way he asked very little of life, —
he made modest demands on passion; why then
should his only passion be born to ill-fortune? why
should his first — his last — glimpse of positive happiness
be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?
It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the
same stock, he had in his composition a lurking
principle of asceticism to whose authority he had
ever paid an unquestioning respect, that he now felt
all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce — to
renounce again — to renounce forever — was this all
that youth and longing and resolve were meant for?
Was experience to be muffled and mutilated, like an
indecent picture? Was a man to sti and deliberately
condemn his future to be the blank memory of
a regret, rather than the long reverberation of a joy?
Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds muddled
by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist
now seemed not to dare, but simply to be, to live
on possible terms.
His hostess came out to hang a cloth to dry on the
hedge, and, though her guest was sitting quietly
enough, she seemed to see in his kindled eyes a flattering
testimony to the quality of her wine.
As she turned back into the house, she was met by
a young man whom Longmore observed in spite of his
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preoccupation. He was evidently a member of that
jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has
an affinity with the element of picturesqueness and
unexpectedness in life which provokes a great deal of
unformulated envy among people foredoomed to be
respectable.
Longmore was struck first with his looking like a
very clever man, and then with his looking like a very
happy one. The combination, as it was expressed in
his face, might have arrested the attention of even a
less cynical philosopher. He had a slouched hat and
a blond beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished
sketch in oils under the other.
He stopped and stood talking for some moments to
the landlady with a peculiarly good-humored smile.
They were discussing the possibilities of dinner; the
hostess enumerated some very savory ones, and he
nodded briskly, assenting to everything. It could n't
be, Longmore thought, that he found such soft contentment
in the prospect of lamb chops and spinach and a
tarte à la crême. When the dinner had been ordered,
he turned up his sketch, and the good woman fell
a-wondering and looking off at the spot by the stream-side
where he had made it.
Was it his work, Longmore wondered, that made
him so happy? Was a strong talent the best thing in
the world? The landlady went back to her kitchen,
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and the young painter stood as if he were waiting for
something, beside the gate which opened upon the path
across the fields. Longmore sat brooding and asking
himself whether it was better to cultivate an art than
to cultivate a passion. Before he had answered the
question the painter had grown tired of waiting. He
picked up a pebble, tossed it lightly into an upper
window, and called, “Claudine!”
Claudine appeared; Longmore heard her at the window,
bidding the young man to have patience. “But
I 'm losing my light,” he said; “I must have my
shadows in the same place as yesterday.”
“Go without me, then,” Claudine answered; “I will
join you in ten minutes.” Her voice was fresh and
young; it seemed to say to Longmore that she was as
happy as her companion.
“Don't forget the Chénier,” cried the young man;
and turning away, he passed out of the gate and followed
the path across the fields until he disappeared
among the trees by the side of the stream. Who was
Claudine? Longmore vaguely wondered; and was she
as pretty as her voice? Before long he had a chance
to satisfy himself; she came out of the house with her
hat and parasol, prepared to follow her companion.
She had on a pink muslin dress and a little white hat,
and she was as pretty as a Frenchwoman needs to be
to be pleasing. She had a clear brown skin and a
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bright dark eye, and a step which seemed to keep time
to some slow music, heard only by herself. Her hands
were encumbered with various articles which she
seemed to intend to carry with her. In one arm she
held her parasol and a large roll of needlework, and in
the other a shawl and a heavy white umbrella, such as
painters use for sketching. Meanwhile she was trying
to thrust into her pocket a paper-covered volume which
Longmore saw to be the Poems of André Chénier; but
in the effort she dropped the large umbrella, and uttered
a half-smiling exclamation of disgust. Longmore
stepped forward with a bow and picked up the
umbrella, and as she, protesting her gratitude, put out
her hand to take it, it seemed to him that she was unbecomingly
overburdened.
“You have too much to carry,” he said; “you must
let me help you.”
“You 're very good, monsieur,” she answered. “My
husband always forgets something. He can do nothing
without his umbrella. He is d'une étourderie —”
“You must allow me to carry the umbrella,” Longmore
said. “It 's too heavy for a lady.”
She assented, after many compliments to his politeness;
and he walked by her side into the meadow.
She went lightly and rapidly, picking her steps and
glancing forward to catch a glimpse of her husband.
She was graceful, she was charming, she had an air of
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decision and yet of sweetness, and it seemed to Longmore
that a young artist would work none the worse
for having her seated at his side, reading Chénier's
iambics. They were newly married, he supposed, and
evidently their path of life had none of the mocking
crookedness of some others. They asked little; but
what need one ask more than such quiet summer days,
with the creature one loves, by a shady stream, with
art and books and a wide, unshadowed horizon? To
spend such a morning, to stroll back to dinner in the
red-tiled parlor of the inn, to ramble away again as the
sun got low, — all this was a vision of bliss which
floated before him, only to torture him with a sense of
the impossible. All Frenchwomen are not coquettes,
he remarked, as he kept pace with his companion.
She uttered a word now and then, for politeness' sake,
but she never looked at him, and seemed not in the
least to care that he was a well-favored young man.
She cared for nothing but the young artist in the
shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering
where he had set up his easel.
This was soon done. He was encamped under the
trees, close to the stream, and, in the diffused green
shade of the little wood, seemed to be in no immediate
need of his umbrella. He received a vivacious rebuke,
however, for forgetting it, and was informed of what
he owed to Longmore's complaisance. He was duly
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[figure description] Page 465.[end figure description]
grateful; he thanked our hero warmly, and offered him
a seat on the grass. But Longmore felt like a marplot,
and lingered only long enough to glance at the young
man's sketch, and to see it was a very clever rendering
of the silvery stream and the vivid green rushes. The
young wife had spread her shawl on the grass at the
base of a tree, and meant to seat herself when Longmore
had gone, and murmur Chénier's verses to the
music of the gurgling river. Longmore looked awhile
from one to the other, barely stifled a sigh, bade them
good morning, and took his departure.
He knew neither where to go nor what to do; he
seemed afloat on the sea of ineffectual longing. He
strolled slowly back to the inn, and in the doorway
met the landlady coming back from the butcher's with
the lamb chops for the dinner of her lodgers.
“Monsieur has made the acquaintance of the dame
of our young painter,” she said with a broad smile, —
a smile too broad for malicious meanings. “Monsieur
has perhaps seen the young man's picture. It appears
that he has a great deal of talent.”
“His picture was very pretty,” said Longmore, “but
his dame was prettier still.”
“She 's a very nice little woman; but I pity her all
the more.”
“I don't see why she 's to be pitied,” said Longmore;
“they seem a very happy couple.”
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The landlady gave a knowing nod.
“Don't trust to it, monsieur! Those artists, — ça
n'a pas de principes! From one day to another he
can plant her there! I know them, allez. I 've had
them here very often; one year with one, another year
with another.”
Longmore was puzzled for a moment. Then, “You
mean she 's not his wife?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What shall I tell
you? They are not des hommes sérieux, those gentlemen!
They don't engage themselves for an eternity.
It 's none of my business, and I 've no wish to speak
ill of madame. She 's a very nice little woman, and
she loves her jeune homme to distraction.”
“Who is she?” asked Longmore. “What do you
know about her?”
“Nothing for certain; but it 's my belief that she 's
better than he. I 've even gone so far as to believe
that she 's a lady, — a true lady, — and that she has
given up a great many things for him. I do the best
I can for them, but I don't believe she 's been obliged
all her life to content herself with a dinner of two
courses.” And she turned over her lamb chops tenderly,
as if to say that though a good cook could
imagine better things, yet if you could have but one
course, lamb chops had much in their favor. “I shall
cook them with bread crumbs. Voilà les femmes,
monsieur!”
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Longmore turned away with the feeling that women
were indeed a measureless mystery, and that it was
hard to say whether there was greater beauty in their
strength or in their weakness. He walked back to
Saint-Germain, more slowly than he had come, with
less philosophic resignation to any event, and more of
the urgent egotism of the passion which philosophers
call the supremely selfish one. Every now and then
the episode of the happy young painter and the
charming woman who had given up a great many
things for him rose vividly in his mind, and seemed
to mock his moral unrest like some obtrusive vision
of unattainable bliss.
The landlady's gossip cast no shadow on its brightness;
her voice seemed that of the vulgar chorus of the
uninitiated, which stands always ready with its gross
prose rendering of the inspired passages in human action.
Was it possible a man could take that from a woman,—
take all that lent lightness to that other woman's
footstep and intensity to her glance, — and not give
her the absolute certainty of a devotion as unalterable
as the process of the sun? Was it possible that such a
rapturous union had the seeds of trouble, — that the
charm of such a perfect accord could be broken by anything
but death? Longmore felt an immense desire to
cry out a thousand times “No!” for it seemed to him
at last that he was somehow spiritually the same as the
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young painter, and that the latter's companion had the
soul of Euphemia de Mauves.
The heat of the sun, as he walked along, became
oppressive, and when he re-entered the forest he turned
aside into the deepest shade he could find, and stretched
himself on the mossy ground at the foot of a great
beech. He lay for a while staring up into the verdurous
dusk overhead, and trying to conceive Madame
de Mauves hastening toward some quiet stream-side
where he waited, as he had seen that trusting creature
do an hour before. It would be hard to say how well
he succeeded; but the effort soothed him rather than
excited him, and as he had had a good deal both of
moral and physical fatigue, he sank at last into a quiet
sleep.
While he slept he had a strange, vivid dream. He
seemed to be in a wood, very much like the one on
which his eyes had lately closed; but the wood was
divided by the murmuring stream he had left an hour
before. He was walking up and down, he thought,
restlessly and in intense expectation of some momentous
event. Suddenly, at a distance, through the
trees, he saw the gleam of a woman's dress, and hurried
forward to meet her. As he advanced he recognized
her, but he saw at the same time that she
was on the opposite bank of the river. She seemed
at first not to notice him, but when they were
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opposite each other she stopped and looked at him very
gravely and pityingly. She made him no motion that
he should cross the stream, but he wished greatly to
stand by her side. He knew the water was deep, and
it seemed to him that he knew that he should have
to plunge, and that he feared that when he rose to
the surface she would have disappeared. Nevertheless,
he was going to plunge, when a boat turned into the
current from above and came swiftly toward them,
guided by an oarsman, who was sitting so that they
could not see his face. He brought the boat to the
bank where Longmore stood; the latter stepped in,
and with a few strokes they touched the opposite
shore. Longmore got out, and, though he was sure he
had crossed the stream, Madame de Mauves was not
there. He turned with a kind of agony and saw that
now she was on the other bank, — the one he had
left. She gave him a grave, silent glance, and walked
away up the stream. The boat and the boatman resumed
their course, but after going a short distance
they stopped, and the boatman turned back and looked
at the still divided couple. Then Longmore recognized
him, — just as he had recognized him a few days before
at the café in the Bois de Boulogne.
-- --
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HE must have slept some time after he ceased
dreaming, for he had no immediate memory of
his dream. It came back to him later, after he had
roused himself and had walked nearly home. No
great ingenuity was needed to make it seem a rather
striking allegory, and it haunted and oppressed him
for the rest of the day. He took refuge, however, in
his quickened conviction that the only sound policy
in life is to grasp unsparingly at happiness; and it
seemed no more than one of the vigorous measures
dictated by such a policy, to return that evening to
Madame de Mauves. And yet when he had decided
to do so, and had carefully dressed himself, he felt an
irresistible nervous tremor which made it easier to
linger at his open window, wondering, with a strange
mixture of dread and desire, whether Madame Clairin
had told her sister-in-law that she had told him.....
His presence now might be simply a gratuitous cause
of suffering; and yet his absence might seem to imply
that it was in the power of circumstances to make
them ashamed to meet each other's eyes. He sat a
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long time with his head in his hands, lost in a painful
confusion of hopes and questionings. He felt at moments
as if he could throttle Madame Clairin, and yet
he could not help asking himself whether it was not
possible that she might have done him a service. It
was late when he left the hotel, and as he entered the
gate of the other house his heart was beating so that
he was sure his voice would show it.
The servant ushered him into the drawing-room,
which was empty, with the lamp burning low. But
the long windows were open, and their light curtains
swaying in a soft, warm wind, and Longmore stepped
out upon the terrace. There he found Madame de
Mauves alone, slowly pacing up and down. She was
dressed in white, very simply, and her hair was arranged,
not as she usually wore it, but in a single loose
coil, like that of a person unprepared for company.
She stopped when she saw Longmore, seemed slightly
startled, uttered an exclamation, and stood waiting
for him to speak. He looked at her, tried to say
something, but found no words. He knew it was
awkward, it was offensive, to stand silent, gazing; but
he could not say what was suitable, and he dared not
say what he wished.
Her face was indistinct in the dim light, but he
could see that her eyes were fixed on him, and he
wondered what they expressed. Did they warn him,
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did they plead or did they confess to a sense of provocation?
For an instant his head swam; he felt as if
it would make all things clear to stride forward and
fold her in his arms. But a moment later he was still
standing looking at her; he had not moved; he knew
that she had spoken, but he had not understood her.
“You were here this morning,” she continued, and
now, slowly, the meaning of her words came to him.
“I had a bad headache and had to shut myself up.”
She spoke in her usual voice.
Longmore mastered his agitation and answered her
without betraying himself: “I hope you are better
now.”
“Yes, thank you, I 'm better — much better.”
He was silent a moment, and she moved away to a
chair and seated herself. After a pause he followed
her and stood before her, leaning against the balustrade
of the terrace. “I hoped you might have been
able to come out for the morning into the forest. I
went alone; it was a lovely day, and I took a long
walk.”
“It was a lovely day,” she said absently, and sat
with her eyes lowered, slowly opening and closing her
fan. Longmore, as he watched her, felt more and more
sure that her sister-in-law had seen her since her interview
with him; that her attitude toward him was
changed. It was this same something that chilled the
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ardor with which he had come, or at least converted
the dozen passionate speeches which kept rising to his
lips into a kind of reverential silence. No, certainly,
he could not clasp her to his arms now, any more than
some early worshipper could have clasped the marble
statue in his temple. But Longmore's statue spoke at
last, with a full human voice, and even with a shade
of human hesitation. She looked up, and it seemed
to him that her eyes shone through the dusk.
“I 'm very glad you came this evening,” she said.
“I have a particular reason for being glad. I half
expected you, and yet I thought it possible you might
not come.”
“As I have been feeling all day,” Longmore answered,
“it was impossible I should not come. I have
spent the day in thinking of you.”
She made no immediate reply, but continued to open
and close her fan thoughtfully. At last, — “I have
something to say to you,” she said abruptly. “I want
you to know to a certainty that I have a very high
opinion of you.” Longmore started and shifted his
position. To what was she coming? But he said
nothing, and she went on.
“I take a great interest in you; there 's no reason
why I should not say it, — I have a great friendship
for you.”
He began to laugh; he hardly knew why, unless
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that this seemed the very mockery of coldness. But
she continued without heeding him.
“You know, I suppose, that a great disappointment
always implies a great confidence — a great hope?”
“I have hoped,” he said, “hoped strongly; but doubtless
never rationally enough to have a right to bemoan
my disappointment.”
“You do yourself injustice. I have such confidence
in your reason, that I should be greatly disappointed
if I were to find it wanting.”
“I really almost believe that you are amusing yourself
at my expense,” cried Longmore. “My reason?
Reason is a mere word! The only reality in the world
is feeling!”
She rose to her feet and looked at him gravely. His
eyes by this time were accustomed to the imperfect
light, and he could see that her look was reproachful,
and yet that it was beseechingly kind. She shook her
head impatiently, and laid her fan upon his arm with
a strong pressure.
“If that were so, it would be a weary world. I
know your feeling, however, nearly enough. You
need n't try to express it. It 's enough that it gives
me the right to ask a favor of you, — to make an
urgent, a solemn request.”
“Make it; I listen.”
“Don't disappoint me. If you don't understand me
-- 475 --
[figure description] Page 475.[end figure description]
now, you will to-morrow, or very soon. When I said
just now that I had a very high opinion of you, I
meant it very seriously. It was not a vain compliment.
I believe that there is no appeal one may
make to your generosity which can remain long unanswered.
If this were to happen, — if I were to find
you selfish where I thought you generous, narrow
where I thought you large,” — and she spoke slowly,
with her voice lingering with emphasis on each of
these words, — “vulgar where I thought you rare, —
I should think worse of human nature. I should suffer, —
I should suffer keenly. I should say to myself
in the dull days of the future, `There was one man
who might have done so and so; and he, too, failed.'
But this shall not be. You have made too good an
impression on me not to make the very best. If you
wish to please me forever, there 's a way.”
She was standing close to him, with her dress
touching him, her eyes fixed on his. As she went on
her manner grew strangely intense, and she had the
singular appearance of a woman preaching reason
with a kind of passion. Longmore was confused, dazzled,
almost bewildered. The intention of her words
was all remonstrance, refusal, dismissal; but her presence
there, so close, so urgent, so personal, seemed a
distracting contradiction of it. She had never been so
lovely. In her white dress, with her pale face and
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deeply lighted eyes, she seemed the very spirit of the
summer night. When she had ceased speaking, she
drew a long breath; Longmore felt it on his cheek,
and it stirred in his whole being a sudden, rapturous
conjecture. Were her words in their soft severity a
mere delusive spell, meant to throw into relief her
almost ghostly beauty, and was this the only truth,
the only reality, the only law?
He closed his eyes and felt that she was watching
him, not without pain and perplexity herself. He
looked at her again, met her own eyes, and saw a tear
in each of them. Then this last suggestion of his desire
seemed to die away with a stifled murmur, and her
beauty, more and more radiant in the darkness, rose
before him as a symbol of something vague which
was yet more beautiful than itself.
“I may understand you to-morrow,” he said, “but I
don't understand you now.”
“And yet I took counsel with myself to-day and
asked myself how I had best speak to you. On one
side, I might have refused to see you at all.” Longmore
made a violent movement, and she added: “In
that case I should have written to you. I might see
you, I thought, and simply say to you that there were
excellent reasons why we should part, and that I
begged this visit should be your last. This I inclined
to do; what made me decide otherwise was — simply
-- 477 --
[figure description] Page 477.[end figure description]
friendship! I said to myself that I should be glad to
remember in future days, not that I had dismissed
you, but that you had gone away out of the fulness
of your own wisdom.”
“The fulness — the fulness!” cried Longmore.
“I 'm prepared, if necessary,” Madame de Mauves
continued after a pause, “to fall back upon my strict
right. But, as I said before, I shall be greatly disappointed,
if I am obliged to.”
“When I hear you say that,” Longmore answered,
“I feel so angry, so horribly irritated, that I wonder
it is not easy to leave you without more words.”
“If you should go away in anger, this idea of mine
about our parting would be but half realized. No, I
don't want to think of you as angry; I don't want even
to think of you as making a serious sacrifice. I want
to think of you as —”
“As a creature who never has existed, — who never
can exist! A creature who knew you without loving
you, — who left you without regretting you!”
She turned impatiently away and walked to the
other end of the terrace. When she came back, he
saw that her impatience had become a cold sternness.
She stood before him again, looking at him from head
to foot, in deep reproachfulness, almost in scorn. Beneath
her glance he felt a kind of shame. He colored;
she observed it and withheld something she was about
-- 478 --
[figure description] Page 478.[end figure description]
to say. She turned away again, walked to the other
end of the terrace, and stood there looking away into
the garden. It seemed to him that she had guessed
he understood her, and slowly — slowly — half as the
fruit of his vague self-reproach, — he did understand
her. She was giving him a chance to do gallantly
what it seemed unworthy of both of them he should
do meanly.
She liked him, she must have liked him greatly, to
wish so to spare him, to go to the trouble of conceiving
an ideal of conduct for him. With this sense of her
friendship, — her strong friendship she had just called
it, — Longmore's soul rose with a new flight, and suddenly
felt itself breathing a clearer air. The words
ceased to seem a mere bribe to his ardor; they were
charged with ardor themselves; they were a present
happiness. He moved rapidly toward her with a feeling
that this was something he might immediately
enjoy.
They were separated by two thirds of the length of
the terrace, and he had to pass the drawing-room window.
As he did so he started with an exclamation.
Madame Clairin stood posted there, watching him.
Conscious, apparently, that she might be suspected
of eavesdropping, she stepped forward with a smile and
looked from Longmore to his hostess.
“Such a tête-à-tête as that,” she said, “one owes no
-- 479 --
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apology for interrupting. One ought to come in for
good manners.”
Madame de Mauves turned round, but she answered
nothing. She looked straight at Longmore, and her
eyes had extraordinary eloquence. He was not exactly
sure, indeed, what she meant them to say; but they
seemed to say plainly something of this kind: “Call
it what you will, what you have to urge upon me is the
thing which this woman can best conceive. What I
ask of you is something she can't!” They seemed,
somehow, to beg him to suffer her to be herself, and
to intimate that that self was as little as possible like
Madame Clairin. He felt an immense answering desire
not to do anything which would seem natural to
this lady. He had laid his hat and cane on the parapet
of the terrace. He took them up, offered his hand
to Madame de Mauves with a simple good night, bowed
silently to Madame Clairin, and departed.
-- --
[figure description] Page 480.[end figure description]
HE went home and without lighting his candle
flung himself on his bed. But he got no sleep
till morning; he lay hour after hour tossing, thinking,
wondering; his mind had never been so active. It
seemed to him that Euphemia had laid on him in those
last moments an inspiring commission, and that she
had expressed herself almost as largely as if she had listened
assentingly to an assurance of his love. It was
neither easy nor delightful thoroughly to understand
her; but little by little her perfect meaning sank into
his mind and soothed it with a sense of opportunity,
which somehow stifled his sense of loss. For, to begin
with, she meant that she could love him in no degree
nor contingency, in no imaginable future. This was
absolute; he felt that he could alter it no more than
he could transpose the constellations he lay gazing at
through his open window. He wondered what it was, in
the background of her life, that she grasped so closely:
a sense of duty, unquenchable to the end? a love that
no offence could trample out? “Good heavens!” he
thought, “is the world so rich in the purest pearls of
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passion, that such tenderness as that can be wasted
forever, — poured away without a sigh into bottomless
darkness?” Had she, in spite of the detestable present,
some precious memory which contained the germ
of a shrinking hope? Was she prepared to submit to
everything and yet to believe? Was it strength, was
it weakness, was it a vulgar fear, was it conviction,
conscience, constancy?
Longmore sank back with a sigh and an oppressive
feeling that it was vain to guess at such a
woman's motives. He only felt that those of Madame
de Mauves were buried deep in her soul, and that
they must be of some fine temper, not of a base one.
He had a dim, overwhelming sense of a sort of invulnerable
constancy being the supreme law of her
character, — a constancy which still found a foothold
among crumbling ruins. “She has loved once,” he
said to himself as he rose and wandered to his window;
“that 's forever. Yes, yes, — if she loved again
she would be common.” He stood for a long time
looking out into the starlit silence of the town and
the forest, and thinking of what life would have
been if his constancy had met hers unpledged. But
life was this, now, and he must live. It was living
keenly to stand there with a petition from such a
woman to revolve. He was not to disappoint her,
he was to justify a conception which it had beguiled
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her weariness to shape. Longmore's imagination
swelled; he threw back his head and seemed to be
looking for Madame de Mauves's conception among
the blinking, mocking stars. But it came to him
rather on the mild night-wind, as it wandered in
over the house-tops which covered the rest of so many
heavy human hearts. What she asked he felt that
she was asking, not for her own sake (she feared nothing,
she needed nothing), but for that of his own
happiness and his own character. He must assent
to destiny. Why else was he young and strong, intelligent
and resolute? He must not give it to her to
reproach him with thinking that she had a moment's
attention for his love, — to plead, to argue, to break
off in bitterness; he must see everything from above,
her indifference and his own ardor; he must prove
his strength, he must do the handsome thing; he
must decide that the handsome thing was to submit
to the inevitable, to be supremely delicate, to spare
her all pain, to stifle his passion, to ask no compensation,
to depart without delay and try to believe
that wisdom is its own reward. All this, neither
more nor less, it was a matter of friendship with
Madame de Mauves to expect of him. And what
should he gain by it? He should have pleased her!....
He flung himself on his bed again, fell asleep
at last, and slept till morning.
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Before noon the next day he had made up his mind
that he would leave Saint-Germain at once. It
seemed easier to leave without seeing her, and yet
if he might ask a grain of “compensation,” it would
be five minutes face to face with her. He passed a
restless day. Wherever he went he seemed to see
her standing before him in the dusky halo of evening,
and looking at him with an air of still negation more
intoxicating than the most passionate self-surrender.
He must certainly go, and yet it was hideously hard.
He compromised and went to Paris to spend the rest
of the day. He strolled along the boulevards and
looked at the shops, sat awhile in the Tuileries gardens
and looked at the shabby unfortunates for whom
this only was nature and summer; but simply felt,
as a result of it all, that it was a very dusty, dreary,
lonely world into which Madame de Mauves was
turning him away.
In a sombre mood he made his way back to the
boulevards and sat down at a table on the great
plain of hot asphalt, before a café. Night came on,
the lamps were lighted, the tables near him found
occupants, and Paris began to wear that peculiar evening
look of hers which seems to say, in the flare of
windows and theatre doors, and the muffled rumble
of swift-rolling carriages, that this is no world for you
unless you have your pockets lined and your
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scruples drugged. Longmore, however, had neither scruples
nor desires; he looked at the swarming city for
the first time with an easy sense of repaying its indifference.
Before long a carriage drove up to the
pavement directly in front of him, and remained standing
for several minutes without its occupant getting
out. It was one of those neat, plain coupés, drawn
by a single powerful horse, in which one is apt to
imagine a pale, handsome woman, buried among silk
cushions, and yawning as she sees the gas-lamps glittering
in the gutters. At last the door opened and
out stepped M. de Mauves. He stopped and leaned
on the window for some time, talking in an excited
manner to a person within. At last he gave a nod
and the carriage rolled away. He stood swinging his
cane and looking up and down the boulevard, with
the air of a man fumbling, as one may say, with the
loose change of time. He turned toward the café and
was apparently, for want of anything better worth his
attention, about to seat himself at one of the tables,
when he perceived Longmore. He wavered an instant,
and then, without a change in his nonchalant
gait, strolled toward him with a bow and a vague
smile.
It was the first time they had met since their encounter
in the forest after Longmore's false start for
Brussels. Madame Clairin's revelations, as we may
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[figure description] Page 485.[end figure description]
call them, had not made the Baron especially present
to his mind; he had another office for his emotions
than disgust. But as M. de Mauves came toward
him he felt deep in his heart that he abhorred him.
He noticed, however, for the first time, a shadow upon
the Baron's cool placidity, and his delight at finding
that somewhere at last the shoe pinched him, mingled
with his impulse to be as exasperatingly impenetrable
as possible, enabled him to return the other's greeting
with all his own self-possession.
M. de Mauves sat down, and the two men looked
at each other across the table, exchanging formal greetings
which did little to make their mutual serutiny
seem gracious. Longmore had no reason to suppose
that the Baron knew of his sister's revelations. He
was sure that M. de Mauves cared very little about
his opinions, and yet he had a sense that there was
that in his eyes which would have made the Baron
change color if keener suspicion had helped him to
read it. M. de Mauves did not change color, but he
looked at Longmore with a half-defiant intentness,
which betrayed at once an irritating memory of the
episode in the Bois de Boulogne, and such vigilant
curiosity as was natural to a gentleman who had intrusted
his “honor” to another gentleman's magnanimity, —
or to his artlessness. It would appear that
Longmore seemed to the Baron to possess these
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[figure description] Page 486.[end figure description]
virtues in rather scantier measure than a few days before;
for the cloud deepened on his face, and he turned away
and frowned as he lighted a cigar.
The person in the coupé, Longmore thought, whether
or no the same person as the heroine of the episode
of the Bois de Boulogne, was not a source of unalloyed
delight. Longmore had dark blue eyes, of admirable
lucidity, — truth-telling eyes which had in his childhood
always made his harshest taskmasters smile at
his nursery fibs. An observer watching the two men,
and knowing something of their relations, would certainly
have said that what he saw in those eyes must
not a little have puzzled and tormented M. de Mauves.
They judged him, they mocked him, they eluded him,
they threatened him, they triumphed over him, they
treated him as no pair of eyes had ever treated him.
The Baron's scheme had been to make no one happy
but himself, and here was Longmore already, if looks
were to be trusted, primed for an enterprise more inspiring
than the finest of his own achievements. Was
this candid young barbarian but a faux bonhomme
after all? He had puzzled the Baron before, and this
was once too often.
M. de Mauves hated to seem preoccupied, and he
took up the evening paper to help himself to look
indifferent. As he glanced over it he uttered some
cold commonplace on the political situation, which
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gave Longmore an easy opportunity of replying by
an ironical sally which made him seem for the moment
aggressively at his ease. And yet our hero was far
from being master of the situation. The Baron's ill-humor
did him good, so far as it pointed to a want
of harmony with the lady in the coupé; but it disturbed
him sorely as he began to suspect that it possibly
meant jealousy of himself. It passed through
his mind that jealousy is a passion with a double face,
and that in some of its moods it bears a plausible
likeness to affection. It recurred to him painfully
that the Baron might grow ashamed of his political
compact with his wife, and he felt that it would
be far more tolerable in the future to think of his
continued turpitude than of his repentance. The two
men sat for half an hour exchanging stinted small-talk,
the Baron feeling a nervous need of playing the
spy, and Longmore indulging a ferocious relish of his
discomfort. These rigid courtesies were interrupted
however by the arrival of a friend of M. de Mauves, —
a tall, pale, consumptive-looking dandy, who filled the
air with the odor of heliotrope. He looked up and
down the boulevard wearily, examined the Baron's
toilet from head to foot, then surveyed his own in the
same fashion, and at last announced languidly that the
Duchess was in town! M. de Mauves must come
with him to call; she had abused him dreadfully a
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[figure description] Page 488.[end figure description]
couple of evenings before, — a sure sign she wanted to
see him.
“I depend upon you,” said M. de Mauves's friend
with an infantine drawl, “to put her en train.”
M. de Mauves resisted, and protested that he was
d'une humeur massacrante; but at last he allowed
himself to be drawn to his feet, and stood looking
awkwardly—awkwardly for M. de Mauves—at Longmore.
“You 'll excuse me,” he said dryly; “you, too,
probably, have occupation for the evening?”
“None but to catch my train,” Longmore answered,
looking at his watch.
“Ah, you go back to Saint-Germain?”
“In half an hour.”
M. de Mauves seemed on the point of disengaging
himself from his companion's arm, which was locked
in his own; but on the latter uttering some persuasive
murmur, he lifted his hat stiffly and turned away.
Longmore packed his trunk the next day with dogged
heroism and wandered off to the terrace, to try and
beguile the restlessness with which he waited for evening;
for he wished to see Madame de Mauves for the
last time at the hour of long shadows and pale pink-reflected
lights, as he had almost always seen her.
Destiny, however, took no account of this humble plea
for poetic justice; it was his fortune to meet her on
the terrace sitting under a tree, alone. It was an hour
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when the place was almost empty; the day was warm,
but as he took his place beside her a light breeze
stirred the leafy edges on the broad circle of shadow
in which she sat. She looked at him with candid
anxiety, and he immediately told her that he should
leave Saint-Germain that evening, — that he must bid
her farewell. Her eye expanded and brightened for a
moment as he spoke; but she said nothing and turned
her glance away toward distant Paris, as it lay twinkling
and flashing through its hot exhalations. “I have
a request to make of you,” he added. “That you think
of me as a man who has felt much and claimed little.”
She drew a long breath, which almost suggested
pain. “I can't think of you as unhappy. It 's impossible.
You have a life to lead, you have duties,
talents, and interests. I shall hear of your career.
And then,” she continued after a pause and with the
deepest seriousness, “one can't be unhappy through
having a better opinion of a friend, instead of a
worse.”
For a moment he failed to understand her. “Do
you mean that there can be varying degrees in my
opinion of you?”
She rose and pushed away her chair. “I mean,”
she said quickly, “that it 's better to have done nothing
in bitterness, — nothing in passion.” And she
began to walk.
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Longmore followed her, without answering. But he
took off his hat and with his pocket-handkerchief
wiped his forehead. “Where shall you go? what
shall you do?” he asked at last, abruptly.
“Do? I shall do as I 've always done, — except
perhaps that I shall go for a while to Auvergne.”
“I shall go to America. I have done with Europe
for the present.”
She glanced at him as he walked beside her after
he had spoken these words, and then bent her eyes
for a long time on the ground. At last, seeing that
she was going far, she stopped and put out her hand.
“Good by,” she said; “may you have all the happiness
you deserve!”
He took her hand and looked at her, but something
was passing in him that made it impossible to return
her hand's light pressure. Something of infinite value
was floating past him, and he had taken an oath not
to raise a finger to stop it. It was borne by the strong
current of the world's great life and not of his own
small one. Madame de Mauves disengaged her hand,
gathered her shawl, and smiled at him almost as you
would do at a child you should wish to encourage.
Several moments later he was still standing watching
her receding figure. When it had disappeared, he
shook himself, walked rapidly back to his hotel, and
without waiting for the evening train paid his bill and
departed.
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Later in the day M. de Mauves came into his wife's
drawing-room, where she sat waiting to be summoned
to dinner. He was dressed with a scrupulous freshness
which seemed to indicate an intention of dining
out. He walked up and down for some moments in
silence, then rang the bell for a servant, and went out
into the hall to meet him. He ordered the carriage
to take him to the station, paused a moment with his
hand on the knob of the door, dismissed the servant
angrily as the latter lingered observing him, re-entered
the drawing-room, resumed his restless walk, and at
last stepped abruptly before his wife, who had taken
up a book. “May I ask the favor,” he said with evident
effort, in spite of a forced smile of easy courtesy,
“of having a question answered?”
“It 's a favor I never refused,” Madame de Mauves
replied.
“Very true. Do you expect this evening a visit
from Mr. Longmore?”
“Mr. Longmore,” said his wife, “has left Saint-Germain.”
M. de Mauves started and his smile
expired. “Mr. Longmore,” his wife continued, “has
gone to America.”
M. de Mauves stared a moment, flushed deeply, and
turned away. Then recovering himself, — “Had anything
happened?” he asked. “Had he a sudden call?”
But his question received no answer. At the
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same moment the servant threw open the door and
announced dinner; Madame Clairin rustled in, rubbing
her white hands, Madame de Mauves passed
silently into the dining-room, and he stood frowning
and wondering. Before long he went out upon the
terrace and continued his uneasy walk. At the end
of a quarter of an hour the servant came to inform
him that the carriage was at the door. “Send it
away,” he said curtly. “I shall not use it.” When
the ladies had half finished dinner he went in and
joined them, with a formal apology to his wife for
his tardiness.
The dishes were brought back, but he hardly tasted
them; on the other hand, he drank a great deal of
wine. There was little talk; what there was, was
supplied by Madame Clairin. Twice she saw her
brother's eyes fixed on her own, over his wineglass,
with a piercing, questioning glance. She replied by
an elevation of the eyebrows, which did the office of a
shrug of the shoulders. M. de Mauves was left alone
to finish his wine; he sat over it for more than an
hour, and let the darkness gather about him. At last
the servant came in with a letter and lighted a candle.
The letter was a telegram, which M. de Mauves,
when he had read it, burnt at the candle. After five
minutes' meditation, he wrote a message on the back
of a visiting-card and gave it to the servant to carry
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to the office. The man knew quite as much as his
master suspected about the lady to whom the telegram
was addressed; but its contents puzzled him;
they consisted of the single word, “Impossible.” As
the evening passed without her brother reappearing
in the drawing-room, Madame Clairin came to him
where he sat, by his solitary candle. He took no
notice of her presence for some time; but he was the
one person to whom she allowed this license. At last,
speaking in a peremptory tone, “The American has
gone home at an hour's notice,” he said. “What does
it mean?”
Madame Clairin now gave free play to the shrug she
had been obliged to suppress at the table. “It means
that I have a sister-in-law whom I have n't the honor
to understand.”
He said nothing more, and silently allowed her to
depart, as if it had been her duty to provide him with
an explanation and he was disgusted with her levity.
When she had gone, he went into the garden and
walked up and down, smoking. He saw his wife sitting
alone on the terrace, but remained below strolling
along the narrow paths. He remained a long time.
It became late and Madame de Mauves disappeared.
Toward midnight he dropped upon a bench, tired,
with a kind of angry sigh. It was sinking into his
mind that he, too, did not understand Madame
Clairin's sister-in-law.
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Longmore was obliged to wait a week in London for
a ship. It was very hot, and he went out for a day
to Richmond. In the garden of the hotel at which he
dined he met his friend Mrs. Draper, who was staying
there. She made eager inquiry about Madame de
Mauves, but Longmore at first, as they sat looking
out at the famous view of the Thames, parried her
questions and confined himself to small-talk. At last
she said she was afraid he had something to conceal;
whereupon, after a pause, he asked her if she remembered
recommending him, in the letter she sent to
him at Saint-Germain, to draw the sadness from her
friend's smile. “The last I saw of her was her smile,”
said he, — “when I bade her good by.”
“I remember urging you to `console' her,” Mrs.
Draper answered, “and I wondered afterwards whether—
a model of discretion as you are — I had n't given
you rather foolish advice.”
“She has her consolation in herself,” he said; “she
needs none that any one else can offer her. That 's for
troubles for which — be it more, be it less — our own
folly has to answer. Madame de Mauves has not a
grain of folly left.”
“Ah, don't say that!” murmured Mrs. Draper. “Just
a little folly is very graceful.”
Longmore rose to go, with a quick nervous movement.
“Don't talk of grace,” he said, “till you have
measured her reason.”
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For two years after his return to America he heard
nothing of Madame de Mauves. That he thought of
her intently, constantly, I ned hardly say: most people
wondered why such a clever young man should not
“devote” himself to something; but to himself he
seemed absorbingly occupied. He never wrote to her;
he believed that she preferred it. At last he heard
that Mrs. Draper had come home, and he immediately
called on her. “Of course,” she said after the first
greetings, “you are dying for news of Madame de
Mauves. Prepare yourself for something strange. I
heard from her two or three times during the year
after your return. She left Saint-Germain and went
to live in the country, on some old property of her
husband's. She wrote me very kind little notes, but
I felt somehow that — in spite of what you said about
`consolation' — they were the notes of a very sad woman.
The only advice I could have given her was to
leave her wretch of a husband and come back to her own
land and her own people. But this I did n't feel free
to do, and yet it made me so miserable not to be able
to help her that I preferred to let our correspondence
die a natural death. I had no news of her for a year.
Last summer, however, I met at Vichy a clever young
Frenchman whom I accidentally learned to be a friend
of Euphemia's lovely sister-in-law, Madame Clairin. I
lost no time in asking him what he knew about
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Madame de Mauves, — a countrywoman of mine and
an old friend. `I congratulate you on possessing her
friendship,' he answered. `That 's the charming little
woman who killed her husband.' You may imagine
that I promptly asked for an explanation, and he proceeded
to relate to me what he called the whole story.
M. de Mauves had fait quelques folies, which his wife
had taken absurdly to heart. He had repented and
asked her forgiveness, which she had inexorably refused.
She was very pretty, and severity, apparently,
suited her style; for whether or no her husband had
been in love with her before, he fell madly in love with
her now. He was the proudest man in France, but
he had begged her on his knees to be readmitted to
favor. All in vain! She was stone, she was ice, she
was outraged virtue. People noticed a great change in
him: he gave up society, ceased to care for anything,
looked shockingly. One fine day they learned that he
had blown out his brains. My friend had the story
of course from Madame Clairin.”
Longmore was strongly moved, and his first impulse
after he had recovered his composure was to return
immediately to Europe. But several years have passed,
and he still lingers at home. The truth is, that in the
midst of all the ardent tenderness of his memory of
Madame de Mauves, he has become conscious of a
singular feeling, — a feeling for which awe would be
hardly too strong a name.
