Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

'Exactly. Well, then, my countess, when I have my eye upon her, is her simple womanly self, because she knows my insight is unerring; but with you I'll wager she talks literature, and art, and morals, and things of that kind, eh?'

'I will not deny it, Jeff.'

'Of course she did, and why? Because she knew she could make you believe she really cared for such things; and, womanlike, she couldn't resist humbugging you.'

'And her laughing at you, her contemptuous allusions to your stature and so forth were also impositions upon my naïve ignorance of the sex?'

'Indeed, my dear Campbell, they were.'

'It is me, then, and not you that she considers ridiculous?'

'At all events you can see that it's not me,' said Jeff leniently. 'Why, just consider the points in me which she professed to consider laughable. My height! Now the last thing a woman bothers herself about in a man is his height. When there is a question of physical attractions, she looks first at his shoulders, then at his eyes, then at his feet and hands, then at his chin. If these please her his height may take care of itself; and if you won't mind my saying it, the less it has to take care of the better. Look at Napoleon Bonaparte, Martin Luther, Frederick the Great, Benjamin Franklin, Plato, General Grant. Why, pretty nearly everybody who has stood a head and shoulders above his generation has been under five feet eight.'

'Bravo, Jeff! You are both eloquent and sagacious. Beacon Street should be proud of you.'

'Knowledge of this kind is a matter of temperament and intuition. Experience can but confirm what the soul has already divined; and if the previous divination do not exist, age and experience are just so much to the bad, if you won't mind my saying so. And so she ridiculed the fog incident?'

'She alluded to it with an apparent spice of humour,' I said diffidently.

'Dear girl,' murmured the poet tenderly. 'That seeming ridicule was almost as direct an avowal of affection as a modest woman could have made. That mutual voiceless self-revelation of ours, which my dear Campbell professes to discredit, has evidently stirred my Countess to her depths. It has aroused the potent germs of the master passion of her life. She trembles to confess herself to herself; how, then, could she do otherwise than veil herself from a stranger? and what better veil than a simulated mirth and mockery? But really now you don't need me to tell you this; it's the A, B, C of the feminine nature.'

'Jeff, you puzzle me; you are either more or less than human. At all events you are an incarnate solution of the old problem how to make the best of it. Well, what are your proximate intentions?'

'To dance the "Boston" with her this evening.'

'You will be at the ball, then?'

'Indeed, yes. Shall not you?'

'I shall; for since you are definitely resolved upon playing the donkey, I want to be in a position to hear your opening bray.'

'At ten o'clock, then; but it will be a variation upon _A Midsummer Night's Dream_,' answered the poet with imperturbable geniality; and so we parted.

VIII.

The ball--or rather the _soirée dansante_--was announced for nine o'clock, and at thirty minutes after that hour I passed through the doorway.

An oblong hall, the floor space framed in on three sides by an embankment of benches, with the orchestra on the fourth. This orchestra comprised a piano, two violins, and a trombone, all in evening dress. The assembly to whom this unexceptionable quartette discoursed was by no means so rigorously attired. There were coats and trousers of all hues, and skirts and waists of all fashions and degrees of lowness. The scene was a motley one, but all incongruities were harmonised by the universal element of uncompromising enjoyment, pervading black and grey, high and low alike, and animating the heels and heads of the spectators upon the benches as well as the actual performers upon the floor. The orchestra sawed and thrummed with hearty good-will, and the lamps on their brackets and the windows in their frames jarred and rattled to the rhythmic fall of feet. In the pauses of the dance and clatter the roar of the surf came in through the open door upon the wings of the cool salt breeze.

The most polished people in the world dance, if not ideally, at least really. There is no languishing, no shilly-shallying, but downright roundabout, vigorous hard work. A Frenchman who has danced over night must needs feel the effects of it on getting up in the morning; and as for his partner, who has danced for herself and for him on two separate counts, it is a wonder she ever gets up at all. Their scheme of a waltz is simple and telling, being based upon the primitive principle of planetary motion--revolution round their own axis and revolution round their orbit. This double motion is kept up with mechanical regularity until nature--or more frequently the orchestra--gives way. The orbit of one couple being the orbit of all, the general effect of a lively waltz is of a voluntary human whirlpool composed of self-centred _tête-à-tête_ eddies. By centrifugal law the centre of the whirlpool remains empty.

A moment's inspection of this whirlpool satisfied me that it did not contain the Countess Almara. As I was proceeding to a scrutiny of the benches the _frou-frou_ of a crisp skirt along the aisle caused me to turn and find my face within eighteen inches of the clear firm cheek of the beautiful pagan. She and her mother passed without appearing to see me; and they were followed by a military-looking personage of some fifty years of age, bald-headed, broad-shouldered, and bulky, whom I fancied I had noticed once or twice before. After seeing the ladies into their seats he returned past me up the aisle and went out.

Presently I came down, exchanged greetings with my friends, and sat in a vacant seat near the Countess Almara. Her manner was distraught and preoccupied; her smile only came from her lips, and though she looked me in the face occasionally with a certain intentness, she seemed scarcely to see me or to comprehend my words.

Her personal appearance was more diabolically handsome than ever. As usual, her colours were black and red, but, being in silk, they were exceptionally effective. There was a glimpse of warm white neck and smooth rounded arms; her hair, coiled on the top of her head, revealed the graceful bend of the nape. Her bracelet and necklace matched the earrings of the morning, and beneath the delicate film of her glove was discernible the form of the great ruby.

'Might I have the honour of this dance?'

'Not yet, not yet. In this moment I feel myself unable. Let us rather talk. I am not myself; you see it. Listen to the sea. My God! how it roars! I wish I were out on it in my canoe with the great waves.'

I laughed to disguise the concern which her manifest agitation caused me.

'In that case, mademoiselle, you would be without the advantage of my society; and I doubt whether my little friend Montgomery even would venture to swim after you on such a night as this.'

'Oh, he is your friend, then, this Monsieur Mont--Mont-go-merie? And I have spoken of him to you slightingly. I did not know, and I am foolish; I speak without forethought. You will forget it? Yes.'

'If anyone should apologise it is I, for not having warned you beforehand of our tender relations. But be reassured; Monsieur Montgomery is a poet, and intends making you the heroine of an epic. If you are gracious to him this evening he will forgive you anything.'

'It is not of him that I shall demand pardon,' said the Countess with the slightest imaginable intonation of scorn. 'But he is your friend, and you shall see how I will be polite.' She breathed and moved nervously, her thoughts being evidently absorbed in some subject foreign enough to anything I could guess. Her eyes were restless, and she fanned her flushed cheeks in vain.

'What day is this?' she demanded suddenly.

'The fifteenth of August.'

'I shall remember it always--always.'

The hand that held the fan drooped, and, seemingly by accident, touched my own. The momentary glance that swept my face showed an inward trouble and appeal, and, if I read it aright, a something deeper and more passionate beyond. With the unexpectedness that was one of her characteristics she rose to her feet.

'Come, I feel better at present: let us dance; come.'

In her preoccupation she had not perceived that the music had ceased some minutes, and the dancers all left the floor.

'What hast thou, then, dear one?' inquired the Countess Semaroff, looking up indolently through her eye-glasses.

Almara perceived her blunder, and I could mark a pulsation of anger pass through her body while she muttered behind her teeth, 'That I am imbecile!'

'Don't you find it very warm here? Suppose we take a turn to the door,' I suggested. She thanked me with a look, exchanged a glance and a word with her mother, and taking my arm, we began to move down the aisle.

Presentiments, though commonly deceptive, do nevertheless exist. Just at this time I had a presentiment that some crisis was impending. If I could secure a few minutes' privacy with the young Countess, I was resolved to tell her a secret which already burned within me, though I myself had not known it until this very evening. But I felt conviction, I felt confidence, and I felt that there was no time like the present.

Events the most insignificant upset purposes the most momentous. There were two doors to the hall, and in order to reach the one at which we were aiming it was necessary to cross the floor. As we stepped on the floor at one side a couple of gentlemen appeared on the other; we met in the very centre of the hall, but it was not until I felt the Countess press my arm that I thought to notice who either of the gentlemen was. To my ineffable annoyance I then recognised the infatuated Jeff leaning on the arm of the bulky gentleman with the moustachios, who was positively in the act of introducing him to my partner.

The Countess seemed as much taken by surprise as myself. She returned Jeff's elaborate obeisance with a grand curtsey, and then stood erect and silent, her hand still resting within my arm. The music struck up another waltz.

'May I have the honour of this dance?' inquired Jeff with his sweetest emphasis.

I waited to hear the Countess say she was engaged and to pass on with her; but after an instant's pause she slowly relinquished my arm, and uttering the conventional words, 'Je veux bien,' she resigned herself to the triumphant Bostonian.

Then, when it was too late, I realised that our engagement had been for the previous dance, and not for this one, if indeed there had been any definite engagement at all, and that, as I had heard Jeff's request in silence, the Countess had been forced to suppose that I desired we should part. It was one of those absurd misapprehensions which occur in ball-rooms as well as in other places, but which I had never found so vexatious as in the present instance.

Meantime Jeff and she had eddied away from me; another couple, revolving up from behind, came into collision with me. I felt myself in a false position, and beat a retreat to the Countess Semaroff, beside whom I seated myself with the gloomy grin of a baffled man.

But the Countess made herself particularly gracious and entertaining, and I was perforce obliged to give her a good deal of attention, though my real interest was monopolised by the proceedings of Jeff and his partner. Jeff was undoubtedly the best dancer in the room, and the 'Boston' step which he danced was not only more graceful and easy than the ordinary whirligig, but, by the device of 'reversing,' enabled him to perform his evolutions undisturbed in that vacant centre of the merry-go-round which has been already described. This proficiency of his contributed to the sum of my misfortunes for that evening. I am not myself a good dancer, and I therefore shrank from affording the Countess Almara an opportunity of comparing Jeff's performance with my own. I resolved not to dance at all, and to trust to luck for an opportunity of getting a few minutes' private conversation with her.

But the stars in their courses fought against me on this night of August 15. Madame introduced me to the military gentleman, who turned out to be her husband, and he and I presently fell into an animated political discussion. When Jeff and his partner returned they took seats on the further side of the Countess, and it was almost impossible for me to appropriate so much as a glance from those eyes which now held so large a portion of my world's light. I could mark her forced attention to the poet's vapourings; I could divine her secret disgust, and I understood that she endured this petty martyrdom from a mistaken idea of making me reparation for her slight upon him. But I was practically incapacitated for either explanation or consolation. The intangible trammels of society and etiquette are as strong as the thread that bound Fenrir, and I finally made up my mind that I might as well go home.

'Before you go, dear Monsieur Campbell,' said the Countess Semaroff with a glance at the Count, 'we will venture to entreat of you a great favour.'

'I despair of expressing to you the extent of the obligation which your condescension would impose upon us,' added the Count with his bland, impassive politeness.

'Am I really, then, so fortunate as to be able to contribute in any way to the pleasure of the Count and Countess? What happiness!'

'Behold how it becomes ravishing!' exclaimed the Countess. 'Almara, my very dear, Monsieur Campbell will perhaps consent.'

The young Countess had been sitting with her hands folded listlessly in her lap, absorbed apparently in her own thoughts, which were who knows how far removed from the confiding chit-chat which poor Jeff was babbling at her ear. She now raised her head and turned her eyes upon me. The deep sentiment contained in that look would have drawn from me, had she required it, the sacrifice even of that happiness which was to be the substance of my life. She said not a word.

'Thou must ask Monsieur; do thou ask him, Almara,' continued the Countess, smiling, 'since it concerns thee.'

'Is it that you would paint a portrait of me?' said Almara simply.

'Merely a sketch, dear monsieur,' put in the mother persuasively. 'The opportunity may not again occur for us. It is not often one has the fortune to meet Monsieur Campbell.'

'And there can be but one Monsieur Campbell in the world,' added the Count with a bow.

'Something at all events--a likeness merely--a work of three days,' subjoined Madame earnestly.

I had had time to suppress the first impulse of delight, and to command my face to an expression of polite affability. In this so-called favour I recognised the agency of the Countess Almara. To the father and mother it meant securing a likeness of their daughter from the hand of the first portrait-painter of the day; but to that painter and to that daughter it meant hours spent in comparatively undisturbed enjoyment of one another's society--hours of silent sympathies, of low-spoken words that sounded little but meant much; hours that would count for years in the progress of a mutual understanding where each sought to reveal all and withhold nothing.

'It will give me great pleasure to sketch Mademoiselle,' said I. 'Four or five sittings will suffice. To-morrow, after the bath, we will speak further on the subject. At present I must retire. Madame the Countess, monsieur, mademoiselle, _au revoir_.'

'Good-night, Campbell,' spoke up Jeff as I moved away. 'Thank you ever so much; but you must expect to find me a severe critic. _Au revoir._'

IX.

But our drama was not to reach its conclusion without a modicum of the tragic element, and this modicum was to be introduced by no less heroic a character than the little poet of Beacon Hill.

It is yet early to point the moral of my tale; but I may remark that we are not seldom helped along the path of life, and even have our true direction pointed out to us, by ineffective obstacles. The person or circumstance obstructing us first arouses us to appreciate the advantages of a course which we might else never have thought of, or, having thought of, might have lacked energy to pursue.

In this sense it may be said that I owed my introduction to the Countess Almara, and still more the colour which that acquaintance immediately assumed, to the unintentional influence of my Boston friend. His vague rhapsodies first drew my attention to a woman whom I had till then admired without appreciating her. His transcendental love-making had shown me how truly she was lovable, and his infatuated pursuit of her had stimulated me to a decision whose gravity might else have given me pause. Left to myself, I should doubtless have fallen in love, but I should have been a great deal longer about it. At the age of five-and-thirty the passions are more enduring than in youth, but do not ordinarily kindle so readily. Jeff was the match that set me afire, and he the goad that drove me at a pace which surprised myself. But I do not care to dwell upon this phase of my romance. To have been the rival of one you contemn is unpleasant, and the superior nature cannot avoid remorse in looking back upon such a contest.

However, the sittings began and fulfilled all our anticipations--Almara's and mine. The further I penetrated into her mind and heart the richer did these appear. Our speech and bearing still observed a chivalrous sort of ceremony towards one another; we did not as yet permit ourselves to be frankly lovers. But our reserve was only an instinctive device for gaining a deeper realisation of our happiness. Strong natures often illustrate this paradox: they are repelled for a time by the intensity of their attraction to each other.

Moreover, we were never left entirely to ourselves; the customs of Continental etiquette are immovable, and so was the Countess Semaroff from my _atelier_ or from the little antechamber opening out of it. But the restraint was purely formal, and even added to the zest of our enjoyment by giving it the air of being something to intrigue for. It may not be creditable to human nature, but it is a fact that the most precious gifts of love are the smuggled ones.

But why did I not declare the state of affairs at once to the Count and Countess, and thus settle a question of such vital moment to me? In the first place, I could plead the lover's excuse--the desire to keep the secret of his heart for a time veiled, even from her he loved. But, besides this, I felt uncertain how the avowal would be received, not by Almara herself--I was sure of her--but by her parents. A marriage between even an eminent artist and a woman of noble birth is not an everyday occurrence; and I felt the prudence of sounding the views of the Count and Countess on this subject before putting my fate to the touch. In case of refusal, indeed, I should not hesitate to take Almara in spite of them, feeling as I did that our love would be compensation for all losses; and it may be that I contemplated the possibility of a hostile turn of the die with something like a pleasurable thrill. A man likes to prove his power in the teeth of obstacles; and, as I looked at Almara's proud and passionate beauty, I thought how grand would be the response to the summons of her heart. It would be almost a pity to forego that spectacle.

Another source of my hesitation had to do with the mystery which still continued to invest my beautiful sitter--that mystery which seemed concentrated in her ruby. What it might be I knew not; Almara quietly but resolutely foiled all my attempts to lead the conversation up to the subject. Of course I was not able, situated as we were, to make any serious attack upon her reserve; but it was evident that her secret would probably remain a secret until all concealments were finally at an end between us. All that troubled me in the matter was a fear lest it should turn out to be a hindrance to our union; but, as time went on, this apprehension faded from my mind. Almara was gradually losing those traces of depression and anxiety which she had betrayed in our first interviews. The sunnier side of her character came out; she chatted with gaiety and abandon; the shadow of pain and revolt was passing away. She still turned and twisted the heavy ring upon her finger, but now rather caressingly than impatiently. And once, I remember, as she and I and the rest, including Jeff, were sitting after sundown round a table outside the casino, laughing, gossiping, admiring the afterglow along the western horizon, and sipping iced coffee out of tall glasses, on this evening of the last day but one of the sittings I saw her lift her hand to her lips with one of those unexpected movements of hers and bestow a quick kiss upon the ruby. No one seemed to notice this strange gesture, which indeed was so managed as to have escaped any eye less keen than a lover's. What was the meaning of it? Almara's glance met mine; for a moment she seemed disconcerted, but the next moment laughed and said saucily--

'Monsieur Campbell, do you know a cure for burnt fingers?'

The next day at noon the last sitting was over. I sat alone in the _atelier_, adding the finishing touches to the portrait. At four o'clock the whole party, not forgetting Jeff, were to be present for the 'private view.'

No one, not even Almara, had thus far been permitted to see the picture; and as for my Boston friend, I had not suffered him even to be present at any of the sittings. Besides that the little man had a disturbing effect upon me I wished these hours to be as far as possible sacred to my sitter and myself--oases of serene communion uninvaded by Bostonian ineptitudes. On the other hand, I must plead guilty to having used Jeff (or allowed Almara to use him) outside the studio in a manner perhaps inconsistent with the strict loyalty of friendship.

No definite words had passed between her and me on the subject, but, by a tacit agreement, the unsuspecting poet was made to do duty as a blind. Almara, in short, made show of a particular and sentimental interest in him, thus closing people's eyes to the state of feeling between ourselves. She acted her part so well, and the delighted Jeff so purred and beamed under her condescension, that I sometimes felt remorse. He deserved it, no doubt; it would teach him a lesson; and yet I disliked seeing even Jeff make such a fool of himself. The fact that he would have scouted my representations, had I sought to enlighten him, did not remove my responsibility. Almara did not seem to share my scruples; women never look at these things as men do. She fascinated Jeff without mercy; they canoed, dived, and danced together. A stronger brain than his might have failed to detect any insincerity in her manner. Perhaps, indeed, she was not for the time being any less sincere with him than she was with me. The histrionic side of a woman's nature is generally strong, and is sometimes developed to such a pitch that what they enact seems as real to them as what they are in sober earnest about.

About half an hour before the time appointed for receiving my visitors there was a knock at my door, and Jeff came in. He was as neat, complacent, and pretty as a miniature on ivory. I had just put the last touch to the canvas, and was standing back in thoughtful contemplation of the work.

'Well, how do you like it?' I asked him after the first words.

'Campbell, I am almost satisfied; and that, from me, is the highest eulogy that can be bestowed upon you.'

'You never told me that you were the final umpire in art criticism.'

'Oh, I only pretend to be the final umpire on the subject of Almara.'

'Come, Jeff, let this farce have an end,' said I, laying my hand kindly on his shoulder. 'From this hour you must give up your pretensions in that quarter. To use the homely phrase, the Countess Almara is meat for--Well, let us say for your elders.'

'Oh, my dear fellow, not at all; we suit each other perfectly. But I knew we should; you remember my telling you so? I should think you would have noticed it this week past yourself.'

'What I have noticed, my poor Jeff, has caused me more than one twinge of conscience. You must try and forgive me. The fact is, the Countess Almara and I----'

The poet interrupted me with an arch laugh.

'Twinge of conscience, did you say? Twinge of jealousy you mean. My dear old Campbell, if I have anything to forgive, I forgive it with all my heart. But my object in coming here so early was to ask you to forgive me.'

'Ah, I fancy I understand you, and I admit having thought you rather reprehensible on that score. Considering that your father made that provisional arrangement regarding your income in case you thwarted his wishes----'

'Yes, but that was only in case I----'

'In case you married anyone but the lady he had selected for you. Exactly. And you decided that you preferred the Countess to the income.'

'Really you are mistaken, Campbell. I have no idea of risking my income. I know the value of money.'

'All I was going to say was that you have not been acting quite ingenuously towards the Count and Countess Semaroff, not to speak of their daughter. They look upon you as a young gentleman able to dispose of ten thousand pounds a year. Now, if you had proposed to them for her hand without letting them know----'

'Propose to them for it? But, my dear Campbell, that was all settled from the beginning.'

'Do you mean to say they have admitted you as a suitor?'

'Why, what else could I mean?'

'And you omitted to tell them that in case you married her, you would have but three hundred pounds income?'

'Indeed, I told them nothing of the sort. Why should I?'

'Because an honest man in your place would have told them!' I replied coldly. 'You are sailing under false colours. You are giving yourself out to be a millionaire when you have only the salary of a clerk.'

'But isn't a clerk with ten thousand a year a pretty decent millionaire?'

'But you will have ten thousand a year only as long as you are unmarried.'

'That is so far the case that, after I'm married, I shall have twenty thousand a year--my wife's income added to my own.'

'Well, Montgomery, I don't care to beat about the bush with you. If you can reconcile your conduct with your own code of honesty it's no concern of mine. But as regards the Countess Almara--I am going to marry her myself.'

'You? Oh, you are joking.'

'I have loved her from the first; she loves me----'

'Oh! I say! ha, ha, ha! Has she told you so?'

'We have not openly declared ourselves in so many words--you are welcome to whatever consolation that may afford you--but there are other means of coming to an understanding than by words.'

'Well, that is true, at any rate: it is for that I came to ask your pardon, Campbell. But really was it not in great measure your own fault?'

'Upon my word, Montgomery, I fail to catch your drift.'

'Well--the long and short of it is she's been flirting with you.'

'With me? You surprise me.'

'You see she didn't want you to suspect our engagement. You remember that first conversation you had with her, when she made those allusions to my height, and said she hated Americans, and so on?'

I made a sign of assent.

'When she said those absurd things, though only in fun, she did not know that I was her intended; and when, a few hours later, we found each other out, she naturally felt annoyed at having spoken of me to a stranger in such terms. You understand?'

'Pray go on,' I said, taking up my palette and brushes and standing before the canvas, so that my face was turned from the speaker.

'So she begged her mother and me not to let you suspect; and the more thoroughly to lull your suspicions (and also because the girl is a born flirt, as all feminine women are) she--just--you know what--made love to you in a mild way, I suppose.'

Jeff paused. 'The man is mad--raving mad!' I muttered, still making pretence of retouching my background. Jeff flowed on.

'Of course a man like you, a man of the world, a great artist, and getting on in the forties--of course I knew you'd only be amused, and would take nothing seriously; and you know you scoffed at the notion of matrimony when I asked you about it. But still she can be so attractive when she chooses that latterly I began to fear you might be the least bit fetched, after all. I told Allie I'd never forgive her if it turned out so.'

'Told--_who_?'

'Allie--Almara, you know. We always called each other "Allie" and "Jeffie" in our letters.'

'Letters? You corresponded, then?'

'Regularly--for the last five years.'

'I see; and--and so it's been a settled thing--but--is this your first meeting?'

'Yes, and that is what made it so amusing. It had been arranged, you know, that I was to meet them in Paris on the 20th----'

'Meet whom? You must excuse me, but you have such an unsystematic way of imparting your information. I'm a bit confused.'

'To meet the Semaroffs. The Count is the Russian commissioner with whom we are in treaty about the cigarette-holders. We were to be formally betrothed in Paris, Allie and I----'

'Would you mind calling her the Countess Almara in speaking of her to me? I--I have unpleasant associations with the other name. Go on.'

'The point is that, happening to stop here on my way, I was a good deal taken with the "beautiful pagan," without of course knowing who she was; and I might have made myself very unhappy about her if it hadn't been for you.'

'Eh?'

'Yes, a fact. The first I knew of my pagan maid being one and the same with Allie--Countess, I mean--was your mentioning her name to me that first day at breakfast. Don't you remember my remarking how strangely things came out? It was accident our both happening to be here, but it was you who made us known to each other. Wasn't it curious?'

'Very curious, very amusing, the whole thing--ha, ha! And so that story about the three hundred a year was--part of your poem, I suppose?'

'Not at all. But the Countess Almara being my papa's selection, I risked nothing in marrying her. I tried to explain it to you at the time, but you pitched into me so, and insisted upon my leaving her and marrying somebody else, that at last, just for the fun of the thing, I allowed you to believe that I was really as great a fool as you took me for.'

Hereupon ensued a pause of some minutes. Jeff, I believe, lit a cigarette. What I did I have no recollection; but I must have remained standing before the easel. At length I felt that Jeff was standing behind me.

'It couldn't be better, really,' he said. 'They'll like it so much at home.'

'Beg pardon?'

'It's to go to Boston, you know, to give papa and mamma an idea of how their daughter-in-law looks. Ah! you've put in the ring, too. I'm glad of that. Handsome ruby, isn't it?'

'An antique. Such rings are not made nowadays.'

'Except by Tiffany; he manufactures them after the antique models. I got this at his store in New York six months ago, and paid fifteen hundred dollars for it. By the way, my dear Campbell, how much will this sketch be?'

'Hum, let me see. How long have I been over it?'

'Just six days.'

'Well, then, I'll let it go for six thousand pounds. I don't care to make money out of friends.'

The smoke of Jeff's cigarette got into his windpipe; and while he was coughing the door opened, and the two countesses, followed by the Count, came in.

After the portrait had been criticised and the compliments exchanged I drew near to Almara, who was standing apart from the others, near the easel.

'Countess, permit my congratulations.'

There was a slight involuntary quivering of the eyebrows and of the corner of her mouth, and she kept her eyes upon the portrait as she said in a low tone--

'You know it, then?'

'Your future husband has just told me.'

She shifted her position a little, and began to blush slowly.

'I have included a portrait of the ruby, you observe,' I went on. 'Are you satisfied with it?'

'Very well--excellent,' she said mechanically.

'I was not sure whether you might prefer to have it omitted. That evening on the beach--you remember,--you seemed to wish it out of the way. I will conjure it away even now, if you say the word,' and I took up the palette and brushes.

There was a pause: she understood me; the colour gradually left her face, which she still kept averted. At length, with a perceptible effort, she said--

'It had better remain.'

'I think so too,' I said, laying down the palette. The company was now prepared to depart.

'Before you go, Countess, I wish--merely out of curiosity--that you would tell me one thing.'

'Well, monsieur?'

'Are you an angel or a devil?'

Then at last she raised her face, pale as marble, and her black eyes met mine in a quiet, strange look. She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

'I know not--well, I am a woman. Adieu. You will not forget me.' And there, at all events, she spoke no more than truth.

The modest price which I had put upon my portrait appeared to overtax the resources of Beacon Street, and the work remained upon my hands. That night Madame Enault's chimney caught fire--an occurrence unprecedented in the middle of August. I explained that I had burnt up some rubbish, which had proved to be remarkably inflammable, and made the fullest apologies; but the good lady's nerves did not recover their tone until after the exhibition of tincture of argentum--a sound dose. This, so far as I can recollect, was the last noticeable episode of my summer holiday.

A LOVER IN SPITE OF HIMSELF.

I.

At first, I simply laughed the idea to scorn. I refused to regard it, even for a moment, in a serious light. I jested with myself about it, and became positively witty on the subject. I let slip no opportunity to cast ridicule upon it. My chief regret was that I had no acquaintance in town to whom I could expatiate on the complete absurdity of the suggestion. In default of this, I took out of my toilet drawer the nine square inches of cracked mirror before which I was accustomed to do my shaving and cravat-tying, and, gazing curiously at the heavy-browed, rugged-featured visage therein reflected, I sarcastically inquired of it how soon it intended getting its portrait painted on ivory, and hung in a locket round a fair lady's neck? I entreated it, with sardonic humour, to give an example of a winning smile--of an ardent glance--of a beseeching gaze. Then I threw myself in my chair, put my feet upon my table, filled my rankest pipe with my strongest tobacco, and while I smoked and lolled, I bade myself, with a hoarse chuckle of mockery, amend the rudeness and unconventionality of my manners, and abandon all selfish and offensive habits. In short, I did everything to prove the folly and groundlessness of this preposterous notion--except to forget it.

So went matters the first day. The following morning I arose to find myself quite as firm as before, but somewhat less disposed towards jocosity. I abused my imbecility with as much vigour as yesterday, but with fewer quips and humours. I began to see that, for such a fool as I had proved myself, stringent means were best; I ought to be too much ashamed of the affair to laugh at it or treat it lightly. Accordingly, I went about all day with a sour and malignant expression of countenance: whenever old Joanna, the maidservant, happened to venture into my apartments, I growled like a dangerous dog at her: and I gave her my orders that no visitor was to be admitted, and no letters or messages were to be brought up, in a tone of such energy and menace, that you would have thought my privacy was as important and as liable to intrusion as Chancellor Bismarck's: instead of which, the only person I knew in Dresden, after my six months' residence there, was the German-American banker; and it was not likely that he would give himself the trouble to visit me--no, indeed! for my whole yearly revenue (not including the sums received for my pictures, because I had never yet sold any) did not reach fifteen hundred thalers; and though I knew that at least twelve per cent. of this sum went into my German-American friend's pocket under the name of 'commission,' yet even that _douceur_ would not suffice to bring him a mile and a half away into the outskirts of the Neustadt, and up three flights of dark and devious staircases, to pay me a complimentary call. However, had he, in spite of probability, actually made his appearance, I should not have hesitated, in my then state of mind, to kick him downstairs again.

Well, that day passed, and was followed by a restless and weary night; and I awoke in the morning to confront the fact that my attack had now lasted no less than forty-two mortal hours, and, so far from abating, showed every symptom of being on the increase.

I was now seriously alarmed. Here was I grappling with an insidious and potent enemy, who apparently knew all my weak places, and how to take advantage of them, but of the proper methods of defending myself against whom I was fatally and completely ignorant. I had done what I could, only to prove that I could do nothing: and in this case, doing nothing was not a negative but a positive evil. The more I pondered over my helplessness, the more disturbed did I become. What did it all mean? What should I do? What was to be the end of it?

I ate my breakfast of coffee and rolls in silence and humility: old Joanna had no cause whatever to complain of violent manifestations from me. I spoke to her submissively and gently. I even entertained the question whether it might not be prudent to lay the case before her and entreat her advice upon it. But shame prevented me; I could not steel myself to endure her gaze of incredulity deepening into contempt. No--as I had struggled in the solitude of my own heart, so in the same solitude would I suffer and submit. If I was really to become a slave, let me at least conceal my fetters. Joanna could not succour me, for she had never made the resolutions and embraced the principles that I had--only to see them, at this late day, violated and broken. In a word, I determined to hold my peace and to put the best face possible upon my discomfiture.

By the time I had arrived at this decision it was already afternoon, and my customary walking hour was at hand. Should I go out as usual, or not? I had refrained from going yesterday, but no good effects had come of my forbearance. On the other hand, if I found reason to remain at home to-day, the same reason would be in as good force to-morrow, and the day after; and the logical result must be that I should never go out at all. Now this was a prospect which I could not bring myself to contemplate. In the first place, I was naturally of an active and energetic temperament, and my health demanded plenty of vigorous exercise in the open air. Secondly, although my pride was fain to put up with the lot of a slave, I was scarcely as yet prepared to regard myself as a prisoner likewise: and finally, if I did go out, the chances were a hundred or perhaps a thousand to one that I did not meet her. Moreover, what if I did? I could not well be worse off than I was now; and there might be a remote possibility that a more deliberate scrutiny of the object of my infatuation would tend to my disenchantment.

Since I have thus betrayed my secret, I may as well pause here and make a thorough confession. Yes--there could be no doubt about it; I--Thomas Wyndham--was in love at last, and that, too, with a woman I did not know and who did not know me. Nothing could have been more inopportune, nothing more undesirable, nothing more impossible--but nothing was more certain! I loved. It had come upon me no less abruptly than overwhelmingly. A chance encounter in the street--a look--an indrawn breath--and I, who up to my five-and-twentieth birthday had laughed at scars, now felt a wound which not all the drowsy syrups of the East could medicine. There was no palliating feature in the case; it was not only love, it was love at first sight; it was not only love at first sight, it was love unrequited. And once more, the lover was Tom Wyndham!

But I perceive that some further explanation will be necessary. Although, then, as has been intimated, I had existed in this great, beautiful, and seductive world during more than a quarter of a century, I had remained all that time heart-whole; and though my immunity had never happened to cost me an effort, it was none the less in accordance with a certain hard-and-fast rule which I had long ago laid down for my guidance throughout life. This rule was, to uphold, at all times and against all comers, the dogma that a bachelor life was, for Tom Wyndham, the only proper, expedient, and dignified one. Marriage, so far as I was concerned, was against both my principles and my interest. I was an artist, to begin with, and in my opinion it was the duty of every true artist to live for his art alone, jealously eschewing whatever might tend to divide or alienate his devotion. His transactions with the sex, if any transactions there must be, should be strictly in the way of business; he might paint them, but never woo them. But beyond this, I was (or so I had fondly imagined) constitutionally and impenetrably proof against female fascinations. Like the famous Duke of Gloster, I was not formed for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass. In other words, I had always been noted for my awkwardness and infelicity in women's society; and I could not doubt that I was as tiresome and oppressive to them as they were always terrible and often hateful to me. Here, then, were good and sufficient obstacles enough against matrimonial entanglements; and there were others behind. I was as poor as I was unattractive; I was destitute of the faculty of money-making, and I was as incapable of winning a rich wife by my personal merits as I should have been of living upon her bounty afterwards. In short, and not to multiply objections, confirmed bachelorhood was my category by every law, moral, mental, and material; notwithstanding which, I had committed the inconceivable imbecility of losing my heart and head at the same moment, and ... but it is enough that I lost my temper at the time; to lose it over again now would be undignified.

Let me rather record a few particulars of my previous history. My father had been a wealthy Englishman; he married the daughter of a rich American planter. My mother died when I, her only child, was but a few years old. My father returned to England after her death, and I was brought up there in the lap of luxury. I was sent to Rugby, and thence to Cambridge; and it was there I first met my cousin Floyd Wyndham--the son of my father's younger brother. We were as different as white and black, but we were the greatest friends in the world. There never was such a lovable fellow as Floyd, and he was the most popular man in our College, and, indeed, wherever he went. He had all the social graces and instincts that I lacked; it was as inevitable to him to charm people as it was to me to repel them; and the best of it was, his success never cost him the least effort--on the contrary, he rather turned up his nose at it. What he saw to like in me I'm sure I cannot imagine; but all the same he did love me with his whole heart, and would have done anything in the world to oblige me. Dear old Floyd! with your lazy blue eyes, your quiet, audacious manner, your drawl and your fun: what a contrast you were to me, to be sure!

I never knew anything of his family, there being some misunderstanding or other between my father and his; but our rooms at the College were contiguous, and we were together every day. There was a picture on the wall over his mantelpiece--a portrait of our maternal grandmother, and a lovelier face no painter ever drew. Whenever I dropped in to have a chat with Floyd, I used to sit where I could keep that face in view; it was the only woman's face I ever ventured or cared to look twice at. Floyd used to laugh, and say it was like me to be spoony on my own grandmother: adding, that he had a little sister growing up who was going to be exactly like her, and that I had better begin paying my addresses to her immediately. But, jesting aside, I honestly believe that the memory of that portrait had a good deal to do with my bachelorhood. As for Floyd's sister, I never had seen her or had the opportunity of testing her alleged resemblance.

About the middle of our third year at Cambridge, something happened. My father had a stroke of paralysis. I was summoned home, to find him speechless and helpless. I was not yet of age, and the property was under the management of our business agents--as, in fact, it had been during the last ten years. While I was waiting to see whether or not the malady were going to take a dangerous turn, a letter came from America; which I, my father being as he was, opened and read. It told me that my American grandfather was dead, and that his estates, valued at over a million of dollars, were bequeathed (with certain conditions which I need not specify) to myself.

This bequest gave me no pleasure, for I already had far more money than I knew what to do with. As I folded up the letter, the thought entered my mind, 'I wish Floyd had it!' For my cousin, who was intended by nature for another Monte Cristo, possessed barely more than sufficient means to keep up appearances withal. 'And why shouldn't he have it?' was my next inspiration; and with that I sat down in a chair to think it over.

If I were skilled in that sort of thing I dare say I might write a very interesting passage here. But since I am not, I will tell the upshot of my meditations in the fewest words possible. I made over my bequest to Floyd, arranging matters in such a way that he should be under the impression that it came to him direct from the testator, without my intervention. I said nothing about what I had done either to our own business agents, Messrs. Frisby and Faust, or to my father, who was not in a condition to hear anything yet. Everything being settled, and my father appearing to be on the mending hand, I went back to Cambridge, and dropped in quietly at Floyd's rooms.

The dear old boy was in great spirits, though, as his manner was, he showed little of it on the surface; but he told me what had happened, and I congratulated him with an artful assumption of surprise. He was going to start for America in a month, and 'run' his estate himself, leaving his father and sister in England. 'That sort of life wouldn't do for them, you know,' said he, leaning back against the mantelpiece and putting his hands in his pockets. 'But it'll suit me first-rate; I rather guess I'll make just about the everlastingest tip-top planter ever you see! Of course,' he added in his usual tone, 'the governor and Sis will come in for their full share of the plunder all the same: I mean to settle a hundred thousand sterling on her the first thing.'

We talked together till the small hours of the morning, and I must say I had never enjoyed an evening so much in my life. Floyd was just the fellow to be rich, and I had had the good luck to make him so without his being aware of it. At last we shook hands and said good-night, little thinking that we were not to meet again. But next morning came the telegram announcing my father's death. I went home by the next train. After the funeral came the crash. Old Mr. Frisby, the senior partner of the firm of our agents, came to me in a pitiable state of shame and anguish, with the news that Faust had stolen nearly the whole of my fortune, and had absconded none knew whither. If I realised what was left, it would amount to barely eight thousand pounds. In other words instead of being heir to twelve thousand a year, I must content myself with about two hundred and fifty.

I took pains to keep Floyd from any knowledge of my sudden poverty, because, especially should it ever chance to leak out that his estate was a present from me, I knew well enough what his generous heart would prompt him to do. So I let him sail for the New World without seeing me again. He remained on that side of the Atlantic; and after writing me one letter, which, upon reflection, I thought it best not to answer, we became lost to each other, so far as any communication was concerned. Nevertheless, I always thought of him as my dear and only friend, and I never doubted that I was as dear to him as he to me.

I may as well add, lest I should acquire a reputation for generosity which I was far from deserving, that my changed fortunes troubled me very little. In fact, I rather enjoyed the new order of things. I had always fancied I could paint pictures, and cherished a secret ambition to live by my brush. Here, then, was my opportunity. I went on the Continent; became a student of the Quartier Latin in Paris; wandered thence to Italy; and so, after several years of careless Bohemian existence, I found myself at length in Dresden. I hired part of a small third _étage_ on the Bautznerstrasse, set up my easel, and divided my time between that, the Gallery, and the music gardens. For six months all went well; then happened the event whereof I am now to write, and which threatened to upset my plans, my ambition, my self-respect and my peace of mind. And now, my digressions having run themselves out, I can no longer put off recounting the mortifying particulars.