“we are here,” wrote boo to her eldest brother half a year later. “it’s quite hot: one wants summer frocks. there are no end of germans and russes to play with; but i don’t like them. mammy’s got a new man made of millions, or rather she has not got him and it makes her cross. he gave me a gold cupid seal—so pretty. she took it away from me, and sent it as a wedding-present to daisy ffiennes. wasn’t that like mammy? she never speaks of you. she says uncle ronnie has made you a bad boy.”
the letter was dated from cannes.
jack had good sense enough to put the note in the roaring fire of old salt-encrusted ship logs which was burning on the great hearth of faldon’s central hall, before which he and many dogs were lying in the gloom of the december afternoon. he did not envy his sister the roses and mimosa and white lilac of cannes. his mother had gone there because everybody in the winter does go there, or to egypt, or to india; but she was out of temper with fate, as her little daughter had said. she did not wish for more adventures. she dreaded other tyrants. she wanted to have two things in one: liberty and money. of marriage she was afraid. where find another cocky?
still in her moments of sober reflection she knew that she must marry, or risk drifting into an insecure, shifty, and discreditable position. liaisons, however agreeable and amusing, are not sheet-anchors. besides, she had been on the verge of losing her reputation—she knew what the danger feels like; and to become one of the throng of people who live on their knees outside the gates which once opened wide to them would have been infinitely more odious to her than an over dose of chloral. she was duchess of otterbourne, but she was very much more in her own sight and that of her family; she was a courcy of faldon.
[475]that memory had been powerless to keep her feet straight in the path of honor; but it was strong enough to make her feel that she would die sooner than go down in the dust amongst the discrowned—the discrowned who live in pyrenean watering-places, or second-rate italian cities, or german baths out of their season, and are made much of at the hands of consuls’ wives and british chaplains, and who sneak back to their people’s country house in england, and are received there as a family obligation, and never more are seen in london between easter and goodwood. such an existence she would no more have led than she would have worn a three-guinea ready-made gown bought at an annual sale. she had always led the first flight in the hunting-field or out of it.
she had, though a very unpoetic personage, this in common with poets and grasshoppers, that she seldom looked beyond the immediate day. but now the immediate day frowned on her, grey and ugly; and, grasshopper-like, she began to feel the shiver and the rime of frost.
her income under settlement was enough, as her brother had more than once told her, to enable her to live very quietly at her dower-house, or at any quiet rural place with her children. but as she would infinitely have preferred a fatal dose of chloral to such an existence her future vaguely terrified her. it was no longer possible to rely upon ronald, and she found bankers and lenders were all fully alive to the fact that the widowed duchess of otterbourne with only her jointure was a very different person to lady kenilworth, who had always had the money potentialities of her lord’s future inheritance behind her, and had also had the ingenious ability in matters financial of cocky at her back.
poor cocky! whoever would have thought that she would have so sincerely missed his support as she now did?
her aunt’s legacy was well-nigh finished; she had spent it recklessly. when it had come to her it had seemed inexhaustible, but it actually dissolved as fast as a water-ice in a ballroom. she was much tormented by the sense of her poverty. she felt that she could not afford to run any more risks in supplying the deficiencies[476] in her exchequer. she knew that her brother was now aware of her tendency to replace resources by ingenious intrigue; and any step which would compromise her afresh she was afraid to take.
what on earth could she do?
what a wretch william massarene had been not to leave her some portion of his immense wealth! she thought about it until she persuaded herself that she had been deeply wronged. after torturing her as he had done surely he should have left her at peace for the rest of her actual life! she really thought so. if he had only left his fortune to his wife she could have mesmerized that dull, simple soul into anything. but the fortune had all gone to the woman she hated the most in the world, that stately, lily-like, silent person who had considered that her own songs were not good enough to be sung at the harrenden house concerts; and who had sent her all those receipts and counterfoils without even her compliments, just as you might send her boxes after a dismissed maid!
she had no inclination to write good or bad music now; she was absorbed in the discords of her life. her tradespeople in paris and london were no longer pliant; they even wrote rudely; beaumont no doubt had talked. meanwhile she wanted money every moment as a plant wants air.
there was a man near her in cannes who was made of money and of whom she had often thought: adrian vanderlin. but how to reach him she did not know. he was a hermit. he had a beautiful place three miles from cannes, and was at that moment in residence there; so much she learned from an archduke who had been to see him, but the rest was not easy even to her audacity. vanderlin, who had divorced his wife and was a financier, would scarcely, she reasoned, be an ingénu. if she could see him—well, she had few doubts as to the effect she produced on those who saw her. experience had justified her optimism.
one day she drove through the olive-woods which were on his estate and through which a drive had been cut which was open to the public. she saw the château at a[477] distance; it was built in the style of françois premier, and was at once elegant and stately; it had long terraces which looked out on to the sea. it was precisely the sort of place to which she would like to come when east winds were blowing down piccadilly and north winds down the champs elysées.
“how could that woman be so stupid as to separate from him?” she said to the archduke in whose carriage she was. that gentleman smiled.
“as to give him any cause to separate from her? well, no one knows the rights of the drama. she was very young and extremely beautiful. many suppose that she was sacrificed to intrigues of her father’s.”
“but there must have been evidence against her,” said mouse, who had a great dislike to this woman whom she had never seen.
“there is such a thing as suborned witnesses,” replied the archduke. “besides, in german courts divorce is given on slight grounds. myself, i think vanderlin regrets it, or else i do not know why a man of his years and his wealth should shut himself up away from the world as he does.”
“but he must be seen in paris?”
“by men of business; scarcely anyone else. he never goes into society.”
“but you see him, sir?”
“on business, on business.”
“could you not show me the château?”
“i grieve to refuse you, but i should not venture. i should look like mephisto leading a temptress of the venusberg to disturb an anchorite in a paraclete.”
“what a fool he must be!” said mouse with sincere conviction.
the archduke laughed.
“dear duchess, there are people, even men, to whom, when the affections go wrong, life seems worthless. of course you do not understand that. your mission is to inspire despairing passions, not to feel them.
“you are a charming creature,” he thought as he spoke. “but you are as keen after gold as a stoat after poultry. i shall not put you on the track of vanderlin’s. he is a[478] great capitalist; but such women as you would eat up the treasure of an empire and still cry ‘give!’—daughter of the horse-leech as you are, with your innocent eyes and your childlike smile.”
mouse said no more on the subject, but she carefully surveyed the approaches of the château and the shore which stretched immediately beneath its terraces. she had a plan in her fertile mind.
she was as at home in the water as a fish; the family at faldon had always lived half their days in the sea.
early the next morning she rowed herself out in a small rowing-boat which belonged to one of her friends; she had boo with her.
“we will go and have a bathe in deep water,” she said to the child. they frequently did so. but she did not go out very far, and she steered eastward where the woods of vanderlin’s château rose above the shore. in front of the house, and in sight of it, she took advantage of a moment in which boo was busy clapping her hands at some gulls to pull up the plug in the bottom of the boat. it began to leak and then to fill. she gave a cry as the water welled up over her ankles, and drawing the child to her rapidly pulled off boo’s clothes, leaving her in her chemise and drawers.
“jump on my back and put your arms round my throat. don’t hold too hard to choke me. don’t be frightened—i will take you to shore.”
with the little girl on her shoulders she cleared herself of the boat as it filled to its edges, and let herself go into the sea, which was quite calm and not very cold in the noontide. boo, who had her mother’s high spirit, and was used to dance about in sea surf, was not nervous and did not cling too closely. mouse struck out toward the beach somewhat embarrassed by her clothing, but swimming with the skill which she had acquired in childish days in the rougher waters of the irish channel.
she knew that if anyone was looking through a binocular on the terraces above she must make a very effective picture—like venus aphrodite bearing eros. boo, who was amused, rode triumphant, keeping her golden hair and her black gainsborough hat out of the water. some[479] men who were on the beach holloaed and ran to get a boat out of a boathouse lower on the shore, but before they could launch it mouse and her little daughter had come ashore laughing and dripping like two playfellows. their little skiff, turned keel upward, was floating away to the eastward as the wind drove it.
“there will be several napoleons to pay for that,” she thought, as she saw the derelict going fast out of sight. “never mind if one gets into the enchanted castle.”
at that moment of her landing, whilst she stood shaking the salt water off her on to the sand, a voice addressed her from the marble sea-wall above:
“have you had an accident, madam? you have displayed great courage. pray come up those steps; my house is at your disposal.”
“god helps those who help themselves,” thought mouse, as she looked up and saw a man above who, she felt certain, must be adrian vanderlin. “i shall be glad to dry my little daughter’s clothes,” she said, as she began to ascend the stone steps. “the plug of the boat was rotten; it filled before one could call out even. if you have any outhouse you can put us in—we are as wet as two newfoundlands.”
boo, feeling that it would be more interesting to do so, had begun to tremble a little and cry, looking a very pretty watery baby-syren.
“don’t cry, boo,” said her mother. “you know you’re not frightened a bit, only cold.”
“i have sent to my women servants to bring you cloaks,” said the owner of the château as he came down the steps to meet her, unconscious of the comedy which had been acted for him. “it was very venturesome,” he added, “to come in a rowing-boat with no one to aid you.”
“it was very stupid of me not to examine the condition of the boat,” she replied. “as for danger there was none. i kept close to land, and my child and i swim like fish.”
“so i have seen; but the mediterranean, if only a salt-water lake as some say, can be a very turbulent one.”
at that moment his servants came, bringing wraps in which they hastened to enfold the lady and her little girl,[480] who were beginning to feel really chilly. they went up to the house, over whose façade the appreciative eyes of mouse ranged enviously.
“pray consider everything here at your disposal,” he said courteously. “my housekeeper will take you upstairs, and if you will allow me to advise you, you will go to bed. meantime, can i send to inform your people?”
she thanked him gracefully, not too warmly, and gave him her address in cannes.
“if you could get my maid over with some clothes i should be glad,” she said, as she went up the staircase looking, as no other woman would have looked, lovely despite the thick wraps and the soaked hair.
“but you have not told me your name?”
“duchess of otterbourne,” she called back to him, whilst she went up the stairs followed by boo, who by this time had grown cold and equally cross.
she was taken into a beautiful bedchamber of the louis quinze style, with silver dogs on the hearth where a wood fire already blazed.
“it was really very well done,” she thought with self-complacency. “i only hope to goodness boo will not take cold. that man must be vanderlin himself. he is more good-looking than i expected; and for an anchorite he is civil.”
“they’re silver,” said boo, surveying the andirons, whilst two maids were rubbing dry her rosy limbs. “so’s the mirror,” she added as she looked around her after drinking a cup of hot milk; after which she allowed herself to be put to bed and soon fell fast asleep.
her mother sat by the fire wrapped in blankets and eider-down.
even to boo’s busy and suspicious intelligence it did not occur that the plug had been pulled out on purpose. the little secret was quite safe in her mother’s own brain.
“this is a very nice house,” said boo with condescension to the owner of it when, three hours later, the maid and the clothes having arrived from cannes, they went downstairs with no trace in either of their late immersion in salt water, and saw their host in his library.
[481]“i am honored by your approval,” said vanderlin.
“boo is a great connoisseur,” said her mother.
vanderlin was a tall and slender man, with a handsome face, spoiled by melancholy and fatigue; his eyes were dreamy and gentle, his manner was grave and gave the impression that his thoughts were not greatly in what he was saying; he at all times spoke little.
he smiled at the child indulgently. “i hope she has felt no ill effects,” he said to her mother. “nor yourself?”
“they took too good care of us,” replied mouse. “it is so very kind of you to have been so hospitable to two drowned rats.”
“i am happy to have been of use.” he said it with perfect politeness, but the tone suggested to her that he would be grateful if she went away and left him to his solitude.
the indifference stimulated her vanity.
“you have not told me who you are,” she said with that abruptness which in her was graceful. “but i think i know. you are baron vanderlin.”
he assented.
“why do you not see people?” she asked brusquely. “why do you shut yourself up all alone in this beautiful place?”
“i come here for rest.”
“but even in paris or london or berlin you shun society?”
“i do not care for it.”
“what a pity!”
“do you think so?”
“certainly i do. no one should live alone who is not old and blind and poor.”
he smiled slightly.
“if one were old and blind and poor, one would be probably left alone, malgré soi.”
“ah, you are a pessimist! i am not. i think the world very delightful and people very good.”
“your experiences have been fortunate—and brief.”
he looked vaguely round the room as if he looked for somebody to take her away.
boo, who had been examining the library, came up to[482] him with a little agate cupid, a paper weight; the cupid had gold wings and quiver, and was a delicate work of art. “it’s pretty,” she said; “will you let me have it?”
“pray keep it,” said vanderlin. her mother scolded her and protested, she was indeed considerably annoyed at the child’s effrontery; but boo kept tight hold on the cupid.
“gentleman don’t want it,” she said. “he’s too old for toys.”
he laughed. he had not laughed for a long time.
“have you any children?” asked boo.
“no, my dear.”
“why haven’t you?”
“they are treasures not accorded to all.”
“treasure is great anxiety, whether it is your kind of treasure or mine, m. vanderlin,” said boo’s mother. “you have been very kind to this naughty little girl; and we have trespassed too long on your hospitality. yet, if it wouldn’t bore you too much, i should so like to see something of the house before i go. i have often wished to enter as i sallied past it or drove through your olive woods.”
he assented to her wish with a reluctance which she ignored; and he showed her over the chief part of his château, which contained much which was beautiful and rare. boo, wishing for everything she saw but warned by her mother’s eyes not to ask for anything more, went jumping and running through the rooms, her hat in her hand and the light on her golden head.
“you have several children, i think,” said vanderlin to her mother.
“four,” replied mouse; and she felt that she would have preferred for this hermit to know nothing about her by reputation.
“are they all with you?”
“no; they are little boys; their guardians have more to do with them than i.”
there was a sadness in her tone which made him look at her with a certain interest.
“law is very hard on women,” she added. “especially as regards their offspring.”
[483]she was, to men of serious temper, most interesting in her maternal feeling, and it was genuine in a sense though used with artifice. vanderlin looked at her with less indifference and unwillingness, but she made little way in his intimacy; he remained distant in his courtesy, and as she drove away with baskets of roses for herself and of fruit for her little daughter she felt discontentedly that she had gone through the trouble of her invention, and spent the money which the lost boat would cost, for small purpose.
boo turned and looked back at the turrets of the château already distant above its woods.
“that’s a nice man,” she said decidedly. “won’t you marry him, mammy?”
her mother colored at such unexpected divination of her own projects.
“what odious things you say, boo,” she answered; “and how odiously you behaved, asking for things in that bare-faced way. i have told you fifty times never to ask.”
“i shouldn’t have got it else,” replied boo, calmly and unmoved, taking the cupid out of the pocket of her fur paletôt, and contemplating it with satisfaction. she had improved in the science of looting since the day when her mother had made her give back the gold box to mrs. massarene.
as the carriage drove along the sea-road vanderlin returned to the solitude of his library.
it had been unwelcome to him to be obliged to entertain them, and yet now that they were gone he momentarily missed them, the gay bright presence of the child and the graceful nonchalance in speech and movement of the woman. it was years since either child or woman had been in the rooms of les mouettes.
the days passed and brought her no recompense whatever for her self-inflicted immersion in the cold january waves. the boat had been found and restored to its owner, so it did not cost her very much. but the sense of failure irritated her exceedingly. boo importuned her several times to return to the château of the silver dogs, but only encountered a sharp reprimand and was scolded[484] for effrontery. the cupid had been taken away from her and found its home in her mother’s dispatch-box till it was sent as a wedding-gift to somebody who was being married in the fog in belgravia. boo resented the injustice bitterly and meditated compensation or revenge. more than once she was on the point of starting by herself for les mouettes, but it was far off, her feet would not take her there, and she could not get away in a boat because her governess or her maid was always after her. “if i could only get there alone he’d give me a lot of things,” she thought; she could see the promontory on which it stood some five miles off to westward. but she had to stay in cannes, and be walked out by her women, and play stupid games with little muscovite princesses, pale and peevish, and little german countesses, rustic and rosy. mammy took little notice of her. “she’s always nasty when she’s got no money,” reflected boo.
boo knew that there was a scarcity of money.
one day, as she was walking with her governess, which she hated, she saw two gentlemen on the other side of a myrtle hedge. she kissed her hand to one of them and rushed headlong to where a break in the hedge enabled her to join them.
“good morning!” she cried, rapturously throwing her arms about vanderlin. he looked down at her, surprised at such a welcome.
“is it you, my little friend? how is your mother?”
“why haven’t you been to see us?” asked boo.
he smiled.
“i am remiss in those matters. i need education.”
“i’ll tell you what to do,” said boo. “i know what people ought to do. come and see mammy now.”
“not now, my dear. i have other engagements.”
boo’s brows knit together.
“people break engagements when i tell them,” she said with hauteur.
“mine are business engagements.”
“come!” she said with a stamp of one small foot.
“no, my dear, i will call on you at three if you wish it so much.”
“that is a rude way to speak.”
[485]“i am not a courtier, my dear. run away now. i am occupied. i will call on you at three.”
boo was forced to be content with this compromise; she looked after him as he walked on with his companion, a prime minister.
“he’s made of millions,” she said to her governess, and her little face had a reverential look upon it.
her mother was at home at three o’clock in the pretty room with its windows opening on to a flower-filled balcony which cost so much in the first hotel in cannes. she was reading, and boo, at a table, was dabbling with some water-color paints, when he who was “made of millions” entered, being faithful to his word.
“your little daughter reminded me that i have been to blame in not earlier doing myself this honor,” he said as he bent over her hand: she thought that he did not look either honored or enthusiastic.
she had a vague sense of hostility to her in him which stimulated her interest and her intentions.
“you owed no duty to two shipwrecked waifs whom you entertained only too amiably,” she said with a charming smile. “i am surprised that you have given us a thought.”
he had scarcely given her a thought, but he could not tell her so.
he remained with her half an hour, talking in a somewhat absent manner of french literature and of german music.
“what’ll you give me, mammy?” said boo when he had taken his leave, as she dropped down at her mother’s feet.
“give you? what do you mean?” said mouse, who was irritated that he had not invited her to his château.
“what’ll you give me, mammy?” repeated boo; and her upraised saucy imperious eyes said plainly, “reward me for bringing the person you wanted or i shall tell him you’ve sent his cupid—my cupid—as a wedding-present to daisy ffiennes.”
“i will give you a kiss first,” said mouse with apparent ignorance of the meaning of the upraised eyes, “and then i will give you a drive. run away.”
[486]to boo the recompense seemed small besides the greatness of the service rendered. but her short years of life had been long enough to convince her that people were not grateful.
“man’s made of millions,” she said dreamily when she was seated by her mother’s side in the victoria and vanderlin, driving a pair of horses on his homeward way, passed them.
“i believe he is,” said her mother. “but his millions are nothing to us.”
boo turned her head away that she might grin unrepressed, showing all her pretty teeth to an eucalyptus tree on the road.
her mother did not like vanderlin. his grave abstracted manner, his visible indifference to herself, his somewhat ceremonious words bored her, chilled her; she felt in his presence very much as she did when in church.
but she intended him to marry her. she fancied he was weak and unintelligent; she thought she would do as she liked with him and the millions which were undoubtedly his. on his part he would benefit, for he wanted rousing and being reconciled to the world. what was the use of the millions if there were nobody to spend them? she knew that no one could distance her in the art of making money fly about and diffuse itself.
she would much sooner have married wuffie.
wuffie was his serene highness prince woffram of karstein-lowenthal; he was twenty-four years old, very good-looking, very mirthful and pleasure-loving, very popular and sociable; he was extremely in love with her, and would have given her all he possessed with rapture. but, alas! that all was represented by a rank which was negotiable in the marriage market, and bills which were not negotiable anywhere. he was a fourth son, and his parents were so poor that daddy gwyllian declared he knew for a fact that, when they were dining alone, they had the volkzeitung outspread for a tablecloth to save their palatial damask. wuffie was charming, but matrimonially he was impossible.
wuffie was then at cannes, floating himself in the best society, as penniless princes of his fatherland alone can[487] do. she liked him; she had even more than liking for him, but she kept him at a respectful distance, for he did not accord with the grave intentions with which she had swum toward the terraces of les mouettes. in racing parlance, she did not dare put her money on him for any big event.
“why am i out in the cold, darling?” he asked sorrowfully of boo, who was always consulted by her mother’s admirers as an unfailing aneroid.
boo shook her head and pursed up her lips.
“why?” insisted the poor prince. “you know everything, boo.”
this appeal to her omniscience prevailed.
“you’re very pretty, wuffie,” she said, caressing his golden hair, which was as bright as her own. “you’re very pretty, and you’re great fun. but you know, poor, poor wuffie, you haven’t got a pfennig to spend.”
“come and see, boo,” said wuffie, stung by such a statement into mad expenditure, which resulted in the purchase for boo of a toy opera-house, with orchestra, costumes, and personages complete, which had, for three days, been the object of her ardent desires in a shop window in nice.
“i’ll sing all the parts myself,” she said rapturously.
“you must give the tenor’s to me,” said the purchaser of it, with a double meaning.
“tenors is always spitted,” said boo solemnly. “they’re always spitted—or poisoned.”
her mother passed some days in perplexed meditation. she felt that all the charms of her ever-irresistible sorcery would be thrown away on the owner of that delicious sea-palace, and that, as matters now stood, there was not a shadow of reason for the threat of prince khristof to be put into execution. but she was tenacious, and did not like to acknowledge herself beaten. she could not readily believe that vanderlin was so different to other men that he could in the end remain wholly uninfluenced by her. the great difficulty was to approach him, for she felt that she had already committed herself to more than was wise or was delicate in her advances to him in his solitude. she cast about her for some deus ex machina that she[488] could set in motion, and decided on the old austrian archduke.
the archduke was an old man in years, but not in temperament, and he was highly sensible of her attractions; she did very much as she pleased with him, and he, sternest of martinets and harshest of commanding officers, was like a ball of feathers in her hands. with great adroitness, and the magnetism which every charming woman exercises, she so interested him by her descriptions of les mouettes, that he was inspired by a desire of seeing the place for himself, and was induced to overcome both his well-bred dislike to intruding on a recluse, and his imperial reluctance to cross the threshold of a man not noble. in the end, so well did she know how to turn men and things to her own purposes, that, despite the mutual reluctance of both the guest and the host, vanderlin did, taken at a disadvantage one day, when he met them all three together, invite the old general to breakfast, and invited also herself and her little girl, and the invitations were promptly accepted. it was impossible to be more perfectly courteous than vanderlin was on the occasion, or to show more urbanity and tact than he did in his reception of them; but even she, who could easily persuade herself of most things which she wished to believe, could not fail to see that the entertainment was a weariness to him—a concession, and an unwilling one, to the wishes of an aged prince with whom his banking-house had, for many years, had relations.
no one was ever, she thought, so gracefully courteous and so impenetrably indifferent as her host was. the child alone seemed to interest him; and boo, who had taken her cue unbidden from her mother, was charming, subdued, almost shy, and wholly bewitching. she had a genuine respect for the man made of millions.
the archduke, after the luncheon, tired by his perambulations over the large house, and having eaten and drunk largely, fell asleep on a sofa with some miniatures, which he was looking at, lying on his knees; he was sunk in the heavy slumber of age and defective digestion. not to disturb him, vanderlin and she conversed in low tones at some distance from him, whilst the gentleman of his[489] household, who had accompanied him, discreetly played a noiseless game of ball with boo on the terrace outside the windows.
she, who was greatly daring, thought that now or never was the moment to find out what her host’s feelings were toward the woman whom he had divorced. it was difficult, and she knew that it was shockingly ill-bred to invade the privacy of such a subject, but she felt that it was the only way to get even with khris kar.
they were in a room consecrated to the portraits of women—a collection made by vanderlin’s father—chiefly portraits of the eighteenth century, some oils, some pastels, some crayons, and most of them french work, except a romney or two and several conway miniatures. she had looked, admired, criticised them with that superficial knowledge of the technique and jargon of art which is so easily acquired in the world by people to whom art, quâ art, is absolutely indifferent. she said the right thing in the right place, displaying culture and accurate criticism, and looking, as she always did, like a brilliant romney herself, very simply attired with a white gown, a blue ribbon round her waist, and a straw hat, covered with forget-me-nots, on her hair.
the room was in shade and silence, full of sweetness from great china bowls of lilies of the valley; the old man slept on with his chin on his chest; the sound of the sea and the smothered ripple of childish laughter came from without. now or never, she thought, and turned to vanderlin.
“what an exquisite place this is! what a pity you are all alone in it.”
“solitude has its compensations, if not its distractions,” he answered; he was profoundly distrustful of her simple, natural, friendly manner, which seemed to him more dangerous than any other; he believed it to be assumed on purpose to put him off his guard. he thought the circe who now endeavored to beguile him one of the loveliest women he had ever seen, and he felt convinced that she was also one of the most dangerous. but she aroused neither interest nor curiosity in him, though his mind acknowledged her potent charms.
[490]“do you never regret?” she asked abruptly.
“who can outlive youth without regret?” he replied. he was hostile to her in his mind. he felt her charm, but he resented her approaches. he could not but perceive her desire to draw him into confidential conversation, and the reserve which was natural to him increased in proportion to her persistent endeavor to overcome it.
in herself, she was irritated and discouraged; but she concealed both feelings, and summoned all her courage.
“is there a portrait of your wife here?” she asked abruptly, turning and facing him.
he grew pale to his lips, and an expression of intense pain passed over his countenance.
“madame,” he said very coldly, “that lady’s name must not be mentioned to me.”
“oh, you know, i am a very impertinent person!” she answered lightly. “perhaps you will say i am a very ill-bred one. but her story has always had a fascination for me. they say she is such a very beautiful person.”
he said nothing; he retained his composure with difficulty; this audacious stranger probed a wound which he would not have allowed his most intimate friend to touch.
“i know her father very well,” she continued, disregarding the visible offence and suffering with which he heard her; “he has sometimes spoken of her to me. he is not very scrupulous. don’t you think there may have been some misunderstanding, some misrepresentation, some intentional mischief?”
vanderlin, with increasing difficulty, controlled his anger and his emotion.
“i do not discuss these matters,” he said with great chillness. “allow me, madame, to remind you that the privilege of your acquaintance is to me a very recent honor.”
“and you think me very intrusive and insupportable? oh! i quite understand that. but i have heard things—and it seems a pity—you are not old enough to mope all by yourself like this; and if there was any mistake?”
“there was none.”
he said it between his teeth; the recollections she evoked were fraught for him with intolerable torture, and[491] he could have taken this intruder by her shoulders and thrust her out of his presence if he had not been restrained by the habits and self-command of a man of the world.
“but she ruins your life. you do not forget her?” said his unwelcome visitant.
“i shall not replace her, madame,” replied vanderlin curtly, weary of the cross-examination, and wondering, half divining, what the scope of it might be.
“ah, there you are so right!” mouse murmured. “how can the ruling of a judge undo what is done, efface what is written on the heart, or make the past a tabula rasa? you think me an impertinent, tiresome person, i am sure, but i must say to you how glad, how very glad i should be, if i could ever prove to you that you wronged the countess zu lynar.”
“why do you speak of such things?” said vanderlin, his self-control momentarily deserting him. “does one put out the light of one’s life, of one’s soul, on mere suspicion? you do not know what you are saying. you torture me. you will make me forget myself. be silent, i tell you; be silent!”
she looked at him, very sweetly, without offence.
“i understand. you love this woman still. she was the mother of your dead child. i understand—oh! so completely! well, if ever i can prove to you that i am right and you are wrong, i shall be very glad, for i am quite sure that you will never care for any other person. it may seem to you very impertinent, but i have an idea—an idea—— never mind, if there be any grounds for it, time will show.”
“you speak very strangely, madame,” said vanderlin, agitated to a degree which it was hard for him to conceal, yet extremely suspicious of her motives.
“i dare say i do,” she answered without offence, “for i know nothing whatever, and i conjecture a great deal; very feminine that, you will say. hush! the archduke is stirring.”
at that moment the archduke awoke from his slumber, astonished to find himself where he was, and looking round for his missing gentleman. vanderlin hastened, of course, to his side, and the tête-à-tête was over, but it had[492] lasted long enough for her to be certain that it would be as easy to raise the sunken galleys of carthage from the violet seas beyond the windows as to revive passion in the heart of her host.
she hastened to leave him and go out on to the terrace to tell boo to be quiet, for she had, as she had truly said, no knowledge whatever, and merely some vague impressions suggested by the visit and the warning of prince khris. but she had gleaned two certainties from her conversation with vanderlin—one, that he had never ceased to regret his divorced wife, the other that it would be as much use to woo a marble statue as to attempt to fascinate this man, whose heart was buried in the deep sea grave of a shipwrecked passion. she had read of such passions, and seen them represented on the stage, but she had never before believed in their existence. now that she did believe in them, such a waste of opportunities seemed to her supremely idiotic. the idea of a financier, a man of the world, a crœsus of paris and berlin, sitting down to weep for the broken jug of spilt milk, for the shattered basket of eggs, like the farm-girl in the fable! what could be sillier or less remunerative? but she remembered she had often heard that the cleverest men in public business were always the greatest fools in private life.
she drove away in the radiance of the late afternoon in the archduke’s carriage, boo sitting opposite to her holding disconsolately a bouquet of orchids, of which the rarity did not compensate to her for not having got anything else.
“what a pity that man does not marry again,” said the old gentleman, as they passed through the olive and ilex woods of the park.
“i believe he is in love with his lost wife,” said mouse.
“very possibly,” replied the archduke. “i remember her as a young girl; her beauty was quite extraordinary; it was her misfortune, for it was the cause of his jealousy.”
“jealous! that serene impassive man?”
“the serenity is acquired, and the impassiveness is an armor. he is a person of strong passions and deep affections.[493] he adored his wife, and i have always supposed that his susceptibilities were played upon by some iago.”
“but what iago? and why?”
“her father, perhaps, and out of spite. but i really know nothing,” said the archduke, recollecting himself, the good wines of les mouettes having loosened his tongue to unusual loquacity.
“he didn’t give me anything to-day!” said boo woefully from the front seat; she was unrewarded for her painful goodness, for her sweetly-imitated shyness, for the self-denial with which she had held her tongue, and bored herself to play ball noiselessly with that stout, bald, florid aide-de-camp.
the archduke laughed.
“giving is a delightful privilege,” he said; “but when we know that all the world is expecting us to give, the pastime palls. adrian vanderlin has felt that from the time he was in his nursery. you must allow me to remedy his omission in this instance, my charming little friend.”
mouse went home sorely out of temper; it seemed to her quite monstrous that two persons, like this man and billy’s daughter, should each have had command given them of a vast fortune by which they were each only bored, whilst she who would have spent such a fortune so well, and with so much enjoyment, was left a victim to the most sordid anxieties. there was certainly something wrong in the construction of the universe. she felt almost disposed to be a socialist.
as she went up the staircase of her hotel she was roused from her meditations by boo’s voice, which was saying plaintively again, “he didn’t give me anything to-day!”
“i am very glad he did not,” said her mother. “you are a greedy, shameless, gobbling little cat.”
“you’re the cat and i’m your kitten,” thought her young daughter, but boo, saucy and bold as she was, never dared to be impudent to her mother.
when they had left him vanderlin went up to his bedchamber, unlocked a drawer in a cabinet, and took out of it two portraits, one of his divorced wife, the other of her dead child.
[494]he looked at them long with slow, hot tears welling up into his eyes.
he would have given all the millions which men envied him to have had the child playing at his side, and the mother with her hand in his.
a sorrow of the affections may not affect the health, the strength, the mind, the occupations, or the general life of a man, but it embitters it as a single drop of wormwood can embitter the whole clearness and brightness of a bowl of pure water; the bowl may be of silver, may be of gold, but the water in it is spoilt for ever; and he who must drink from it envies the peasant the wooden cup which he fills and refills at a purling stream.
