CHAPTER IX
Quintin Ferrars was gone, and Miss Ballinger acknowledged to herself that she missed his visits greatly. His conversation, it is true, aroused her combativeness as no one else's did; but then, no one interested, and at the same time puzzled her, as did this strange man. It cannot be said that she thought much of him when alone, for her mind was still engrossed with the image of a very different person, between whom and herself a gulf, wider than the Atlantic, had been fixed. But in the human procession that passed daily before her eyes, no figure was as vivid as that of Ferrars, none that she could have missed as she did his. Under no circumstances could she have loved this man—his nature was not heroic. And the only men who had exercised, or could by any possibility ever exercise, an influence on her life, had, whether rightly or wrongly, seemed to her as heroes. For Quintin Ferrars she felt very sorry, but no respect. His existence appeared to be a wasted one. She admired his intellectual capacity; his very strangeness had a certain attraction for her; the knowledge that there was some real cause for his unhappiness, though she was ignorant of that cause, all made him an interesting person in her eyes. But there her feeling for him stopped. The more she studied his character, the more she felt that there was something which evaded her. He had shirked a duty; he had not fallen in a fair stand-up fight with life—he almost acknowledged as much—and it is not of such stuff that heroes are made.
But Grace Ballinger was a woman, and not above a woman's weaknesses. She liked appreciation—admiration—call it what you will; and, though possessed of no craving to have a man always at her feet, the constant occupation—it might almost be called the devotion—of a clever and original one was certainly agreeable to her. She did not even now realize all that this meant to Ferrars. He sought her as he did no one else; but his reticence as to his own feelings on every personal subject blinded her to the fact that she was growing to be of paramount importance in his scheme for the future. They had now been nearly a month in New York, and had met almost daily, yet it never occurred to her to regard his assiduity in a very serious light. Her view of it was that he found an intellectual pleasure in her society, nothing more. He was too self-absorbed in brooding over past troubles to feel any longer a passionate interest in any one. Mordaunt, standing further off, discovered what she did not. We cannot see the object accurately that is held too close to our eyes.
And so it came to pass that when he bade her good-by, with a certain rigidity and difficulty of utterance, she expressed her sorrow at his departure with more than her usual frankness.
"I am so sorry you are going. I hope you will try and be at Brackly when we are there."
"Yes. You may depend on that. Mrs. Courtly will write to me; she has promised."
"I fancy we shall not be there beyond the middle of February, and I think, from what my brother said yesterday, he means to go to Boston straight from here."
Mordaunt had dropped something more than this, to wit—that Miss Planter was a friend of Mrs. Courtly's, and was going to stay at Brackly in February. But Grace did not give this reason for the faith that was in her as regarded her brother's movements.
"I hope you are going to do your duty as a good American citizen," she said, smiling, as she shook his hand.
"I am going to fulfil the law, at all events," he returned, grimly. And then he departed.
What an odd man he was, to be sure! How difficult it was to understand him! Perhaps the explanation of it was that the lens of his mental photographic apparatus was ill-adjusted: not only were the shadows too black, the objects themselves were distorted; and the nearer they stood in relation to him, the more they were out of focus.
Mrs. Van Winkle's party that evening was no compromise. She had nailed her colors fast to the staff of fashion; and literature, save in her own fair person, was unrepresented. Mr. Sims, who stood on the borderland of the two worlds, and the young painter, Michael Angelo Brown, at present engaged on a portrait of Mrs. Van Winkle in the character of Diana, with a crescent on her head and a bow in her hand—these were the pinches of salt thrown in to flavor the social compound, with a regard to Miss Ballinger's appetite for something stronger than a fashionablesoufflé. It is true that bright creature, Mrs. Siebel, was of the party, whose shrewd perceptions and ebullient sense of fun irradiated any circle. But then, in Mrs. Van Winkle's eyes, she was first of all a woman of fashion; only a delightful human being afterwards. For Sir Mordaunt, Mrs. Van Winkle felt herself to be feast enough; but with the happy confidence of a woman who fears no rivalry, she had selected two pretty units of the "Four Hundred" to add brilliancy to the entertainment. She looked unusually well herself, in pale blue velvet, with powdered hair, and pearls. When Grace remarked how much they became her, she whispered,
"Diamonds are getting so vulgar! Look at the poor dear princess. She is always like a badly-madeblanc-mange, but to-night she looks as if she had been upset in a jeweller's window, and had got mixed up with the diamonds."
For the Princess Lamperti's ample white form was resplendent with jewels, two necklaces defining a waist which it would have taken a life-guardsman to encircle. Not wholly unlike a life-guardsman was Mr. George Ray, who was on her left, while the host sat between her and Miss Ballinger. He was a well-favored gentleman of fifty, with extremely good manners, and not much besides. The dinner was perfect, and the ingenuity with which it wascoloredgave rise to some amusement, of the thin, obvious kind which any one can enjoy. The table was covered with forget-me-nots growing out of moss, procured for Mrs. Van Winkle with infinite difficulty at this season. The candle-shades were pale blue; the bills of fare were printed, as were the names of the guests, on pale blue cards. Of course themenubegan with Blue Point oysters. Then there was aPotage à la Mazarin, having an occult reference to the tint associated with the cardinal of that name. This was followed byTruites au bleu, and what Mrs. Van Winkle had christened "True-blue Fillets of Salmon." After that there came a compote of "blue-rock pigeons," and I know not what other birds of the air, andentréesof meat which had been re-christened for the nonce. In the second course there was a jelly of blueberries, I remember, and finally themenuclosed with afondu au cordon bleu.
On the other side of Grace was Mr. Sims. He fired his little shots alternately at the hostess, the princess, and other ladies across the table, breaking up thetêtes-à-têteswith the laughter which followed his assaults.
"I never saw so becoming a 'fit of the blues' as your dress, Mrs. Van Winkle," he declared.
"It is quite too sweet of you to say so; you don't generally pay compliments."
"He would not have done so now but for the temptation of the pun," laughed Mrs. Siebel. "I wonder he did not get in something about 'blue stockings.'"
"It was an oversight," he replied, merrily. "Couldn't you have concocted a dish 'au bas-bleu,' Mrs. Van Winkle?"
"You don't suppose I did not think of it? My avoidance of that opprobrious term was deliberate. Literary women never understand the art of eating; I am the exception. With me it is afineart. Observe the combination in thismenu. The sequence of flavors is as delicately felt as the juxtaposition of colors on Titian's canvases."
"You mean it is a 'symphony in blue'?"
"Exactly. You think you are making an epigram, Mr. Sims. You are uttering the simple truth. There are no harsh discords here. You are led up from one dish to another; you may eat straight through this dinner. You will find that all the surprisesresolvethemselves, like the surprises in harmony."
"Great Scot!" cried Mr. Sims. "I had no idea eating was allied to music, as well as to painting! It only remains to drag in poetry."
"Oh!" interposed Grace, "she requires no dragging. Does not she step in of her own accord? From Homer downwards all the grand, healthy old poets take delight in the pleasures of the table. It is only the morbid, attenuated school that feed on rose-leaves."
"That reminds me of the 'Souls,' that exclusive society of æsthetes in London we have heard so much about," said Mrs. Van Winkle. "Are you a 'Soul,' Miss Ballinger?"
Grace laughed. "I am nobody, but I am not a 'Soul'."
"I should like to be one," sighed her hostess. "But must I abandon all the pleasures of the flesh to be admitted to this spiritual community?"
"No; some female 'Souls' are very corporeally active—a sort of 'Walkyre'—spirits on horseback. They ride; they hunt."
"In couples?" asked the hostess, with an air of infantine innocence.
"Only misanthropes like doing things alone," returned Grace, with a smile. "I am sure I don't."
"Nor I!" cried Mrs. Siebel.
"My dear, who is prepared to contradict you?" Mrs. Van Winkle played with a morsel of jelly on the end of her fork, as she spoke. "We all love humanity too much. Yes, I wish I were a 'Soul'!"
"Well!" said Sims, reflectively, with a funny twitch of his mouth, "you fence beautifully, and I have seen you dance apas seul—two recommendations, I believe, to Souldom." Then, turning to the large lady, who certainly looked as if she could neither fence nor dance apas seul, he continued, "And you, princess, what doyousay? Do you feel like being a 'Soul'?"
The princess paused, and looked grave, before she replied,
"I don't quite know what it all means, Mr. Sims; but if it has anything to do with ghosts, and visions, and second sight, I have the best right to join the society, for I am verycroyante. I have hadsuchexperiences! Ah!"
"Do tell us about them."
"A ghost story first hand! How delightful!" said several people round the table.
"Not now, not while we are at table," returned the princess. "Perhaps by and by." And no one had the bad taste to insist further.
But Mrs. Van Winkle, who, no matter at what cost, was never content to play second fiddle, here observed,
"I once saw a ghost—or what I took to be a ghost—in St. Petersburg, in the dusk of the evening, in my room. I was dreadfully frightened. It proved to be a Russian; those foreigners are so very enterprising. He had long shown his admiration. He now sprang at me with a drawn sword in his hand. Happily, I was near the bell, or it might have been very awkward."
"And what became of the ghost?" asked Mordaunt, biting his lips. "Did you have him arrested?"
"Oh, no, I felt too much compassion for him, poor man! Indeed, I was very much touched. There is so little romance in this present day."
"What a charming, comprehensive word that is, my dear Mrs. Van Winkle!" laughed Sims. "It includes murder, highway robbery, and now, I see, other little offences!"
A good deal of amusement was caused by this peculiar revelation, and one can only imagine the narrator intended that such should be the result. I am confident she rarely expected to be taken seriously. If she could shock or astonish her audience by her utterances she was satisfied. She had certainly driven the ghosts from the field.
But when dinner was over, and the men had rejoined the ladies in that bower of embroideries and perfume where Mrs. Van Winkle received her guests, lapped in languorous repose on satin cushions, and no one's face could be distinguished under the dim, irreligious light of silk-shrouded lamps, then the narrator of abnormal experiences, being pressed by her hostess, began, without reluctance, without a shadow of hesitation,
"It will be five years ago next May, I was in Rome and alone. The prince had left me to go to Palermo—on business, as he said. I had only been married three years at this time, and though I cannot say I was happy, no!—I still loved my husband. I was not completelydesillusionnée. I knew he wasvolage, but I had no reason to suspect that he was quite—how do you say?—estranged from me. I gave him a liberal allowance, over and above what had been settled on him at our marriage, and he always treated me with, well—with respect. He was notpassionné, no—but I thought,enfin, I thought it was not his nature. Well! he went to Palermo, and I had a letter from him in the course of a few days, saying his business was advancing favorably, though slowly. He would probably be detained longer than he expected. I was not anxious, I was not uneasy about him—why should I be?—when I went to bed that night. That made my dream the more extraordinary,tout à fait saisissante. I saw him in a garden, under a tree. Beside him stood a dark woman, whose face was quite distinct. I could have drawn it. She gave him some fruit."
"Were they in the condition of Adam and Eve?" murmured Mrs. Van Winkle, from her pile of satin cushions.
"Oh, no," continued the princess, gravely, "she had on a yellow gown, trimmed withbroderie Anglaise. I can see it now! He was dressed in gray tweed. He ate the fruit she gave him, and then gradually, gradually, I saw his face change color, and the expression, ah!il avait un air méchant. I had never seen him look like that before—he was almost green, his features hideously distorted. He fell down at her feet, and I knew that she had poisoned him. I woke with a scream!"
"No wonder. You must yourself have eaten something that disagreed with you, princess!" said Sims.
She shook her head. "No, but my dream disagreed with me! Ah! I was quiteboulversée, I could not sleep again, and still I saw them distinctly before me. In the morning I rang for my maid, and said I would start for Palermo. My family tried to dissuade me from following my husband, but I said I knew some misfortune had happened to him, or would happen, if I did not go. What I had dreamed was apresentiment; and so persuaded of this was I, that when I reached Naples, though a great hurricane was blowing, and I am a dreadful sailor—je souffre horriblement—I insisted on embarking. They told me the steamer was a very bad one, and really not fit to put to sea in such weather, but I was firm.Que voulez vous?I was possessed with the idea. We had a terrible passage, but at last we reached Palermo, and I drove to the Hôtel des Palmes. I was dreadfully nervous; I scarcely dared ask after my husband, but they told me he was quite well—he was in the garden, so I followed him. I could not rest till I had seen, with my own eyes, that he did not look as he had done in my dream. I found him under a tree, a palm-tree, in his gray tweed suit, seated beside a brunette dressed in yellow—that Madame Moretto,who has poisoned his life ever since!"
"And does that account for his looking as he does—so very unwholesome—princess?" asked Mrs. Van Winkle.
"Ah! I saw a change in that minute, when he looked up and perceived me. Ah! he turned green, just as I had seen him in my dream—d'un ton verdâtre—and his expression, it was terrible! That was the beginning of all my trouble, which lasted nearly five years, before I consented to divorce him. He went to live in Paris, and, having no Italian property, became a French subject. This enabled me to do so. Have I not reason,ma chere, to believe in spiritual warnings, second sight, and—and so on?"
Of course every one declared that it was the most interesting and remarkable instance of spiritual premonition that he or she had ever heard, direct from the fountain-head. Only Mr. Sims made a captious remark, to the effect that the vision seemed to have been quite useless—it had resulted in the princess being very seasick, and very unhappy some time before she need have been; otherwise, the warning had produced no effect, one way or the other.
Grace listened to all this in silence. It was amazing to her that any one could bring herself to relate deliberately so painful an episode in her past, to hand it over, as it were, for analysis to a cold and curious circle, eager, indeed, for "some new thing," but not even pretending to feel any warm sympathy for the lady's domestic woes. It confirmed Grace in the opinion that those woes could not be very deep-seated. No doubt this soft feather-bed of a woman had suffered to some extent, but not to the extent which she herself believed—not as a proud, passionate, sensitive nature would have suffered in like circumstances. To such a one it would have been impossible to make them the subject of after-dinner discussion, in a circle of the merest acquaintance.
She was at some distance from the princess, and Madame Siebel, who sat near her, whispered,
"You can take a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. He was dead sick of his wife five years ago, so she would have done better to set him free then."
"In England we don't think that sort of millstone should be so easily slipped off the neck," returned Grace, half seriously and half playfully. "She has only just divorced him, then?"
"Only just. He is waiting now, I believe, for Madame Moretto to divorceherhusband in order to marry her."
"Good gracious! Hasshegot a husband also? And what is the plea inhercase?—or is it the husband who divorcesher!"
"No. He is passive, I am told, in the matter. She pleads desertion, though of course that is all nonsense, for she is ever so rich, and left him years ago. The curious thing is, no one knew she had a husband until the prince was free to marry her. Then it came out she had been clandestinely married to some American, who had separated from her, when he discovered the sort of woman she was."
"Well! I must say these divorces by mutual consent seem very easily obtained in your country."
"Yes, if you are in the right State. I don't mean state of mind or body—I mean if you go and live for six months in a State where it is the law. Madame Moretto has come over here expressly for that purpose, and is living in Rhode Island, I am told, where divorce is made easy. It is not so in New York."
"But I have seen her here twice?"
"Oh! they have only been over for the day. It is a funny story, isn't it?—this sort of double game of chess. To make it complete, the American ought now to marry the princess."
"I should think she had had enough of matrimony."
"Oh, dear, no. She is just the woman to marry again. A husband is a luxury that sort of woman cannot forego. I shouldn't wonder if George Ray the Third were the fortunate man."
"That young Adonis? Do you mean that he—? Oh! impossible!"
"Impossible that he should propose? Not at all. He is awfully hard up. The only gold, I believe, he possesses is in his teeth." Here she laughed merrily. "Sometimes I think we take a pride in the amount of gold we stuff into our mouths. Talk about the gold-fields, I will back a fashionable churchyard to beat them as a mine of wealth."
Grace could not help laughing.
"I heard of a man who had a front tooth stuffed with a diamond, but I didn't believe it."
"Why not? Young men addicted to precious stones have so few opportunities of displaying them. If George Ray the Third marries the princess, I'll suggest to him that he should wear one of hers, instead of that lump of gold, in his eye-tooth."
The princess here rose. It was time to go to the assembly, of which she was a patroness, and whither nearly all the party present were bound.