It has been said of the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib tongue. To explain the whereabouts of the Talleyrand Club were only a work of supererogation. Many hansom cabmen know it. Hansom cabmen know more than they are credited with.
The Talleyrand, as its name implies, is a diplomatic club, but ambassadors and ministers enter not its portals. They send their juniors. Some of these latter are in the habit of stating that London is the hub of Europe and the Talleyrand smoking-room its grease-box. Certain is it that such men as Claude de Chauxville, as Karl Steinmetz, and a hundred others who are or have been political scene-shifters, are to be found in the Talleyrand rooms.
It is a quiet club, with many members and sparse accommodation. Its rooms are never crowded, because half of its members are afraid of meeting the other half. It has swinging glass doors to its every apartment, the lower portion of the glass being opaque, while the upper moiety affords a peep-hole. Thus, if you are sitting in one of the deep, comfortable chairs to be found in all these small rooms, you will be aware from time to time of eyes and a bald head above the ground glass. If you are nobody, eyes and bald head will prove to be the property of a gentleman who does not know you, or knows you and pretends that he does not. If you are somebody, your solitude will depend upon your reputation.
There are quite a number of bald heads in the Talleyrand Club—bald heads surmounting youthful, innocent faces. The innocence of these gentlemen is quite remarkable. Like a certain celestial, they are “childlike and bland”; they ask guileless questions; they make blameless mistakes in respect to facts, and require correction, which they receive meekly. They know absolutely nothing, and their thirst for information is as insatiable as it is unobtrusive.
The atmosphere is vivacious with the light sound of many foreign tongues; it bristles with the ephemeral importance of cheap titles. One never knows whether one’s neighbor is an ornament to the Almanac de Gotha, or a disgrace to a degenerate colony of refugees.
Some are plain Messieurs, Seqores, or Herren. Bluff foreigners with upright hair and melancholy eyes, who put up philosophically with a cheaper brand of cigar than their souls love. Among the latter may be classed Karl Steinmetz—the bluffest of the bluff—innocent even of his own innocence.
Karl Steinmetz in due course reached England, and in natural sequence the smoking-room—room B on the left as you go in—of the Talleyrand.
He was there one evening after an excellent dinner taken with humorous resignation, smoking the largest cigar the waiter could supply, when Claude de Chauxville happened to have nothing better or nothing worse to do.
De Chauxville looked through the glass door for some seconds. Then he twisted his waxed mustache and lounged in. Steinmetz was alone in the room, and De Chauxville was evidently—almost obviously—unaware of his presence. He went to the table and proceeded to search in vain for a newspaper that interested him. He raised his eyes casually and met the quiet gaze of Karl Steinmetz.
“Ah!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Steinmetz.
“You—in London?”
Steinmetz nodded gravely.
“Yes,” he repeated.
“One never knows where one has you,” Claude de Chauxville went on, seating himself in a deep arm-chair, newspaper in hand. “You are a bird of passage.”
“A little heavy on the wing—now,” said Steinmetz.
He laid his newspaper down on his stout knees and looked at De Chauxville over his gold eye-glasses. He did not attempt to conceal the fact that he was wondering what this man wanted with him. The baron seemed to be wondering what object Steinmetz had in view in getting stout. He suspected some motive in the obesity.
“Ah!” he said deprecatingly. “That is nothing. Time leaves its mark upon all of us. It was not yesterday that we were in Petersburg together.”
“No,” answered Steinmetz. “It was before the German Empire—many years ago.”
De Chauxville counted back with his slim fingers on the table—delightfully innocent.
“Yes,” he said, “the years seem to fly in coveys. Do you ever see any of our friends of that time—you who are in Russia?”
“Who were our friends of that time?” parried Steinmetz, polishing his glasses with a silk handkerchief. “My memory is a broken reed—you remember?”
For a moment Claude de Chauxville met the full, quiet, gray eyes.
“Yes,” he said significantly, “I remember. Well—for instance, Prince Dawoff?”
“Dead. I never see him—thank Heaven!”
“The princess?”
“I never see; she keeps a gambling house in Paris.”
“And little Andrea?”
“Never sees me. Married to a wholesale undertaker, who has buried her past.”
“En gros?”
“Et en ditail.”
“The Count Lanovitch,” pursued De Chauxville, “where is he?”
“Banished for his connection with the Charity League.”
“Catrina?”
“Catrina is living in the province of Tver—we are neighbors—she and her mother, the countess.”
De Chauxville nodded. None of the details really interested him. His indifference was obvious.
“Ah! the Countess Lanovitch,” he said reflectively, “she was a foolish woman.”
“And is.”
M. de Chauxville laughed. This clumsy German ex-diplomat amused him immensely. Many people amuse us who are themselves amused in their sleeve.
“And—er—the Sydney Bamboroughs,” said the Frenchman, as if the name had almost left his memory.
Karl Steinmetz lazily stretched out his arm and took up theMorning Post. He unfolded the sheet slowly, and having found what he sought, he read aloud:
“‘His Excellency the Roumanian Ambassador gave a select dinner-party at 4 Craven Gardens, yesterday. Among the guests were the Baron de Chauxville, Feneer Pasha, Lord and Lady Standover, Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, and others.’”
Steinmetz threw the paper down and leant back in his chair.
“So, my dear friend,” he said, “it is probable that you know more about the Sydney Bamboroughs than I do.”
If Claude de Chauxville was disconcerted he certainly did not show it. His was a face eminently calculated to conceal whatever thought or feeling might be passing through his mind. Of an even white complexion—verging on pastiness—he was handsome in a certain statuesque way. His features were always composed and dignified; his hair, thin and straight, was never out of order, but ever smooth and sleek upon his high, narrow brow. His eyes had that dulness which is characteristic of many Frenchmen, and may perhaps be attributed to the habitual enjoyment of too rich a cuisine and too many cigarettes.
De Chauxville waved aside the small contretemps with easy nonchalance.
“Not necessarily,” he said, in cold, even tones. “Mrs. Sydney Bamborough does not habitually take into her confidence all who happen to dine at the same table as herself. Your confidential woman is usually a liar.”
Steinmetz was filling his pipe; this man had the evil habit of smoking a wooden pipe after a cigar.
“My very dear De Chauxville,” he said, without lookup, “your epigrams are lost on me. I know most of them. I have heard them before. If you have anything to tell me about Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, for Heaven’s sake tell it to me quite plainly. I like plain dishes and unvarnished stories. I am a German, you know; that is to say, a person with a dull palate and a thick head.”
De Chauxville laughed again in an unemotional way.
“You alter little,” he said. “Your plainness of speech takes me back to Petersburg. Yes, I admit that Mrs. Sydney Bamborough rather interested me. But I assume too much; that is no reason why she should interest you.”
“She does not, my good friend, but you do. I am all attention.”
“Do you know anything of her?” asked De Chauxville perfunctorily, not as a man who expects an answer or intends to believe that which he may be about to hear.
“Nothing.”
“You are likely to know more?”
Karl Steinmetz shrugged his heavy shoulders, and shook his head doubtfully.
“I am not a lady’s man,” he added gruffly; “the good God has not shaped me that way. I am too d—d fat. Has Mrs. Sydney Bamborough fallen in love with me? Has some imprudent person shown her my photograph? I hope not. Heaven forbid!”
He puffed steadily at his pipe, and glanced quickly at De Chauxville through the smoke.
“No,” answered the Frenchman quite gravely. Frenchmen, by the way, do not admit that one may be too middle-aged, or too stout, for love. “But she is au mieux with the prince.”
“Which prince?”
“Pavlo.”
The Frenchman snapped out the word, watching the other’s benevolent countenance. Steinmetz continued to smoke placidly and contentedly.
“My master,” he said at length. “I suppose that some day he will marry.”
De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders. He touched the button of the electric bell, and when the servant appeared, ordered coffee. He selected a cigarette from a silver case with considerable care, and having lighted it smoked for some moments in silence. The servant brought the coffee, which he drank thoughtfully. Steinmetz was leaning back in his deep chair, with his legs crossed. He was gazing into the fire, which burnt brightly, although it was nearly May. The habits of the Talleyrand Club are almost continental. The rooms are always too warm. The silence was that of two men knowing each other well.
“And why not Mrs. Sydney Bamborough?” asked Steinmetz suddenly.
“Why not, indeed?” replied De Chauxville. “It is no affair of mine. A wise man reduces his affairs to a minimum, and his interest in the affairs of his neighbor to less. But I thought it would interest you.”
“Thanks.”
The tone of the big man in the arm-chair was not dry. Karl Steinmetz knew better than to indulge in that pastime. Dryness is apt to parch the fount of expansiveness.
De Chauxville’s attention was apparently caught by an illustration in a weekly paper lying open on the table near to him. Your shifty man likes something to look at. He did not speak for some moments. Then he threw the paper aside.
“Who was Sydney Bamborough, at any rate?” he asked, with a careless assumption of a slanginess which is affected by society in its decadent periods.
“So far as I remember,” answered Steinmetz, “he was something in the Diplomatic Service.”
“Yes, but what?”
“My dear friend, you had better ask his widow when next you sit beside her at dinner.”
“How do you know that I sat beside her at dinner?”
“I did not know it,” replied Steinmetz, with a quiet smile which left De Chauxville in doubt as to whether he was very stupid or exceedingly clever.
“She seems to be very well off,” said the Frenchman.
“I am glad, as she is going to marry my master.”
De Chauxville laughed almost awkwardly, and for a fraction of a second he changed countenance under Steinmetz’s quiet eyes.
“One can never know whom a woman intends to marry,” said he carelessly, “even if they can themselves, which I doubt. But I do not understand how it is that she is so much better off, or appears to be, since the death of her husband.”
“Ah, she is much better off, or appears to be, since the death of her husband,” said the stout man, in his slow Germanic way.
“Yes.”
De Chauxville rose, stretched himself and yawned. Men are not always, be it understood, on their best behavior at their club.
“Good-night,” he said shortly.
“Good-night, my very dear friend.”
After the Frenchman had left, Karl Steinmetz remained quite motionless and expressionless in his chair, until such time as he concluded that De Chauxville was tired of watching him through the glass door. Then he slowly sat forward in his chair and looked back over his shoulder.
“Our friend,” he muttered, “is afraid that Paul is going to marry this woman. Now, I wonder why?”
These two had met before in a past which has little or nothing to do with the present narrative. They had disliked each other with a completeness partly bred of racial hatred, partly the outcome of diverse interests. But of late years they had drifted apart. There was no reason why the friendship, such as it was, should not have lapsed into a mere bowing acquaintance. For these men were foreigners, understanding fully the value of the bow as an interchange of masculine courtesy. Englishmen bow badly.
Steinmetz knew that the Frenchman had recognized him before entering the room. It was to be presumed that he had deliberately chosen to cross the threshold, knowing that a recognition was inevitable. Karl Steinmetz went farther. He suspected that De Chauxville had come to the Talleyrand Club, having heard that he was in England, with the purpose in view of seeking him out and warning him against Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
“It would appear,” murmured the stout philosopher, “that we are about to work together for the first time. But if there is one thing that I dislike more than the enmity of Claude de Chauxville it is his friendship.”
Karl Steinmetz lifted his pen from the paper before him and scratched his forehead with his forefinger.
“Now, I wonder,” he said aloud, “how many bushels there are in a ton. Ach! how am I to find out? These English weights and measures, this English money, when there is a metrical system!”
He sat and hardly looked up when the clock struck seven. It was a quiet room this in which he sat, the library of Paul’s London house. The noise of Piccadilly reached his ears as a faint roar, not entirely unpleasant, but sociable and full of life. Accustomed as he was to the great silence of Russia, where sound seems lost in space, the hum of a crowded humanity was a pleasant change to this philosopher, who loved his kind while fully recognizing its little weaknesses.
While he sat there still wondering how many bushels of seed made a ton, Paul Alexis came into the room. The younger man was in evening dress. He looked at the clock rather eagerly.
“Will you dine here?” he asked, and Steinmetz wheeled around in his chair. “I am going out to dinner,” he explained further.
“Ah!” said the elder man.
“I am going to Mrs. Sydney Bamborough’s.”
Steinmetz bowed his head gravely. He said nothing. He was not looking at Paul, but at the pattern of the carpet. There was a short silence. Then Paul said, with entire simplicity:
“I shall probably ask her to marry me.”
“And she will probably say yes.”
“I am not so sure about that,” said Paul, with a laugh. For this man was without conceit. He had gradually been forced to admit that there are among men persons whose natural inclination is toward evil, persons who value not the truth, nor hold by honesty. But he was guileless enough to believe that women are not so. He actually believed that women are truthful and open and honorable. He believes it still, which is somewhat startling. There are a few such dullards yet. “I do not see why she should,” he went on gravely. He was standing by the empty fire-place, a manly, upright figure; one who was not very clever, not brilliant at all, somewhat slow in his speech, but sure, deadly sure, in the honesty of his purpose.
Karl Steinmetz looked at him and smiled openly, with the quaint air of resignation that was his.
“You have never seen her, eh?” enquired Paul.
Steinmetz paused, then he told a lie, a good one, well told, deliberately.
“No.”
“We are going to the opera, Box F2. If you come in I shall have pleasure in introducing you. The sooner you know each other the better. I am sure you will approve.”
“I think you ought to marry money.”
“Why?”
Steinmetz laughed.
“Oh,” he answered, “because every-body does who can. There is Catrina Lanovitch, an estate as big as yours, adjoining yours. A great Russian family, a good girl who—is willing.”
Paul laughed, a good wholesome laugh.
“You are inclined to exaggerate my manifold and obvious qualifications,” he said. “Catrina is a very nice girl, but I do not think she would marry me even if I asked her.”
“Which you do not intend to do.”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you will make an enemy of her,” said Steinmetz quietly. “It may be inconvenient, but that cannot be helped. A woman scorned—you know. Shakspere or the Bible, I always mix them up. No, Paul; Catrina Lanovitch is a dangerous enemy. She has been making love to you these last four years, and you would have seen it if you had not been a fool! I am afraid, my good Paul, you are a fool, God bless you for it!”
“I think you are wrong,” said Paul rather curtly; “not about me being a fool, but about Catrina Lanovitch. If you are right, however, it only makes me dislike her instead of being perfectly indifferent to her.”
His honest face flushed up finely, and he turned away to look at the clock again.
“I hate your way of talking about women, Steinmetz,” he said. “You’re a cynical old beast, you know.”
“Heaven forbid, my dear prince! I admire all women—they are so clever, so innocent, so pure-minded. Do not your English novels prove it, your English stage, your newspapers, so high-toned? Who supports the novelist, the play-wright, the actor, who but your English ladies?”
“Better than being cooks—like your German ladies,” retorted Paul stoutly. “If youareGerman this evening. Better than being cooks.”
“I doubt it! I very much doubt it, my friend. At what time shall I present myself at Box F2 this evening?”
“About nine—as soon as you like.”
Paul looked at the clock. The pointers lagged horribly. He knew that the carriage was certain to be at the door, waiting in the quiet street with its great restless horses, its two perfectly trained men, its gleaming lamps and shining harness. But he would not allow himself the luxury of being the first arrival. Paul had himself well in hand. At last it was time to go.
“See you later,” he said.
“Thank you—yes,” replied Steinmetz, without looking up.
So Paul Howard Alexis sallied forth to seek the hand of the lady of his choice, and as he left his own door that lady was receiving Claude de Chauxville in her drawing-room. The two had not met for some weeks—not indeed since Etta had told the Frenchman that she could not marry him. Her invitation to dine, couched in the usual friendly words, had been the first move in that game commonly called “bluff.” Claude de Chauxville’s acceptance of the same had been the second move. And these two persons, who were not afraid of each other, shook hands with a pleasant smile of greeting, while Paul hurried toward them through the busy streets.
“Am I forgiven—that I am invited to dinner?” asked De Chauxville imperturbably, when the servant had left them alone.
Etta was one of those women who are conscious of their dress. Some may protest that a lady moving in such circles would not be so. But in all circles women are only women, and in every class of life we meet such as Etta Bamborough. Women who, while they talk, glance down and rearrange a flower or a piece of lace. It is a mere habit, seemingly small and unimportant; but it marks the woman and sets her apart.
Etta was standing on the hearthrug, beautifully dressed—too beautifully dressed, it is possible, to sit down. Her maid had a moment earlier confessed that she could do no more, and Etta had come down stairs a vision of luxury, of womanly loveliness. Nevertheless, there appeared to be something amiss. She was so occupied with a flower at her shoulder that she did not answer at once.
“Forgiven for what?” she asked at length, in that preoccupied tone of voice which tells wise men that only questions of dress will be considered.
De Chauxville shrugged his shoulders in his graceful Gallic way.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed. “For a crime which requires no excuse, and no explanation other than a mirror.”
She looked up at him innocently.
“A mirror?”
“Yours. Have you forgiven me for falling in love with you? It is, I am told, a crime that women sometimes condone.”
“It was no crime,” she said. She had heard the wheels of Paul’s carriage. “It was a misfortune. Please let us forget that it ever happened.”
De Chauxville twirled his neat mustache, looking keenly at her the while.
“You forget,” he said. “But I—will remember.”
She did not answer, but turned with a smile to greet Paul.
“I think you know each other,” she said gracefully when she had shaken hands, and the two men bowed. They were foreigners, be it understood. There were three languages in which they could understand each other with equal ease.
“WhereisMaggie?” exclaimed Mrs. Bamborough. “She is always late.”
“When I am here,” reflected De Chauxville. But he did not say it.
Miss Delafield kept them waiting a few minutes, and during that time Etta Sydney Bamborough gave a very fine display of prowess with the double-stringed bow. When a man attempts to handle this delicate weapon, he usually makes, if one may put it thus crudely, an ass of himself. He generally succeeds in snapping one and probably both of the strings, injuring himself most certainly in the process.
Not so, however, this clever lady. She had a smile and an epigram for Claude de Chauxville, a grave air of sympathetic interest in more serious affairs for Paul Alexis. She was bright and amusing, guileless and very worldly wise in the same breath—simple for Paul and a match for De Chauxville, within the space of three seconds. Withal she was a beautiful woman beautifully dressed. A thousand times too wise to scorn her womanhood, as learned fools are prone to do in print and on platform in these wordy days, but wielding the strongest power on earth, to wit, that same womanhood, with daring and with skill. A learned woman is not of much account in the world. A clever woman moves as much of it as lies in her neighborhood—that is to say, as much as she cares to rule. For women love power, but they do not care to wield it at a distance.
Paul was asked to take Mrs. Sydney Bamborough down to dinner by the lady herself.
“Mon ami,” she said in a quiet aside to De Chauxville, before making her request, “it is the first time the prince dines here.”
She spoke in French. Maggie and Paul were talking together at the other end of the room. De Chauxville bowed in silence.
At dinner the conversation was necessarily general, and, as such, is not worth reporting. No general conversation, one finds, is of much value when set down in black and white. It is not even grammatical nowadays. To be more correct, let us note that the talk lay between Etta and M. de Chauxville, who had a famous supply of epigrams and bright nothings delivered in such a way that they really sounded like wisdom. Etta was equal to him, sometimes capping his sharp wit, sometimes contenting herself with silvery laughter. Maggie Delafield was rather distraite, as De Chauxville noted. The girl’s dislike for him was an iron that entered the quick of his vanity anew every time he saw her. There was no petulance in the aversion, such as he had perceived with other maidens who were only resenting a passing negligence or seeking to pique his curiosity. This was a steady and, if you will, unmaidenly aversion, which Maggie conscientiously attempted to conceal.
Paul, it is to be feared, was what hostesses call heavy in hand. He laughed where he saw something to laugh at, but not elsewhere, which in some circles is considered morose and in bad form. He joined readily enough in the conversation, but originated nothing. Those topics which occupied his mind did not present themselves as suitable to this occasion. His devotion to Etta was quite obvious, and he was simple enough not to care that it should be so.
Maggie was by turns quite silent and very talkative. When Paul and Etta were speaking together she never looked at them, but fixedly at her own plate, at a decanter, or a salt-cellar. When she spoke she addressed her remarks—valueless enough in themselves—exclusively to the man she disliked, Claude de Chauxville.
There was something amiss in the pretty little room. There were shadows seated around that pretty little table ` quatre, beside the guests in their pretty dresses and their black coats; silent cold shadows, who ate nothing, while they chilled the dainty food and took the sweetness from the succulent dishes. These shadows had crept in unawares, a silent partie carrie, to take their phantom places at the table, and only Etta seemed able to jostle hers aside and talk it down. She took the whole burden of the conversation upon her pretty shoulders, and bore it through the little banquet with unerring skill and unflinching good humor. In the midst of her merriest laughter, the clever gray eyes would flit from one man’s face to the other. Paul had been brought here to ask her to marry him. Claude de Chauxville had been invited that he might be tacitly presented to his successful rival. Maggie was there because she was a woman and made the necessary fourth. Puppets all, and two of them knew it. And some of us know it all our lives. We are living, moving puppets. We let ourselves be dragged here and pushed there, the victim of one who happens to have more energy of mind, a greater steadfastness of purpose, a keener grasp of the situation called life. We smirk and smile, and lose the game because we have begun by being anvils, and are afraid of trying to be hammers.
But Etta Sydney Bamborough had to deal with metal of a harder grain than the majority of us. Claude de Chauxville was for the moment forced to assume the humble rtle of anvil because he had no choice. Maggie Delafield was passive for the time being, because that which would make her active was no more than a tiny seedling in her heart. The girl bid fair to be one of those women who develop late, who ripen slowly, like the best fruit.
During the drive to the opera house the two women in Etta’s snug little brougham were silent. Etta had her thoughts to occupy her. She was at the crucial point of a difficult game. She could not afford to allow even a friend to see so much as the corners of the cards she held.
In the luxurious box it was easily enough arranged—Etta and Paul together in front, De Chauxville and Maggie at the other corner of the box.
“I have asked my friend Karl Steinmetz to come in during the evening,” said Paul to Etta when they were seated. “He is anxious to make your acquaintance. He is my—prime minister over in Russia.”
Etta smiled graciously.
“It is kind of him,” she answered, “to be anxious to make my acquaintance.”
She was apparently listening to the music; in reality she was hurrying back mentally over half a dozen years. She had never had much to do with the stout German philosopher, but she knew enough of him to scorn the faint hope that he might have forgotten her name and her individuality. Etta Bamborough had never been disconcerted in her life yet; this incident came very near to bringing about the catastrophe.
“At what time,” she asked, “is he coming in?”
“About half-past nine.”
Etta had a watch on a bracelet on her arm. Such women always know the time.
It was a race, and Etta won it. She had only half an hour. De Chauxville was there, and Maggie with her quiet, honest eyes. But the widow of Sydney Bamborough made Paul ask her to be his wife, and she promised to give him his answer later. She did it despite a thousand difficulties and more than one danger—accomplished it with, as the sporting people say, plenty to spare—before the door behind them was opened by the attendant, and Karl Steinmetz, burly, humorously imperturbable and impenetrable, stood smiling gravely on the situation.
He saw Claude de Chauxville, and before the Frenchman had turned round the expression on Steinmetz’s large and placid countenance had changed from the self-consciousness usually preceding an introduction to one of a dim recognition.
“I have had the pleasure of meeting madame somewhere before, I think. In St. Petersburg, was it not?”
Etta, composed and smiling, said that it was so, and introduced him to Maggie. De Chauxville took the opportunity of leaving that young lady’s side, and placing himself near enough to Paul and Etta to completely frustrate any further attempts at confidential conversation.
For a moment Steinmetz and Paul were left standing together.
“I have had a telegram,” said Steinmetz in Russian. “We must go back to Tver. There is cholera again. When can you come?”
Beneath his heavy mustache Paul bit his lip.
“In three days,” he answered.
“True? You will come with me?” enquired Steinmetz, under cover of the clashing music.
“Of course.”
Steinmetz looked at him curiously. He glanced toward Etta, but he said nothing.
The season wore on to its perihelion—a period, the scientific books advise us, of the highest clang and crash of speed and whirl, of the greatest brilliancy and deepest glow of a planet’s existence. The business of life, the pursuit of pleasure, and the scientific demolition of our common enemy, Time, received all the care which such matters require.
Dibutantes bloomed and were duly culled by aged connoisseurs of such wares, or by youthful aspirants with the means to pay the piper in the form of a handsome settlement. The usual number of young persons of the gentler sex entered the lists of life, with the mistaken notion that it is love that makes the world go round, to ride away from the joust wiser and sadder women.
There was the same round of conventional pleasures which the reader and his humble servant have mixed in deeply or dilettante, according to his taste or capacity for such giddy work. There was withal the usual heart-burning, heart-bartering, heart—anything you will but breaking. For we have not breaking hearts among us to-day. Providence, it would seem, has run short of the commodity, and deals out only a few among a number of persons.
Amid the whirl of rout, and ball, and picnic, race-meeting, polo-match, and what-not, Paul Howard Alexis stalked misunderstood, distrusted; an object of ridicule to some, of pity to others, of impatience to all. A man, if it please you, with a purpose—a purpose at the latter end of the nineteenth century, when most of us, having decided that there is no future, take it upon ourselves to despise the present.
Paul soon discovered that he was found out—at no time a pleasant condition of things, except, indeed, when callers are about. That which Eton and Cambridge had failed to lay their fingers upon, every match-making mother had found out for herself in a week. That the discovery had been carefully kept in each maternal breast, it is needless to relate. Ces dames are not confidential upon such matters between themselves. When they have scented their game they stalk him, and if possible bag him in a feline solitude which has no fears for stout, ambitious hearts. The fear is that some other prowling mother of an eligible maiden may hit upon the same scent.
Paul was invited to quiet dinners and a little music, to quiet dinners without the music, to a very little music and no dinner whatever. The number of ladies who had a seat in a box thrown upon their hands at the last minute—a seat next to Angelina in her new pink, or Blanche in her sweet poult de soie—the number of these ladies one can only say was singular, because politeness forbids one to suggest that it was suspicious. Soft cheeks became rosy at his approach—partly, perhaps, because soft and dainty toes in satin slippers were trodden upon with maternal emphasis at that moment. Soft eyes looked love into eyes that, alas! only returned preoccupation. There was always room on an engagement card for Paul’s name. There was always space in the smallest drawing-room for Paul’s person, vast though the latter was. There was—fond mothers conveyed it to him subtly after supper and champagne—an aching void in more than one maiden heart which was his exact fit.
But Paul was at once too simple and too clever for matron and maid alike. Too simple, because he failed to understand the inner meaning of many pleasant things that the guileless fair one said to him. Too clever, because he met the subtle matron with the only arm she feared, a perfect honesty. And when at last he obtained his answer from the coy and hesitating Etta, there was no gossip in London who could put forward a just cause or impediment.
Etta gave him the answer one evening at the house of a mutual friend, where a multitude of guests had assembled ostensibly to hear certain celebrated singers, apparently to whisper recriminations on their entertainer’s champagne. It was a dull business—except, indeed, for Paul Howard Alexis. As for the lady—the only lady his honest, simple world contained—who shall say? Inwardly she may have been in trembling, coy alarm, in breathless, blushing hesitation. Outwardly she was, however, exceedingly composed and self-possessed. She had been as careful as ever of her toilet—as hard to please; as—dare we say snappish with her maids? The beautiful hair had no one of its aureate threads out of place. The pink of her shell-like cheek was steady, unruffled, fair to behold. Her whole demeanor was admirable in its well-bred repose. Did she love him? Was it in her power to love any man? Not the humble chronicler—not any man, perhaps, and but few women—can essay an answer. Suffice it that she accepted him. In exchange for the title he could give her, the position he could assure to her, the wealth he was ready to lavish upon her, and, lastly, let us mention, in the effete, old-fashioned way, the love he bore her—in exchange for these she gave him her hand.
Thus Etta Sydney Bamborough was enabled to throw down her cards at last and win the game she had played so skilfully. The widow of an obscure little Foreign Office clerk, she might have been a baroness, but she put the smaller honor aside and aspired to a prince. Behind the gay smile there must have been a quick and resourceful brain, daring to scheme, intrepid in execution. Within the fair breast there must have been a heart resolute, indomitable, devoid of weak scruple. Mark the last. It is the scruple that keeps the reader and his humble servant from being greater men than they are.
“Yes,” says Etta, allowing Paul to take her perfectly gloved hand in his great, steady grasp; “yes, I have my answer ready.”
They were alone in the plashy solitude of an inner conservatory, between the songs of the great singers. She was half afraid of this strong man, for he had strange ways with him—not uncouth, but unusual and somewhat surprising in a finnicking, emotionless generation.
“And what is it?” whispers Paul eagerly. Ah! what fools men are—what fools they always will be!
Etta gave a little nod, looking shamefacedly down at the pattern of her lace fan.
“Is that it?” he asked breathlessly.
The nod was repeated, and Paul Howard Alexis was thereby made the happiest man in England. She half expected him to take her in his arms, despite the temporary nature of their solitude. Perhaps she half wished it; for behind her business-like and exceedingly practical appreciation of his wealth there lurked a very feminine curiosity and interest in his feelings—a curiosity somewhat whetted by the manifold differences that existed between him and the society lovers with whom she had hitherto played the pretty game.
But Paul contented himself with raising the gloved fingers to his lips, restrained by a feeling of respect for her which she would not have understood and probably did not merit.
“But,” she said with a sudden smile, “I take no responsibility. I am not very sure that it will be a success. I can only try to make you happy—goodness knows if I shall succeed!”
“You have only to be yourself to do that,” he answered, with lover-like promptness and a blindness which is the special privilege of those happy fools.
She gave a strange little smile.
“But how do I know that our lives will harmonize in the least? I know nothing of your daily existence; where you live—where you want to live.”
“I should like to live mostly in Russia,” he answered honestly.
Her expression did not change. It merely fixed itself as one sees the face of a watching cat fix itself, when the longed for mouse shows a whisker.
“Ah!” she said lightly, confident in her own power; “that will arrange itself later.”
“I am glad I am rich,” said Paul simply, “because I shall be able to give you all you want. There are many little things that add to a woman’s comfort; I shall find them out and see that you have them.”
“Are you so very rich, Paul?” she asked, with an innocent wonder. “But I don’t think it matters; do you? I do not think that riches have much to do with happiness.”
“No,” he answered. He was not a person with many theories upon life or happiness or such matters—which, by the way, are in no way affected by theories. By taking thought we cannot add a cubit to the height of our happiness. We can only undermine its base by too searching an analysis of that upon which it is built.
So Paul replied “No,” and took pleasure in looking at her, as any lover must needs have done.
“Except, of course,” she said, “that one may do good with great riches.”
She gave a little sigh, as if deploring the misfortune that hitherto her own small means had fallen short of the happy point at which one may begin doing good.
“Are you so very rich, Paul?” she repeated, as if she was rather afraid of those riches and mistrusted them.
“Oh, I suppose so. Horribly rich!”
She had withdrawn her hand. She gave it to him again, with a pretty movement usually understood to indicate bashfulness.
“It can’t be helped,” she said. “We”—she dwelt upon the word ever so slightly—“we can perhaps do a little good with it.”
Then suddenly he blurted out all his wishes on this point—his quixotic aims, the foolish imaginings of a too chivalrous soul. She listened, prettily eager, sweetly compassionate of the sorrows of the peasantry whom he made the object of his simple pity. Her gray eyes contracted with horror when he told her of the misery with which he was too familiar. Her pretty lips quivered when he told her of little children born only to starve because their mothers were starving. She laid her gloved fingers gently on his when he recounted tales of strong men—good fathers in their simple, barbarous way—who were well content that the children should die rather than be saved to pass a miserable existence, without joy, without hope.
She lifted her eyes with admiration to his face when he told her what he hoped to do, what he dreamed of accomplishing. She even made a few eager, heartfelt suggestions, fitly coming from a woman—touched with a woman’s tenderness, lightened by a woman’s sympathy and knowledge.
It was in its way a tragedy, the picture we are called to look upon—these newly made lovers, not talking of themselves, as is the time-honored habit of such. Surrounded by every luxury, both high-born, refined, and wealthy; both educated, both intelligent. He, simple-minded, earnest, quite absorbed in his happiness, because that happiness seemed to fall in so easily with the busier, and, as some might say, the nobler side of his ambition. She, failing to understand his aspirations, thinking only of his wealth.
“But,” she said at length, “shall you—we—be allowed to do all this? I thought that such schemes were not encouraged in Russia. It is such a pity to pauperize the people.”
“You cannot pauperize a man who has absolutely nothing,” replied Paul. “Of course, we shall have difficulties; but, together, I think we shall be able to overcome them.”
Etta smiled sympathetically, and the smile finished up, as it were, with a gleam very like amusement. She had been vouchsafed for a moment a vision of herself in some squalid Russian village, in a hideous Russian-made tweed dress, dispensing the necessaries of life to a people only little raised above the beasts of the field. The vision made her smile, as well it might. In Petersburg life might be tolerable for a little in the height of the season—for a few weeks of the brilliant Northern winter—but in no other part of Russia could she dream of dwelling.
They sat and talked of their future as lovers will, knowing as little of it as any of us, building up castles in the air, such edifices as we have all constructed, destined, no doubt, to the same rapid collapse as some of us have quailed under. Paul, with lamentable honesty, talked almost as much of his stupid peasants as of his beautiful companion, which pleased her not too well. Etta, with a strange persistence, brought the conversation ever back and back to the house in London, the house in Petersburg, the great grim castle in the Government of Tver, and the princely rent-roll. And once on the subject of Tver, Paul could scarce be brought to leave it.
“I am going back there,” he said at length.
“When?” she asked, with a composure which did infinite credit to her modest reserve. Her love was jealously guarded. It lay too deep to be disturbed by the thought that her lover would leave her soon.
“To-morrow,” was his answer.
She did not speak at once. Should she try the extent of her power over him? Never was lover so chivalrous, so respectful, so sincere. Should she gauge the height of her supremacy? If it proved less powerful than she suspected, she would at all events be credited with a very natural aversion to parting from him.
“Paul,” she said, “you cannot do that. Not so soon. I cannot let you go.”
He flushed up to the eyes suddenly, like a girl. There was a little pause, and the color slowly left his face. Somehow that pause frightened Etta.
“I am afraid I must go,” he said gravely at length.
“Must—a prince?”
“It is on that account,” he replied.
“Then I am to conclude that you are more devoted to your peasants than to—me?”
He assured her to the contrary. She tried once again, but nothing could move him from his decision. Etta was perhaps a small-minded person, and as such failed to attach due importance to this proof that her power over him was limited. It ceased, in fact, to exist as soon as it touched that strong sense of duty which is to be found in many men and in remarkably few women.
It almost seemed as if the abrupt departure of her lover was in some sense a relief to Etta Sydney Bamborough. For, while he, lover-like, was grave and earnest during the small remainder of the evening, she continued to be sprightly and gay. The last he saw of her was her smiling face at the window as her carriage drove away.
Arrived at the little house in Upper Brook Street, Maggie and Etta went into the drawing-room, where biscuits and wine were set out. Their maids came and took their cloaks away, leaving them alone.
“Paul and I are engaged,” said Etta suddenly. She was picking the withered flowers from her dress and throwing them carelessly on the table.
Maggie was standing with her back to her, with her two hands on the mantel-piece. She was about to turn round when she caught sight of her own face in the mirror, and that which she saw there made her change her intention.
“I am not surprised,” she said, in an even voice, standing like a statue. “I congratulate you. I think he is—nice.”
“You also think he is too good for me,” said Etta, with a little laugh. There was something in that laugh—a ring of wounded vanity, the wounded vanity of a bad woman who is in the presence of her superior.
“No!” answered Maggie slowly, tracing the veins of the marble across the mantel-piece. “No—o, not that.”
Etta looked up at her. It was rather singular that she did not ask what Maggie did think. Perhaps she was afraid of a certain British honesty which characterized the girl’s thought and speech. Instead she rose and indulged in a yawn which may have been counterfeit, but it was a good counterfeit.
“Will you have a biscuit?” she said.
“No, thanks.”
“Then shall we go to bed?”
“Yes.”