CHAPTER IX
And now it seems to me as if I might go on writing to the end of what remains of my lifetime, and never come to a finish. But I have to take hold of myself, as it were, with resolution, and to refrain from speaking of a hundred thousand things which interest me in memory.
The story I am bidden to tell is of how and why I came to rob Miss Rossano of forty thousand pounds, and yet not to suffer one whit in her esteem or in my own. It is an easy thing to say to a man, “You took part in such and such an adventure; you know all about it; take your pen in your hand and write a history of it.” The trouble is in the selection; and I have found myself so gravely puzzled as to what I shall leave out that I see nothing for it but to set down formally before myself, for my own guidance, the names of the people who are most closely and intimately concerned in what I have to tell; and having done that, I must resolve to restrict my narrative to the history of their sayings and doings. Such a countless crowd of people surge up into memory that this is more difficult than any one would fancy. All my old comrades in deliberation, my friends in council, my companions in the war of later on are with me at times as I sit and think over the incidents of this story. The odd part of it is that a thousand things I had forgotten come back as clearly as if they had happened yesterday, and I should feel a greater pleasure in dwelling upon them than upon the main incidents to which I am bound to confine myself. Roaring nights by the camp-fire, when a chance-found skin of wine made the time glorious; jolly little touches of mirth and camaraderie here and there; heats of battle, splendors of victory, miseries of retreat—all come back upon me, and the faces of many dead comrades people the air.
But to come to my resolution. There is Brunow, who was the fatal cause of it all; and the Baroness Bonnar, who made her cat's-paw of him; and Ruffiano, whom the two betrayed between them; and then there are left the count, and Miss Rossano, and the faithful Hinge. Then there is the ghost of poor Constance Pleyel, who came like a wraith out of the past and vanished again into the darkness; then there is myself for the centre of the story, whether I like it or not. Here are now my dramatis persono before me. The stage of my mind is crowded with auxiliaries, but I dare scarcely glance at them.
And who was Constance Pleyel? In a sense she was the motive and main-spring of my life, for it was she who embarked me on that career of adventure which has made me what I am.
When I was a very young man indeed I fell in love with Constance Pleyel. I am not the first man whose life has been set awry by his love for an unworthy woman, nor shall I be the last. I would very willingly keep silent about that episode in my life, but the story has to be told. It shall be told with due reticence; for if I cannot respect poor Constance any more, I can at least respect the feelings which made her sacred in my eyes for a year and more in the days of my boyhood.
Months had gone by, and the spring of the year was near at hand. The count had come back to a condition of health and of mental strength which was no less than astonishing. I have never ceased to think it wonderful that a man who had been so long buried from the world, from all its interests, and from all knowledge of its affairs, should have been able so readily to take up the lost threads of life. The most remarkable thing about him, even if on the whole it were the least surprising, was the survival of the patriotic impulse in his mind. It seemed as if nothing could quench that, and as if all his suffering had served only to lend new fuel to that sacred flame. By this time he was deep in all our councils, the most active, and at once the wariest and most ardent of our leaders. I was pledged to the cause of Italy heart and soul, and was, I think, as thoroughly and % passionately devoted to her service as if the call of blood had sounded in me. I identified myself with the hopes of Miss Rossano and her father, and I was in all things their loyal servant and coadjutor.
I suppose I have made it clear by this time that I had never any very great esteem or affection for Bru-now. He was in the thick of affairs, and knew as much of our intentions and of our actual movements as any man among us. It is no credit to me that I was willing to suspect him, and that I distrusted him from the beginning. I never thought him likely to be guilty of deliberate treason, but I always feared 'his rash and boastful tongue, and I confess that I did something here and there to inspire my comrades with the sense of my own mistrust. I have not the slightest doubt that he knew of this. I certainly never took any pains to disguise it from him, and I dare say that in what followed he partly justified his own action in his own mind by my dislike of him and his own dislike of me.
Brunow was a queerish sort of study, and I honestly believe that half the harm he did sprang out of the only little bit of good I was ever able to discover in him. He would do almost anything to secure anybody's favorable opinion, and neither his judgment nor his conscience—if he had either one or the other—stood in the way of this amiable weakness. He was more amenable to flattery than a child, and was moved by it as easily to good as to evil. The misfortune was that those who would have cared to influence him in the right direction disdained to tickle his foible, while those who fooled him to his own ruin flattered him to the top of his bent.
I can't help thinking that for a long time the poor feather-head attached a considerable value to my opinion, and that he was anxious in his own way to conciliate my friendship. He knew what I thought about him, and yet he sought my acquaintance, and did what he could to propitiate me and to secure my good-will; but at last an open breach declared itself between us. It came about in this wise:
I was sitting in my chambers one afternoon when the count called upon me. We had had a rather stormy discussion at our last meeting, and I had had to take sides against him. He was on fire for immediate action, and I had felt it my duty to plead for delay. We had parted rather hotly, and he made it his first business to apologize to me for something into which his enthusiasm had hurried him. This being over, we sat in silence for some time, and I saw at last that something was weighing on his mind.
“I was ungenerous and wrong last night,” he said at last, “and I feel it all the more because I am here to ask you now for a special favor.”
“My dear count,” I said, “we have the same hopes, and we disagree sometimes about the proper means of reaching them. I think there is no possibility of a quarrel between us. However much we disagree, we feel no rancor.”
“Rancor!” cried the count. “Good God! my dear Fyffe, how should there be rancor in my mind to you.”
He held out his hand, and I shook it heartily. The truest and easiest way of getting to like a man is to do him a service; that makes you wish him well forever afterwards. I should have honored and esteemed the Count Rossano if he had not been his daughter's father. As it was, I had an affection for him which it would not be easy for me to overstate.
“I have so few friends,” said the count, when our reconciliation was complete, “and I am so much in need of advice, that I venture to trouble you, my dear Fyffe, in a matter of great delicacy.”
I told him, I forget precisely in what terms, that I was entirely at his service; and after another hesitating pause he blurted out the truth.
“I have received an offer for my daughter's hand. The proposal comes to me from the Honorable Mr. Brunow. I owe him the same debt I owe to you, and I own that I should be reluctant to hurt his feelings by a refusal. His offer came to me last night, and took me by surprise. I should have been less troubled in dealing with it if he had not assured me that, with my consent, he is fairly certain of my daughter's. I should be wrong,” he added—“I should be altogether wrong if I claimed any authority over her. I have not the right to such a voice in her affairs as I should have if she had been bred under my own care. But Brunow, in spite of the debt I owe him, is not the man I should have chosen for her. You have known him for many years. I am gravely troubled, my dear Fyffe. Tell me what I should do.”
I am not exaggerating when I say that if the count had stabbed-me he would hardly have hurt or amazed me more. I had heard Brunow's butterfly protestations about his affection for Miss Rossano, and my eyes had certainly not been less open to his defects of character because he was a rival to my own hopes; but I had never regarded him as being altogether serious. I knew that he was irretrievably in debt, and I had never really feared until that moment that his opposition would take real form. A lover is always jealous, and I had envied my rival his faculty of small talk, his cheery, easy temper, and those touches of gallant attention of which practice and nature had made him master. I had been very angry sometimes at his success in pleasing. But a certain contempt had always mingled with my anger, and I had never really been afraid of him. Yet in the count's declaration of Brunow's belief that Miss Rossano was not indifferent to him I could see more than a touch of reason. She was always gay in his presence, always ready to laugh at his genial and charming nonsense—would come out of her gravest humor at any moment to meet his badinage half way.
I was thinking of all these things, and suffering sorely, when the count's voice recalled me to myself.
“I admit, I know, I feel the delicacy of the situation.”
“I am the last man in the world,” I said, “to be consulted on this question.”
“Surely not that!” cried the count.
“The last man in the world,” I repeated. “I can have no voice in the matter one way or the other.”
I felt, even as I spoke, that my words and tones alike were too brusque and imperative, but I was wounded to the heart, and alarmed alike for Miss Rossano and myself. Brunow was certainly not the man to make her happy, whatever fancy he might have inspired in her mind, and yet it was no business of mine to say so. I was his rival, and my opinion of him was naturally biassed. For the moment I hated him, but I had self-control enough left to feel that that fact bound me all the more to silence.
“You cannot advise me?” said the count.
“I have no right to advise you,” I responded.
He rose with a strange look at me, and began to walk up and down the room with his fingers at his lips. I have wounded myself in reading what I have already written about his prison look. I had learned to know him as so high-minded, so brave and so honorable a gentleman that it pains me even to think of the jail-bird aspect which came upon him at times. His walk up and down my room became something very like a prowl, and he fell to casting furtive glances at me, biting his finger ends, and murmuring inarticulately below his breath.
“You have some reason for this,” he said, suddenly. “You do not refuse to help me in such a matter for nothing.”
“I have the best of all reasons,” I answered. “I cannot advise, because I have no right to advise.”
“I give you the right by asking for advice,” he said, turning round upon me. “Is it kind to refuse me in this? I am a stranger to the world—a child, and less than a child. I owe to this man and to you everything I am and all I have. But—may I tell you?—I mistrust him. I do not care to leave my daughter's happiness in his charge.”
I made a successful struggle to control myself, and I answered him quietly:
“You must know, sir, that in England young people arrange these matters very much for themselves. I have no doubt that Miss Rossano will attach full weight to your judgment and counsel. I am very sorry, but I have no right to advise you even at your own request.”
“I had hoped for another answer,” he responded. “I had even ventured to think—Ah, well, my dear Fyffe, I cannot help myself, and if you will not help me—”
“I would, sir, if I could,” I answered.
And at this he sat down, gnawing at his finger-nails, and more broken and furtive in manner than I had seen him since the first week of his escape from prison.
“I owe Brunow a great deal,” he said at length, as if he addressed himself rather than me; “but what I owe to one I owe to the other, and I had hoped things would have gone differently. It was natural, perhaps—I suppose it was natural—that she should think of one of you.”
It was impossible to escape his meaning, and I saw clearly that if I had spoken first I should have found an ally in him. I do not remember ever to have felt so miserable and so hopeless; but I sat down and filled my pipe and smoked in silence, thinking that perhaps I had thrown a chance away, and that perhaps I had never had one.
While I sat thus, looking out of the window and watching with a curiously awakened interest the traffic in the street below, I felt the count's hand on my shoulder.
“Tell me, my dear Fyffe,” he said, shaking me gently, “am I utterly mistaken? I had thought—I had hoped—”
“What had you thought, sir?” I asked, without turning my face towards him.
“I had thought,” he began with hesitation, and then paused—“I had thought that you would have put that question to me, rather than Brunow. Was I wrong?”
“Brunow has put the question, sir,” I answered, “and he has a right to be answered. You can guess now, I fancy, why I can give you no advice.”
“That is enough,” said the count. “Pray understand me, my dear Fyffe. This is a matter of delicacy in which I am perhaps acting very strangely, but I have thought that you cared for my child. I had hoped that it was so, and I had hoped that she might care for you. I had not thought of Mr. Brunow in this way; and if I intrust my daughter's happiness to his charge, I am afraid.”
“I did not know,” I told him, “that I had betrayed myself. If you have found out the truth about me, I can't be blamed for having told you. I should have spoken to you weeks ago, but you see how I live.” He cast his eyes about the room and nodded. “I am as poor as a church-mouse, and I see no way to better my position.”
“I had some hopes,” said the count, “that you might tell me this. It was that which led me to come here and ask you to advise me.”
A wild and improbable hope sprang into my mind, but it died as soon as it was born. Perhaps I was absurd enough to fancy the count had seen something in his daughter's manner which led him to believe that she cared for me, and perhaps he had taken advantage of Brunow's proposal to awake me to a sense of my own wasted opportunities. I put that fancy by, for intimate as I had grown to be with Miss Rossano. I had never discerned the faintest hint in her manner of anything but friendship. If my fancy had not been already dead, the count's next words would have killed it outright.
“I have nothing,” he said, “to guide me to my daughter's feelings, but I am certain of my own. Mr. Brunow's declaration took me by surprise, but I had been expecting yours, and should have received it with pleasure.”
“I did my best to form an honest judgment and to act like an honorable man. Mr. Brunow,” I said, “has known Miss Rossano much longer than I have. I must not disguise the fact that he has more than once spoken to me of his attachment to her. He mentioned that months ago, but in such a way that I hardly supposed him to be in earnest. He has spoken first, and he has a right to an answer. If when he has received his answer I still have a right to speak, I may do so.”
“That,” said the count, “is not the conclusion at which I hoped you would arrive. I think I can offer an alternative. If I ask you to look at this matter like a man of the world, you will have a right to laugh at my presumption. I was a man of the world once, but that was long ago. I have lost so much that what is left to me is hidden in a cloud of self-distrust; yet I think I am right in this, and you yourself shall be the judge.”
He paused there for some time, and I could tell by his inward look, and by the occasional motion of his lips, that he was choosing words in which to make his meaning clear to me. He looked up at last, with his gray face illuminated by the mere ghost of a smile, and reaching both hands across the table towards me, leaned upon them firmly.
“My penetration, blunted as it is, has not been altogether at fault,” he said; “I have hit the truth in your case. That is so?” I nodded, gloomily enough, I dare say, to signify assent. “What I propose, my dear Fyffe, is this: I cannot read my daughter's mind at all, and so far as I can tell she may have no such preference as leads to marriage for either of you. She is half English by birth, and wholly English by education. If she would marry at all she will follow her own inclination, after the fashion of young ladies in this country. Even if I had had the authority which a life-long watch over her would have given me, I should never have dreamed of using it. But this is the plain English of the matter. I would gladly trust my child with you, and I should be sorry to trust her with Mr. Brunow. That sounds ungrateful to him, for I owe him an enormous service; but there are duties which transcend gratitude, and this is one of them. I have surprised your sentiments, and have extorted a confession from you. I ask you now to authorize me to lay before my daughter your case and Mr. Brunow's side by side. I will tell her, if you prefer it, precisely what passed between us. If she should accept neither of you, my own hope and yours will have had at least a chance of fulfilment. You have no objection to making that proposal?”
I answered truly that I was profoundly grateful for it, and that I had never had so much honor done me.
The count departed well pleased, and I was left to await his news in such anxiety as any man who has not awaited a similar verdict might picture for himself. I did not stir from my rooms for several days, and at almost every minute of that time I was either at the very height of hope or the very bottom of despair.
The news came in a startling and unexpected way at last. About four o'clock on the afternoon of the third day a rapid step came up the stair, and somebody knocked with an angry and passionate insistence at the outer door of my chambers. Hinge, startled by the unusual exigence of the summons, ran to answer it. I learned from him who my visitor was, for as he opened the door he sang out:
“Good Lord, Mr. Brunow, what on earth's the matter?”
“Stand on one side!” cried Brunow, in a loud and angry voice; and scarcely a second later he entered the room I sat in, and, banging the door noisily behind him, faced me, still grasping in his right hand the walking-cane with which he had offered such a startling announcement of his presence.
“You damned traitor!” said Brunow; “you infernal traitor!”
He had hardly spoken, indeed he had hardly turned his white and wrathful face towards me, when I understood precisely what had happened. Of course an absolute certainty was out of the question, but I felt the next thing to it; and what with the exulting thought that it was possible and the fear that it might not be true, I was so taken aback that I had no answer for this unusual greeting.
“You blackguard!” Brunow stammered, his stick quivering in his hand.
“Come, come,” I answered, rising, and keeping a careful eye on him, for he looked as if he were fit for any sort of mischief, “this is curious language. Will you be good enough to tell me how you justify it?”
“You know well enough how I justify it!” cried Brunow. “Your dirty under-plot has succeeded. You have that for your comfort, but you may take this to flavor it. I took you for an honest man until a quarter of an hour ago, and now I know that you are as dirty and as despicable a hypocrite and backbiter as any in the world!”
“That is a lie, my dear Brunow, whoever says it!” I responded. “You will be good enough to tell me at once on what grounds you bring such a charge against me.”
“Oh,” cried Brunow, “I'm not going to debase myself with quarrelling with a man like you! You have my opinion of you, and you know how you have earned it. That's enough for me. Good-afternoon.”
He turned, but I was at the door before him.
“That may be enough for you, my dear Brunow, but it isn't enough for me. You don't leave this room with my good-will until you have given me some justification for your conduct.”
“I'll give you none!” he cried. “You're a liar and a hypocrite, and I've done with you forever! That ought to be enough for you! Stand by and let me go, or—” he raised his stick with a threatening gesture, but at that I could afford to smile. I knew Brunow a great deal too well to think him likely to assault me after having put me on my guard by a threat.
“I wonder,” he said, with his lips quivering and his teeth tight clinched behind them—“I wonder that I don't thrash you within an inch of your life.”
“I wouldn't waste much wonder on that question if I were you, Brunow,” I answered. “You will be able to find an easy explanation. Tell me on what grounds you come to me with these angry accusations.”
“You pretend you don't know?” he sneered. “You can't guess, you soul of honor!”
“I pretend nothing,” I told him; “but no man uses such language to me without justifying it. A gentleman having under any fancied sense of wrong used such language will hasten to find reasons for it.”
“You may keep me here,” said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into an arm-chair. “I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or justify a word I've said, and you can take what course you please.”
“Very well,” I answered, turning the key in the lock and then putting it in my pocket, “we shall both have an opportunity of exercising the great gift of patience.”
“Look here,” he cried, suddenly leaping from his chair and shaking his forefinger in ray face, “do you pretend to deny that months and months ago I told you what my feelings were with respect to Miss Rossano?”
“You told me,” I answered, “that you admired her, and that she had a very pretty little income of her own. You coupled those two facts together in such a way as to make me think you were ready to contract a mercenary marriage.”
“That's how you choose to put it,” he retorted. “I could have supposed, without your help, that you'd find some such means of justifying yourself. Your affection has nothing mercenary in it, of course. In that respect you're above suspicion. A mountebank soldier with a wooden sword to sell that nobody chooses to buy. A strolling pauper without a penny to his name.”
I don't quite like to think of what might have happened if this strain of invective had not been interrupted at that moment. I know now, and I almost knew then, what ground Brunow had for his anger and resentment. But the words he used were almost too much for my endurance, and I was glad that a ring sounded at the hall bell, and that Hinge, who, I have no doubt at all, was listening outside, answered immediately. I heard a muffled voice outside, and then Hinge knocked at the inner door; and having in vain tried the handle, said:
“The Conte di Rossano, if you please.”
CHAPTER X
I drew the key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and admitted the count, who stood for an instant on the threshold, looking from me to Brunow and from Brunow to me with an aspect of some considerable amazement. Hinge was gaping in the passage, and it was evident that he was more interested in the proceedings than he knew himself to have the right to be; for, encountering my eye, he withdrew his own instantly, and plunged with great precipitation out of sight.
“Come in, sir,” I said to the count; and he entered, closing the door behind him, and still looking from Brunow to myself and back again with an aspect of complete surprise strongly mingled with displeasure.
“I had not expected to find Mr. Brunow here.” This told me, or seemed to tell me at once, that Brunow had but recently left the count, and my conjecture turned out in a moment to be true.
“I have repeated to Captain Fyffe, sir,” said Brunow, “what I told you less than half an hour ago.”
“Then,” said the count, “you have repeated to Captain Fyffe what I emphatically denied to you. That, sir, is a refusal of my plighted word.”
His meagre figure was drawn to its full height, he threw his head back, and his deep-sunken eyes flashed with indignation.
“I have told this fellow,” cried Brunow, “that he has betrayed my confidence—the most sacred confidence one man can repose in another—a confidence I extended to him, believing him to be a man of honor and my friend.”
“And I, sir, have instructed you,” returned the count, “that your accusation is altogether baseless. There, if you cede so much to the authority of my years, the matter may be allowed to rest. If you have further business with Captain Fyffe, I will find another opportunity of calling upon him.”
“I have no further business with Captain Fyffe,” said Bruno, “now nor at any time.”
So saying, he looked about him for his hat, caught it up, bowed angrily to the count, and without a word or a glance for me walked out of the room, slamming the outer door so noisily that the whole house shook with the concussion.
“Mr. Brunow,” said the count, when we were thus left alone, “is an ill-conditioned person. I owe it to you to explain precisely what has happened. But first, my dear Fyffe, give me your hand, and let me offer you my felicitations.”
I took the hand he offered and held it a moment, hardly realizing where I stood.
“Your suit is accepted; and if you will do us the honor to dine with us this evening, I am charged by Lady Rollinson to say that she will be charmed to meet you at her table. There, my dear fellow,” he concluded, hastily withdrawing his hand, “you are stronger than you fancy yourself to be.”
He stood, half laughing, as he straightened the fingers of his right hand with his left, and then shook them in memory of my grip.
I had not a word to say for myself, and I felt as foolish and awkward as a school-boy.
“And now,” said the count, laying a hand on each of my shoulders and pressing me gently towards an arm-chair, “I will tell you what has happened between Mr. Brunow and myself.”
“Never mind about Brunow just at present, sir,” I cried, recovering my wits a little; “I have other things to think of which are of greater moment.”
“Well, yes,” he answered, with a very sweet yet mournful smile, “I can believe so. Brunow will keep.”
“I am to understand, sir,” I asked, “that Miss Rossano accepts the offer of my hand?”
“Precisely,” said the count, nodding with his affectionate and melancholy smile.
“She knows my circumstances?”
“I will not say she knows them absolutely,” he replied, “but I think she has a fairly accurate knowledge of them.”
“I have an income of three hundred pounds a year.”
“So much as that?” he asked, with a dry, quaint look. It was so wise, so friendly, so childlike, so gay, so unlike the dull and dreadful aspect his face had worn when I had first known it that it affected me strongly, “My dear Fyffe,” he said, reaching his friendly hand out towards me once more, “why should we talk about money? If you can put Brunow out of your mind I can put money out of mine. My daughter loves me, and the man who saved me loves my daughter; and Violet—well, she shall speak for herself.”
I was so entirely happy that I could afford to take pity on my unsuccessful rival. When I thought how I should have felt if our cases had been reversed—if he had won and I had been rejected—I was willing to forgive him anything. I hoped that in course of time he would come to see how baseless his suspicions were, but in my joy I could nurse no anger against him. But I was eager to meet my promised wife, and he did not fill my thoughts for more than a passing moment.
The count volunteered to accompany me to Lady Rollinson's house.
“You are bidden to dinner,” he said, “but I dare say they will excuse an afternoon visit as well. The circumstances are unusual.”
His face was full of a quiet and happy humor, which even in the midst of my own whirling emotions struck me as being remarkable. What a native courage must have existed within this man that all the miseries he had undergone had left so much of his manhood to him! What a tranquil and heroic soul he must have borne to have survived that hideous time at all. I know of myself that I should have beaten my brains out against the wall of that loathsome jail many years ago had his lot fallen to me, or I should have sunk to the stupor of an idiot.
We walked together arm in arm, as our manner was, and we talked of scores of things as we went along, though there was always one thought uppermost in the minds of both of us. The count seemed almost as happy as I was, and the knowledge that he welcomed me so warmly was like honey to my heart. For all this I was in an absurd flutter all the way; and when we reached the house I had come to such a condition of mind that whether I were in a delirium of joy or a delirium of misery I was in no wise sure. The delirium was certain; but I found that afternoon how true a thing it is that extremes meet. Great joy and great sorrow are not very wide apart in the havoc they work on the nerves.
I have been trying to recall everything that happened that day; but I find that I have no memory of anything at all between our talking very brightly and affectionately in the street, and my finding myself alone in Lady Rollinson's drawing-room. There was a bright fire burning there, for the spring days were chilly. There was a clock ticking delicately on the mantel-piece, and my mind fastened on to the sound as if there were possibility of checking and steadying my whirling thoughts by thinking of it—pretty much as a man would clutch a straw in a whirlpool. The rustle of a dress sounded in the corridor outside, and a step paused at the door. My heart beat furiously, and then as the door opened it seemed as if it stopped for a second. Miss Rossano entered (it is the last time I shall call her by that name), and for a moment we stood face to face in silence, like a pair of foolish statues. She was more self-possessed than I, for she advanced and offered me her hand, and I took it clumsily, as if I had no idea what to do with it.
I had loved her from the very first moment I had seen her sweet and noble face, and every hour had seemed to make me love her more. And yet I had never breathed a word to her, and here we were plighted to each other in this strange and sudden fashion, with no preliminaries of courtship, with no question asked by me or answered by her, and hardly at the moment an understanding of how a thing so curious had come to pass.
I have not forgotten anything that was said or done that happy hour, but it is still all too sacred to be written down for any eye but hers or mine to read. It is enough to say that I learned she loved me. Her love has ceased to be to me the puzzle it once was, for one grows used to everything, and I have been both her husband and her lover now for so many years that it would be strange indeed if any sense of strangeness were left in it. But when I first found out that she had fallen in love with me just as quickly as I with her, I could not get over the wonder of it, or the feeling of added unworthiness with which the knowledge burdened me. But, in truth, the very things which make a man feel so clumsy and coarse in the presence of the woman he loves are the things that take a woman's fancy, just as her sweetness and delicacy are the things that take his. I never was a bit of a handsome fellow, but I was a big man, flowing over with health and vigor, with a big voice and a broad chest and shoulders, and, until I fell in love, I never set a great deal of value on good looks in a man. But there was I, a great hulking fellow who had passed all the best part of his life in the giving and receiving of hard knocks, a fellow who could not for the life of him help feeling that he carried the flavor of the camp about with him. What was there, in the name of Heaven, I used to ask myself in those first days of courtship, for a delicate and high-minded girl of refined breeding to fall in love with? But that, my lads and lasses all, is the provision of great nature which makes delicacy love strength and strength love gentleness, which makes fear look pretty to a soldier's eyes, and makes courage look noble and admirable to a charming creature who is afraid of a mouse. So now that I am older and more experienced, I have no wonder that my wife did not choose to fall in love with some namby-pamby fellow of the drawing-rooms rather than with me, though I have now, as I have had always, the sense to know that she is worth ten thousand of me.
I came back to something like sanity in the first ten minutes, and we sat there with no lack of things to talk about, a trouble from which I believe lovers do occasionally suffer. I am not going to pretend that the count and Italy occupied all our minds, but they had their full share of our thoughts, and we both knew that there was no question of marriage just at present. With the history of her broken-hearted mother before me I was in no mood to ask her to be my widow, and there was a growing certainty that there was fighting in front of us, and that it was likely to begin pretty soon.
If Lady Rollinson, Violet, the count, and myself had been dining alone that evening, I should probably have been allowed, under the circumstances, to dispense with evening-dress, and so there would have been no necessity for my going home again before dinner. The count, however, had already advised me of expected guests, and however fascinating the society in which I found myself, I had to break away from it for an hour.
The spring dusk was already thick as I passed along Bond Street, and there was a slight fog abroad; but at the time of which I am writing the West End shops kept open hours later than they do now, and there was no sign of cessation of business. There were a good many foot-passengers abroad, and in front of a brilliantly lighted jeweller's-shop I found myself brought to a stand-still by a little block in the traffic. A carriage stood immediately in front of the shop, and I was about to step round it into the horse road when I saw that a lady was bowing to me from it, and discovered that the lady was no other than the Baroness Bonnar. I raised my hat in answer to her salutation, and as I did so Brunow emerged from the crowd and handed a small packet to her. She took it from him with a smile, and gave the word to the coachman. I had seen that she had a companion with her, a lady whose back was turned to me; but I had taken no notice of the fact, and, indeed, had not given it a thought. But as the coachman wheeled round his horses the lady's face came for a moment into the full light of the brilliantly illuminated window, and I, standing wedged there in the momentary block of pedestrians, met her glance point-blank. She gave not the faintest sign of recognition, though she must have seen that I stared and stared as though I had beheld a ghost; but leaning back in the luxurious cushions of the carriage, drew down her veil and arranged a fur rug about her knees. I stood stock-still, and was rather roughly hustled before I so much as remembered where I was. When I looked round Brunow had disappeared. He had probably seen me, and having found time to cool, had wisely decided against a renewal in the public street of our quarrel of that afternoon. I walked on like a man in a dream, for Constance Pleyel was the last woman in the world I had thought to see, and the very last woman to be found in the society of Brunow and the Baroness Bonnar. So far as I knew, Brunow had certainly little enough to do with her, and their meeting might have been one of the purest chance; but that she was associated in some way with the baroness was evident enough from her presence in that lady's carriage. It is a bitter thing to have to go back on the past in this way, but I cannot tell my story without it. If there are worthless women in the world, there are some who are very nearly angels, and I feel as if I were almost dishonoring the sex in telling the truth about poor Constance, for I had been very honestly in love with her when I was a lad, and it seems even now, after the lapse of all these years, as if I were defiling the place which had once been a sanctuary. But when I had recovered from the shock of my surprise and began to understand what I had seen, it crossed me in a very vivid fashion that the mistrusting dislike with which I had always regarded the baroness had received strong confirmation in an unexpected way; for Constance Pleyel was not and had not been for years one with whom any self-respecting woman would wish to be intimate. The thought of the Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet. My mind was a good deal exercised about this matter as I walked swiftly homeward. I thought about it while I was dressing, and as I drove back to Lady Rollinson's that strange rencontre filled my thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. You may judge of my surprise when the baroness appeared as the very last of the invited guests. Considering the elaborate toilet she had made she had shown wonderful despatch, and though I have no pretensions to be versed in these mysteries, I should have been inclined to think that such a display as she made could only have been achieved with an hour or two's labor. In spite of haste, if she had been really pressed for time, her make-up was as perfect as ever, and what with her flashing white shoulders and flashing white teeth, her sparkling diamonds and sparkling eyes, and the artistic flush of artificial color on lier cheeks, she looked quite dazzling.
Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the baroness. She talked across me to my companion until my nerves grew rigid with the strain of the repression I was compelled to lay upon myself, and the dinner, which ought to have been a little foretaste of heaven to a newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something unusual in the way of music. It was my right to have monopolized Violet's society, or if not actually to have monopolized it, to have taken a full share of it. I found opportunity to whisper to her that I had an especial reason for speaking to the baroness, and while the music was going on I planted myself at that lady's side. She received me with more than her usual foreign affability, and chattered so rapidly that one or two of the guests, who I suppose really cared for the performance then going on, cast glances of open disapproval in her direction. The little woman was quite at home, however, and continued to talk with great animation. I made two or three attempts to interject what I had to say, but she stopped me each time, and started off on a new theme before I could get more than a word in edgewise. I know that she must have seen from my looks that I was not in the least degree disposed to the flippant mood to which she herself pretended, and at last she either was, or feigned to be, tired of my failure to respond to her.
“You are bête to-night, mon beau capitaine,” she said at last, and with a humorously disdainful gesture of her fan she made a motion to rise.
“Not yet, baroness,” I said, taking the fan in my hand. “I have something serious to say to you.”
“I am not in the mind for anything serious tonight,” she answered, “and this is not the place for anything serious.”
“I am in the mood,” I said, “and the place will do well enough.”
She flashed her eyes at me with a sudden anger.
“Is that an impertinence or a gaucherie?” she asked. A second later her charming girlish smile lit up her face again, and rising from her seat she dropped a little mock rustic courtesy. “If M. le Capitaine Fyffe will honor me at my own humble residence, I am never abroad till one.” With that she shot me a curiously veiled glance and turned away, holding up her hand as if to ask me to listen to the last strains of the music which her own vehement chatter had already spoiled for everybody who cared to listen to it. She had evidently a purpose in holding me off, and I of course could form a reasonable guess as to what the nature of that purpose was. I devoted myself to Violet for the rest of the evening, and contrived so well to forget the baroness that by the time at which I was compelled to take my leave I was restored to the state of mind natural to an ardent lover who had only that day been lifted from something very like despair to the fulfilment of his hope.
When the baroness took leave I helped her to adjust her costly fur mantle. Violet was standing by, and the baroness was talking to her with a pretence of animation which I know was intended to prevent me from giving her a reminder of what had already passed between us. As she turned to go she gave me a moment's chance. I had been waiting for it, and I seized it instantly.
“To-morrow, then, at twelve,” I said.
She turned, with her eyes wide open and angered, as if I had presumed in speaking to her and had offered her an insult. But she changed her mind in the merest fraction of time, and answered, smilingly:
“To-morrow, then, at twelve.”
Then she looked at me with the odd veiled glance I had seen before—a glance which expressed both dislike and fear, and held at the same time a keener and more piercing observation than anybody at first sight would have been likely to charge the butterfly-like woman with.
I have spoken quite openly, and as if what I have had to say had been the most commonplace matter in the world. Violet had heard me, but when we went back to the drawing-room together she asked no questions. She has told me since that she wondered a little what appointment I could have with the Baroness Bonnar, but she gave me here the first of a hundred thousand proofs of that noble freedom from the pinch of small curiosity which helps to make her different from and superior to her sex.
I kept my appointment next day, and found the baroness at home. She had a dainty little house of her own, and I suppose that at this time she kept better style, was furnished with completer credentials, was admitted to know better people, and was more liberally supplied with funds than at any other period of her curiously vagabond existence. She was to me at this time the Baroness Bonnar pure and simple, a foreign lady of wealth and position who moved in good society, had agreeable and influential friends, and obvious command of money. She was to me, in short, what she was to the rest of the world, and I had no earthly reason to doubt any of her pretences. But I had come with a definite object, and I approached it at once. She was not at all disposed to banter to-day, but met me with perfect candor.
“My time is a little limited, Captain Fyffe,” she began. “Will you do me the honor to let me know at once to what I owe your visit?”
“I passed you last night in Bond Street,” I returned. She nodded briefly, with her lips tight set and her eyes glittering a little dangerously, I thought. “Would you oblige me by telling me the name of your companion?”
“Would you oblige me,” she retorted, “by telling me the reasons for which you ask it?”
She was so very quick and resolute that I saw at once she had been prepared for the occasion.
“I had rather not give my reason just at present, baroness,” I said. “I have, as a matter of fact, no reason for asking the lady's name for my own satisfaction, because I know it with much more certainty than you do.”
“Oh!” she said, very quietly. “Then why do you ask?”
“Let me change my question,” I responded. “Let me ask you if you have known Miss Constance Pleyel long?”
“Do you know, my good Captain Fyffe,” said the little woman, toying idly with the vinaigrette and sniffing at its contents now and then, “you have a manner which is abominably resolute. You are speaking to me as if you were a rustic juge d'instruction, and I a prisoner in the dock.”
“I beg your pardon, baroness; I was conscious of no such manner. Will you oblige me by telling me if you have known this lady long?”
“I do not recognize your right to question me,” said the baroness; “but since you are audacious enough to come here and to question me about that lady after what I heard last night—” she paused there of set purpose, and repeating the words “after what I heard last night” with emphasis, paused again.
“After what you heard last night,” I repeated, unable to attach any meaning whatever to her words.
“You decline to understand me?” she said, with a threatening nod of her pretty little head. “Very well. But if,” still with marked emphasis, “after what I heard last night you are sufficiently audacious to come here and ask me questions about Constance Pleyel, I can tell you that I have known that lady long enough to know the history of her life and how far you are responsible for the sorrows she has known.”
“I responsible?” I cried.
“Do you deny it?” she retorted.
I had risen to my feet unconsciously, and she arose to face me.
“I deny it absolutely!” I answered. “The suggestion is an outrage!”
For sole answer she touched a little silver gong which stood upon the table. A servant appeared in answer to the sound, and the baroness, without turning her head towards him, said, “Send my compliments to Miss Pleyel, and let her know Captain Fyffe has called.”
I stood rooted in astonishment.