Amoung the frets and checks to the course that "never did run smooth,"
there is one which is sufficiently frequent, for many a reader will
remember the irritation it caused him. You have counted on a meeting
with the beloved one unwitnessed by others, an interchange of confessions
and vows which others may not hear. You have arranged almost the words
in which your innermost heart is to be expressed; pictured to yourself
the very looks by which those words will have their sweetest reply. The
scene you have thus imagined appears to you vivid and distinct, as if
foreshown in a magic glass. And suddenly, after long absence, the
meeting takes place in the midst of a common companionship: nothing that
you wished to say can be said. The scene you pictured is painted out by
the irony of Chance; and groups and backgrounds of which you had never
dreamed start forth from the disappointing canvas. Happy if that be all!
But sometimes, by a strange, subtle intuition, you feel that the person
herself is changed; and sympathetic with that change, a terrible chill
comes over your own heart.
Before Graham had taken his seat at the table beside Isaura, he felt that
she was changed to him. He felt it by her very touch as their hands met
at the first greeting,--by the tone of her voice in the few words that
passed between them,--by the absence of all glow in the smile which had
once lit up her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in spring,
and gives a richer gladness of colour to all its blooms. Once seated
side by side they remained for some moments silent. Indeed, it would
have been rather difficult for anything less than the wonderful
intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can prevent the stolen
interchange of tokens, to have ventured private talk of their own amid
the excited converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears,
admitting no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion.
Englishmen do not recognise the old classic law which limited the number
of guests, where banquets are meant to be pleasant, to that of the Nine-
Muses. They invite guests so numerous, and so shy of launching talk
across the table, that you may talk to the person next to you not less
secure from listeners than you would be in talking with the stranger whom
you met at a well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state
occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into solitude with your
next neighbour. The guests collected by Duplessis completed with himself
the number of the Sacred Nine--the host, Valerie, Rochebriant, Graham,
Isaura, Signora Venosta, La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy and high-
born Imperialist, Prince --------, and last and least, one who shall be
nameless.
I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the books which American
superstition dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted
seer, technically styled medium, sees at the opera a box which to other
eyes appears untenanted and empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well
dressed in _costume de-regle_, gazing on the boards and listening to the
music. Like such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on.
Though still living, they have no share in the life they survey, they
come as from another world to hear and to see what is passing in ours.
In ours they lived once, but that troubled sort of life they have
survived. Still we amuse them as stage-players and puppets amuse
ourselves. One of these Lookers-on completed the party at the house of
Duplessis.
How lively, how animated the talk was at the financier's pleasant table
that day, the 8th of July! The excitement of the coming war made itself
loud in every Gallic voice, and kindled in every Gallic eye. Appeals at
every second minute were made, sometimes courteous, sometimes sarcastic,
to the Englishman--promising son of an eminent statesman, and native of a
country in which France is always coveting an ally, and always suspecting
an enemy. Certainly Graham could not have found a less propitious moment
for asking Isaura if she really were changed. And certainly the honour
of Great Britain was never less ably represented (that is saying a great
deal) than it was on this occasion by the young man reared to diplomacy
and aspiring to Parliamentary distinction. He answered all questions
with a constrained voice and an insipid smile,--all questions pointedly
addressed to him as to what demonstrations of admiring sympathy with the
gallantry of France might be expected from the English Government and
people; what his acquaintance with the German races led him to suppose
would be the effect on the Southern States of the first defeat of the
Prussians; whether the man called Moltke was not a mere strategist on
paper, a crotchety pedant; whether, if Belgium became so enamoured of the
glories of France as to solicit fusion with her people, England would
have a right to offer any objection,&c., &c. I do not think that during
that festival Graham once thought one-millionth so much about the fates
of Prussia and France as he did think, "Why is that girl so changed to
me? Merciful heaven! is she lost to my life?"
By training, by habit, even by passion, the man was a genuine politician,
cosmopolitan as well as patriotic, accustomed to consider what effect
every vibration in that balance of European power, which no deep thinker
can despise, must have on the destinies of civilised humanity, and on
those of the nation to which he belongs. But are there not moments in
life when the human heart suddenly narrows the circumference to which its
emotions are extended? As the ebb of a tide, it retreats from the shores
it had covered on its flow, drawing on with contracted waves the
treasure-trove it has selected to hoard amid its deeps.