In the course of these long years Pierston's artistic emotions
were abruptly suspended by the news of his father's sudden death at
Sandbourne, whither the stone-merchant had gone for a change of air by
the advice of his physician.
Mr. Pierston, senior, it must be admitted, had been something miserly
in his home life, as Marcia had so rashly reminded his son. But he had
never stinted Jocelyn. He had been rather a hard taskmaster, though as a
paymaster trustworthy; a ready-money man, just and ungenerous. To every
one's surprise, the capital he had accumulated in the stone trade was of
large amount for a business so unostentatiously carried on--much larger
than Jocelyn had ever regarded as possible. While the son had been
modelling and chipping his ephemeral fancies into perennial shapes, the
father had been persistently chiselling for half a century at the
crude original matter of those shapes, the stern, isolated rock in the
Channel; and by the aid of his cranes and pulleys, his trolleys and
his boats, had sent off his spoil to all parts of Great Britain.
When Jocelyn had wound up everything and disposed of the business, as
recommended by his father's will, he found himself enabled to add about
eighty thousand pounds to the twelve thousand which he already possessed
from professional and other sources.
After arranging for the sale of some freehold properties in the island
other than quarries--for he did not intend to reside there--he returned
to town. He often wondered what had become of Marcia. He had promised
never to trouble her; nor for a whole twenty years had he done so;
though he had often sighed for her as a friend of sterling common sense
in practical difficulties.
Her parents were, he believed, dead; and she, he knew, had never gone
back to the isle. Possibly she had formed some new tie abroad, and had
made it next to impossible to discover her by her old name.
A reposeful time ensued. Almost his first entry into society after his
father's death occurred one evening, when, for want of knowing what
better to do, he responded to an invitation sent by one of the few
ladies of rank whom he numbered among his friends, and set out in a
cab for the square wherein she lived during three or four months of the
year.
The hansom turned the corner, and he obtained a raking view of the
houses along the north side, of which hers was one, with the familiar
linkman at the door. There were Chinese lanterns, too, on the balcony.
He perceived in a moment that the customary 'small and early' reception
had resolved itself on this occasion into something very like great and
late. He remembered that there had just been a political crisis,
which accounted for the enlargement of the Countess of Channelcliffe's
assembly; for hers was one of the neutral or non-political houses at
which party politics are more freely agitated than at the professedly
party gatherings.
There was such a string of carriages that Pierston did not wait to take
his turn at the door, but unobtrusively alighted some yards off and
walked forward. He had to pause a moment behind the wall of spectators
which barred his way, and as he paused some ladies in white cloaks
crossed from their carriages to the door on the carpet laid for the
purpose. He had not seen their faces, nothing of them but vague forms,
and yet he was suddenly seized with a presentiment. Its gist was that
he might be going to re-encounter the Well-Beloved that night: after her
recent long hiding she meant to reappear and intoxicate him. That liquid
sparkle of her eye, that lingual music, that turn of the head, how well
he knew it all, despite the many superficial changes, and how instantly
he would recognize it under whatever complexion, contour, accent,
height, or carriage that it might choose to masquerade!
Pierston's other conjecture, that the night was to be a lively political
one, received confirmation as soon as he reached the hall, where a
simmer of excitement was perceptible as surplus or overflow from above
down the staircase--a feature which he had always noticed to be present
when any climax or sensation had been reached in the world of party and
faction.
'And where have you been keeping yourself so long, young man?' said his
hostess archly, when he had shaken hands with her. (Pierston was always
regarded as a young man, though he was now about forty.) 'O yes, of
course, I remember,' she added, looking serious in a moment at thought
of his loss. The Countess was a woman with a good-natured manner
verging on that oft-claimed feminine quality, humour, and was quickly
sympathetic.
She then began to tell him of a scandal in the political side to which
she nominally belonged, one that had come out of the present crisis;
and that, as for herself, she had sworn to abjure politics for ever on
account of it, so that he was to regard her forthwith as a more
neutral householder than ever. By this time some more people had surged
upstairs, and Pierston prepared to move on.
'You are looking for somebody--I can see that,' said she.
'Yes--a lady,' said Pierston.
'Tell me her name, and I'll try to think if she's here.'
'I cannot; I don't know it,' he said.
'Indeed! What is she like?'
'I cannot describe her, not even her complexion or dress.'
Lady Channelcliffe looked a pout, as if she thought he were teasing
her, and he moved on in the current. The fact was that, for a moment,
Pierston fancied he had made the sensational discovery that the One
he was in search of lurked in the person of the very hostess he had
conversed with, who was charming always, and particularly charming
to-night; he was just feeling an incipient consternation at the
possibility of such a jade's trick in his Beloved, who had once before
chosen to embody herself as a married woman, though, happily, at
that time with no serious results. However, he felt that he had been
mistaken, and that the fancy had been solely owing to the highly charged
electric condition in which he had arrived by reason of his recent
isolation.
The whole set of rooms formed one great utterance of the opinions of the
hour. The gods of party were present with their embattled seraphim, but
the brilliancy of manner and form in the handling of public questions
was only less conspicuous than the paucity of original ideas. No
principles of wise government had place in any mind, a blunt and jolly
personalism as to the Ins and Outs animating all. But Jocelyn's interest
did not run in this stream: he was like a stone in a purling brook,
waiting for some peculiar floating object to be brought towards him and
to stick upon his mental surface.
Thus looking for the next new version of the fair figure, he did not
consider at the moment, though he had done so at other times, that this
presentiment of meeting her was, of all presentiments, just the sort of
one to work out its own fulfilment.
He looked for her in the knot of persons gathered round a past Prime
Minister who was standing in the middle of the largest room discoursing
in the genial, almost jovial, manner natural to him at these times. The
two or three ladies forming his audience had been joined by another
in black and white, and it was on her that Pierston's attention was
directed, as well as the great statesman's, whose first sheer gaze
at her, expressing 'Who are you?' almost audibly, changed into an
interested, listening look as the few words she spoke were uttered--for
the Minister differed from many of his standing in being extremely
careful not to interrupt a timid speaker, giving way in an instant if
anybody else began with him. Nobody knew better than himself that all
may learn, and his manner was that of an unconceited man who could catch
an idea readily, even if he could not undertake to create one.
The lady told her little story--whatever it was Jocelyn could not hear
it--the statesman laughed: 'Haugh-haugh-haugh!'
The lady blushed. Jocelyn, wrought up to a high tension by the aforesaid
presentiment that his Shelleyan 'One-shape-of-many-names' was about to
reappear, paid little heed to the others, watching for a full view of
the lady who had won his attention.
That lady remained for the present partially screened by her neighbours.
A diversion was caused by Lady Channelcliffe bringing up somebody to
present to the ex-Minister; the ladies got mixed, and Jocelyn lost sight
of the one whom he was beginning to suspect as the stealthily returned
absentee.
He looked for her in a kindly young lady of the house, his hostess's
relation, who appeared to more advantage that night than she had ever
done before--in a sky-blue dress, which had nothing between it and the
fair skin of her neck, lending her an unusually soft and sylph-like
aspect. She saw him, and they converged. Her look of 'What do you think
of me NOW?' was suggested, he knew, by the thought that the last time
they met she had appeared under the disadvantage of mourning clothes, on
a wet day in a country-house, where everybody was cross.
'I have some new photographs, and I want you to tell me whether they are
good,' she said. 'Mind you are to tell me truly, and no favour.'
She produced the pictures from an adjoining drawer, and they sat down
together upon an ottoman for the purpose of examination. The portraits,
taken by the last fashionable photographer, were very good, and he
told her so; but as he spoke and compared them his mind was fixed on
something else than the mere judgment. He wondered whether the elusive
one were indeed in the frame of this girl.
He looked up at her. To his surprise, her mind, too, was on other
things bent than on the pictures. Her eyes were glancing away to distant
people, she was apparently considering the effect she was producing upon
them by this cosy tete-a-tete with Pierston, and upon one in particular,
a man of thirty, of military appearance, whom Pierston did not know.
Quite convinced now that no phantom belonging to him was contained in
the outlines of the present young lady, he could coolly survey her as he
responded. They were both doing the same thing--each was pretending to
be deeply interested in what the other was talking about, the attention
of the two alike flitting away to other corners of the room even when
the very point of their discourse was pending.
No, he had not seen Her yet. He was not going to see her, apparently,
to-night; she was scared away by the twanging political atmosphere.
But he still moved on searchingly, hardly heeding certain spectral imps
other than Aphroditean, who always haunted these places, and jeeringly
pointed out that under the white hair of this or that ribanded old
man, with a forehead grown wrinkled over treaties which had swayed the
fortunes of Europe, with a voice which had numbered sovereigns among its
respectful listeners, might be a heart that would go inside a nut-shell;
that beneath this or that white rope of pearl and pink bosom, might lie
the half-lung which had, by hook or by crook, to sustain its possessor
above-ground till the wedding-day.
At that moment he encountered his amiable host, and almost
simultaneously caught sight of the lady who had at first attracted him
and then had disappeared. Their eyes met, far off as they were from each
other. Pierston laughed inwardly: it was only in ticklish excitement as
to whether this was to prove a true trouvaille, and with no instinct
to mirth; for when under the eyes of his Jill-o'-the-Wisp he was more
inclined to palpitate like a sheep in a fair.
However, for the minute he had to converse with his host, Lord
Channelcliffe, and almost the first thing that friend said to him was:
'Who is that pretty woman in the black dress with the white fluff about
it and the pearl necklace?'
'I don't know,' said Jocelyn, with incipient jealousy: 'I was just going
to ask the same thing.'
'O, we shall find out presently, I suppose. I daresay my wife knows.'
They had parted, when a hand came upon his shoulder. Lord Channelcliffe
had turned back for an instant: 'I find she is the granddaughter of my
father's old friend, the last Lord Hengistbury. Her name is Mrs.--Mrs.
Pine-Avon; she lost her husband two or three years ago, very shortly
after their marriage.'
Lord Channelcliffe became absorbed into some adjoining dignitary of the
Church, and Pierston was left to pursue his quest alone. A young friend
of his--the Lady Mabella Buttermead, who appeared in a cloud of muslin
and was going on to a ball--had been brought against him by the tide.
A warm-hearted, emotional girl was Lady Mabella, who laughed at the
humorousness of being alive. She asked him whither he was bent, and he
told her.
'O yes, I know her very well!' said Lady Mabella eagerly. 'She told
me one day that she particularly wished to meet you. Poor thing--so
sad--she lost her husband. Well, it was a long time ago now, certainly.
Women ought not to marry and lay themselves open to such catastrophes,
ought they, Mr. Pierston? _I_ never shall. I am determined never to run
such a risk! Now, do you think I shall?'
'Marry? O no; never,' said Pierston drily.
'That's very satisfying.' But Mabella was scarcely comfortable under his
answer, even though jestingly returned, and she added: 'But sometimes I
think I may, just for the fun of it. Now we'll steer across to her, and
catch her, and I'll introduce you. But we shall never get to her at this
rate!'
'Never, unless we adopt "the ugly rush," like the citizens who follow
the Lord Mayor's Show.'
They talked, and inched towards the desired one, who, as she discoursed
with a neighbour, seemed to be of those--
'Female forms, whose gestures beam with mind,'
seen by the poet in his Vision of the Golden City of Islam.
Their progress was continually checked. Pierston was as he had sometimes
seemed to be in a dream, unable to advance towards the object of pursuit
unless he could have gathered up his feet into the air. After ten
minutes given to a preoccupied regard of shoulder-blades, back hair,
glittering headgear, neck-napes, moles, hairpins, pearl-powder, pimples,
minerals cut into facets of many-coloured rays, necklace-clasps, fans,
stays, the seven styles of elbow and arm, the thirteen varieties of
ear; and by using the toes of his dress-boots as coulters with which
he ploughed his way and that of Lady Mabella in the direction they were
aiming at, he drew near to Mrs. Pine-Avon, who was drinking a cup of tea
in the back drawing-room.
'My dear Nichola, we thought we should never get to you, because it is
worse to-night, owing to these dreadful politics! But we've done it.'
And she proceeded to tell her friend of Pierston's existence hard by.
It seemed that the widow really did wish to know him, and that
Lady Mabella Buttermead had not indulged in one of the too frequent
inventions in that kind. When the youngest of the trio had made the pair
acquainted with each other she left them to talk to a younger man than
the sculptor.
Mrs. Pine-Avon's black velvets and silks, with their white
accompaniments, finely set off the exceeding fairness of her neck and
shoulders, which, though unwhitened artificially, were without a speck
or blemish of the least degree. The gentle, thoughtful creature she had
looked from a distance she now proved herself to be; she held also sound
rather than current opinions on the plastic arts, and was the first
intellectual woman he had seen there that night, except one or two as
aforesaid.
They soon became well acquainted, and at a pause in their conversation
noticed the fresh excitement caused by the arrival of some late comers
with more news. The latter had been brought by a rippling, bright-eyed
lady in black, who made the men listen to her, whether they would or no.
'I am glad I am an outsider,' said Jocelyn's acquaintance, now seated on
a sofa beside which he was standing. 'I wouldn't be like my cousin, over
there, for the world. She thinks her husband will be turned out at the
next election, and she's quite wild.'
'Yes; it is mostly the women who are the gamesters; the men only the
cards. The pity is that politics are looked on as being a game for
politicians, just as cricket is a game for cricketers; not as the
serious duties of political trustees.'
'How few of us ever think or feel that "the nation of every country
dwells in the cottage," as somebody says!'
'Yes. Though I wonder to hear you quote that.'
'O--I am of no party, though my relations are. There can be only
one best course at all times, and the wisdom of the nation should be
directed to finding it, instead of zigzagging in two courses, according
to the will of the party which happens to have the upper hand.'
Having started thus, they found no difficulty in agreeing on many
points. When Pierston went downstairs from that assembly at a quarter to
one, and passed under the steaming nostrils of an ambassador's horses to
a hansom which waited for him against the railing of the square, he had
an impression that the Beloved had re-emerged from the shadows, without
any hint or initiative from him--to whom, indeed, such re-emergence was
an unquestionably awkward thing.
In this he was aware, however, that though it might be now, as
heretofore, the Loved who danced before him, it was the Goddess behind
her who pulled the string of that Jumping Jill. He had lately been
trying his artist hand again on the Dea's form in every conceivable
phase and mood. He had become a one-part man--a presenter of her only.
But his efforts had resulted in failures. In her implacable vanity she
might be punishing him anew for presenting her so deplorably.