ravaged in a ghastly fashion by want and illness. The contour and pose
of youth remained, but all bloom, freshness and colour had gone; his
person seemed to have seen as much hard service as his clothes and to
have suffered more.
From the lines on his brow and at the corners of his remarkably
beautiful mouth it might have been supposed that he was in pain, but
his expression was calm and his large hazel eyes serene. The flies
circled the room and beat at the window with a monotonous persistency;
the sun burnt up the already foul air and heated the room almost
unbearably. The young man rose, displaying a figure no more than the
middle height, but of a graceful, well-trained manliness, and walked
unsteadily to the window.
As he moved he felt his own weakness and caught his breath with a quick
exclamation.
For years he had been warned that he was killing himself as he had been
warned that he was ruining himself. The last had occurred; he had been
ruined in fame and fortune, and it seemed as if the first prophecy
would be justified also. Two nights ago he had ridden from one town
to another; six hours in the rain and the chill that had followed had
greatly increased the vague illness that had been for the last two
years threatening his life.
He had always been as reckless of his health as of all the other great
gifts he had once been blessed with, and he was paying toll now, a
penniless exile, bankrupt in everything.
He could see nothing from the window, the blaze of the sun was too
strong on the white Spanish street.
The flies droned in his ears, and they were the only sound.
He closed his eyes, for the dazzle of sunshine made him feel giddy.
“Gad,” he murmured, “one could do with a few drops of rain–a cloud at
least.”
He began to be conscious of a great thirst; there was no water in the
brown earthenware jug standing in the corner, he knew. Languidly, but
with the well-schooled and now unconscious grace of the man of fashion
who is used to move with a thousand eyes watching every detail of his
dress and deportment, the young Englishman crossed the room, unlatched
the door and went slowly down the dark, steep and dirty stairs.
He came directly into a large picturesque room that gave by a tall open
door on to the street.
It was a kind of general hall or kitchen, the smooth black beams of
the ceiling hung with rows of onions and herbs, all manner of pots and
pans about the huge open hearth, a window at the back looking on to the
garden, and in a dusky corner an empty cradle and a spinning wheel.
The young man went to the shelf where the thick green glasses stood,
took one down and dipped it into the red-glazed pitcher that stood
beneath. The bubble of the water sounded pleasantly; he raised the
dripping glass and drank with a grateful air.
He was glad of the cool shadows and of the intense quiet; every one
seemed abroad; it was autumn and he supposed they were at work in the
vineyards.
There was an old rush-bottomed chair near the black-carved supports
of the door; he seated himself with his back to the sunlight in the
deserted street, and his eyes on the window the other side of the
room that gave an exquisite glimpse of a fig-tree drooping in the
shadowed garden, and beyond a glossy myrtle, glittering in distant
sunbeams. The young man knew that he had not long to live, both from
ordinary signs and fore-warnings and the sure inner instinct his keen
intelligence was quick to notice and regard.
He was absolutely without fear; he had never had any credence in any
religion or any belief, even vague, in a future state of existence, nor
had, like many, tried to invent these feelings for himself or supply
their place with superstitions and conventions.
He had never needed these lures to gild his life with promise, always
he had found the moment sufficient, and whatever the moment demanded,
in wealth, honour, talent, charm or health, he had given lavishly, not
unthinkingly, for he had always known that a price would be demanded,
as he had seen it demanded from others of his kind.
And he was prepared to pay.
A long life did not attract him; all the pleasures he valued were
pleasures that could not with dignity be enjoyed when youth was past;
his own sparkling wit had often made a butt of an old rake, or an
elderly prodigal; he had never intended to join the ranks of those
people who had outworn their enjoyments.
A poet whom he had patronised had called him “The scorn and wonder of
the age;” but from his own point of view his life had been the very
steady following of a very simple philosophy.
Caring for nothing but the world, that he regarded as the golden apple
hung above the head of every youth to ignore or gain, he had bought
the world, with money, with charm, with honour, with talent, with
beauty and strength and exulted in it and sated himself–and he did not
complain of the bargain. He never complained of anything; his sweet,
good humour was held by many to condone his villainies as the grace
with which he took his final fall almost justified the acts which had
led to that fall. When his political levity, his social extravagances,
his dissipations had finally left him without health or money, he had
taken the verdict of the doctors, the curses of his creditors and
the flight of his friends with the same gentle smile, and, urged by
his ardent love of the world to make life an adventure to the last,
had disappeared from London, where he was so dazzling and infamous
a figure, to die abroad, in the sun and among scenes that by their
freshness and simplicity disguised, at least to a stranger’s eyes, the
sharpness of their poverty. So he, by birth an English Marquis, by
patent of the Pretender a Duke, son of a famous man and himself the
most renowned rake in London, even among a set that included Viscount
Bolingbroke, stayed his obscure wanderings at a poor inn in an unknown
Spanish village and prepared himself for death among the peasants of a
strange land.
He regretted nothing, not the splendid chances he had thrown away, not
the fine name he had tarnished, not the great talents he had wasted,
not the life he had sapped and used up before its time. He admitted no
sins, he claimed no virtues and he believed in no judgment.
God he considered a polite myth, invented to frighten human weaknesses,
the devil a fable to excuse man’s breakage of his own laws; he had
never paid the least regard to either; never, in any moment of
disappointment or sickness, had he felt any touch of remorse, of regret
or fear.
If he had been given his life over again he would have again used it
for the same extravagances, the same follies, the same short brilliant
flare.
As he sat now, looking at the distant fig-tree and myrtle, he was
thinking of his past life without compunction, though every incident
that rose to his memory was connected with some broken promise, some
shameless deception, some ruined heart, some wanton, dishonourable
action.
The one thing he had been faithful to (beyond his own Epicurean creed)
was the code of a gentleman, as interpreted by the society in which he
moved. It was a curious code, inherited, not learnt, an instinct more
than a quality only remotely connected with the chivalry from which it
had sprung.
The Duke would have found this code difficult to define; he called it
honour, but it was only a kind of flourishing likeness of honour.
Its laws were simple, mainly these: never be afraid; never chaffer with
money nor earn it in any way, nor mingle in trade; never play false
in your games or your bets; always be courteous to your inferiors and
to women; never take insolence from any one, even the King; seek out
danger and the company of your equals; never take up money once you
have put it down; smile when you win and laugh when you lose; never
speak of your loves nor toast an actress at your club.
My lord had never broken these laws: he did not put this to his credit;
he took them as naturally as clean linen and neat table manners, but
perhaps in the casting up of his worthless life they might be set
against the black length of his wicked record, as some poor palliative.
There was something else my lord could claim, a personal quality this
and peculiar to himself: he was tender to animals and anything weak
that came his way.
He could not have turned a step aside to seek out the poor or
miserable, but when they crossed his path he was lavish.
And no bird or beast had ever suffered through him; he had never lent
the brilliance of his presence to any baiting or cock-fighting or
bull-fight.
This, too, might be set to my lord’s account, but there was little else.
Yet he was lovable; he had always been lovable.
People who knew him and scorned him still cared for him; he had been
caressed by Charles Edward in genuine affection and liked by King
George. Perhaps because he was so utterly soulless and made no pretence
of being other than he was, because he was so entirely frank in his
passionate capacity for happiness, in his beautiful gaiety he attracted
those who were themselves divided in their aims and too timid to crown
their own vices as he crowned his, for his fascination was more than
merely physical and the attraction of exquisite manners.
He was lovable now; even after his long exile from the splendours
of St. James, even in his worn clothes, even marred by illness and
weariness, he carried with him something that was wholly pleasing, not
in the least suggestive of the shameful, unlovely things with which his
name was branded.
He was reviewing the final adventure of his life with no changed sense
of values, no blurred outlook.
The near presence of death did not alter his opinion in one jot on any
particular nor confuse his estimate nor awaken new feeling; he must
have satisfied, in some way, the purposes for which he had been born,
to be so serene, so content on the eve of the complete end.
All his senses were absolutely clear, even more exquisite than usual;
even more perhaps than ever did he appreciate the beauties of light and
colour and scent, the delicacies of sound, of touch, yet his mean and
unbeautiful surroundings did not trouble him; compared to what they
might have been they were well enough. It was better to die in a poor
Spanish lodging than in the Fleet, or a garret in Whitefriars, or some
kinsman’s back room; nay, better this than the Tower and the panoply of
death some chill morning on the scaffold.
He would perhaps have preferred an active death in some duel, but he
made no complaint that this had not been the end ordained for him.
He was grateful that he was going to die in the sun.
Leaning back easily in the old willow-wand chair, he began to compose
some verses–some of those witty cynical lines for which he had been
famous in London and which amused him to fashion.
Presently his sensitive ears detected a light sound, a sweet and
familiar sound, the play of a woman’s skirt against her ankles and the
floor.
He broke off his mental composition and turned his head towards the
shadowy depths of the room that lay between him and the window at which
he had been gazing.
From out these darknesses a figure emerged from a mysterious door
that opened and shut on farther recesses of blackness, moved into the
clearer shadows and finally into the full light.
It was a woman, young and notable, who appeared not to notice that
there was any one in the room, for she stood in a watchful, motionless
pose, gazing up the dark staircase from which the Duke had descended.
Her dress was fantastic and charming, a tight blue satin bodice gleamed
round her slender waist, and beneath it panniers of pink gauze
billowed over her hips and were looped away from a white petticoat
trimmed with blue jet that glimmered even when she stood still.
Round the bottom of this petticoat was a garland of pink roses, her
stockings, that showed well above her ankles, were blue, her shoes
white, heelless and fastened in with embroidered pink ribbons.
On one arm she carried a pale yellow cloak and a black velvet mask;
over her wide shoulders was flung, carelessly, but gracefully, a white
silk scarf with a deep fringe border.
Her dusky brown hair was slightly powdered and gathered on the top of
her small head by a huge tortoiseshell comb set with red coral, long
blue jet earrings quivered in her ears, and she wore a necklace of fine
pearls.
The Duke noticed these things and the delicacy and grace of the woman
herself, the poise of her head, the straight lines of her profile, the
fineness of her hands and ankles, the richness of her locks, the dark
sweep of her eyebrows and the dusky bloom on her round cheek.
He also knew her dress to be that of a dancer or ballerina, despite the
blue brocade train that dragged a couple of yards behind her.
What or who she was he did not care, nor how she came to be in this
poor inn dressed in this festal fashion.
He was pleased to see again one of the pretty creatures who had always
been to him the most entrancing and beautiful objects in an entrancing
and beautiful world.
He watched the gentle vision with interest and tenderness, making no
movement or sound.
Suddenly she turned full on him her dark face that, although it was too
broad for perfect beauty, was piquant and glowing with fine colour.
The Duke rose and bowed.
“I am Philip Wharton, Señora,” he said in Spanish.
She advanced towards him.
“I thought you were upstairs,” she said gravely.
Her voice was delicate, but her speech had the peasant accent of
Andalusia.
“Were you watching for me?” he asked curiously.
“Yes,” she said. “For who else? Why should I come back after this long
time save to see you? Yesterday I was here,” she added, “but you would
not see me.”
“Pardon me, I was ill yesterday and did not come downstairs.”
She gazed at him with soft, luminous and unfathomable eyes.
“Have I seen you before?” asked the Duke, endeavouring to place her
among the many women who had flitted across his life.
“I used to dance,” she answered, “at the opera in Venice.”
He did not remember her. How could he recall one face from out the
whirl of joy and gaiety he had known in Venice?
“You are Spanish?” he asked.
“From Andalusia. And you are English?”
“Yes.”
“And dying?”
“Ah, you know as much as that, do you?” he smiled.
“I know many things now.”
“Ah, wisdom!” he mocked. “I could wager your knowledge begins and ends
with the list of your victims and triumphs. How did you come here?” he
asked abruptly.
“I ran away.”
“To this place?”
“It was but a stage on the road.”
“You know me?” he asked.
“Yes; I have met you at Paris, at Vienna, at Rome and Naples.”
“By gad,” he said, “you flatter me by your memory.”
He began to notice that she never smiled, and it displeased him; he
disliked a grave woman.
“What is your name?” he asked in the tone of a master, and sank back
into the chair, for indeed he felt very weak.
She shook her head.
“I have so many.”
“Give me one.”
She bent her eyes on him earnestly.
“What was the name of your first love?” she asked.
He started.
“I have forgotten.”
“What was the name of the woman you loved the most?”
Fair faces rose before him, tearful faces, pleading faces, angry
faces–he could not choose between them.
“I do not know,” he said faintly.
She glanced round the room as if she, too, saw the faces that had risen
so clearly before his mental eyes.
“You were not kind or loyal to one of them,” she said.
Philip Wharton laughed.
“Tell me your name,” he insisted.
“You have forgotten it, and you do not know it,” she returned quickly.
“Once I was called Helen, but that was a long time ago.”
He looked at her curiously.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said, “and how you come to be here alone.”
She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train
and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade.
“It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for
the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over
my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house
of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—”
She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke.
“—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my
eyes, so—”
Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn
tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness.
“—and one led me by the hand, thus—”
Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage.
“—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand
guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was
not very long before he was tired of me.”
She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently.
Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised
crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style.
An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays
of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that
was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt,
fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a
red rose.
“As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon
got tired of me.”
“_Carina_, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you
and Venice.”
“You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an
orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met
you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.”
“I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you
when I am dying.”
She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the
balcony.
“Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked.
He followed her.
Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola
cushioned in sapphire blue floated.
The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the
light boat forward between the palaces.
“This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said.
She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at
him over the feather tips.
“The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I
was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—”
Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and
gold into darkness.
“They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—”
The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see,
the lady rise and step out.
Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he
stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his
wrist drew him through a doorway.
“My husband is coming back to-morrow,” the voice continued. “Oh,
Philip, I am afraid!”
He put his free hand to his sword.
“That is foolish of you,” he said. “I am here.”
“But you have begun to cease to care,” her voice wailed, “and you will
go away.”
As she spoke a door opened to her right, and she released his wrist; he
followed her into a little boudoir charmingly hung with straw-coloured
silk.
The Duke remembered it very well; he turned to the woman.
She was now a pale blonde wrapped in an embroidered mob and wearing
dazzling little silver slippers.
Her face was tear-stained and her eyes pleading.
“Paris was terrible after you left,” she said. “Why did you go? You
tired so soon.”
“You have remarked that,” he returned, “twice, I think, before.”
She began to cry.
“Do not you love me any more, Philip?”
“I have come back to you,” he answered; “but my head is rather
confused. And, Madame, you are spoiling your complexion with these
tears.”
“Hush!” she cried.
She ran to the dainty hangings that concealed the door, raised them,
and listened.
“Some one is coming!”
She hastened back to him and half dragged, half pushed him to a secret
door; as she touched a spring it flew open, and he stepped with a
laugh into the concealment of a dark secret room that was filled with
a bitter, pungent perfume. He closed his eyes; there was a heaviness
in his head; he could not tell how long he had been closed in when the
sliding panel was drawn.
“It was a false alarm after all,” said the woman.
Her black hair hung dishevelled on her brocade gown, her hollow face
was pale and her eyes stormy.
“Did you say that you must leave Bois-le-Duc to-morrow?” she demanded
hoarsely.
She held a candle in a pewter stick in her right hand and her left
clasped her dress together over her palpitating bosom.
“The Prince gave me leave to return to England,” he answered.
He stepped from his concealment into a room with polished walls,
furnished heavily and well.
“You would not betray him after he has given you a Dukedom–you would
not forsake me?” she asked anxiously.
“Do you not trust me?” he asked lightly.
“Oh yes, I trusted you. But you went away.”
“Always the same!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Have I not been faithful
to return to you now?”
She began to laugh.
“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful!”
He laughed too, and the echo was long and loud.
He went to the door and opened it on dark stairs; without looking back
he descended.
The first landing blazed with the light of a thousand candles; a
magnificent doorway with portals flung wide invited him into a
gorgeous ballroom, where splendidly dressed people moved to and fro to
the melody of violin and harp.
Philip Wharton entered; in a little alcove to his right he found the
woman waiting for him.
The diamonds sparkled red and blue as if her flesh was on fire; her
powdered locks were piled high, and the billows of her violet dress
spread wide on the settee where she sat.
She laughed.
“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful! And you are leaving Vienna to-morrow!”
He seated himself on the small portion of the brocade her spreading
skirts had left uncovered.
His nostrils distended to drink in the perfumed air, and his eyes
sparkled; his whole spirit became animated in the congenial atmosphere
of a court–a luxurious court.
“And I must really die and leave all this,” he complained.
He looked at the lady and smiled; but her face was very grave.
“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a
glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily
lit by coloured lanterns. She took the Duke’s arm, and they passed
along the prim paths between avenues of clipped limes and box bushes.
For some while she did not speak; then she whispered–
“It is strange to see you at Kensington again, my lord.” Her voice
sounded as if it was full of tears. “Strange to think that you must
leave again so soon.”
She pressed close to his side now, for she no longer wore a hoop; a
quilted hood and cloak concealed her head and figure, and he thought
that she must wear jasmine somewhere on her person, so strong was the
scent of that blossom on the air.
“I wonder,” she continued, “if, when you come to die, you will ever
think of these moments–the broken promises, the broken hearts?”
“When I come to die,” repeated the Duke musingly, “I shall no doubt
think of you and your sweetness.”
“Not of me and my sadness?”
Philip Wharton did not answer; he smiled into the darkness, which he
perceived was beginning to be lightened by the first delicate sparkle
of dawn.
“Have you ever done one good action?” continued the voice at his side.
“Oh, Madame!”
“Or shed one tear–one tear for another? One tear to heal all the
wickedness you have committed–all the grief you have caused?”
“Never!” he answered. “Never!”
“Is there no memory you can recall that would soften you to tears now?”
He answered “None.”
Her hand slackened on his arm and was withdrawn; in the confusion of
the lifting shadows and the spreading milky whiteness of the new day he
lost her.
He was alone in the garden. No, not a garden; it was soon light enough
to see, and he then noticed that he was walking in an English field in
early spring-time.
Before him a meadow sloped to a fence that enclosed a little wood;
bluebells, daffodils, and primroses grew under the branches of the
trees; the meadow was starred all over with buttercups and daisies.
To one side of the fence was a small thatched cottage behind which
the sun was rising, and where the distance merged into the early blue
vapour the sharp spire of a church rose.
A slight, very slight, feeling of apprehension came over Philip Wharton.
“I do not wish to come back here,” he said. “This has all been a dream,
and I will wake up now.”
Yet he walked on.
It was absolutely still; though the sun had now risen clear of the
mists and was glittering in a clear heaven, there was no one abroad.
The Duke approached the cottage, saying to himself–
“I know this place, and I do not wish to see it again.”
Before the wooden gate of the tiny garden he paused.