THE MAN BY THE STREAM
Apart from personal hopes or designs, the presence, or even the
proximity, of a beautiful woman is a cheerful thing: it gives a man the
sense of happiness, like sunshine or sparkling water; these are not his
either, but he can look at and enjoy them; he smiles back at the world
in thanks for its bountiful favours. Never had life seemed better to
Dieppe than when he awoke the next morning; yet there was guilt on his
conscience--he ought not to have opened that door. But the guilt
became parent to a new pleasure and gave him the one thing needful to
perfection of existence--a pretty little secret of his own, and this
time one that he was minded to keep.
"To think," he exclaimed, pointing a scornful finger at the village
across the river, "that but for my luck I might be at the inn! Heaven
above us, I might even have been leaving this enchanting spot!" He
looked down at the stream. A man was fishing there, a tall, well-made
fellow in knickerbockers and a soft felt hat of the sort sometimes
called Tyrolean. "Good luck to you, my boy!" nodded the happy and
therefore charitable Captain.
Going down to the Count's pleasant room at the corner of the left wing,
he found his host taking his coffee. Compliments passed, and soon
Dieppe was promising to spend a week at least with his new friend.
"I am a student," observed the Count, "and you must amuse yourself.
There are fine walks, a little rough shooting perhaps--"
"Fishing?" asked Dieppe, thinking of the man in the soft hat.
"The fishing is worth nothing at all," answered the Count, decisively.
He paused for a moment and then went on: "There is, however, one
request that I am obliged to make to you."
"Any wish of yours is a command to me, my dear host."
"It is that during your visit you will hold no communication whatever
with the right wing of the house." The Count was now lighting a cigar;
he completed the operation carefully, and then added:
"The Countess's establishment and mine are entirely separate--entirely."
"The Countess!" exclaimed Dieppe, not unnaturally surprised.
"I regret to trouble you with family matters. My wife and I are not in
agreement; we have n't met for three months. She lives in the right
wing with two servants; I live in the left with three. We hold no
communication, and our servants are forbidden to hold any among
themselves; obedience is easier to insure as we have kept only those we
can trust, and, since entertaining is out of the question, have
dismissed the rest."
"You have--er--had a difference?" the Captain ventured to suggest, for
the Count seemed rather embarrassed.
"A final and insuperable difference, a final and permanent separation."
The Count's tone was sad but very firm.
"I am truly grieved. But--forgive me--does n't the arrangement you
indicate entail some inconvenience?"
"Endless inconvenience," assented the Count.
"To live under the same roof, and yet--"
"My dear sir, during the negotiations which followed on the Countess's
refusal to--to well, to meet my wishes, I represented that to her with
all the emphasis at my command. I am bound to add that she represented
it no less urgently to me."
"On the other hand, of course, the scandal--" Dieppe began.
"We Fieramondi do not much mind scandal. That was n't the difficulty.
The fact is that I thought it the Countess's plain duty to relieve me
of her presence. She took what I may call the exactly converse view.
You follow me?"
"Perfectly," said Dieppe, repressing an inclination to smile.
"And declared that nothing--nothing on earth--should induce her to quit
the Castle even for a day; she would regard such an act as a surrender.
I said I should regard my own departure in the same light. So we stay
here under the extremely inconvenient arrangement I have referred to.
To make sure of my noticing her presence, my wife indulges in something
approaching to an illumination every night."
The Count rose and began to walk up and down as he went on with a
marked access of warmth. "But even the understanding we arrived at,"
he pursued, "I regret to say that my wife did n't see fit to adhere to
in good faith. She treated it with what I must call levity." He faced
round on his guest suddenly. "I mentioned a cat to you," he said.
"You did," Dieppe admitted, eyeing him rather apprehensively.
"I don't know," pursued the Count, "whether you noticed a door in your
room?" Dieppe nodded. "It was bolted?" Dieppe nodded again. "If you
had opened that door--pardon the supposition--you would have seen a
passage. At the other end is another door, leading to the Countess's
apartments. See, I will show you. This fork is the door from your
room, this knife is--"
"I follow your description perfectly," interposed Dieppe, assailed now
with a keener sense of guilt.
"The Countess possesses a cat--a thing to which in itself I have no
objection. To give this creature, which she likes to have with her
constantly, the opportunity of exercise, she has caused an opening to
be made from the passage on to the roof. This piece of bread will
represent--"
"I understand, I assure you," murmured Dieppe.
"Every evening she lets the cat into the passage, whence it escapes on
to the roof. On its return it would naturally betake itself to her
room again."
"Naturally," assented the Captain. Are not cats most reasonable
animals?
"But," said the Count, beginning to walk about again, "she shuts her
door: the animal mews at it; my wife ignores the appeal. What then?
The cat, in despair, turns to my door. I take no heed. It mews
persistently. At last, wearied of the noise, I open my door.
Always--by design, as I believe--at that very moment my wife flings her
door open. You see the position?"
"I can imagine it," said Dieppe, discreetly.
"We are face to face! Nothing between us except the passage--and the
cat! And then the Countess, with what I am compelled to term a
singular offensiveness, not to say insolence, of manner, slams the door
in my face, leaving me to deal with the cat as I best can! My friend,
it became intolerable. I sent a message begging the Countess to do me
the favour of changing her apartment.
"She declined point-blank. I determined then to change mine, and sent
word of my intention to the Countess." He flung himself into a chair.
"Her reply was to send back to me her marriage contract and her
wedding-ring, and to beg to be informed whether my present stay at the
Castle was likely to be prolonged."
"And you replied--?"
"I made no reply," answered the Count, crossing his legs.
A combination of feelings prevented Dieppe from disclosing the incident
of the previous night. He loved a touch of mystery and a possibility
of romance. Again, it is not the right thing for a guest to open
bolted doors. A man does not readily confess to such a breach of
etiquette, and his inclination to make a clean breast of it is not
increased when it turns out that the door in question leads to the
apartments of his host's wife.
Finally, the moment for candour had slipped by: you cannot allow a man
to explain a locality by means of forks and knives and pieces of bread
and then inform him that you were all the while acquainted with its
features. Dieppe was silent, and the Count, who was obviously upset by
the recital of his grievances, presently withdrew to his study, a room
on the upper floor which looked out on the gardens at the back of the
house.
"What did they quarrel about?" Dieppe asked himself; the Count had
thrown no light on that. "I 'll be hanged if I 'd quarrel with her,"
smiled the Captain, remembering the face he had seen at the other end
of the passage. "But," he declared to himself, virtuously, "the cat
may mew till it's hoarse--I won't open that door again." With this
resolve strong in his heart, he took his hat and strolled out into the
garden.
He had no sooner reached the front of the house than he gave an
exclamation of surprise. The expanse of rather rough grass sprinkled
with flower-beds, which stretched from the Castle to the point where
the ground dipped steeply towards the river, was divided across by a
remarkable structure--a tall, new, bare wooden fence, constituting a
very substantial barrier. It stood a few paces to the right of the
window which the Captain identified as his own, and ran some yards down
the hill. Here was plain and strong evidence of the state of war which
existed between the two wings. Neither the Count nor the Countess
would risk so much as a sight of the other while they took their
respective promenades. The Captain approached the obstacle and
examined it with a humorous interest; then he glanced up at the wall
above, drawing a couple of feet back to get a better view. "Ah," said
he, "just half-way between my window and--hers! They are very
punctilious, these combatants!"
Natural curiosity must, so far as it can, excuse Captain Dieppe for
spending the rest of the morning in what he termed a reconnaissance of
the premises, or that part of them which was open to his inspection.
He found little. There was no sign of anybody entering or leaving the
other wing, although (as he discovered on strolling round by the road)
a gate in the wall on the right of the gardens, and a carriage-drive
running up to it, gave independent egress from that side of the Castle.
Breakfast with the Count was no more fruitful of information; the Count
discussed (apropos of a book at which he had been glancing) the
question of the Temporal Power of the Papacy with learning and some
heat: he was, it appeared, strongly opposed to these ecclesiastical
claims, and spoke of them with marked bitterness. Dieppe, very little
interested, escaped for a walk early in the afternoon. It was five
o'clock when he regained the garden and stood for a few moments looking
down towards the river. It was just growing dusk, and the lights of
the inn were visible in the village across the valley.
Fishermen are a persevering race, the young man in the soft hat was
still at his post. But no, he was not fishing! He was walking up and
down in a moody, purposeless way, and it seemed to the Captain that he
turned his head very often towards the Castle. The Captain sat down on
a garden-seat close under the barricade and watched; an idea was
stirring in his brain--an idea that made him pat his breast-pocket,
twirl his moustache, and smile contentedly. "Not much of a fisherman,
I think," he murmured. "Ah, my friend, I know the cut of your jib, I
fancy. After poor old Jean Dieppe, are n't you, my boy? A police-spy;
I could tell him among a thousand!"
Equally pleased with the discovery and with his own acuteness in making
it, the Captain laughed aloud; then in an instant he sat bolt upright,
stiff and still, listening intently. For through the barricade had
come two sounds--a sweet, low, startled voice, that cried half in a
whisper, "Heavens, he 's there!" and then the rustle of skirts in hasty
flight. Without an instant's thought--without remembering his promise
to the Count--Dieppe sprang up, ran down the hill, turned the corner of
the barricade, and found himself in the Countess's territory.
He was too late. The lady had made good her escape. There was nobody
to be seen except the large yellow cat: it sat on the path and blinked
gravely at the chagrined Captain.
"Animal, you annoy me!" he said with a stamp of his foot. The cat
rose, turned, and walked away with its tail in the air. "I 'm making a
fool of myself," muttered Dieppe. "Or," he amended with a dawning
smile, "she 's making a fool of me." His smile broadened a little.
"Why not?" he asked. Then he drew himself up and slowly returned to
his own side of the barricade, shaking his head and murmuring, "No, no,
Jean, my boy, no, no! He 's your host--your host, Jean," as he again
seated himself on the bench under the barricade.
Evening was now falling fast; the fisherman was no longer to be seen;
perfect peace reigned over the landscape. Dieppe yawned; perfect peace
was with him a synonym for intolerable dulness.
"Permit me, my dear friend," said a voice behind him, "to read you a
little poem which I have beguiled my leisure by composing."
He turned to find the Count behind him, holding a sheet of paper.
Probably the poet had his composition by heart, for the light seemed
now too dim to read by. However this may be, a rich and tender voice
recited to Dieppe's sympathetic ears as pretty a little appeal (so the
Captain thought) as had ever been addressed by lover to an obdurate or
capricious lady. The Captain's eyes filled with tears as he
listened--tears for the charm of the verse, for the sad beauty of the
sentiment, also, alas, for the unhappy gentleman from whose heart came
verse and sentiment.
"My friend, you love!" cried the Captain, holding out his hand as the
Count ended his poem and folded up the paper.
"And you are unhappy," he added.
The Count smiled in a sad but friendly fashion.
"Is n't it the same thing?" he asked. "And at any rate as to me you
are right."
Dieppe wrung his hand. The Count, apparently much moved, turned and
walked slowly away, leaving Dieppe to his meditations.
"He loves her." That was the form they took. Whatever the meaning of
the quarrel, the Count loved his wife; it was to her the poem was
written, hers was the heart which it sought to soften. Yet she had not
looked hard-hearted. No, she had looked adorable, frankly adorable; a
lady for whose sake any man, even so wise and experienced a man as
Captain Dieppe, might well commit many a folly, and have many a
heartache; a lady for whom--
"Rascal that I am!" cried the Captain, interrupting himself and
springing up. He raised his hand in the air and declared aloud with
emphasis: "On my honour, I will think no more of her. I will think, I
say, no more of her."
On the last word came a low laugh from the other side of the barricade.
The Captain started, looked round, listened, smiled, frowned, pulled
his moustache. Then, with extraordinary suddenness, resolution, and
fierceness, he turned and walked quickly away. "Honour, honour!" he
was saying to himself; and the path of honour seemed to lie in flight.
Unhappily, though, the Captain was more accustomed to advance.