"Ah, then he wasn't alone."
"And I've been to see him, in his study."
"Did he know you were there?"
"Naturally--I was announced."
Blanche Adney glanced at me like a lovely conspirator. "You mustn't be
announced!" With this she walked on.
I rejoined her, breathless. "Do you mean one must come upon him when he
doesn't know it?"
"You must take him unawares. You must go to his room--that's what you
must do."
If I was elated by the way our mystery opened out, I was also,
pardonably, a little confused. "When I know he's not there?"
"When you know he _is_."
"And what shall I see?"
"You won't see anything!" Mrs. Adney cried as we turned round.
We had reached the end of the terrace, and our movement brought us face
to face with Lord Mellifont, who, resuming his walk, had now, without
indiscretion, overtaken us. The sight of him at that moment was
illuminating, and it kindled a great backward train, connecting itself
with one's general impression of the personage. As he stood there
smiling at us and waving a practised hand into the transparent night (he
introduced the view as if it had been a candidate and "supported" the
very Alps), as he rose before us in the delicate fragrance of his cigar
and all his other delicacies and fragrances, with more perfections,
somehow, heaped upon his handsome head than one had ever seen
accumulated before, he struck me as so essentially, so conspicuously and
uniformly the public character that I read in a flash the answer to
Blanche Adney's riddle. He was all public and had no corresponding
private life, just as Clare Vawdrey was all private and had no
corresponding public one. I had heard only half my companion's story,
yet as we joined Lord Mellifont (he had followed us--he liked Mrs.
Adney; but it was always to be conceived of him that he accepted society
rather than sought it), as we participated for half an hour in the
distributed wealth of his conversation, I felt with unabashed duplicity
that we had, as it were, found him out. I was even more deeply diverted
by that whisk of the curtain to which the actress had just treated me
than I had been by my own discovery; and if I was not ashamed of my
share of her secret any more than of having divided my own with her
(though my own was, of the two mysteries, the more glorious for the
personage involved), this was because there was no cruelty in my
advantage, but on the contrary an extreme tenderness and a positive
compassion. Oh, he was safe with me, and I felt moreover rich and
enlightened, as if I had suddenly put the universe into my pocket. I had
learned what an affair of the spot and the moment a great appearance may
be. It would doubtless be too much to say that I had always suspected
the possibility, in the background of his lordship's being, of some such
beautiful instance; but it is at least a fact that, patronising as it
sounds, I had been conscious of a certain reserve of indulgence for him.
I had secretly pitied him for the perfection of his performance, had
wondered what blank face such a mask had to cover, what was left to him
for the immitigable hours in which a man sits down with himself, or,
more serious still, with that intenser self, his lawful wife. How was he
at home and what did he do when he was alone? There was something in
Lady Mellifont that gave a point to these researches--something that
suggested that even to her he was still the public character and that
she was haunted by similar questionings. She had never cleared them up:
that was her eternal trouble. We therefore knew more than she did,
Blanche Adney and I; but we wouldn't tell her for the world, nor would
she probably thank us for doing so. She preferred the relative grandeur
of uncertainty. She was not at home with him, so she couldn't say; and
with her he was not alone, so he couldn't show her. He represented to
his wife and he was a hero to his servants, and what one wanted to
arrive at was what really became of him when no eye could see. He
rested, presumably; but what form of rest could repair such a plenitude
of presence? Lady Mellifont was too proud to pry, and as she had never
looked through a keyhole she remained dignified and unassuaged.
It may have been a fancy of mine that Blanche Adney drew out our
companion, or it may be that the practical irony of our relation to him
at such a moment made me see him more vividly: at any rate he never had
struck me as so dissimilar from what he would have been if we had not
offered him a reflection of his image. We were only a concourse of two,
but he had never been more public. His perfect manner had never been
more perfect, his remarkable tact had never been more remarkable. I had
a tacit sense that it would all be in the morning papers, with a leader,
and also a secretly exhilarating one that I knew something that wouldn't
be, that never could be, though any enterprising journal would give one
a fortune for it. I must add, however, that in spite of my enjoyment--it
was almost sensual, like that of a consummate dish--I was eager to be
alone again with Mrs. Adney, who owed me an anecdote. It proved
impossible, that evening, for some of the others came out to see what we
found so absorbing; and then Lord Mellifont bespoke a little music from
the fiddler, who produced his violin and played to us divinely, on our
platform of echoes, face to face with the ghosts of the mountains.
Before the concert was over I missed our actress and, glancing into the
window of the salon, saw that she was established with Vawdrey, who was
reading to her from a manuscript. The great scene had apparently been
achieved and was doubtless the more interesting to Blanche from the new
lights she had gathered about its author. I judged it discreet not to
disturb them, and I went to bed without seeing her again. I looked out
for her betimes the next morning and, as the promise of the day was
fair, proposed to her that we should take to the hills, reminding her of
the high obligation she had incurred. She recognised the obligation and
gratified me with her company; but before we had strolled ten yards up
the pass she broke out with intensity: "My dear friend, you've no idea
how it works in me! I can think of nothing else."
"Than your theory about Lord Mellifont?"
"Oh, bother Lord Mellifont! I allude to yours about Mr. Vawdrey, who is
much the more interesting person of the two. I'm fascinated by that
vision of his--what-do-you-call-it?"
"His alternative identity?"
"His other self: that's easier to say."
"You accept it, then, you adopt it?"
"Adopt it? I rejoice in it! It became tremendously vivid to me last
evening."
"While he read to you there?"
"Yes, as I listened to him, watched him. It simplified everything,
explained everything."
"That's indeed the blessing of it. Is the scene very fine?"
"Magnificent, and he reads beautifully."
"Almost as well as the other one writes!" I laughed.
This made my companion stop a moment, laying her hand on my arm. "You
utter my very impression. I felt that he was reading me the work of
another man."
"What a service to the other man!"
"Such a totally different person," said Mrs. Adney. We talked of this
difference as we went on, and of what a wealth it constituted, what a
resource for life, such a duplication of character.
"It ought to make him live twice as long as other people," I observed.
"Ought to make which of them?"
"Well, both; for after all they're members of a firm, and one of them
couldn't carry on the business without the other. Moreover mere survival
would be dreadful for either."
Blanche Adney was silent a little; then she exclaimed: "I don't know--I
wish he _would_ survive!"
"May I, on my side, inquire which?"
"If you can't guess I won't tell you."
"I know the heart of woman. You always prefer the other."
She halted again, looking round her. "Off here, away from my husband, I
_can_ tell you. I'm in love with him!"
"Unhappy woman, he has no passions," I answered.
"That's exactly why I adore him. Doesn't a woman with my history know
that the passions of others are insupportable? An actress, poor thing,
can't care for any love that's not all on _her_ side; she can't afford
to be repaid. My marriage proves that: marriage is ruinous. Do you know
what was in my mind last night, all the while Mr. Vawdrey was reading me
those beautiful speeches? An insane desire to see the author." And
dramatically, as if to hide her shame, Blanche Adney passed on.
"We'll manage that," I returned. "I want another glimpse of him myself.
But meanwhile please remember that I've been waiting more than
forty-eight hours for the evidence that supports your sketch, intensely
suggestive and plausible, of Lord Mellifont's private life."
"Oh, Lord Mellifont doesn't interest me."
"He did yesterday," I said.
"Yes, but that was before I fell in love. You blotted him out with your
story."
"You'll make me sorry I told it. Come," I pleaded, "if you don't let me
know how your idea came into your head I shall imagine you simply made
it up."
"Let me recollect then, while we wander in this grassy valley."
We stood at the entrance of a charming crooked gorge, a portion of whose
level floor formed the bed of a stream that was smooth with swiftness.
We turned into it, and the soft walk beside the clear torrent drew us on
and on; till suddenly, as we continued and I waited for my companion to
remember, a bend of the valley showed us Lady Mellifont coming toward
us. She was alone, under the canopy of her parasol, drawing her sable
train over the turf; and in this form, on the devious ways, she was a
sufficiently rare apparition. She usually took a footman, who marched
behind her on the highroads and whose livery was strange to the
mountaineers. She blushed on seeing us, as if she ought somehow to
justify herself; she laughed vaguely and said she had come out for a
little early stroll. We stood together a moment, exchanging platitudes,
and then she remarked that she had thought she might find her husband.
"Is he in this quarter?" I inquired.
"I supposed he would be. He came out an hour ago to sketch."
"Have you been looking for him?" Mrs. Adney asked.
"A little; not very much," said Lady Mellifont.
Each of the women rested her eyes with some intensity, as it seemed to
me, on the eyes of the other.
"We'll look for him _for_ you, if you like," said Mrs. Adney.
"Oh, it doesn't matter. I thought I'd join him."
"He won't make his sketch if you don't," my companion hinted.
"Perhaps he will if _you_ do," said Lady Mellifont.
"Oh, I dare say he'll turn up," I interposed.
"He certainly will if he knows we're here!" Blanche Adney retorted.
"Will you wait while we search?" I asked of Lady Mellifont.
She repeated that it was of no consequence; upon which Mrs. Adney went
on: "We'll go into the matter for our own pleasure."
"I wish you a pleasant expedition," said her ladyship, and was turning
away when I sought to know if we should inform her husband that she had
followed him. She hesitated a moment; then she jerked out oddly: "I
think you had better not." With this she took leave of us, floating a
little stiffly down the gorge.
My companion and I watched her retreat, then we exchanged a stare, while
a light ghost of a laugh rippled from the actress's lips. "She might be
walking in the shrubberies at Mellifont!"
"She suspects it, you know," I replied.
"And she doesn't want him to know it. There won't be any sketch."
"Unless we overtake him," I subjoined. "In that case we shall find him
producing one, in the most graceful attitude, and the queer thing is
that it will be brilliant."
"Let us leave him alone--he'll have to come home without it."
"He'd rather never come home. Oh, he'll find a public!"
"Perhaps he'll do it for the cows," Blanche Adney suggested; and as I
was on the point of rebuking her profanity she went on: "That's simply
what I happened to discover."
"What are you speaking of?"
"The incident of day before yesterday."
"Ah, let's have it at last!"
"That's all it was--that I was like Lady Mellifont: I couldn't find
him."
"Did you lose him?"
"He lost _me_--that appears to be the way of it. He thought I was gone."
"But you did find him, since you came home with him."
"It was he who found _me_. That again is what must happen. He's there
from the moment he knows somebody else is."
"I understand his intermissions," I said after a short reflection, "but
I don't quite seize the law that governs them."
"Oh, it's a fine shade, but I caught it at that moment. I had started to
come home. I was tired, and I had insisted on his not coming back with
me. We had found some rare flowers--those I brought home--and it was he
who had discovered almost all of them. It amused him very much, and I
knew he wanted to get more; but I was weary and I quitted him. He let me
go--where else would have been his tact?--and I was too stupid then to
have guessed that from the moment I was not there no flower would be
gathered. I started homeward, but at the end of three minutes I found I
had brought away his penknife--he had lent it to me to trim a
branch--and I knew he would need it. I turned back a few steps, to call
him, but before I spoke I looked about for him. You can't understand
what happened then without having the place before you."
"You must take me there," I said.
"We may see the wonder here. The place was simply one that offered no
chance for concealment--a great gradual hillside, without obstructions
or trees. There were some rocks below me, behind which I myself had
disappeared, but from which on coming back I immediately emerged again."
"Then he must have seen you."
"He was too utterly gone, for some reason best known to himself. It was
probably some moment of fatigue--he's getting on, you know, so that,
with the sense of returning solitude, the reaction had been
proportionately great, the extinction proportionately complete. At any
rate the stage was as bare as your hand."
"Could he have been somewhere else?"
"He couldn't have been, in the time, anywhere but where I had left him.
Yet the place was utterly empty--as empty as this stretch of valley
before us. He had vanished--he had ceased to be. But as soon as my voice
rang out (I uttered his name), he rose before me like the rising sun."
"And where did the sun rise?"
"Just where it ought to--just where he would have been and where I
should have seen him had he been like other people."
I had listened with the deepest interest, but it was my duty to think of
objections. "How long a time elapsed between the moment you perceived
his absence and the moment you called?"
"Oh, only an instant. I don't pretend it was long."
"Long enough for you to be sure?" I said.
"Sure he wasn't there?"
"Yes, and that you were not mistaken, not the victim of some hocus-pocus
of your eyesight."
"I may have been mistaken, but I don't believe it. At any rate, that's
just why I want you to look in his room."