"That I had missed him? So it struck me, but he thought he had been
quick enough."
"Did you speak of his disappearance?"
"Heaven forbid! It seemed to me too strange."
"Quite right. And how did he look?"
Trying to think it out again and reconstitute her miracle, Blanche Adney
gazed abstractedly up the valley. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Just as he
looks now!" and I saw Lord Mellifont stand before us with his
sketch-block. I perceived, as we met him, that he looked neither
suspicious nor blank: he looked simply, as he did always, everywhere,
the principal feature of the scene. Naturally he had no sketch to show
us, but nothing could better have rounded off our actual conception of
him than the way he fell into position as we approached. He had been
selecting his point of view; he took possession of it with a flourish of
the pencil. He leaned against a rock; his beautiful little box of
water-colours reposed on a natural table beside him, a ledge of the bank
which showed how inveterately nature ministered to his convenience. He
painted while he talked and he talked while he painted; and if the
painting was as miscellaneous as the talk, the talk would equally have
graced an album. We waited while the exhibition went on, and it seemed
indeed as if the conscious profiles of the peaks were interested in his
success. They grew as black as silhouettes in paper, sharp against a
livid sky from which, however, there would be nothing to fear till Lord
Mellifont's sketch should be finished. Blanche Adney communed with me
dumbly, and I could read the language of her eyes: "Oh, if _we_ could
only do it as well as that! He fills the stage in a way that beats us."
We could no more have left him than we could have quitted the theatre
till the play was over; but in due time we turned round with him and
strolled back to the inn, before the door of which his lordship,
glancing again at his picture, tore the fresh leaf from the block and
presented it with a few happy words to Mrs. Adney. Then he went into the
house; and a moment later, looking up from where we stood, we saw him,
above, at the window of his sitting-room (he had the best apartments),
watching the signs of the weather.
"He'll have to rest after this," Blanche said, dropping her eyes on her
water-colour.
"Indeed he will!" I raised mine to the window: Lord Mellifont had
vanished. "He's already reabsorbed."
"Reabsorbed?" I could see the actress was now thinking of something
else.
"Into the immensity of things. He has lapsed again; there's an
_entr'acte_."
"It ought to be long." Mrs. Adney looked up and down the terrace, and at
that moment the head-waiter appeared in the doorway. Suddenly she turned
to this functionary with the question: "Have you seen Mr. Vawdrey
lately?"
The man immediately approached. "He left the house five minutes ago--for
a walk, I think. He went down the pass; he had a book."