WE visited France, Germany, and Italy; and we were absent from England
nearly two years.
Had time and change justified my confidence in them? Was the image of
Mrs. Van Brandt an image long since dismissed from my mind?
No! Do what I might, I was still (in the prophetic language of Dame
Dermody) taking the way to reunion with my kindred spirit in the time to
come. For the first two or three months of our travels I was haunted
by dreams of the woman who had so resolutely left me. Seeing her in my
sleep, always graceful, always charming, always modestly tender toward
me, I waited in the ardent hope of again beholding the apparition of her
in my waking hours--of again being summoned to meet her at a given place
and time. My anticipations were not fulfilled; no apparition showed
itself. The dreams themselves grew less frequent and less vivid and then
ceased altogether. Was this a sign that the days of her adversity
were at an end? Having no further need of help, had she no further
remembrance of the man who had tried to help her? Were we never to meet
again?
I said to myself: "I am unworthy of the name of man if I don't forget
her now!" She still kept her place in my memory, say what I might.
I saw all the wonders of Nature and Art which foreign countries could
show me. I lived in the dazzling light of the best society that Paris,
Rome, Vienna could assemble. I passed hours on hours in the company
of the most accomplished and most beautiful women whom Europe could
produce--and still that solitary figure at Saint Anthony's Well, those
grand gray eyes that had rested on me so sadly at parting, held their
place in my memory, stamped their image on my heart.
Whether I resisted my infatuation, or whether I submitted to it, I still
longed for her. I did all I could to conceal the state of my mind from
my mother. But her loving eyes discovered the secret: she saw that I
suffered, and suffered with me. More than once she said: "George, the
good end is not to be gained by traveling; let us go home." More than
once I answered, with the bitter and obstinate resolution of despair:
"No. Let us try more new people and more new scenes." It was only when
I found her health and strength beginning to fail under the stress of
continual traveling that I consented to abandon the hopeless search
after oblivion, and to turn homeward at last.
I prevailed on my mother to wait and rest at my house in London before
she returned to her favorite abode at the country-seat in Perthshire.
It is needless to say that I remained in town with her. My mother now
represented the one interest that held me nobly and endearingly to life.
Politics, literature, agriculture--the customary pursuits of a man in my
position--had none of them the slightest attraction for me.
We had arrived in London at what is called "the height of the season."
Among the operatic attractions of that year--I am writing of the days
when the ballet was still a popular form of public entertainment--there
was a certain dancer whose grace and beauty were the objects of
universal admiration. I was asked if I had seen her, wherever I went,
until my social position, as the one man who was indifferent to the
reigning goddess of the stage, became quite unendurable. On the next
occasion when I was invited to take a seat in a friend's box, I accepted
the proposal; and (far from willingly) I went the way of the world--in
other words, I went to the opera.
The first part of the performance had concluded when we got to the
theater, and the ballet had not yet begun. My friends amused themselves
with looking for familiar faces in the boxes and stalls. I took a chair
in a corner and waited, with my mind far away from the theater, from the
dancing that was to come. The lady who sat nearest to me (like ladies
in general) disliked the neighborhood of a silent man. She determined to
make me talk to her.
"Do tell me, Mr. Germaine," she said. "Did you ever see a theater
anywhere so full as this theater is to-night?"
She handed me her opera-glass as she spoke. I moved to the front of the
box to look at the audience.
It was certainty a wonderful sight. Every available atom of space (as
I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of the
building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward, my range
of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that distance, the
excellent glass which had been put into my hands brought the faces of
the audience close to me. I looked first at the persons who occupied
the front row of seats in the gallery stalls.
Moving the opera-glass slowly along the semicircle formed by the seats,
I suddenly stopped when I reached the middle.
My heart gave a great leap as if it would bound out of my body. There
was no mistaking _that_ face among the commonplace faces near it. I had
discovered Mrs. Van Brandt!
She sat in front--but not alone. There was a man in the stall
immediately behind her, who bent over her and spoke to her from time to
time. She listened to him, so far as I could see, with something of a
sad and weary look. Who was the man? I might, or might not, find that
out. Under any circumstances, I determined to speak to Mrs. Van Brandt.
The curtain rose for the ballet. I made the best excuse I could to my
friends, and instantly left the box.
It was useless to attempt to purchase my admission to the gallery. My
money was refused. There was not even standing room left in that part of
the theater.
But one alternative remained. I returned to the street, to wait for Mrs.
Van Brandt at the gallery door until the performance was over.
Who was the man in attendance on her--the man whom I had seen sitting
behind her, and talking familiarly over her shoulder? While I paced
backward and forward before the door, that one question held possession
of my mind, until the oppression of it grew beyond endurance. I went
back to my friends in the box, simply and solely to look at the man
again.
What excuses I made to account for my strange conduct I cannot now
remember. Armed once more with the lady's opera-glass (I borrowed it and
kept it without scruple), I alone, of all that vast audience, turned my
back on the stage, and riveted my attention on the gallery stalls.
There he sat, in his place behind her, to all appearance spell-bound
by the fascinations of the graceful dancer. Mrs. Van Brandt, on
the contrary, seemed to find but little attraction in the spectacle
presented by the stage. She looked at the dancing (so far as I could
see) in an absent, weary manner. When the applause broke out in a
perfect frenzy of cries and clapping of hands, she sat perfectly
unmoved by the enthusiasm which pervaded the theater. The man behind her
(annoyed, as I supposed, by the marked indifference which she showed
to the performance) tapped her impatiently on the shoulder, as if he
thought that she was quite capable of falling asleep in her stall. The
familiarity of the action--confirming the suspicion in my mind which had
already identified him with Van Brandt--so enraged me that I said or did
something which obliged one of the gentlemen in the box to interfere.
"If you can't control yourself," he whispered, "you had better leave
us." He spoke with the authority of an old friend. I had sense enough
left to take his advice, and return to my post at the gallery door.
A little before midnight the performance ended. The audience began to
pour out of the theater.
I drew back into a corner behind the door, facing the gallery stairs,
and watched for her. After an interval which seemed to be endless, she
and her companion appeared, slowly descending the stairs. She wore a
long dark cloak; her head was protected by a quaintly shaped hood, which
looked (on _her_) the most becoming head-dress that a woman could wear.
As the two passed me, I heard the man speak to her in a tone of sulky
annoyance.
"It's wasting money," he said, "to go to the expense of taking _you_ to
the opera."
"I am not well," she answered with her head down and her eyes on the
ground. "I am out of spirits to-night."
"Will you ride home or walk?"
"I will walk, if you please."
I followed them unperceived, waiting to present myself to her until
the crowd about them had dispersed. In a few minutes they turned into a
quiet by-street. I quickened my pace until I was close at her side, and
then I took off my hat and spoke to her.
She recognized me with a cry of astonishment. For an instant her face
brightened radiantly with the loveliest expression of delight that I
ever saw on any human countenance. The moment after, all was changed.
The charming features saddened and hardened. She stood before me like a
woman overwhelmed by shame--without uttering a word, without taking my
offered hand.
Her companion broke the silence.
"Who is this gentleman?" he asked, speaking in a foreign accent, with an
under-bred insolence of tone and manner.
She controlled herself the moment he addressed her. "This is Mr.
Germaine," she answered: "a gentleman who was very kind to me in
Scotland." She raised her eyes for a moment to mine, and took refuge,
poor soul, in a conventionally polite inquiry after my health. "I hope
you are quite well, Mr. Germaine," said the soft, sweet voice, trembling
piteously.
I made the customary reply, and explained that I had seen her at the
opera. "Are you staying in London?" I asked. "May I have the honor of
calling on you?"
Her companion answered for her before she could speak.
"My wife thanks you, sir, for the compliment you pay her. She doesn't
receive visitors. We both wish you good-night."
Saying those words, he took off his hat with a sardonic assumption of
respect; and, holding her arm in his, forced her to walk on abruptly
with him. Feeling certainly assured by this time that the man was no
other than Van Brandt, I was on the point of answering him sharply, when
Mrs. Van Brandt checked the rash words as they rose to my lips.
"For my sake!" she whispered, over her shoulder, with an imploring look
that instantly silenced me. After all, she was free (if she liked) to go
back to the man who had so vilely deceived and deserted her. I bowed and
left them, feeling with no common bitterness the humiliation of entering
into rivalry with Mr. Van Brandt.
I crossed to the other side of the street. Before I had taken three
steps away from her, the old infatuation fastened its hold on me again.
I submitted, without a struggle against myself, to the degradation
of turning spy and following them home. Keeping well behind, on the
opposite side of the way, I tracked them to their own door, and entered
in my pocket-book the name of the street and the number of the house.
The hardest critic who reads these lines cannot feel more contemptuously
toward me than I felt toward myself. Could I still love a woman after
she had deliberately preferred to me a scoundrel who had married her
while he was the husband of another wife? Yes! Knowing what I now knew,
I felt that I loved her just as dearly as ever. It was incredible, it
was shocking; but it was true. For the first time in my life, I tried to
take refuge from my sense of my own degradation in drink. I went to my
club, and joined a convivial party at a supper table, and poured glass
after glass of champagne down my throat, without feeling the slightest
sense of exhilaration, without losing for an instant the consciousness
of my own contemptible conduct. I went to my bed in despair; and through
the wakeful night I weakly cursed the fatal evening at the river-side
when I had met her for the first time. But revile her as I might,
despise myself as I might, I loved her--I loved her still!
Among the letters laid on my table the next morning there were two which
must find their place in this narrative.
The first letter was in a handwriting which I had seen once before, at
the hotel in Edinburgh. The writer was Mrs. Van Brandt.
"For your own sake" (the letter ran) "make no attempt to see me, and
take no notice of an invitation which I fear you will receive with this
note. I am living a degraded life. I have sunk beneath your notice. You
owe it to yourself, sir, to forget the miserable woman who now writes to
you for the last time, and bids you gratefully a last farewell."
Those sad lines were signed in initials only. It is needless to say
that they merely strengthened my resolution to see her at all hazards. I
kissed the paper on which her hand had rested, and then I turned to the
second letter. It contained the "invitation" to which my correspondent
had alluded, and it was expressed in these terms:
"Mr. Van Brandt presents his compliments to Mr. Germaine, and begs
to apologize for the somewhat abrupt manner in which he received Mr.
Germaine's polite advances. Mr. Van Brandt suffers habitually from
nervous irritability, and he felt particularly ill last night. He trusts
Mr. Germaine will receive this candid explanation in the spirit in which
it is offered; and he begs to add that Mrs. Van Brandt will be delighted
to receive Mr. Germaine whenever he may find it convenient to favor her
with a visit."
That Mr. Van Brandt had some sordid interest of his own to serve in
writing this grotesquely impudent composition, and that the unhappy
woman who bore his name was heartily ashamed of the proceeding on which
he had ventured, were conclusions easily drawn after reading the two
letters. The suspicion of the man and of his motives which I naturally
felt produced no hesitation in my mind as to the course which I had
determined to pursue. On the contrary, I rejoiced that my way to
an interview with Mrs. Van Brandt was smoothed, no matter with what
motives, by Mr. Van Brandt himself.
I waited at home until noon, and then I could wait no longer. Leaving a
message of excuse for my mother (I had just sense of shame enough left
to shrink from facing her), I hastened away to profit by my invitation
on the very day when I received it.