“So he did meet her, after all?” the Duchessa said.
“Yes, he met her in the end,” Peter answered.
They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright
perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose,
where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and
still and beautiful--a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The
Duchessa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low,
lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he
must be cautious, cautious.
“Yes, he met her in the end,” he said.
“Well--? And then--?” she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling
into his eyes. “What happened? Did she come up to his expectations?
Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining--oh, but
pining--to hear the continuation of the story.”
She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. “I must be cautious,”
he told himself. “In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment.” At
the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely
nonchalant and candid.
“Oh, no--tutt' altro,” he said, with an assumption of nonchalant
airiness and candid promptness. “She 'better bettered' his
expectations--she surpassed his fondest. She was a thousand times more
delightful than he had dreamed--though, as you know, he had dreamed a
good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest
echo of her.”
The Duchessa meditated for an instant.
“It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a
disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion,” she said, at last.
“It seems so, indeed,” assented Peter; “but disenchantment, there was
none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the
substance--he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were,
from a single angle, and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale
reflection of one side of her--a pencil-sketch in profile.”
The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.
“You pile wonder upon wonder,” she said. “That the reality should excel
the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid
from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more
splendid still, on close inspection! It's dead against the accepted
theory of things. And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable
Pauline! You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she read
his book?”
“Nothing happened,” said Peter. “I warned you that it was a drama
without action. A good deal happened, no doubt, in Wildmay's secret
soul. But externally, nothing. They simply chatted together--exchanged
the time o' day--like any pair of acquaintances. No, I don't think she
had read his book. She did read it afterwards, though.”
“And liked it?”
“Yes--she said she liked it.”
“Well--? But then-?” the Duchessa pressed him, insistently. “When
she discovered the part she had had in its composition--? Was n't she
overwhelmed? Wasn't she immensely interested--surprised--moved?”
She leaned forward a little. Her eyes were shining. Her lips were
slightly parted, so that between their warm rosiness Peter could see the
exquisite white line of her teeth. His heart fluttered again. “I must be
cautious, cautious,” he remembered, and made a strenuous “act of will”
to steady himself.
“Oh, she never discovered that,” he said.
“What!” exclaimed the Duchessa. Her face fell. Her eyes darkened--with
dismay, with incomprehension. “Do you--you don't--mean to say that
he didn't tell her?” There was reluctance to believe, there was a
conditional implication of deep reproach, in her voice.
Peter had to repeat his act of will.
“How could he tell her?” he asked.
She frowned at him, with reproach that was explicit now, and a kind of
pained astonishment.
“How could he help telling her?” she cried. “But--but it was the one
great fact between them. But it was a fact that intimately concerned
her--it was a fact of her own destiny. But it was her right to be told.
Do you seriously mean that he did n't tell her? But why did n't he? What
could have possessed him?”
There was something like a tremor in her voice. “I must appear entirely
nonchalant and candid,” Peter remembered.
“I fancy he was possessed, in some measure, by a sense of the liberty he
had taken by a sense of what one might, perhaps, venture to qualify as
his 'cheek.' For, if it was n't already a liberty to embody his notion
of her in a novel--in a published book, for daws to peck at--it would
have become a liberty the moment he informed her that he had done so.
That would have had the effect of making her a kind of involuntary
particeps criminis.”
“Oh, the foolish man!” sighed the Duchessa, with a rueful shake of the
head. “His foolish British self-consciousness! His British inability
to put himself in another person's place, to see things from another's
point of view! Could n't he see, from her point of view, from any point
of view but his own, that it was her right to be told? That the matter
affected her in one way, as much as it affected him in another? That
since she had influenced--since she had contributed to--his life and his
art as she had, it was her right to know it? Couldn't he see that his
'cheek,' his real 'cheek,' began when he withheld from her that great
strange chapter of her own history? Oh, he ought to have told her, he
ought to have told her.”
She sank back in her chair, giving her head another rueful shake,
and gazed ruefully away, over the sunny landscape, through the mellow
atmosphere, into the golden-hazy distance.
Peter looked at her--and then, quickly, for caution's sake, looked
elsewhere.
“But there were other things to be taken into account,” he said.
The Duchessa raised her eyes. “What other things?” they gravely
questioned.
“Would n't his telling her have been equivalent to a declaration of
love?” questioned he, looking at the signet-ring on the little finger of
his left hand.
“A declaration of love?” She considered for a moment. “Yes, I suppose
in a way it would,” she acknowledged. “But even so?” she asked, after
another moment of consideration. “Why should he not have made her a
declaration of love? He was in love with her, wasn't he?”
The point of frank interrogation in her eyes showed clearly, showed
cruelly, how detached, how impersonal, her interest was.
“Frantically,” said Peter. For caution's sake, he kept HIS eyes on the
golden-hazy peaks of Monte Sfionto. “He had been in love with her, in a
fashion, of course, from the beginning. But after he met her, he fell in
love with her anew. His mind, his imagination, had been in love with its
conception of her. But now he, the man, loved her, the woman herself,
frantically, with just a downright common human love. There were
circumstances, however, which made it impossible for him to tell her
so.”
“What circumstances?” There was the same frank look of interrogation.
“Do you mean that she was married?”
“No, not that. By the mercy of heaven,” he pronounced, with energy, “she
was a widow.”
The Duchessa broke into an amused laugh.
“Permit me to admire your piety,” she said.
And Peter, as his somewhat outrageous ejaculation came back to him,
laughed vaguely too.
“But then--?” she went on. “What else? By the mercy of heaven, she was a
widow. What other circumstance could have tied his tongue?”
“Oh,” he answered, a trifle uneasily, “a multitude of circumstances.
Pretty nearly every conventional barrier the world has invented, existed
between him and her. She was a frightful swell, for one thing.”
“A frightful swell--?” The Duchessa raised her eyebrows.
“Yes,” said Peter, “at a vertiginous height above him--horribly 'aloft
and lone' in the social hierarchy.” He tried to smile.
“What could that matter?” the Duchessa objected simply. “Mr. Wildmay is
a gentleman.”
“How do you know he is?” Peter asked, thinking to create a diversion.
“Of course, he is. He must be. No one but a gentleman could have had
such an experience, could have written such a book. And besides, he's
a friend of yours. Of course he's a gentleman,” returned the adroit
Duchessa.
“But there are degrees of gentleness, I believe,” said Peter. “She was
at the topmost top. He--well, at all events, he knew his place. He had
too much humour, too just a sense of proportion, to contemplate offering
her his hand.”
“A gentleman can offer his hand to any woman--under royalty,” said the
Duchessa.
“He can, to be sure--and he can also see it declined with thanks,”
Peter answered. “But it wasn't merely her rank. She was horribly
rich, besides. And then--and then--! There were ten thousand other
impediments. But the chief of them all, I daresay, was Wildmay's fear
lest an avowal of his attachment should lead to his exile from her
presence--and he naturally did not wish to be exiled.”
“Faint heart!” the Duchessa said. “He ought to have told her. The case
was peculiar, was unique. Ordinary rules could n't apply to it. And
how could he be sure, after all, that she would n't have despised the
conventional barriers, as you call them? Every man gets the wife he
deserves--and certainly he had gone a long way towards deserving her.
She could n't have felt quite indifferent to him--if he had told her;
quite indifferent to the man who had drawn that magnificent Pauline from
his vision of her. No woman could be entirely proof against a compliment
like that. And I insist that it was her right to know. He should simply
have told her the story of his book and of her part in it. She would
have inferred the rest. He needn't have mentioned love--the word.”
“Well,” said Peter, “it is not always too late to mend. He may tell her
some fine day yet.”
And in his soul two voices were contending.
“Tell her--tell her--tell her! Tell her now, at once, and abide your
chances,” urged one. “No--no--no--do nothing of the kind,” protested the
second. “She is arguing the point for its abstract interest. She is a
hundred miles from dreaming that you are the man--hundreds of miles from
dreaming that she is the woman. If she had the least suspicion of that,
she would sing a song as different as may be. Caution, caution.”
He looked at her--warm and fragrant and radiant, in her soft, white
gown, in her low lounging-chair, so near, so near to him--he looked
at her glowing eyes, her red lips, her rich brown hair, at the
white-and-rose of her skin, at the delicate blue veins in her forehead,
at her fine white hands, clasped loosely together in her lap, at the
flowing lines of her figure, with its supple grace and strength; and
behind her, surrounding her, accessory to her, he was conscious of the
golden August world, in the golden August weather--of the green park,
and the pure sunshine, and the sweet, still air, of the blue lake, and
the blue sky, and the mountains with their dark-blue shadows, of the
long marble terrace, and the gleaming marble facade of the house, and
the marble balustrade, with the jessamine twining round its columns.
The picture was very beautiful--but something was wanting to perfect its
beauty; and the name of the something that was wanting sang itself
in poignant iteration to the beating of his pulses. And he longed and
longed to tell her; and he dared not; and he hesitated....
And while he was hesitating, the pounding of hoofs and the grinding of
carriage-wheels on gravel reached his ears--and so the situation was
saved, or the opportunity lost, as you choose to think it. For next
minute a servant appeared on the terrace, and announced Mrs. O'Donovan
Florence.
And shortly after that lady's arrival, Peter took his leave.