Early on the following morning John Carvel came to my room. He looked
less anxious than on the previous night, but he was evidently not
altogether his former self.
"Would you care to drive to the station and meet those boys?" he asked,
cheerfully.
The weather was bright and frosty, and I was glad enough of an excuse
for being alone for half an hour with my friend. I assented, therefore,
to his proposition, and presently we were rattling along the hard road
through the park. The hoar-frost was on the trees and on the blue-green
frozen grass beneath them, and on the reeds and sedges beside the pond,
which was overspread with a sheet of black ice. The breath flew from the
horses' nostrils in white clouds to right and left, and the low morning
sun flashed back from the harness, and made the little icicles and laces
of frost upon the trees shine like diamonds.
"Carvel," I said presently, as we spun past the lodge, through the great
iron gates, "I am not inquisitive, but it is easy to see that there is
something going on in your house which is not agreeable to you. Will you
tell me frankly whether you would like me to go away?"
"Not for worlds," my companion ejaculated, and he turned a shade paler
as he spoke. "I would rather tell you all about it--only"---- He paused.
"Don't," said I. "I don't want to know. I merely thought you might
prefer to be left free of outsiders at present."
"We hardly look upon you as an outsider, Griggs," said John, quietly.
"You have been here so much and we have been so intimate that you are
almost like one of the family. Besides, you know this young nephew of my
wife's, Paul Patoff; and your knowing him will make matters a little
easier. I am not at all sure I shall like him."
"I think you will. At all events, I can give you some idea of him."
"I wish you would," answered John.
"He is a thorough Russian in his ideas and an Englishman in
appearance,--perhaps you might say he is more like a Scotchman. He is
fair, with blue eyes, a brown mustache, and a prominent nose. He is
angular in his movements and rather tall. He has a remarkable talent for
languages, and is regarded as a very promising diplomatist. His temper
is violent and changeable, but he has excellent manners and is full of
tact. I should call him an extremely clever fellow in a general way, and
he has done wisely in the selection of his career."
"That is not a bad description. Is there anything against him?"
"I cannot say; I only knew him in Persia,--a chance acquaintance. People
said he was very eccentric."
"Eccentric?" asked John. "How?"
"Moody, I suppose, because he would sometimes shut himself up for days,
and see nobody unless the minister sent for him. He used to beat his
native servants when he was in a bad humor, and was said to be a
reckless sort of fellow."
"I hope he will not indulge his eccentricities here. Heaven knows, he
has reason enough for being odd, poor fellow. We must make the best of
him," continued John hurriedly, as though regretting his last remark,
"and you must help us to amuse him and keep him out of mischief. Those
Russians are the very devil, sometimes, as I have no doubt you know, and
just at present our relations with them are not of the best; but, after
all, he is my nephew and one of the family, so that we must do what we
can for him, and avoid trouble. Macaulay likes him, and I dare say he
likes Macaulay. They will get on together very well."
"Yes--perhaps so--though I do not see what the two can have in common,"
I answered. "Macaulay can hardly have much sympathy for Patoff's
peculiarities, however much he may like the man himself."
"Macaulay is very young, although he has seen something of the world. He
has not outgrown the age which mistakes eccentricity for genius and bad
temper for boldness. We shall see,--we shall see very soon. They will
both hate Cutter, with his professorial wisdom and his immense
experience of things they have never seen. How do you like him
yourself?"
"Without being congenial to me, he represents what I would like to be
myself."
"Would you change with him, if you could?" asked John.
"No, indeed. I, in my person, would like to be what he is in his,--that
is all. People often talk of changing. No man alive would really
exchange his personality for that of another man, if he had the chance.
He only wishes to adorn what he most admires in himself with those
things which, in his neighbor, excite the admiration of others. He
meditates no change which does not give his vanity a better appearance
to himself, and his reputation a dash of more brilliant color in the
popular eye."
"Perhaps you are right," said John. "At all events, the professor has
qualities that any man might envy."
We reached the station just as the train ran in, and Macaulay Carvel and
Patoff waved their hats from the carriage window. In a moment we were
all shaking hands upon the platform.
"Papa, this is cousin Paul," said Macaulay, and he turned to greet me
next. He is a good-looking fellow, with rather delicate features and a
quiet, conscientious sort of expression, exquisite in his dress and
scrupulous in his manners, with more of his mother's gentleness than of
his father's bold frankness in his brown eyes. His small hand grasped
mine readily enough, but seemed nerveless and lacking in vitality, a
contrast to Paul Patoff's grip. The Russian was as angular as ever, and
his wiry fingers seemed to discharge an electric shock as they touched
mine. I realized that he was a very tall man, and that he was far from
ugly. His prominent nose and high cheek-bones gave a singular eagle-like
look to his face, and his cold, bright eyes added to the impression. He
lacked grace of form, but he had plenty of force, and though his
movements were sometimes sudden and ungainly he was not without a
certain air of nobility. His brown mustache did not altogether hide the
half-scornful expression of his mouth.
"How is everybody?" asked Macaulay Carvel of his father. "We shall have
a most jolly Christmas, all together."
"Well, Mr. Griggs," said Patoff to me, "I did not expect, when we parted
in Persia, that we should meet again in my uncle's house, did you? You
will hardly believe that this is my first visit to England, and to my
relations here."
"You will certainly not be taken for a foreigner here," I said,
laughing.
"Oh, of course not. You see my mother is English, so that I speak the
language. The difficulty for me will lie in learning the customs. The
English have so many peculiar habits. Is Professor Cutter at the house?"
"Yes. You know him?"
"Very well. He has been my mother's physician for some time."
"Indeed--I was not aware that he practiced as a physician." I was
surprised by the news, and a suspicion crossed my mind that the lady at
Weissenstein might have been Patoff's mother. Instantly the meaning of
the professor's warning flashed upon me,--I was not to mention that
affair in the Black Forest to Carvel. Of course not. Carvel was the
brother-in-law of the lady in question. However, I kept my own counsel
as we drove rapidly homewards. The sun had risen higher in the cloudless
sky, and the frozen ground was beginning to thaw, so that now and then
the mud splashed high from under the horses' hoofs. The vehicle in which
we drove was a mail phaeton, and Macaulay sat in front by his father's
side, while Patoff and I sat behind. We chatted pleasantly along the
road, and in half an hour were deposited at Carvel Place, where the
ladies came out to meet us, and the new cousin was introduced to every
one. He seemed to make himself at home very easily, and I think the
first impression he produced was favorable. Mrs. Carvel held his hand
for several seconds, and looked up into his cold blue eyes as though
searching for some resemblance to his mother, and he met her gentle look
frankly enough. Chrysophrasia eyed him and eyed him again, trying to
discover in him the attributes she had bestowed upon him in her
imagination; he was certainly a bold-looking fellow, and she was not
altogether disappointed. She allowed her hand to linger in his, and her
sentimental eyes turned upwards towards him with a look that was
intended to express profound sympathy. As for Paul, he looked at his
aunt Chrysophrasia with a certain surprise, and he looked upon Hermione
with a great admiration as she came forward and put out her hand. John
Carvel stood near by, and I thought his expression changed as he saw the
glance his nephew bestowed upon his daughter. I slipped away to the
library, and left the family party to themselves. Professor Cutter had
not yet appeared, and I hoped to find him. Sure enough, he was among the
books. Three or four large volumes lay open upon a table near the
window, and the sturdy professor was turning over the leaves, holding a
pencil in his mouth and a sheet of paper in one hand, the image of a
student in the pursuit of knowledge. I went straight up to him.
"Professor Cutter," I said, "you asked me last night whether I had ever
heard anything more of the lady with whom I met you at Weissenstein. I
have heard of her this morning."
The scientist took the pencil from his mouth, and thrust his hands into
his pockets, gazing upon me through the large round lenses of his
spectacles. He glanced towards the door before he spoke.
"Well, what have you heard?" he asked.
"Only that she was Paul Patoff's mother," I answered.
"Nothing else?"
"Nothing."
"And how did you come by the information, if you please?" he inquired.
"Very simply. Paul Patoff volunteered to tell me that you had been his
mother's physician for some time. I remembered that you warned me not to
speak of the Weissenstein affair to our friend Carvel; that was natural
enough, since the lady was his sister-in-law. She did not look at all
like Paul, it is true, but you are not in the habit of playing
physician, and it is a thousand to one that you have attended no one
else in the last year who is in any way connected with John Carvel."
The learned doctor smiled.
"You have made a very good guess, Mr. Griggs," he said. "Paul Patoff is
a silly fellow enough, or he would not have spoken so plainly. Why do
you tell me that you have found me out?"
"Because I imagine that you are still interested in the lady, and that
you had better be informed of everything connected with the case."
"The case--yes--it is a very singular case, and I am intensely
interested in it. Besides, it has very nearly cost me my reputation, as
well as my life. I assure you I have rarely had to do with such a case,
nor have I ever experienced such a sensation as when I went over the
cliff at Weissenstein after Madame Patoff."
"Probably not," I remarked. "I never saw a braver thing more
successfully accomplished."
"There is small courage in acting under necessity," said the professor,
walking slowly across the room towards the fire. "If I had not rescued
my patient, I should have been much more injured than if I had broken my
neck in the attempt. I was responsible for her. What would have become
of the 'great neurologist,' the celebrated 'mad-doctor,' as they call
me, if one of the few patients to whom I ever devoted my whole personal
attention had committed suicide under my very eyes? You can understand
that there was something more than her life and mine at stake."
"I never knew exactly how it happened," I replied. "I was looking out of
my window, when I saw a woman fall over the balcony below me. Her
clothes caught in the crooked branches of a wild cherry tree that grew
some ten feet below; and as she struggled, I saw you leaning over the
parapet, as if you meant to scramble down the face of the cliff after
her. I had a hundred feet of manilla rope which I was taking with me to
Switzerland for a special expedition, and I let it down to you. The
people of the inn came to my assistance, and we managed to haul you up
together, thanks to your knowing how to tie the rope around you both.
Then I saw you down-stairs for a few minutes and you told me the lady
was not hurt. I left almost immediately. I never knew what led to the
accident."
Professor Cutter passed his heavy hand slowly over his thick gray hair,
and looked pensively into the fire.
"It was simple enough," he said at last. "I was paying our bill to the
landlord, and in doing so I turned my back upon Madame Patoff for a
moment. She was standing on a low balcony outside the window, and she
must have thrown herself over. Luckily she was dressed in a gown of
strong Scotch stuff, which did not tear when it caught in the tree. It
was the most extraordinary escape I ever saw."
"I should think so, indeed. But why did she want to kill herself? Was
she insane?"
"Are people always insane who try to kill themselves?" asked the
professor, eying me keenly through his glasses.
"Very generally they are. I suppose that she was."
"That is precisely the question," said the scientist. "Insanity is an
expression that covers a multitude of sins of all kinds, but explains
none of them, nor is itself explained. If I could tell you what insanity
is, I could tell you whether Madame Patoff was insane or not. I can say
that a man possesses a dog, because I can classify the dogs I have seen
all over the world. But supposing I had never met any specimen of the
canine race but a King Charles spaniel, and on seeing a Scotch deerhound
in the possession of a friend was told that the man had a 'dog:' I
should be justified in doubting whether the deerhound was a dog at all
in the sense in which the tiny spaniel--the only dog I had ever
seen--represented the canine race in my mind and experience. The
biblical 'devil,' which 'possessed' men, took as many shapes and
characteristics as the _genus_ 'dog' does: there was the devil that
dwelt in tombs, the devil that tore its victim, the devil that entered
into swine, the devil that spoke false prophecies, and many more. It is
the same with insanity. No two mad people are alike. If I find a person
with any madness I know, I can say he is mad; but if I find a person
acting in a very unusual way under the influence of strong and
protracted emotion, I am not justified in concluding that he is crazy. I
have not seen everything in the world yet. I have not seen every kind of
dog, nor every kind of devil, nor every kind of madness."
"You choose strange illustrations," I said, "but you speak clearly."
"Strange cases and strange examples. Insanity is the strangest phase of
human nature, because it is the least common state of humanity. If a
majority of men were mad, they would have a right to consider themselves
sane, and sane men crazy. Your original question was whether, when she
attempted suicide, Madame Patoff were sane or not. I do not know. I have
known many persons to attempt to take their lives when, according to all
their other actions, they were perfectly sane. The question of their
sanity could be decided by placing a large number of sensible people in
similar circumstances, in order to see whether the majority of them
would kill themselves or not. That sort of experiment is not likely to
be tried. I found Madame Patoff placed in very extraordinary
circumstances, but I did not know her before she was so placed. The case
interests me exceedingly. I am still trying to understand it."
"You speak as though you were still treating it," I remarked.
"A physician, in his imagination, will continue to study a case for
years after it has passed out of his treatment," answered my companion.
"I must go and see Paul, however, since he was good enough to mention me
to you." Whereupon Professor Cutter buttoned up his coat and went away,
leaving me to my reflections by the library fire.
If Carvel had intended to have a family party in his house at Christmas,
including his nephew whom he had never seen, and whose mother had been
mad, and the great scientist who had attended her, it seemed strange
that he should have asked me as directly as he had done to spend the
whole winter under his roof. I had never been asked for so long a visit
before, and had never been treated with such confidence and received so
intimately as I now was. I could not help wondering whether I was to be
told the reason of what was going on, whether, indeed, anything was
going on at all, and whether the air of depression and mystery which I
thought I observed were not the result of my own imagination, rather
than of any actual foundation in fact. The professor might be making a
visit for his pleasure, but I knew how valuable his time must be, and I
wondered how he could afford to spend it in mere amusement. I
remembered John Carvel's hesitation as we drove to the station that
morning, and his evident annoyance when I proposed to leave. He knew me
well enough to say, "All right, if you don't mind, run up to town for a
day or two," but he had not said it. He had manifested the strongest
desire that I should stay, and I had determined to comply with his
request. At the same time I was left entirely in the dark as to what was
going on in the family, and whispered words, conversations that ceased
abruptly on my approach, and many other little signs told me beyond all
doubt that something was occurring of which I had no knowledge. Without
being inquisitive, it is hard to live in such surroundings without
having one's curiosity roused, and the circumstance of my former meeting
with the professor, now so suddenly illuminated by the discovery that
the lady whose life he had saved was the sister-in-law of our host, led
me to believe, almost intuitively, that the mystery, if mystery there
were, was connected in some way with Madame Patoff. As I thought of her,
the memory of the little inn, the Gasthof zum Goldenen Anker, in
Weissenstein, came vividly back to me. The splash of the plunging Nagold
was in my ears, the smell of the boundless pine forest was in my
nostrils; once more I seemed to be looking down from the upper window of
the hostelry upon the deep ravine, a sheer precipice from the back of
the house, broken only by some few struggling trees that appeared
scarcely able to find roothold on the straight fall of rock,--one tree
projecting just below the foundations of the inn, ten feet lower than
the lowest window, a knotted wild cherry, storm-beaten and crooked,--and
then, suddenly, something of uncertain shape, huddled together and
falling from the balcony down the precipice,--a woman's figure, caught
in the gnarled boughs of the cherry-tree, hanging and swinging over the
abyss, while shriek on shriek echoed down to the swollen torrent and up
to the turrets of the old inn in an agonized reverberation of horror.
It was a fearful memory, and the thought of being brought into the
company of the woman whose life I had seen so risked and so saved was
strange and fascinating. Often and often I had wondered about her fate,
speculating upon the question whether her fall was due to accident or to
the intention of suicide, and I had tried to realize the terrible waking
when she found herself saved from the destruction she sought by the man
I had seen,--perhaps by the very man from whom she was endeavoring to
escape. I was thrown off my balance by being so suddenly brought face to
face with this woman's son, the tall, blue-eyed, awkward fine gentleman,
Paul Patoff. I sat by the library fire and thought it all over, and I
said to myself at last, "Paul Griggs, thou art an ass for thy pains, and
an inquisitive idiot for thy curiosity." I, who am rarely out of conceit
with myself, was disgusted at my lack of dignity at actually desiring to
find out things that were in no way my business, nor ever concerned me.
So I took a book and fell to reading. Far off in the house I could hear
voices now and then, the voices of the family making the acquaintance of
their new-found relation. The great fire blazed upon the broad hearth
within, and the wintry sun shone brightly without, and there came
gradually upon me the delight of comfort that reigns within a luxurious
library when the frost is biting without, and there is no scent upon the
frozen fields,--the comfort that lies in the contrasts we make for
ourselves against nature; most of all, the peace that a wanderer on the
face of the earth, as I am, can feel when he rests his weary limbs in
some quiet home, half wishing he might at last be allowed to lay down
the staff and scrip, and taste freely of the world's good things, yet
knowing that before many days the devil of unrest will drive him forth
again upon his road. So I sat in John Carvel's library, and read his
books, and enjoyed his cushioned easy-chair with the swinging desk; and
I envied John Carvel his home, and his quiet life, and his defenses
against intrusion, saying that I also might be made happy by the
trifling addition of twenty thousand pounds a year to my income.
But I was not long permitted to enjoy the undisturbed possession of this
temple of sweet dreams, reveling in my imagination at the idea of what I
should do if I possessed such a place. The door of the library opened
suddenly with the noise of many feet upon the polished floor.
"And this is the library," said the voice of Hermione, who led the way,
followed by her mother and aunt and Paul; John Carvel brought up the
rear, quietly looking on while his daughter showed the new cousin the
wonders of Carvel Place.
"This is the library," she repeated, "and this is Mr. Griggs," she
added, with a little laugh, as she discovered me in the deep easy-chair.
"This is the celebrated Mr. Griggs. His name is Paul, like yours, but
otherwise he is not in the least like you, I fancy. Everybody knows him,
and he knows everybody."
"We have met before," said Patoff, "not only this morning, but in the
East. Mr. Griggs certainly seemed to know everybody there, from the Shah
to the Greek consul. What a splendid room! It must have taken you years
of thought to construct such a literary retreat, uncle John," he added,
turning to the master of the house as he spoke.
Indeed, Paul Patoff appeared much struck with everything he saw at
Carvel Place. I left my chair and joined the party, who wandered through
the rooms and into the great conservatory, and finally gravitated to the
drawing-room. Patoff examined everything with an air of extreme
interest, and seemed to understand intuitively the tastes of each member
of the household. He praised John's pictures and Mrs. Carvel's
engravings; he admired Chrysophrasia's stained-glass window, and her
pots, and plates, and bits of drapery, he glanced reverently at Mrs.
Carvel's religious books, and stopped now and then to smell the flowers
Hermione loved. He noted the view upon the park from the south windows,
and thought the disposal of the shrubbery near the house was a
masterpiece of landscape gardening. As he proceeded, surrounded by his
relations, remarking upon everything he saw, and giving upon all things
opinions which marvelously flattered the individual tastes of each one
of the family, it became evident that he was making a very favorable
impression upon them.
"It is delightful to show you things," said Hermione. "You are so
appreciative."
"It needs little skill to appreciate, where everything is so beautiful,"
he answered. "Indeed," he continued, addressing himself to all present,
"your home is the most charming I ever saw: I had no idea that the
English understood luxury so well. You know that with us Continental
people you have the reputation of being extravagant, even magnificent,
in your ideas, but of being also ascetics in some measure,--loving to
make yourselves strangely uncomfortable, fond of getting very hot, and
of taking very cold baths, and of living on raw meat and cold potatoes
and all manner of strange things. I do not see here any evidences of
great asceticism."
"How wonderfully he speaks English!" exclaimed Mrs. Carvel, aside, to
her husband.
"I should say," continued Paul, without noticing the flattering
interruption, "that you are the most luxurious people in the world, that
you have more taste than any people I have ever known, and that if I had
had the least idea how charming my relations were, I should have come
from our Russian wilds ten years ago to visit you and tell you how
superior I think you are to ourselves."
Paul laughed pleasantly as he made this speech, and there was a little
murmur of applause.
"We were very different, ten years ago," said John Carvel. "In the first
place, there was no Hermione then, to do the honors and show you the
sights. She was quite a little thing, ten years ago."
"That would have made no difference in the place, though," said
Hermione, simply.
"On the contrary," said Paul. "I am inclined to think, on reflection,
that I would have postponed my visit, after all, for the sake of having
my cousin for a guide."
"Ah, how gracefully these wild northern men can turn a phrase!"
whispered Chrysophrasia in my ear,--"so strong and yet so tender!" She
could not take her eyes from her nephew, and he appeared to understand
that he had already made a conquest of the aesthetic old maid, for he
took her admiration for granted, and addressed himself to Mrs. Carvel;
not losing sight of Chrysophrasia, however, but looking pleasantly at
her as he talked, though his words were meant for her sister.
"It is the whole atmosphere of this life that is delightful, and every
little thing seems so harmonious," he said. "You have here the solidity
of traditional English country life, combined with the comforts of the
most advanced civilization; and, to make it all perfection, you have at
every turn the lingering romance of the glorious mediaeval life," with a
glance at Miss Dabstreak, "that middle age which in beauty was the prime
of age, from which began and spread all your most glorious ideas, your
government, your warfare, your science. Did you never have an alchemist
in your family, Uncle John? Surely he found for you the golden secret,
and it is his touch which has beautified these old walls!"
"I don't know," said John Carvel.
"Indeed there was!" cried Chrysophrasia, in delight. "I have found out
all about him. He was not exactly an alchemist; he was an astrologer,
and there are the ruins of his tower in the park. There are some old
books up-stairs, upon the Black Art, with his name in them, Johannes
Carvellius, written in the most enchanting angular handwriting."
"I believe there was somebody of that name," remarked John.
"They are full of delicious incantations for raising the devil,--such
exquisite ceremonies, with all the dress described that you must wear,
and the phases of the moon, and hazel wands cut at midnight. Imagine how
delightful!"
"The tower in the park is a beautiful place," said Hermione. "I have it
all filled with flowers in summer, and the gardener's boy once saw a
ghost there on All Hallow E'en."
"You must take me there," said Paul, smiling good-humoredly at the
reference to the alchemist. "I have a passion for ruins, and I had no
idea that you had any; nothing seems ruined here, and yet everything
appears old. What a delightful place!" Paul sat far back in his
comfortable chair, and inserted a single eyeglass in the angle between
his heavy brow and his aquiline nose; his bony fingers were spotless,
long, and white, and as he sat there he had the appearance of a
personage receiving the respectful homage of a body of devoted
attendants, the indescribable air of easy superiority and condescending
good-nature which a Roman patrician might have assumed when visiting the
country villa of one of his clients. Everybody seemed delighted to be
noticed by him and flattered by his words.
I am by nature cross-grained and crabbed, I presume. I admitted that
Paul Patoff, though not graceful in his movements, was a fine-looking
fellow, with an undeniable distinction of manner; he had a pleasant
voice, an extraordinary command of English, though he was but half an
Englishman, and a tact which he certainly owed to his foreign blood; he
was irreproachable in appearance, in the simplicity of his dress, in the
smoothness of his fair hair and well-trimmed mustache; he appeared
thoroughly at home among his new-found relations, and anxious to please
them all alike; he was modest and unassuming, for he did not speak of
himself, and he gave no opinion saving such as should be pleasing to
his audience. He had all this, and yet in the cold stare of his stony
eyes, in the ungainly twist of his broad white hand, where the bones
and sinews crossed and recrossed like a network of marble, in the
decisive tone with which he uttered the most flattering remarks,
there was something which betrayed a tyrannical and unyielding
character,--something which struck me at first sight, and which
suggested a nature by no means so gentle and amiable as he was willing
it should appear.
Nevertheless, I was the only one to notice these signs, to judge by the
enthusiasm which Patoff produced at Carvel Place in those first hours of
his stay. It is true that the professor was not present, although he had
left me on the pretense of going to see Paul, and Macaulay Carvel was
resting from his journey in his own rooms, in a remote part of the
house; but I judged that the latter had already fallen under the spell
of Patoff's manner, and that it would not be easy to find out what the
man of science really thought about the Anglo-Russian. They probably
knew each other of old, and whatever opinions they held of each other
were fully formed.
Paul sat in his easy-chair in the midst of the family, and smiled and
surveyed everything through his single eyeglass, and if anything did not
please him he did not say so. John had something to do, and went away,
then Mrs. Carvel wanted to see her son alone, and she left us too; so
that Chrysophrasia and Hermione and I remained to amuse Patoff. Hermione
immediately began to do so after her own fashion. I think that of all of
us she was the one least inclined to give him absolute supremacy at
first, but he interested her, for she had seen little of the world, and
nothing of such men as her cousin Paul, who was thirty years of age, and
had been to most of the courts of the world in the course of twelve
years in the diplomatic service. She was not inclined to admit that
knowledge of the world was superiority of itself, nor that an easy
manner and an irreproachable appearance constituted the ideal of a man;
but she was barely twenty, and had seen little of those things. She
recognized their importance, and desired to understand them; she felt
that wonderful suspicion of possibilities which a young girl loves to
dwell on in connection with every exceptional man she meets; she
unconsciously said to herself that such a man as Patoff might possibly
be her ideal, because there was nothing apparent to her at first sight
which was in direct contradiction with the typical picture she had
conceived of the typical man she hoped to meet.
Every young girl has an ideal, I presume. If it be possible to reason
about so unreasonable a thing as love, I should say that love at first
sight is probably due to the sudden supposed realization in every
respect of an ideal long cherished and carefully developed in the
imagination. But in most cases a young girl sees one man after another,
hopes in each one to find those qualities which she has elected to
admire, and finally submits to be satisfied with far less than she had
at first supposed could satisfy her. As for young men, they are mostly
fools, and they talk of love with a vast deal of swagger and bravery,
laughing it to scorn, as a landsman talks of seasickness, telling you it
is nothing but an impression and a mere lack of courage, till one day
the land-bred boaster puts to sea in a Channel steamer, and experiences
a new sensation, and becomes a very sick man indeed before he is out of
sight of Dover cliffs.
But with Hermione there was certainly no realization of her ideal, but
probably only the faint, unformulated hope that in her cousin Paul she
might find some of those qualities which her own many-sided nature
longed to find in man.
"You must tell us all about Russia, cousin Paul," she said, when her
father and mother were gone. "Aunt Chrysophrasia believes that you are
the most extraordinary set of barbarians up there, and she adores
barbarians, you know."
"Of course we are rather barbarous."
"Hermione! How can you say I ever said such a thing!" interposed Miss
Dabstreak, with a deprecating glance at Paul. "I only said the Russians
were such a young and manly race, so interesting, so unlike the
inhabitants of this dreary den of printing-presses and steam-engines,
so"----
"Thanks, aunt Chrysophrasia," said Paul, "for the delightful ideal you
have formed of us. We are certainly less civilized than you, and
perhaps, as you are so good as to believe, we are the more interesting.
I suppose the unbroken colt of the desert is more interesting than an
American trotting horse, but for downright practical use"----
"There is such a tremendous talk of usefulness!" ejaculated
Chrysophrasia, a faint, sad smile flickering over her sallow features.
"Usefulness is so remarkably useful," I remarked.
"Oh, Mr. Griggs," exclaimed Hermione, "what an immensely witty speech!"
"There is nothing so witty as truth, Miss Carvel, though you laugh at
it," I answered, "for where there is no truth, there is no wit. I
maintain that usefulness is really useful. Miss Dabstreak, I believe,
maintains the contrary."
"Indeed, I care more for beauty than for usefulness," replied the
aesthetic lady, with a fine smile.
"Beauty is indeed truly useful," said Paul, with a very faint imitation
of Chrysophrasia's accent, "and it should be sought in everything. But
that need not prevent us from seeing true beauty in all that is truly
useful."
I had a faint suspicion that if Patoff had mimicked Miss Dabstreak in
the first half of his speech, he had imitated me in the second portion
of the sentiment. I do not like to be made game of, because I am aware
that I am naturally pedantic. It is an old trick of the schools to rouse
a pedant to desperate and distracted self-contradiction by quietly
imitating everything he says.
"You are very clever at taking both sides of a question at once," said
Hermione, with a smile.
"Almost all questions have two sides," answered Paul, "but very often
both sides are true. A man may perfectly appreciate and approve of the
opinions of two persons who take diametrically opposite views of the
same point, provided there be no question of right and wrong involved."
"Perhaps," retorted Hermione; "but then the man who takes both sides has
no opinion of his own. I do not like that."
"In general, cousin Hermione," said Paul, with a polite smile, "you may
be sure that any man will make your opinion his. In this case, I submit
that both beauty and usefulness are good, and that they need not at all
interfere with each other. As for the compliment my aunt Chrysophrasia
has paid to us Russians, I do not think we can be said to have gone very
far in either direction as yet." After which diplomatic speech Paul
dropped his eyeglass, and looked pleasantly round upon all three of us,
as much as to say that it was impossible to draw him into the position
of disagreeing with any one present by any device whatsoever.