THE POINT OF VIEW.
On leaving the villa Lenox Leigh experienced a number of conflicting
emotions, and at last found relief in sleep. The day that followed he
passed in chambered solitude; it was possible that some delegate from
Mr. Incoul might wish to exchange a word with him, and in accordance
with the unwritten statutes of what is seemly, it behooved him to be
in readiness for the exchange of that word. Moreover, he was expectant
of a line from Maida, some word indicative of the course of conduct
which he should pursue, some message, in fact, which would aid him
to rise from the uncertainty in which he groped. As a consequence he
remained in his room. He was not one to whom solitude is irksome,
indeed he had often found it grateful in its refreshment, but to be
enjoyable solitude should not be coupled with suspense; in that case
it is uneasiness magnified by the infinite. And if fear be analyzed,
what is it save the dread of the unknown? When the nerves are unstrung
a calamity is often a tonic. The worst that can be has been done, the
blow has fallen, and with the falling fear vanishes, hope returns, the
healing process begins at once.
The uneasiness which visited Lenox Leigh came precisely from his
inability to determine whether or not a blow was impending. As to the
blow, he cared, in the abstract, very little. If it were to be given,
let it be dealt and be done with; that which alone troubled him was his
ignorance of what had ensued after his meeting with Mr. Incoul, and his
incapacity to foresee in what manner the consequences of that meeting
would affect his relations with Mr. Incoul’s wife.
In this uncertainty he looked at the matter from every side, and, that
he might get the broadest view, he recalled the incidents connected
with the meeting. The facts of the case seemed then to resolve
themselves into this: Mr. Incoul had unexpectedly returned to his home
after midnight, and had met a friend of his wife’s descending the
stair. Their greeting, if formal, had been perfectly courteous. The
departing guest had informed the returning husband at what hotel he
was stopping, and that gentleman had expressed the hope that he was
comfortable. Certainly there was nothing extraordinary in that. People
who dwelled in recondite regions might see impropriety in a call that
extended up to and beyond midnight, whereas others who lived in more
liberal centres might consider it the most natural thing in the world.
It was, then, merely the point of view, and what was the point of view
which Mr. Incoul had adopted? If he considered it an impropriety why
had he seemed so indifferent? And, if he considered it natural and
proper, why should he have been so damned civil? Why should he have
expressed the hope that his wife’s guest was comfortable at a hotel?
Was the expression of that hope merely a commonplace rejoinder, or was
it an intentional slur? Surely, every one possessed of the brain of a
medium-sized rabbit feels that it is as absurd to expect an intelligent
being to be comfortable in a hotel as it is to suppose that he can
find enjoyment in an evening party or amusement in a comic paper. Then
again, and this, after all, was the great question: was the return of
Mr. Incoul intentional or accidental? If it was intentional, if he
had gone away intending that he would be absent all night merely that
by an unexpected return he might verify any suspicions which he may
have harbored, then in driving to his door in a rumbling coach he had
shown himself a very poor plotter. On the other hand, if the return
were accidental had it served to turn a suspicionless husband into a
suspicious one, and if it had so served, how far did those suspicions
extend? Did he think that his wife and her guest had been occupied with
aimless chit-chat, or did he believe that their conversation had been
of a personal and intimate nature?
As Lenox pondered over these things it seemed to him that, let Mr.
Incoul suspect what he might, the one and unique cause for apprehension
lay in the attitude which Maida had assumed when her husband, after
closing the door, had gone to her in search of an explanation. That
he had so gone there was to him no possible doubt. And it was in the
expectancy of tidings as to the result of that explanation that he
waited the entire day in his room.
But the afternoon waned into dusk and still no tidings came. As
the hours wore on his uneasiness decreased. “Bah!” he muttered to
himself at last, “in the winter I gave all my mornings to Pyrrho and
Ænesidemus, and here six months later during an entire day I bother
myself about eventualities.”
He sighed wearily with an air of self-disgust, and rising from the sofa
on which his meditations had been passed he went to the window. The
Casino opposite was already illuminated. “They will be there to-night,”
he thought. “I have been a fool for my pains. If Maida hasn’t written
it is because there has been nothing to write. I will look them up
after dinner and everything will be as before.” He took off his morning
suit and got himself into evening dress. He tied his white cravat
without emotion, with a precision that was geometric in its accuracy,
and to hold the tie in place he ran a silver pin through the collar
without so much as pricking his neck. He was thoroughly at ease. The
fear of the blow had passed. Pyrrho, Ænesidemus, the whole corps of
ataraxists had surged suddenly and rescued him from the toils of the
inscrutable.
At a florist’s in the street below he found an orchid with which he
decked his button-hole, and then in search of dinner he sauntered
into Helder’s, a restaurant on the main street, a trifle above the
Grand Hôtel. It was crowded; there did not seem to be a single table
unoccupied. He hesitated for a moment, and was about to go elsewhere
when he noticed some one signaling to him from the remoter end of the
garden. He could not at first make out who it was and it was not until
he had made use of a monocle that he recognized a fellow Baltimorean,
Mr. Clarence May, with whom in days gone by he had been on terms
approaching those of intimacy.
Mr. Clarence May, more familiarly known as Clara, was a pigeon-shooter
who for some years past had been promenading the side scenes of
continental life. He was well known in the penal colonies of the
Riviera, and hand-in-glove with some of the most distinguished
_rastaquouères_, yet did he happen in a proscenium it was by
accident. In appearance he was not beautiful: he was a meagre little
man, possessed of vague features and an allowance of sandy hair so
undetermined that few were able to remember whether or not he wore any
on his face. When he spoke it was with a slight stutter, a trick of
speech which he declared he had inherited from his wet-nurse.
He rose from his seat, and hurrying forward, greeted Lenox as though he
had seen him the week before. He was anything but an idealist, yet he
treated Time as though it were the veriest fiction of the non-existent,
and he bombarded no one with questions as to what had become of them,
or where had they been.
“I have just ordered dinner,” he said, in his amusing stammer, “you
must share it with me.” And Lenox, who had not a prejudice to his name,
accepted the invitation as readily as it was made.
“I don’t know,” May continued, when they were seated--“I don’t know
whether you will like the dinner--I have ordered very little. No
soup, too hot, don’t you think? No oysters, there are none; all out
visiting, the man said; for fish I have substituted a melon; fish, at
the seaside, is never good; then we are to have white truffles, with a
plain sauce, a chateaubriand, salad, a bit of cheese--_voilà_! How will
that suit you?”
Lenox nodded, as who should say, had I ordered it myself it could not
be more to my taste, and thus encouraged, May offered him a glass of
Amer Picon, a beverage that smells like an orange and looks like ink.
The dinner passed off pleasantly enough. The white truffles were
excellent, and the chateaubriand cooked to a turn. The only fault to be
found was with the Brie, which May seemed to think was not as flowing
as it should be.
“By the way,” he said at last when coffee was served, “you know Mirette
is here?”
“Mirette? Who is Mirette?”
“Why, good gad! My dear fellow, Mirette is Mirette; the one adorable,
unique, divine Mirette. You don’t mean to say you never heard of her!”
“I do, though perhaps she may have had the good fortune to hear of me.”
“Heavens alive, man! don’t you read the papers?”
Lenox smiled. “Why should I? I am not interested in the community. It
might be stricken with dry-rot, elephantiasis and plica polonica for
ought I care. Besides, there is nothing in them; the English papers
are all advertisements and aridity, the French are frivolous and
obscene. I mind neither frivolity nor obscenity; both have their uses,
as flowers and cesspools have theirs; but I object to them served with
my breakfast. I think if once a year a man would read a summary of the
twelvemonth, he would get in ten minutes a digest of all that might be
necessary to know, and what is more to the point, he would have to his
credit a clear profit of two hundred hours at the very least, and two
hundred hours rightly employed are sufficient for the acquirement of
such a knowledge of a foreign language as will permit a man to make
love in it gracefully. No, I seldom read the papers, so forgive my
ignorance as to Mirette.”
“After such an explanation I shall have to. But if you care to learn
by word of mouth that which you decline to read in print, Mirette is
_premier sujet_.”
“In the ballet, you mean.”
“Yes, in the ballet, and I can’t for the life of me think of a ballet
without her.”
“She must have gone to your head.”
“And to every one’s who has seen her.”
“You say she is here?”
“Yes, she’ll be at the Casino to-night; I’ll present you if you say so.”
“I might take a look at her, but I fancy I shalt be occupied elsewhere.”
“As you like.” May drew out his watch. “It’s after nine,” he added, “if
we are going to the Casino we had better be t-toddling.”
On the way there May entered a tobacconist’s, and Lenox waited for him
without. As he loitered on the curb, Blydenburg rounded an adjacent
corner.
“Well,” exclaimed the latter, “you didn’t see our friends off.”
“What friends?”
“The Incouls of course; didn’t you know that they had gone?”
Lenox looked at him blankly. “Gone,” he echoed.
“Yes, they must have sent you word. Incoul seemed to expect you. They
have gone up to Paris. If I had known beforehand--”
Mr. Blydenburg rambled on, but Lenox no longer listened. It was for
this then that he had been bothering himself the entire day. The
abruptness of the departure mystified him, yet he comforted himself
with the thought that had there been anything abnormal, it could not
have escaped Blydenburg’s attention.
“And you say they expected me?” he asked at last.
“Yes, they seemed to. Incoul left good-bye for you. When you get to
Paris look them up.”
While he was speaking May came out from the tobacconist’s.
“I will do so,” Lenox said, and with a parting nod he joined his friend.
As he walked on down the road to the Casino, Mr. Blydenburg looked
musingly after him. He would not be a bad match for Milly, he told
himself, not a bad match at all; and thinking that perhaps it might be
but a question of bringing the two young people together, he presently
started off in search of his daughter and led her, lamb-like, to the
Casino. But once there he felt instinctively that for that evening at
least any bringing together of the young people was impossible. Lenox
was engaged in an animated conversation with a conspicuously dressed
lady, whom, Mr. Blydenburg learned on inquiry, was none other than the
notorious Mlle. Mirette, of the Théâtre National de l’Opéra.