I drew the key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and admitted the
count, who stood for an instant on the threshold, looking from me
to Brunow and from Brunow to me with an aspect of some considerable
amazement. Hinge was gaping in the passage, and it was evident that he
was more interested in the proceedings than he knew himself to have the
right to be; for, encountering my eye, he withdrew his own instantly,
and plunged with great precipitation out of sight.
“Come in, sir,” I said to the count; and he entered, closing the door
behind him, and still looking from Brunow to myself and back again with
an aspect of complete surprise strongly mingled with displeasure.
“I had not expected to find Mr. Brunow here.” This told me, or seemed
to tell me at once, that Brunow had but recently left the count, and my
conjecture turned out in a moment to be true.
“I have repeated to Captain Fyffe, sir,” said Brunow, “what I told you
less than half an hour ago.”
“Then,” said the count, “you have repeated to Captain Fyffe what I
emphatically denied to you. That, sir, is a refusal of my plighted
word.”
His meagre figure was drawn to its full height, he threw his head back,
and his deep-sunken eyes flashed with indignation.
“I have told this fellow,” cried Brunow, “that he has betrayed my
confidence--the most sacred confidence one man can repose in another--a
confidence I extended to him, believing him to be a man of honor and my
friend.”
“And I, sir, have instructed you,” returned the count, “that your
accusation is altogether baseless. There, if you cede so much to the
authority of my years, the matter may be allowed to rest. If you have
further business with Captain Fyffe, I will find another opportunity of
calling upon him.”
“I have no further business with Captain Fyffe,” said Bruno, “now nor at
any time.”
So saying, he looked about him for his hat, caught it up, bowed angrily
to the count, and without a word or a glance for me walked out of the
room, slamming the outer door so noisily that the whole house shook with
the concussion.
“Mr. Brunow,” said the count, when we were thus left alone, “is an
ill-conditioned person. I owe it to you to explain precisely what has
happened. But first, my dear Fyffe, give me your hand, and let me offer
you my felicitations.”
I took the hand he offered and held it a moment, hardly realizing where
I stood.
“Your suit is accepted; and if you will do us the honor to dine with
us this evening, I am charged by Lady Rollinson to say that she will be
charmed to meet you at her table. There, my dear fellow,” he concluded,
hastily withdrawing his hand, “you are stronger than you fancy yourself
to be.”
He stood, half laughing, as he straightened the fingers of his right
hand with his left, and then shook them in memory of my grip.
I had not a word to say for myself, and I felt as foolish and awkward as
a school-boy.
“And now,” said the count, laying a hand on each of my shoulders and
pressing me gently towards an arm-chair, “I will tell you what has
happened between Mr. Brunow and myself.”
“Never mind about Brunow just at present, sir,” I cried, recovering my
wits a little; “I have other things to think of which are of greater
moment.”
“Well, yes,” he answered, with a very sweet yet mournful smile, “I can
believe so. Brunow will keep.”
“I am to understand, sir,” I asked, “that Miss Rossano accepts the
offer of my hand?”
“Precisely,” said the count, nodding with his affectionate and
melancholy smile.
“She knows my circumstances?”
“I will not say she knows them absolutely,” he replied, “but I think she
has a fairly accurate knowledge of them.”
“I have an income of three hundred pounds a year.”
“So much as that?” he asked, with a dry, quaint look. It was so wise, so
friendly, so childlike, so gay, so unlike the dull and dreadful
aspect his face had worn when I had first known it that it affected
me strongly, “My dear Fyffe,” he said, reaching his friendly hand out
towards me once more, “why should we talk about money? If you can put
Brunow out of your mind I can put money out of mine. My daughter loves
me, and the man who saved me loves my daughter; and Violet--well, she
shall speak for herself.”
I was so entirely happy that I could afford to take pity on my
unsuccessful rival. When I thought how I should have felt if our cases
had been reversed--if he had won and I had been rejected--I was willing
to forgive him anything. I hoped that in course of time he would come
to see how baseless his suspicions were, but in my joy I could nurse no
anger against him. But I was eager to meet my promised wife, and he did
not fill my thoughts for more than a passing moment.
The count volunteered to accompany me to Lady Rollinson's house.
“You are bidden to dinner,” he said, “but I dare say they will excuse an
afternoon visit as well. The circumstances are unusual.”
His face was full of a quiet and happy humor, which even in the midst
of my own whirling emotions struck me as being remarkable. What a native
courage must have existed within this man that all the miseries he had
undergone had left so much of his manhood to him! What a tranquil and
heroic soul he must have borne to have survived that hideous time at
all. I know of myself that I should have beaten my brains out against
the wall of that loathsome jail many years ago had his lot fallen to me,
or I should have sunk to the stupor of an idiot.
We walked together arm in arm, as our manner was, and we talked of
scores of things as we went along, though there was always one thought
uppermost in the minds of both of us. The count seemed almost as happy
as I was, and the knowledge that he welcomed me so warmly was like honey
to my heart. For all this I was in an absurd flutter all the way; and
when we reached the house I had come to such a condition of mind that
whether I were in a delirium of joy or a delirium of misery I was in no
wise sure. The delirium was certain; but I found that afternoon how true
a thing it is that extremes meet. Great joy and great sorrow are not
very wide apart in the havoc they work on the nerves.
I have been trying to recall everything that happened that day; but I
find that I have no memory of anything at all between our talking very
brightly and affectionately in the street, and my finding myself alone
in Lady Rollinson's drawing-room. There was a bright fire burning there,
for the spring days were chilly. There was a clock ticking delicately on
the mantel-piece, and my mind fastened on to the sound as if there were
possibility of checking and steadying my whirling thoughts by thinking
of it--pretty much as a man would clutch a straw in a whirlpool. The
rustle of a dress sounded in the corridor outside, and a step paused at
the door. My heart beat furiously, and then as the door opened it seemed
as if it stopped for a second. Miss Rossano entered (it is the last time
I shall call her by that name), and for a moment we stood face to face
in silence, like a pair of foolish statues. She was more self-possessed
than I, for she advanced and offered me her hand, and I took it
clumsily, as if I had no idea what to do with it.
I had loved her from the very first moment I had seen her sweet and
noble face, and every hour had seemed to make me love her more. And yet
I had never breathed a word to her, and here we were plighted to each
other in this strange and sudden fashion, with no preliminaries of
courtship, with no question asked by me or answered by her, and hardly
at the moment an understanding of how a thing so curious had come to
pass.
I have not forgotten anything that was said or done that happy hour, but
it is still all too sacred to be written down for any eye but hers or
mine to read. It is enough to say that I learned she loved me. Her love
has ceased to be to me the puzzle it once was, for one grows used to
everything, and I have been both her husband and her lover now for so
many years that it would be strange indeed if any sense of strangeness
were left in it. But when I first found out that she had fallen in love
with me just as quickly as I with her, I could not get over the wonder
of it, or the feeling of added unworthiness with which the knowledge
burdened me. But, in truth, the very things which make a man feel so
clumsy and coarse in the presence of the woman he loves are the things
that take a woman's fancy, just as her sweetness and delicacy are the
things that take his. I never was a bit of a handsome fellow, but I was
a big man, flowing over with health and vigor, with a big voice and
a broad chest and shoulders, and, until I fell in love, I never set a
great deal of value on good looks in a man. But there was I, a great
hulking fellow who had passed all the best part of his life in the
giving and receiving of hard knocks, a fellow who could not for the life
of him help feeling that he carried the flavor of the camp about with
him. What was there, in the name of Heaven, I used to ask myself in
those first days of courtship, for a delicate and high-minded girl of
refined breeding to fall in love with? But that, my lads and lasses all,
is the provision of great nature which makes delicacy love strength and
strength love gentleness, which makes fear look pretty to a soldier's
eyes, and makes courage look noble and admirable to a charming creature
who is afraid of a mouse. So now that I am older and more experienced,
I have no wonder that my wife did not choose to fall in love with some
namby-pamby fellow of the drawing-rooms rather than with me, though I
have now, as I have had always, the sense to know that she is worth ten
thousand of me.
I came back to something like sanity in the first ten minutes, and we
sat there with no lack of things to talk about, a trouble from which I
believe lovers do occasionally suffer. I am not going to pretend that
the count and Italy occupied all our minds, but they had their full
share of our thoughts, and we both knew that there was no question of
marriage just at present. With the history of her broken-hearted mother
before me I was in no mood to ask her to be my widow, and there was a
growing certainty that there was fighting in front of us, and that it
was likely to begin pretty soon.
If Lady Rollinson, Violet, the count, and myself had been dining
alone that evening, I should probably have been allowed, under the
circumstances, to dispense with evening-dress, and so there would have
been no necessity for my going home again before dinner. The count,
however, had already advised me of expected guests, and however
fascinating the society in which I found myself, I had to break away
from it for an hour.
The spring dusk was already thick as I passed along Bond Street, and
there was a slight fog abroad; but at the time of which I am writing the
West End shops kept open hours later than they do now, and there was no
sign of cessation of business. There were a good many foot-passengers
abroad, and in front of a brilliantly lighted jeweller's-shop I found
myself brought to a stand-still by a little block in the traffic. A
carriage stood immediately in front of the shop, and I was about to step
round it into the horse road when I saw that a lady was bowing to me
from it, and discovered that the lady was no other than the Baroness
Bonnar. I raised my hat in answer to her salutation, and as I did so
Brunow emerged from the crowd and handed a small packet to her. She took
it from him with a smile, and gave the word to the coachman. I had seen
that she had a companion with her, a lady whose back was turned to me;
but I had taken no notice of the fact, and, indeed, had not given it a
thought. But as the coachman wheeled round his horses the lady's face
came for a moment into the full light of the brilliantly illuminated
window, and I, standing wedged there in the momentary block of
pedestrians, met her glance point-blank. She gave not the faintest sign
of recognition, though she must have seen that I stared and stared as
though I had beheld a ghost; but leaning back in the luxurious cushions
of the carriage, drew down her veil and arranged a fur rug about her
knees. I stood stock-still, and was rather roughly hustled before I
so much as remembered where I was. When I looked round Brunow had
disappeared. He had probably seen me, and having found time to cool, had
wisely decided against a renewal in the public street of our quarrel of
that afternoon. I walked on like a man in a dream, for Constance Pleyel
was the last woman in the world I had thought to see, and the very last
woman to be found in the society of Brunow and the Baroness Bonnar. So
far as I knew, Brunow had certainly little enough to do with her, and
their meeting might have been one of the purest chance; but that she
was associated in some way with the baroness was evident enough from
her presence in that lady's carriage. It is a bitter thing to have to go
back on the past in this way, but I cannot tell my story without it.
If there are worthless women in the world, there are some who are very
nearly angels, and I feel as if I were almost dishonoring the sex in
telling the truth about poor Constance, for I had been very honestly in
love with her when I was a lad, and it seems even now, after the lapse
of all these years, as if I were defiling the place which had once been
a sanctuary. But when I had recovered from the shock of my surprise
and began to understand what I had seen, it crossed me in a very vivid
fashion that the mistrusting dislike with which I had always regarded
the baroness had received strong confirmation in an unexpected way; for
Constance Pleyel was not and had not been for years one with whom any
self-respecting woman would wish to be intimate. The thought of the
Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's
presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was
never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain
English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance
Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet. My mind was a good
deal exercised about this matter as I walked swiftly homeward. I thought
about it while I was dressing, and as I drove back to Lady Rollinson's
that strange _rencontre_ filled my thoughts to the exclusion of
everything else. You may judge of my surprise when the baroness appeared
as the very last of the invited guests. Considering the elaborate toilet
she had made she had shown wonderful despatch, and though I have no
pretensions to be versed in these mysteries, I should have been inclined
to think that such a display as she made could only have been achieved
with an hour or two's labor. In spite of haste, if she had been really
pressed for time, her make-up was as perfect as ever, and what with
her flashing white shoulders and flashing white teeth, her sparkling
diamonds and sparkling eyes, and the artistic flush of artificial color
on lier cheeks, she looked quite dazzling.
Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count
himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge
of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little
traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if
no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had
confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the
baroness. She talked across me to my companion until my nerves grew
rigid with the strain of the repression I was compelled to lay upon
myself, and the dinner, which ought to have been a little foretaste of
heaven to a newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There
were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they
were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting
over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his
long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate,
so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had
retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our
way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something
unusual in the way of music. It was my right to have monopolized
Violet's society, or if not actually to have monopolized it, to have
taken a full share of it. I found opportunity to whisper to her that I
had an especial reason for speaking to the baroness, and while the music
was going on I planted myself at that lady's side. She received me with
more than her usual foreign affability, and chattered so rapidly that
one or two of the guests, who I suppose really cared for the performance
then going on, cast glances of open disapproval in her direction. The
little woman was quite at home, however, and continued to talk with
great animation. I made two or three attempts to interject what I had to
say, but she stopped me each time, and started off on a new theme before
I could get more than a word in edgewise. I know that she must have
seen from my looks that I was not in the least degree disposed to the
flippant mood to which she herself pretended, and at last she either
was, or feigned to be, tired of my failure to respond to her.
“You are _bête_ to-night, _mon beau capitaine_,” she said at last, and
with a humorously disdainful gesture of her fan she made a motion to
rise.
“Not yet, baroness,” I said, taking the fan in my hand. “I have
something serious to say to you.”
“I am not in the mind for anything serious tonight,” she answered, “and
this is not the place for anything serious.”
“I am in the mood,” I said, “and the place will do well enough.”
She flashed her eyes at me with a sudden anger.
“Is that an impertinence or a gaucherie?” she asked. A second later her
charming girlish smile lit up her face again, and rising from her seat
she dropped a little mock rustic courtesy. “If M. le Capitaine Fyffe
will honor me at my own humble residence, I am never abroad till one.”
With that she shot me a curiously veiled glance and turned away, holding
up her hand as if to ask me to listen to the last strains of the music
which her own vehement chatter had already spoiled for everybody who
cared to listen to it. She had evidently a purpose in holding me off,
and I of course could form a reasonable guess as to what the nature
of that purpose was. I devoted myself to Violet for the rest of the
evening, and contrived so well to forget the baroness that by the time
at which I was compelled to take my leave I was restored to the state of
mind natural to an ardent lover who had only that day been lifted from
something very like despair to the fulfilment of his hope.
When the baroness took leave I helped her to adjust her costly fur
mantle. Violet was standing by, and the baroness was talking to her with
a pretence of animation which I know was intended to prevent me from
giving her a reminder of what had already passed between us. As she
turned to go she gave me a moment's chance. I had been waiting for it,
and I seized it instantly.
“To-morrow, then, at twelve,” I said.
She turned, with her eyes wide open and angered, as if I had presumed in
speaking to her and had offered her an insult. But she changed her mind
in the merest fraction of time, and answered, smilingly:
“To-morrow, then, at twelve.”
Then she looked at me with the odd veiled glance I had seen before--a
glance which expressed both dislike and fear, and held at the same time
a keener and more piercing observation than anybody at first sight would
have been likely to charge the butterfly-like woman with.
I have spoken quite openly, and as if what I have had to say had been
the most commonplace matter in the world. Violet had heard me, but when
we went back to the drawing-room together she asked no questions. She
has told me since that she wondered a little what appointment I could
have with the Baroness Bonnar, but she gave me here the first of a
hundred thousand proofs of that noble freedom from the pinch of small
curiosity which helps to make her different from and superior to her
sex.
I kept my appointment next day, and found the baroness at home. She had
a dainty little house of her own, and I suppose that at this time
she kept better style, was furnished with completer credentials, was
admitted to know better people, and was more liberally supplied with
funds than at any other period of her curiously vagabond existence. She
was to me at this time the Baroness Bonnar pure and simple, a foreign
lady of wealth and position who moved in good society, had agreeable
and influential friends, and obvious command of money. She was to me,
in short, what she was to the rest of the world, and I had no earthly
reason to doubt any of her pretences. But I had come with a definite
object, and I approached it at once. She was not at all disposed to
banter to-day, but met me with perfect candor.
“My time is a little limited, Captain Fyffe,” she began. “Will you do
me the honor to let me know at once to what I owe your visit?”
“I passed you last night in Bond Street,” I returned. She nodded
briefly, with her lips tight set and her eyes glittering a little
dangerously, I thought. “Would you oblige me by telling me the name of
your companion?”
“Would you oblige me,” she retorted, “by telling me the reasons for
which you ask it?”
She was so very quick and resolute that I saw at once she had been
prepared for the occasion.
“I had rather not give my reason just at present, baroness,” I said. “I
have, as a matter of fact, no reason for asking the lady's name for my
own satisfaction, because I know it with much more certainty than you
do.”
“Oh!” she said, very quietly. “Then why do you ask?”
“Let me change my question,” I responded. “Let me ask you if you have
known Miss Constance Pleyel long?”
“Do you know, my good Captain Fyffe,” said the little woman, toying idly
with the _vinaigrette_ and sniffing at its contents now and then, “you
have a manner which is abominably resolute. You are speaking to me as if
you were a rustic _juge d'instruction_, and I a prisoner in the dock.”
“I beg your pardon, baroness; I was conscious of no such manner. Will
you oblige me by telling me if you have known this lady long?”
“I do not recognize your right to question me,” said the baroness; “but
since you are audacious enough to come here and to question me about
that lady after what I heard last night--” she paused there of set
purpose, and repeating the words “after what I heard last night” with
emphasis, paused again.
“After what you heard last night,” I repeated, unable to attach any
meaning whatever to her words.
“You decline to understand me?” she said, with a threatening nod of her
pretty little head. “Very well. But if,” still with marked emphasis,
“after what I heard last night you are sufficiently audacious to come
here and ask me questions about Constance Pleyel, I can tell you that I
have known that lady long enough to know the history of her life and how
far you are responsible for the sorrows she has known.”
“I responsible?” I cried.
“Do you deny it?” she retorted.
I had risen to my feet unconsciously, and she arose to face me.
“I deny it absolutely!” I answered. “The suggestion is an outrage!”
For sole answer she touched a little silver gong which stood upon the
table. A servant appeared in answer to the sound, and the baroness,
without turning her head towards him, said, “Send my compliments to Miss
Pleyel, and let her know Captain Fyffe has called.”
I stood rooted in astonishment.