I
From the days of his earliest manhood, Crammon, a pilgrim upon the
paths of pleasantness and delight, had been a constant wayfarer from
capital to capital and from country-seat to country-seat. He came of an
Austrian family whose landed estates lay in Moravia, and his full name
was Bernard Gervasius Crammon von Weissenfels.
In Vienna he owned a small but beautifully furnished house. Two old,
unmarried ladies were its guardians--the Misses Aglaia and Constantine.
They were his distant kinswomen, but he was devoted to them as to
sisters of his blood, and they returned his affection with an equal
tenderness.
On an afternoon in May the two sat by an open window and gazed
longingly down into the street. He had announced the date of his
arrival by letter, but four days had passed and they were still waiting
in vain. Whenever a carriage turned the corner, both ladies started and
looked in the same direction.
When twilight came they closed the window and sighed. Constantine took
Aglaia’s arm, and together they went through the charming rooms, made
gleamingly ready for their master. All the beautiful things in the
house reminded them of him, just as every one of them was endeared to
him because it united him to some experience or memory.
Here was the chiselled fifteenth century goblet which the Marquis
d’Autichamps had given him, yonder the agate bowl bequeathed him by
the Countess Ortenburg. There were the coloured etchings, part of the
legacy of a Duchess of Gainsborough, the precious desk-set which he
had received from the old Baron Regamey, the Tanagra figurines which
Felix Imhof had brought him from Greece. There, above all, was his own
portrait, which the English artist Lavery had painted on an order from
Sir Charles MacNamara.
They knew these things and esteemed them at their true worth. They
stopped before his picture, as they so often delighted to do. The
well rounded face wore a stern, an almost sombre expression. But that
expression seemed deceptive, for a tell-tale gleam of worldly delight,
of irony and roguishness, played about the clean-shaven lips.
When night fell the two ladies received a telegram informing them that
Crammon had been forced to put off his return home for a month. They
lit no lights after that, and went sadly to bed.