The Marchesa passed through the door held open by the butler, across a
little stone passage, into the dining room.
This room was in structure similar to the one she had just quitted,
except for the two long windows cut through the south wall--flood gates
for the sun. The table was laid with a white cloth almost to the
floor. In the center of it was a single silver bowl, as great as a peck
measure, filled with fruit, an old massive piece, shaped like the hull
of a huge acorn, the surface crudely cut to resemble the outside of that
first model for his cup, which the early man found under the oak tree.
The worn rim marked the extreme antiquity of this bowl. Somewhere in
the faint dawn of time, a smith, melting silver in a pot, had cast the
clumsy outline of the piece in a primitive sand mold on the floor of his
shop, and then sat down with his model--picked up in the forest--before
him on his bench, to cut and hammer the outside as like to nature as he
could get it with his tools--the labor of a long northern winter; and
then, when that prodigious toil was ended, to grind the inside smooth
with sand, rubbed laboriously over the rough surface. But his work
remained to glorify his deftness ages after his patient hands were dust.
It sat now on the center of the white cloth, the mottled spots, where
the early smith had followed so carefully his acorn, worn smooth with
the touching of innumerable fingers.
At the end of the room was a heavy rosewood sideboard, flanked at
either corner by tall silver cups--trophies, doubtless, of this Duke
of Dorset--bearing inscriptions not legible to the Marchesa at the
distance. The luncheon set hastily for the unexpected guest was
conspicuously simple. The butler, perhaps at the Duke's direction, did
not follow into the dining room. The host helped the guest to the food
set under covers on the sideboard. Cold grouse, a glass of claret, and
later, from the huge acorn, a bunch of those delicious white grapes
grown under glass in this north country.
The Duke, having helped the Marchesa to the grouse, sat down beyond her
at the table, taking out of courtesy a glass of wine and a biscuit.
"You will pardon this hunter's luncheon," he said; "I did not know how
much leisure you might have."
"I have quite an hour," replied the Marchesa; "I go on to Oban at twenty
minutes past one."
The answer set the man to speculating on the object of this trip to
Oban. He did not descend to the commonplace of such a query, but he
lifted the gate for the Marchesa to enter if she liked.
"The bay of Oban," he said, "is thought to be one of the most beautiful
in the world. I believe it is a meeting place for yachts at this
season."
The Marchesa Soderrelli returned a bit of general explanation. "I
believe that a great number of yachts come into the harbor for the Oban
Gathering," she answered; "it is considered rather smart for a day or
two then."
"I had forgotten the Oban Gathering for the moment," said the Duke.
"Does it not seem rather incongruous to attend land games with a fleet
of yachts? The Celt is not a person taking especially to water in any
form but rain." The Marchesa laughed. "It is the rich wanderer who comes
in with his yacht."
"I wonder why it is," replied the Duke, "that we take usually to the
road in the extremes of wealth and poverty. The instinct of vagrancy
seems to dominate a man when necessity emancipates him."
"I think it is because the great workshop is not fitted with a lounging
room," said the Marchesa, "and, so, when one is paid off at the window,
he can only go about and watch the fly wheels spin. If there is a little
flurry anywhere in the great shop he hurries to it." Then she added,
"Have you ever attended a Northern Gathering?"
"No," replied the Duke, "but I may possibly go to Oban for a day of it."
The answer seemed to bring some vital matter strikingly before the
Marchesa Soderrelli.
She put down her fork idly on the plate. She took up her glass of claret
and drank it slowly, her eyes fixed vacantly on the cloth. But she could
have arisen and clapped her hands. The gods, sitting in their spheres,
were with her. The moving object of her visit was to get this man to
Oban. And he was coming of himself! Surely Providence was pleased at
last to fill the slack sails of her fortune.
Then a sense of how little this man resembled the popular conception of
him, thrust itself upon her like a thing not until this moment thought
of. He was a stranger, almost wholly unknown in England, but the title
was known. Next to that of the reigning house it was the greatest in the
Empire. The story of its descent to this new Duke of Dorset was widely
known. The romance of it had reached even to that Janet, toasting scones
in the innkeeper's kitchen. The story, issuing from every press in
Europe, was colored like a tale of treasure. But it was vague as to
the personality of this incoming Duke. He had been drawn for the reader
wholly from the fancy. In the great hubbub he had been painted--like
that picture which she had examined in the innkeeper's dining
room--young, handsome, a sort of fairy prince. The man, while the
sensation ran its seven days, was hunting somewhere in the valley of the
Saagdan on the Great Laba, inaccessible for weeks. The romance passed,
turning many a pretty head with this new Prince Charlie, coming, as by
some Arabian enchantment, to be the richest and the greatest peer in
England. Other events succeeded to the public notice. The matter of the
succession adjusted itself slowly under the cover of state portfolios,
the steps of it coming out now and then in some brief notice. But the
portrait of the new Duke remained, as the dreamers had created him, a
swaggering, handsome, orphaned lad, moved back into an age of romance.
The reality sat now before the Marchesa Soderrelli in striking contrast
to this fancy. A man of five and thirty, hard as the deck of a whale
ship; his hair sunburned; the marks of the wilderness, the desert, the
great silent mountains stamped into his bronze face; his hands sinewy,
callous; his eyes steady, with the calm of solitudes--an expression,
common to the eye of every living thing dwelling in the waste places of
the earth.
"You will come to Oban?" she said, putting down her cup and lifting her
face, brightened with this pleasing news. "I am delighted. The Duke of
Dorset will be a great figure at this little durbar. Perhaps on some
afternoon there, when you are tired of bowing Highlanders, you will
permit me to carry you off to an American yacht." She paused a moment,
smiling. "Now, that you are a great personage in England, you should
give a bit of notice to great personages in other lands. The peace
of the world, and all that, depends, we are told, on such social
intermixing. I promise you a cup of tea with a most important person."
Then she laughed in a cheery note.
"You will pardon the way I run on. I do not really depend on the
argument I am making. I ought rather to be quite frank; in fact, to say,
simply, that an opportunity to present the Duke of Dorset to my friends
will help me to make good a little feminine boasting. I confess to the
weakness. When the romance of your succession to the greatest title in
England was being blown about the world, I could not resist a little
posing. I had seen you in various continental cities, now and then, and
I boasted it a bit. I added, perhaps, a little color to your imaginary
portrait. I stood out in the gay season at Biarritz as the only woman
who actually knew this fairy prince. King Edward was there, and with
him London and New York. You were the consuming topic, and this little
distinction pleased my feminine vanity."
The Marchesa smiled again. "It seems infinitely little, doesn't it? And
to a man it would be, but not so to a woman. A woman gets the pleasure
of her life out of just such little things. You must not measure us in
your big iron bushel. If you take away our little vanities, our flecks
of egotism, our bits of fiction, you leave us with nothing by which we
can manage to be happy. And so," she continued, lowering her eyes to the
cloth and tapping the rim of the plate with her fingers, "if the Duke
of Dorset appears in Oban and does not know me, I am conspicuously
pilloried."
It was not possible to determine from the man's face with what
internal comment he took this feminine confession. He arose, filled the
Marchesa's glass, set the decanter on the table, and returned to his
chair; then he answered.
"If I should attend this Gathering," he said, "I will certainly do
myself the honor of looking you up."
The words rang on the Marchesa Soderrelli like a rebuke descended from
the stars. She might have saved herself the doubtful effect of her
ingenuous confession.
The man's face gave no sign. He was still talking--words which the
Marchesa, engrossed with the various aspects of her error, did not
closely follow. He was going on to explain that he was just setting out
for Canada, but if he had a day or two he would likely come to Oban.
He was curious to see a Highland Gathering. And if he came he would be
charmed to know the Marchesa's friends--to see her again there, and so
forth.
The Marchesa Soderrelli murmured some courteous platitudes, some vague
apology, and arose from the table. The Duke held back the door for her
to pass and then followed her into the next room. There the Marchesa,
inquiring the hour, announced that she must go. She said the words
with a bit of brightened color, with visible confusion, and remained
standing, embarrassed, until the Duke should put into her hands the
money which he had sent for. But he did not do it. He bade her a
courteous adieu.
A certain sense of loss, of panic, enveloped her. This man had doubtless
forgotten, but she could not remind him. She felt that such words rising
now into her throat, would choke her. The butler stood there by the
door. She walked over to it, bowed to the Duke remaining now by his
table as he had been when she had first crossed the threshold; then she
went out and slowly down the stone stairway, empty handed as she had
come that morning up it. At every step, clicking under her foot, the
panic deepened. She had not two sovereigns remaining in her bag. She was
going down these steps to ruin.
As the butler, preceding her, threw open the iron door to the court,
she saw, in the flood of light thus admitted, a footman standing at the
bottom of the stairway, holding a silver tray, and lying on it a big
blue envelope sealed with a splash of red wax.