Caroline was dressing. The Marchesa sat with her elbows on the Buhl
table; her chin in her palm; her eyes following the young girl, being
prepared, under the maid's hands, for the Oban ballroom. Evening had
descended. The curtains were drawn. The salon was softly lighted. The
Marchesa was seeking for the girl's impression of the Duke of Dorset.
"You are disappointed, then," said the Marchesa.
The girl laughed, her soft voice rippling like a brook.
"He is so unlike, so wholly unlike, everything I fancied him to be."
"And what did you fancy him?" said the Marchesa.
The girl sprang up, swept the long hair back from her face and took a
pose before the table.
"Like this," she said, "with big, dreamy eyes, a sad mouth, long
delicate hands, and lots of lace on his coat."
The naïve, mischievous, jesting air of the girl was adorable; but more
adorable was that slender figure, posing for the Marchesa Soder-relli
in the dishabille of her toilet with its white stuffs and lace. Her
slender, beautiful body was not unlike that of some perfect, immortal
youth, transported from sacred groves; some exquisite Adonis coming from
a classic myth; except for certain delicate contours that marked a woman
emerging from these slender outlines. Even to the Marchesa, seated with
her chin in her hands, there was, over the beautiful body of the girl, a
charm that thrilled her; the charm of something soft and white and warm
and caressing.
"But he isn't the least like this, Marchesa," she ran on. "Don't you
remember what everybody said of him at Biarritz--a sort of Prince
Charlie? And here he is, so big, and brown, and strong that I simply
cannot fix a single fancy to him."
Her eyes danced and her voice laughed.
"He hasn't a sad mouth at all. He has a big, firm mouth, and there isn't
the wisp of a shadow in his eyes. They are steady, like this--and level,
like this--and he looks at you--so."
She narrowed her eyelids, lifted her chin, and reproduced that profound,
detached expression with which the Duke of Dorset had continued to
regard her on this afternoon.
"Why, I have been simply fluttering all day. He has stalked through all
my little illusions of him and swept them away like cobwebs. There isn't
a delicate, pale, 'bonnie Charlie' thing about him. He is a big, hard,
ivory creature, colored with walnut stain. He looks like he could break
horseshoes and things. He drove that little boat through the sea with
a mere shrug of his elbows. If Prince Charlie had been like that the
capitol of England would be now in Edinburgh. I wish you could have seen
him out there in the hay."
The Marchesa had not removed her eyes from the girl.
"I wish rather," she said, "that he could see you now."
"Oh, Marchesa!" cried the girl, fleeing back to her chair and the
protection of her dressing gown. She huddled in it and drew it about
her. She looked around at the door, at the window, she caught her
breath. "How you frightened me!" she said.
"Forgive me, my dear child," said the Marchesa. "I did not mean to speak
that way. I meant only to regret that the Duke of Dorset can never know
how wonderful you are."
"Perhaps he doesn't care a fig how wonderful I am," said the girl, now
safely hidden in the exquisite silk gown.
The Marchesa did not reply. Instead she asked a question. "Tell me what
he said."
"Oh, Marchesa, I led him into terribly deep water. I made him tell me
how an English marriage is gone about. Dear me, what a fuss they make
over it, and what a solemn, ponderous, life-and-death thing it becomes
when the sturdy Briton gets at it."
She put out her hands with an immense gravity.
"'It is the administration for life of a great trust in perpetuity.'"
She rolled the words with a delicious intonation. "All the wiseacres in
the family eat and smoke over it. They hold councils on it. They trudge
around it, and they discuss it with a lawyer, just as one would do if
one were making his will. They brush every little vestige of romance out
of it. They make it safe."
For a moment her face became serious. "I wonder if they are right. I
wonder if older persons know."
Then she clasped her hands with a burst of laughter. "Why, if I were
English, I would be expected to huddle up against my Uncle's coat
and say, 'Far be it from me to doubt the wisdom of your opinion, dear
Uncle.' And I would be handed over, boots and baggage, to the fine young
man in the silver frame on my Uncle's table." Again for a moment the
laughter vanished and the grave air returned. "I wish I knew what the
poor little mite of a girl thought about it. I wish I knew if in the end
she was glad to have her life made so safe. I wish you could have
heard all the excellent reasons the Duke of Dorset repeated. He made me
afraid."
"I would rather have seen the Duke," said the Marchesa.
"You mean how he looked when he was talking?"
"Exactly that," replied the Marchesa.
"Well, he looked like a man who is thinking one thing and saying
something else. He looked like this." And again she contracted her
eyelids, and lifted her chin.
"Ah!" said the Marchesa.
The girl jerked her head, scattering the pins which the maid was putting
into her hair.
"Why did you say 'Ah' like that?"
"Because," replied the Marchesa, "it helps to confirm a theory I have
got."
"About the Duke's mind being far away?"
"Far away from what he has been saying all this afternoon," replied the
Marchesa, "but not far away."
"But that is not a theory. A theory would explain this phenomenon."
"I know. It is only an evidence upon which I base my theory."
"And what is the theory?"
"That the Duke of Dorset has found something."
"How interesting! What has he found?"
"A thing he has been looking for."
"Something he had lost?"
"No, nothing that he had lost."
"But how could he have found something that he was looking for if he had
not lost it?"
"He did not know that he was looking for it." The girl began to laugh.
"'Through a stone,
Through a reel,
Through a spinning wheel--'
What is it that the Duke of Dorset found that he did not lose, while he
was looking for it and did not know it? I can't answer that riddle."
"Unfortunately," said the Marchesa, "you are the only one who ever can
answer it."
"Wise woman," said the girl, "you speak in parables."
"I am going to speak in a parable now," replied the Marchesa. "Listen.
One day a woman on her way to the city of Dreams arrived before the city
of the Awakened, which is also called the city of Zeus, and there came
out to her the people of that city, and they said, 'Enter and dwell with
us, for there is no city of Dreams, and you go on a fool's errand.' And
one persuaded her, and she entered with him, and when the gates were
closed, they took her and bound her, and cut out her tongue, for they
said among themselves, 'She will perceive that we are liars, and she
will call down from the house top to others whom we go out to seek.
Moreover, if she be maimed, she cannot escape from us and flee away to
the city of Dreams, for one may in no wise enter that city who hath a
blemish.' And they put burdens upon her and she went about that city of
wrath and labor and bitterness, dumb. And years fled. And on a certain
day, when she was old, as she walked on the wall in the cool of the
evening, she saw another drawing near to the city of the Awakened, which
is also called the city of Zeus. And the other was young and fair as
she had been when she set out to go to the city of Dreams. And while she
looked, the people of the city went out to this traveler to beguile her
and to persuade her. And the woman walking on the wall would have called
down to warn her, but she could not, for she was dumb."
The girl leaned forward in her chair. Her voice was low and soft.
"Dear Marchesa," she said, "what do you mean?"
The Marchesa Soderrelli looked down at the table. She put up her hand
and flecked away particles of invisible dust.
"I do not mean anything," she answered. "I am merely a foolish old
woman."
But the girl went on speaking low and softly. "Do you mean that we ought
not to believe what older persons say? That one ought to follow what one
feels? That all the excellent reasons which the Duke of Dorset repeated
are to persuade us to accept the commonplace--to be contented with the
reality, to abandon our hopes, our aspirations, our dreams? Do you mean
to show me how it fares with the poor little mite of a girl, when she
is persuaded that happiness is an illusion, and is made to give up the
dream of it? How it would have gone with little Cinderella if she had
been persuaded to believe there was no fairy godmother, and no prince
coming to make her queen. And how, if she had believed it and married
the chimney sweep she would have missed it all?" Her voice sank. "My
dear Marchesa, is this the warning of the woman on the wall?"
"You forget the parable," replied the Marchesa. "The woman on the wall
was dumb." The girl arose, went over to the Marchesa and put her hand on
her shoulder.
"If I had been that other traveler," she said, "I would have gone into
the city of Zeus, I would have found the woman who was dumb, and I would
have taken her with me to the city of Dreams."
"My dear," replied the Marchesa, "you will not remember the story. That
other woman could never enter the blessed city; she was maimed."
"Then, Marchesa," said the girl, "do you think the traveler should have
gone on alone?"
The Marchesa took both of the girl's hands, and looked up into her face.
"I will tell you something else," she said. "In the city of the
Awakened, there was a maker of images, old and wise; and sometimes the
woman went into his shop, and because she was dumb she wrote in the
dust on the floor, with her finger, and she asked him about the city of
Dreams, and how one reached it. And he said: 'Not the travelers only
who pass by the city of Zeus win their way to the city of Dreams; our
fathers have gone there also, but not often, and very long ago, and the
direction and the distance and the landmarks of the way our fathers have
forgot, but this thing our fathers have remembered, that no man ever
found his way to the city of Dreams who set out on that quest alone.'"
"But if one could not go alone, how could one go at all?"
"He said there was always another chosen to go with us."
"And where is the other?"
"He said, 'In the world somewhere.'"
"And must one seek him?"
"He said that one was always seeking him, from the day that one was
born, only one knew it not."
"And what is there to lead us, did he say that?"
"The woman asked him that," replied the Marchesa, "and he said: 'What
is there to lead the little people of the sea when they travel with the
tides?'"
Caroline stooped over and put her arm close around the Marchesa
Soderrelli.
"No matter," she said, "I would stay with the poor dumb woman."
The Marchesa arose. She lifted the girl's chin and kissed her.
"No, dear," she said, "you must go on to the city of Dreams."