Little Lady Chesterfield sat in her private boudoir, looking out on
a glowing section of the palace gardens. Thirty feet away a marble
basin, shaped like a tazza, bubbled with a tiny jet of water; and on
the rim of the basin, as if posed for a picture, sat a single peacock.
Great white clouds loitered in a sapphire sky, a thousand flowers
starred the beds, the box borders were lush with growth, and all
between went a maze of little paths, frilled with green sweetness. It
was an endearing prospect, spacious and peaceful, hardly ruffled by
the murmurs of the great life in whose midmost it was cloistered; yet
small consciousness of its tranquillity was apparent in the blue eyes
whose introspective vision reflected only the mists and turbulence of
a troubled heart.
Now, as regards physical infection, one may be susceptible to the
predaceous germ on one occasion and not on another: it is a question
of bodily condition. So, there is a moral microbe whose insidious
approaches may find us pregnable or not according to our spiritual
temper of the time. The healthiest constitutions enjoy no absolute
immunity in this respect, and those which do escape harm often owe
their reputation for incorruptibility to no better than the accident
which found them free from attack at the weak moments. Evil
disposition makes no more sinners than the lack of it does saints. It
is mostly a question of coincidence between the alighting seed-down
and the soil suitable to its germination.
Well, there are soils and soils, and as one seed which sickens on a
rich loam will wax bursting fat in an arid crevice, so sand will not
produce roses. Yet, I should say, if one sought a common denominator
in this matter of proneness to moral infections, one could not
instance a state more typically susceptive to all than that of
idleness and boredom.
And to that perilous condition had poor Kate succeeded. She was
ennuyée, sick of soul, tired of everything and everybody. Her
matrimonial barque, she felt, had been flung on a shoal, where it lay
as divorced from wreck as from rescue. There appeared no alternative
but to abandon it; and yet all her instincts of faith and decency
still fought against that seeming treachery to her vows. She had
really at one time believed in the poor creature her husband--even
though necessarily at the modified valuation imposed upon wives of her
date and condition: she had not utterly abandoned her hope in him yet.
But little of it remained, and that little so tempered with scorn and
disgust as to seem hardly worth the retaining. Still, the wifely
instinct clung by a thread, and was so far her resource and safety.
Yet not much was needed to snap that last strand, and she knew it, and
felt it, and was wrought thereby to a state of nervous irritability
which halted, in its sense of sick isolation, between fidelity and
revolt. She was susceptible, in fact, when the germ made its
appearance.
It was a flattering germ, garbed royally, with a melting eye and an
insinuative manner. She may have been already conscious in herself of
premonitory symptoms betokening its approach, as the wind of the
avalanche heralds the fall thereof; I will certainly not commit myself
to any statement to the contrary. But even were that the case, it is
not to say that her hold on the thread continued less fond and
desperate. It is likely, indeed, that it acquired a more urgent grip,
as foreseeing a particular strain upon its resources. Royalty could
pull so hard with so little effort of its own. However that may be, it
is worthy of note that she displayed at least the courage of her sex
in facing the possibility of infection instead of flying from it.
Now, as she sat, gazing out on the quiet scene with unregarding eyes,
and obsessed with the sole thought that she was the most aggrieved and
weary-spirited woman in the world, she heard a sound in the room
behind her, and turned to see her second brother, young Arran. He
minced forward, the darling, and saluted her with the most
unimaginable grace, though there was certainly a little tell-tale
flush on his callow cheek.
“Thithter Kit,” quoth he, “I have taken the privilege of a brother to
introduth a vithitor to your private apartment.”
“A visitor!” She rose, uncertain, to her feet, and was aware, with a
little shock of the blood, of the figure of the Duke of York standing
in the doorway. His Royal Highness, with a grave smile, in which there
was nevertheless a touch of anxiety, advanced into the room, closing
the door behind him.
“Uninvited, but not too greatly daring, I hope,” said he. “Formality,
ceremonial, were all incompatible with the boon we designed to ask of
your ladyship.”
A vivid flush would rise to her cheek; she could not help it, nor
control, with all her will to, the self-conscious instinct betrayed in
her drooped lashes. For a moment, in the embarrassment of her youth,
she stood dumb before this realized liberty.
“A privilege, your brother called it,” continued the Duke. “Then, if
for him, how much more for me! Of its extent, believe me, I am so
fully sensible, that, accepting your silence for condonation of my
presumption, I hesitate to abuse a favour so freely vouchsafed by
taking advantage of it to beg another.”
She raised her lids, and again dropped them. The shadow of a smile
twitched the corners of her mouth. And then her breath caught,
suddenly and irresistibly, in a little half-hysterical laugh. The
pomposity of this prelude was after all too much for her.
“O, my lord Duke,” she said, “if I were to assume the nature of this
favour from the solemnity of its introduction, I should have no
alternative but to refuse it offhand, as implying something grave and
weighty beyond my years. I pray you bear my youth in mind.”
He smiled, relieved and at ease.
“Most tenderly, madam. For all that resounding symphony, you shall
find the piece, when we come to play it, a very _pastorale_ in
lightness. Will you not be seated?”
“By your favour, your Highness--when you have set me the example.”
She sought to take refuge from her fluttering apprehensions behind
that shy insistence on punctilio. The Duke bowed, and accepting a
chair from his lordship of Arran, signified his entreaty that the lady
should occupy another contiguous. Kate had no choice but to obey. She
was not yet mistress of her blushes, and she blushed as she seated
herself. But there was a strange excitement in her heart,
nevertheless.
“Now,” said his Highness, “I am in the position of a litigant, who
hath engaged an advocate to plead his cause for him. So, like a
sensible client, I leave the first word to him.”
He waited, in a serene confidence. Lady Chesterfield looked at her
brother.
“What is it, Richard?”
His lordship giggled, “hem’d,” pulled at his cravat, and spoke.
“Nothing in the world, thithter Kit.”
“O!” she said, “nothing is easily granted. I give you the case, your
Highness.”
“He rates his own genius too lightly,” cried the Duke. “I see that,
for the sake of his modesty, I must reverse the parts. Take me for
advocate, then, and hear my plea. It is that, saving one factor, your
brother is the most accomplished guitarist at Court.”
“O, fie, your Highneth!” said Arran, squirming in every limb. “Think
of Corbetti.”
“A master, I grant,” said the Duke, “but with the faults incident to
professionalism. A perfect executant, art hath yet despoiled him of
nature. For pure sympathy, give me your born musician before your
trained.”
Again Arran squirmed. “O, your Highneth, your Highneth!”
The Duke turned to Kate.
“Do you not love your brother’s playing?”
“Indeed,” answered the girl, perplexed, “Richard plays well.”
“Well?” he echoed, protesting. “Have you heard him in the new
saraband?” She shook her head. “Ah!” he said: “not Corbetti himself
could so interpret the loveliness of his own composition. I speak as
one who knows. My lord’s performance, to eschew superlatives, was
divine. Yet there was a flaw. The perfect master lacked the perfect
instrument. To attain the latter, or at least more nearly approximate
it, only one resource offered. Your ladyship, as he informed me, was
owner of the finest guitar in all England. To hear him on that guitar
became then a necessity with me--a fever, a passion. It was to entreat
that opportunity that I ventured this descent upon your ladyship’s
privacy.”
She heard; she opened her eyes in ingenuous wonder. Before she could
consider the words, they were on her lips.
“Is that all?”
“Nay, not all,” he answered softly--“not all. But that _you_ might
hear and feel.”
Involuntarily she shrank away a little.
“Richard knew,” she said, “that he could always have my guitar for the
asking.”
“Is that so?” said his Highness. “But he did not tell me--perchance
because he would have his sister learn the estimate in which he is
held by others, to show his power to move me in your presence. Ah!” he
waved a playful hand--a very white and shapely one: “relations are
notoriously grudging critics of their own.”
Still she struggled faintly.
“This is a poor room for resonance, my lord Duke. The audience-chamber
would have been better chosen.”
“Nay,” he said; “are we not private here?”
“Private, Sir?”
“Is not privacy the very essence of all sweet sounds and thoughts? To
risk interruption is to risk the jarring of their lovely sequence. No,
we are happiest where we are, apart and secluded. The loneliest bower
is that where the bird sings his song to an end.”
She rose hastily, and with an effort to control her agitation.
“I will go and fetch it,” she said. “It is not here.”
He sought to detain her.
“Does not your brother know the place?”
Arran interposed. Some vague uneasiness, perhaps, was making itself
felt in the shallow brain of the nincompoop.
“No, by my thoul, your Highneth,” he said, “nor underthtand if she
told me.”
Kate hurried to the door. As she did so, a feminine form outside
whisked into the near shelter of some hangings. Then, foreseeing
certain detection if she remained where she was, waited until the
issuing figure had vanished down a passage, when she herself slipped
away incontinent in another direction.
The Duke in the meanwhile sat frowning and silent, half suspecting a
ruse on the lady’s part to escape him. But in that he did the Countess
too much or too little justice. For whatever reason--of honour or
perversity; you may take your choice--Kate acquitted herself
faithfully of her errand, and came back with the guitar; whereat the
royal brow cleared wonderfully.
And Arran played the saraband--this time to perfection, exclaimed his
Highness. Sweet melody, sweet touch, and sweetest atmosphere--it had
been all a banquet of delight, served, as it were, amidst the
tenderest surroundings, in a self-contained corner of Eden, by the
most paradisical of chefs. The Duke was transported; he was really
transported, though it is true some ecstasies stop short of heaven.
There are sirens in Campania to see to that.
And Kate was also moved; she could not well help but be. Her heart was
in too emotional a state to be safe proof against such soft besieging.
When the Duke leaned towards her, she did not stir, but sat with eyes
downcast, her bosom plainly turbulent.
“Was I not right,” he said, “and could any gain in resonance have
improved on this faultless unison of parts? Perfection must know
bounds, even like a framed picture, or the soul cannot compass it. To
have enlarged these but in one direction would have been to sacrifice
the proportions of the whole--the harmonious concord of place, and
sound, and tenderest feeling. Give me this bower, lady, for your
rounded madrigal, wherein sweetest music lends itself with love and
beauty to weave a finished pattern of delight. My lord, grant me the
instrument a moment.”
He took the guitar, somewhat peremptorily, from the Earl’s hesitating
hands; but he was in no mood, at this pass, to temporize or finesse.
And, having received it, he went plucking softly among the strings,
gathering up sweet chords and sobbing accidentals, as it were flowers,
to present in a nosegay to the heart of his moved hearer. There was a
knowledge, a sure emotionalism, in his touch which went far to
discount his earlier pretence of inadequacy; and Arran in his weak
brain may have felt somehow conscious of the fact, and of a suspicion
that he had been subtly beguiled into lending his own vanity for a
catspaw to the other’s schemes. But he had no wit to mend the
situation he had encouraged; and so he only stood silent, with his
mouth open--sowing gape-seed, as they say in Sussex.
The Duke, ending presently on a “dying fall,” sighed and looked up.
“Lady,” he said, “there is a test of the interpretative power of music
(which some deny), to render the very spirit of a flower in sound, so
that one listening, with closed eyes, will say, ‘That be jonquils,’ or
‘That be rosemary,’ or lavender, or what you will. Only the player
must have that same blossom he would explain nigh to him, that his
soul may be permeated by its essence while he improvises. What say
you, shall we put it to the proof? Poor artist as I am, if my skill
prove but twin-brother to my wish I will interpret you my blossoms so
that you shall cry, ‘That’s for the one in flower language called
Remembrance,’ or ‘That’s for gentle Friendship,’ or ‘That’s for Love.’
Will you be so entertained? Only--for the means.”
He looked to the Earl. This was no more than a ruse, devised on the
moment to rid himself of that simple incubus.
“My lord,” said he, with an ingratiatory smile, “will you favour me so
far as to go gather me a posy from the garden?”
But before the sappy youth could fall into that palpable trap, Kate
had risen hurriedly to her feet.
“Nay, brother,” she said, “stay you here. I know better than you where
to find the blooms most meet to his Highness’s purpose”--and she was
going, half scared and yet half diverted.
But scarce had she taken a step or two, when a sudden voice singing
outside the window brought her to an instant standstill--
“_Oh, turn, love, I prythee, love, turn to me_,
_For thou art the only one, love, that art ador’d by me_”;
so sweet and unexpected, they all whisked about in surprise to mark
the singer. She loitered, in seeming unconsciousness of their
neighbourhood, among the beds, a slender girl figure, on whose face,
as she stooped and rose, the sunlight went and came as if it fought
her for a kiss. She looked a very stillroom fairy of the gardens,
herself expressed from all their daintiest scents and colours.
And so, no doubt, the men thought; but, for my lady Chesterfield, the
apparition wrought in her a revulsion of feeling which was as instant
as it was startling. Her wrongs, the empty vanity of her scruples, all
rushed upon her in a moment, and she stood stock still. And then she
gave a chill little laugh, a woman of ice in a moment, and said she,
small and quiet--
“But it were ill manners for a hostess to desert her guest; and after
all, Dick, thou art the musician to feel a musician’s needs.”
My lord looked suddenly gratified.
“Ath you will, thithter Kit,” said he; “unless your friend outthide
would prefer your company.”
“Friend!” cried her ladyship; “she is no friend of mine.”
“Of whoth, then?”
“You may ask her if you will. Nay, I see that you are all excitement
to put his Highness’s pleasant fancy to the test. Go, then--leave your
sister, and gather flowers.”
He answered with a little foolish shamefaced snigger; then turned and
stole away a-tiptoe, as if he feared to be detected, while she watched
his departure with a twitch of scorn upon her lips. The Duke, with an
amused smile on his, regarded her furtively, her rigid attitude, the
flushed curve of her cheek, which alone of her face was visible as she
stood with her back to him. But much expression can be conveyed in a
curve.
“No friend of yours, my lady?” he asked softly.
“No,” she said, and, lowering her head, began plucking at her
handkerchief without turning to him.
“Of your husband’s, perhaps?” he asked, in the same tone.
“Of any man’s,” she answered.
“O!” He rose and, just glancing through the window at the pretty
figure, now joined in company with that of the young nobleman, took a
step or two which brought him within close range of the averted face.
“Is that so?” he said. “And she lies in this house?”
She did not answer; and, venturing quite gently to capture her
reluctant fingers, he led her by them to the window. The couple
outside were already, it appeared, on friendly terms. They laughed and
chatted together, making a sport of the flower-choosing, in which,
with all pretty coquetries, the lady would defer to her companion,
plucking this bloom and that, and holding it to his button nose, and
throwing the thing away in a pretended pet if he shook his head to it.
The Duke stood some moments regarding the scene.
“Why, young, but practised,” he said presently. “He has met her
before?”
“Never, to my knowledge.”
She spoke low, trembling a little now--perhaps from that sudden chill.
“Not?” he said, and drew in a quick breath, as if scandalized. “I see,
I see. And how is she known?”
“Her name is Mary Davis.”
“Ah! Some wanton fancy of your----”
“Your Highness, I beg you to let me go.”
She broke from his too sympathetic hold, and went back from him, until
a space separated them.
“Believe me,” said he gravely: “I had no wish to surprise this unhappy
secret out of you.”
“I know,” she said hurriedly--“I know. But, learning it, you will be
considerate--considerate and compassionate.”
“On my royal faith,” he answered. “It shall be an inviolable
confidence between us. Have I not myself too good reason to sympathize
with the ill-mated?”
He did not say whether on his own account or on his wife’s. Perhaps,
if on hers, that ill-starred woman would have preferred his fidelity
to all the sympathy in the world. But, as in such matters the feminine
prejudice is always in favour of the man, so Kate, in no ways an
exception to her sex, was quite prepared to accept the sentiment at
its obvious significance. A faint sigh lifted her innocent bosom.
“I may not speak of that,” she said. “Is--is marriage always so
unhappy?”
He sighed too.
“Always? I know not. It _may_ chance to include that natural
correlation of sympathies, that perfect soul affinity, which was no
doubt in the original scheme of things before the Fall. Blest,
immeasurably blest the nuptials in that case; yet how rare a
coincidence! A man and woman, both virgin, both unspoiled, may here
and there find, as predestined, their rapturous conjunction, and so
achieve themselves in flawless unity. But, for the most part, we must
be resigned to forgo that heavenly encounter until, caught fast in
alien bonds, we meet and recognize for the first time our elective
affinities. Too late, then? I cannot say. Only is it possible that
Heaven could blame us for consummating its own ideal at the expense of
the social conventions made by man? Ah! if we could only, in the first
instance, be safe to meet with her, the heartfelt, the unmistakable,
the lovely ordained perfecter of our imperfect beings! What happiness
would be added to the world and what sin avoided!” His very voice was
like a wooing confidence. He bent to gaze into her face. “Ill-mated!
Alike in that, at least,” he said, and sought her hand again. “Come,
sweet soul, be seated, and let me play to you once more.”
Kate started, as if to an electric shock.
“No, your Highness.”
“You will not?”
“I must not. Let me call my brother.”
He intercepted her. “Say at least I may visit you again--see
you--speak to you.” He spoke low and vehemently.
“No, no,” she said, almost weeping--“not now. O, let me go, Sir! I was
wrong to complain--wrong to encourage you.”
She made past him, and hurried to the open window. “Richard!” she
cried. “Richard! How long you are! His Highness waits the flowers with
impatience.”
Arran had no choice but to obey. She saw his companion, with a pert
laugh and toss of the head, thrust the nosegay into his hand, and
watch him, with a mocking lip, as he retreated from her. And the next
moment he was in the room.
But, for the Duke, he was quite content with his progress. She had put
her confidence in his keeping, and, for a sound beginning, that meant
much.