“So you have come, Morrice,” said Elmscott languidly. “How do ye? Lord Culverton, this is my cousin of whom I have spoken.”
He turned towards a little popinjay man who was fluttering about the room in a laced coat, and powdered periwig which hung so full about his face that it was difficult to distinguish any feature beyond a thin, prominent nose.
“You should know one another. For if you remember, Morrice, it was Culverton you robbed of Phoebe.”
“Phoebe?” simpered Lord Culverton. “I remember no Phoebe. But in truth the pretty creatures pester one so impertinently that burn me if I don’t jumble up their names. What was she like, Mr Buckler?”
“She was piebald,” said I gravely, “and needed cudgelling before she would walk.”
“And Morrice killed her,” added Elmscott, with a laugh.
“Then he did very well to kill her, strike me speechless! But there must be some mistake. I have met many women who needed cudgelling before they would walk, but never one that was piebald.”
Elmscott explained the matter to him, and then, with some timidity, I began to inquire concerning the Countess Lukstein.
“What! bitten already?” cried my cousin. “Faith, I knew not I had so smart a hand for description.”
“The most rapturous female, pink me!” broke in Lord Culverton. “She is but newly come to London, and hath the town at her feet already. Egad! I’m half soused in love myself, split my windpipe!” and he flicked a speck of powder from his velvet coat, and carefully arranged the curls of his periwig. “The most provoking creature!” he went on. “A widow without a widow’s on-coming disposition.”
“Ay, but she hath discarded the weeds,” said Elmscott.
“She is a widow none the less. And yet breathe but one word of tender adoration in her ear, and she strikes you dumb, O Lard! with the most supercilious eyebrow. However, time may do much with the obstinate dear—time, a tolerable phrase, and a je ne sais quoi in one’s person and conversation.” He pointed a skinny leg before the mirror, and languished with a ludicrous extravagance at his own reflection.
I had much ado to restrain myself from laughing, the more especially when Elmscott replied, with a wink at me,—“Oh, if you have entered the lists, the rest of us may creep out with as little ignominy as we can. They say that every pretty woman has a devil at her elbow, and ’tis most true, so long as Culverton lives.”
“You flatter me! A devil, indeed! You flatter me,” replied the fop, skipping with delight. “You positively flatter me. The ladies use me—no more. I am only their humble servant in general, and the Countess Lukstein’s in particular.”
The remark had more truth in it than Culverton would have cared for us to believe. For the Countess did in very truth use this gossipy tittle-tattler, and with no more consideration than she showed to the humblest of her servants. However, he was born for naught else but to fetch and carry, and since he delighted in the work, ’twas common kindness to employ him.
“Then we’ll drink a health to your success,” says Elmscott, pouring out three glasses of his Burgundy.
“I never drink in the morning,” objected Culverton, “’Tis a most villainous habit, and ruins the complexion irretrievably, stap my vitals!”
However, I was less squeamish on the subject of mine, and draining the glass, I asked,—”Is she come to London alone?”
“She hath a companion, a very faded, nauseous person: a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Durette. She serves as a foil;” and Culverton launched forth into an affected estimation of Countess Lukstein’s charms. Her eyes dethroned the planets, the brightness of her hair shamed the sunlight; for her mouth, ’twas a Cupid’s bow that shot a deadly arrow with every word. When she danced, her foot was a snow-flake upon the floor, and the glint of the buckle on her instep, a flame threatening to melt it; when she played upon the harp, her fingers were the ivory plectrums of the ancients.
“You make me curious,” I interrupted him, “to become acquainted with the lady.”
“Then let me present you,” said he eagerly.
“You see, Morrice,” said Elmscott, “he has such solid grounds for confidence that he has no fear of rivals.”
“Nay, the truth is, she has a passion for fresh faces.”
“Indeed!” said I.
“Oh, most extraordinary! A veritable passion, and no one so graciously received as he who brings a stranger to her side. For that reason,” he added naively, “I would fain present you.” and then he suddenly stopped and surveyed me, shaking his head doubtfully the while.
“But Lard! Mr Buckler,” he said, “you must first get some new clothes.”
“The clothes are good enough,” I laughed, for I was dressed in my best suit, and though ’twas something more modest than my Lord Culverton’s attire, I was none the less pleased with it on that account.
“Rabbit me, but I daren’t!” he said. “I daren’t introduce you in that suit. I daren’t indeed! My character would never survive the imputation, strike me purple if it would! ’Tis a very yeoman’s habit, and reeks of the country. I can smell onions and all sorts of horrible things, burn me!”
“I will run the risk, Morrice,” interposed Elmscott. “Dine with me to-day at Lockett’s, and I will take you to the Countess’s lodging in Pall Mall afterwards. But Culverton’s right. You do look like a Quaker, and that’s the truth.”
However, I paid little attention to what they said or thought concerning my appearance. The knowledge that I was to meet Countess Lukstein and have speech with her no later than that very evening, engendered within me an indescribable excitement. I got free from my companions as speedily as I could, and passed the hours till dinner-time in a vague expectancy; though what it was that I expected, I could not have told even to myself.
About seven of the clock we repaired to her apartments. The rooms were already filled with a gay crowd of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the extreme of fashion, and at first I could get no glimpse of the Countess. But I looked towards the spot where the throng was thickest, and the tripping noise of pleasantries most loud, and then I saw her. Elmscott advanced; I followed close upon his heels, the circle opened, magically it seemed to me, and I stood face to face with her at last.
Yet for all that I was prepared for it, now that I beheld her but six steps from me, now that I looked straight into her eyes, a strange sense of unreality stole over me, dimming my brain like a mist; so incredible did it appear to me that we who had met before in such a tragic conjunction in that far-away nook of the Tyrol, should now be presented each to the other like the merest strangers, amidst the brightness and gaiety of London town. I almost expected the candles to go out, and the company to dissolve into air. I almost began to dread that I should wake up in a moment to find myself in the dark, crouched up upon my bed in Cumberland. So powerfully did this fear possess me that I was on the point of crying aloud, “Speak! speak!” when Elinscott took me by the arm.
“Madame,” said he, “I have taken the liberty of bringing hither my cousin, Mr Morrice Buckler, who is anxious—as who is not?—for the honour of your acquaintance.”
“It is no liberty,” she replied graciously, in a voice that was exquisitely sweet, and she let her eyes fall upon my face with a quick and watchful scrutiny.
The next instant, however, the alertness died out of them.
“Mr Buckler is very welcome,” she said quietly, and it struck me that there was some hint of disappointment in her tone, and maybe of a touch of weariness. If, indeed, what Culverton had said was true, and she had a passion for fresh faces, ’twas evident that mine was to be exempted from the rule.
It might have been the expression of her indifference, or perchance the mere sound of her voice broke the spell upon me, but all at once I became sensible to the full of my sober, sad-coloured clothes. I looked about me. Coats and dresses brilliant with gold and brocade mingled their colours in a flashing rainbow, jewels sparkled and winked as they caught the light, and I felt that every eye in this circle of elegant courtiers was fixed disdain fully upon the awkward intruder.
I faltered through a compliment, conscious the while that I had done better to have held my tongue. I heard a titter behind me, and here and there some fine lady or gentleman held a quizzing-glass to the eye, as though I was some strange natural from over-seas. All the blood in my body seemed to run tingling into my face. I half turned to flee away and take to my heels, but a second glance at the sneering countenances around me stung my pride into wakefulness, and resolving to put the best face on the matter I could, I attempted a sweeping bow. Whether my foot slipped, whether some one tripped me purposely with a sword, I know not—I was too flustered to think at the time or to remember afterwards—but whatever the cause, I found myself plumped down upon my knees before her, with the titter changed into an open laugh.
“Hush!” lisped one of the bystanders, “don’t disturb the gentleman; he is saying his prayers.”
I rose to my feet in the greatest confusion.
“Madame,” I stammered, “I come to my knees no earlier than the rest of your acquaintances. Only being country-bred, I do it with the less discretion.”
She laughed with a charming friendliness which lifted me somewhat out of my humiliation.
“The adroitness of the recovery, Mr Buckler,” she said, “more than atones for the maladresse of the attack.”
“Nay,” I protested, with what may well have appeared excessive earnestness, “the simile does me some injustice, for it hints of an antagonism betwixt you and me.”
She glanced at me with some surprise and more amusement in her eyes.
“Are not all men a woman’s antagonists?” she said lightly.
But to me it seemed an ill-omened beginning. There was something too apposite in her chance phrase, I remembered, besides, that I had stumbled to the ground in much the same way before her husband, and I bethought me what had come of the slip.
‘Twas but for a little, however, that these gloomy fore bodings possessed me, and I retired to the outer edge of the throng, whence I could observe her motions and gestures undisturbed. And with a growing contentment I perceived that ever and again her eyes would stray towards me, and she would drop some question into Elmscott’s ear.
The Countess wore, I remember, a gown of purple velvet fronted with yellow satin, which to my eyes hung a trifle heavily upon her young figure and so emphasised its slenderness, imparting even to her neck and head a certain graceful fragility. The rich colour of her hair was hidden beneath a mask of powder after the fashion, and below it her face shone pale, pale indeed as when I saw her last, but with a wonderful clarity and pureness of complexion, so that as she spoke the blood came and went very prettily about her cheeks and temples. The two attributes, however, which I noted with the greatest admiration were her eyes and voice. For it seemed to me well beyond belief that the eyes which I now saw flashing with so lively a fire were the same which had stared vacantly into mine at Lukstein Castle, and that the voice which I now heard musical with all the notes of laughter was that which had sent the shrill, awful scream tearing the night.
Alter a while the company sat down to basset and quadrille, and I was left standing disconsolately by my self. I looked around for Elmscott, being minded to depart, when her voice sounded at my elbow, and I forgot all but the sweetness of it.
“Mr Buckler,” she asked, “you do not play?”
“No,” I replied. “I have seen but little of either cards or dice, and that little has given me no liking for them.”
“Then I will make bold to claim your services, for the room is hot, and my ears, perchance, a little tired.”
’Twas with no small pride, you may be sure, that I gave my arm to the Countess; only I could have wished that she had laid her hand less delicately upon my sleeve. Indeed, I should hardly have known that it rested there at all had I not felt its touch more surely on the strings of my heart.
We went into a smaller apartment at the end of the room, which was dimly lit, and very cool and peaceful. The window stood open and showed a little balcony with a couch. The Countess seated herself upon it with a sigh of relief, and leaning forward, plucked a sprig of flowers which grew in a pot at her side.
“I love these flowers,” said she, holding the spray towards me.
’Twas the blue flower of the aconite plant, and I answered,—“They remind you of your home.”
“Then you know the Tyrol, and have travelled there.” She turned to me with a lively interest.
“I learnt that much of botany at school.”
“There should be a fellow-feeling between us, Mr Buckler,” she said, after a pause; “for we are both strangers to London, waifs thrown together for an hour.”
“But there is a world of difference, for you might have lived amongst these gallants all your days, while I, alas! have no skill even to hide my awkwardness.”
“Nay, no excuses, for I like you the better for the lack of that skill.”
“Madame,” I began, “such words from you—”
She turned to me with a whimsical entreaty. “Prithee, no! To tell the honest truth, I am surfeited with compliments, and ’twould give me a great pleasure if during these few minutes we are together you would style me neither nymph, divinity, nor angel, but would treat me as just a woman. The fashion, indeed, is not worth copying, the more especially when, to quote your own phrase, one copies it without discretion.”
She laughed pleasantly as she spake, and the words conveyed not so much a rebuke as the amiable raillery of an intimate.
“’Tis true,” I replied, “I do envy these townsmen. I envy them their grace of bearing and the nimbleness of their wits, which ever reminds me of the sparkle in a bottle of Rhenish wine.”
She shook her head, and made room for me by her side.
“The bottle has stood open for me these two months since, and I begin to find the wine is very flat.” She dropped her voice at the end of the sentence, and leaned wearily back upon the cushions.
“You see, Mr Buckler,” she explained, “I live amongst the hills,” and there was a certain wistfulness in her tone as of one home-sick.
“Then there is a second bond between us, for I live amongst the hills as well.”
“It is that,” said she, “which makes us friends,” and just for a second she laid a hand upon my sleeve. It seemed to me that no man ever heard sweeter words or more sweetly spoken from the lips of woman.
“But since you are here,” I questioned eagerly, “you will stay—you will stay for a little?”
“I know not,” she replied, smiling at my urgency; and then with a certain sadness, “some day I shall go back, I hope, but when, I know not. It might be in a week, it might be in a year, it might be never.” Of a sudden she gave a low cry of pain. “I daren’t go home,” she cried, “I daren’t until—until————”
“Until you have forgotten.” The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I caught them back in time, and for a while we sat silent. The Countess appeared to grow all unconscious of my presence, and gazed steadily down the quiet street as though it stretched beyond and beyond in an avenue of leagues, and she could see waving at the end of it the cedars and pine-trees of her Tyrol.
Nor was I in any hurry to arouse her. A noisy rattle of voices streamed out on a flood of yellow light from the farther windows on my left, and here she and I were alone in the starlit dusk of a summer night. Her very silence was, sweet to me with the subtlest of flatteries. For I looked upon it as the recognition of a tie of sympathy which raised me from the general throng of her courtiers into the narrow circle of her friends.
So I sat and watched her. The pure profile of her face was outlined against the night, the perfume of her hair stole into my nostrils, and every now and then her warm breath played upon my cheek. A fold of her train had fallen across my ankle, and the soft touch of the velvet thrilled me like a caress; I dared not move a muscle for fear lest I should displace it.
At length she spoke again, almost in a whisper. “I have told you more about myself than I have told to any one since I came to England. It is your turn now. Tell me where lies your home!”
“In the north. In Cumberland.”
“In—in Cumberland,” she repeated, with a little catch of her breath. “You have lived there long?”
“’Twas the home of my fathers, and I spent my boyhood there. But between that time and this year’s spring I have been a stranger to the countryside. For I was first for some years at Oxford, and thence I went to Leyden.”
She rose abruptly from the couch, throwing her train clear of me with her hand, and leaned over the balcony, resting her elbow on its baluster, and propping her chin upon the palm of her hand.
“Leyden!” she said carelessly. “’Tis a town of great beauty, they tell me, and much visited by English students.”
“There were but few English students there during the months of my residence,” said I. “I could have wished there had been more.”
A second period of silence interrupted our talk, and I sat wondering over that catch in her breath and the tremor of her voice when she repeated “Cumberland.” Was it possible, I asked myself, that she could have learnt of Sir Julian Harnwood and of his quarrel with her husband? If she did know, and if she attributed the duel in which her husband fell to a result of it, why, then—Cumberland was Julian’s county, and the name might well strike with some pain upon her hearing. But who could have informed her? Not the Count, surely; ’twas hardly a matter of which a man could boast to his wife. I remembered, besides, that he had asked me to speak English, and to speak it low. There could have been but one motive for the request—a desire to keep the subject of our conversation a secret from the Countess.
I glanced towards her. Without changing her attitude she had turned her head sideways upon her palm, and was quietly looking me over from head to foot. Then she rose erect, and with a frank and winning smile, she said, as if in explanation,—“I was seeking to discover, Mr Buckler, what it was in you that had beguiled me to forget the rest of my guests. However, if I have shown them but scant courtesy, I shall bid them reproach you, not me.”
“Prithee, madame, no. Have some pity on me. The statement would get me a thousand deadly enemies.”
“Hush!” said she, with a playful menace. “You go perilous near to a compliment,” and we went back into the glare and noise of the thawing-room.
“Ah, Ilga! I have missed you this half-hour.” ’Twas a little woman of, I should say, forty years who bustled up to us on our entrance.
“You see?” said the Countess, turning to me with a whimsical reproach. “You must blame Mr Buckler, Clemence, and I will make you acquainted that you may have the occasion.”
She presented me thus to Mademoiselle Durette, and left us together. But I fear the good woman must have found me the poorest company, for I paid little heed to what she said, and carried away no recollection beyond that her chatter wearied me intolerably, and that once or twice I caught the word “convenances,” whence I gather she was reading me a lecture.
I got rid of her as soon as I decently could, and took my leave of the Countess. She gave me her hand, and I bent over and kissed it. ’Twas only the glove I kissed, but the hand was within the glove, as I had reason to know, for I felt it tremble within my fingers and then tug quickly away.
“One compliment I will allow you to pay me,” she said, “and that is a renewal of your visit.”
“Madame permits,” I exclaimed joyfully.
“Madame will be much beholden to you,” says she, and drops me a mocking curtsey.
I walked down the staircase in a prodigious elation. Six step from the floor of the ball it made a curve, and as I turned at the angle I stopped dead of a sudden with my heart leaping within my breast. For at the foot of the stairs, and looking at me now straight in the face as he had looked at me in the archway of Bristol Bridewell, I saw Otto Krax, the servant of Count Lukstein. The unexpected sight of his massive figure came upon me like a blow. I had forgotten him completely!
I staggered back into the angle of the wall. He must know me, I thought. He must know me. But he gazed with no more than the stolid attention of a lackey. There was not a trace of recognition in his face, not a start of his muscles; and then I remembered the difference in my garb. ’Twould have been strange indeed if he had known me.
I recovered my composure, drew a long breath of relief, and was about to step down to him when I happened to glance up the stairway.
The Countess herself was leaning over the rail at its head, with the light from the hall-lamp below streaming up into her face. I had not heard her come out on the landing.
“I knew not whether Otto Krax was there to let you out.” She smiled at me. “Good-night!”
“Good-night,” said I, and looking at Otto, I understood whence she might have got some knowledge of Sir Julian Harnwood.
Once outside, I stood for a while loitering in front of the house, and wondering how much ’twould cost to buy it up. For I believed that it would be a degradation should any other woman lodge in those same rooms afterwards.
In a few minutes Elrnscott came out to me.
“You have seen the Countess Lukstein before?” he asked, and the words fairly startled me.
“What in Heaven’s name makes you think that?”
“I fancied I read it in your looks. Your eyes went straight to her before ever I presented you.”
“That proves no more than the merit of your description.”
“Well, did I exaggerate? What think you?”
I drew a long breath. ’Twas the only description I could give. There were no words in the language equal to my thoughts.
“Tha will suffice.” said Elmscott, and he turned away.
“One moment,” I cried. “I need a service of you.”
He burst out into a laugh.
“A thousand pounds to a gninea I know the service. ’Tis the address of my tailor you need. I saw you looking down at your clothes as though the wearing of them sullied you. Very well, one of my servants shall be with you in the morning with a complete list of my tradesmen.” And he swung off in the direction of Piccadilly, laughing as he went, while I, filled with all sorts of romantical notions, walked back to my lodging. Though, indeed, to say that I walked, falls somewhat short of the truth; to speak by the book, I fairly scampered, and arrived breath less at my doorstep.
My servants had unpacked my baggage, and with a momentary pang of misgiving, I observed, lying on the table, my ill-omened copy of Horace.
“How comes this here?” I inquired sharply of Udal, taking the book in my hands.
It opened at once at the diagram, and the date upon the leaf opposite. So often had this outline been scanned and examined that the merest fingering of the cover served to make the book fall open at this particular page. I doubt, indeed, whether it had been possible to lift or move the volume at all without noticing the diagram.
Udal told me that Jack himself had placed the book in my trunk. He intended it as a hint for my conduct, I made certain, and, newly come as I was from the presence of Countess Lukstein, I felt no gratitude for his interference. I tossed the book on to a side-table by the chimney, where it lay henceforward forgotten, and proceeded to light my pipe.
’Twas late when I mounted to my bedroom. The moon was in its last quarter, and the park which my window overlooked lay very fair and quiet in the soft light. What nonsense does a man con over and ponder at such times! Yet ’tis very pleasant nonsense, and though it keeps him out of bed o’nights, he may yet draw good from it—ay, and more good than from quartos of philosophy.