The Cardinal's snuff-box
opera; and then later again, once or twice, in London; and then, once
more, in Paris, in the Bois. That was all, but that was enough. Her
appearance--her face, her eyes, her smile, her way of carrying herself,
her way of carrying her head, her gestures, her movements, her way of
dressing--he never so much as heard her voice--her mere appearance
made an impression on him such as all the rest of womankind had totally
failed to make. She was exceedingly lovely, of course, exceedingly
distinguished, noble-looking; but she was infinitely more. Her face her
whole person--had an expression! A spirit burned in her--a prismatic,
aromatic fire. Other women seemed dust, seemed dead, beside her. She
was a garden, inexhaustible, of promises, of suggestions. Wit,
capriciousness, generosity, emotion--you have said it--they were all
there. Race was there, nerve. Sex was there--all the mystery, magic, all
the essential, elemental principles of the Feminine, were there: she was
a woman. A wonderful, strenuous soul was there: Wildmay saw it, felt it.
He did n't know her--he had no hope of ever knowing her--but he knew her
better than he knew any one else in the world. She became the absorbing
subject of his thoughts, the heroine of his dreams. She became, in fact,
the supreme influence of his life.”
The Duchessa's eyes had not lost their intentness, while he was
speaking. Now that he had finished, she looked down at her hands, folded
in her lap, and mused for a moment in silence. At last she looked up
again.
“It's as strange as anything I have ever heard,” she said, “it's
furiously strange--and romantic--and interesting. But--but--” She
frowned a little, hesitating between a choice of questions.
“Oh, it's a story all compact of 'buts,'” Peter threw out laughing.
She let the remark pass her--she had settled upon her question.
“But how could he endure such a situation?” she asked. “How could he sit
still under it? Did n't he try in any way--did n't he make any effort at
all--to--to find her out--to discover who she was--to get introduced to
her? I should think he could never have rested--I should think he would
have moved heaven and earth.”
“What could he do? Tell me a single thing he could have done,” said
Peter. “Society has made no provision for a case like his. It 's
absurd--but there it is. You see a woman somewhere; you long to make
her acquaintance; and there's no natural bar to your doing so--you 're a
presentable man she's what they call a lady--you're both, more or less,
of the same monde. Yet there 's positively no way known by which you can
contrive it--unless chance, mere fortuitous chance, just happens to drop
a common acquaintance between you, at the right time and place. Chance,
in Wildmay's case, happened to drop all the common acquaintances they
may possibly have had at a deplorable distance. He was alone on each
of the occasions when he saw her. There was no one he could ask to
introduce him; there was no one he could apply to for information
concerning her. He could n't very well follow her carriage through the
streets--dog her to her lair, like a detective. Well--what then?”
The Duchessa was playing with her fan again.
“No,” she agreed; “I suppose it was hopeless. But it seems rather hard
on the poor man--rather baffling and tantalising.”
“The poor man thought it so, to be sure,” said Peter; “he fretted and
fumed a good deal, and kicked against the pricks. Here, there, now,
anon, he would enjoy his brief little vision of her--then she would
vanish into the deep inane. So, in the end--he had to take it out in
something--he took it out in writing a book about her. He propped up a
mental portrait of her on his desk before him, and translated it
into the character of Pauline. In that way he was able to spend long
delightful hours alone with her every day, in a kind of metaphysical
intimacy. He had never heard her voice--but now he heard it as often as
Pauline opened her lips. He owned her--he possessed her--she lived under
his roof--she was always waiting for him in his study. She is real to
you? She was inexpressibly, miraculously real to him. He saw her, knew
her, felt her, realised her, in every detail of her mind, her soul, her
person--down to the very intonations of her speech--down to the veins
in her hands, the rings on her fingers--down to her very furs and laces,
the frou-frou of her skirts, the scent upon her pocket-handkerchief. He
had numbered the hairs of her head, almost.”
Again the Duchessa mused for a while in silence, opening and shutting
her fan, and gazing into its opals.
“I am thinking of it from the woman's point of view,” she said, by
and by. “To have played such a part in a man's life--and never to have
dreamed it! Never even, very likely, to have dreamed that such a man
existed--for it's entirely possible she didn't notice him, on those
occasions when he saw her. And to have been the subject of such a
novel--and never to have dreamed that, either! To have read the novel
perhaps--without dreaming for an instant that there was any sort of
connection between Pauline and herself! Or else--what would almost be
stranger still--not to have read the novel, not to have heard of it! To
have inspired such a book, such a beautiful book--yet to remain in sheer
unconscious ignorance that there was such a book! Oh, I think it is even
more extraordinary from the woman's point of view than from the man's.
There is something almost terrifying about it. To have had such an
influence on the destiny of someone you've never heard of! There's a
kind of intangible sense of a responsibility.”
“There is also, perhaps,” laughed Peter, “a kind of intangible sense of
a liberty taken. I'm bound to say I think Wildmay was decidedly at his
ease. To appropriate in that cool fashion the personality of a total
stranger! But artists are the most unprincipled folk unhung. Ils
prennent leur bien la, ou ils le trouvent.”
“Oh, no,” said the Duchessa, “I think she was fair game. One can carry
delicacy too far. He was entitled to the benefits of his discovery--for,
after all, it was a discovery, was n't it? You have said yourself how
indispensable the eye of the beholder is--'the seeing eye.' I think,
indeed, the whole affair speaks extremely well for Mr. Wildmay. It is
not every man who would be capable of so purely intellectual a passion.
I suppose one must call his feeling for her a passion? It indicates a
distinction in his nature. He can hardly be a mere materialist. But--but
I think it's heart-rending that he never met her.”
“Oh, but that's the continuation of the story,” said Peter. “He did meet
her in the end, you know.”
“He did meet her!” cried the Duchessa, starting up, with a sudden access
of interest, whilst her eyes lightened. “He did meet her? Oh, you must
tell me about that.”
And just at this crisis the Cardinal and Emilia appeared, climbing the
terrace steps.
“Bother!” exclaimed the Duchessa, under her breath. Then, to Peter, “It
will have to be for another time--unless I die of the suspense.”
After the necessary greetings were transacted, another elderly priest
joined the company; a tall, burly, rather florid man, mentioned, when
Peter was introduced to him, as Monsignor Langshawe. “This really is her
chaplain,” Peter concluded. Then a servant brought tea.
“Ah, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what mischief you might have
wrought,” he admonished himself, as he walked home through the level
sunshine. “In another instant, if we'd not been interrupted, you would
have let the cat out of the bag. The premature escape of the cat from
the bag would spoil everything.”
And he hugged himself, as one snatched from peril, in a qualm of
retroactive terror. At the same time he was filled with a kind of
exultancy. All that he had hoped had come to pass, and more, vastly
more. Not only had he been received as a friend at Ventirose, but he had
been encouraged to tell her a part at least of the story by which her
life and his were so curiously connected; and he had been snatched from
the peril of telling her too much. The day was not yet when he could
safely say, “Mutato nomine.....” Would the day ever be? But, meanwhile,
just to have told her the first ten lines of that story, he could not
help feeling, somehow advanced matters tremendously, somehow put a new
face on matters.
“The hour for which the ages sighed may not be so far away as you
think,” he said to Marietta. “The curtain has risen upon Act Three. I
fancy I can perceive faint glimmerings of the beginning of the end.”
XIX
All that evening, something which he had not been conscious of noticing
especially when it was present to him--certainly he had paid no
conscious attention to its details--kept recurring and recurring to
Peter's memory: the appearance of the prettily-arranged terrace-end at
Ventirose: the white awning, with the blue sky at its edges, the sunny
park beyond; the warm-hued carpets on the marble pavement; the wicker
chairs, with their bright cushions; the table, with its books and
bibelots--the yellow French books, a tortoise-shell paperknife, a silver
paperweight, a crystal smelling-bottle, a bowlful of drooping poppies;
and the marble balustrade, with its delicate tracery of leaves and
tendrils, where the jessamine twined round its pillars.
This kept recurring, recurring, vividly, a picture that he could see
without closing his eyes, a picture with a very decided sentiment.
Like the gay and gleaming many-pinnacled facade of her house, it seemed
appropriate to her; it seemed in its fashion to express her. Nay, it
seemed to do more. It was a corner of her every-day environment; these
things were the companions, the witnesses, of moments of her life,
phases of herself, which were hidden from Peter; they were the
companions and witnesses of her solitude, her privacy; they were her
confidants, in a way. They seemed not merely to express her, therefore,
but to be continually on the point--I had almost said of betraying her.
At all events, if he could only understand their silent language,
they would prove rich in precious revelations. So he welcomed their
recurrences, dwelt upon them, pondered them, and got a deep if somewhat
inarticulate pleasure from them.
On Thursday, as he approached the castle, the last fires of sunset were
burning in the sky behind it--the long irregular mass of buildings stood
out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red: the
grey stone, dark, velvety indigo; the pink stucco, pink still, but
with a transparent blue penumbra over it; the white marble, palely,
scintillantly amethystine. And if he was interested in her environment,
now he could study it to his heart's content: the wide marble staircase,
up which he was shown, with its crimson carpet, and the big mellow
painting, that looked as if it might be a Titian, at the top; the great
saloon, in which he was received, with its polished mosaic floor,
its frescoed ceiling, its white-and-gold panelling, its hangings and
upholsteries of yellow brocade, its satinwood chairs and tables, its
bronzes, porcelains, embroideries, its screens and mirrors; the long
dining-hall, with its high pointed windows, its slender marble columns
supporting a vaulted roof, its twinkling candles in chandeliers and
sconces of cloudy Venetian glass, its brilliant table, its flowers and
their colours and their scents.
He could study her environment to his heart's content, indeed--or to
his heart's despair. For all this had rather the effect of chilling,
of depressing him. It was very splendid; it was very luxurious and
cheerful; it was appropriate and personal to her, if you like; no doubt,
in its fashion, in its measure, it, too, expressed her. But, at that