The Cardinal's Snuff-Box

XX

“So he did meet her, after all?” the Duchessa said.

“Yes, he met her in the end,” Peter answered.

They were seated under the gay white awning, against the bright perspective of lawn, lake, and mountains, on the terrace at Ventirose, where Peter was paying his dinner-call. The August day was hot and still and beautiful—a day made of gold and velvet and sweet odours. The Duchessa lay back languidly, among the crisp silk cushions, in her low, lounging chair; and Peter, as he looked at her, told himself that he must be cautious, cautious.

“Yes, he met her in the end,” he said.

“Well—? And then—?” she questioned, with a show of eagerness, smiling into his eyes. “What happened? Did she come up to his expectations? Or was she just the usual disappointment? I have been pining—oh, but pining—to hear the continuation of the story.”

She smiled into his eyes, and his heart fluttered. “I must be cautious,” he told himself. “In more ways than one, this is a crucial moment.” At the same time, as a very part of his caution, he must appear entirely nonchalant and candid.

“Oh, no—tutt' altro,” he said, with an assumption of nonchalant airiness and candid promptness. “She 'better bettered' his expectations—she surpassed his fondest. She was a thousand times more delightful than he had dreamed—though, as you know, he had dreamed a good deal. Pauline de Fleuvieres turned out to be the feeblest, faintest echo of her.”

The Duchessa meditated for an instant.

“It seems impossible. It's one of those situations in which a disenchantment seems the foregone conclusion,” she said, at last.

“It seems so, indeed,” assented Peter; “but disenchantment, there was none. She was all that he had imagined, and infinitely more. She was the substance—he had imagined the shadow. He had divined her, as it were, from a single angle, and there were many angles. Pauline was the pale reflection of one side of her—a pencil-sketch in profile.”

The Duchessa shook her head, marvelling, and smiled again.

“You pile wonder upon wonder,” she said. “That the reality should excel the poet's ideal! That the cloud-capped towers which looked splendid from afar, with all the glamour of distance, should prove to be more splendid still, on close inspection! It's dead against the accepted theory of things. And that any woman should be nicer than that adorable Pauline! You tax belief. But I want to know what happened. Had she read his book?”

“Nothing happened,” said Peter. “I warned you that it was a drama without action. A good deal happened, no doubt, in Wildmay's secret soul. But externally, nothing. They simply chatted together—exchanged the time o' day—like any pair of acquaintances. No, I don't think she had read his book. She did read it afterwards, though.”

“And liked it?”

“Yes—she said she liked it.”

“Well—? But then-?” the Duchessa pressed him, insistently. “When she discovered the part she had had in its composition—? Was n't she overwhelmed? Wasn't she immensely interested—surprised—moved?”

She leaned forward a little. Her eyes were shining. Her lips were slightly parted, so that between their warm rosiness Peter could see the exquisite white line of her teeth. His heart fluttered again. “I must be cautious, cautious,” he remembered, and made a strenuous “act of will” to steady himself.

“Oh, she never discovered that,” he said.

“What!” exclaimed the Duchessa. Her face fell. Her eyes darkened—with dismay, with incomprehension. “Do you—you don't—mean to say that he didn't tell her?” There was reluctance to believe, there was a conditional implication of deep reproach, in her voice.

Peter had to repeat his act of will.

“How could he tell her?” he asked.

She frowned at him, with reproach that was explicit now, and a kind of pained astonishment.

“How could he help telling her?” she cried. “But—but it was the one great fact between them. But it was a fact that intimately concerned her—it was a fact of her own destiny. But it was her right to be told. Do you seriously mean that he did n't tell her? But why did n't he? What could have possessed him?”

There was something like a tremor in her voice. “I must appear entirely nonchalant and candid,” Peter remembered.

“I fancy he was possessed, in some measure, by a sense of the liberty he had taken by a sense of what one might, perhaps, venture to qualify as his 'cheek.' For, if it was n't already a liberty to embody his notion of her in a novel—in a published book, for daws to peck at—it would have become a liberty the moment he informed her that he had done so. That would have had the effect of making her a kind of involuntary particeps criminis.”

“Oh, the foolish man!” sighed the Duchessa, with a rueful shake of the head. “His foolish British self-consciousness! His British inability to put himself in another person's place, to see things from another's point of view! Could n't he see, from her point of view, from any point of view but his own, that it was her right to be told? That the matter affected her in one way, as much as it affected him in another? That since she had influenced—since she had contributed to—his life and his art as she had, it was her right to know it? Couldn't he see that his 'cheek,' his real 'cheek,' began when he withheld from her that great strange chapter of her own history? Oh, he ought to have told her, he ought to have told her.”

She sank back in her chair, giving her head another rueful shake, and gazed ruefully away, over the sunny landscape, through the mellow atmosphere, into the golden-hazy distance.

Peter looked at her—and then, quickly, for caution's sake, looked elsewhere.

“But there were other things to be taken into account,” he said.

The Duchessa raised her eyes. “What other things?” they gravely questioned.

“Would n't his telling her have been equivalent to a declaration of love?” questioned he, looking at the signet-ring on the little finger of his left hand.

“A declaration of love?” She considered for a moment. “Yes, I suppose in a way it would,” she acknowledged. “But even so?” she asked, after another moment of consideration. “Why should he not have made her a declaration of love? He was in love with her, wasn't he?”

The point of frank interrogation in her eyes showed clearly, showed cruelly, how detached, how impersonal, her interest was.

“Frantically,” said Peter. For caution's sake, he kept HIS eyes on the golden-hazy peaks of Monte Sfionto. “He had been in love with her, in a fashion, of course, from the beginning. But after he met her, he fell in love with her anew. His mind, his imagination, had been in love with its conception of her. But now he, the man, loved her, the woman herself, frantically, with just a downright common human love. There were circumstances, however, which made it impossible for him to tell her so.”

“What circumstances?” There was the same frank look of interrogation. “Do you mean that she was married?”

“No, not that. By the mercy of heaven,” he pronounced, with energy, “she was a widow.”

The Duchessa broke into an amused laugh.

“Permit me to admire your piety,” she said.

And Peter, as his somewhat outrageous ejaculation came back to him, laughed vaguely too.

“But then—?” she went on. “What else? By the mercy of heaven, she was a widow. What other circumstance could have tied his tongue?”

“Oh,” he answered, a trifle uneasily, “a multitude of circumstances. Pretty nearly every conventional barrier the world has invented, existed between him and her. She was a frightful swell, for one thing.”

“A frightful swell—?” The Duchessa raised her eyebrows.

“Yes,” said Peter, “at a vertiginous height above him—horribly 'aloft and lone' in the social hierarchy.” He tried to smile.

“What could that matter?” the Duchessa objected simply. “Mr. Wildmay is a gentleman.”

“How do you know he is?” Peter asked, thinking to create a diversion.

“Of course, he is. He must be. No one but a gentleman could have had such an experience, could have written such a book. And besides, he's a friend of yours. Of course he's a gentleman,” returned the adroit Duchessa.

“But there are degrees of gentleness, I believe,” said Peter. “She was at the topmost top. He—well, at all events, he knew his place. He had too much humour, too just a sense of proportion, to contemplate offering her his hand.”

“A gentleman can offer his hand to any woman—under royalty,” said the Duchessa.

“He can, to be sure—and he can also see it declined with thanks,” Peter answered. “But it wasn't merely her rank. She was horribly rich, besides. And then—and then—! There were ten thousand other impediments. But the chief of them all, I daresay, was Wildmay's fear lest an avowal of his attachment should lead to his exile from her presence—and he naturally did not wish to be exiled.”

“Faint heart!” the Duchessa said. “He ought to have told her. The case was peculiar, was unique. Ordinary rules could n't apply to it. And how could he be sure, after all, that she would n't have despised the conventional barriers, as you call them? Every man gets the wife he deserves—and certainly he had gone a long way towards deserving her. She could n't have felt quite indifferent to him—if he had told her; quite indifferent to the man who had drawn that magnificent Pauline from his vision of her. No woman could be entirely proof against a compliment like that. And I insist that it was her right to know. He should simply have told her the story of his book and of her part in it. She would have inferred the rest. He needn't have mentioned love—the word.”

“Well,” said Peter, “it is not always too late to mend. He may tell her some fine day yet.”

And in his soul two voices were contending.

“Tell her—tell her—tell her! Tell her now, at once, and abide your chances,” urged one. “No—no—no—do nothing of the kind,” protested the second. “She is arguing the point for its abstract interest. She is a hundred miles from dreaming that you are the man—hundreds of miles from dreaming that she is the woman. If she had the least suspicion of that, she would sing a song as different as may be. Caution, caution.”

He looked at her—warm and fragrant and radiant, in her soft, white gown, in her low lounging-chair, so near, so near to him—he looked at her glowing eyes, her red lips, her rich brown hair, at the white-and-rose of her skin, at the delicate blue veins in her forehead, at her fine white hands, clasped loosely together in her lap, at the flowing lines of her figure, with its supple grace and strength; and behind her, surrounding her, accessory to her, he was conscious of the golden August world, in the golden August weather—of the green park, and the pure sunshine, and the sweet, still air, of the blue lake, and the blue sky, and the mountains with their dark-blue shadows, of the long marble terrace, and the gleaming marble facade of the house, and the marble balustrade, with the jessamine twining round its columns. The picture was very beautiful—but something was wanting to perfect its beauty; and the name of the something that was wanting sang itself in poignant iteration to the beating of his pulses. And he longed and longed to tell her; and he dared not; and he hesitated....

And while he was hesitating, the pounding of hoofs and the grinding of carriage-wheels on gravel reached his ears—and so the situation was saved, or the opportunity lost, as you choose to think it. For next minute a servant appeared on the terrace, and announced Mrs. O'Donovan Florence.

And shortly after that lady's arrival, Peter took his leave.