Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

There can be little doubt that, when Ellice did that, and said those words, she was resolved to meet Geoffrey in the Lansdowne drawing-room, between nine and eleven o'clock; and at all events she could not endure to be left in an awkward or unpicturesque situation. But unfortunately it was then only six in the afternoon; three hours in which to wait, to reconsider, to doubt. It would be doing her injustice to say that there was not a struggle. The struggle was even carried to such a pitch that, at half-past nine, a hansom cab drove up to the corner of the street below the Lansdowne Hotel, and a lady got out of it, veiled, with a satchel in her hand. She paid the cabman, and then walked along towards the hotel. The broad bay window of the drawing-room abutted upon the sidewalk; a street lamp stood on the opposite side of the road. As the lady passed the window she glanced up, and saw a man seated there with a newspaper, which he was not reading, in his hand. Her knees trembled, but she said to herself: 'If he looks out and recognises me, I will go to him.' Even then he turned, slowly, and looked out; she stood still, unable to move. He must have seen her; but he did not recognise her; after a moment he turned away. Then she faced about, and ran back along the sidewalk, with what feelings in her heart who can tell? The hansom had not yet gone from the place where she left it; and she was driven back to her house in Mayfair, where she was to receive some distinguished guests.

II.

Geoffrey Herne's reflections were upon these matters, as he sat in his chair on the spring day with which this story began. An interval of two years had elapsed since he waited for Mrs. Amidon in the drawing-room of the Lansdowne Hotel. During that period his professional success had been rather on the wane. He was as clever and sarcastic as ever--perhaps more so; but he neglected his work. He was morose and indolent; the stimulus to achieve great things was lacking. He conceived himself to have fathomed life and to have proved it worthless. 'What is the odds what a man does? The devil is at the bottom of it all!' he sometimes would remark. His more philosophical and healthy-minded friends detected something petulant or childish in this attitude of his; and the futility of their attempts to induce him to 'throw it off' served to confirm them in their opinion. It should be understood that nothing definite was known about what had occurred further than that Herne had had a row with some woman. But other men have had rows with women, and got over it.

The letter which Herne had just received and read was not long, though it was sufficiently suggestive; and it may as well be given here:

'Dear Geoffrey,--I shall never see Mr. Amidon again. I wish to see
you at once. I know you must have had hard thoughts of me, but if
I had had you always with me, I should have always done what you
wish. It is when you leave me that I lose my strength. That is the
secret of all our trouble. When we are together I always have known
that I love you, and that I can never love anything but you; but
when we are parted, other thoughts come; sometimes I imagine that
love is all imagination. Geoffrey, I have never told you what I
did not know to be true. If you had only made me yours at first!
Even as I write to you at this moment, and think of my life since
I saw you last, I half doubt whether anything is real of what I
have felt for you; and yet they were the deepest feelings of all. I
seem fated not to be happy; and yet I have tried ways of happiness
more than most women. What is with me is real; what is away from
me--you--are like a dream. But you are a dream that I believe in
more than in reality; and I come to you in my trouble. Come and see
me this evening without fail. I remember what you said to me at
parting two years ago. At last I have done my part; I do not ask
you to do yours; but at least come to me.--Yours,

'ELLICE.'

Two years is a long time. Geoffrey had not forgotten Ellice, and her evil influence upon his life had not ceased to be operative; but he had ceased to feel the need of her personal presence. He had grown so accustomed to the wrong of her desertion, that this had become more necessary to him than she herself was. After a while we make friends with our grievances, and would be at a loss were they suddenly removed. An hour ago there was nothing that Geoffrey would have desired less than to hear again from his lost Ellice.

Nor was this all. Within the last three weeks a new element had come into Geoffrey's gloomy life. He had admitted it in a mood of self-contemptuous indolence; but since then it had worked upon him gently but powerfully, and was now on the way to make itself an unlooked-for resource and consolation. It had aroused a sentiment of gratitude in Geoffrey's heart, which, by-and-by, perhaps, would develop into something warmer and more tender. It had invested his future with a subdued but brightening light, so that he had doubtfully told himself that his latter days might be happier than those which were passed. Now, above all things, he wished for no change, no disturbance. Nevertheless, it was at this moment that the change and disturbance had come. He could feel, stealing subtly through his veins, a lawless and reckless heat which he remembered but too well, though it had long been a stranger to him. These written pages came from her, had been touched by her hand, and caressed by her breath. From them seemed to proceed an insidious mist, blinding his eyes to honour, and leading astray his judgment. How great and unaccountable was her power over him! It had not always been for evil--not so at first. No; at first it had been the purest and loftiest emotion of his heart. But now that it was become evil, it was not less strong: it was stronger.

Still, it might be resisted; it should, it must be resisted! Geoffrey pulled himself out of his reverie, and stood upright. After glancing confusedly first this way and then that, he went to the tall secretaire between the windows, and unlocked one of its inner drawers. Out of the drawer he took the black silk bow and the dried rosebud, which, at different times, had come to him from Ellice. Of late he had often thought of destroying these relics, but he had put off doing so, adducing many arguments to justify himself in his procrastination. Now, however, the thing must be done, if it were to be done at all. Geoffrey brought them and laid them upon the letter which he had placed upon the mantelpiece, after once more taking it from its envelope. After a pause, he folded the letter about them, and grasped the little bundle in his hand. The next moment he quickly replaced it on the mantelpiece and faced towards the door. Had not some one knocked?

The knock was repeated. He strode heavily and wrathfully to the door, and opened it There stood a woman, dressed in black, with a red rose in her bosom. She immediately threw back her gauze veil, but before she did so he had recognised her. Moreover, in spite of the utter surprise of her appearance at this place and hour, it seemed to him that he had been all along secretly expecting her. With a sort of dogged sullenness he made way for her, and she came in without hesitation, and with perfect grace.

'We are together again, Geoffrey,' she said, when he had closed the door, facing him as he advanced towards her. She took a hand of his in both hers, and added, 'Yes, you are real! You see, I would not wait. It was not worth while to risk anything more.'

'You are too late, by some weeks,' answered he, looking over her head at the wall.

'Why? Ah, you mean that--you don't care for me any more!' She let go his hand, and looked at him askance. Geoffrey, though he was thinking of far different things, noticed that she was paler than he had remembered her, except that her lips were scarlet as ever, and to the beauty of her face was superadded a depth of expression, distinct from its natural feminine mysteriousness. He suddenly fetched a deep sigh, like one who is oppressed, and then he walked to the mantelpiece, and rested his elbow on it, and his head on his hand.

'It is not necessary,' said Ellice, after a pause. 'I did not even expect it. I have done you too much harm--a great deal too much. But it is partly for that reason that I came. Whatever there is left of me belongs to you, if it can be of any use to you. I would like to die in some way that would make you forgive me.'

'Forgiveness is a word which children use,' replied he; 'it is never anything more than a word. The only thing I could not forgive you is, that you have come in my way again.'

A light sparkled in Ellice's eyes, and she smiled a very little. For, although the superficial significance of the words was repellent enough, she could discern the essential, reluctant flattery underlying them. It was not because she was odious to Geoffrey that he wished her away; but because she was too much the contrary. She was safe, therefore.

'Let us talk together this once,' she said, 'and afterwards, if you like, you need never see me again. May I sit down here with you beside me? How happy we might have been!'

'Do you wish me to remember that you are a married woman?' he demanded sullenly. 'You seem to think that everything is a game and a plaything. Can you alter or take back what you have been doing these last three years? What have you done with your husband?'

'Do you remember a thing you said two years ago, Geoffrey, when I asked you to be my friend? Well, there need be no secret now. I mean never to see Mr. Amidon again. I don't care what society says or thinks. He has made it impossible for me to live with him. I don't blame him, for he never could have had much satisfaction out of me, poor creature. He knew from the beginning that I cared nothing for him; it was merely an arrangement on account of property, and I--I consented more for my father's sake than----'

'You need not take the trouble to say that to me!' interrupted Geoffrey with a harsh laugh.

'No; I will tell you the whole truth,' she said, leaning back in her chair and surveying him attentively. 'I have always told you that, so far as I knew it; but now, for the first time, I think I know it all. I thought I needed something more than your love, but it was a mistake. I had not had enough of it to know what it could be--that is all. Mr. Amidon has at least taught me that; he has taught me by showing me all that it is not. I used to think there were so many pleasant things in the world, that no one pleasure--not even the pleasure of your love--could make up for the loss of the others. But I have found that no pleasure can be really enjoyed except through love; one might as well save money for dresses by going without food. What is the use of fine clothes if you are dead?'

'Do you intend to divorce your husband?'

Ellice looked down for a moment at her hands, then glanced up with a smile and nodded.

'Does he know of it?'

'No. He does not know where I am at this moment. I left him suddenly yesterday in Paris. But he cannot help himself; he has no defence.'

'Well, and after you have got your divorce--what then?'

Ellice was looking straight at Geoffrey when he asked this question, and for all answer she gave him another of her strange, unexpected smiles.

Geoffrey stood up; this scarcely disguised avowal that she believed her power over him to be undiminished so far defeated itself as to give him strength for at least temporary resistance. He took her letter with its enfolded contents off the mantelpiece.

'Two years have made more difference with me than they seem to have made with you,' he said. 'I don't pretend to be as fresh-hearted and as ready to begin life over again now as I was then, and perhaps I can give you the friendly counsel to-day which you expected of me that afternoon at Lady Feuilleton's. You will make a great mistake, in my opinion, in leaving your husband. He can be of more use to you than anybody else can. The longer you live the more of that sort of help you will need. You will find it more inconvenient to give up the world than it was to give up me. My advice is that you take the next train back to Paris.'

'I will go if you send me,' replied Ellice, rising with an unhurried movement, and standing in slender gracefulness before him. 'If that advice comes from your heart, Geoffrey, I will do even that for you, if it will make you happier. But--will you be happier? Am I grown ugly and hateful to you? Look at me, Geoffrey! You used to think my lips were beautiful.'

'Look at this!' returned he, breaking out into fierceness. He unfolded the letter, and showed her the black bow and the dried rosebud. 'These came from you. I have kept them till now, but at the moment you came in I was going to burn them, and let that part of my life be annihilated with them; for I had begun a new life, which they dishonoured. Why do you come now? You promised to come before that flower faded. Did you think it was immortal?'

'You have kept it all this time,' said Ellice softly, drawing a deep breath. 'Then, perhaps, it may not be too late to make it bloom again. Shall we try, Geoffrey?'

His eyes and face glowed; he felt himself drawn towards her as by the strong current of a river; their hands met, when, as if by some sudden impulse independent of his own will, he uttered the words:

'We cannot; I am going to be married.'

At first it seemed as if this announcement had produced no effect whatever upon Ellice. She continued to clasp Geoffrey's hands, and her gaze was untroubled. But presently she began slowly to grow pale, until her whole face was quite white, while her eyes darkened until they appeared black. Her lips fell apart a little, and it was with difficulty that she moved them to say: 'You--I did not hear. What was it?'

Geoffrey did not speak again. It was with a conscious effort that he held himself upright, and looked at her. He wished this were over. Ellice now slipped her hands from his and drew them back against her shoulders, as if they had touched something unwholesome; but all the while she kept questioning him with a gaze half incredulous, half wistful. At last, however, and all at once, the full significance of what he had told her seemed to leap into her mind, charging her features with a vivid and sinister expression, the like of which Geoffrey had never seen in her before. It ended in her laughing somewhat shrilly, and sitting down again in her chair. She felt nervously for her handkerchief, and having got it, pressed it several times to her mouth.

'You took me quite by surprise,' she began, in a thin voice. 'You are really going to be married! How dramatically you brought it out! Who--may I ask to whom?'

'No name that you have ever heard,' said Geoffrey stolidly.

'And you have been engaged to her long? You love her passionately, of course?'

'We have been engaged about three weeks. She deserves the best love----'

'Yes--I didn't mean to pry into your tender affairs! Geoffrey, have you kissed her--often, I mean?'

'Yes, a hundred times,' he answered, between his teeth.

Ellice gave an involuntary shudder, and made a gesture as if to shut out what he had said from her ears. The emotion brought the blood surging and tingling back to her face. She turned her head aside and remained for some time with her gaze fixed upon the wall. Geoffrey ventured to make no sign, for he had tried his resolution to the uttermost, and knew too well where another struggle would leave him. Yet, at heart, perhaps, he grudged himself a victory so much less sweet than defeat would have been. At that moment Ellice was for him the only woman in the world. He was ready to fall at her feet. He felt as if all the outrage had been on his side and all the suffering on hers.

At last she got up, outwardly quiet, save for the deep flush in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes, which travelled over Geoffrey occasionally as she spoke, but never rested steadily upon him. 'You have made me feel ashamed of myself,' she said. 'I think you should have told me this news at first. No--I take that back. I broke in upon you uninvited and--but it was because I thought--I did not think----You must believe that I am not so unwomanly as to have done it if I had known.' She paused, buttoning and unbuttoning her glove mechanically, her lips moving silently. Finally she looked up and said in a fresher tone: 'May I ask you one favour?'

Geoffrey moved his head in silent assent.

'I shall go away--I shall go back to-morrow evening,' she went on. 'You see I am wise enough to take your advice now. But I want very much to see--this lady before I go. You need not be afraid; I should say nothing that could pain her; but you can understand why I should like to see her. I suppose I may tell you--for you must know it already--that she is the only woman in the world whom I can feel an interest in seeing. When I picture you to myself hereafter, I want to be able to picture her too. Will you bring her to see me to-morrow, before I go? Tell her that I am an old--acquaintance of yours; a married woman, who feels an interest in what concerns your happiness. Will you come with her?'

'Oh, Ellice,' said he, in a broken voice, 'I will come with her--or, if you say so, I will come without her!'

She seemed to hesitate for an instant, drawing in her breath, and sending him one swift and penetrating glance. But the next instant she answered quite composedly, and as if she had not understood the significance of his avowal. 'Oh, no, come with her; I should like to see her! Thank you; now I will go; good-bye till to-morrow!' And before he could take her hand in farewell, or find words to speak, she had retreated to the door, opened it, and passed out.

It was dark when she departed. Geoffrey lit no lamp; but after locking his door, he sat for many hours with his head on his hands; and everywhere, standing forth against the gloom, he saw her slender supple figure, her fascinating wayward face: the changes of her voice murmured in his ears; and the desire of her ruled his heart and mind.

* * * * *

It was not with the feelings of a triumphant lover, proud to exhibit his mistress to envious eyes, that Geoffrey Herne presented himself, with the girl he was to marry, at Ellice's apartments the next day. Not that Gertrude Hamilton was in any respect a bride to be ashamed of. She was handsome, wholesome, and serene; full of kindliness and common sense; pure in thought and upright in deed. She had given her whole honest love to Geoffrey, moreover; and having done so, she had as little thought of changing as the moon has of ceasing to be the earth's satellite. So short a time ago as yesterday forenoon, Geoffrey had seen his way to a life of sober happiness with her; but now he could only think, 'She is not Ellice'; and he shunned to meet her quiet, confident look, and could not respond frankly to her conversational advances. He felt himself a cheat; and inwardly kept repeating to himself the ominous question: 'How will it end? How will it end?'

Mrs. Amidon received her guests with a charm of cordiality that at once produced a favourable impression upon Gertrude. She was dressed in a flowing tea-gown of some oriental stuff which became her especially well; there was colour in her cheeks, and her manner varied between languor and what seemed restrained excitement; but a certain rare feminine sweetness pervaded all. On the table by her side was a silver salver, holding a decanter of wine and three glasses. These glasses, which had already been filled to the brim with wine, were of Venetian design, each one of a pattern different from the others. The room was in half light and furnished sumptuously.

Ellice addressed almost all her questions and remarks to Gertrude; never meeting the latter's eyes, but occasionally glancing at her with great keenness. To Geoffrey she scarcely spoke; and when he addressed her, she would reply to him, as it were, through Gertrude. Geoffrey had noticed that she had avoided shaking hands with either of them at meeting; and, as he sat observing her, the fantasy now and then seized him that she was not a tangible human being of flesh and blood, but a beautiful wraith. There was a refinement and a sensitiveness in her gesture and aspect as of one who could scarcely have part in the vain, self-seeking world: and yet what an odd commentary upon this appearance her actual life (as far as one could know it) had been!

After a while she said, rising, and speaking with more vivacity than she had shown before: 'Now I am going to ask you both to take a glass of wine with me.'

Gertrude thanked her, but said she seldom took wine, unless for medicinal purposes.

'Oh, but let me beg of you to make an exception this time,' returned Ellice, with singular earnestness. 'I have set my heart--yes, my heart, upon your drinking with me. Do not refuse me. I shall never have the opportunity of asking another favour of you.' She took up the salver as she spoke, and held it towards Gertrude, with the three glasses upon it. 'Choose one,' she said. 'I am superstitious. I cannot let you off from this. Take whichever you like.'

'Certainly, if it will oblige you,' said Gertrude, smiling. 'I suppose they are all the same wine? I will take this.' And she took the slenderest of the three glasses.

'The wine is the same,' observed Ellice, 'but the glasses sometimes make a difference in the taste. Well, you have chosen; now, Geoffrey, it lies between you and me.'

Her hands trembled a little as she presented the salver to him, so that the glasses jingled, and some of the wine was spilt. 'Quick!' she said in a whisper; and he took the glass with the curved brim and the snaky stem. As she set down the salver her hand was steady again, and when she raised the remaining glass between her fingers not a drop was spilt.

'You remember the last time we drank together, Geoffrey?' she said, looking directly at him now for the first time. 'I shall never drink wine in my life after this. I am glad you and Gertrude have chosen as you have done. It is better--much better. You had your free choice, and left this for me. I drink to your health, my friends.'

She drank her glass out, and set it down. The others followed her example.

'It is very good wine, I'm sure,' remarked Gertrude.

'You will get no harm from it,' replied Ellice, tremulously and smiling; 'nor will you, Geoffrey. And it will be good for me, too. You will----' she began to tremble so violently that she could not stand, and sank down in a chair. 'You will think--kindly of me?' she went on in a scarcely audible voice. A strange alteration was rapidly creeping over her features. Her lips quivered, her eyes dilated, and there was a choking in her throat. Geoffrey, who, for the last few moments, had kept his eyes fixed upon her searchingly, suddenly flung himself down on his knees beside her with a hollow cry of anguish.

'Ellice! you have poisoned yourself,' he cried with thick utterance. 'Could you not have forgiven me enough to let me go too?'

'You--had your--chance; it was death--to one or other of us three,' she answered with difficulty. 'Fate chose me. Oh! do not trouble me now; I am content. Of what use have I ever been in the world? She is better for you.'

'What is the matter? Can I be of any help?' enquired Gertrude, in concern and perplexity.

For a minute Geoffrey made no reply. Then he rose stiffly, kissed the dead woman's lips, and turning away from her, but not towards Gertrude, answered heavily, 'None!'

THE COUNTESS'S RUBY.

I.

One hot August forenoon, some years ago, two men met at a certain point of the coast of Normandy, and shook hands with mutual good-will.

The elder of these men had lived in the world about five-and-thirty years; he had had losses, and successes as well; but the latter, happening to have arrived a year or so after he had got tired of waiting for them, found him grown a trifle soured and cynical, and apt to carp at the sunshine which had withheld its warmth from his bones until they had contracted an ineradicable chill. His bitterness was perhaps more of the head than of the heart, but was none the less observable on that account. He was an Englishman by birth, and a born painter also--at least in his own opinion. He had begun his career with the firm persuasion that his genius entitled him not only to hang on the line at the Academy, but to be one of the hangmen. The Royal Academicians did not immediately fall in with his views on either point; and when, after many years, they relented, and gave his picture the place of honour, and intimated their purpose of filling with his name the first vacancy on their august roll, this lofty and unforgiving gentleman made a bow and begged to be excused. He had made his name known without the Academy's help; he had won pecuniary independence in a land where the word of the Academy was not law; and he would now, therefore, with all due respect to the members of that body, see every mother's son of them at the deuce before he would have anything to do with them. Such an ultimatum necessarily finished the episode; the Academy preserved a dignified silence, and the lofty and unforgiving gentleman continued to spend the best part of his time in Paris, exhibiting every year in the Salon, and telling the story of his quarrel with the English potentates to whomsoever cared to hear an amusing anecdote caustically related. He was a lengthy, meagre, harsh-featured personage, this same cynical artist, but he prided himself on the Parisian polish of his manners and his French accent, and he was, in fact, a good deal of a favourite in society.

The man who shook hands with the person above described was in most respects as unlike him as could be imagined. To begin with, he was an American; and, sentimental twaddle to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no nationality so irreconcilable with the English, and so incapable of sympathy with them, as that which styles itself American. But this man, in addition to his Americanism, was full ten years the junior of the other, and nearly the same number of inches shorter. His face was smooth and almost boyish, handsome even to an unusual degree, yet open to one criticism--that of being perfectly in harmony with the figure of its owner. The world has seen many great men under six feet high; but in them the countenance possessed the power or the nobility that more than compensates for defective stature; and, in looking upon it, the beholder quite forgot to be critical as to the greater or less degree of its elevation above the earth's surface. In a word, the face of this young American was the face of a short American--a recommendation, doubtless, from the purely æsthetic standpoint, but otherwise unfortunate. The lively blue eyes lacked depth and sternness; the fine straight nose might well have been a thought longer or higher; the mouth was too little and too academic in its curves; the forehead, though capacious, lacked the fine and expressive modelling which announces a master intellect. For the rest, this young American had a clear, deep colour in his cheeks, such as any woman might have envied, and the only fault of which was that no emotion had power either to diminish or to heighten its intensity; soft dark hair, a small silky moustache, and broad white teeth. The best feature in his face was probably the chin, which betokened a vigorous and persistent will. In figure he was square-shouldered, and rather plump than lean: his hands and feet were small and well shaped. If the enumeration of these merely physical details seems out of proportion with what was specified on that score in the portrait of the Englishman, it should be remembered that the younger man had as yet achieved little in the world beyond this attractive personal appearance. His moral and social history were yet to make. He was the son of a Boston millionaire; he had been educated at Harvard College; he was courted and caressed in Beacon Street drawing-rooms; and he had written quite a number of poems, odes, lyrics, and sonnets, philosophical, commemorational, imaginative, and erotic, which, reversing the natural sequence of states, first led a brilliant butterfly life in newspapers and magazines, and afterwards shut themselves up in the chrysalid of a gilt-edged, cloth-embossed volume, whence they afterwards showed no symptom of emerging.

These two men, such as they are here shadowed forth, found themselves face to face by the water's edge on that sultry August morning, and greeted each other with hearty enough cordiality.

As if to compensate for their physical dissimilarity, they were dressed almost precisely alike. Both had on shoes made of a flat sole of plaited hemp, with stout linen uppers curiously embroidered with red and blue braid, and laced round the ankle after the manner of the ancient sandal. Both wore a kind of straw bonnet, high-crowned and wide brimmed, clewed down on either side the face by a broad ribbon tied under the chin. Neither possessed any other essential article of clothing except a close-fitting tunic or set of tights, with the legs and arms cut off close to the body. Over this was lightly thrown a long mantle of Turkish-towel stuff. The tights were striped horizontally, alternate white and blue for the Englishman, and red and white for the American; and herein lay the sole distinction between their respective costumes. It is true that the American's fitted much the more closely and smoothly of the two; but that is neither here nor there.

In front of these simply-attired friends, and breaking in baby ripples at their feet, stretched in slumbrous calm a pale and turquoise ocean, destitute of any visible horizon. A tender haze which brooded in that region so intermingled sea and air that distant ships seemed to sail in the clouds, and clouds to voyage upon the water.

Behind them rose a mounded beach of purple shingle, uncomfortable to tread upon, but invaluable as a bulwark against the incursion of high tides into the low-lying village beyond. This village snuggled in the valley formed between the two hills which abutted at either extremity of the beach in precipitous cliffs, reflecting their pallid faces in the molten surface of the summer sea.

Between the village and the beach, and surmounting the latter like a fort, extended the casino parade, an embankment of masonry lying parallel with the shore, and backed by the casino itself, long, low, and flat-roofed, all windows and awnings. It contained a card room, billiard room, restaurant and theatre, the last transmutable into a ball room by the simple process of removing the pit seats.

The persons of whom I write were not alone by the water's edge; on the contrary, they had scarcely more than elbow room. On either side of them stood, chattered, and gesticulated a hundred human beings of both sexes and all ages, arrayed more or less on the same general principle already detailed. A hundred others paddled, plunged, and bobbed in the pellucid element in front. Twice as many lounged, fluttered, and ogled in serried groups in the rear--these last resplendent in the latest Parisian fashions for the month of August. Down upon this gay scene of colour, sparkle, and sound glowered the hot, lazy sun, longing for the still nine-hours-distant time when he might cool his own sweltering sides in the luxury of a sea bath.

Beyond the average range of the swimmers sped hither and thither a score of light skiffs or canoes, whose occupants prudently wore their bathing dresses and sat heedfully amidships as they plied their long paddles. Finally, I may mention the diving-board, an infernal machine of a thirty foot plank supported at a third of its length on the axle of a tall pair of wheels, and so rolled into the water, to be rushed up and jumped off of by dashing divers. That diving-board was a daily thorn in the side of the English artist, who was not a dashing diver and who would have greatly preferred to take to the water like a duck--that is quietly and smoothly--but whom a false pride constrained to mount that penitential plank morning after morning, and upset himself off the end of it with an agonised effort--seldom or never successful--to strike the water vertically. What fools sensible people will make of themselves for the sake of being like the fools who are ready-made!

It may as well be mentioned here, since the truth is sure to crop out sooner or later, that the name of the cynical and Frenchified English artist was Mr. Claude Campbell, and that he was, consequently, no less a personage than myself, who write concerning him. Let this confession put the reader on his guard against whatever exaggerative or prejudicial statements he may fancy he detects in what I have told or have yet to tell. I do not pretend to be an absolutely impartial historian of events in which myself have been an actor. I promise only to set down things as they appeared to me at the time, and leave the reader to draw his own conclusions. Did I make the world, or even organise human society? No; nor am I responsible for the logic of events, which, on the other hand, has often struck me as being a shocking bad system of logic.

As for the red-cheeked American, he was Jefferson Montgomery, Esquire, of Boston, as aforesaid, and he shall speak for himself.

II.

'Hullo, Jeff! Just a year since we parted on Beacon Hill.'

'My _dear_ Campbell,' said Jeff, giving my hand a strong pressure, while his blue eyes beamed and his white teeth flashed, 'this is _really very nice_. Have you been here long?'

'Maybe a week.'

'A _week_? _Really!_ how _very strange_!'

As I do not intend to underline all Mr. Jeff's speeches, I will explain here that he was one of those persons who choose their words with care, and then bestow upon them a certain emphasis--an emphasis of breath--a soft cough, so to say, intended merely to call your attention to the word in question as an unexceptionable word. At first you wondered at the speaker's earnestness; afterwards you begot a nervous oppression of the breathing apparatus, referable to the obscure phenomena of sympathetic affections. For my own part, the kind of conscientious self-complacency of which I considered this idiosyncrasy of my friend to be a symptom tended to arouse in me all my caustic and combative instincts; and, inasmuch as the young poet was fertile in 'notions' and resolute in upholding the same, our conversations were apt to become discussions, and our discussions disputes. Our disputes had never deepened into quarrels--we were too dissimilar for that--though a listener might sometimes have found it difficult to make the distinction. But to resume.

'Why strange?' was my enquiry.

'Why, that we shouldn't have encountered previously.'

'On the contrary, the strangeness is in our meeting at all. I came here to make studies, and you, I suppose, to make conquests. How many so far?'

'Oh, you old cynic! I don't know a soul in the place. It was an accident my being here at all, and I've been doing nothing but admire these lovely cliffs and the poetic scenery.'

'Poetic? That reminds me. Pardon my thoughtlessness, Jeff. You have been wooing the muse, of course?'

'Well, I confess I have been attempting something; it's unfinished as yet, but I hope it is fresh and strong; and I believe it to be original in treatment as well as in idea. It will be my most ambitious effort so far. A pagan maid falls in love with the Spirit of the Ocean, and a poet is in love with her, and between these two loves----'

'She comes to the ground, or into the water. Which is it?'

'You are always so ready to mock, Campbell. But of course it doesn't come from the heart; it's only your badinage. And really, don't you think the conception fine? I should like to read you my description of the pagan maid.'

'Portrait of anybody in particular?'

'Well, between you and me, Campbell, there _is_ a young lady here--I don't know who she is, but she really does seem to be almost the type I need--for my poem, I mean. A noble creature--the true grand pagan style. You would like her; she would charm the artist equally with the poet.'

'So you have been trotting up hill and down dale after a pagan, and call it writing a poem on metaphysical abstractions! Do you never mean to give up this sort of thing, my dear boy?'

'Really, what do you mean?'

'Dangling after women the way you do.'

'What an expression! Every cultivated man feels it his duty to love woman and to frequent her society.'

'But why not choose out a representative woman and frequent the whole sex in her person?'

'Do you advocate marriage, then?' asked the poet, his blue eyes pensively interrogating the horizon.

'I say that, if you must make an ass of yourself at all, you should confine yourself within the narrowest possible limits.'

'Have you ever contemplated matrimony, Campbell?'

'It is the last thing I should contemplate for myself.'

'You have never yearned for a counter-soul?'

'I don't know what you mean, but I venture to say I never have,' I replied. 'But what would be folly in me would be philanthropy in you.'

Jeff heaved a long sigh. 'Let me whisper you a secret. You know my papa made a fortune in the Crimean war. We had a contract to furnish the Russians with briar-wood pipes. Well, Russia is now on the eve of another conflict, and papa has sent me over to arrange the terms of another contract.'

'But what has this to do with your getting married?'

'Why, the person who manages the business on the Russian side is our old friend--the same who concluded the arrangements with papa twenty-five years ago. Our relations have always remained intimate and cordial. And immediately subsequent to the Russian war this commissioner married, and--had--oh!'

The poet's voice died away; his eyes were fixed upon something a little farther along the beach.

'There! there!' he murmured. 'Oh! is she not--divine?'

'Ha! that is your pagan, is it?'

'Going out in a canoe,' continued Jeff.

This young and strikingly handsome girl, of proportions almost statuesque, was not seen by me now for the first time. I had, in fact, noticed her shortly after my arrival in town, and had taken that pleasure in observing her which an artist feels for whatever is thoroughly picturesque. Who she was I knew no more than Jeff, and it was not to be expected that another man's admiration of her should be disagreeable to me; but some men are not any man, and I must admit that the revelation of her identity with the subject of Jeff's rhapsodies affected me unpleasantly. The girl's beauty, patent to me, was not of a type to reveal itself to every careless and uneducated eye. But I will not attempt to defend my feeling. I simply state it.

The young lady took her seat in the canoe and grasped the paddle, and an elderly moustachioed gentleman pushed her off from shore. She was dressed in a rather remarkable bathing suit of black, slashed with scarlet; her round, firm arms were bare from the shoulder, and her legs from the knee; her hair was gathered up in the customary oilskin cap. With two or three vigorous strokes she sent her skiff well out beyond the crowd of bathers.

When I turned again towards Jeff I found he was no longer at my side; he was walking up the diving board, on the end of which he balanced himself a moment and then launched himself head foremost into the water, which closed over him with scarce a ripple. Presently his head appeared some distance beyond the spot at which he had entered, and he began swimming seaward with vigorous strokes. He was directly in the wake of the fair pagan, who, unaware of his pursuit, was paddling leisurely towards the thickening haze on the horizon, herself and her canoe mirrored distinctly on the glassy surface.

'Does he propose to overtake her and make her hear his poetry _tête-à-tête_ in twelve fathoms of water?' I asked myself. 'At any rate, he resembles Byron in his swimming powers. And how neatly the fellow took the water! Let me see if I can't acquit myself as well as a Boston republican.'

With a sudden access of valour I snatched off my peignoir and cast it behind me, and, without stopping to see where it fell, I mounted the fatal plank with deliberate steps, saw the treacherous element smile for a moment beneath me, shut my eyes, and let myself go.

III.

I foresaw, in that instant of time which intervened between my last foot leaving the plank and my head reaching the water, that I was going to make a failure more than usually ignominious. A sounding thwack, taking effect along the entire length of my frame, and a painfully tingling sensation, only partly the result of shame, immediately apprised me that my prophetic instinct had not been at fault. I sank, however, and I was glad to sink; for though I dislike having my head under water, my wounded self-esteem made me dread putting it out again. Much as I have seen and suffered, and callous though I have become to most of the attacks of destiny, upon some points I am still sensitive. In a decent suit of clothes and a dignified attitude I can sustain almost any misfortune; but if my personal appearance be laughable, or my position a false one, my soul has much ado to maintain her constancy.

Need was, however, that I should emerge at last, and up I bobbed accordingly. I swam about moodily and unsociably during my customary fifteen minutes; and such was the dejection of my spirits that the water seemed colder than usual, and as I waded my way up a steep incline of the shingle on my way out, there was a tendency to convulsive shudderings in the muscles of my lower jaw. Chilled, humiliated, and conscious that I cut a ridiculous figure before a fashionable and merciless world, I only wished to seize my peignoir, wrap it round me, and vanish from the view and memory of mankind. Some men are cowed by one thing, some by another; and, once cowed, a man is no better than a whipped schoolboy, and feels far less respectable.

I hastened, then, to hide my discomfiture in my peignoir; but at that moment the certainty flashed upon me that I knew not where my peignoir was. I had omitted to note the place where I had laid it down: all places on a shingle beach are alike, especially when that beach is crowded to the water's edge.

I was standing face to face with the crowd, dressed in the curtailment of costume already described, which, hanging in dripping folds about my meagre form, rendered grotesque that which by nature was ungainly merely. For the first time in my life I regretted my six feet of stature; at five feet I should have felt less defenceless as well as appeared less conspicuous. There I stood before the world, shivering, lost, and helpless.

What was I to do? It was a pressing question, for every moment rendered the situation not only physically but morally more intolerable.

Should I return to the water, whence I came?

Too late! Not only would I catch my death--a minor evil--but the world by this time knew that I had started to come out, and by detecting the cowardice of my retreat would render it cowardice thrown away.

Should I steal the first peignoir that came to hand and fly? Hundreds were scattered about. It was but reaching forth my hand.

No, I could not steal: not because I was too honest--far from it; a cowed man is beyond the reach of scruples--but because I lacked the courage to be a thief. I feared detection, and knew I lacked the effrontery to brazen out the robbery.

Should I pretend I never had a peignoir, and stalk insouciantly through the crowd and up to the beach as I was?

Impossible. I had not the spirits for such a _tour de force_ in the first place, and in the second I had not the figure for it. Moreover, the _mairie_ had issued edicts against bathers promenading without peignoirs, and the thought of being arrested by a squad of gendarmes and marched in my present condition to a lock up was not to be contemplated.

I must, therefore, either stand where I was until my peignoir came to me or institute a deliberate search after my peignoir. To search, perhaps for hours, amidst a wilderness of spotless hostile skirts and immaculate shrinking pantaloons for a peignoir scarcely distinguishable from any other peignoir, and which, too, might have already been appropriated by some person more heedless (or more self-possessed) than myself! Decidedly there are times in a man's life when he is forced to avow that Providence has omitted to endow human beings with the only boon really worth their having--the power, namely, of instant and unobtrusive self-annihilation.

My search began. I went to a peignoir and examined it; it was not mine. With shaking limbs I blundered towards another a few yards off; it was not mine. At this juncture I heard, and affected not to hear, a titter of laughter. With my heart full of murder and suicide I pounced upon a peignoir quite near at hand. It was the same I had examined first. My brain began to reel.

'Monsieur!' said a gentle voice near me. 'Pardon, Monsieur!'

Could such words be addressed to me? As I tottered on the shifting pebbles, throwing dazed glances here and there, I became aware that a lady, middle-aged and of noble demeanour, was standing beside me with a folded peignoir in her hands.

'Pardon, but did Monsieur chance to be searching for anything?' she asked in French.

'My peignoir----'

'I have perceived that Monsieur dropped this upon entering the water: it shall be his perhaps?' and with a smile too truly polite even to seem compassionate this angel of mature years placed my own identical peignoir in my arms.

I clutched it as Macbeth clutched the phantom dagger; only more fortunate than the thane, I felt it in my grasp. Some part of my senses returned to me.

'Madame,' I stuttered as well as my chattering teeth would let me, 'you come from doing me the greatest favour woman can confer upon man. I shall never forget it. I thank you, madame, from the depths of my soul, and I salute you with the most distinguished gratitude and respect.'

The doer of this noble action bowed and smiled graciously, and I, with my peignoir about me, stalked boldly through the crowd to my toilet cabin. The distance was not great, but such was the glow of gratitude in my heart that by the time I arrived there I was not only warm but almost dry. Nor did the effect of this kindness stop at my skin; my immortal part, as Jeff might have called it, was sweetened and exalted; never, that I could remember, had I been succoured so opportunely or in such poignant need. Be that lady who she might she was worthy of all homage, and if it would have done her any good I believe that, confirmed bachelor though I was, I would have offered her my hand and heart as soon as I had finished my toilet.

But I trusted to my good genius to find me some better way of requiting her favour. It is sad to reflect how few ways there are of obliging our fellow-creatures. People would do more for one another but for the difficulty of finding something at once practical and practicable to do.

The first thing that attracted my notice, when I issued from my cabin and returned to the beach, was that the haze, which all the morning had lain along the horizon, had now thickened greatly and advanced upon the shore. Nothing was visible at twenty paces, and the fog, shone through by the sun, drifted softly over the bustling crowd, which was already beginning to stream homewards.

It was a pretty spectacle, but one likely to be regarded with different feelings by an Englishman safe on dry land and an American lost in twelve fathoms of water. Jeff had not come back to shore, and being out of sight of land, it necessarily followed that he was lost. The danger was graver than might at first sight have appeared, for the swimmer had had time to get fully a mile out to sea, and at that distance there were strong currents which might sweep him away altogether. I scanned the white blank before me with anxious eyes, but it revealed nothing. Poor Jeff!

I began to experience that uncomfortable sensation occasioned by knowing a friend to be in peril, and feeling the necessity of doing something to rescue him. More grievous but more convenient is it when the inevitable occurs at once, and saves us the annoyance of suspense. I could have sorrowed heartily and sincerely over the poor poet's drowned body laid out upon the shingle, but there was no satisfaction in taking measures to ascertain whether or not the corpse were an accomplished fact--to postpone, in other words, the luxury of grief for the anguish of action.

A group of sailors were collected round a boat at the water's edge, which they seemed to be on the point of launching. A lady was haranguing them earnestly. As I approached I recognised her as the heroine of my late adventure with the peignoir. She was saying--

'It was in that direction that I last saw her. She is already, perhaps, a kilomètre distant. There is no time to lose, mind you. Behold me distracted.'

Here was my opportunity; I could kill both my birds with one stone. I stepped forward with raised hat, and placed myself at the disposal of feminine distress. Having respectfully recalled myself to her recollection, I begged to be honoured with the distinction of being permitted to promote the alleviation of the anxiety under which she appeared to be labouring.

She thanked me with ardour, but to inconvenience me would desolate her.

Having received at her hands a favour beyond estimation, I should expire of chagrin in the case of being refused the privilege of testifying in some degree the depth and liveliness of my recognition.

Madame hereupon vouchsafed to inform me that Mademoiselle her daughter had paddled away with herself into the fog, and there was fear that she be lost in unknown oceans.