I read the letter once more.
"MY DEAR GUARDIAN,
"Very serious business makes me send to you. Come and see me. As your honoured wife is now engaged on a provincial tour, can"t you come and dine with me to-day? We shall be all by ourselves.
"BESSY."
Was there ever an odder reason?--"_As your honoured wife is now engaged on a provincial tour_"! No doubt she found that out in the _Fovarosi Lapok_.[106] But the conclusion: "_therefore_ you can come and dine with me to-day"! And finally: "We shall be all by ourselves"! If that wasn"t a temptation, I don"t know what is.
[Footnote 106: _News of the Capital_, a popular newspaper of the period.]
I began to walk up and down.
The maid waited to see if I was going to count how many paces it was from the window to the door. At last she grew importunate.
"Is there any answer, please? I have to go home and cook the dinner."
"Ah, yes, of course! Greet your mistress from me, and tell her that I"ll come and see her in the forenoon to-morrow."
"But I want to know whether you are coming to dinner, that I may arrange my cooking accordingly."
"True! Then say I"ll come to dinner."
In Bessy"s house the custom seemed to prevail for the mistress to dine six days of the week with Duke Humphrey, and then on the seventh, her at-home day, to make a great parade before her guests.
I was now running into the very centre of danger.
I could not possibly back out of this engagement.
"A serious business, eh?" I know it was serious enough to me.
An ideal of my youth, and lovelier now than ever, with a husband of her own too, and that husband a fine manly fellow. So far from being jealous, he had openly entrusted me with the consolation of his sorrowing spouse. And I am the last person in the world to be enrolled in the Order of Anchorites.
I candidly admit that I am not a bit better than my neighbours.
So I tricked myself out finely. I put on my new coffee-coloured clothes with the antique b.u.t.tons; I neatly tied my embroidered cravat; I drew on my Kordofan-leather boots with the silver spurs; I fastened a crane"s plume in my new spiral hat.
This was the audacious fashion of the year, and within a twelvemonth this costume was worn in the whole kingdom. And after that, I went to the barber"s and he twisted my thick blonde hair into masterly ringlets.
Aggravating circ.u.mstances, the whole lot of them!
CHAPTER XVIII
A COLD DOUCHE
How my heart beat when I set forth on my expedition!
On the way from my dwelling to Bessy"s lodgings my ill fate brought me face to face with all the veteran actresses of the National Theatre, and they all stopped me and asked where I was going. They all remarked that I was very stylishly got up, and they all shook their fingers at me, and said: "Fie, fie! you straw-widower!"
The devil must really have been in me to make me take the trouble to have my hair so prettily frizzled.
I was just about to dash hastily up the staircase of Bessy"s dwelling, when whom should I run into but Toni Sagi. It only needed that. He came from the same town as I did, was a common friend of all my friends, and was about as reticent of news as a town-crier.
"Your servant, friend! Why, you"re quite a stranger. I"ve just come from Bessy. The young lady is in a very bad humour. She as good as pitched me out of doors. She must be expecting some one. Perhaps you are the very man, eh?"
It was all up with me now! To-morrow every newspaper in the town will report my visit here. For "quod licet _bovi_, non licet _Jovi_."
If I were to turn back now, it would only make matters worse.
I hastened up the steps. Bessy lived on the third floor.... To get to her rooms I had to follow the open corridor which led down to the courtyard. I pa.s.sed on my way the lodgings of a milliner, a female p.a.w.nbroker, and a lady who supplied families with servant-maids, and all three poked their heads out of their windows and watched me disappear.
On reaching Bessy"s number, I found, tugging at the bell-rope, a red-peluched young c.o.xcomb. The door was about a fourth part open, and the face of the vicious looking cook was protruding out of it. She dismissed the visitor with curt ceremony.
"My mistress is not at home!"
We nearly trod each other"s spurs off as we cannoned against each other in the narrow corridor.
A minute afterwards the countenance of the self-same cook, rounded into complete amiability, again appeared, and she said to me:
"Would you do us the honour to walk in?"
And she held the door wide open for me.
You should have seen the face which my red furbelowed gentleman made at this. It was not enough for him to open his eyes and mouth at me; he stuck his _pince-nez_ on the bridge of his nose as well.
That will mean a duel for me to-morrow.
Meantime, however, I was master of the situation.
I had to go through the kitchen to get to Bessy"s room. The kitchen was also the ante-chamber; you hung up your overcoat there. Her cook was her only servant, parlour-maid, chamber-maid, everything.
"Would you kindly walk into the saloon?" urged the servant.
"But announce me beforehand. Here"s my card."
"Beg pardon, but I can"t take it; both my hands are doughy." (She was in the middle of kneading some dough cake or other with b.u.t.ter.) "Would you kindly put your card between my teeth?"
Thus, like a retriever, she carried in my card between her teeth. A moment afterwards she cried:
"Come in now, please!"
I entered the room which the servant had called a saloon.
n.o.body was there. I looked around me. I found nothing there of the luxurious splendour which had surrounded the young lady formerly in her mother"s house; but for all that everything was neat and pretty.
Embroideries, a music-stand with songs upon it, and a fiddle, flower-pots, a cage with exotic birds, Wallachian _Katrinczas_,[107]