"And do you think beauty is everything?"
"I don"t know about its being everything. But it"s very delightful"
"Of course it is difficult for a woman to know how far to go," said my companion. "I adore everything that gives a charm to life. I am intensely sensitive to form. But sometimes I draw back--don"t you see what I mean?--I don"t quite see where I shall be landed. I only want to be quiet, after all," Miss Ambient continued, in a tone of stifled yearning which seemed to indicate that she had not yet arrived at her desire. "And one must be good, at any rate, must not one?" she inquired, with a cadence apparently intended for an a.s.surance that my answer would settle this recondite question for her. It was difficult for me to make it very original, and I am afraid I repaid her confidence with an unblushing plat.i.tude. I remember, moreover, appending to it an inquiry, equally dest.i.tute of freshness, and still more wanting perhaps in tact, as to whether she did not mean to go to church, as that was an obvious way of being good. She replied that she had performed this duty in the morning, and that for her, on Sunday afternoon, supreme virtue consisted in answering the week"s letters. Then suddenly, without transition, she said to me, "It"s quite a mistake about Dolcino being better. I have seen him, and he"s not at all right."
"Surely his mother would know, would n"t she?" I suggested.
She appeared for a moment to be counting the leaves on one of the great beeches. "As regards most matters, one can easily say what, in a given situation, my sister-in-law would do. But as regards this one, there are strange elements at work."
"Strange elements? Do you mean in the const.i.tution of the child?"
"No, I mean in my sister-in-law"s feelings."
"Elements of affection, of course; elements of anxiety. Why do you call them strange?"
She repeated my words. "Elements of affection, elements of anxiety. She is very anxious."
Miss Ambient made me vaguely uneasy; she almost frightened me, and I wished she would go and write her letters. "His father will have seen him now," I said, "and if he is not satisfied he will send for the doctor."
"The doctor ought to have been here this morning. He lives only two miles away."
I reflected that all this was very possibly only a part of the general tragedy of Miss Ambient"s view of things; but I asked her why she had n"t urged such a necessity upon her sister-in-law. She answered me with a smile of extraordinary significance, and told me that I must have very little idea of what her relations with Beatrice were; but I must do her the justice to add that she went on to make herself a little more comprehensible by saying that it was quite reason enough for her sister not to be alarmed that Mark would be sure to be. He was always nervous about the child, and as they were predestined by nature to take opposite views, the only thing for Beatrice was to cultivate a false optimism. If Mark were not there, she would not be at all easy. I remembered what he had said to me about their dealings with Dolcino,--that between them they would put an end to him; but I did not repeat this to Miss Ambient: the less so that just then her brother emerged from the house, carrying his child in his arms. Close behind him moved his wife, grave and pale; the boy"s face was turned over Ambient"s shoulder, towards his mother.
We got up to receive the group, and as they came near us Dolcino turned round. I caught, on his enchanting little countenance, a smile of recognition, and for the moment would have been quite content with it.
Miss Ambient, however, received another impression, and I make haste to say that her quick sensibility, in which there was something maternal, argues that, in spite of her affectations, there was a strain of kindness in her. "It won"t do at all--it won"t do at all," she said to me under her breath. "I shall speak to Mark about the doctor."
The child was rather white, but the main difference I saw in him was that he was even more beautiful than the day before. He had been dressed in his festal garments,--a velvet suit and a crimson sash,--and he looked like a little invalid prince, too young to know condescension, and smiling familiarly on his subjects.
"Put him down, Mark, he"s not comfortable," Mrs. Ambient said.
"Should you like to stand on your feet, my boy?" his father asked.
"Oh, yes; I "m remarkably well," said the child.
Mark placed him on the ground; he had shining, pointed slippers, with enormous bows. "Are you happy now, Mr. Ambient?"
"Oh, yes, I am particularly happy," Dolcino replied. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when his mother caught him up, and in a moment, holding him on her knees, she took her place on the bench where Miss Ambient and I had been sitting. This young lady said something to her brother, in consequence of which the two wandered away into the garden together. I remained with Mrs. Ambient; but as a servant had brought out a couple of chairs I was not obliged to seat myself beside her. Our conversation was not animated, and I, for my part, felt there would be a kind of hypocrisy in my trying to make myself agreeable to Mrs. Ambient I didn"t dislike her--I rather admired her; but I was aware that I differed from her inexpressibly. Then I suspected, what I afterwards definitely knew and have already intimated, that the poor lady had taken a dislike to me; and this of course was not encouraging.
She thought me an obtrusive and even depraved young man, whom a perverse Providence had dropped upon their quiet lawn to flatter her husband"s worst tendencies. She did me the honor to say to Miss Ambient, who repeated the speech, that she didn"t know when she had seen her husband take such a fancy to a visitor; and she measured, apparently, my evil influence by Mark"s appreciation of my society. I had a consciousness, not yet acute, but quite sufficient, of all this; but I must say that if it chilled my flow of small-talk, it did n"t prevent me from thinking that the beautiful mother and beautiful child, interlaced there against their background of roses, made a picture such as I perhaps should not soon see again. I was free, I supposed, to go into the house and write letters, to sit in the drawing-room, to repair to my own apartment and take a nap; but the only use I made of my freedom was to linger still in my chair and say to myself that the light hand of Sir Joshua might have painted Mark Ambient"s wife and son. I found myself looking perpetually at Dolcino, and Dolcino looked back at me, and that was enough to detain me. When he looked at me he smiled, and I felt it was an absolute impossibility to abandon a child who was smiling at one like that. His eyes never wandered; they attached themselves to mine, as if among all the small incipient things of his nature there was a desire to say something to me. If I could have taken him upon my own knee, he perhaps would have managed to say it; but it would have been far too delicate a matter to ask his mother to give him up, and it has remained a constant regret for me that on that Sunday afternoon I did not, even for a moment, hold Dolcino in my arms. He had said that he felt remarkably well, and that he was especially happy; but though he may have been happy, with his charming head pillowed on his mother"s breast, and his little crimson silk legs depending from her lap, I did not think he looked well. He made no attempt to walk about; he was content to swing his legs softly and strike one as languid and angelic.
Mark came back to us with his sister; and Miss Ambient, making some remark about having to attend to her correspondence, pa.s.sed into the house. Mark came and stood in front of his wife, looking down at the child, who immediately took hold of his hand, keeping it while he remained. "I think Ailingham ought to see him," Ambient said; "I think I will walk over and fetch him."
"That "s Gwendolen"s idea, I suppose," Mrs. Ambient replied, very sweetly.
"It"s not such an out-of-the-way idea, when one"s child is ill."
"I "m not ill, papa; I "m much better now," Dolcino remarked.
"Is that the truth, or are you only saying it to be agreeable? You have a great idea of being agreeable, you know."
The boy seemed to meditate on this distinction this imputation, for a moment; then his exaggerated eyes, which had wandered, caught my own as I watched him. "Do _you_ think me agreeable?" he inquired, with the candor of his age, and with a smile that made his father turn round to me, laughing, and ask, mutely, with a glance, "Is n"t he adorable?"
"Then why don"t you hop about, if you feel so l.u.s.ty?" Ambient went on, while the boy swung his hand.
"Because mamma is holding me close!"
"Oh, yes; I know how mamma holds you when I come near!" Ambient exclaimed, looking at his wife.
She turned her charming eyes up to him, without deprecation or concession, and after a moment she said, "You can go for Allingham if you like, I think myself it would be better. You ought to drive."
"She says that to get me away," Ambient remarked to me, laughing; after which he started for the doctor"s.
I remained there with Mrs. Ambient, though our conversation had more pauses than speeches. The boy"s little fixed white face seemed, as before, to plead with me to stay, and after a while it produced still another effect, a very curious one, which I shall find it difficult to express. Of course I expose myself to the charge of attempting to give fantastic reasons for an act which may have been simply the fruit of a native want of discretion; and indeed the traceable consequences of that perversity were too lamentable to leave me any desire to trifle with the question. All I can say is that I acted in perfect good faith, and that Dolcino"s friendly little gaze gradually kindled the spark of my inspiration. What helped it to glow were the other influences,--the silent, suggestive garden-nook, the perfect opportunity (if it was not an opportunity for that, it was an opportunity for nothing), and the plea that I speak of, which issued from the child"s eyes, and seemed to make him say, "The mother that bore me and that presses me here to her bosom--sympathetic little organism that I am--has really the kind of sensibility which she has been represented to you as lacking; if you only look for it patiently and respectfully. How is it possible that she should n"t have it? How is it possible that I should have so much of it (for I am quite full of it, dear, strange gentleman), if it were not also in some degree in her? I am my father"s child, but I am also my mother"s, and I am sorry for the difference between them!" So it shaped itself before me, the vision of reconciling Mrs. Ambient with her husband, of putting an end to their great disagreement The project was absurd, of course, for had I not had his word for it--spoken with all the bitterness of experience--that the gulf that divided them was wellnigh bottomless? Nevertheless, a quarter of an hour after Mark had left us, I said to his wife that I could n"t get over what she told me the night before about her thinking her husband"s writings "objectionable." I had been so very sorry to hear it, had thought of it constantly, and wondered whether it were not possible to make her change her mind. Mrs. Ambient gave me rather a cold stare; she seemed to be recommending me to mind my own business. I wish I had taken this mute counsel, but I did not. I went on to remark that it seemed an immense pity so much that was beautiful should be lost upon her.
"Nothing is lost upon me," said Mrs. Ambient "I know they are very beautiful."
"Don"t you like papa"s books?" Dolcino asked, addressing his mother, but still looking at me. Then he added to me, "Won"t you read them to me, American gentleman?"
"I would rather tell you some stories of my own," I said. "I know some that are very interesting." "When will you tell them? To-morrow?"
"To-morrow, with pleasure, if that suits you." Mrs. Ambient was silent at this. Her husband, during our walk, had asked me to remain another day; my promise to her son was an implication that I had consented, and it is not probable that the prospect was agreeable to her. This ought, doubtless, to have made me more careful as to what I said next; but all I can say is that it did n"t. I presently observed that just after leaving her the evening before, and after hearing her apply to her husband"s writings the epithet I had already quoted, I had, on going up to my room, sat down to the perusal of those sheets of his new book which he had been so good as to lend me. I had sat entranced till nearly three in the morning. I had read them twice over. "You say you have n"t looked at them. I think it "s such a pity you should n"t Do let me beg you to take them up. They are so very remarkable. I "m sure they will convert you. They place him in--really--such a dazzling light. All that is best in him is there. I have no doubt it"s a great liberty, my saying all this; but excuse me, and _do_ read them!"
"Do read them, mamma!" Dolcino repeated; "do read them!"
She bent her head and closed his lips with a kiss. "Of course I know he has worked immensely over them," she said; and after this she made no remark, but sat there looking thoughtful, with her eyes on the ground.
The tone of these last words was such as to leave me no spirit for further pressure, and after expressing a fear that her husband had not found the doctor at home, I got up and took a turn about the grounds.
When I came back, ten minutes later, she was still in her place watching her boy, who had fallen asleep in her lap. As I drew near she put her finger to her lips, and a moment afterwards she rose, holding the child, and murmured something about its being better that he should go upstairs. I offered to carry him, and held out my hands to take him; but she thanked me and turned away with the child seated on her arm, his head on her shoulder. "I am very strong," she said, as she pa.s.sed into the house, and her slim, flexible figure bent backwards with the filial weight So I never touched Dolcino.
I betook myself to Ambient"s study, delighted to have a quiet hour to look over his books by myself. The windows were open into the garden; the sunny stillness, the mild light of the English summer, filled the room, without quite chasing away the rich dusky tone which was a part of its charm, and which abode in the serried shelves where old morocco exhaled the fragrance of curious learning, and in the brighter intervals, where medals and prints and miniatures were suspended upon a surface of faded stuff. The place had both color and quiet; I thought it a perfect room for work, and went so far as to say to myself that, if it were mine to sit and scribble in, there was no knowing but that I might learn to write as well as the author of _Beltraffio_. This distinguished man did not turn up, and I rummaged freely among his treasures. At last I took down a book that detained me awhile, and seated myself in a fine old leather chair by the window to turn it over. I had been occupied in this way for half-an-hour,--a good part of the afternoon had waned,--when I became conscious of another presence in the room, and, looking up from my quarto, saw that Mrs. Ambient, having pushed open the door in the same noiseless way that marked, or disguised, her entrance the night before, had advanced across the threshold. On seeing me she stopped; she had not, I think, expected to find me. But her hesitation was only of a moment; she came straight to her husband"s writing-table as if she were looking for something. I got up and asked her if I could help her. She glanced about an instant, and then put her hand upon a roll of papers which I recognized, as I had placed it in that spot in the morning on coming down from my room.
"Is this the new book?" she asked, holding it up. "The very sheets, with precious annotations." "I mean to take your advice;" and she tucked the little bundle under her arm. I congratulated her cordially, and ventured to make of my triumph, as I presumed to call it, a subject of pleasantry. But she was perfectly grave, and turned away from me, as she had presented herself, without a smile; after which I settled down to my quarto again, with the reflection that Mrs. Ambient was a queer woman.
My triumph, too, suddenly seemed to me rather vain. A woman who could n"t smile in the right place would never understand Mark Ambient. He came in at last in person, having brought the doctor back with him. "He was away from home," Mark said, "and I went after him, to where he was supposed to be. He had left the place, and I followed him to two or three others, which accounts for my delay." He was now with Mrs. Ambient looking at the child, and was to see Mark again before leaving the house. My host noticed, at the end of ten minutes, that the proof-sheets of his new book had been removed from the table; and when I told him, in reply to his question as to what I knew about them, that Mrs. Ambient had carried them off to read, he turned almost pale for an instant with surprise. "What has suddenly made her so curious?" he exclaimed; and I was obliged to tell him that I was at the bottom of the mystery. I had had it on my conscience to a.s.sure her that she really ought to know of what her husband was capable. "Of what I am capable? _Elle ne s"en dottie que trop!_" said Ambient, with a laugh; but he took my meddling very good-naturedly, and contented himself with adding that he was very much afraid she would burn up the sheets, with his emendations, of which he had no duplicate. The doctor paid a long visit in the nursery, and before he came down I retired to my own quarters, where I remained till dinner-time. On entering the drawing-room at this hour, I found Miss Ambient in possession, as she had been the evening before.
"I was right about Dolcino," she said, as soon as she saw me, with a strange little air of triumph. "He is really very ill."
"Very ill! Why, when I last saw him, at four o"clock, he was in fairly good form."
"There has been a change for the worse, very sudden and rapid, and when the doctor got here he found diphtheritic symptoms. He ought to have been called, as I knew, in the morning, and the child ought n"t to have been brought into the garden."
"My dear lady, he was very happy there," I answered, much appalled.
"He would be happy anywhere. I have no doubt he is happy now, with his poor little throat in a state--" she dropped her voice as her brother came in, and Mark let us know that, as a matter of course, Mrs. Ambient would not appear. It was true that Dolcino had developed diphtheritic symptoms, but he was quiet for the present, and his mother was earnestly watching him. She was a perfect nurse, Mark said, and the doctor was coming back at ten o"clock. Our dinner was not very gay; Ambient was anxious and alarmed, and his sister irritated me by her constant tacit a.s.sumption, conveyed in the very way she nibbled her bread and sipped her wine, of having "told me so." I had had no disposition to deny anything she told me, and I could not see that her satisfaction in being justified by the event made poor Dolcino"s throat any better. The truth is that, as the sequel proved, Miss Ambient had some of the qualities of the sibyl, and had therefore, perhaps, a right to the sibylline contortions. Her brother was so preoccupied that I felt my presence to be an indiscretion, and was sorry I had promised to remain over the morrow. I said to Mark that, evidently, I had better leave them in the morning; to which he replied that, on the contrary, if he was to pa.s.s the next days in the fidgets, my company would be an extreme relief to him. The fidgets had already begun for him, poor fellow; and as we sat in his study with our cigars after dinner, he wandered to the door whenever he heard the sound of the doctor"s wheels. Miss Ambient, who shared this apartment with us, gave me at such moments significant glances; she had gone upstairs before rejoining us to ask after the child His mother and his nurse gave a tolerable account of him; but Miss Ambient found his fever high and his symptoms very grave. The doctor came at ten o"clock, and I went to bed after hearing from Mark that he saw no present cause for alarm. He had made every provision for the night, and was to return early in the morning.
I quitted my room at eight o"clock the next day, and, as I came downstairs, saw, through the open door of the house, Mrs. Ambient standing at the front gate of the grounds, in colloquy with the physician. She wore a white dressing-gown, but her shining hair was carefully tucked away in its net, and in the freshness of the morning, after a night of watching, she looked as much "the type of the lady" as her sister-in-law had described her. Her appearance, I suppose, ought to have rea.s.sured me; but I was still nervous and uneasy, so that I shrank from meeting her with the necessary question about Dolcino. None the less, however, was I impatient to learn how the morning found him; and, as Mrs. Ambient had not seen me, I pa.s.sed into the grounds by a roundabout way, and, stopping at a further gate, hailed the doctor just as he was driving away. Mrs. Ambient had returned to the house before he got into his gig.
"Excuse me, but as a friend of the family, I should like very much to hear about the little boy."
The doctor, who was a stout, sharp man, looked at me from head to foot, and then he said, "I"m sorry to say I have n"t seen him."
"Have n"t seen him?"
"Mrs. Ambient came down to meet me as I alighted, and told me that he was sleeping so soundly, after a restless night, that she did n"t wish him disturbed. I a.s.sured her I would n"t disturb him, but she said he was quite safe now and she could look after him herself."