"I imagine it does n"t remind you of Silberstadt," said Acton. It was the first time that he had mentioned Silberstadt to her, for particular reasons. He knew she had a husband there, and this was disagreeable to him; and, furthermore, it had been repeated to him that this husband wished to put her away--a state of affairs to which even indirect reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the Baroness herself had often alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious position for a lady--this being known as a repudiated wife; and it is worthy of observation that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding grace and dignity. She had made it felt, from the first, that there were two sides to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose to present it, would be replete with touching interest.
"It does not remind me of the town, of course," she said, "of the sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful Schloss, with its moat and its cl.u.s.tering towers. But it has a little look of some other parts of the princ.i.p.ality. One might fancy one"s self among those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains; the sort of country one sees from the windows at Shreckenstein."
"What is Shreckenstein?" asked Acton.
"It is a great castle,--the summer residence of the Reigning Prince."
"Have you ever lived there?"
"I have stayed there," said the Baroness. Acton was silent; he looked a while at the uncastled landscape before him. "It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silberstadt," she said. "I should think you would want to know about my marriage; it must seem to you very strange."
Acton looked at her a moment. "Now you would n"t like me to say that!"
"You Americans have such odd ways!" the Baroness declared. "You never ask anything outright; there seem to be so many things you can"t talk about."
"We Americans are very polite," said Acton, whose national consciousness had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands, and who yet disliked to hear Americans abused. "We don"t like to tread upon people"s toes," he said. "But I should like very much to hear about your marriage. Now tell me how it came about."
"The Prince fell in love with me," replied the Baroness simply. "He pressed his suit very hard. At first he did n"t wish me to marry him; on the contrary. But on that basis I refused to listen to him. So he offered me marriage--in so far as he might. I was young, and I confess I was rather flattered. But if it were to be done again now, I certainly should not accept him."
"How long ago was this?" asked Acton.
"Oh--several years," said Eugenia. "You should never ask a woman for dates."
"Why, I should think that when a woman was relating history".... Acton answered. "And now he wants to break it off?"
"They want him to make a political marriage. It is his brother"s idea.
His brother is very clever."
"They must be a precious pair!" cried Robert Acton.
The Baroness gave a little philosophic shrug. "Que voulez-vous? They are princes. They think they are treating me very well. Silberstadt is a perfectly despotic little state, and the Reigning Prince may annul the marriage by a stroke of his pen. But he has promised me, nevertheless, not to do so without my formal consent."
"And this you have refused?"
"Hitherto. It is an indignity, and I have wished at least to make it difficult for them. But I have a little doc.u.ment in my writing-desk which I have only to sign and send back to the Prince."
"Then it will be all over?"
The Baroness lifted her hand, and dropped it again. "Of course I shall keep my t.i.tle; at least, I shall be at liberty to keep it if I choose.
And I suppose I shall keep it. One must have a name. And I shall keep my pension. It is very small--it is wretchedly small; but it is what I live on."
"And you have only to sign that paper?" Acton asked.
The Baroness looked at him a moment. "Do you urge it?"
He got up slowly, and stood with his hands in his pockets. "What do you gain by not doing it?"
"I am supposed to gain this advantage--that if I delay, or temporize, the Prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother.
He is very fond of me, and his brother has pushed him only little by little."
"If he were to come back to you," said Acton, "would you--would you take him back?"
The Baroness met his eyes; she colored just a little. Then she rose. "I should have the satisfaction of saying, "Now it is my turn. I break with your serene highness!""
They began to walk toward the carriage. "Well," said Robert Acton, "it "s a curious story! How did you make his acquaintance?"
"I was staying with an old lady--an old Countess--in Dresden. She had been a friend of my father"s. My father was dead; I was very much alone.
My brother was wandering about the world in a theatrical troupe."
"Your brother ought to have stayed with you," Acton observed, "and kept you from putting your trust in princes."
The Baroness was silent a moment, and then, "He did what he could," she said. "He sent me money. The old Countess encouraged the Prince; she was even pressing. It seems to me," Madame Munster added, gently, "that--under the circ.u.mstances--I behaved very well."
Acton glanced at her, and made the observation--he had made it before--that a woman looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or her sufferings. "Well," he reflected, audibly, "I should like to see you send his serene highness--somewhere!"
Madame Munster stooped and plucked a daisy from the gra.s.s. "And not sign my renunciation?"
"Well, I don"t know--I don"t know," said Acton.
"In one case I should have my revenge; in another case I should have my liberty."
Acton gave a little laugh as he helped her into the carriage. "At any rate," he said, "take good care of that paper."
A couple of days afterward he asked her to come and see his house. The visit had already been proposed, but it had been put off in consequence of his mother"s illness. She was a constant invalid, and she had pa.s.sed these recent years, very patiently, in a great flowered arm-chair at her bedroom window. Lately, for some days, she had been unable to see any one; but now she was better, and she sent the Baroness a very civil message. Acton had wished their visitor to come to dinner; but Madame M; auunster preferred to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that if she should go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also be asked, and it had seemed to her that the peculiar character of the occasion would be best preserved in a tete-a-tete with her host. Why the occasion should have a peculiar character she explained to no one. As far as any one could see, it was simply very pleasant. Acton came for her and drove her to his door, an operation which was rapidly performed.
His house the Baroness mentally p.r.o.nounced a very good one; more articulately, she declared that it was enchanting. It was large and square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept shrubbery, and was approached, from the gate, by a short drive. It was, moreover, a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth"s, and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented. The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had a.n.a.lyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point.
And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries--trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: paG.o.das of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the gla.s.s doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the paG.o.das and other curiosities every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy. Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things; she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares. She came to meet Madame Munster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected--she had had occasion to do so before--that American girls had no manners. She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton. Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy.
It was a source of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it should seem to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a trifle more of a nonent.i.ty; for Eugenia had hitherto been conscious of no moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins.
It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie"s pertness that she very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother"s hands. Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac. The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention. If there had been any one to say it to she would have declared that she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make this declaration--even in the strictest confidence--to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of unwontedness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges; that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point. One"s impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an inconvenience. One could trust him, at any rate, round all the corners of the world; and, withal, he was not absolutely simple, which would have been excess; he was only relatively simple, which was quite enough for the Baroness.
Lizzie reappeared to say that her mother would now be happy to receive Madame Munster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton"s apartment.
Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an aspiration on the girl"s part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill; she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that--neither so ill, nor, possibly, so modest. On a chair, beside her, lay a volume of Emerson"s Essays. It was a great occasion for poor Mrs.
Acton, in her helpless condition, to be confronted with a clever foreign lady, who had more manner than any lady--any dozen ladies--that she had ever seen.
"I have heard a great deal about you," she said, softly, to the Baroness.
"From your son, eh?" Eugenia asked. "He has talked to me immensely of you. Oh, he talks of you as you would like," the Baroness declared; "as such a son must talk of such a mother!"
Mrs. Acton sat gazing; this was part of Madame Munster"s "manner." But Robert Acton was gazing too, in vivid consciousness that he had barely mentioned his mother to their brilliant guest. He never talked of this still maternal presence,--a presence refined to such delicacy that it had almost resolved itself, with him, simply into the subjective emotion of grat.i.tude. And Acton rarely talked of his emotions. The Baroness turned her smile toward him, and she instantly felt that she had been observed to be fibbing. She had struck a false note. But who were these people to whom such fibbing was not pleasing? If they were annoyed, the Baroness was equally so; and after the exchange of a few civil inquiries and low-voiced responses she took leave of Mrs. Acton. She begged Robert not to come home with her; she would get into the carriage alone; she preferred that. This was imperious, and she thought he looked disappointed. While she stood before the door with him--the carriage was turning in the gravel-walk--this thought restored her serenity.
When she had given him her hand in farewell she looked at him a moment.
"I have almost decided to dispatch that paper," she said.
He knew that she alluded to the doc.u.ment that she had called her renunciation; and he a.s.sisted her into the carriage without saying anything. But just before the vehicle began to move he said, "Well, when you have in fact dispatched it, I hope you will let me know!"