"Scores," said I solemnly.
"I am very grateful to you for--for everything," she said almost in a whisper, with a sort of penitence that I understood well enough, and an obvious desire to show every proper feeling toward me.
"I delight to please you above all things now," I answered; but even to myself the words sounded cold and formal. Yet they were true; it was above all things my wish to persuade her that she was happy. To this end I used eagerly the aid of the four (or was it six?) gray horses, the necklace, and "Their Majesties."
In the next few days I was much with Elsa, but not much alone with her.
There was, of course, no want of ready company, but most of those who offered themselves merely intensified the constraint which their presence was expected to remove. Even Victoria overdid her part rather, betraying an exaggerated fear of leaving us to ourselves. Varvilliers"
admirable tact, his supreme apparent unconsciousness, and his never-failing flow of gaiety made him our ideal companion. I missed in him that sympathy with my sombre moods which bound me to Wetter, spirit to spirit; but for lighter hours, for hours that must be made light, he was incomparable. With him Elsa bloomed into merriment, and being, as it were, midway between us, he seemed to me to bridge the gulf of mind and temperament that separated her from me. Hour by hour she grew happier, less timid, more her true self. I took great comfort from this excellent state of things. No doubt I must be careful not to upset her (as Victoria said), but she was certainly getting used to me (as William Adolphus said). Moreover, I was getting used to her, to the obligations she expressed, and to the renunciations she involved. But I had no more wish to try to upset her.
It must be a familiar fact to many that we are very p.r.o.ne to mistake or confuse the sources of our pleasure and the causes of such contentment as we achieve. We attribute to our surroundings in general what is due to one especial part of them; for the sake of one feature the landscape"s whole aspect seems pleasant; we rob Peter with intent to pay Paul, and then in the end give the money to somebody else. It is not difficult to see how Elsa and I came to think that we got on better with one another because we both got on so well with Varvilliers, that we were more comfortable together because he made us both comfortable, that we came nearer to understanding each other because he understood us so admirably. We did not perceive even that he was the occasion of our improved relations, far less did we realize that he was their cause and their essence; that it was to him I looked, to him she looked; and that while he was between there could be no rude direct contact of her eyes with mine, nor of mine with hers. Onlookers see most of the game, they say, but here the onlookers were as blind as the players; there was an air of congratulation at Artenberg; the King and his bride were drawing closer together. The blindness was complete; Varvilliers himself shared it. Of his absolute good faith and utter unconsciousness I, who doubt most things, can not doubt. Had he been Wetter, I should have been alert for the wry smile and the lift of the brows; but he was his simple self, a perfect gentleman unspoiled by thought. Such are entirely delightful; that they work infinite havoc with established relations between other people seems a small price to pay for the privilege which their existence confers upon the world. My dear friend Varvilliers, for whom my heart is always warm, played the mischief with the relations between Elsa and myself, which we all (very whimsically) supposed him to be improving.
It was a comparatively small, although an interestingly unusual, thing that I came to enjoy Elsa"s society coupled with Varvilliers", and not to care much about it taken alone; it was a more serious, though far more ordinary, turn of affairs that Elsa should come to be happy enough with me provided that Varvilliers were there to--shall I say to take the edge off me?--but cared not a jot to meet me in his absence. The latter circ.u.mstance is simply and conventionally explained (and, after all, these conventional expressions are no more arbitrary than the alphabet, which is admitted to be a useful means of communicating our ideas) by saying that Elsa was falling in love with Varvilliers; my own state of mind would deserve a.n.a.lysis, but for a haunting notion that no states of mind are worth such trouble. Let us leave it; there it was. It was impossible to say which of us would miss Varvilliers more. He had become necessary to both of us. The conclusion drawn by the way of this world is, of course, at once obvious; it followed pat from the premise. We must both of us be deprived of him as soon as possible. I am not concerned to argue that the world is wrong; and the very best way to advance a paradox is to look as though you were uttering a plat.i.tude. In this art the wittiest writer cuts a poor figure beside the laws of society.
The end of the week approached. Elsa was to go; Varvilliers was to go.
So the arrangement stood; Elsa was to return, about Varvilliers" return nothing had been said. The bandage was still over the eyes of all of us; we had not perceived the need of settling anything about him. He was still as insignificant to us as he was to Princess Heinrich herself.
This being the state of the case, there enters to me one morning my good Cousin Elizabeth, tearfully radiant and abundantly maternal. The reason was soon declared. Elsa had been found crying again, and wondering vaguely what she was crying about. It was suggested to her that her grief was due to approaching departure; Elsa embraced the idea at once.
It was pointed out that a month"s absence from me was involved; Elsa sighed deeply and dabbed her eyes. Cousin Elizabeth dabbed hers as she told the story; then she caught me in her arms, kissed me, and said that her happiness was complete. What was I to do? I was profoundly surprised, but any display of that emotion would have been inappropriate and ungracious. I could appear only compa.s.sionate and gratified.
"Things do happen right sometimes, you see," pursued Cousin Elizabeth, triumphing in this refutation of some little sneer of mine which she had contested the day before. "I knew you had come to care for her, and now she cares for you. I never was indifferent to that side of it. I always hoped. And now it really is so! Kiss me, Augustin dear."
I kissed Cousin Elizabeth. I was miles away in thought, lost in perplexed musings.
"I comforted her, and told her that the time would soon pa.s.s, and that then she would have you all to herself, with no tiresome people to interrupt. But the poor darling still cried a little. But one can"t really grieve, can one? A little sorrow means so much happiness later on, doesn"t it? And though I couldn"t comfort her, you"ll be able to, I daresay. What"s a month?"
"Nothing," said I. I was conscious of realizing that it was at all events very little.
"I shall expect to see her quite smiling after she"s had a little talk with you," was Cousin Elizabeth"s parting speech. It won from me a very rea.s.suring nod, and left me in mazes of bewilderment. There was nothing in particular which I believed, but I disbelieved one thing very definitely. It was that Elsa wept because she must be absent from me for a month--a month delightfully busied with the making of four hundred frocks.
Impelled partly by duty but more by curiosity, I went in search of her.
Having failed to find her in the house or on the terrace, I descended into the hanging woods, and made for an arbour which she and I and Varvilliers had fallen into the habit of frequenting. A broad gra.s.s path ran up to the front of it, but, coming as I did, I approached it by a side track. Elsa sat on the seat and Varvilliers stood before her. He was talking; she leaned forward listening, with her hands clasped in her lap and her eyes fixed on his face. Neither perceived me. I walked briskly toward them, without loitering or spying, but I did not call out. Varvilliers" talk was light, if it might be judged by his occasional laughs. When I was ten yards off I called, "Hallo, here you are!" He turned with a little start, but an easy smile. Elsa flushed red. I had not yet apprehended the truth, although now the idea was dimly in my mind. I sat down by Elsa, and we talked. Of what I have forgotten. I think, in part, of William Adolphus, I laughing at my brother-in-law, Varvilliers feigning to defend him with good-humoured irony. It did not matter of what we talked. For me there was significance in nothing save in Elsa"s eyes. They were all for Varvilliers, for him sparkled, for him clouded, for him wondered, laughed, applauded, lived. Presently I dropped out of the conversation and sat silent, facing this new thing. It was not bitter to me; my mood of desire had gone too utterly. There was no pang of defeated rivalry.
But I knew why Elsa had cried, who had power to bring, and who also had power to dry, her tears.
Suddenly I saw, or seemed to see, a strange and unusual restraint in Varvilliers" manner. He missed the thread of a story, stumbled, grew dull, and lost his animation. He seemed to talk now for duty, not for pleasure, as a man who covers an awkward moment rather than employs to the full a happy opportunity. Then his glance rested for an instant on my face. I do not know what or how much my face told him, but I did not look at him unkindly.
"I must go, if I may," he said addressing me. "I promised to ride with Vohrenlorf, and the time is past."
He bowed to Elsa and to me.
"We shall see you this afternoon?" she asked.
He bowed again in acquiescence, but with an air of discomfort. Elsa looked at him, and from him to me. She flushed again, opened her lips, but did not speak; then she bent her head down, and the blush spread from neck to forehead.
"Go, my dear friend, go," said I.
He looked at me as though he would have spoken, almost as though he would have protested or excused himself, inadmissible as such a thing plainly was. I smiled at him, but waved my hand to dismiss him. He turned and walked quickly away along the broad gra.s.s path. I watched him till he was out of sight; all the while I was conscious of an utter motionlessness in Elsa"s figure beside me.
We must have sat there a long while in that unbroken eloquent silence, hardly moving, never looking at one another. For her I was full of grief; a wayward thing it was, indeed, of fate to fashion out of Varvilliers" pleasant friendship this new weapon of attack. She had been on the way to contentment--at least to resignation--but was now thrust back. And she was ashamed. Poor child! why, in Heaven"s name, should she be ashamed? Should she not better have been ashamed of a fancy so ill directed as to light on me when Varvilliers was by? For myself I seemed to see rising before me the need for a new deception, a hoodwinking of all the world, a secret that none must know or suspect, that she and I must have between us for our own. The thing might pa.s.s; she was young.
Very likely, but it would not pa.s.s in time. There were the frocks. Ah, but the wardrobe that half hid me would not suffice to obscure Varvilliers. Or would it? I smiled for an instant. Instead of hiding behind the wardrobe, I saw myself becoming part of it, blending with it.
Should I take rank as the four-hundred-and-first frock? "Willingly give thyself up to Clotho, allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases." Even into a frock, O Emperor? Goes the philosophy as far as that?
At last I turned to her and laid my hand gently on her clasped hands.
"Come, my dear," said I, "we must be going back. They"ll all be looking for us. We"re too important people to be allowed to hide ourselves."
As I spoke I jumped to my feet, holding out my hand to help her to rise.
She looked up at me in an oddly pathetic way. I was afraid that she was going to speak of the matter, and there was nothing to be gained by speaking of it. "Give me your hand," I said with a smile, and she obeyed. The pleading in her eyes persisted. As she stood up, I kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then we walked away together.
That afternoon I was summoned to Princess Heinrich"s room to drink tea with her and the d.u.c.h.ess. Cousin Elizabeth was still exuberant; it seemed to me that a cold watchfulness governed my mother"s mood.
Relations between my mother and myself have not always been cordial; but I have never failed to perceive and respect in her a fine inner sincerity, an apt.i.tude for truth and a resolute facing of facts. While Cousin Elizabeth talked, the Princess sat smiling with her usual faint smile; it never showed the least inclination to become a laugh. She acquiesced politely in the rose-coloured description of Elsa"s feelings and affections. She had perception enough to know that the picture could not be true. Presently I took the liberty of informing her by a glance that I was not a partner in the delusion. She showed no surprise; but the fruit of my act was that she detained me by a gesture, after Cousin Elizabeth had taken her leave. For a few moments she sat silent; then she remarked:
"The d.u.c.h.ess is a very kind woman, very anxious to make everybody happy."
"Yes," said I carelessly.
"But it must be in her own way. She is romantic. She thinks everybody else must be the same. You and I know, Augustin, that things of that kind occupy a very small part of a man"s life. My s.e.x deludes itself.
And when a man occupies the position you do, it"s absurd to suppose that he pays much attention to them."
"No doubt Cousin Elizabeth exaggerates," said I, standing in a respectful att.i.tude before my mother.
"Well, I daresay you remember the time when Victoria was a girl. You recollect her folly? But you and I were firm--you behaved very well then, Augustin--and the result is that she is most suitably and most happily married."
I bowed. I did not think that any agreement of mine could be worthy of the magnificent boldness of Princess Heinrich"s statement.
"Girls are silly; they pa.s.s through a silly time," she pursued, smiling.
A sudden remembrance shot across me.
"It doesn"t do to take any notice of such things," said I gravely.
Happily, perhaps, Princess Heinrich was not awake to the fact that she herself was being quoted to herself.
"I"m glad to hear you say so," she said. "You have your work to do.
Don"t waste your time in thinking of girls" megrims--or of their mothers" nonsense."
I left her presence with a strong sense that Providence had erred in not making her a saint, a king, or anything else that demands a resolute repression of human infirmities. Some people are content to triumph over their own weaknesses; my mother had an eye also for the frailty of others.
She made no reference at all to Varvilliers. There was always something to be learned from Princess Heinrich. From early youth I was inured to a certain degree of painfulness in the lesson.
"Willingly give thyself up to Clotho." My mother was more than willing.
She was proud; and, if I may be allowed to vary the metaphor, she embarked on the ship of destiny with a family ticket.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A PARADOX OF SENSIBILITY.