Part 34 (1/2)
It is not to be supposed that a man of Barker's character would neglect the signal advantage he had gained in being injured, or at least badly bruised, while attempting to save Margaret from destruction. That he had really saved her was a less point in his favour than that he had barked his s.h.i.+ns in so doing. The proverbial relations.h.i.+p between pity and love is so exceedingly well known that many professional love-makers systematically begin their campaigns by endeavouring to move the compa.s.sion of the woman they are attacking. Occasionally they find a woman with whom pity is akin to scorn instead of to love--and then their policy is a failure.
The dark Countess was no soft-hearted Saxon maiden, any more than she was a cold-blooded, cut-throat American girl, calculating her romance by the yard, booking her flirtations by double-entry and marrying at compound interest, with the head of a railway president and the heart of an Esquimaux. She was rather one of those women who are ever ready to sympathise from a naturally generous and n.o.ble nature, but who rarely give their friends.h.i.+p and still more seldom their love. They marry, sometimes, where there is neither. They marry--ye G.o.ds! why do people marry, and what reasons will they not find for marrying? But such women, if they are wedded where their heart is not, are generally very young; far too young to know what they are doing; and though there be little inclination to the step, it always turns out that they had at least a respect for the man. Margaret had been married to Count Alexis because it was in every way such a plausible match, and she was only eighteen then, poor thing. But Alexis was such an uncommonly good fellow that she had honestly tried to love him, and had not altogether failed.
At least she had never had any domestic troubles, and when he was shot at Plevna, in 1876, she shed some very genuine tears and shut herself away from the world for a long time. But though her sorrow was sincere, it was not profound, and she knew it from the first, never deceiving herself with the idea that she could not marry again. She had sustained many a siege, however, both before her husband's untimely death and since; and though a stranger to love, she was no novice in love-making.
Indeed few women are; certainly no beautiful women.
Margaret, then, though a pure-hearted and brave lady, was of the world, understanding the wiles thereof; and so, when Mr. Barker began to come regularly to see her, and when she noticed how very long the slight lameness he had incurred from the runaway accident seemed to last, and when she observed how cunningly he endeavoured to excite her sympathy towards him, she began to suspect that he meant something more than a mere diversion for himself. He spoke so feelingly of his lonely position in the world; to accentuate which, he spoke of his father without any feeling whatever. He represented himself as so drearily lonely and friendless in this hard-hearted, th.o.r.n.y world. Quite a little lamb was Silas, leaving shreds of his pure white wool rent off and clinging to the briars of his solitary life-journey. He was very patient in his sufferings, he said, for he so keenly felt that coa.r.s.er natures could not suffer as he did; that troubles glided from their backs like water from the feathers of the draggled but happy goose, whereas on his tender heart they struck deep like a fiery rain. Was it not Danty who told of those poor people who were exposed to the molten drizzle? Ah yes! Danty knew, of course, for he had been a great sufferer. What a beautiful, yet sad, word is that, ”to suffer”! How gentle and lovely to suffer without complaint! Had the Countess ever thought of it? To suffer silently--and long--(here Silas cast a love-sick glance out of his small dark eyes)--with the hope of gaining an object infinitely far removed, but--(another glance)--infinitely beautiful and worth obtaining. Oh!
Silas would suffer for ever in such a hope! There was nothing Silas would not do that was saintly that he might gain heaven.
After a time, Margaret, who disliked this kind of talk intensely, began to look grave, an omen which Barker did not fail to interpret to his advantage, for it is a step gained when a woman begins to be serious.
Only a man ignorant of Margaret's real character, and incapable of appreciating it, could have been so deceived in this case. She had felt strongly that Barker had saved her life, and that he had acted with a boldness and determination on that occasion which would have merited her admiration even had it not commanded her grat.i.tude. But she was really grateful, and, wis.h.i.+ng to show it, could devise no better plan than to receive his visits and to listen politely to his conversation.
One day, late in the afternoon, they were sitting together over a cup of tea, and Barker was pouring out his experiences, or what he was pleased to call by that name, for they were not genuine. Not that his own existence would have been a dull or uninteresting chapter for a rainy afternoon, for Barker had led a stirring life of its kind. But as it was necessary to strike the pathetic key, seeing that Claudius had the heroic symphony to himself, Barker embroidered skilfully a little picture in which he appeared more sinned against than sinning, inasmuch as he had been called upon to play the avenging angel. He had succeeded, he admitted, in accomplis.h.i.+ng his object, which in his opinion had been a justifiable one, but it had left a sore place in his heart, and he had never quite recovered from the pain it had given him to give so much pain--wholesome pain indeed, but what of that?--to another.
”It was in New York, some years ago,” he said. ”A friend of mine, such a dear good fellow, was very much in love with a reigning beauty, a Miss--; well, you will guess the name. She threw him over, after a three months' engagement, in the most heartless manner, and he was so broken-hearted that he drank himself to death in six months at the club.
He died there one winter's evening under very painful circ.u.mstances.”
”A n.o.ble end,” said Margaret, scornfully. ”What a proud race we Americans are!” Barker sighed skilfully and looked reproachfully at Margaret.
”Poor chap!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”I saw him die. And that night,” continued Mr. Barker, with a mournful impressiveness, ”I determined that the woman who had caused so much unhappiness should be made to know what unhappiness is. I made up my mind that she should suffer what my friend had suffered. I knew her very well,--in fact she was a distant connection; so I went to her at a ball at the Van Sueindells'. I had engaged her to dance the German[2], and had sent her some very handsome roses. I had laid my plan already, and after a little chaff and a few turns I challenged her to a set flirtation. 'Let us swear,' I said, 'to be honest, and let us make a bet of a dozen pairs of gloves. If one of us really falls in love, he or she must acknowledge it and pay the gloves.' It was agreed, for she was in great spirits that night, and laughed at the idea that she could ever fall in love with _me_--poor me!
who have so little that is attractive. At first she thought it was only a joke, but as I began to visit her regularly and to go through all the formalities of love-making, she became interested. We were soon the talk of the town, and everybody said we were going to be married. Still the engagement did not come out, and people waited, open-mouthed, wondering what next. At last I thought I was safe, and so, the first chance I had at a party in Newport, I made a dead set at a new beauty just arrived from the South--I forget where. The other--the one with whom I was betting--was there, and I watched her. She lost her temper completely, and turned all sorts of colours. Then I knew I had won, and so I went back to her and talked to her for the rest of the evening, explaining that the other young lady was a sister of a very dear friend of mine.
[Footnote 2: American for the _cotillon_.]
”The next day I called on my beauty, and throwing myself at her feet, I declared myself vanquished. The result was just as I expected. She burst into tears and put her arms round my neck, and said it was she who lost, for she really loved me though she had been too proud to acknowledge it. Then I calmly rose and laughed. 'I do not care for you in the least,' I said; 'I only said so to make you speak. I have won the gloves.' She broke down completely, and went abroad a few days afterwards. And so I avenged my friend.”
There was a pause when Barker had finished his tale. He sipped his tea, and Margaret rose slowly and went to the window.
”Don't you think that is a very good story, Countess?” he asked. ”Don't you think I was quite right?” Still no answer. Margaret rang the bell, and old Vladimir appeared.
”Mr. Barker's carriage,” said she; then, recollecting herself, she repeated the order in Russian, and swept out of the room without deigning to look at the astonished young man, standing on the hearthrug with his tea-cup in his hand. How it is that Vladimir succeeds in interpreting his mistress's orders to the domestics of the various countries in which she travels is a mystery not fathomed, for in her presence he understands only the Slav tongue. But however that may be, a minute had not elapsed before Mr. Barker was informed by another servant that his carriage was at the door. He turned pale as he descended the steps.
You have carried it too far, Mr. Barker. That is not the kind of story that a lady of Countess Margaret's temper will listen to; for when you did the thing you have told her--if indeed you ever did it, which is doubtful--you did a very base and unmanly thing. It may not be very nice to act as that young lady did to your friend; but then, just think how very much worse it would have been if she had married him from a sense of duty, and made him feel it afterwards. Worse? Ay, worse than a hundred deaths. You are an a.s.s, Barker, with your complicated calculations, as the Duke has often told you; and now it is a thousand to one that you have ruined yourself with the Countess. She will never take your view that it was a justifiable piece of revenge; she will only see in it a cruel and dastardly deception, practised on a woman whose only fault was that, not loving, she discovered her mistake in time. A man should rejoice when a woman draws back from an engagement, reflecting what his life might have been had she not done so.
But Barker's face was sickly with disappointment as he drove away, and he could hardly collect himself enough to determine what was best to be done. However, after a time he came to the conclusion that a letter must be written of humble apology, accompanied by a few very expensive flowers, and followed after a week's interval by a visit. She could not mean to break off all acquaintance with him for so slight a cause. She would relent and see him again, and then he would put over on the other tack. He had made a mistake--very naturally, too--because she was always so reluctant to give her own individual views about anything. A mistake could be repaired, he thought, without any serious difficulty.
And so the next morning Margaret received some flowers and a note, a very gentlemanly note, expressive of profound regret that anything he could have said, and so forth, and so forth. And Margaret, whose strong temper sometimes made her act hastily, even when acting rightly, said to herself that she had maltreated the poor little beast, and would see him if he called again. That was how she expressed it, showing that to some extent Barker had succeeded in producing a feeling of pity in her mind--though it was a very different sort of pity from what he would have wished. Meanwhile Margaret returned to New York, where she saw her brother-in-law occasionally, and comforted him with the a.s.surance that when his hundred napoleons were at an end, she would take care of him.
And Nicholas, who was a gentleman, like his dead brother, proud and fierce, lived economically in a small hotel, and wrote magazine articles describing the state of his unhappy country.
Then Barker called and was admitted, Miss Skeat being present, and his face expressed a whole volume of apology, while he talked briskly of current topics; and so he gradually regained the footing he had lost. At all events he thought so, not knowing that though Margaret might forgive she could never forget; and that she was now forewarned and forearmed in perpetuity against any advance Barker might ever make.
One day the mail brought a large envelope with an English postage stamp, addressed in a strong, masculine hand, even and regular, and utterly without adornment, but yet of a strikingly peculiar expression, if a handwriting may be said to have an expression.
”CUNARD S.S. _Servia, Sept. 15th_.
”My Beloved Lady--Were it not for the possibility of writing to you, this voyage would be an impossible task to me; and even as it is, the feeling that what I write must travel away from you for many days before it travels towards you again makes me half suspect it is a mockery after all. After these wonderful months of converse it seems incredible that I should be thus taken out of your hearing and out of the power of seeing you. That I long for a sight of your dear face, that I hunger for your touch and for your sweet voice, I need not tell you or further a.s.severate. I am constantly looking curiously at the pa.s.sengers, vainly thinking that you must appear among them. The sea without you is not the sea, any more than heaven would be heaven were you not there.
”I cannot describe to you, my dear lady, how detestable the life on board is to me. I loathe the people with their inane chatter, and the idiotic children, and the highly-correct and gentlemanly captain, all equally. The philistine father, the sea-sick mother, the highly-cultured daughter, and the pipe-smoking son, are equally objects of disgust. When I go on deck the little children make a circle round me, because I am so big, and the sailors will not let me go on to forecastle under three s.h.i.+llings--which I paid cheerfully, however, because I can be alone there and think of you, without being contemplated as an object of wonder by about two hundred idiots. I have managed to rig a sort of table in my cabin at last, and here I sit, under the dubious light of the port-hole, wis.h.i.+ng it would blow, or that we might meet an iceberg, or anything, to scare the people into their dens and leave me a little open-air solitude.
”It seems so strange to be writing to you. I never wrote anything but little notes in the old days at Baden, and now I am writing what promises to be a long letter, for we cannot be in under six days, and in all that time there is nothing else I can do--nothing else I would do, if I could. And yet it is so different. Perhaps I am incoherent, and you will say, different from what? It is different from what it used to be, before that thrice-blessed afternoon in the Newport fog.