_ CHAPTER IV
The summer breath of the roses blew sweetly in through the long windows of the Countess's morning-room from the little garden outside as Barker and Claudius entered. There was an air of inhabited luxury which was evidently congenial to the American, for he rubbed his hands softly together and touched one or two objects caressingly while waiting for the lady of the house. Claudius glanced at the table and took up a book, with that singular student habit that is never lost. It was a volume of English verse, and in a moment he was reading, just as he stood, with his hat caught between the fingers that held the book, oblivious of countesses and visits and formalities. There was a rustle and a step on the garden walk, and both men turned towards the open glass door. Claudius almost dropped the vellum-covered poet, and was very perceptibly startled as he recognised the lady of his Heidelberg adventure--the woman who had got, as by magic, a hold over his thoughts, so that he dreamed of her and wondered about her, sleeping and waking.
Dark-eyed Countess Margaret, all clad in pure white, the smallest of lace fichus just dropped over her heavy hair, moved smoothly up the steps and into the room.
"Good morning, Mr. Barker, I am so glad you have come," said she, graciously extending her hand in the cordial Transatlantic fashion.
"Permit me to present my friend, Professor Claudius," said Barker. Claudius bowed very low. The plunge was over, and he recovered his outward calm, whatever he might feel.
"Mr. Barker flatters me, Madam," he said quietly. "I am not a professor, but only a private lecturer."
"I am too far removed from anything learned to make such distinctions," said the Countess. "But since good fortune has brought you into the circle of my ignorance, let me renew my thanks for the service you did me in Heidelberg the other day."
Claudius bowed and murmured something inaudible.
"Or had you not realised that I was the heroine of the parasol at the broken tower?" asked Margaret smiling, as she seated herself in a low chair and motioned to her guests to follow her example. Barker selected a comfortable seat, and arranged the cushion to suit him before he subsided into repose, but the Doctor laid hands on a stern and solid-looking piece of carving, and sat upright facing the Countess.
"Pardon me," said he, "I had. But it is always startling to realise a dream." The Countess looked at Claudius rather inquiringly; perhaps she had not expected he was the sort of man to begin an acquaintance by making compliments. However, she said nothing, and he continued, "Do you not always find it so?"
"The bearded hermit is no duffer," thought Mr. Barker. "He will say grace over the whole barrel of pork."
"Ah! I have few dreams," replied the Countess, "and when I do have any, I never realise them. I am a very matter-of-fact person."
"What matters the fact when you are the person, Madam?" retorted Claudius, fencing for a discussion of some kind.
"Immense," thought Mr. Barker, changing one leg over the other and becoming interested.
"Does that mean anything, or is it only a pretty paradox?" asked the lady, observing that Claudius had thrown himself boldly into a crucial position. Upon his answer would probably depend her opinion of him as being either intelligent or _banal_ It is an easy matter to frame paradoxical questions implying a compliment, but it is no light task to be obliged to answer them oneself. Claudius was not thinking of producing an effect, for the fascination of the dark woman was upon him, and the low, strange voice bewitched him, so he said what came uppermost.
"Yes," said he, "there are persons whose lives may indeed be matters of fact to themselves--who shall say?--but who are always dreams in the lives of others."
"Charming," laughed the Countess, "do you always talk like that, Professor Claudius?"
"I have always thought," Mr. Barker remarked in his high-set voice, "that I would like to be the dream of somebody's life. But somehow things have gone against me."
The other two laughed. He did not strike one as the sort of individual who would haunt the love-sick dreams of a confiding heart.
"I would rather it were the other way," said Claudius thoughtfully.
"And I," rejoined the American, "would drink perdition to the unattainable."
"Either I do not agree with you, Mr. Barker," said the Countess, "or else I believe nothing is unattainable."
"I implore you to be kind, and believe the latter," he answered courteously.
"Come, I will show you my garden," said Margaret rising. "It is pleasanter in the open air." She led the way out through the glass door, the men walking on her right and left.
"I am very fond of my garden," she said, "and I take great care of it when I am here." She stopped and pulled two or three dead leaves off a rosebush to illustrate her profession of industry.
"And do you generally live here?" asked Claudius, who was as yet in complete ignorance of the Countess's name, title, nationality, and mode of life, for Mr. Barker had, for some occult reason, left him in the dark.
Perhaps the Countess guessed as much, for she briefly imparted a good deal of information.
"When Count Alexis, my husband, was alive, we lived a great deal in Russia. But I am an American like Mr. Barker, and I occasionally make a trip to my native country. However, I love this place in summer, and I always try to be here. That is my friend, Miss Skeat, who lives with me."
Miss Skeat was stranded under a tree with a newspaper and several books. Her polished cheekbones and knuckles glimmered yellow in the shade. By her side was a long cane chair, in which lay a white silk wrap and a bit of needlework, tumbled together as the Countess had left them when she went in to receive her visitors. Miss Skeat rose as the party approached. The Countess introduced the two men, who bowed low, and they all sat down, Mr. Barker on the bench by the ancient virgin, and Claudius on the grass at Margaret's feet. It was noonday, but there was a light breeze through, the flowers and grasses. The conversation soon fell into pairs as they sat.
"I should not have said, at first sight, that you were a very imaginative person, Dr. Claudius," said the Countess.
"I have been dreaming for years," he answered. "I am a mathematician, and of late I have become a philosopher in a small way, as far as that is possible from reading the subject. There are no two branches of learning that require more imagination than mathematics and philosophy."
"Philosophy, perhaps," she replied, "but mathematics--I thought that was an exact science, where everything was known, and there was no room for dreaming."
"I suppose that is the general impression. But do you think it requires no imagination to conceive a new application of knowledge, to invent new methods where old ones are inadequate, to lay out a route through the unknown land beyond the regions of the known?"
"Ordinary people, like me, associate mathematics with measurement and figures and angles."
"Yes," said Claudius, "but it is the same as though you confused religion with its practical results. If the religion is true at all, it would be just as true if man did not exist, and if it consequently had no application to life."
"I understand the truth of that, though we might differ about the word. So you have been dreaming for years--and what were your dreams like?" The Countess looked down earnestly at Claudius, who in his turn looked at her with a little smile. She thought he was different from other men, and he was wondering how much of his dreams he might tell her.
"Of all sorts," he answered, still looking up into her face. "Bitter and sweet. I have dreamed of the glory of life and of mind-power, of the accomplishment of the greatest good to the greatest number; I have believed the extension of science possible 'beyond the bounds of all imaginable experience' into the realms of the occult and hidden; I have wandered with Hermes by the banks of the Nile, with Gautama along the mud-flats of the Ganges. I have disgusted myself with the writings of those who would reduce all history and religion to solar myths, and I have striven to fathom the meaning of those whose thoughts are profound and their hearts noble, but their speech halting. I have dreamed many things, Countess, and the worst is that I have lived to weary of my dreams, and to say that all things are vanity--all save one," he added with hesitation. There was a momentary pause.
"Of course," Mr. Barker was saying to Miss Skeat, with a fascinating smile, "I have the greatest admiration for Scotch heroism. John Grahame of Claver-house. Who can read Macaulay's account--"
"Ah," interrupted the old gentlewoman, "if you knew how I feel about these odious calumnies!"
"I quite understand that," said Barker sympathetically. He had discovered Miss Skeat's especial enthusiasm.
Margaret turned again to the Doctor.
"And may I ask, without indiscretion, what the one dream may be that you have refused to relegate among the vanities?"
"Woman," answered Claudius, and was silent.
The Countess thought the Doctor spoke ironically, and she laughed aloud, half amused and half annoyed. "I am in earnest," said Claudius, plucking a blade of grass and twisting it round his finger.
"Truly?" asked she.
"Foi de gentilhomme!" he answered.
"But Mr. Barker told me you lived like a hermit."
"That is the reason it has been a dream," said he.
"You have not told me what the dream was like. What beautiful things have you fancied about us?"
"I have dreamed of woman's mission, and of woman's love. I have fancied that woman and woman's love represented the ruling spirit, as man and man's brain represent the moving agent, in the world. I have drawn pictures of an age in which real chivalry of word and thought and deed might be the only law necessary to control men's actions. Not the scenic and theatrical chivalry of the middle age, ready at any moment to break out into epidemic crime, but a true reverence and understanding of woman's supreme right to honour and consideration; an age wherein it should be no longer coarsely said that love is but an episode in the brutal life of man, while to woman it is life itself. I have dreamed that the eternal womanhood of the universe beckoned me to follow."
The Countess could not take her eyes off Claudius. She had never met a man like him; at least she had never met a man who plunged into this kind of talk after half an hour's acquaintance. There was a thrill of feeling in her smooth deep voice when she answered: "If all men thought as you think, the world would be a very different place."
"It would he a better place in more ways than one," he replied.
"And yet you yourself call it a dream," said Margaret, musing.
"It is only you, Countess, who say that dreams are never realised."
"And do you expect to realise yours?"
"Yes--I do." He looked at her with his bold blue eyes, and she thought they sparkled.
"Tell me," she asked, "are you going to preach a crusade for the liberation of our sex? Do you mean to bring about the great change in the social relations of the world? Is it you who will build up the pedestal which we are to mount and from which we shall survey countless ranks of adoring men?"
"Do you not see, as you look down on me from your throne, from this chair, that I have begun already?" answered Claudius, smiling, and making a pretence of folding his hands.
"No," said the Countess, overlooking his last speech; "if you had any convictions about it, as you pretend to have, you would begin at once and revolutionise the world in six months. What is the use of dreaming? It is not dreamers who make history."
"No, it is more often women. But tell me, Countess, do you approve of my crusade? Am I not right? Have I your sanction?"
Margaret was silent. Mr. Barker's voice was heard again, holding forth to Miss Skeat.
"In all ages," he said, with an air of conviction, "the aristocracy of a country have been in reality the leaders of its thought and science and enlightenment. Perhaps the form of aristocracy most worthy of admiration is that time-honoured institution of pre-eminent families, the Scottish clan, the Hebrew tribe--"
Claudius overheard and opened his eyes. It seemed to him that Barker was talking nonsense. Margaret smiled, for she knew her companion well, and understood in a moment that the American had discovered her hobby, and was either seeking to win her good graces, or endeavouring to amuse himself by inducing her to air her views. But Claudius returned to the charge.
"What is it to be, Countess?" he asked. "Am I to take up arms and sail out and conquer the universe, and bring it bound to your feet to do you homage; or shall I go back to my turret chamber in Heidelberg?"
"Your simile seems to me to be appropriate," said Margaret. "I am sure your forefathers must have been Vikings."
"They were," replied Claudius, "for I am a Scandinavian. Shall I go out and plunder the world for your benefit? Shall I make your universality, your general expression, woman, sovereign over my general expression, man?"
"Considering who is to be the gainer," she answered, laughing, "I cannot well withhold my consent. When will you begin?"
"Now."
"And how?"
"How should I begin," said he, a smile on his face, and the light dancing in his eyes, "except by making myself the first convert?"
Margaret was used enough to pretty speeches, in earnest and in jest, but she thought she had never heard any one turn them more readily than the yellow-bearded student.
"And Mr. Barker," she asked, "will you convert him?"
"Can you look at him at this moment, Countess, and say you really think he needs it?"
She glanced at the pair on the bench, and laughed again, in the air, for it was apparent that Mr. Barker had made a complete conquest of Miss Skeat. He had led the conversation about tribes to the ancient practices of the North American Indians, and was detailing their customs with marvellous fluency. A scientific hearer might have detected some startling inaccuracies, but Miss Skeat listened with rapt attention. Who, indeed, should know more about Indians than a born American who had travelled in the West?
The Countess turned the conversation to other subjects, and talked intelligently about books. She evidently read a great deal, or rather she allowed Miss Skeat to read to her, and her memory was good. Claudius was not behind in sober criticism of current literature, though his reading had been chiefly of a tougher kind. Time flew by quickly, and when the two men rose to go their visit had lasted two hours.
"You will report the progress of your conquest?" said the Countess to Claudius as she gave him her hand, which he stooped to kiss in the good old German fashion.
"Whenever you will permit me, Countess," he said.
"I am always at home in the middle of the day. And you too, Mr. Barker, do not wait to be asked before you come again. You are absolutely the only civilised American I know here."
"Don't say that, Countess. There is the Duke, who came with me yesterday."
"But he is English."
"But he is also American. He owns mines and prairies, and he emigrates semi-annually. They all do now. You know rats leave a sinking ship, and they are going to have a commune in England."
"Oh, Mr. Barker, how can you!" exclaimed Miss Skeat.
"But I am only joking, of course," said he, and pacified her. So they parted.
Mr. Barker and Claudius stood on the front door-step, and the former lit a cigar while the carriage drove up.
"Doctor," said he, "I consider you the most remarkable man of my acquaintance."
"Why?" asked Claudius as he got into the carriage.
"Well, for several reasons. Chiefly because though you have lived in a 'three pair back' for years, and never seen so much as a woman's ear, by your own account, you nevertheless act as if you had never been out of a drawing-room during your life. You are the least shy man I ever saw."
"Shy?" exclaimed Claudius, "what a funny idea! Why should I be shy?"
"No reason in the world, I suppose, after all. But it is very odd." And Mr. Barker ruminated, rolling his cigar in his mouth. "Besides," he added, after a long pause, "you have made a conquest."
"Nonsense. Now, you have some right to flatter yourself on that score."
"Miss Skeat?" said Mr. Barker. "Sit still, my heart!"
They drove along in silence for some time. At last Mr. Barker began again,--
"Well, Professor, what are you going to do about it?"
"About what?"
"Why, about the conquest. Shall you go there again?"
"Very likely." Claudius was annoyed at his companion's tone of voice. He would have scoffed at the idea that he loved the Countess at first sight; but she nevertheless represented his ideal to him, and he could not bear to hear Mr. Barker's chaffing remarks. Of course Barker had taken him to the house, and had a right to ask if Claudius had found the visit interesting. But Claudius was determined to check any kind of levity from the first. He did not like it about women on any terms, but in connection with the Countess Margaret it was positively unbearable. So he answered curtly enough to show Mr. Barker he objected to it. The latter readily understood and drew his own inferences.
A different conversation ensued in the Countess's garden when the visitors were gone.
"Well, Miss Skeat," said Margaret, "what do you think of my new acquaintances?"
"I think Mr. Barker is the most agreeable American I ever met," said Miss Skeat. "He has very sound views about social questions, and his information on the subject of American Indians is perfectly extraordinary."
"And the Doctor? what do you think of him?"
"He dresses very oddly," said the lady companion; "but his manners seem everything that could be desired, and he has aristocratic hands."
"I did not notice his dress much. But he is very handsome. He looks like a Scandinavian hero. You know I was sure I should meet him again that day in Heidelberg."
"I suppose he really is very good-looking," assented Miss Skeat.
"Shall we have them to dinner some day? I think we might; very quietly, you know."
"I would certainly advise it, dear Countess. You really ought to begin and see people in some way besides allowing them to call on you. I think this solitude is affecting your spirits."
"Oh no; I am very happy--at least, as happy as I can be. But we will have them to dinner. When shall it be?"
"To-morrow is too soon. Say Thursday, since you ask me," said Miss Skeat.
"Very well. Shall we read a little?" And Tourgueneff was put into requisition.
It was late in the afternoon when the Countess's phaeton, black horses, black liveries, and black cushions, swept round a corner of the drive. Claudius and Barker, in a hired carriage, passed her, coming from the opposite direction. The four people bowed to each other--the ladies graciously, the men with courteous alacrity. Each of the four was interested in the others, and each of the four felt that they would all be thrown together in the immediate future. There was a feeling among them that they had known each other a long time, though they were but acquaintances of to-day and yesterday.
"I have seldom seen anything more complete than that turn-out," said Mr. Barker. "The impression of mourning is perfect; it could not have been better if it had been planned by a New York undertaker."
"Are New York undertakers such great artists?" asked Claudius.
"Yes; people get buried more profusely there. But don't you think it is remarkably fine?"
"Yes. I suppose you are trying to make me say that the Countess is a beautiful woman," answered Claudius, who was beginning to understand Barker. "If that is what you want, I yield at once. I think she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw."
"Ah!--don't you think perhaps that Miss Skeat acts as an admirable foil?"
"Such beauty as that requires no foil. The whole world is a foil to her."
"Wait till you come to America. I will show you her match in Newport."
"I doubt it. What is Newport?"
"Newport is the principal watering-place of our magnificent country. It is Baden, Homburg, Bigorre, and Biarritz rolled into one. It is a terrestrial paradise, a land of four-in-hands and houris and surf-bathing and nectar and ambrosia. I could not begin to give you an idea of it; wait till you get there."
"A society place, I suppose, then?" said Claudius, not in the least moved by the enthusiastic description.
"A society place before all things. But you may have plenty of solitude if you like."
"I hardly think I should care much for Newport," said Claudius.
"Well, I like it very much. My father has a place there, to which I take the liberty of inviting you for the season, whenever you make up your mind to enjoy yourself."
"You are very good, I am sure; and if, as you say, I ever go to America, which seems in your opinion paramount to enjoying myself, I will take advantage of your kind invitation."
"Really, I hope you will. Shall we go and dine?" _