One Of Them

“Indiscreet wretch!” said she, laughing; “not but he told the truth there. I remember having given him something like what lawyers call a retainer.”

“Such a man might be very troublesome, Loo,” said he, cautiously.

“Not a bit of it, papa; he might be very useful, on the contrary. Indeed, I’m’ not quite certain that I have not exactly the very service on which to employ him.”

“Remember, Loo,” said he, warmly, “he’s a shrewd fellow in his way.”

“In his way’ he is, but his way is not mine,” said she, with a saucy toss of the head. “Have you any idea, papa, of what may be the sort of place or employment he looks for? Is he ambitious, or has adversity taught him humility?”

“A good deal depends upon the time of the day when one talks to him. Of a morning he is usually downcast and depressed; he ‘d go out as a magistrate to the Bahamas or consul to a Poyais republic. Towards dinner-time he grows more difficult and pretentious; and when he has got three or four glasses of wine in, he would n’t take less than the Governorship of a colony.”

“Then it’s of an evening one should see him.”

“Nay, I should say not, Loo. I would rather take him at his cheap moment.”

“Quite wrong, papa, – quite wrong. It is when his delusions are strongest that he will be most easily led. His own vanity will be the most effectual of all intoxications. But you may leave him to me without fear or misgiving.”

“I suppose so,” said he, dryly. And a silence of some minutes ensued. “Why are you taking such pains about your hair, Loo,” asked he, “if you are going in domino?”

“None can ever tell when or where they must unmask in this same life of ours, papa,” said she, laughingly; “and I have got such a habit of providing for casualties that I have actually arranged my papers and letters in the fashion they ought to be found in after my death.”

Holmes sighed. The thought of such a thing as death is always unwelcome to a man with a light auburn wig and a florid complexion, who wants to cheat Fate into the notion that he is hale and hearty, and who likes to fancy himself pretty much what he was fifteen or twenty years ago. And Holmes sighed with a feeling of compassionate sorrow for himself.

“By the way, papa,” said she, in a careless, easy tone, “where are you stopping?”

“At the Hôtel d’Italie, my dear.”

“What do you think, – had n’t you better come here?”

“I don’t exactly know, nor do I precisely see how.”

“Leave all that to me, papa. You shall have an invitation, – ‘Sir William Heathcote’s compliments,’ &c, – all in due form, in the course of the day, and I ‘ll give directions about your room. You have no servant, I hope?”

“None.”

“So much the better; there is no guarding against the garrulity of that class, and all the craftiest stratagems of the drawing-room are often undermined in the servants’-hall. As for yourself, you know that you represent the late Captain’s executor. You were the guardian of poor dear Penthony, and his oldest friend in the world.”

“Knew him since he was so high!” said he, in a voice of mock emotion, as he held out his extended palm about two feet above the floor.

“That will give you a world of trouble, papa, for you ‘ll have to prepare yourself with so much family history, explaining what Morrises they were, how they were Penthonys, and so on. Sir William will torture you about genealogies.”

“I have a remedy for that, my dear,” said he, slyly. “I am most painfully deaf! No one will maintain a conversation of a quarter of an hour with me without risking a sore throat; not to say that no one can put delicate questions in the voice of a boatswain.”

“Dear papa, you are always what the French call ‘at the level of the situation,’ and your deafness will be charming, for our dear Baronet and future husband has a most inquisitive turn, and would positively torture you with interrogatories.”

“He ‘ll be more than mortal if he don’t give in, Loo. I gave a Lunacy Commissioner once a hoarseness that required a course of the waters at Vichy to cure; not to say that, by answering at cross purposes, one can disconcert the most zealous inquirer. But now, my dear, that I am in possession of my hearing, do tell me something about yourself and your plans.”

“I have none, papa, – none,” said she, with a faint sigh. “Sir William Heathcote has, doubtless, many, and into some of them I may perhaps enter. He intends, for instance, that some time in March I shall be Lady Heathcote; that we shall go and live – I’m not exactly sure where, though I know we ‘re to be perfectly happy, and, not wishing to puzzle him, I don’t ask how.”

“I have no doubt you will be happy, Loo,” said he, confidently. “Security, safety, my dear, are great elements of happiness.”

“I suppose they are,” said she, with another sigh; “and when one has been a privateer so long, it is pleasant to be enrolled in the regular navy, even though one should be laid up in ordinary.”

“Nay, nay, Loo, no fear of that!”

“On the contrary, papa, every hope of it! The best thing I could ask for would be oblivion.”

“My dear Loo,” said he, impressively, “the world has not got one half so good a memory as you fancy. It is our own foolish timidity – what certain folk call conscience – that suggests the idea how people are talking of us, and, like the valet in the comedy, we begin confessing our sins before we ‘re accused of them!”

“I know that is your theory, papa,” said she, laughing, “and that one ought always to ‘die innocent.’”

“Of course, my dear. It is only the jail chaplain benefits by what is called ‘a full disclosure of the terrible tragedy.’”

“I hear my carriage creeping up quietly to the door,” said she, listening. “Be sure you let me see you early tomorrow. Good-night.”

CHAPTER XXXVI. A GRAVE SCENE IN LIGHT COMPANY

Moralists have often found a fruitful theme in the utter barrenness of all the appliances men employ for their pleasures. What failures follow them, what weariness, what satiety and heart-sickness! The feast of Belshazzar everywhere!

To the mere eye nothing could be more splendid, nothing more suggestive of enjoyment, than the Pergola of Florence when brilliantly lighted and thronged with a gay and merry company. Character figures in every variety fancy or caprice could suggest – Turks, Styrians, Highlanders, Doges, Dervishes, and Devils – abounded, with Pifferari from Calabria, Muleteers, Matadors, and Conjurers; Boyards from Tobolsk jostled Male Crusaders, and Demons that might have terrified St. Anthony flitted past with Sisters of Charity! Strange parody upon the incongruities of our every-day life, costume serving but to typify the moral incompatibilities which are ever at work in our actual existence! for are not the people we see linked together – are not the social groupings we witness – just as widely separated by every instinct and every sentiment as are these characters in all their motley? Are the two yonder, as they sit at the fireside, not as remote from each other as though centuries had rolled between them? They toil along, it is true, together; they drag the same burden, but with different hopes and fears and motives. Bethink you “the friends so linked together” are like-minded? No, it is all masquerade; and the motley is that same easy conventionality by which we hope to escape undetected and unknown!

Our business now is not with the mass of this great assemblage; we are only interested for two persons, – one of whom, a tall figure in a black domino, leans against a pillar yonder, closely scrutinizing each new-comer that enters, and eagerly glancing at the sleeve of every yellow domino that passes.

He has been there from an early hour of the evening, and never left it since. Many a soft voice has whispered some empty remark on his impassiveness; more than once a jesting sarcasm has been uttered upon his participation in the gayety around; but he has never replied, but with folded arms patiently awaited the expected one. At last he is joined by another, somewhat shorter and stouter, but dressed like him, who, bending close to his ear, whispers, —

“Why are you standing here, – have you not seen her?”

“No; she has never passed this door.”

“She entered by the stage, and has been walking about this hour. I saw her talking to several, to whom, to judge by their gestures, her remarks must have been pointed enough; but there she is, – see, she is leaning on the arm of that Malay chief. Join her; you know the signal.”

Paten started suddenly from his lounging attitude, and cleft his way through the crowd, little heeding the comments his rude persistence called forth. As he drew nigh where the yellow domino stood, he hesitated and glanced around him, as though he felt that every eye was watching him, and only after a moment or so did he seem to remember that he was disguised. At last he approached her, and, taking her sleeve in his hand, unpinned the little cross of tricolored ribbon and fastened it on his own domino. With a light gesture of farewell she quickly dismissed her cavalier and took his arm.

As he led her along through the crowd, neither spoke, and it was only at last, as seemingly baffled to find the spot he sought for, she said, —

“All places are alike here. Let us talk as we walk along.”

A gentle pressure on her arm seemed to assent, and she went on: —

“It was only at the last moment that I determined to come here this evening. You have deceived me. Yes; don’t deny it. Paten is with you here, and you never told me.”

He muttered something that sounded like apology.

“It was unfair of you,” said she, hurriedly, “for I was candid and open with you; and it was needless, besides, for we are as much apart as if hundreds of miles separated us. I told you already as much.”

“But why not see him? He alone can release you from the bond that ties you; he may be more generous than you suspect.”

“He generous! Who ever called him so?”