For a quarter of an hour I lay back in my place, stunned by the suddenness of the apparition. At last one of the two other passengers, a large and gorgeous captain of the White Königsberg Cuirassiers, civilly but firmly suggested that I might shut my window, as the evening was cold. I did so, with an apology, and relapsed into silence. The train ran swiftly on for a long time, and it was already beginning to slacken speed before entering another station when I roused myself, and made a sudden resolution. As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly lighted platform, I seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers, and got out, determined to take the first express back to Paris.
This time the circumstances of the vision had been so natural that it did not strike me that there was anything unreal about the face, or about the woman to whom it belonged. I did not try to explain to myself how the face, and the woman, could be travelling by a fast train from Berlin to Paris on a winter’s afternoon, when both were in my mind indelibly associated with the moonlight and the fountains in my own English home. I certainly would not have admitted that I had been mistaken in the dusk, attributing to what I had seen a resemblance to my former vision which did not really exist. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind, and I was positively sure that I had again seen the face I loved. I did not hesitate, and in a few hours I was on my way back to Paris. I could not help reflecting on my ill-luck. Wandering as I had been for many months, it might as easily have chanced that I should be travelling in the same train with that woman, instead of going the other way. But my luck was destined to turn for a time.
I searched Paris for several days. I dined at the principal hotels; I went to the theatres; I rode in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning, and picked up an acquaintance, whom I forced to drive with me in the afternoon. I went to mass at the Madeleine, and I attended the services at the English Church. I hung about the Louvre and Notre Dame. I went to Versailles. I spent hours in parading the Rue de Rivoli, in the neighbourhood of Meurice’s corner, where foreigners pass and re-pass from morning till night. At last I received an invitation to a reception at the English Embassy. I went, and I found what I had sought so long.
There she was, sitting by an old lady in grey satin and diamonds, who had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen grey eyes that seemed to take in everything they saw, with very little inclination to give much in return. But I did not notice the chaperon. I saw only the face that had haunted me for months, and in the excitement of the moment I walked quickly towards the pair, forgetting such a trifle as the necessity for an introduction.
She was far more beautiful than I had thought, but I never doubted that it was she herself and no other. Vision or no vision before, this was the reality, and I knew it. Twice her hair had been covered, now at last I saw it, and the added beauty of its magnificence glorified the whole woman. It was rich hair, fine and abundant, golden, with deep ruddy tints in it like red bronze spun fine. There was no ornament in it, not a rose, not a thread of gold, and I felt that it needed nothing to enhance its splendour; nothing but her pale face, her dark strange eyes, and her heavy eyebrows. I could see that she was slender, too, but strong withal, as she sat there quietly gazing at the moving scene in the midst of the brilliant lights and the hum of perpetual conversation.
I recollected the detail of introduction in time, and turned aside to look for my host. I found him at last. I begged him to present me to the two ladies, pointing them out to him at the same time.
“Yes — uh — by all means — uh—” replied his Excellency, with a pleasant smile. He evidently had no idea of my name, which was not to be wondered at.
“I am Lord Cairngorm,” I observed.
“Oh — by all means,” answered the Ambassador, with the same hospitable smile. “Yes — uh — the fact is, I must try and find out who they are; such lots of people, you know.”
“Oh, if you will present me, I will try and find out for you,” said I, laughing.
“Ah, yes — so kind of you — come along,” said my host.
We threaded the crowd, and in a few minutes we stood before the two ladies.
“‘Lowmintrduce L’d Cairngorm,” he said; then, adding quickly to me, “Come and dine to-morrow, won’t you?” He glided away with his pleasant smile, and disappeared in the crowd.
I sat down beside the beautiful girl, conscious that the eyes of the duenna were upon me.
“I think we have been very near meeting before,” I remarked, by way of opening the conversation.
My companion turned her eyes full upon me with an air of enquiry. She evidently did not recall my face, if she had ever seen me.
“Really — I cannot remember,” she observed, in a low and musical voice. “When?”
“In the first place, you came down from Berlin by the express, ten days ago. I was going the other way, and our carriages stopped opposite each other. I saw you at the window.”
“Yes — we came that way, but I do not remember—” She hesitated.
“Secondly,” I continued, “I was sitting alone in my garden last summer — near the end of July — do you remember? You must have wandered in there through the park; you came up to the house and looked at me—”
“Was that you?” she asked, in evident surprise. Then she broke into a laugh. “I told everybody I had seen a ghost; there had never been any Cairngorms in the place since the memory of man. We left the next day, and never heard that you had come there; indeed, I did not know the castle belonged to you.”
“Where were you staying?” I asked.
“Where? Why, with my aunt, where I always stay. She is your neighbour, since it is you.”
“I — beg your pardon — but then — is your aunt Lady Bluebell? I did not quite catch—”
“Don’t be afraid. She is amazingly deaf. Yes. She is the relict of my beloved uncle, the sixteenth or seventeenth Baron Bluebell — I forget exactly how many of them there have been. And I — do you know who I am?” She laughed, well knowing that I did not.
“No,” I answered frankly. “I have not the least idea. I asked to be introduced because I recognised you. Perhaps — perhaps you are a Miss Bluebell?”
“Considering that you are a neighbour, I will tell you who I am,” she answered. “No; I am of the tribe of Bluebells, but my name is Lammas, and I have been given to understand that I was christened Margaret. Being a floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell — with two l’s and an e — because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may avoid making such a bad pun.”
“Do I look like a man who makes puns?” I asked, being very conscious of my melancholy face and sad looks.
Miss Lammas eyed me critically.
“No; you have a mournful temperament. I think I can trust you,” she answered. “Do you think you could communicate to my aunt the fact that you are a Cairngorm and a neighbour? I am sure she would like to know.”
I leaned towards the old lady, inflating my lungs for a yell. But Miss Lammas stopped me.
“That is not of the slightest use,” she remarked. “You can write it on a bit of paper. She is utterly deaf.”
“I have a pencil,” I answered, “but I have no paper. Would my cuff do, do you think?”
“Oh yes!” replied Miss Lammas, with alacrity; “men often do that.”
I wrote on my cuff: “Miss Lammas wishes me to explain that I am your neighbour, Cairngorm.” Then I held out my arm before the old lady’s nose. She seemed perfectly accustomed to the proceeding, put up her glasses, read the words, smiled, nodded, and addressed me in the unearthly voice peculiar to people who hear nothing.
“I knew your grandfather very well,” she said. Then she smiled and nodded to me again, and to her niece, and relapsed into silence.
“It is all right,” remarked Miss Lammas. “Aunt Bluebell knows she is deaf, and does not say much, like the parrot. You see, she knew your grandfather. How odd, that we should be neighbours! Wh
y have we never met before?”
“If you had told me you knew my grandfather when you appeared in the garden, I should not have been in the least surprised,” I answered rather irrelevantly. “I really thought you were the ghost of the old fountain. How in the world did you come there at that hour?”
“We were a large party, and we went out for a walk. Then we thought we should like to see what your park was like in the moonlight, and so we trespassed. I got separated from the rest, and came upon you by accident, just as I was admiring the extremely ghostly look of your house, and wondering whether anybody would ever come and live there again. It looks like the castle of Macbeth, or a scene from the opera. Do you know anybody here?”
“Hardly a soul. Do you?”
“No. Aunt Bluebell said it was our duty to come. It is easy for her to go out; she does not bear the burden of the conversation.”
“I am sorry you find it a burden,” said I. “Shall I go away?”
Miss Lammas looked at me with a sudden gravity in her beautiful eyes, and there was a sort of hesitation about the lines of her full, soft mouth.
“No,” she said at last, quite simply, “don’t go away. We may like each other, if you stay a little longer — and we ought to because we are neighbours in the country.”
I suppose I ought to have thought Miss Lammas a very odd girl. There is, indeed, a sort of freemasonry between people who discover that they live near each other, and that they ought to have known each other before. But there was a sort of unexpected frankness and simplicity in the girl’s amusing manner which would have struck any one else as being singular, to say the least of it. To me, however, it all seemed natural enough. I had dreamed of her face too long not to be utterly happy when I met her at last, and could talk to her as much as I pleased. To me, the man of ill-luck in everything, the whole meeting seemed too good to be true. I felt again that strange sensation of lightness which I had experienced after I had seen her face in the garden. The great rooms seemed brighter, life seemed worth living; my sluggish, melancholy blood ran faster, and filled me with a new sense of strength. I said to myself that without this woman I was but an imperfect being, but that with her I could accomplish everything to which I should set my hand. Like the great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated Mephistopheles at last, I could have cried aloud to the fleeting moment, Verweile doch du bist so schön!
“Are you always gay?” I asked suddenly. “How happy you must be!”
“The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy,” she answered thoughtfully. “Yes, I think I find life very pleasant, and I tell it so.”
“How can you ‘tell life’ anything?” I enquired. “If I could catch my life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure you.”
“I dare say. You have a melancholy temper. You ought to live out of doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you than moping in your rook tower, and hating everything.”
“It is rather lonely down there,” I murmured apologetically, feeling that Miss Lammas was quite right.
“Then marry, and quarrel with your wife,” she laughed. “Anything is better than being alone.”
“I am a very peaceable person. I never quarrel with anybody. You can try it. You will find it quite impossible.”
“Will you let me try?” she asked, still smiling.
“By all means — especially if it is to be only a preliminary canter,” I answered rashly.
“What do you mean?” she enquired, turning quickly upon me.
“Oh — nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarrelling in the future. I cannot imagine how you are going to do it. You will have to resort to immediate and direct abuse.”
“No. I will only say that if you do not like your life, it is your own fault. How can a man of your age talk of being melancholy, or of the hollowness of existence? Are you consumptive? Are you subject to hereditary insanity? Are you deaf, like Aunt Bluebell? Are you poor, like — lots of people? Have you been crossed in love? Have you lost the world for a woman, or any particular woman for the sake of the world? Are you feebleminded, a cripple, an outcast? Are you — repulsively ugly?” She laughed again. “Is there any reason in the world why you should not enjoy all you have got in life?”
“No. There is no reason whatever, except that I am dreadfully unlucky, especially in small things.”
“Then try big things, just for a change,” suggested Miss Lammas. “Try and get married, for instance, and see how it turns out.”
“If it turned out badly, it would be rather serious.”
“Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If abuse is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be abused. Abuse the Conservatives — or the Liberals — it does not matter which, since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by other people. You will like it, if they don’t. It will make a man of you. Fill your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do anything else. It did Demosthenes no end of good, you know. You will have the satisfaction of imitating a great man.”
“Really, Miss Lammas, I think the list of innocent exercises you propose—”
“Very well — if you don’t care for that sort of thing, care for some other sort of thing. Care for something, or hate something. Don’t be idle. Life is short, and though art may be long, plenty of noise answers nearly as well.”
“I do care for something — I mean somebody,” I said.
“A woman? Then marry her. Don’t hesitate.”
“I do not know whether she would marry me,” I replied. “I have never asked her.”
“Then ask her at once,” answered Miss Lammas. “I shall die happy if I feel I have persuaded a melancholy fellow-creature to rouse himself to action. Ask her, by all means, and see what she says. If she does not accept you at once, she may take you the next time. Meanwhile, you will have entered for the race. If you lose, there are the ‘All-aged Trial Stakes,’ and the ‘Consolation Race.’”
“And plenty of selling races into the bargain. Shall I take you at your word, Miss Lammas?”
“I hope you will,” she answered.
“Since you yourself advise me, I will. Miss Lammas, will you do me the honour to marry me?”
For the first time in my life the blood rushed to my head and my sight swam. I cannot tell why I said it. It would be useless to try to explain the extraordinary fascination the girl exercised over me, or the still more extraordinary feeling of intimacy with her which had grown in me during that half-hour. Lonely, sad, unlucky as I had been all my life, I was certainly not timid, nor even shy. But to propose to marry a woman after half an hour’s acquaintance was a piece of madness of which I never believed myself capable, and of which I should never be capable again, could I be placed in the same situation. It was as though my whole being had been changed in a moment by magic — by the white magic of her nature brought into contact with mine. The blood sank back to my heart, and a moment later I found myself staring at her with anxious eyes. To my amazement she was as calm as ever, but her beautiful mouth smiled, and there was a mischievous light in her dark-brown eyes.
“Fairly caught,” she answered. “For an individual who pretends to be listless and sad you are not lacking in humour. I had really not the least idea what you were going to say. Wouldn’t it be singularly awkward for you if I had said ‘Yes’? I never saw anybody begin to practise so sharply what was preached to him — with so very little loss of time!”
“You probably never met a man who had dreamed of you for seven months before being introduced.”
“No, I never did,” she answered gaily. “It smacks of the romantic. Perhaps you are a romantic character after all. I should think you were, if I believed you. Very well; you have taken my advice, entered for a Stranger’s Race and lost it. Try the All-aged Trial Stakes. You have another cuff, and a pencil. Propose to Aunt Bluebell; she wou
ld dance with astonishment, and she might recover her hearing.”
CHAPTER III
THAT WAS HOW I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I will agree with any one who says I behaved very foolishly. But I have not repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago understood that I was out of my mind that evening, but I think my temporary insanity on that occasion has had the effect of making me a saner man ever since. Her manner turned my head, for it was so different from what I had expected. To hear this lovely creature, who, in my imagination, was a heroine of romance, if not of tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was more than my equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my heart. But when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make certain arrangements at the Castle — certain changes and improvements which would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1343
