CHAPTER IV
The dinner at Ritter's proved a brilliant affair, but Sir Horace experienced an unexpected disappointment, when he discovered that instead of being a guest at a pleasant little informal meal, he and his nephew were two in a party of thirty. The menu was everything that a Homburg menu could, and should, be; the company were crême de la crême; but the crafty Baronet realised that this kind of entertainment afforded no opportunities to advance his schemes. He and Malcolm might as well have dined at their own hostelry—save that in that case, they would have been obliged to pay for their food.
A long table, carefully screened from public gaze, was decorated with a profusion of roses and silver; the company were smart, and Madame herself was magnificent in black and gold, with touches of crimson—her natural taste was for the primary colours, and many jewels, but this weakness was sternly repressed by a strong-willed French maid.
The hostess was supported by a titled guest on either hand, ate a hearty (and extremely unwholesome) meal, and enjoyed herself prodigiously. Sir Horace sat beside a talkative, elderly dame, a neighbour entirely after his own heart. They were in the same set, and exchanged quotations from letters, highly spiced morsels of gossip, and nodded and cackled, as they consumed various delicacies, and sipped dry champagne.
Malcolm Haig was by no means so fortunate, for he was placed between a deaf man and a plain dowdy woman. Far, far away, on the opposite side of the table, he espied Miss Chandos—and the Prince—the former was more beautiful than ever without her hat; the wealth of her wonderful hair, exposed in all its glory, made a fitting frame for her brilliant face.
She wore a gown of white lace, with long sleeves, a chain of splendid pearls, and to his romantic imagination seemed the dazzling embodiment of a princess in a fairy tale. The Prince, who was eating little, talked to her incessantly, enforcing his conversation with flashing eyes and quick, impassioned gestures.
What was he saying? Malcolm watched and wondered; finally he arrived at the conclusion that he was making love after the most approved Italian mode, and became sensible of a flaming desire to go round and punch his sleek head.
Poor Allessandro! he really was devoted to the lovely English Signorina. He could not sleep, he would not eat, he chiefly existed on cigarettes and her society—and yet he was a little afraid of his enchantress. She was so fascinating, yet elusive; always charming and gracious, but when he became sentimental she laughed with heartless indifference and brushed all his tender compliments aside. And then she was so rich! Mother of Heaven, what a fortune! With this girl, and her money, his existence would be heaven on earth. Good-bye for ever to insolent creditors, to third-class tickets, shabby clothes and undignified poverty.
"Ah, Verona," he murmured, "you are called after one of our most beautiful towns; you ought to belong to Italy."
"Do you think so?" she answered gaily; "then, in that case, you should belong to Turkey!"
"I would ever belong to where you were," he murmured tenderly.
Miss Chandos merely helped herself to a salted almond. She had lovely hands.
"Why were you called Verona?" he pursued.
"I have not the faintest idea. I suppose they thought it more uncommon than Florence!"
"Did you never ask them the reason?" he continued in his soft voice.
"If by 'them' you allude to my father and mother, I am sorry to say I have not even a dim recollection of either."
"Ah! So you are an orphan?"
She bowed her head.
"How sad! How I pity you!" he ejaculated. "Now I have the good fortune to have a charming father and mother—my mother is a beautiful woman. How much I should like to make you known to her. I assure you she would love you as a—daughter."
"It is very kind of you to say so, Prince."
"She lives in a noble old castle. It still retains many splendid pictures and works of art. Perhaps you would visit her there one day? It has such a wonderful view, being high on the top of a mountain—almost in the clouds."
"Almost a castle in the air?" suggested Verona.
"Yes, yes, it is; and I, too, have my real castle in the air," he added with tremulous significance. "Oh, such an adorable one." This speech was accompanied by a long, intense look.
"Don't you think these castles in the air cost a good deal to keep up?" remarked Miss Chandos. "I cannot afford to build them myself." Then she smiled her sweet smile, and turned away to address her left-hand neighbour.
All this time Malcolm was inwardly fuming, although he was eating his dinner critically and carrying on a conversation with the lady beside him, a lady who was blessed with a copious stock of words and laboured under the delusion that she was a brilliant and dramatic talker. She speedily discovered that her neighbour had been in India, and plied him with opinions, suggestions and numerous questions with regard to native life.
At last, utterly wearied by this severe cross-examination, he exclaimed:
"I am truly sorry my information appears so meagre, but the truth is that India—real India—is to the European a closed book!"
"Oh no, surely not!" she protested warmly. "Only stupid, lazy people say so!"
"Well, I have been out in the East seven years, and I know precious little of the natives, although I speak their language. I was born there, too, and sent home as a kid. My father was a judge in the Punjaub for thirty years. Shall I tell you what he said?"
"Oh, pray do!"
"That we Europeans are like drops of oil on a great ocean of water, and will never penetrate or mix!"
"Really! Well, I am afraid I do not share his opinion," declared the listener with a shrug of her round shoulders.
"You have been in the country, of course?"
"No; but I have read about it, which amounts to almost the same thing. Have you seen a book called 'Thrills from the Hills, or The Curse of the Khitmagar'?"
"Yes, as it happens, I have! A fellow on board ship had it, and I looked into it."
"Tell me, how did it strike you?" she demanded, and the lady's key was pitched in the imperative mood.
"As absolutely the greatest drivel and rot I ever read—and that is saying a good deal! It is no more like India than it's like Homburg! I should say that the author took her facts from fiction, her local colour from Earl's Court, and her grammar from her cook!"
There was an unusually spacious pause. Captain Haig glanced furtively at his companion, and noticed that her face had become alarmingly red. Presently she remarked in a repressed, but throaty voice:
"It is a misfortune that the book fails to meet with your approval. As it happens it was written by my sister," and she turned her head away and gave him a view of nearly the whole of her shoulders.
"Well, what was said was said!" reflected her neighbour, apologies were useless. He tossed off a glass of champagne and settled himself to brazen out the situation until a welcome signal should give him his release.
For a considerable time the culprit was compelled to subsist on disjointed scraps of the adjoining conversations. Among the crumbs he gathered were these: "Fancy going 'no trumps' on such a hand! Wasn't it sickening?"
"Oh—I don't know! He had two aces. It was unlucky he was done in spades."
"A lovely piece of Persian lamb. Just enough for the collar."
"No; a man with a beard never takes on the stage."
"So they got the grand slam!"
"I'm sure the Staal Brunnen would suit you."
"But she is so dark—her eyes and hair—you don't think——?" Voice dropped, man's raised in reply, and in the key of D sharp.
"Good heavens, no! What an awful suspicion! Not with that complexion."
Pushing back of chairs, general rising, general exit.
After coffee in the garden the party strolled over to the Casino in order to see the grand fireworks. The grounds were illuminated, and the crowd was immense. The entire scene was delightful, so gay, so exhilarating and so foreign. People of many nations sat about, or promenaded in groups, staring at the brilliant display, and listening to the band.
Some of the members of the late festivity assembled on the terrace, where they paced to and fro, or stood to exclaim at some specially marvellous effect. Miss Chandos was so closely invested by Uhlan officers and other friends that Captain Haig had no opportunity of exchanging a word with her. After several frustrated attempts he turned aside, took a seat apart, and, we may as well admit it, sulked! He watched with discontented eyes the gay throng of well-dressed people, the glitter of diamonds, the bright stars overhead, the bright light around. He saw Verona (as he mentally called her) now holding a little court on the terrace, again strolling up and down with an Austrian field-marshal or a Russian grand duke, and he realised how difficult it would be for him to improve their acquaintance, and what a complete outsider he was. There were too many notable worshippers, all competing for a lady's society and favour, and he was but an impecunious officer who must not venture to claim the privilege of sunning himself in the beauty's smiles.
Nevertheless, Captain Haig had some brief visions of Miss Chandos; for instance, at the Elisabeth Well of a morning, at the opera, or at church, now and then they exchanged a few sentences.
At the annual Battle of Flowers—which was attended by all Homburg and Frankfort—the carriage of Madame de Godez was accorded a coveted banner, and first prize. The landau was entirely covered with pink roses, the very wheels had been transformed into colossal wreaths. Four milk-white horses, caparisoned with roses and silver, were led by grooms wearing pink and silver livery and white wigs. It was the chariot of a Fairy Queen, and was received with shouts of admiration and pelted with a hurricane of flowers.
Enthroned in the vehicle reclined Madame de Godez, arrayed (despite her maid) in a gorgeous pink and silver pelisse, with feathered headgear of the most imposing assumption. ("The blot on the escutcheon," Sir Horace dubbed the lady.) Beside her was seated the Princess, clad in white, her hat crowned with roses; on the coach box was perched Dog Darling, decorated en suite, with an enormous pink bow—glowering at all the world and shivering with shame!
The carriage was crammed with flowers of the most costly varieties, which the two ladies tossed to the crowd with liberal hands.
As the splendid equipage rolled majestically between dense masses of admiring spectators it seemed to represent the triumphal car of Beauty and Mammon.
Captain Haig, posted in a coign of vantage, pelted the occupants with the best of his assortment. He had no eyes, or flowers, for others, not even for the cart laden with sheaves of corn and pretty girls and drawn by oxen, nor for the gorgeous yellow coach, or yet the charming Japanese; his flowers were only for Verona. Once he had the good fortune to catch her eye, and as she passed she smiled and tossed him a rose. This he kissed with fervour and stowed away as if it were some holy relic, for Malcolm Haig was really in love. So much in love, that he actually attended a charity bazaar in the extravagant and foolish hope of finding her within; but unfortunately Miss Chandos was elsewhere, playing golf, and his temerity cost him three sovereigns. His leave was ebbing hourly—his luck was dead out. Sir Horace, too, was selfishly absorbed in his own affairs and the progress of his cure, and had never given his unhappy nephew a helping hand since that first notable morning. At last Fortune smiled! Captain Haig was returning from a sad and solitary ramble in the woods, when to his surprise, and, needless to add, joy, he came upon Miss Chandos and Dog Darling. She was seated on the trunk of a fallen tree with the enviable animal in her lap.
"Oh, this is fortunate!" she exclaimed, "I am in rather a quandary, like the ferryman with the fox and goose and corn. Dog Darling has cut his foot, and I don't know how I am to get him home. I dare not leave him; he might stray, or be stolen, and, much as I love him—I cannot carry him!"
"No, indeed," agreed the delighted lover. "Pray how do you happen to be here all alone?"
"I was driving with Auntie from Nauheim, I got out to walk back the rest of the way, and give Dog Darling a run. He has cut his foot on a broken bottle, poor dear; so wicked of people to leave their picnics loose."
"I see, his poor paw is badly cut," said Malcolm; "shall I bandage it up?"
"I shall be most grateful if you will, but I warn you that he may bite you!"
"And then you'll have to bandage me! Eh, is it a bargain?"
"I will guarantee to hold his mouth quite firmly, and you can please take my handkerchief."
"No, no; mine is the best," said the impromptu surgeon, and in five minutes the business was successfully accomplished.
"I think he has sense to know that I mean well," said Captain Haig, "and now I propose to carry him home; it is not more than a mile."
"But he is so heavy!" objected the young lady. "If you were to go back and send a carriage to fetch us—how would that do?"
Naturally this arrangement did not appeal to her companion, and he replied with deliberate untruth:
"The patient is a mere feather! You lay him in my arms and I'll do nurse as if to the manner born."
Having effected this amicable arrangement without any contretemps, the pair set off, the young man carrying the dog, who proved to be a dead weight and exceedingly irritable and sorry for himself.
"Where did Madame get him?" asked his bearer abruptly.
"Well, the fact is, he belonged to me originally, and is a native of England," replied the girl. "I lived with a family from the time I was eight till I was seventeen, and enjoyed a delightful country life."
"No lessons—all haymaking, jam and holidays, I presume?"
"Any amount of lessons and governesses. The Melvilles' daughter and I shared them. Auntie paid me flying visits, and on one of these occasions she noticed Toby, a young dog, full of tricks and spirits. He was very nice to her (as he can be when he likes), and she simply insisted on carrying him off."
"Precisely as I am doing."
"Oh, no; in a dog-box. It changed his whole career and outlook on life. Instead of living in a barrel, hunting water rats and rabbits, and having a brother in the house, and cousins in the village, he has become a society dog, and a cynical, disappointed person."
"Poor old boy!" exclaimed his nurse, "so he is out of his element like many of his betters."
From Dog Darling the conversation gradually became more personal, Captain Haig walking as slowly as possible, and occasionally coming to a dead halt, would have gladly carried his burden many miles—for the sake of the dog's mistress. But everything, however agreeable, must end, and the delightful tête-à-tête concluded all too soon at the door of Ritter's Hotel. Madame de Godez professed herself to be much touched by Captain Haig's attention to her sweet darling, and, as a suitable reward, the following evening she invited him to coffee on the Casino terrace, which invitation he grasped at, since he had now come to his last hours in Homburg. After the coffee had been served Captain Haig and Miss Chandos instinctively, by a sort of mute mutual consent, descended into the grounds, and strolled there in the moonlight, listening to the superb string band. It happened to be playing "Die Lieben Langen Tag," when Malcolm said:
"Do you know this is my last day here? I'm off tomorrow morning."
"Oh, are you?" she exclaimed, "must you really leave so soon? I am sorry."
"Not a thousandth part as sorry as I am," he responded, with what seemed unnecessary emphasis. "I wonder if we shall ever meet again?"
"I wonder?" she echoed meditatively. "How I should like to see your gorgeous East! but of course I never shall. Please give my love to India!"
"Yes; the instant I sight Colaba light, if you will give me something in return."
"What is it?"
"Your photograph," was the bold reply.
"Oh, but really, I never give that to any one," she answered rather stiffly.
"In Europe, no. But I am going ten thousand miles away. Do grant me this favour—it will be a talisman to summon happy memories in a foreign land."
"But I know you will stick me in a row with forty other girls," she objected, with a smile.
"I will not," he rejoined, with prompt vehemence, "never—I swear it." A pause, and he reiterated his request. "Will you?" he pleaded, sinking his voice to a half-whisper.
"I will see," she replied, "and now I really must return to auntie and carry her off to bed. I am trying to coax her to keep early hours, and she is as fractious as a little girl of six."
Malcolm Haig having mentally consigned Madame to the bed of the Red Sea, reluctantly turned towards the Casino, and as they passed near some great trees he halted abruptly and said:
"I think, if you don't mind, I'll say good-bye here."
"Why?" she asked quickly. Then, as she glanced at him, she noticed in the moonlight that her companion's face was working with some strong emotion, and it dawned upon her for the first time that Captain Haig was in love with her, and struggling to say, with decent fortitude, farewell for ever.
Miss Chandos was startled and not a little sorry, although her own heart was untouched. Auntie need not have been so pointedly careful to exclude Sir Horace's handsome nephew from all her select little parties.
She hesitated for a moment, then murmured "Good-bye" as she held out her hand.
For a second he held it fast; then, suddenly stooping, pressed his lips upon it, and the beautiful princess did not resist. Possibly she was accustomed to such homage!
The following morning, before Captain Haig departed, a large square envelope was delivered to him. He opened it with a thumping pulse to discover (as he hoped) the portrait of his lady love.
Certainly it was a beautiful face. The lips and eyes seemed almost to speak. Across one corner was inscribed, in a clear, fine hand, "Verona Chandos."
Captain Haig was occasionally impulsive; he was stirred by impulse now, and seizing a sheet of the hotel paper he sat down immediately and scrawled:—
"Dear Miss Chandos,—
"Thank you for your gracious gift, I prize it above everything I possess. I am, alas! but a humble soldier, and you are the Fairy Princess; should the princess ever need a champion to do battle for her, I pray that she may command till death,
"Malcolm Haig."
Malcolm Haig was already nearing Frankfort, with his cap drawn far over his eyes, and a curious sensation gripping his heart, when Verona received his note. She read it over twice—the first time quickly, the second with a pleased smile—and somewhat to her own surprise, crammed it away among her unanswered letters.