The Lake of Wine

by Bernard Capes

Now Miss Angela would not condescend to this abrupt change of front; for, for one thing, she was a zealous student of moral sensation, and, for another, she was conscious of maturing past her first bloom. She desired to keep her rose-coloured spectacles, only the rims must be of gold. In short, she was feeling that, were the picturesqueness of life her object, she must seek to change her outlook while her charms remained sufficiently inviting to procure her a new prosperous coign of vantage. She had played with romance. Now, for the time being, it must be subordinated to questions of business.

Foremost in this connection presented itself the figure of her inscrutable neighbour of “Delsrop.” He, for a period, had slept without a rival in the pupils of her pale eyes. He had satisfied her most delicate sensibilities—for a period.

Gradually, however, was effected that change in her point of view. She came to question in herself, not the personality of the interesting stranger so much as his eligibility. And here she had to acknowledge herself at sea, and to own that melancholy and mystery were best applied to matrimony when justified by substantial dividends.

Moreover, there was the matter of position. The case of her almost-namesake, Mrs. Kauffmann, was not so ancient to men’s memories as that she could afford to discount its significance as legendary. Indeed, she had a mental picture of herself as a little prim-set maid of five or so, walking, her hand in her father’s, through a suite of magnificent rooms, the walls of which, all gorgeously upholstered, were hung with canvases in such quantity as to spoil, she thought, the pretty effect of the hangings; and she remembered how her father—a lord of Plympton Manor in Devonshire, where was once a school-master with a famous son—had stopped and presented his hand to a little dapper gentleman—who wore a plum-coloured coat, and who had a scar on his lip and very squeezed-up eyes—and a courteous bow to a pale and melancholy lady who stood by the little gentleman’s side. And the lady had smiled upon the baby-girl and had asked her name; and when told it the smile had vanished, and she had said in a queer un-English voice, “Gott bewahre. Rechristen the mädchen if you wish her happiness.” And at that the two men had looked flushed and awkward, as men are wont to look over some suppressed meaning that invites impossible sympathy.

Well, Miss Angela—or Angelica, as you will—was to learn afterwards that she had had the youthful honour to be present at the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Academy, whose then acquirement of its fine new rooms in Somerset House was an earnest of his Majesty the King’s paternal support and munificence. And she was to learn that the little spruce gentleman had been no other than that notable President of an august body whose chief claim to her interest lay in the fact that he was Plympton-born; but who came to be known to her later experience as an artist who was said to ask as much as forty pounds for a head, and a hundred guineas for a full-length portrait—as if the more valuable virtues of a man were exhibited in his legs. And the lady, she was informed, had been Mrs. Kauffmann, since become Signora Zucchi, whom some people thought a greater artist even than the President; for she gave no preference to either head or legs, but painted both in such a way that any one or other of them might have done duty for either sex—which was a very noble and impartial view to take of the unities of art.

Now, it was not this poor Angelica’s management of pigments that was the present subject of Miss Royston’s thoughts. It was that melancholy story of how Sir Joshua’s protégée had, at the outset of her hopeful career, been drawn into matrimony with a picturesque rogue of a valet, who had it in him to play the part of Uther to a noble lady.

Assuredly, the mistress of “Chatters” had no desire to repeat history in such a respect, for all the veneer of romance that overlay it; or to risk, without astute inquiry, a union with one whose personality was wrapt in so impenetrable a fog of mystery.

What was it not possible the man might be; or what limits were to put on the ingenuity of resourceful vagabonds? Count Horn’s fellow had hoodwinked society no less than the trustful girl it had made a pet of. And whence had Mr. Tuke issued, and what was his claim to that haunted estate that had come to be considered in the neighbourhood a sort of no-man’s-land? On these points he had never condescended to throw light. Still, if his right-ownership of “Delsrop” must be taken on trust, no such condition applied to the question of his origin. Here conjecture must needs incline to suspicion, seeing that his immediate predecessor had been, by his own showing, a common thief and coach-robber.

Therefore was she resolved to temper fascination with prudence; to whip her captive to the end of his tether, and, pending discoveries, to no more than lightly hold him in hand.

In furtherance of this policy it was that she drove her unproclaimed suitor to the nether side of reason, and, by some over-accent of coquetry, almost lost herself the indulgence of a very pretty pastime.