"Good-night—good-night, Claudius."
The Duke waited fully ten minutes for the Doctor. It was the second time she had spoken his name without the formality of a prefix, and Claudius stood where she left him, thinking. There was nothing so very extraordinary in it, after all, he thought. Foreign women, especially Russians, are accustomed to omit any title or prefix, and to call their intimate friends by their simple names, and it means nothing. But her voice was so wonderful. He never knew his name sounded so sweet before—the consonants and vowels, like the swing and fall of a deep silver bell in perfect cadence. "A little longer," thought Claudius, "and it shall be hers as well as mine." He took a book from the table absently, and had opened it when he suddenly recollected the Duke, put it down and left the room.
Soon a noiseless individual in a white waistcoat and a dress-coat put his head in at the door, advanced, straightened the chairs, closed the book the Doctor had opened, put the gas out and went away, shutting the door for the night, and leaving the room to its recollections. What sleepless nights the chairs and heavy-gilt glasses and gorgeous carpets of a hotel must pass, puzzling over the fragments of history that are enacted in their presence!
CHAPTER XI.
Mr. Barker's urgent engagement up town that evening must have been to meet some one; but considering that the individual he might be supposed to be awaiting did not come, he showed a remarkable degree of patience. He went to a certain quiet club and ordered, with the utmost care, a meal after his own heart—for one; and though several members hailed him and greeted him on his return, he did not seem particularly interested in what they had to say, but sat solitary at his small square table with its exquisite service; and when he had eaten, and had finished his modest pint of Pommery Sec, he drank his coffee and smoked his own cigars in undisturbed contemplation of the soft-tinted wall-paper, and in calm, though apparently melancholy, enjoyment of the gentle light that pervaded the room, and of the sweet evening breeze that blew in from the trees of Madison Square, so restful after the dust and discomfort of the hot September day.
Whoever it was that he awaited did not come, and yet Mr. Barker exhibited no sign of annoyance. He went to another room, and sat in a deep arm-chair with a newspaper which he did not read, and once he took a scrap of paper from his pocket and made a short note upon it with a patent gold pencil. It was a very quiet club, and Mr. Barker seemed to be its quietest member. And well he might be, for he had made up his mind on a grave point. He had determined to marry.
He had long known it must come, and had said to himself more than once that "to every man upon this earth death cometh, soon or late;" but being human, he had put off the evil day, having always thought that it must, of necessity, be evil. But now it was different. What he had said to the Duke, and what the Duke had said to him, that evening on the yacht when they were talking about marriage, was exactly what he had always expected to occur. The day, he said, must come when the enterprising mamma will get the better of Silas B. Barker junior. The girl of the season, with her cartload of bouquets slung all over her, her neat figure, her pink-and-white complexion and her matchless staying powers in a ballroom, will descend upon the devoted victim Barker, beak and talons, like the fish-hawk on the poor, simple minnow innocently disporting itself in the crystal waters of happiness. There will be wedding presents, and a breakfast, and a journey, and a prospect of everlasting misery. All these things, thought he, must come to every man in time, unless he is a saint, or an author, or has no money, and therefore they must come to me; but now it was different. If there is to be any fishing, he thought, I will be the hawk, and the minnow may take its chance of happiness. Why should the minnow not be happy? I am a hawk; well—but I am a very good hawk.
But these reflections were not what occupied his mind as he sat with his second cigar in the reading-room of his quiet club. These things he had elaborated in his brain at least three days ago, and they had now taken the form of a decision, against which there could be no appeal, because it was pleasant to the ego of Mr Barker. Judgments of that sort he never reversed. He had fully determined to be the hawk, he had picked out his minnow, and he was meditating the capture of his prey. A great many people do as much as that, and discover too late that what they have taken for a minnow is an alligator, or a tartar, or a salamander, or some evil beast that is too much for their powers. This was what Mr. Barker was afraid of, and this was what he wished to guard against. Unfortunately he was a little late in the selection of his victim, and he knew it. He had determined to marry the Countess Margaret.
He knew perfectly well that Claudius had determined upon the very same thing, and he knew that Claudius was intimate, to say the least of it, with the woman he loved. But Barker had made up his mind that Claudius had been refused, and had accepted the Platonic position offered him by the Countess, merely because he had not the strength to leave her. "Just like the vanity of a fellow like that," he argued, "not to be willing to believe himself beaten." He had drawn the whole situation in his mind entirely to his own satisfaction. If Claudius could only be removed, any other man would have as good a chance. The other man is Barker—therefore, remove Claudius at once. Remove him! Away with him! Let his place know him no more!