"It is the whole atmosphere of this life that is delightful, and every little thing seems so harmonious," he said. "You have here the solidity of traditional English country life, combined with the comforts of the most advanced civilization; and, to make it all perfection, you have at every turn the lingering romance of the glorious mediæval life," with a glance at Miss Dabstreak, "that middle age which in beauty was the prime of age, from which began and spread all your most glorious ideas, your government, your warfare, your science. Did you never have an alchemist in your family, Uncle John? Surely he found for you the golden secret, and it is his touch which has beautified these old walls!"
"I don't know," said John Carvel.
"Indeed there was!" cried Chrysophrasia, in delight. "I have found out all about him. He was not exactly an alchemist; he was an astrologer, and there are the ruins of his tower in the park. There are some old books up-stairs, upon the Black Art, with his name in them, Johannes Carvellius, written in the most enchanting angular handwriting."
"I believe there was somebody of that name," remarked John.
"They are full of delicious incantations for raising the devil,—such exquisite ceremonies, with all the dress described that you must wear, and the phases of the moon, and hazel wands cut at midnight. Imagine how delightful!"
"The tower in the park is a beautiful place," said Hermione. "I have it all filled with flowers in summer, and the gardener's boy once saw a ghost there on All Hallow E'en."
"You must take me there," said Paul, smiling good-humoredly at the reference to the alchemist. "I have a passion for ruins, and I had no idea that you had any; nothing seems ruined here, and yet everything appears old. What a delightful place!" Paul sat far back in his comfortable chair, and inserted a single eyeglass in the angle between his heavy brow and his aquiline nose; his bony fingers were spotless, long, and white, and as he sat there he had the appearance of a personage receiving the respectful homage of a body of devoted attendants, the indescribable air of easy superiority and condescending good-nature which a Roman patrician might have assumed when visiting the country villa of one of his clients. Everybody seemed delighted to be noticed by him and flattered by his words.
I am by nature cross-grained and crabbed, I presume. I admitted that Paul Patoff, though not graceful in his movements, was a fine-looking fellow, with an undeniable distinction of manner; he had a pleasant voice, an extraordinary command of English, though he was but half an Englishman, and a tact which he certainly owed to his foreign blood; he was irreproachable in appearance, in the simplicity of his dress, in the smoothness of his fair hair and well-trimmed mustache; he appeared thoroughly at home among his new-found relations, and anxious to please them all alike; he was modest and unassuming, for he did not speak of himself, and he gave no opinion saving such as should be pleasing to his audience. He had all this, and yet in the cold stare of his stony eyes, in the ungainly twist of his broad white hand, where the bones and sinews crossed and recrossed like a network of marble, in the decisive tone with which he uttered the most flattering remarks, there was something which betrayed a tyrannical and unyielding character,—something which struck me at first sight, and which suggested a nature by no means so gentle and amiable as he was willing it should appear.
Nevertheless, I was the only one to notice these signs, to judge by the enthusiasm which Patoff produced at Carvel Place in those first hours of his stay. It is true that the professor was not present, although he had left me on the pretense of going to see Paul, and Macaulay Carvel was resting from his journey in his own rooms, in a remote part of the house; but I judged that the latter had already fallen under the spell of Patoff's manner, and that it would not be easy to find out what the man of science really thought about the Anglo-Russian. They probably knew each other of old, and whatever opinions they held of each other were fully formed.
Paul sat in his easy-chair in the midst of the family, and smiled and surveyed everything through his single eyeglass, and if anything did not please him he did not say so. John had something to do, and went away, then Mrs. Carvel wanted to see her son alone, and she left us too; so that Chrysophrasia and Hermione and I remained to amuse Patoff. Hermione immediately began to do so after her own fashion. I think that of all of us she was the one least inclined to give him absolute supremacy at first, but he interested her, for she had seen little of the world, and nothing of such men as her cousin Paul, who was thirty years of age, and had been to most of the courts of the world in the course of twelve years in the diplomatic service. She was not inclined to admit that knowledge of the world was superiority of itself, nor that an easy manner and an irreproachable appearance constituted the ideal of a man; but she was barely twenty, and had seen little of those things. She recognized their importance, and desired to understand them; she felt that wonderful suspicion of possibilities which a young girl loves to dwell on in connection with every exceptional man she meets; she unconsciously said to herself that such a man as Patoff might possibly be her ideal, because there was nothing apparent to her at first sight which was in direct contradiction with the typical picture she had conceived of the typical man she hoped to meet.