CHAPTER XXVI. HOW ATHENS TOOK THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE PERFIDIOUS RUDOLPH.
Rudolph’s disappearance with Photini created rather more than a nine days’ wonder at Athens. This is one of the privileges of living in a small and talkative town where private affairs spread like fire, and scandal is an excitement only second to that of the election of the mayor. But it must be confessed that this was a big scandal, and worth all the ejaculations, comments, and emphatic censure it provoked. The baron shrugged his shoulders and smiled: it may be allowed he was not prepared for this sweeping descent on the part of the innocent Rudolph. But, as he remarked to his wife:
“It’s always your well brought up and virtuous youths who take the rapidest strides to the deuce! I told Ottilie, years ago, that she was bringing up that boy to be a very dainty morsel for any adventuress that might happen to catch him.”
“Well, my dear, we must admit,” said the baroness, “that the Natzelhuber did not put herself to any considerable trouble to catch Rudolph. I’ve not the slightest doubt that the boy was only longing to be caught, and not wishing to escape it.”
“That is ever the way,” remarked her amiable husband, “with our inconsistent sex. Our normal condition is longing or grumbling. Either we are crying out against the adventuresses who wish to catch us, or we are railing against those who won’t; and when we are caught, we are still crying out that we are caught. The child, you perceive, is father to the man. Watch an infant with his pets: he fondles and maltreats the confiding kitten that rubs itself against him, and deserts it to run after the butterfly. The butterfly won’t be caught and he howls dismally, if he doesn’t go into a fit, and proceeds to strangle the tabby. Thus it has been with your engaging nephew. Mademoiselle Andromache represents the confiding kitten, deserted for Selaka’s daughter, the unattainable butterfly, and Photini stands for the domestic tabby. Only the tabby in question possesses very formidable claws, which she is too likely to use upon the slightest or even upon no provocation from the faithless Rudolph. He will then return to us a sadder and a wiser man. Perhaps when that time comes, it will not be so very difficult for us, with the aid of Mademoiselle Veritassi, should that delightful young lady be still free, to anchor him in the placid waters of matrimony.”
“As for Mademoiselle Veritassi,” said the baroness, “it is always the girls who come off the worst in these matters. They stand there ready victims for the worn and jaded rakes who have sown their wild oats. That wild-oat period is an abomination, Baron, and the theory has done more to injure young men than anything else.”
“Madame, I am not responsible for the errors of civilisation. The period which you so aptly describe as the wild-oat period, is doubtless a sad one to contemplate for those like you and me, who have passed to the other side, where it is to be hoped there are no wild oats to be sown. But I am not so sure of that. However, I have not the slightest doubt, should Rudolph settle down with Mademoiselle Veritassi, that he will make her as good a husband as any other. Certainly she will find him very pliant and easy to manage. He is wealthy, too, and I suppose a young woman cannot ask anything better than a husband she can easily manage, and a purse she can draw heavily upon,” said the baron, and continued to smoke his morning cigar without any unwonted discomposure.
The baroness went on her round of visits in a saddened spirit, thinking of that young life wrecked on its threshold, and feeling that her sister Ottilie, watching from above, might perhaps consider that she in some manner or another, was responsible for the boy’s fall. She was a good woman in her way, though a worldly one. Whatever might be her opinion of the morals of the young men with whom she associated, she would gladly have shielded poor Rudolph from any such acquaintance with life as theirs. Having no child of her own, she loved the boy with a tender and maternal love.