“You are very kind. I should like nothing better.”
Mrs. Lehmyl begged to be excused and left the room. Arthur followed the sound of her light, quick footsteps up the stairs.
“Browning is her patron saint,” volunteered Mrs. Hart. “She spends her time about equally between him and her piano.”
Mrs. Lehmyl came back.
“There,” she said, giving him the volume, and smiling, “there is my vade mecum. I love it almost as dearly as I could if it were a human being. You must be sure to like it.”
“I am sure you honor me very highly by entrusting it to me,” he replied.
At home he opened it, thinking to read for an hour or two before going to bed. What interested him, however, even more than the strong, virile, sympathetic poetry, and, indeed, ere long, quite absorbed his attention, were the traces of Mrs. Lehmyl’s ownership that he came across every here and there—a corner dog-eared, a passage inclosed by pencil lines, a fragment of rose-petal stuck between the pages. It gave him a delicious sense of intimacy with her to hold this book in his hands. Had not her hand warmed it? her hair shadowed it? her very breath touched it? Had it not been her companion in solitary moments? a witness to the life she led when no human eye was upon her? What precious secrets it might have whispered, if it had had a tongue! There was a slight discoloration of the paper, where Pompilia tells of her miseries as Guido’s bride. Who could say but that it had been caused by Mrs. Lehmyl’s tears? That she had loaned him the book seemed somehow like a mark of confidence. On the flyleaf something had been written in ink, and subsequently scratched out—probably her name. He wondered why she had erased it. Toward the close of Caponsacchi’s version, one of the pages had been torn clear across, and then neatly pasted together with tissue paper braces. He wondered what the circumstances were under which the mischief had been done, and whether the repair was her handiwork. A faint, sweet perfume clung to the pages. It had the power of calling her up vividly before him, and sending an exquisite tremor into his heart. And, withal, had any body suggested that he was at the verge of falling in love with her, he would have denied it stoutly—so little was he disposed to self-analysis.
But ere a great while, the scales fell from his eyes.
By dint of much self-discipline, he managed to let a week and a day elapse before paying his second call. While he stood in the vestibule, waiting for the opening of the door, sundry bursts of sound escaping from within, informed him that a duet was being played upon the piano. Intuitively he concluded that the treble part was Mrs. Lehmyl’s; instinctively he asked, “But who is carrying the bass?” On entering the parlor, it was with a sharp and significant pang that he beheld, seated at Mrs. Lehmyl’s left, no less redoubtable a creature than a Man. He took a chair, and sat down, and suffered untold wretchedness until that duet was finished. He could not see the man’s face, but the back of his head indicated youth. The vicissitudes of the composition they were playing brought the two performers painfully close together. This was bad enough; but to poor Arthur’s jealous mind it seemed as if from time to time, even when the music furnished no excuse, they voluntarily approached each other. Every now and then they hurriedly exchanged a whispered sentence. He felt that he would eagerly have bartered his ten fingers for the right to know what it was they said. How much satisfaction would he have obtained if he had been stationed near enough to overhear? All they said was, “One, two, three, four, five, six.” Perhaps in his suspicious mood he would have magnified this innocent remark into a confidence conveyed by means of a secret code.
When the musicians rose Arthur experienced a slight relief. Mrs. Lehmyl greeted him with marked kindness, and shook hands warmly. She introduced her co-executant as Mr. Spencer. And Mr. Spencer was tall, lean, gawky and bilious-looking.