Meanwhile, Marion had been deployed in another direction, her heart and thoughts remaining with Philip; and in this condition she was able to pay but imperfect attention to the curly-haired and bright-eyed little gentleman who had just been presented to her, and whose name she had not caught. He spoke with a slight Irish brogue, and there was a kind of vivacious sentimentality in the tone of his remarks, which had a tendency, moreover, to become inconveniently high-flown and figurative. At length, to be rid of him, she got him to conduct her to a chair, and then sent him off to fetch her a glass of water. “Who’s that girl Tom was talking to just now?” said one man to another, as she sat alone. “Don’t know: nice fresh young creature; oh, let Tom alone for being first in the field with whatever’s going: and in a week he’ll have put her in the Irish melodies, and then the next man may take what is left!” This dialogue was so little to Marion’s taste that she rose from her seat and established herself under the wing of an elderly dowager with whom she happened to have some acquaintance; and there, putting her hand in her pocket to find her smelling-salts, she felt the letter that she had forgotten: whereupon she drew it forth and opened it, and was actually absorbed in its contents at the very moment when the author of “Lallah Rookh” was searching for her everywhere with a glass of water in his hand.
The letter was not long, but Marion found it unexpectedly interesting, insomuch that she read it over three or four times, with a constantly expanding sense of its importance. It was not the answer to her own letter, nor had it any reference to that; it was addressed to Philip throughout, and treated of business which was as new as it was surprising. After having considered the written words from every point of view, Marion sat with the letter in her lap and her eyes gazing at nothing, in a state of mingled bewilderment and distress. She had contended against destiny, and had seemed at first to win; but now her flank was turned, and the day was against her.
Through the midst of her perplexity she presently became aware of a dapper little figure standing before her with a glass of water in its hand: she gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Just then, however, another face, which she immediately recognized, appeared amidst the crowd, and not only restored her self-possession, but set all her faculties on edge. She rose quickly, and eluding the astonished water-carrier, she reached Fillmore’s side and touched him on the arm.
“Mr. Fillmore, will you please give me your arm? I have read your letter. I wish to talk to you. Take me somewhere where we can be uninterrupted for a few minutes.” Fillmore complied without asking any questions, and without showing any particular symptoms of surprise.
Philip, the lion of the evening, was, in the meantime, getting on very agreeably. After running the gauntlet of numerous promiscuous admirers, who besought him to tell them whether Iduna was drowned, whether the sea-god were real or only a fancy of hers, whether she married her mortal lover, and whether the latter managed to get safe off on the wreck of the castle, and much more to the same effect—after he had been parrying such inquiries as these, with what ingenuity and good humor he might, for some time, he happened to raise his eyes, and saw the eyes of Perdita directed upon him from a little distance, with a beckoning expression. In a few minutes he succeeded in placing himself, with a feeling of genuine relief, by her side. And indeed he had no reason to be dissatisfied with his position. If there were, in that assembly, any woman more classically handsome than Perdita, there was certainly no one who could compare with her in brilliance and subtle attractiveness; nor any who knew so well how to say what a man would like to hear; nor any who, in the present instance, was better disposed to say it. She touched his shoulder lightly with her hand as he sat down, with an air and smile as if she were conferring upon him a well-earned knighthood.
“This is the hardest part, you know,” she said. “Men who do great things are always beset by little people, with their discordant little adulations. It is like what you see on the stage; when Kean or Kemble has given a great passage, and your ears are ringing with it, there comes a flat racket of hand-clapping. That is the world’s applause!”
“We must take the deed for the will,” said Philip laughing, “and be glad to get it.”
“And so you wish me to believe,” pursued Perdita, “that love is a vision that cannot be realized in this world?”
“I don’t know that I mean that,” he replied; “and I don’t want to undertake the responsibility of my own poetical morals. But love is like life, perhaps, never to be found by any dissection of mortal hearts or brains. It is above what can be seen or touched, though that may embody it. You see I am as great a fool as any of my readers. I don’t know, any more than the young lady I just was talking with, whether Iduna was drowned or married. But neither do I care.”
“There is more than one man in every real poet,” remarked Perdita, looking at him intently for a moment, and then looking down; “and the one who appears in the flesh is not always, I suspect, the one best worth having. And yet he may be worth breaking one’s heart for. What do you think?”