“My dear, Eliza Peyton—Madame Koller I should say—is what you young sprigs call green—excessively green. She imagines because I am old I am a fool. And that precious scamp, Ahlberg—”
“Why do you call him a scamp, papa?”
“Why do I call Petrarch an African?”
“Mrs. Peyton seems to have some kind of a prejudice to Mr. Ahlberg, too.”
“Aha, trust Sally Peyton to see for herself. She’s devilish tricky, is Sally Peyton—not that I have any cause to complain of it—none whatever. She’s very sharp. But we’ll go and call some day on Eli—Madame Koller. She’s not bad company for the country—and I’ve heard she could sing, too.”
“Yes, we will go,” answered Olivia, suppressing a yawn. “It’s in the country, as you say.”
CHAPTER II.
Does anybody ever ask what becomes of the prime donne who break down early? Madame Koller could have told something about their miseries, from the first struggling steps up to the pinnacle when they can fight with managers, down again to the point when the most dreadful sound that nature holds—so she thought—a hiss—laid them figuratively among the dead. Nature generally works methodically, but in Madame Koller’s case, she seemed to take a delight in producing grapes from thorns. Without one atom of artistic heredity, surroundings or atmosphere to draw upon, Eliza Peyton had come into the world an artist. She had a voice, and she grew up with the conviction that there was nothing in the world but voices and pianos. It is not necessary to repeat how in her girlhood, by dint of her widowed mother marrying a third rate German professor, she got to Munich and to Milan—nor how the voice, at first astonishingly pure and beautiful, suddenly lost its pitch, then disappeared altogether. It is true that after a time it came back to her partially. She could count on it for an hour at a time, but no more. Of course there was no longer any career for her, and she nearly went crazy with grief—then she consoled herself with M. Koller, an elderly Swiss manufacturer. In some way, although she was young and handsome and accomplished, she found in her continental travels that the best Americans and English avoided the Kollers. This she rashly attributed to the fact of her having had a brief professional career, and she became as anxious to conceal it as she had once been anxious to pursue it. M. Koller was a hypochondriac, and went from Carlsbad to Wiesbaden, from Wiesbaden to Hyéres, from Hyéres to Aix-les-Bains. He was always fancying himself dying, but one day at Vichy, death came quite unceremoniously and claimed him just as he had made up his mind to get well. Thus Eliza Koller found herself a widow, still young and handsome, with a comfortable fortune, and a negative mother to play propriety. She went straight to Paris as soon as the period of her mourning was over. It was then toward the latter part of the civil war in America, and there were plenty of Southerners in Paris. There she met Colonel Berkeley and Olivia, and for the first time in her adult life, she had a fixed place in society—there was a circle in which she was known.
What most troubled her, was what rôle to take up—whether she should be an American, a French woman, an Italian, a German, or a cosmopolitan. For she was like all, and was distinctively none. In Paris at that time, she met a cousin of her late husband—Mr. Ahlberg, also a Swiss, but in the Russian diplomatic service. He was a sixth Secretary of Legation, and had hard work making his small salary meet his expenses. He was a handsome man, very blonde, and extremely well-dressed. Madame Koller often wondered if his tailor were not a very confiding person. For Ahlberg’s part, he sincerely liked his cousin, as he called her, and quite naturally slipped into the position of a friend of the family. Everything perhaps would have been arranged to his satisfaction, if just at that time the war had not closed, and French Pembroke and his brother came to Paris that the surgeons might work upon poor Miles. They could not but meet often at the Berkeleys, and Pembroke, it must be admitted, was not devoid of admiration for the handsome Madame Koller, who had the divine voice—when she could be persuaded to sing, which was not often. He had been rather attentive to her, much to Ahlberg’s disgust. And to Ahlberg’s infinite rage, Madame Koller fell distinctly and unmistakably in love with Pembroke. If Ahlberg had only known the truth, Pembroke was really the first gentleman that poor Madame Koller had ever known intimately since her childhood in Virginia. Certainly the wildest stretch of imagination could not call the late Koller a gentleman, and even Ahlberg himself, although a member of the diplomatic corps, hardly came under that description.
Pembroke had a kind of hazy idea that widows could take care of themselves. Besides, he was not really in love with her—only a little dazzled by her voice and her yellow hair. His wrath may be imagined when after a considerable wrench in tearing himself away from Paris, and when he had begun to regard Olivia Berkeley with that lofty approval which sometimes precedes love making, to return to Virginia, and in six weeks to find Madame Schmidt and Madame Koller established at their old place, The Beeches, and Ahlberg, who had been their shadow for two years, living at the village tavern. He felt that this following him, on the part of Madame Koller, made him ridiculous. He was mortally afraid of being laughed at about it. Instead of holding his own stoutly in acrid discussions with Colonel Berkeley, Pembroke began to be afraid of the old gentleman’s pointed allusions to the widow. He even got angry with poor little Miles when the boy ventured upon a little sly chaff. As for Olivia Berkeley, she took Madame Koller’s conduct in coming to Virginia in high dudgeon, with that charming inconsequence of noble and inexperienced women. What particular offense it gave her, beyond the appearance of following Pembroke, which was shocking to her good taste, she could not have explained to have saved her life. But with Madame Koller she took a tone of politeness, sweet yet chilly, like frozen cream—and the same in a less degree, toward Pembroke. She seemed to say, “Odious and underbred as this thing is, I, you see, can afford to be magnanimous.” Colonel Berkeley chuckled at this on the part of his daughter, as he habitually did at the innocent foibles of his fellow creatures. It was very innocent, very feminine, and very exasperating.