“And that’s all?” he asked, glaring at the carpet.
“No--that’s not all,” said Edith in a low voice. “It’s a long story, and I thought perhaps I wouldn’t tell you; my aunt wanted me to, but it was a very sad story, and it happened so long ago I hoped people had forgotten; although I might have known that people’s memory for the unfortunate lasts as long as their oblivion of the happier star. You have observed to-night that I am a sensible woman, Horace; what is your definition of a sensible woman?”
He hesitated.
“Well, hang it all, I don’t know how to define things, but I suppose I meant a woman who wasn’t foolish--never made a fuss, or scenes, or mistakes, or did--well, stupid things, you know.”
“Then,” said Edith, smiling demurely, “as a girl I think I must have answered to your description of a foolish woman, Horace. I don’t know that I made scenes, but I certainly did what people call foolish things, and I behaved, as my aunt would no doubt tell you, as an idiot; at the time you mention she called me a suicidal idiot!
“To begin with, I must tell you I am very susceptible to beauty. I probably shouldn’t have tolerated you nearly as well if it hadn’t been for your extremely handsome nose--you needn’t blush--it is handsome, and I know it is through no effort of your own that you have acquired this undoubted beauty. When I reached Bellagio I saw there the most beautiful human being I have ever seen in my life (you need not jog your foot, Horace); she was a woman, and she was exquisitely beautiful. If you ask my aunt, she will tell you that a girl as beautiful as that ought to be immured for life behind walls. However, she wasn’t immured, she was walking along on the shores of the lake with a loathsome man I hated, and she had a mouth that made your heart ache to look at, with the mere maddening beauty of it! She was very tall, and everything about her was slender that ought to be slender--and every curve that ought to be full was full--and her head was poised like a flower, and her skin was soft as the tenderest little petal of a new bud, and colored like light through a cloud, and her eyes were dark and stormy like a black lake in the mountains--and unutterably sad. I could go on describing her all night, but you’ve got to go at half-past ten. The absurd part of the whole story is that she was in love with the silly little scrap one might call a man, I suppose, if we had to label him as a specimen, and he--was tired (if you please) of her! Plainly, Helen of Troy, the Venus of Milo--or whatever you choose to consider within a thousand miles of her--no longer suited his convenience!
“At this moment he caught diphtheria, and I sincerely hope he suffered abominably; but, needless to say, he hadn’t the decency to die. No one in the hotel was any the wiser. It was too early in the season, and the man had money, so ‘Helen of Troy’ nursed him in their particular part of the hotel behind a carbolic sheet, and we were told he had bronchitis.
“My aunt is one of the most plucky and altogether delightful women I know, but she has a pronounced terror of infectious disease, and if she had guessed what lurked in that distant wing I might never be telling you this story. One morning as I was crossing the hotel lounge I saw the unpromising specimen of manhood in front of the bureau. He had quite recovered and was giving notice for his departure that day. He added that Madame could not accompany him; she had better be removed to the hospital, as he was unable to continue to offer her his protection. I heard him say this in the quick French, which he no doubt calculated could hardly reach the intelligence of an English miss. Then I went over to the bureau and told the manager that I would be responsible for Madame, and that I would nurse her and undertake her expenses. He seemed very unwilling to accept my offer, and finally under promise of secrecy he told me the nature of the trouble. There was no one in the hotel but ourselves. I told my aunt what I intended to do, and that as bronchitis was occasionally infectious I should not come out of my patient’s room for some weeks. (Did I ever tell you that I had worked previously in a London hospital for a year? I meant to be a nurse, but my throat wasn’t strong enough, so I never finished my training.) Well, my aunt appealed to my common sense, to my affection for her, and finally to her authority; and then I kissed her and reminded her that she had always told me to consider my life my personal property, and how long Helen of Troy’s eyelashes were, and what an ineffable brute the man must have been. She said I was a suicidal idiot, and that I could send her a daily message. But of course I never did, because you might be able to carry that kind of bronchitis in notes.
“Well, the end of the story was that my aunt met the doctor, and whether she had had her suspicions or not before, I don’t know, but the doctor couldn’t stand against her; she got the truth out of him, left the hotel in a panic, and wired to me to leave instantly, get quarantined somewhere, and then join her.
“I had been by this time a fortnight with Helen of Troy; she was recovering, but she had found out that I wasn’t the man, and her heart was broken. I don’t expect you know anything about women with broken hearts, Horace, but I think you would agree with me, you can’t leave them. So I didn’t leave Helen of Troy. We stayed on together long after she had actually recovered. I slept in a room leading out of hers, and I was glad I was a strong woman, because on three occasions she tried to commit suicide, and you need a good deal of muscle to stop a person who wants to commit suicide as much as she did. After her illness was over we used to wander up and down the garden by the lake-side. The season had begun there, and all kinds of people kept turning up. One day some strange men spoke to us in the garden. One of them was a friend of the ‘unpromising specimen,’ and before we had time to make ourselves perfectly plain to them the hotel gossip scuttled off like a rabbit from almost under our feet to the manager, and he told us the next morning very politely that unfortunately our rooms were wanted.