I don't believe that love often comes at first sight; but that it may come thus, or at least, at second sight, I have my own case to prove. It may be that my empty heart, bruised and lonely in that great city, was waiting with open door for any guest bold enough to walk in and claim possession. It may be that that young lady with her pleasant smile, her high-bred face and kindly air, crossing my path in that stranger-thronged wilderness, was led by Providence; it may be that her grace and charm were those I had pictured long in the Heavenward dreams of youth and but now found. However it was, I went home in love with an ideal whose outward semblance was the girl with the children's toys—truly in love with her. And the vision of Lilian Poole never came to me again in any guise that could discomfort me. From this time the vision that haunted me and led me on was of a sweet-eyed girl who dimpled as she smiled and dropped her violets. The picture of Lilian Poole, standing by the marble mantel in her plush-upholstered parlor, adjusting her bracelet so as to set off her not too small wrist, while I faced my fate, flitted before my mind, but she was a ghost to me, and my heart warmed as I thought of the lady of the violets and the children's toys.
XVI
THE SHADOW OF SHAM
I soon changed back to my first boarding-house. After my two weeks were out for which I had prepaid, I went to my landlady, Mrs. Starling, a tall, thin woman with high cheek bones, a cold eye and a close mouth, and told her frankly I could not pay any more in advance, and that, though I would certainly pay her within a short time, it might not be convenient for me to pay her by the week, and I left it with her whether she would keep me on these terms. She did not hesitate a second. Her first duty was to herself and family, she said, by which she meant her daughter, "Miss Starling," as she always spoke of her, but whom the irreverent portion of the boarders whom I associated with always spoke of as "Birdy," a young woman who dressed much in yellow, perhaps because it matched her blondined hair, played vehemently on the piano, and entertained the young men who boarded there. "Besides, she wanted the room for a dressing-room for a gentleman who wished a whole suite," she added, with what I thought a little undue stress on the word "gentleman," as the "gentleman" in question was the person who had borrowed my money from me and never returned it: Count Pushkin, who occupied the big room next my little one. He had, as I learned, cut quite a dash in town for a while, living at one of the most fashionable hotels, and driving a cart and tandem, and paying assiduous attention to a young heiress in the city, daughter of a manufacturer and street-car magnate; but latterly he had taken a room at Mrs. Starling's, "in order," he gave out, "that he might be quiet for a time," as a duke or duchess or something—I am not sure he did not say a king—who was his relative, had died in Europe. He had taken the greater part of the boarding-house by storm, for he was a tall, showy-looking fellow, and would have been handsome but for a hard and shifty eye. And I found myself in a pitiful minority in my aversion to him, which, however, after a while, gained some recruits among the young men, one of them, my young reporter, Kalender, who had moved there from Mrs. Kale's.
The boarding-house keeper's daughter was desperately in love with Pushkin, and, with her mother's able assistance, was making a dead set for him, which partiality the count was using for what it was worth, hardly attempting meantime to disguise his amusement at them. He sang enough to be passable, though his voice was, like his eye, hard and cold; and he used to sing duets with Miss Starling: the method by which, according to a vivacious young Jew, named Isadore Ringarten, who lived in the house, he paid his board. I never knew how he acquired his information, but he was positive.
"I vish," said Isadore, "I could pay my board in vind—vith a little song. Now, I can sing so the Count he would give me all he is vorth to sing so like I sing; but I am not a count—efen on this side."
However this was, Pushkin paid the girl enough attention to turn the poor thing's head, and made her treat harshly my reporter, Kalender, who was deeply in love with her, and spent all his salary on her for flowers, and lavished theatre tickets on her.
The evening before I left I had to call Pushkin down, who had been drinking a little, and I must say, when I called, he came promptly. It was after dinner in "the smoking room," as the apartment was called, and he began to ridicule poor Victoria cruelly, saying she had told him her hair was yellow like that of the girls of his own country, and he had told her, no, that hers was natural, while theirs was always dyed, and she swallowed it.
"She is in loaf mit me. She swallow whatefer I gif her—" he laughed. The others laughed, too. But I did not. I thought of Lilian Poole and Peck. Perhaps, I was thinking of my money, and I know I thought of the account of the ball which took place the day I arrived. I told him what I thought of his ridiculing a girl he flattered so to her face. He turned on me, his eyes snapping, his face flushed, but his manner cool and his voice level.