My heart gave a sudden drop into my boots one evening when I came across an item in the society columns of an afternoon paper, stating that it was believed by the friends of the parties, that Mr. Canter would, before very long, lead to the altar one of the reigning belles of the city. I had always disliked "Society Columns," as the expression of a latter-day vulgarity. Since then I have detested them.
I finally determined to try to get an interview with her whose absence clouded my world, and wrote her a note rather demanding one. As I received no reply to this, I called one evening to see her, if possible. The servant took in my card and a moment later returned with the statement that Miss Leigh was not at home. I was sure that it was not true. I came down the steps white with rage and also with a sinking of the heart. For I felt that it was all over between us.
Those whom the Gods hate they first make mad, and it was by no accident that the passion of anger and the state of madness have come to be known by the same terms in our tongue. I have always held since then that every true lover has something of madness in him while the passion rages. I could cheerfully have stormed her house and carried Eleanor Leigh away. I recalled with grim envy William the Conqueror's savage wooing when he met the Count's daughter who had insulted him and rode her down, to receive soon afterward her full submission. This somewhat barbarous form of proving one's passion having passed out of vogue, I testified my spleen by falling into a state of general cynicism which I vented so generously that Wolffert finally asked me what had happened to me, and conjectured that I must have met with a cross in love. This recalled me sufficiently to myself to make me dissemble my feelings, at least when in his presence. But I was certainly not rational for some time, and, sleeping or waking, I was haunted by the voice of the siren to whom I had fatally listened. What must I do in my folly the next time I met Miss Leigh, which I did quite accidentally one day on the street, but carry my head so high and bow so slightly that the next time we met, which was far from being as accidental as it might have appeared, she carried her head very high and did not bow at all. It was at some sort of a fair held for charity—and, ever since then I have hated them. Feeling assured that Eleanor Leigh would go, I attended myself with no more charitable object than to benefit a very wretched young lawyer, who was deeply conscious that he had made a fool of himself the last time he saw her. When I arrived, she was nowhere to be seen and I was on the point of leaving when, turning, I found her standing in the midst of a group, her arms full of flowers, which she was selling. All I have to say is that since that time I have felt that Pluto was entirely justified in that little affair in the Sicilian meadows. Thinking to make the amende for my foolish airiness when I last saw her, I made my way up to Miss Eleanor Leigh; but as I approached and was in the very act of speaking to her she turned her back on me. It was a dead cut—a public insult, as humiliating as she could make it. I left the fair in a rage which lasted long. As I wandered through the forlorn streets that night I fed my heart on instances of woman's inconstancy, and agreed with the royal lover that, "Mal habil qui s'y fie." But it was a poor occupation and brought me little consolation. In his "Inferno," Dante has given twelve different and successive circles in the depths of perdition, each lower than the other. I passed through every one of them, and with no companion but my own folly.
XXX
SEEKING ONE THAT WAS LOST
One may not hate his personal enemy; but one should hate an enemy to mankind. Had I known what fresh cause I had to hate Pushkin, I should not have been so supine.
Since I began to work seriously my practice had increased, and I was so interested in working on my old ladies' case that I was often detained at my office until late at night; and several times on my way home I observed a man acting somewhat curiously. He would keep along behind me, and if I turned back, would turn up a by-street or alley. He was a big, brawny fellow, and I never saw him except at night. At first, it had made no impression on me; but at length, I noticed him so often that it suddenly struck me that he was following me. Rendered suspicious by my former experience, I began quietly to test him, and was having a very interesting time leading him around the town, when unexpectedly I discovered who he was. It was a singular feeling to find oneself shadowed; to discover that the man who has passed all others indifferently in the crowd has singled you out and follows you, bound to you by some invisible thread, tracking you through the labyrinth of the thoroughfares; disregarding all the thousands who pass with their manifold interests and affairs, and that, singling you out with no known reason, he sticks to you through all the mazes of the multitudes. It comes to you gradually, dawning by degrees; then bursts on you suddenly with a light that astonishes and amazes. You are startled, frightened, incredulous; then you suspect, test, and are convinced; you suddenly spring from obscurity and indifference into an object of interest to yourself; and then it becomes an intellectual game between hunter and hunted. New powers awaken, dormant since the days when man lived in the forest.
When I awoke to the fact that the big man I had noticed was following me, for a moment the sensation was anything but pleasant. My hair almost stirred on my head. The next moment anger took the place of this feeling—indignation that one should dare to shadow me, to spy on my actions. I determined to confront the spy and thwart him. It was not difficult to do; he was an awkward fellow. The game was easier than I had supposed. One night when I had observed him following me, waiting until I reached a favorable spot, I turned quickly with my hand on my pistol, which I had put in my pocket, and faced him under a street lamp, stepping immediately in front of him and blocking his way.
"Otto!"