CHAPTER XII.

“INFINITE RICHES IN A LITTLE ROOM.”

“I DREW aside the _portière_ and looked into the room. She was there--Carlitz--nestling in a deep easy-chair, with that perfect arm--whose rounded line was accentuated by the tight-fitting sleeve of her violet silk dress--flung above her head in an attitude expressive of weariness. She was not alone. In a chair almost as comfortable as her own sat a portly gentleman of middle age, upon whose handsome countenance good-nature had set a stamp unmistakeable even by the shallowest observer. This gentleman was happily no stranger to me. I had met him in London, and knew him as the guide, philosopher, friend, and financial agent of Madame Carlitz; at once the Talleyrand and the Fould of that fair despot.

“The divinity arched her eyebrows in lazy surprise as I crossed the threshold.

‘I really believe it is some one we know, H.,’ she said to her friend, with delightful insolence.

“Mr. H. received me with more cordiality. I had seen a good deal of him in London during the previous season. E. T. and he were sworn allies. H. had been lieutenant in a regiment of the line, and, after wasting a small patrimony, had sold his commission and turned stage-player. His intimates called him Captain H. and Gentleman H., and he was a man who, in the whole of his careless career, had neither lost a friend nor made an enemy. To Madame Carlitz he was invaluable. The divinity had of late years taken it into her splendid mind to set up a temple of her own, whereby the little Sheppard’s Alley Theatre, the most battered old wooden box that ever held a metropolitan audience, had been transformed, at the cost of some thousands, into a fairy temple of cream-coloured panelling, and white-satin hangings, powdered with golden butterflies; and was now known to the fashionable world, whose carriages and cabs blocked Sheppard’s Alley and overflowed into Wild’s Corner, as the Royal Bonbonnière Opera House.

“Here Carlitz had sung and acted in delicious little operettas, imported from her native shores, to the delight of the world in general--always excepting those stupid people, the builders, and decorators, and upholsterers who had effected the transformation that made Sheppard’s Alley and Wild’s Corner the haunt of rank and fashion, and who had not received any pecuniary reward for their labours. To keep these people at bay, or, it is possible, to reduce their claims to something like reason, Madame Carlitz employed my friend H., who of all men was best adapted to pour oil upon the stormy ocean of a creditor’s mind. He was the enchantress’s _alter ego_, opening and sifting her letters, arranging her starring engagements, choosing her pieces, managing her theatre, and receiving, with imperturbable temper, the torrents of her wrath when she was pleased to be angry. Nor were the proprieties outraged by an alliance so pure. H. was one of those men who are by nature fatherly--nay, almost motherly--in their treatment of women. No scandal had ever tarnished his familiar name. He had that tender, half-quixotic gallantry which is never allied with vice. He was the idol of old women and children, the pride of a doting mother, and the sovereign lord of a commonplace little woman whom he had taken for his wife.

“It was to this gentleman that I owed my right to approach Madame Carlitz. E. T. had obtained my admission to the side-scenes of the Bonbonnière, and had induced H. to present me to the lovely manageress, who was unapproachable as royalty. My introduction obtained for me only some ten minutes’ converse with the presiding genius of the temple; but so supreme an honour was even this small privilege, that E. T. hastened to borrow a couple of hundred from me while my gratitude was yet warm.

“It will be seen, therefore, that I had little justification for intruding on the lady now, beyond the loneliness of the country in which I found her, and the primitive habits there obtaining.

“After I had been a second time presented by H.--the lady having quite forgotten my presentation in Sheppard’s Alley--madame received me with more warmth than she had deigned to evince for me in the green-room of the Bonbonnière.

‘These hills are so dreadfully dreary, and we are so glad to see any one who can give us news,’ she said, with agreeable candour.

“And then H. explained how it fell out that I met them there. Madame had been knocked-up with the season--six new operettas, the lovely _prima donna_ singing in two pieces every night, and _never_ disappointing her public, which master this fair Carlitz served faithfully and constantly throughout her career--and the doctors had ordered change of scene and quiet--no Switzerland, no Italy, no German spa, but a sheltered hermitage, far from the busy haunts of men and the halting-places of stage-coaches.

“On hearing this E. T. had offered his mountain-shanty--poor accommodation, but scenery and air unmatchable in any other spot of earth. Madame Carlitz had been enraptured by the idea. E. T.’s hut was the place of places. She felt herself refreshed and invigorated by the very thought of the mountains and the sea. She would wait for no preparations, no fuss. She would take her own maid and a couple of women for the house--servants in those mountain-districts must be such barbarous creatures--and Parker, her butler, and a page or so, and a dozen or two trunks, and her favourite dogs, and her own particular phaeton and ponies, and her piano, and nothing more. Mr. and Mrs. H. must, of course, go with her, to keep house, and to write to people in London, and prevent the possibility of her being pursued by bills and tiresome letters, and so on.

“H. consented to this, and arranged the journey with infinite patience and good-humour, suppressing the unnecessary adjuncts of the convoy, and reducing the luggage to limits that were almost within the bounds of reason. All this he told me, as we strolled on the lawn before dinner.

‘She--well, she very nearly swore at me when I told her she mustn’t bring her piano,’ said Mr. H.; ‘a concert grand, you know, about ‘seven feet long. And then she stood out for bringing her man Parker, the greatest thief and scoundrel in Christendom; and the ponies and a groom, who sits behind her when she drives; but I fought my ground inch by inch, sir, and here we are. Madame has her own maid, and her lap-dogs; I have hired a stout country-girl for the kitchen, and we do the rest of the housework ourselves. And, egad, madame likes it. She dusts and arranges the rooms, and so forth, with her own hands, and sings and dances about the house more deliciously than ever she sang or danced on the boards of the Bonbonnière. She has developed a genius for cooking: puts on a big holland apron, and tosses an omelet, or fries a dish of trout, with the art of a Vatel, and the grace of a Hebe. I never knew half her fascination until we came here; and I think, if her London admirers could see her, they would be more madly in love with her than ever.’

“They invited me to dine. Mrs. H. made her appearance before dinner--a most amiable inanity, fat, fair, and thirty, with innocent flaxen curls, blue ribbons in her cap, and a babyfied, simpering face; the sort of woman whose presence at a dinner-table, or in a drawing-room, one can only remember by perpetual mental effort. Happily she did not demand much attention, but was content to sit still and simper at her husband’s jokes and madame’s ‘agreeable rattle.’

“We talked of everything and everybody. The divine Carlitz, who in her audience-chamber at the Bonbonnière had received me with such chilling courtesy, was now cordial and familiar as friendship itself. Our conversation developed innumerable points of sympathy between us: mutual likings, mutual antipathies--all of the most frivolous kind; for the world of Estelle Carlitz was a world of trifles--a universe of cashmere-shawls, pug-dogs, airy ballads, dainty pony-carriages, diamonds, and strawberries and cream. I have since heard that beneath that snowy breast, whereon bright gems seemed to shine with intenser brightness, there beat a heart full of generous pity for her own sex, though hard as adamant for ours.

“To me, upon this particular evening, in this lonely mountain-retreat, she was delightful. The dinner was excellent--simplicity itself, but served with a rustic grace that might have charmed Savarin or Alvanly. In my own eyrie the _cuisine_ had been a lamentable failure; and the fact that it was so, may have somewhat contributed to the causes of that ever-increasing weariness of spirit which had been my portion in these mountain regions. At five-and-twenty a man can endure a good deal in this way. I was no _gourmet_, though I had lived amongst men who, in the old Roman days, would have known by the flavour of their oysters whether they had been brought from the coasts of barbarous Britain--men who discussed the _menu_ of a dinner with a solemnity that would have sufficed for the forming of a Cabinet, and arranged the importation of a truffled turkey or a Strasburg pie with as much care as might have attended the dismissal of a secret emissary to the Jacobite court at Rome in the days of the first two Georges.

“H. dozed after dinner, worn out by a long morning’s fishing; while Madame Carlitz and I trifled with our modest dessert, and slandered our London acquaintance. Between us we seemed to know every one. The lady’s knowledge of the great world was chiefly second-hand, it must be confessed, but she told me many facts relating to my intimate acquaintance that were quite new to me, and which might have made my hair stand on end, had I not happily outlived that period in which the secret records of our friends’ lives have power either to shock or to astonish.

“Nothing could present a more piquant contrast to my poor C.’s plaintive looks and tones, and ill-concealed unhappiness, than the elegant vivacity of this most fascinating Carlitz. And to have found her thus remote from her usual surroundings, sequestered, unexpected, as mountain sylph, lent a positive enchantment to the whole affair.

“We went out on to the lawn in the tender moonlight, while Mrs. H. made tea for us at a pretty lamp-lit table, and that most amiable and inconsiderately-considerate H. slept on serenely in his comfortable chintz-covered easy-chair. We went out into that divine, intoxicating light. The ripple of the waves sounded softly afar. A deep cleft in the mountain revealed a glimpse of moonlit water, and around and about us fell the shadows of the mighty hills.

‘It is like a scene in an opera,’ cried Madame Carlitz.

“And it was evident the set awakened no higher emotion in her mind.

‘If such a set were only manageable at the Bonbonnière! But we have not enough depth for this kind of thing. That is what we want, you see--depth.’

‘Yes,’ I answered, almost sadly, ‘that is what we want--depth.’

‘The moonlight effect is only a question of green gauzes, and lamps at the wing. I think, by the bye, we make our moonlights a little too green. I wonder whether Mr. Fresko has ever seen the moon. He spends all his evenings in the theatre, smoking and drinking beer in his painting-room, or hanging about the side-scenes, smelling intolerably of stale tobacco. I really doubt if he has ever seen this kind of thing. But I can’t afford to change him for a better painter. His interiors are exquisite. He was painting a tapestried drawing-room, after Boucher, when I left London--a scene that will enchant you next season. The draperies are to be blue watered-silk--real silk, you know; and folding-doors at the back will open into a garden of real exotics, if I can get my florist to supply them; but he is rather an impracticable sort of person, who is always wanting sums on account.’

‘And the piece?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the piece is a pretty-enough little trifle,’ the lady replied, with supreme carelessness; ‘_The Marquis of Yesterday_, a vaudeville of the Pompadour period, adapted from Scribe. Of course I am to play Pompadour.’

“On this I would fain have become more sentimental. The mountain light, the deep mysterious shadows, the glimpse of ocean--all invited to that dreamy sentimentality which is of earth’s transient intoxications the most delightful. But Madame Carlitz was not sentimentally inclined. To shine, to astonish, to enchant--these to her were but too easy. The melting mood was out of her line. And though she fooled me by her charming air of sympathy, I felt, even in the hour of my delusion, a vague sense that it was all stage-play, and that the looks and tones which thrilled my senses, and almost touched that finer sense I had been taught to call my soul, were the same looks and tones which the dramatic critics praised in the finished actress of the Bonbonnière.

“Have I any right to be angry with her if she was all falsehood, when there was so little reality in my own _fade_ sentimentality and hackneyed flatteries? No; I am not angry. I encountered the enchantress but a few nights ago in society, and said to myself, wonderingly, ‘Once I almost loved you.’

“H. awoke, and smiled upon us with his genial smile, as we returned to the pretty lamp-lit room.

‘Have you two children been rehearsing the balcony-scene in the moonlight,’ he cried. And then we went back to our London talk and London scandal, and H. told us some admirable stories, more or less embellished by a glowing imagination; and Mrs. H. simpered, placidly, just as she had simpered at dinner; and madame contradicted her friend, and laughed at him, and interrupted him by delicious mimicry of his _dramatis personæ_, and behaved altogether in a most fascinating manner.

“I went home slowly in the moonlight, meditating on my evening’s entertainment.

‘Have I been happy?’ I asked myself. ‘No. I have been only amused; and I have come to that period in which little beyond amusement is possible for me.’

“And all my dreams had resolved themselves into this! My Cynthia was not to be found on earth; and the next best thing to the spirit that walks as free as air the clouds among, was--an elegant and fashionable actress.

“My evening had been very pleasant to me; and I was angry with myself, disappointed with myself, because it had been so.

“I thought of Byron. It was not till his star was waning that he found that one companion-spirit who was to console him for the brilliant miseries of his career.

‘Numa was an old man when he met his Ægeria,’ I said, to myself. ‘Perhaps for me too the divine nymph will appear in life’s dreary twilight.’

“I found that my poor C. had been sorely distressed, and even alarmed, by my unwonted absence; and I had no choice but to burden my conscience with a falsehood, or to make her unhappy by the confession that I had been beguiled into the forgetfulness of time in the society of a more fascinating person than her poor, pretty, sentimental self.

‘I found my friend T. at his hut beyond D---- H----,’ I said; ‘and the fellow insisted on my dining with him.’

“My simple-minded C. had implicit faith in my word, even after that _one_ broken promise which had caused this poor child so many tears.

‘I am so glad you found an old friend,’ she said; ‘but oh, H., I cannot tell you what I have suffered in all these long hours! There is no terrible accident which I have not pictured to myself. I thought how you might lose your footing in the narrow path at the edge of the cliff; I thought you might have been tempted to go round by the sands, and that the tide had risen before you could reach the steps in the cliff. I sent D. to look for you.”

“I told her that on another occasion she must disturb herself with no such fear, and hinted that as E. T. was a very intimate and affectionate friend, I might find myself compelled to dine with him occasionally during his stay.

‘Will he be here long?’ she asked, piteously.

‘Oh dear, no,’ I replied; ‘depend upon it, he will soon be tired of these desolate regions.’

“I had pointed out the cottage to her in one of our walks, and had given her some slight account of the owner.

“After this I was often away from my too sad, too gentle companion. Carlitz seemed to me every day more delightful. I forgot all that I had been told about this most volatile of human butterflies, this most enchanting of the papilionaceous tribe. I, the _blasé_ worldling, suffered myself to be caught in that airy net. Most completely was I deluded by her smile of welcome; the sweet, low voice, that grew lower and sweeter when she talked with me; the tender tones in which the enchantress confessed her love for these wild, romantic regions; the unexpected happiness she had found amongst these rugged hills; the disinclination--nay, indeed, the positive disgust--with which she contemplated her approaching return to London; all the meretricious charms of the accomplished coquette had given place to the tender grace, the almost divine loveliness of the woman who for the first time discovers that she possesses a heart, and who only becomes aware of that possession in the hour in which she loses it for ever.

“It must not be supposed that I yielded to this new influence without some weak struggle. Every night I went back to my eyrie, determined to see the divine Carlitz no more. Every morning I found C.’s society more hopelessly dull, and was fain to take refuge in a mountain ramble. Unhappily, the ramble always ended at the same spot.

“To me had been offered some of the sweetest flatteries ever shaped by woman’s lips; but the lovely proprietress of the Bonbonnière was past-mistress of the art, and her flatteries were more subtle than sweetest words. She fooled me to the top of my bent. C. was day by day more neglected; my books were abandoned; my ambitions, my aspirations, for the time utterly forgotten. I had found the supreme good of the Sybarite’s life--amusement. And my vanity was flattered by the idea that I was beloved by a woman whose name was synonymous with the verb ‘to charm.’

“Yes; I was beloved. How else could I account for that gradual transformation which had changed the most volatile of women into a creature pensive and poetical as Sappho or Heloise? If there had been any striking suddenness in this change, I might have considered it a mere stage-trick; but the transition had been so gradual, and seemed so unconscious. What motive could she have for deceiving me? Had she been free to marry, she might have considered me an eligible _parti_, and this might have been a matrimonial snare; but I had been given to understand that somewhere, undistinguished and uncared for, there existed a person answering to the name of Carlitz, and possessing legal authority over this lovely lady. From matrimonial designs I was therefore safe; and I told myself that these signs and tokens which I beheld with such rapture were the evidence of a disinterested affection.

“I remembered the lady’s elegant insolence in the green-room of the Bonbonnière; and it pleased me to think that I had humbled so proud a spirit.

“Whether the sentiment which this most fascinating woman inspired in my mind was ever more than gratified vanity, I know not. For the moment it seemed a deeper feeling; and in thought and word I was already inconstant to that poor child whom I had loved so fondly, so purely, so truly, when we walked, hand locked in hand, on that lovely English shore beyond the little town of B----.

“I hated myself for my inconstancy, but was still inconstant. This woman had a thousand arts and witcheries wherewith to beguile me from my better self. Or were not all her witcheries comprised in one profound and simple art?--SHE FLATTERED ME.

“It is needless to dwell long upon this, my second disappointment in affairs of the heart. The net was spread for me; and, unsuspecting as Agamemnon, I allowed this fair Clytemnestra to entangle me in her fatal web before she gave me the _coup de grâce_.

“Every morning I found some fresh excuse for spending my day in her society. We went upon all manner of excursions, with Mr. and Mrs. H. to play propriety. Any fragment of Gothic tower or ruined stone wall within twenty miles of E. T.’s small domain served as a pretext for a long drive and an impromptu picnic. We went fishing in a rough yacht, and brought up monsters in the way of star-fish and dog-fish, sword-fish and jelly-fish, from the briny deep; but rarely succeeded in securing any piscatorial prize of an edible nature.

‘I don’t exactly know what kind of thing we are fishing for,’ H. said, piteously, ‘but if the boat is to be filled with these savage reptiles, I should be obliged if you would allow me to be put on shore at the earliest opportunity.’

“In all our rambles, madame’s gaiety and good-humour were the chief source of our delight. Her animal spirits were inexhaustible; and for me alone were reserved those occasional touches of sentiment which, in a creature so gay, possessed an unspeakable charm. Her accomplishments were of the highest order, but her reading very little. Yet, by her exquisite tact and _savoir-faire_, she made even her ignorance bewitching. And then she had the art of seeming so interested in every subject her companion started, and would listen to my prosiest rhapsody with eyes of mute eloquence, and parted lips that seemed tremulous with suppressed emotion.

“One day, after she had been even more than usually vivacious and enchanting, during a little open-air repast among the most uninteresting ruins in A----, I was surprised, and indeed mystified, by a sudden change in her manner.

“We had wandered away from the ruins, leaving H. and his placid wife calmly discussing a bottle of E. T.’s old Madeira. Slowly and silently we walked along a solitary path, winding through the bosom of a most romantic glen. I was silent, in sympathy with my companion’s unwonted thoughtfulness. Of my own feelings I had spoken to Estelle Carlitz in the vaguest terms. Close and constant as our companionship had been within these few weeks, we had never passed beyond the boundary-line of flirtation. Poetical and sentimental we had been, in all conscience; but our poetry and sentiment had been expressed by eloquent generalities, which had committed neither of us. Yet I could not doubt that the lady numbered me among her slaves; and I dared to believe my bondage was not to be an utterly hopeless captivity.

‘Can you imagine anything more beautiful than this secluded glen?’ said Madame Carlitz, suddenly. ‘One can scarcely fancy it a part of the same world which contains that noisy whirlpool, London. I cannot tell you how this place has made me hate London. I wish E. T. had never offered me his house. What good have I done myself by coming here? I shall only feel the contrast between perfect peace and unceasing care more keenly when I go back to all my old troubles. It would have been wiser to stay in town, and go on acting, until I realized the dismal prophecies of my medical advisers. If I am doomed to die in harness, my life might as well end one year as another. What does it matter?’

“The words were commonplace enough of themselves, but from the lips of Carlitz the commonest words were magical as the strains of Arion to kindly Dolphin--musical as the seven-stringed lyre with whose chords Terpander healed the wounds of civil war.

‘Do you really mean that you have been happy here among these rugged mountains and barren valleys--you?’

‘Me--I, who speak to you. Happy! Ah, but too happy!’ murmured the divine Estelle, in tones of profoundest melancholy. ‘My life here has been like a pleasant dream; but it is over, and to-morrow I must set my face towards London.’

‘To-morrow!’ I exclaimed. ‘Surely this is very sudden.’

‘It is sudden!’ answered madame, with a short, impatient sigh; ‘but it is inevitable, as it seems. H. received letters this morning; all sorts of bills and lawyers’ threats--horrors which I am incapable of comprehending. I must return; I must, if I die on the journey, _quand même_; she cried, becoming less English as she became more energetic. ‘They will have it, these harpies. I must open my theatre and begin my season, and have the air to gain money _à flots_. Then they will tranquillize themselves. H. will talk to them. This must be. Otherwise they will send their myrmidons here, and put me into their Clichy--their Bench.’

“I expressed my sympathy with all tenderness; but madame shook her head despairingly, and would not be consoled. I remembered the existence of the unknown Carlitz, and reflected that his accomplished wife could scarcely be subject to the horror of imprisonment for debt while sheltered by the ægis of her coverture. But could I basely remind her of his obscure and obnoxious existence? Sentiment, chivalry, devotion, forbade so business-like a suggestion.

‘My dear Estelle,’ I murmured, ‘remain in these tranquil regions till you grow weary of nature’s solitude and my society. You need have no fear of your creditors while I have power to write a cheque.’

“I pressed the daintily-gloved hand that rested on my arm. It was the first time I had uttered her Christian name. Until this moment I had worshipped on my knees. But the tender down is brushed from the wings of Cupid when he rubs shoulders with Plutus.

“The divine Carlitz drew her hand from mine with a movement of outraged dignity.

‘Do you think so meanly of me as _that_?’ she asked, proudly. ‘Do you think I would borrow money from _you_?’

“The emphasis on the last word of the first sentence revealed the nobility of the speaker’s mind; the emphasis on the last word of the second sentence went straight home to the--vanity--of the hearer.

‘Estelle!’ I exclaimed, ‘you cannot refuse the poor service of my fortune! Can there be any question of obligation between you and me? Have you not taught me what it is to be happy? have you not----’

“Idem, idem, idem! Why should I transcribe the milk-and-watery version of that old story, which is only worth telling when it is written in the heart’s blood of an honest man?

“Deep or earnest feeling I had none. By nature I was inconstant. The love that had glorified the sands of B---- with a light that shone not from sun or moon, had faded from my life. Like a fair child who dies in early infancy, the god had vanished, and the memory of his sweet companionship alone remained to me. I think I had tried to fall in love with Estelle Carlitz, and had failed. But I was none the less anxious to win her regard. There is a fashion in these follies; and to have been beloved by the fair directress of the Bonbonnière would have given me _kudos_ amongst my acquaintance of the clubs--nay, even in patrician drawing-rooms, to which the lovely Carlitz herself was yet a stranger.

“This was in my mind as I declared myself in a hackneyed strain of eloquence.

“The lady heard me to the end in silence, and then turned upon me with superb indignation.

‘_Taisez-vous._ Would you offer to lend me money if I were in your own set--if I were not an actress, a person whom you pay to amuse your idle evenings? It is not so long since they refused us Christian burial in my country. Ah! but you are only like the rest. You talk to me of your heart and your banker’s-book in the same breath!’ she cried, passionately. ‘It is mean of you to persecute me with offers of help which you ought to know that I cannot, and will not, accept. But you are in your right. It was I who betrayed my poverty. You wrung my secret from me. I beg you to speak of it no more. My affairs are in very good hands. Mr. H. will arrange everything for me; and--I shall go to-morrow. And now let us be friends. Forget that I have ever spoken to you about these things, and forget that I have been angry.’

“She turned to me with her most bewitching smile, and held out her hand. This power of transition was her greatest charm. The gift that made her most accomplished among stage-players made her also most delightful among women. Pity that the woman who is playing a part should always have so supreme an advantage over the woman who is in earnest.

“We spoke no more of money-matters. I assured Madame Carlitz that, in the circle which she was pleased to call my ‘set,’ there was no one who possessed my respect in greater measure than it was possessed by herself. And at this juncture we heard the jovial voice of the genial H. echoing down the glen, announcing that the carriage was ready for our return.

‘It is agreed that we are to forget everything,’ said madame, ‘except that this is to be my last evening in this dear place, and that we are to spend it together.’

“To this I consented with all tender reverence and submission. Our homeward drive was gaiety itself--our dinner, the banquet of a Horace and Lydia after that little misunderstanding about Chloe and the Thurine boy had been settled to the satisfaction of both parties. After dinner Estelle sang to me, accompanying herself on the guitar, which she played with a rare perfection. The old, forgotten ballads come back to me sometimes, and I hear the low sweet voice, and the sound of the waves washing that rocky headland in A----.

“After she had sung as many songs as I could in conscience entreat from her, I asked H. to smoke a cigar with me in the garden. He came promptly at my call; and I know now, though I was persistently blind at the moment, that a little look of intelligence passed between him and my enchantress as he crossed the room to comply with my request.

“We went out upon the lawn, lighted our cigars, and paced up and down for some few minutes in silence. Then I plunged into the middle of things.

‘H.,’ I said, ‘how much would it take to clear Madame Carlitz of her pressing pecuniary engagements, and release her from any necessity of commencing a new season at the Bonbonnière for the next few months?’

“H. gave a long whistle.

‘My dear boy, don’t think of it,’ he exclaimed; ‘it can’t be done. We must open the theatre, make what money we can; and if we can’t make a composition, we had better go through the court.’

‘But Carlitz!’ I remonstrated.

‘Carlitz is dying,’ replied H., with supreme carelessness--‘has been dying for the last four years. It’s very trying for her. She’d have been driving in her barouche, with strawberry-leaves on the panel, by this time, if he hadn’t been so long about it. But a man can’t go on dying for ever, you know; there must be a limit to that sort of thing.’

‘You talk of a composition. Would a cheque for a thousand pounds enable her to satisfy her creditors?’

“Mr. H. deliberated.

‘Fifteen hundred might do,’ he said, presently; “Snoggs and Bangham, the builders, must have a decent lump of money to stop _their_ mouths; and there’s Kaliks, the florist, an uncommonly tough customer. Yes, I think something between fifteen hundred and two thousand would do it.”

‘You must contrive to settle matters for fifteen hundred,’ I said. ‘I know what a clever financier you are, H. Take me to your room, and give me a pen and ink. I have been sending away money this morning, and happen to have my cheque-book in my pocket.’

‘My dear fellow, this generosity is really something utterly unprecedented, and completely overpowering,’ exclaimed H., in a fat, choking voice. ‘But I doubt if madame will be induced to accept a loan of this nature. If she does avail herself of your generous offer, the matter must of course be placed on a strictly business-like footing. If a bill of sale on the wardrobe and musical library of the Bonbonnière would satisfy your legal adviser as security----’

“I assured Mr. H. that nothing could be farther from my thoughts than the desire to secure myself from loss by means of a bill of sale.

‘The very name of such an instrument sets my teeth on edge,’ I said; ‘the money will be to all intents and purposes a free gift, but it may be better to call it a loan.’

‘My dear fellow,’ cried H., with a gulp, expressive of generous emotion, ‘this is noble. But you don’t know madame. Proud, sir, proud as Lucifer.’

“I remembered that little scene in the glen, and could not dispute the fact of the lady’s haughty and somewhat impracticable mind.

‘It can’t be done, sir,’ said H., decisively; ‘it’s a pity, but it can’t be done.’

‘Why not? Madame Carlitz knows nothing of business matters. I have heard her say as much fifty times.’

‘A mere child, sir--a baby.’

‘In that case there is no difficulty. I will write the cheque; you will settle with the tradesmen, and tell Madame Carlitz nothing except that those obnoxious persons are satisfied. You may take as much credit as you please for your financial powers; I shall not betray the secret of the affair.’

‘Upon my word, my dear friend, you are a prince!’ said H., with enthusiasm.

“Nor did he make any further difficulty. We finished our cigars, and went into the house together, with stealthy footsteps; for the thing we were about to do was a kind of treason. H. led me into a little room which he called his den--a room in which he had spent many weary hours trying to square the circle of madame’s pecuniary embarrassments.

“I wrote a cheque for 1,500_l._, payable to the order of the divine Carlitz.

‘She will endorse it without looking at it, I suppose?’ I said.

‘My dear sir, she would endorse the bond of a compact with Mephistopheles. In business matters she is perfectly infantine. I think she has a vague notion that her creditors can send her to the Tower, and have her head cut off, if she fails to satisfy their demands.’

“On this we went back to the drawing-room, where madame asked me, with a pretty, half-offended air, why I had been so long absent. Then H. brewed some Maraschino punch, which was supposed to be an Olympian beverage, and madame was more charming than ever. If I had been capable of thinking twice of a sum of money squandered on a pretty woman--which I was not--I should have been amply rewarded for my generosity. But I could afford to waste a thousand or two on the caprice of the moment without fear of remorseful twinges or economical regrets after the deed was done.

“It was late when I left the Lodge. Madame and H. followed me to the gate, and bade me good-night under the soft summer stars. Her gaiety had left her by one of those sudden changes that made her charming; and she looked and spoke with a tender sadness as we parted.

‘If I could believe in her depth of feeling, if I could hope----’ I said to myself, after that pensive parting; and then I remembered the sands at B----, and the vows that I had vowed, and the dreams that I had dreamed.

‘No,’ I said, ‘if I could trust her, I could not trust myself. With passion and reality I have finished. Let amusement be the business of my life. I will love as Horace loved, and my motto shall be, _Vogue la galère_.’

“I had only walked a few yards away from the gate when I remembered that I had left my light overcoat, with a pocket full of letters and papers, in the hall. I ran back; the gate was open, the door open too. I went in, and took my coat from its peg. As I did so, I was surprised to hear a silvery peal of laughter--long and joyous, nay indeed, triumphant, from my enchantress. H.’s bass guffaw sustained the sweet soprano peal; and even placid Mrs. H. assisted with a cheerful second.

“And but three minutes before Estelle had looked at me with eyes so tenderly mournful, had spoken with tones so sadly sweet!

“I lifted the _portière_ and looked into the room.”

‘I have come back for my coat,’ I said.

“The laughter ceased with suspicious abruptness.”

‘Oh, do come in! This absurd H. has been telling us the most ridiculous story about Fred M. Of course you know Fred M.?’ cried madame, in nowise disconcerted.

“She insisted that I should stay to hear the anecdote, which H. told for my benefit, with sufficient fluency, and a dash of that club-house mimicry which passes current for faithful imitation. I did not find the anecdote overpoweringly funny; but the lady sounded her peal of silver bells again, long and loudly as before, and I was fain to believe that this frivolous semi-scandalous relation had been the cause of the laughter that had startled me.

“I was not altogether convinced; and that nice appreciation of club-house anecdotes did not appear to me an excellent thing in woman. My adieux were brief and cold, and I walked homeward somewhat _désillusionné_.”

END OF VOL. II.

J. Ogden and Co., Printers, 172, St. John Street, E. C.

=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.