Part 52

“Wait a bit,” it whispered in his ear. “You were there only yesterday. It can't fail, therefore, to seem extraordinary, your calling again to-day. You must be prepared with an excuse, an explanation. But suppose, when you arrive, suppose that (like the lady in the ballad) she greets you with 'a glance of cold surprise'--what then, my dear? Why, then, it's obvious, you can't allege the true explanation--can you? If she greets you with a glance of cold, surprise, you 'll have your answer, as it were, before the fact you 'll know that there's no manner of hope for you; and the time for passionate avowals will automatically defer itself. But then--? How will you justify your visit? What face can you put on?”

“H'm,” assented Peter, “there's something in that.”

“There's a great deal in that,” said the demon. “You must have an excuse up your sleeve, a pretext. A true excuse is a fine thing in its way; but when you come to a serious emergency, an alternative false excuse is indispensable.”

“H'm,” said Peter.

However, if there are demons in the atmosphere, there are gods in the machine--(“Paraschkine even goes so far as to maintain that there are more gods in the machine than have ever been taken from it.”) While Peter stood still, pondering the demon's really rather cogent intervention, his eye was caught by something that glittered in the grass at the roadside.

“The Cardinal's snuff-box,” he exclaimed, picking it up.

The Cardinal had dropped his snuff-box. Here was an excuse, and to spare. Peter rang the bell.

XXIV

And, like the lady in the ballad, sure enough, she greeted his arrival with a glance of cold surprise.

At all events, eyebrows raised, face unsmiling, it was a glance that clearly supplemented her spoken “How do you do?” by a tacit (perhaps self-addressed?) “What can bring him here?”

You or I, indeed, or Mrs. O'Donovan Florence, in the fulness of our knowledge, might very likely have interpreted it rather as a glance of nervous apprehension. Anyhow, it was a glance that perfectly checked the impetus of his intent. Something snapped and gave way within him; and he needed no further signal that the occasion for passionate avowals was not the present.

And thereupon befell a scene that was really quite too absurd, that was really childish, a scene over the memory of which, I must believe, they themselves have sometimes laughed together; though, at the moment, its absurdity held, for him at least, elements of the tragic.

He met her in the broad gravelled carriage-sweep, before the great hall-door. She had on her hat and gloves, as if she were just going out. It seemed to him that she was a little pale; her eyes seemed darker than usual, and graver. Certainly--cold surprise, or nervous apprehension, as you will--her attitude was by no means cordial. It was not oncoming. It showed none of her accustomed easy, half-humorous, wholly good-humoured friendliness. It was decidedly the attitude of a person standing off, shut in, withheld.

“I have never seen her in the least like this before,” he thought, as he looked at her pale face, her dark, grave eyes; “I have never seen her more beautiful. And there is not one single atom of hope for me.”

“How do you do?” she said, unsmiling and waited, as who should invite him to state his errand. She did not offer him her hand but, for that matter, (she might have pleaded), she could not, very well: for one of her hands held her sunshade, and the other held an embroidered silk bag, woman's makeshift for a pocket.

And then, capping the first pang of his disappointment, a kind of anger seized him. After all, what right had she to receive him in this fashion?--as if he were an intrusive stranger. In common civility, in common justice, she owed it to him to suppose that he would not be there without abundant reason.

And now, with Peter angry, the absurd little scene began.

Assuming an attitude designed to be, in its own way, as reticent as hers, “I was passing your gate,” he explained, “when I happened to find this, lying by the roadside. I took the liberty of bringing it to you.”

He gave her the Cardinal's snuff box, which, in spite of her hands' preoccupation, she was able to accept.

“A liberty!” he thought, grinding his teeth. “Yes! No doubt she would have wished me to leave it with the porter at the lodge. No doubt she deems it an act of officiousness on my part to have found it at all.”

And his anger mounted.

“How very good of you,” she said. “My uncle could not think where he had mislaid it.”

“I am very fortunate to be the means of restoring it,” said he.

Then, after a second's suspension, as she said nothing (she kept her eyes on the snuffbox, examining it as if it were quite new to her), he lifted his hat, and bowed, preparatory to retiring down the avenue.

“Oh, but my uncle will wish to thank you,” she exclaimed, looking up, with a kind of start. “Will you not come in? I--I will see whether he is disengaged.”

She made a tentative movement towards the door. She had thawed perceptibly.

But even as she thawed, Peter, in his anger, froze and stiffened. “I will see whether he is disengaged.” The expression grated. And perhaps, in effect, it was not a particularly felicitous expression. But if the poor woman was suffering from nervous apprehension--?

“I beg you on no account to disturb Cardinal Udeschini,” he returned loftily. “It is not a matter of the slightest consequence.”