Scene Third THE ADMINISTRATION

I. THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

The three years following May’s unhappy affair with the Countess Polacca de Valska had been uneventful. He had not plunged again into foreign parts, but became a student of the barbarities of civilization. He saw what is termed the world, particularly that manifestation of it which attains its most perfect growth in London and Paris. Perhaps it would be too much to say that he forgot the Countess de Valska, but certainly his feelings toward that unhappy fair one underwent certain modifications. And as he was in the meantime in the receipt of some twenty thousand a year from the estate of the late John Austin, he by degrees became more reconciled to the extremely practical view the cruel countess had taken of their duties in relation to that gentleman’s will.

He very often wondered as to who might be the residuary legatee. It would be a wild freak, that he was sure of. It was quite on the cards for Uncle Austin to have provided that, since his nephew did not want the money, it might go to the devil for all he cared—or to the Total Abstinence Society.

It is more sad to say that, as time went by, certain metaphysical doubts as to the objective reality of the Cascadegli and the Siberian mine began to obtrude themselves. Faith of the most stubborn description remained to him, so far as the countess’s Paris salon and her beautiful self was concerned, but he failed to see the necessary connection between Trouville, Baden-Baden, Italia Irredenta, and the Parisian police. And Serge had removed himself, for an encumbrance, in a singularly accommodating way.

But May was a man of his word; and he looked forward, at first eagerly, and afterward with mingled emotions, to their promised next meeting in Brookline, Mass.

The woman Byron might have married was not the wife for Talleyrand. And May’s volcanic or Byronic age had passed, and he was in the tertiary period. Taking her for all she said she was, she wouldn’t do in society, and he doubted that she was all she said she was.

However, it gave him no serious trouble until after his acquaintance with the beautiful Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon. Youth has a long future ahead of it, and a young man of twenty-seven easily discounts obligations maturing only in six years. But when May was thirty, and well launched in London society—whether it was the charms of Mrs. Dehon aforesaid, or the vanishing of youthful heroism and that increase of comfort which attends middle life—a political heroine like the Countess Polacca de Valska no longer seemed to him the ideal consort for a man of his temperament.

Young men have their time for falling in love with comédiennes upon the stage; and then they turn to the comédiennes of real life. Only in the latter case it is to be noted that they ever prefer the heroines of a tragedy.

It was on the very evening before all advice became superfluous, that he confided his troubles to Tom Leigh, and asked his advice. Tom Leigh advised him that “he was in a devil of a hole.”

“But what am I to do?” said May. “I am bound to meet her—in five years.”

“Perhaps she won’t come,” said Tom. But Austin shook his head. If she didn’t come, there was May Austin—but he checked himself. He had never spoken of his cousin to Tom Leigh. She was doubtless married ere this; and if she wasn’t, he preferred her to the countess.

“Perhaps her husband ain’t dead,” suggested the resourceful Tom. But May smiled, bitterly. “I guess he’s dead enough—much as ever he was.”

“Then I don’t see but what you’ll have to stand the breach of promise suit,” Tom concluded, with a grin. In these misfortunes, truly, there is something pleasant to our best friends. We know that Messrs. Winkle and Tupman must have chuckled in secret over even Bardell vs. Pickwick. But the idea was unspeakably awful to our fastidious hero. Moreover, he darkly imagined that the countess had other resources than a breach of promise suit.

This was on the evening before the hunt; on that epochal brink of their first meeting. And on the next day all this talk became superfluous; as superfluous as for Falstaff to demand the time of day.

II. A LEAD OF HEARTS.

Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon—ah, Mrs. Dehon! Great heavens! why had they not met earlier—before she had sacrificed herself upon Terwilliger’s commonplace altars—before her radiant youth had been shrouded in tragedy?

The Russo-French police may be successfully evaded, but not so the laws of society. Naught but misery could he see in store for them both—one long life-agony of divided souls.

Of course, it took some time before this dismal prospect lay fairly out before them. At their first meeting there was nothing sadder in sight than the purple hills of Exmoor and the clear cascade of Bagworthy Water; and their talk was broken only by the cheerful yelp of hounds. And there had been fortune, too, in this; fortune we call fate, when fortune turns out ill. He had hardly seen her at the Cloudsham meet, and but just knew who she was. Thither he had gone with his friends, the Leighs, to see the red deer hunted in his ancient lair; and as he stood there, snuffing with his horse the sea-breeze that came up from Porlock Bay, immaculate in coat and patent-leathers, she had ridden up with a fat and pursy citizen beside her. This stall-fed citizen was horse-back on another square-built brute, and it was very Psychecide to call the wretch her husband. A Diana, by heaven! thought he; and, indeed, she sat her horse as any goddess might, and clothed her own riding-habit as the moon her covering of cloud.

“Who’s that?” said he to Tom Leigh.

“That’s the girl that married old Dehon,” said Tom. “She did it——”

But when or how she did it Austin never knew, for just then there was a joyous baying from the hounds, and whish! they scampered downward, skirting hanging Cloudsham Wood. Unluckily, they were at the wrong end of the field, and before they reached the steep bit of gorsy moor that overlooks the valley everyone else who meant to ride had disappeared in the cover of the forest. She reined in her beautiful horse on the very brink, and looked up the valley over Oare Hill; May stood a few yards below and looked down the valley in the direction of Porlock. Then she looked down the valley to Porlock, and May looked up the valley to Oare Hill. And their eyes met.

Her beautiful eyes glanced quickly off, like a sunbeam from a single eyeglass. She turned, as if in sudden decision, and sped like an arrow over the high moor. May’s eyes followed her; and his soul was in his eyes, and his body went after the soul. One dig of the spurs nigh unseated him, as if his spirited horse scorned such an incitement to chivalric duty; and so, for some twenty minutes on end they rode, May neither gaining nor losing, and both out of sight of the rest of the hunt. Now and then the cry of hounds came up from the forest-valley on the right, and May fancied he heard below a crashing as of bushes; but he had faith in his guiding goddess and he took her lead.

The high winds whistled by his head, and there were blue glimpses of the sea and wide gray gleams of misty moorland; but the soft heather made no sound of their mad gallop, and May was conscious of nothing else save the noble horse before him and the flutter of the lady’s riding-habit in the wind. Now the earth that rushed beneath was yellow with the gorse, now purple with the heather; here, he would sail over a turf-bank, there, his horse would swerve furiously from the feeling of an Exmoor bog; where she would ride, he would ride. This he swore to himself; but she rode straight, and he could make no gain. At the top of the moor, almost on the ridge of Dunkery Beacon, was a narrow cart-path, fenced six feet high in ferny turf, after the usual manner of Devonshire lanes. May saw it and exulted; this was sure to turn her, till she found a gate at least.

But his beautiful chase rode up the gentle inner incline and sailing over the lane like a bird, was lost to sight upon the other side.

“By heavens!” swore May to himself. “She means to kill herself.”

He rode at it and cleared the six-foot width of lane successfully; but his horse could not bunch his legs upon the narrow bank beyond. He rolled down it, and May over his head into a bank of heather.

The eager American prematurely began to swear before his head struck the ground; and before his one moderate oath was finished, he was upon his horse and off again. Mrs. Dehon had not even turned round upon his disaster; but May was none the less attracted to her by that. What was mortal mishap to a spirit wrecked like hers? Why should she?

They were riding down hill now; and she was riding a little more carefully, favoring her horse. But May cared neither for his horse nor his neck by this time. Straight down the hill he rode; and by the time they reached the Lynn he had gained the quarter-mile he lost. Here she had pulled up her horse, and he pulled up his at a courteous distance; and both sat still there, in the quiet valley; and the noise of their horses’ breathing was louder than the rustle of the wind in the old ash-trees around them.

May wondered if his pilot was at fault; but hardly had the thought crossed his mind before they heard again the music of the hounds, at full cry; and far up, two or more miles away, toward the Countisbury road, they saw the stag. Though so far off, he was distinctly visible, as he paused for one moment on the brow of the black moor, outlined against the blue sky; then he plunged downward, and the hounds after him, and May’s horse trembled beneath him; and May wondered why his goddess was not off.

But instead of riding down to meet the hunt, along the valley of the East Lynn, by Oare Church and Brendon, she turned and rode up in the direction of Chalk-water. May followed; and hardly had they left the Lynn and gone a furlong up the Chalk-water Combe, when she struck sharp to the right, breasting the very steepest part of Oare Oak Hill. If she knew that he was behind her, she did not look around; and May again had all that he could do to keep his guide in sight.

And now the event proved her skilful venery. For as they crested Oare Oak Hill, and the long bare swell of the moor rolled away before them, the sharp cry of the hounds came up like sounds of victory in the valley just below. Well had Diana known that either way of the Lynn would be too full of his enemies for the now exhausted deer to take. It must make for Bagworthy Water. Long ere they had ridden down the Lynn to the meeting of the streams, the hunt would have passed; but now, as they looked across and along the lonely Doone Valley, they saw the full pack far down at their feet, close by the foaming stream.

Then May could see his leader whip her horse, as if she would open the gap between them; and he set his teeth and swore that he would overtake her, this side the death. And he gained on her slowly, and the purple and yellow patches mingled to a carpet as they whirled by him, and he felt the springing of his horse’s haunches like the waves of a sea; and below them, hardly apace with them, was the hunt and the cry of hounds. Down one last plunging valley—no, there was another yet to cross, a deep side-combe running transversely, its bottom hid in ferns. But the hounds were now abreast of them, below, and there was no time to ride up and around. May saw her take it; and as she did, a great shelf of rock and turf broke off and fell into the brook below. He saw her turn and wave him back; it was the first notice she had taken of him; and he rode straight at the widened breach and took it squarely, landing by her side. Then, without a word, they dashed down, alongside of the slope, and there, in upper Bagworthy Waters, found the deer at bay, and the hounds; but of the hunt no sign, save Nicholas Snow, the huntsman, with reeking knife. He had already blooded his hounds; and now he sat meditatively upon a little rock by the stream, his black jockey-cap in his hands, looking at the body of the noble stag, now lifeless, that had so lately been a thing of speed and air. A warrantable deer it was, and its end was not untimely.

May pushed his panting horse up nearer hers. She was sitting motionless, her cheeks already pale again, her eyes fixed far off upon the distant moor. “Mrs. Dehon!” said he, hat in hand.

The faintest possible inclination of her head was his only response.

“I have to thank you for your lead,” said May.

For one moment she turned her large eyes down to him. “You ride well, sir,” said she.

When the M. D. H. and others of the hunt came up, they found these two talking on a footing of ancient friendship. The slot was duly cut off and presented to Mrs. Dehon; and many compliments fell to our hero’s share, for all of which May gave credit to the beautiful huntress beside him.

Tom Leigh cocked his eye at this, but did not venture to present him to her after that twenty-mile run. It were throwing the helve after the hatchet, to present the man after the heart. And thus it happened that to her our hero was never introduced.

When Mr. Dehon arrived, some hours later, Tom Leigh led him up. “Mr. Dehon,” said he, “I think that you should know my particular friend, Mr. Austin May.” And Tom Leigh cocked his eye again.

May looked at the pursy little old man, and felt that his hatred for him would only be buried in his enemy’s grave. But his enemy was magnanimous, and promptly asked them both to dinner, which May did not scruple to accept.

III. PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA.

Austin May fell devoutly in love with Mrs. Dehon. This was without doubt the grande passion of his life. And it was hopeless.

He was just at the age when such affairs are sternest realities to modern men. He was beyond the uncertainty of youth, and before the compromises and practicalities of middle life. And there was something about Gladys Dehon to make a man who cared for her ride rough-shod, neck or nothing, over all things else. All the world admired her; would have loved her had it dared. There was no daring about it in Austin’s case; his audacity was not self-conscious; he simply followed her as he had followed her over combe and beacon on that Exmoor day.

People could tell him little about her, save that she had been very poor and very proud, and was very beautiful. Gladys Darcy—that had been her name—last of a broken family of Devon and of Ireland. She had neither sister nor brother, only a broken-down father, long since sold out of his Household captaincy. She had sold herself to Terwilliger Dehon, the rich speculator; and she was his, as a cut diamond might have been his; bought with his money, shining in his house, and he no more within her secret self than he might have been within the diamond’s brilliant surface. And two months after the wedding her old father had died and made the sacrifice in vain. Then she became the personage that the world knew as the “beautiful Mrs. Dehon.” May used to dream and ponder about her, long hours of nights and days; and he fancied that something about her life, her lonely bringing-up, her father’s precepts, had made her scornfully incredulous of there being such a thing as the novelist’s love in life. She had been a greater nature than her father, and all mankind had been nothing to her as compared with even him. Too early scorn of this world’s life prepares the soul for evil compromises.

Her character, her nature, she expressed in no way whatever. She had neither intimate friends, charitable occupations, tastes, follies, nor faults. She shone with a certain scornful glitter of splendor, but even of old Dehon’s millions she was not prodigal. She never flirted; she never looked at one man long enough for that. Her one occupation was hunting, and she rode to hounds in a way to jar the nerves of every M. F. H. in England.

Tom Leigh was afraid of her; and when they were asked for a week’s visit that autumn, in their box in Leicestershire, refused to go. May went. And if there was a man of whom she was not utterly unconscious, he surely was the one. Perhaps there was something about his way that she liked. For, with neither much speech, delay, nor artifice, our hero made his heart and soul up into a small packet and threw them into her deep eyes; and when she looked at him, he had them; and when she looked away, they were gone. And this he did perfectly frankly and directly, but without spoken words. The world saw it as clearly as did she, and liked him none the less for it. He was quite incapable of any effort to conceal it; old Terwilliger might have seen it had he been so minded. Possibly he did, and the knowledge lent an added value to his chattel in the old stockbroker’s mind. Mrs. Dehon herself treated May with perfect simplicity, but with an infinite gentleness, as the moon-goddess might have looked upon Endymion.

This state of things got to be perfectly well known to the world. Such things always are well known to the world; nothing is more striking than the perfect openness with which our heart-histories are revealed in modern life, except perhaps the ease with which those most intimately concerned maintain a polite and unembarrassed appearance of utter ignorance upon the subject. All the world loves a lover, particularly a hopeless one; and it was quite the mot d’ordre of society that year for people to ask Mrs. Dehon and the handsome American to their houses together.

And Mrs. Dehon? Well, before the coming of spring she felt a great and trustful friendship for this incidental castaway upon the waters of her troubled life. May afterward remembered that she told him many things about herself; and she had spoken of herself to no one else before, her own father included. She even let him see a little of her heart. And it is an axiom that he who sees ever so little of a woman’s heart has but to take it. Seeing is possession. This is the wisdom of the fair Melusine, and other wise old mediæval myths.

It is needless to say that May had absolutely forgotten the Countess de Valska; more completely than even she had forgotten the Siberian mausoleum of her Serge. If May thought of her once in that year, it was to dismiss her memory with a curse for his own folly, and a mental oath that no Trouvillian countess would part him, should his way ever be clear to Gladys Darcy. He would not recognize the hated name of Dehon, even in his thoughts.

In his despair, he confided in Tom Leigh again. Tom saw no reason to change his previous opinion. The hole seemed if anything deeper, now that two were in it. “I don’t see but what you’ve got to escape the countess, bring Serge to life, kill old Terwilliger, and thus give her two years’ mourning,” said he. “Why the deuce didn’t you find her out first?” he added, ruefully. “Old Terwilliger only married her eighteen months ago.”

“I don’t know,” said May. “Why don’t you invent his railway schemes, and discover his Cornish mines?”

“True,” assented Tom. “Old Dehon always does get in on the ground floor. However,” he added, brightening up, “if you can marry her, you’ll get her and his money, too.”

“Damn his money,” said May.

Tom looked shocked, and changed the subject, and May’s heart continued so to bleed internally that soon Gladys Dehon’s marble brow would soften to pity as she saw him wane. Meantime Terwilliger’s capon-lined stomach waxed apace, and even his digestion was to all appearance unimpaired.

Now, it is probable that ours is the first civilization known to history where this state of things could exist, be mutually known, and continue in tranquil permanency. But it does—that is, it nearly always does—and it is a credit, after all, to our teaching and our times that it does so. The ancient Perseus cut Andromeda’s chains, and departed with her by the next P. and O. steamer they could signal; the modern one sits down on the strand beside her, and he and Andromeda die to slow music—that is, in case either should chance to die before the malady is cured. And Andromeda’s master relies on the strength of his chains and on Perseus’s good bringing-up, and is not wholly displeased at the situation. Particularly for a sly old stock-broker like Terwilliger Dehon, whose idea of values is based on the opinion of the street, a Perseus to his Andromeda is half the fun. The world, on the whole, approves the situation; but the husband Dehon is not a popular character, and it likes the Perseus better. Not, of course, that it is willing to condone anything improper, particularly on the part of Andromeda.

But Austin May stood the passive rôle for precisely twelve months; and then he made up his mind that something would have to break. He hoped it might be the neck of old Terwilliger; but Providence seldom spoils a dramatic situation by so simple a denouement. And, to tell the truth, considering the way the three rode to hounds, it was much more likely to be his own or Gladys’s. One thing was sure: their triangular relations were too strained to continue. He came to this conclusion after one precisely similar day upon Exmoor, a year after their first meeting; except that upon this occasion the deer took to the sea below Glenthorne and was drowned, and he and Gladys rode homeward side by side in silence.

Accordingly, that night Austin May wrote a letter; and in the morning showed Terwilliger a telegram from America, took his departure, shook hands hard with old Terwilliger, barely touched the slender fingers of his wife, but, when he did so, left the letter in her hand. May kept no copy of this letter; but he remembered it very well. It ran as follows:

“Gladys:

“I must not stay in England any more. I cannot bear it. I know that you are unhappy, and I must go where, at least, I shall not see it. Nor can I trust myself with you after our ride of yesterday.

“Remember always that, wherever I am, I am always and only yours. This is a very strange thing to say; but I think there are times when men and women should show each other their hearts, however much the truth may shock the prudes and pedants. And I do very much wish to say that if ever you are free, I ask you to marry me.

“It is a sad thing that the circumstances of your wedded life are such that I can say these things to you and not offend you. But you have shown me enough of your heart for this.

“I go now into Asia. A trivial duty will call me to my family home for one day, on August 14, 1886. Then, if I do not hear of you there, I shall disappear again. After that I shall write you once a year.

“Good-by, “A. M.”