Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/236

228 of contributing to its pleasures and amusements, that she has not yet been ostracised. I was told that her husband and herself were separated after two years of marriage; he is much older than she is, and some extraordinary tales are told of the admiration of an exalted personage at Vienna; but why this should have caused a separation is not explained. There is a long gap, too, between her leaving Vienna and her arrival in Paris. Here, musicians, painters, and authors are her only associates; but even these she sees rarely. Still, the devil’s advocate would obtain her non-canonisation, from a general unsaintly look about her and her belongings, and something revolutionary and strong-minded in her opinions; and then this episode of the Rue du Puits is damning in my opinion. If not married, why not see this man openly. I believe she is married.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I have an engagement. I cannot listen to your chronique scandaleuse any more.”

Why had I done so for so long? We parted, and I walked on with the buzz of those infamous words in my ears.

How strange is the heart of man! I had met this woman repeatedly, and admired her vaguely; much of what I had heard this evening I had heard in fragments before; nothing was absolutely new; and yet because I had walked a few hundred yards with her and heard her speak of the past, there was a feeling of appropriation towards her, which made my temples throb and my heart beat, at this light mention of her name.

I felt fevered and excited, and instead of going home, walked about for the next two hours, scarcely attending to where I went, till, on looking up, I found myself not far from the street mentioned by Auguste. I heard the clocks strike two, and an irresistible impulse led me to the spot mentioned by him. The streets in this neighbourhood, one of the worst in Paris, are filthy, narrow, and dark, and are reported to be dangerous. I thought of nothing, and though I was once hustled and pressed on by two men, I got free and went on. As I passed the centre house, the door opened and a woman issued from it. She went swiftly onwards, without turning to the right or the left. She was plainly dressed in black, and her veil was drawn close down. It was my instinct alone which told me it was Madame Rabenfels, for in nothing could she have been recognised except perhaps by a certain swiftness and lightness of tread, which I had noticed as we walked together a few hours ago.

A step has to me much significance. I can judge of a character by the sound of a step. I can distinguish a race by the manner in which an individual treads. I can estimate the health and temper of a person by observing his walk.

I reached her as she came under the light of a lamp. Still I could not see her face. I passed on and then turned back and repassed her. I looked at her earnestly and saw her start. An impulse, which I restrained, made me step forward as if to speak, but she quickened her pace, and again repassed me. We proceeded thus—I following, she a little in advance—for nearly half an hour. I could not break the spell. I knew not whether she was conscious of it or not, but she drew me as a mesmeriser draws a magnetic patient. At last we entered a street into which one side of her house opened. She drew out a key and opened a small garden door. There to my astonishment she paused for a moment, turned round, threw up her veil, and walked up to me; her grave, earnest eyes flashed upon me, as she bowed haughtily, and with freezing contempt said:

“Be satisfied, Mr. Seymour, the woman you have been insulting by this espionage is the Countess Rabenfels.”

In another minute she was gone.

I was stung to the heart. I could have knelt at her feet. I could have submitted to any chastisement by way of atonement. Such were my thoughts that night as I paced my room. Night is the Egeria to us all. Our best selves come out beneath its influence and counsel. In the teeth of the reports I had heard, in spite of what I had myself seen, I could have attested, at the price of my own, the honour which I had so cruelly doubted.

But alas! the morning comes. The work-a-day world awakes, and we are at once placed in contact with the Prince of the Air and his evil angels. We become suspicious, cynical, and hard. I rose with the most unjustifiable anger against my species in general, against women in particular. Yet, as I argued with myself, what was it all to me? But when did such questions avail?

I went out more than usual. I scorned myself for feeling wounded by the actions of a comparative stranger. I could not shake it off. True, the javelin had been thrown by a stranger’s hand, but the flesh was torn and bled. Pain roused memory, and the memory of pain received and given is a strong tie. I noted this as about a week afterwards I met the Countess Rabenfels again at Madame de L’s.

I felt I blushed as I met her glance. She looked much as usual, but a flash of the eye, a dilatation of the nostrils told me that she, too, was sensible of a link between us.

I listened to the music as it rose and fell. There is a bitter sweetness in the effect of music at times. We may attach our own meaning and interpretation to it, but to me at least there is often a vague sense of unfulfilled promise in it. It suggests “infinite passion,” but with it also

The mortal ear is ravished with the heard melody, but it longs with a tender transport for some yet more divinely harmonious song of which it is only the type.

The rooms were very crowded and the pressure of the throng brought me suddenly exactly behind the seat occupied by Madame Rabenfels.

“How perfect the music has been to-night,” I said to her.

“Perfect in itself, but to me there is always imperfection in music.”

I started, as she thus echoed my own thoughts.

“It is not so much the case in vocal music; the voice and passion of the singer give individuality,