The Riddle and Other Stories/The Count's Courtship

T had long been our custom to muse and gossip through the summer evening twilight, and now we had lingered so late that the darkness of night had come into the room. But two, at least, of the three of us were well content so to moon on, the fitful summer lightnings shining pale on our faces as we sat at the window. As for myself, I can only confess that with every tick of the clock I had been more and more inclined to withdraw, and so give the others the opportunity and ease of my absence. But likely enough, had I done so, the Count would have bluffly recalled me, or my aunt would have roused herself from her reverie to candles and common sense

So I held my tongue, after my aunt's example, who sat, still and erect, looking out through her glasses, her hands upon the arms of her chair, while the Count spoke seldom, and that generally in a kind of inarticulate discourse with himself.

There was plenty to busy my thoughts. The Count was evidently on the point of abandoning his long-cherished platonicism. My aunt, of late, had been far from her usual self, now brisk, now apathetic; but neither and nothing for long together. Matrimony was in the air, and I must soon be an exile. Soon, doubtless, a wife (and how capable and prudent a wife) would relieve me of my duties to my eloquent, arbitrary old friend. I had become superfluous. The most amiable of chaperons now found himself gradually converted into a tartish gooseberry. The quick lightning had but just now illumined the Count's face as he bent towards her. In his eyes was inspiration. And my aunt's almost uncivil withdrawal of her hand was evidently all but the last capricious valedictory gesture to middle age and widowhood.

My aunt apparently suddenly realized this, and the hazard of keeping silent. She rose abruptly, smoothing out her silk skirts as if she had thought to herself, “Well, that's done with.”

“I fear I was nodding, Count; I beg pardon,” she said in a rather faint voice, and behind the semblance of a yawn. “The air's close and heavy. It seems a storm's gathering.”

We neither of us answered her.

“Richard,” she said, “oblige me by ringing the bell.”

The Count deftly intercepted me.

“It's a waste of peace and quietness,” said he appealingly. “Won't you sit but a few minutes longer? Who knows: not so many days maybe left, with such quiet ends—the twilight, summer? Richard shall fetch you a shawl. We'll take a turn in the garden.”

“Very pretty sentiments, Count,” answered my aunt, “but you must take pity on old bones. Upstairs must be my garden to-night. I'm tired and drowsy—it's been a hot, dusty day—and I think I'll be getting to my rest while the thunder is out of hearing.”

Soon candles gleamed on the wall; the pensive romantic twilight of evening was over. My aunt turned her face slowly, even reluctantly, I fancied, into their radiance. She looked pale, tired; and seemed disturbed and perplexed.

“I think, Richard, I'd like your arm up the stairs.” Again the Count forestalled me. 'Bless me, Count,” said my aunt in shaken, almost querulous tones, “you'll be completely spoiling me with your—your kindness. I wouldn't rob you of your peace and quiet for all the world. There, Richard, that's it.”

She leaned a little heavily on my arm, walking slowly and deliberately. In the doorway she turned; hesitated.

“And now, good-night, my dear Count,” she said.

The Count stood, stark as a patriot, against the wall. It was not to be “roses all the way.”

“Good-night, my dear lady,” said he.

As we slowly ascended the stairs I could hardly refrain from gently taxing my aunt with what seemed very like coquetry. Yet something in her words had set me doubting. And as I now looked sidelong at her, I fancied I could detect a gravity in her face which no mere feminine caprice could cause or explain. At her bedroom door I handed her the candle.

“I wish you could have stayed a little,” I mumbled inanely; “he really meant it, you know. I ought to have realized that …”

She took the candle, staring vacantly into my face the while.

“I should like to see you, Richard, in about ten minutes' time,” she said. “Step up cautiously to my room here. I shall be awaiting you. I want a few minutes' quiet, sensible talk—you understand?”

And with that she went in and shut the door.

“Richard, Richard,” I heard the Count's stealthy whisper at the foot of the stairs; but I made a clatter with the door handle, pretending not to have heard him.

I sat in my bedroom speculating in vain what my aunt wanted with me.

In ten minutes I tapped softly, and she herself opened the door. She was attired in a voluminous dressing-gown of scarlet flannel; her hair was loosely plaited and looped up on her shoulders, with less of grey in it than I had supposed. She shut the door after me, and rather stiffly signed to me to sit down.

“I'll trouble you, please, to speak rather softly, Richard,” she said, “because my window is open for air, and the Count is walking in the garden.” She seated herself on a stiff bedroom chair, clasping her hands in her ample lap. "I've called you in, my boy, to tell you that I am going to leave here to-morrow.”

I leaned forward to speak, but she peremptorily waved me back. “Janet has ordered a cab for me; it will be at the door at eleven o'clock in the morning. My trunks—these two, just what I shall require—are packed and ready. Janet will see to the rest. And I'll ask you to be kind enough to send the others to me by the railway before the end of the week. See that they're securely locked and corded; the keys are under the clock there. What's more—I want you to take the Count for a walk early to-morrow morning, and not to return with him till luncheon, when I shall be—when I shall be, well—out of the house. Don't keep on opening your mouth, Richard; it distracts me. Then in some sort of explanation you are to tell him that his hospitality was so—so congenial to me that I hadn't the heart nor the words either—to say good-bye. Tell him I'll write good-bye. … Is that perfectly clear, now?”

A languid breath of air gently lifted the white blind, as if to cool the flush that had spread over my aunt's cheek. Her face was inscrutable.

“What address did you say for the boxes?”

“Bless the boy! send them home.”

“Very well, Aunt Lucy,” I answered, and rose from my chair. My aunt lifted her hand, and let it fall again into her lap.

“Is there anything else?” I said.

The inscrutability of her expression angered and baffled me. She continued to look at me with an open solemnity, but as if I were a hundred miles away.

“Why do you pick and choose your words, make such a pretence, Richard, when you might speak out?”

“'Pretence,' Aunt Lucy?”

“If an old woman came in such straits to me, and I was a tolerably sensible young man like yourself, I hope and trust I'd use my wits to better purpose. I am in some anxiety. You see it. You are not blind. But you are saying to yourself, in your conceit and pique—'I won't ask her what it is.' You think— 'I'll wait for the old lady's confession; it's bound to come.' I ask you candidly, is that open and manly? Is that the English frankness and chivalry we never weary of boasting about? Do you suppose that mere cleverness watched over your cradle? Do you think mere cleverness will ever win you a wife? Would—would the Count?”

Colour once more had welled into her cheeks, and her carpet-slippered foot was thrust impatiently out from beneath her dressing-gown.

“I did not suppose you wished me to intrude,” I stammered. “You have your own reasons, I assume, for ordering me about. I assume, you had your own reasons, too, for not taking me into your confidence. I am sorry. Aunt Lucy, but I don't see what else I could have done.”

“Sit down, Richard,” she said.

“Look here, Aunt Lucy,” I interposed a little hotly, “you ask me to speak out. You've said a good many things a fellow would resent pretty warmly from—any one else. Now let me have my say too. And I can't help it if I do offend you; or if you think I'm butting in on what doesn't concern me. I say this—it's a mean, shabby thing to treat the Count like this. You've talked and walked with him. You know what he thinks—what he feels. He's not the unfeeling simpleton you think me. But he can't help hoping. Now is it fair and square then to go off like this behind his back—because you daren't meet him and brave him to his face?. He simply can't help himself. That's the point. I'm not blind. You can't explain and you daren't wait to be asked for an explanation. It's simply selfishness, that's what it is. And, what is worse, you don't want to go.” I blundered on and on to the grim lady, venturing much further than I had ever dreamed of doing; and then fell suddenly silent.

“In some respects, that is the truth, Richard,” she said at last, quite gently—“I own that freely. But it's not fear or pusillanimity, and no injury, my boy. I am in the right; and yet it's true I daren't go to him and tell him so. If I lifted a finger—if, just as I am, I walked downstairs and went out and took a turn with him in the garden, on the man's arm—well, I ask you, What would he do?”

“He'd pop the question,” I said vulgarly and resentfully, “and you know it. And a jolly good thing too, for both of you. What's more, you've never given him an atom of reason to suppose you wouldn't accept him.”

“I say that's untrue, Richard. And who asked for your views on that, pray? Be smart, sir, in better season. The Count, you say, would ask me to be his wife—what then? I am not too old; I am not too feeble; I am a practical housekeeper! and—I like the man. He'd ask me to be his wife—and then—as I walked in the garden with him, I should be stumbling and peering, pushing and poking my way. Dark to me! Whatever the happiness within, Richard, you poor blind creature, don't you see it? Can the Count marry a woman who's all but eyeless, who can but glimmer to-day out of what will be sightless and hopeless as that night outside, to-morrow? I have been struggling against the truth. I like being here. I like—Oh, I have stayed too long. You stupid, shortsighted men! He has seen me day after day. He has seen me go fingering on from chair to chair. Was I hiding it? Do I or do I not wear spectacles? Do they distort my eyes till I look like an owl in a belfry? Should I wear this hideous monstrosity if—you should have seen, you should have guessed.”

I put my hand on my aunt's as it lay on her knee.

“Good Lord,” I muttered, and choked into silence again.

“That's it, Richard, that's common sense,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “It's all perfectly plain. As duty always is, thank the Lord. He wants a bright, active, capable wife—if he wants any. A blind old woman can't be that. She can't be, even if she had the heart. I'm a silly, Richard, for all my sour ways. Poor man, poor volatile generous creature. He's not quiet and stay-at-home, as his age should be. He's all capers, and fancies, and—and romance. God bless me, romance! … And that's the end of it.”

She stayed; and we heard a light restless footfall upon the gravel beneath the window.

“I never thought I should be saying all this stuff to you; I had no such intention, Richard. But you're of my own blood, and that's something. And now off to bed with you, and not another word. Out with him at ten, and back with him at twelve. And my boxes at the week's end.”

“Look here, my dear aunt” I began.

“You are going to tell me,” she said, “that it's all my fancy; that my eyes are as good as yours; that I shall wreck our old friend's happiness. My dear Richard, do you suppose that my questions to the little snuff-coloured oculist were not sharp and to the point? Do you think life has not given me the courage to know that one's eyesight is at least as precious and mortal as one's heart? Do you think that an old woman, who was never idle in learning, has not by this time read through and through your old friend's warm, fickle, proud, fantastic heart? There are good things a woman can admire in a man, besides mere stubborn adoration. And the Count has most of 'em. So you see, you would have told me only what ninety-nine young men would have told me nearly as well. I think too much of you to listen to it. The hundreth for me. There, give me a kiss and go away, Richard. I wish to retire.”

My aunt rose hastily, kissed me sharply on the cheek, hurried me out of the room, and locked the door after me.

While sitting there in her presence, I had almost failed to see the folly of the business. Her pitiless commonsense had made me an unwilling accomplice. But as I turned over our talk in my mind, I was tempted at once to betray her secret to the Count. He, too, could be resolute and rational and inflexible at need. Nevertheless, I realised how futile, how fatal the attempt might prove.

To the letter then, I determined to obey her, trusting to the Count's genius and the placability of fate for a happier conclusion. And even at that—a young man a good deal incensed with the ridiculous obligations these two elderly victims had thrust upon him found sleep that night very stubborn of attainment.

I had little expected to see my aunt at breakfast next morning; but when the Count came in from the garden, hot and boisterous, she sat waiting for him, and greeted us with her usual cheerful gravity. Only too clearly, however, my new knowledge revealed the tragic truth of her secret of the night before. She leaned forward a little on the table, gazing steadily across it, her hands wandering lightly over the cups, already half endowed with the delicacy at length to come. Never had the Count been so high-spirited, and she answered him jest for jest. Yet not one sign did she vouchsafe to assure me of our compact. She acted her part without a symptom of flinching to the end.

In a rather clumsy fashion, I fear, I at last proposed to the Count a walk over the Heath.

“An excellent suggestion, Richard,” said my aunt cordially. “There, Count, put on your hat, and take your stick, and walk off the steam. It's no use looking at me. I have business to attend to, so I can't come.”

But the Count was exceedingly unwilling to go. The garden held more charm for him, and better company. A faint groping uneasiness, too, showed itself in his features.

But my aunt would heed no scruples, no reluctances. “When a woman wants a man out of the way, don't you suppose. Count, that she knows best?” she enquired lightly but firmly. “Now where's your stick?”

In her eagerness she stumbled against the doorpost, and the Count caught her impulsively by the arm. Her cheek flushed crimson. For an instant I fancied that fate had indeed intervened. But the next minute the Count and I were hurried out of the house, and bound for the Heath. My aunt had herself shut the door, and, heavy with fears and forebodings, I supposed that this was the end of the matter.

It was a quiet summer morning, the sunshine sweet with the nutty and almond scents of bracken and gorse. At first, in our walk, the Count was inclined to be satirical. He scoffed at every remark I made, and scoffed at his scoffing. But at the bottom of the hollow his mood swerved to the opposite extreme. He walked, bent morosely, without raising his eyes from the grass. His only answer to every little remark I volunteered was a shrug or a grunt. His pace diminished more and more until at last he suddenly stopped, as if some one had spoken to him. And he turned his face towards home.

“What's wrong?” he said to me.

“Wrong?” said I.

“I heard your aunt calling.”

“Nonsense,” I said; “she's two miles distant at least.”

“'Nonsense'!” said he angrily: “I say I heard her calling. Am I all skin and bone? I'm done with the Heath.”

I remonstrated in vain. It only served to make things worse. At each word the Count's disquietude increased, he was the more obstinately bent on returning.

“Home, boy, home! I'll not be gainsaid.”

I threatened to go on alone; but the threat, I knew, was futile, and proved me at my last resource.

It was not until we were within a few yards of the house that, on turning a corner, we came in sight of the cab. With a sagacity that almost amounted to divination, the Count jumped at once to the cause of its presence there.

“What's it mean?” he hoarsely shouted, and waved his stick in the air. “What's that cab mean, I say? What's it mean? Have you no answer, eh?” But after that one swift white glance at my face, he said no more. “Bring that box into the house, sir,” he bawled to the cabman, “and drive your cab to the devil.”

I followed him into the house, and the tempest of his wrath raged through it like a cloud. My aunt was not in the dining-room. Janet had fled away into the kitchen. And I suppose by this time my aunt had heard the uproar of his home-coming, for when the Count assailed her door it was secure, and she was in a stronghold.

“Mrs. Lindsay! what's this mean?” he shouted. “What have I done, that you should be leaving my house like this? Am I so far in my dotage that I must be cheated like a child? Is it open with me? You shall not go. You shall not go. I'll burn the cab first. You daren't face me, Mrs. Lindsay.”

“Count, Count,” said I, “every word—the neighbours.”

“The neighbours! the neighbours!” his scorn broke over me. “Look to your own pottering milksop business, sir! Now, Mrs. Lindsay, now!”

In envious admiration I heard my aunt open her door. For an instant there was no sound in the house.

“Count,” she said, “I will just ask you to go quietly down to your study and remain there for five minutes. By that time I shall be ready to say good-bye to you.”

“Lucy, my dear friend,” said the Count—and all the resentment was gone out of his voice—“I ask only one thing: you will not treat me like this?”

“Five minutes, Count, five minutes,” said my aunt.

The Count came downstairs. He paid no heed to me; went into his study and shut the door. The cabman was on the doorstep.

“Richard,” said my aunt from the loop of the stairs, “the cabman will carry out my orders.”

I went up slowly and tapped at my aunt's door. She would not open to me.

“You have failed, Richard, that is all; a man can't do worse,” she called to me from the other side of the panels.

“He insisted, aunt,” I pleaded. “I almost used force.”

“I don't doubt it,” she said; “you used all the force that was in you. There, leave me now. I have other things to think about.”

“On my word of honour, believe me or not, Aunt Lucy,” I cried, “I have done my best. 'I hear her calling'—that's what he kept saying: and home he came. I would have given anything. Let me tell him. I saw his face just now. Aunt Lucy, he's an old man'

“Listen, Richard,” she answered, and she was pressing close to the door. “Say no more. I spoke hastily. I have thought it out; the day will pass; and all the noise and fret over. But, but—are you there, Richard?” She whispered in so low a voice that I could scarcely catch the words, “I go because I'm tired of it all; want liberty, ease: tell him that. 'Just like a woman!' say; anything that sounds best to rid him of this—fancy. Do you see?—and not a single word about the eyes. Richard! do you see? You have failed me once. I am trusting you again. That's all.”

So I went down and sat a while with my own thoughts to entertain me, in the little room with the French windows and the stuffed birds. In a few minutes I heard my aunt's footsteps descending the stairs. She was all but groping her way with extreme caution, step by step. Veil or bonnet, I know not what, had added years to her face. I had not heard the Count open his door. But in a flash I caught sight of him, on the threshold, stiff as a mute.

“Lucy,” he said, “listen. For all that I said—for an old man's noise and fury—forgive me! That is past. My dear friend, all that I ask now is this—will you be my wife?”

My aunt's eyebrows were arched above her spectacles. She smoothed her wrinkled forehead with her fingers. “What did you say, Count?” she said.

“I said I am sorry—beyond all words. And oh, my dear, dear lady, will you be my wife?”

“Ach—nonsense, nonsense, old friend,” said my aunt. “And you and me so old and staid! Grey hairs. Withered sticks. From the bottom of my heart I thank you for the honour. But—why, Count, you discommode an—an old woman.” She laughed like a girl.

And she pushed her gloved hand along the wall of the passage, moving very heedfully and slowly. “Richard, may I ask you just once more to support my poor gouty knees down these odious steps?” My aunt was speaking in a foreign tongue. The Count strode after us.

“Is this all?” said he, gazing into her face.

“God bless the man!—would he stare me out of countenance?” Her hand felt limp and cold beneath her glove. And we went out of the house into the sunlight, and descended slowly to the cab.

And that was the end of the matter. My aunt had divined the truth. Her volatile, fickle, proud, fantastic old friend moped for a while. But soon the intervention of scribbling, projects, books, and dissensions with his neighbours added this one more to many another romantic episode in his charming repertory of memories. Moreover, had my aunt chosen to return, here was a brotherly affection, flavoured with a platonic piquancy, eager to welcome, to serve, and to entertain her.

Not for many a year did I meet my aunt again. I twice ventured to call on her; but she was “out” to me. Rumours strayed my way at times of a soured blind old woman, for ever engaged in scandalous contention with the parents of her domestics; but me she altogether ignored. And then for a long time I feared to force myself on her memory. But when the end came, and the Count was speedily sinking, some odd remembrance of her troubled his sleep. He begged me to write to my aunt, to 'ask her to come and share a last crust with an old, broken, toothless friend.' But my poor old friend died the next evening, and the last stillness had fallen upon the house before she could answer his summons.

On the day following I was sitting in the empty and darkened dining-room, when I heard the sound of wheels, and somehow divining what they portended, I looked out through the Venetian blind.

My aunt had come, as she had gone, in a hackney cab; and, refusing any assistance from the maid who was there with her, she stepped painfully down out of it, and, tapping the ground at her feet with her ebony stick, the wintry sun glinting red upon her blue spectacles as she moved, she began to climb the flight of steps alone, with difficulty, but with a vigorous assurance.

I was seized with dismay at the very sight of her. Something in her very appearance filled me with a sense of my own mere young-manliness and fatuity. I drew sharply back from the window; hesitated—in doubt whether to receive her myself, or to send for Mrs. Rodd. I peeped again. She had come on slowly. But now, midway up the steps, she paused, slowly turned herself about, and stretched out her hand towards the house.

“Cabman, cabman”—her words rang against the stucco walls—“is this the house? What's wrong with the house?”

The cabman began to climb down from his box.

“Agnes, do you hear me?” she cried with a shrill piercing horror in her voice. “Agnes, Agnes—is the house dark?”

“The blinds are all down, m'm,” answered the girl looking out of the window.

My aunt turned her head slowly, and I could see her moving eyebrows arched high above her spectacles. And then she began to climb rapidly backwards down the steps in her haste to be gone. It was a ludicrous and yet a poignant and dreadful thing to see. I could refrain myself no longer.

But she was already seated in the cab before I could reach her. “Aunt, my dear Aunt Lucy,” I said at the window, peering into the musty gloom. “Won't you please come into the house? I have many things—a ring—books—he spoke often”

She turned and confronted me, in very speechless entreaty in her blind face—an entreaty not to me, for no earthly help, past all hope of answer, it seemed; and then, with an extraordinary certainty of aim, she began beating my hand that lay upon the narrow window-frame with the handle of her ebony stick.

“Drive on, drive on!” she cried. “God bless the man, why doesn't he drive on?” The jet butterflies in her bonnet trembled above her crimsoned brow. The cabman brandished his whip. And that was quite the end. I never saw my aunt again.