MASTER EUSTACE 
 
MASTER EUSTACE 
 
 BY 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS SELTZER 
 
 1920 
 
Copyright, 1920, by 
 THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 AH rights reserved 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 439185 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 MASTER EUSTACE 
 
 LONGSTAFF S MARRIAGE 57 
 
 THEODOLINDE II1 
 
 A LIGHT MAN J 47 
 
 BENVOLIO 2O 3 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The five stones in this volume, together with the 
 Your included in "A Landscape Painter," appeared 
 originally in American periodicals, but for some un^ 
 known reason were never issued by Henry James in 
 book form in this country. The present volume, 
 along with "A Landscape Painter," makes accessi- 
 J)le to the American public the nine short stories of 
 Henry James which hitherto have been accessible 
 only in English editions of his works. 
 
 I hardly need to emphasize the literary value of 
 the stories in this volume all of them written later 
 than "A Landscape Painter." Both critics and public 
 have expressed surprise at the amazing precocity of 
 Henry James as shown in the tales of "A Landscape 
 Painter," all of which were written before the author 
 was twenty-five. The stories in the present collec 
 tion are more mature in matter, yet they retain his 
 earlier simplicity of style. Two of them were 
 written when he was almost verging towards "the 
 middle years." 
 
 T 
 
2 - Preface 
 
 "LongstafFs Marriage (Scribner s Monthly, 
 August 1878) and "Benvolio" (Galaxy, August 
 1875) appeared in the "Madonna of the Future and 
 Other Tales," published in London, 1879. "Benvo 
 lio" also appeared in the English edition of Henry 
 James s "Collection of Novels and Tales" brought out 
 in 1883. The other three tales in this volume, 
 "Master Eustace" (Galaxy, November 1871), 
 "Theodolinde" (Lippincott s Magazine, May 1878), 
 and "A Light Man" (Galaxy, July 1869) appeared 
 in "Stories Revived" issued in three volumes in Lon 
 don in 1885. The tale "Theodolinde" was pub 
 lished there with the title "Rose Agathe." "A Light 
 Man" has also been reprinted from The Galaxy in 
 America in a collection of short stories, "Stories by 
 American Authors," Volume V, 1884, but not in any 
 American editions of Henry James s works. 
 
 Like the tales in "A Landscape Painter," these 
 stories are reprinted from the periodicals wherein 
 they first appeared and not from the English edi 
 tions. Of the nine tales I have collected here and in 
 "A Landscape Painter," seven were published by 
 James in England in "Stories Revived," constituting 
 half of that collection. 
 
 From an autobiographical point of view, the most 
 interesting tale in this volume is "Benvolio." The 
 poet Benvolio is evidently a bit of self -portraiture. 
 Not that Henry James had the identical experience 
 
Preface 3 
 
 of his character. But the reader will scarcely fail 
 to recognize in Benvolio the restless type divided 
 between love and literature, for which James was 
 his own model. Henry James himself tells us that 
 he drew on autobiographical material in writing his 
 early tales. 
 
 It is interesting to observe the picture of the young 
 James as he shows it to us in his early works. For 
 it is safe to assume that the type of character he 
 draws most frequently is the one that approximates 
 most closely to himself. The young man we meet 
 oftenest in the pages of James s early tales and works 
 is a romantic, gentlemanly, persistent wooer, a young 
 man travelling in Europe, interested in art or litera 
 ture. He falls in love, often with no encourage 
 ment, and is invariably baffled in his love. In almost 
 every case, however, the youth takes his medicine, 
 for he is chivalrous to the point of annoyance, and 
 he never forgets that he is a gentleman. There are 
 several such types in "The Portrait of a Lady." 
 Roderick Hudson is of that type. Sometimes the 
 young man has his affection returned but is thwarted 
 in the end, like Christopher Newman in "The 
 American." And in many of James s shorter stories 
 the plot centers round the ill success of a man desir 
 ing marriage. 
 
 Such then, in the large, must have been our young 
 author himself. This view of him we find confirmed 
 
4 Preface 
 
 in his letters, though those so far published belong 
 mainly to the late period of his life. In his letters 
 we see James a lonely bachelor, thirsting for love 
 and friendship, clinging tenaciously with beautiful 
 veneration and affection to relatives, old and young 
 friends, and not excluding the fair sex in his 
 Platonic admiration. 
 
 In a word he is very much like the young men we 
 meet oftenest in the tales of "A Landscape Painter" 
 and "Master Eustace." 
 
 ALBERT MORDELL. 
 Philadelphia, August, 1920. 
 
MASTER EUSTACE 
 
MASTER EUSTACE 
 
 HAVING handed me my cup of tea, she pro 
 ceeded to make her own; an operation she 
 performed with a delicate old-maidish pre 
 cision I delighted to observe. 
 
 The story is not my own she then began but 
 that of persons with whom for a time I was inti 
 mately connected. I have led a quiet life. This 
 is my only romance and it s the romance of others. 
 When I was a young woman of twenty-two my 
 poor mother died, after a long, weary illness, and 
 I found myself obliged to seek a new home. Mak 
 ing a home requires time and money. I had neither 
 to spare, so I advertised for a "situation," rating 
 my accomplishments modestly, and asking rather 
 for kind treatment than high wages. Mrs. Garnyer 
 immediately answered my advertisement. She of 
 fered me a fair salary and a peaceful asylum. I 
 was to teach her little boy the rudiments of my 
 slender stock of sciences and to make myself gen- 
 
 7 
 
8 Master Eustace 
 
 erally useful. Something in her tone and manner 
 assured me that in accepting this latter condition 
 I was pledging myself to no very onerous servitude, 
 and I never found reason to repent of my bargain. 
 I had always valued my freedom before all things, 
 and it seemed to me that in trading it away even 
 partially I was surrendering a priceless treasure; 
 but Mrs. Garnyer made service easy. I liked her 
 from the first, and I doubt that she ever fairly 
 measured my fidelity and affection. She knew that 
 she could trust me, and she always spoke of me as 
 "a good creature" ; but she never estimated the 
 trouble I saved her, or the little burdens I lifted 
 from her pretty, feeble shoulders. Both in her 
 position and her person there was something singu 
 larly appealing. She was in those days indeed 
 she always remained a very pretty little woman. 
 But she had grace even more than beauty. She 
 was young, and looked even younger than her years ; 
 slight, light of tread and of gesture, though not at 
 all rapid ( for in all her movements there was a kind 
 of pathetic morbid languor), and fairer, whiter, 
 purer in complexion than any woman I have seen. 
 She reminded me of a sketch from which the "shad 
 ing" has been omitted. She had her shadows 
 indeed, as well as her lights ; but they were all turned 
 inward. She might have seemed compounded of 
 the airy substance of lights and shadows. Nature 
 
Master Eustace 9 
 
 in making her had left out that wholesome leaden 
 ballast of will, of logic, of worldly zeal, with which 
 we are all more or less weighted. Experience, how 
 ever, had given her a burden to carry; she was 
 evidently sorrow-laden. She shifted the cruel 
 weight from shoulder to shoulder, she ached and 
 sighed under it, and in the depths of her sweet 
 natural smile you saw it pressing the tears from her 
 soul. Mrs. Garnyer s trouble, I confess, was in my 
 eyes an added charm. I was desperately fond of 
 a bit of romance, and as I was plainly never to have 
 one of my own, I made the most of my neighbor s. 
 This secret sadness of hers would have covered more 
 sins than I ever had to forgive her. At first, 
 naturally, I connected her unavowed sorrow with 
 the death of her husband; but as time went on, I 
 found reason to believe that there had been little 
 love between the pair. She had married against 
 her will. Mr. Garnyer was fifteen years her senior, 
 and, as she frankly intimated, coarsely and cruelly 
 dissipated. Their married life had lasted but three 
 years, and had come to an end to her great and 
 obvious relief. Had he done her while it lasted 
 some irreparable wrong? I fancied so; she was like 
 a garden rose with half its petals plucked. He had 
 left her with diminished means, though her prop 
 erty (mostly her own) was still ample for her needs. 
 These, with those of her son, were extremely sim- 
 
10 Master Eustace 
 
 pie. To certain little luxuries she was obstinately 
 attached ; but her manner of life was so monotonous 
 and frugal that she must have spent but a fraction 
 of her income. It was her single son the heir of 
 her hopes, the apple of her eye that she intrusted 
 to my care. He was five years old, and she had 
 taught him his letters a great feat, she seemed to 
 think; she was as proud of it as if she had invented 
 the alphabet for the occasion. She had called him 
 Eustace, for she meant that he should have the best 
 of everything the prettiest clothes, the prettiest 
 playthings, and the prettiest name. He was him 
 self as pretty as his name, though but little like his 
 mother. He was slight like her, but far more ner 
 vous and decided, and he had neither her features 
 nor her coloring. Least of all had he her expres 
 sion. Mrs. Garnyer s attitude was one of tender, 
 pensive sufferance modified by hopes a certain 
 half-mystical hope which seemed akin to religion, 
 but which was not all religion, for the heaven she 
 dreamed of was lodged here below. The boy from 
 his early childhood wore an air of defiance and 
 authority. He was not one to wait for things, good 
 or evil, but to snatch boldly at the one sort and snap 
 his fingers at the other. He had a pale, dark skin, 
 not altogether healthy in tone ; a mass of fine brown 
 hair, which seemed given him just to emphasize by 
 its dancing sweep the petulant little nods and shakes 
 
Master Eustace 
 
 of his head ; and a deep, wilful, malicious eye. His 
 eyes told me from the first that I should have no 
 easy work with him ; and in spite of a vast expense 
 of tact and tenderness, no easy work it turned out 
 to be. His wits were so quick, however, and his 
 imagination so lively, that I gradually managed to 
 fill out his mother s meagre little programme of 
 study. This had been drawn up with a sparing 
 hand; her only fear was of his being overworked. 
 The poor lady had but a dim conception of what 
 a man of the world is expected to know. She 
 thought, I believe, that with his handsome face, his 
 handsome property, and his doting mother, he would 
 need to know little more than how to sign that pretty 
 name of Eustace to replies to invitations to dinners. 
 I wonder now that with her constant interference 
 I contrived to set the child intellectually on his legs. 
 Later, when he had a tutor, I received a compliment 
 for my perseverance. 
 
 The truth is, I became fond of him ; his very im 
 perfections fascinated me. He would soon enough 
 have to take his chance of the world s tolerance, 
 and society would cease to consist for him of a 
 couple of coaxing women. I told Mrs. Garnyer 
 that there was never an easier child to spoil, and 
 that those caressing hands of hers would sow a 
 crop of formidable problems for future years. But 
 Mrs. Garnyer was utterly incapable of taking a 
 
12 Master Eustace 
 
 rational view of matters, or of sacrificing to-day to 
 to-morrow; and her folly was the more incurable 
 as it was founded on a strange, moonshiny little 
 principle a crude, passionate theory that love, love, 
 pure love is the sum and substance of maternal duty; 
 and that the love which reasons and exacts and 
 denies is cruel and wicked and hideous. "I know 
 you think I m a silly goose," she said, "and not fit 
 to have a child at all. But you re wrong I promise 
 you you re wrong. I m very reasonable, I m very 
 patient ; I have a great deal to bear more than you 
 know and I bear it very well. But one can t be 
 always on the stretch always hard and wise and 
 good. In some things one must break down and 
 be one s poor, natural, lonely self. Eustace can t 
 turn out wrong; it s impossible; it would be too 
 cruel. You mustn t say it nor hint it. I shall do 
 with him as my heart bids me; he s all I have; he 
 consoles me." 
 
 My notions perhaps were a little old-fashioned; 
 but surely it will never altogether go out of fashion 
 to teach a child that he is not to have the moon by 
 crying for it. Now Eustace had a particular fancy 
 for the moon for everything bright and inaccessible 
 and absurd. His will was as sharp as a steel spring, 
 and it was vain to attempt to bend it or break it. 
 He had an indefeasible conviction that he was num 
 ber one among men; and if he had been born in 
 
Master Eustace 13 
 
 the purple, as they say, of some far-off Eastern 
 court, or the last consummate fruit of a shadowy 
 line of despots, he couldn t have been more closely 
 curtained in this superb illusion. I pierced it here 
 and there as roughly as I dared; but his mother s 
 light fingers speedily repaired my punctures. The 
 poor child had no sense of justice. He had the 
 graceful virtues, but not the legal ones.- He could 
 condescend, he could forgive, he could permit this, 
 that, and the other, with due leave asked; but he 
 couldn t endure the hint of conflicting right. Poor 
 puny little mortal, sitting there wrapped in his 
 golden mist, listening to the petty trickle of his 
 conscious favor and damming it a swelling foun 
 tain of privileges ! He could love, love passionately; 
 but he was so jealous and exacting that his love 
 cost you very much more than it was worth. I 
 found it no sinecure to possess the confidence I had 
 striven so cunningly to obtain. He fancied it a very 
 great honor that he should care to harness me up 
 as his horse, to throw me his ball by the hour, to 
 have me joggle with him (sitting close to the mid 
 dle) on the see-saw till my poor bones ached. 
 Nevertheless, in this frank, childish arrogance there 
 was an almost irresistible charm, and I was absurdly 
 flattered by enjoying his favor. Poor me! at 
 twenty-three I was his first "conquest" the first 
 in a long list, as I believe it came to be. If he 
 
14 Master Eustace 
 
 demanded great license, he used it with a peculiar 
 grace of his own, and he admitted the correspond 
 ing obligation of being clever and brilliant. As a 
 child even, he seemed to be in a sort of occult sym 
 pathy with the picturesque. His talents were ex 
 cellent, and teaching him, whatever it may have 
 been, was at least not dull work. It was indeed less 
 to things really needful than to the luxuries of learn 
 ing that he took most kindly. He had an excellent 
 ear for music, and though he never fairly practised, 
 he turned off an air as neatly as you could have 
 wished. In this he resembled his mother, who was 
 a natural musician. She, however, was always at 
 the piano, and whenever I think of her in those early 
 years, I see her sitting before it musingly, half sadly, 
 with her pretty head on one side, her fair braids 
 thrust behind her ears ears from which a couple 
 of small but admirable diamonds were never absent 
 and her white hands wandering over the notes, 
 seeking vaguely for an air which they seemed hardly 
 to dare to remember. Eustace had an insatiable 
 appetite for stories, though he was one of the coolest 
 and most merciless of critics. I can fancy him now 
 at my knee with his big, superbly-expectant eyes 
 fastened on my lips, demanding more wonders and 
 more, till my poor little short-winded invention had 
 to cry mercy for its impotence. Do my best, I could 
 never startle him ; my giants were never big enough 
 
Master Eustace 15 
 
 and my fairies never small enough, and my en 
 chanters, my prisoners, my castles never on the 
 really grand scale of his own imaginative needs. I 
 felt pitifully prosaic. At last he would always open 
 his wilful little mouth and gape in my face with a 
 dreadfully dry want of conviction. I felt flattered 
 when by chance I had pleased him, for, by a pre 
 cocious instinct, he knew tinsel from gold. "Look 
 here," he would say, "y u re dreadfully ugly; what 
 makes you so ugly? Your nose is so big at the 
 end." (You needn t protest; I was ugly. Like 
 most very plain women, I have improved with 
 time. ) Of course I used to rebuke him for his rude 
 ness, though I secretly thanked it, for it taught me 
 a number of things. Once he said something, I for 
 get what, which made me burst into tears. It was 
 the first time, and the last ; for I found that, instead 
 of stirring his pity, tears only moved his contempt, 
 and apparently a kind of cynical, physical disgust. 
 The best way was to turn the tables on him by pre 
 tending to be cool and indifferent and superior. In 
 that case he himself would condescend to tears 
 bitter, wrathful tears. Then you had perhaps gained 
 nothing, but you had lost nothing. In every other 
 case you had. 
 
 Of course these close relations lasted but a couple 
 of years. I had made him very much wiser than 
 myself ; he was growing tall and boyish and terribly 
 
16 Master Eustace 
 
 inquisitive. My poor little stories ceased to have 
 any illusion for him; and he would spend hours 
 lying on his face on the carpet, kicking up his neat 
 little legs and poring over the "Arabian Nights," 
 the "Fairy Queen," the dozen prime enchanters of 
 childhood. My advice would have been to pack him 
 off to school; but I might as well have asked his 
 mother to send him to the penitentiary. He was 
 to be educated en prince; he was to have a teacher 
 to himself. I thought sympathetically of the worthy 
 pedagogue who was to enjoy Eustace without con 
 currence. But such a one was easily found in fact, 
 he was found three times over. Three private tutors 
 came and went successively. They fell in love, 
 categorically, with Mrs. Garnyer. Their love indeed 
 she might have put up with; but unhappily, unlike 
 Viola, they told their love by letter with an offer 
 of their respective hands. Their letters were dif 
 ferent, but to Mrs. Garnyer their hands were all 
 alike, and alike distasteful. "The horrid creatures !" 
 was her invariable commentary. "I wouldn t speak 
 to them for the world. My dear, you must do it." 
 And I, who had never declined an offer on my own 
 account, went to work in this wholesale fashion for 
 my friend! You will say that young as she was, 
 pretty, independent, lovely, Mrs. Garnyer would 
 have looked none the worse for a spice of coquetry. 
 Nay, in her own eyes, she would have been hideous. 
 
Master Eustace T7 
 
 Her greatest charm for me was a brave little pas 
 sion of scorn for this sort of levity, and indeed a 
 general contempt for cheap sentimental effects. It 
 was as if, from having drunk at the crystal head 
 spring, she had lost her taste for standing water. 
 She was absolutely indifferent to attention; in fact, 
 she seemed to shrink from it. She hadn t a trace 
 of personal vanity; she was even without visible 
 desire to please. Unfortunately, as you see, she 
 pleased in spite of herself. As regards love, she had 
 an imposing array of principles; on this one point 
 her floating imagination found anchorage. "It s 
 either a passion," she said, "or it s nothing. You 
 can know it by being willing to give up everything 
 for it name and fame, past and future, this world 
 and the next. Do you keep back a feather s weight 
 of tenderness and trust? Then you re not in love. 
 You must risk everything, for you get everything 
 if you re happy. I can t understand a woman 
 trifling with love. They talk about the unpardon 
 able sin ; that s it, it seems to me. Do you know the 
 word in the language I most detest? Flirtation. 
 Poh ! it makes me ill." When Mrs. Garnyer uttered 
 this hint of an esoteric doctrine, her clear blue eyes 
 would become clouded with the gathered mists of 
 memory. In this matter she understood herself 
 and meant what she said. 
 
 Defiant as she was of admiration, she saw little 
 
18_ Master Eustace 
 
 of the world. She met her few friends but two or 
 three times a year, and was without a single inti 
 mate. As time went on, she came to care more for 
 me than for anyone. When Eustace had outgrown 
 my teaching, she insisted on my remaining in any 
 capacity I chose as housekeeper, companion, seam 
 stress, guest; I might make my own terms. I be 
 came a little of each of these, and with the increas 
 ing freedom of our intercourse grew to regard her 
 as a younger and weaker sister. I gave her, for 
 what it was worth, my frankest judgment on all 
 things. Her own confidence always stopped short 
 of a certain point. A little curtain of reticence 
 seemed always to hang between us. Sometimes I 
 fancied it growing thinner and thinner, becoming 
 almost transparent and revealing the figures behind 
 it. Sometimes it seemed to move and flutter in the 
 murmur of our talk, so that in a moment it might 
 drop or melt away into air. But it was a magical 
 web; it played a hundred tormenting tricks, and 
 year after year it hung in its place. Of course this 
 inviolate mystery stirred my curiosity, but I can t 
 say more for the disinterested tenderness I felt for 
 Mrs. Garnyer than that it never unduly irritated it. 
 I lingered near the door of her Blue-Beard s cham 
 ber, but I never peeped through the keyhole. She 
 was a poor lady with a secret; I took her into my 
 heart, secret and all. She proclaimed that her isola- 
 
Master Eustace 19 
 
 tion was her own choice, and pretended to be vastly 
 content that society let her so well alone. She made 
 her widowhood serve as a motive for her lonesome 
 days, and declared that her boy s education amply 
 filled them. She was a widow, however, who never 
 of her own accord mentioned her husband s name, 
 and she wore her weeds very lightly. She was very 
 fond of white, and for six months of the year was 
 rarely seen in a dark dress. Occasionally, on cer 
 tain fixed days, she would flame forth in some old- 
 fashioned piece of finery from a store which she 
 religiously preserved, and would flash about the 
 house in rose-color or blue. One day, her boy s 
 birthday, she kept with fantastic solemnity. It fell 
 in the middle of September. On this occasion she 
 would put on a faded ball-dress, overload herself 
 with jewels and trinkets, and dress her hair with 
 flowers. Eustace, too, she would trick out in a suit 
 of crimson velvet, and in this singular guise the pair 
 would walk with prodigious gravity about the gar 
 den and up and down the avenue. Every now and 
 then she would stoop and give him a convulsive hug. 
 The child himself seemed to feel the magnitude of 
 this festival, and played his part with precocious 
 discretion. He would appear at dark with the curl 
 still in his hair, his velvet trousers unstained, his 
 ruffles uncrumpled. In the evening the coachman 
 let off rockets in the garden; we feasted on ice- 
 
20 Master Eustace 
 
 cream, and a bottle of champagne was sent to the 
 kitchen. No wonder Master Eustace took on the 
 graces of an heir-apparent ! Once, I remember, the 
 mother and son were overtaken in the festal prome 
 nade by some people who had come to live in the 
 neighborhood, and who drove up rather officiously 
 to leave their cards. They stared in amazement 
 from the carriage window, and were told Mrs. 
 Garnyer was not at home. A few days later we 
 heard that Mrs. Garnyer was out of her mind; she 
 had been found masquerading in her grounds with 
 her little boy, in the most indecent costume. From 
 time to time she received an invitation, and occa 
 sionally she accepted one. When she went out she 
 deepened her mourning, but she always came home 
 in a fret. "It is the last house I will go to," she 
 declared, as I helped her to undress. "People s 
 neglect I can bear, and thank them for it ; but Heaven 
 deliver me from their kindness ! I won t be patron 
 izedI won t, I won t! Shall I, my boy? We ll 
 wait till you grow up, shan t we, my darling? Then 
 his poor little mother shan t be patronized, shall she, 
 my brave little man?" The child was constantly 
 dangling at his mother s skirts, and was seldom 
 beyond the reach of some such passionate invoca 
 tion. 
 
 A preceptor had at last been found of a less 
 inflammable composition than the others a worthy, 
 
Master Eustace 21 
 
 elderly German of fair attainments, with a stout, 
 sentimental wife she gave music lessons in town 
 who monopolized his ardors. He was a mild, 
 patient man a nose of wax, as the saying is. A 
 pretty nose it grew to be in Eustace s supple fingers ! 
 I ll answer for it that in all those years he never 
 carried a point. I believe that, like me, he had 
 begun with tears; but finding this an altogether 
 losing game, he was content now to take off his 
 spectacles, drop his head on one side, look implor 
 ingly at his pupil with his weak blue eyes, and then 
 exhale his renunciation in a plaintive Lieber Gott! 
 Under this discipline the boy bloomed like a flower. 
 But it was to my sense a kind of hothouse growth. 
 His tastes were sedentary, and he lived largely 
 within doors. He kept a horse and took long lonely 
 rides; but most of the time he spent lounging over 
 a book, trifling at the piano, or fretting over a water- 
 color sketch, which he was sure to throw aside in 
 disgust. One amusement he pursued with unweary 
 ing constancy ; it was a sign of especial good humor, 
 and I never knew it to fail him. He would sit for 
 hours lounging in a chair, with his head thrown 
 back and his legs extended, staring at vacancy, or 
 what seemed to us so, but a vacancy filled with the 
 silent revel of his fancy and the images it evoked. 
 What was the substance of these beatific visions? 
 The broad, happy life before him, the great world 
 
22 Master Eustace 
 
 whose far-off murmurs caressed his ear the joys 
 of consummate manhood pleasure, success, pros 
 perity a kind of triumphant and transfigured 
 egotism. His reveries swarmed with ideal shapes 
 and transcendent delights; his handsome young 
 face, his idle, insolent smile were the cold reflec 
 tions of their brightness. His mother, after watch 
 ing him for a while in these moods, would steal up 
 behind him and kiss him softly on the forehead, as 
 if to marry his sweet illusions to sweet reality. 
 For my part, I wanted to divorce them. It was a 
 sad pity, I thought, that desire and occasion in the 
 lad s life played so deftly into each other s hands. 
 I longed to spoil the game, to shuffle the cards afresh 
 and give him a taste of bad luck. I felt as if be 
 tween them she by her measureless concessions, 
 he by his consuming arrogance they were sowing 
 a crop of dragon s teeth. This sultry summer of 
 youth couldn t last forever, and I knew that the 
 poor lady would be the first to suffer by a change 
 of weather. He would turn some day in his pas 
 sionate vanity and rend the gentle creature who had 
 fed it with the delusive wine of her love. And yet 
 he had a better angel as well as a worse. It was 
 a marvel to see how this sturdy seraph tussled with 
 the fiends, and, in spite of bruises and ruffled pinions, 
 returned again and again to the onset. There were 
 days when his generous, boyish gayety the natural 
 
Master Eustace 23 
 
 sunshine of youth and intelligence warmed our 
 women s hearts to their depths and kindled our most 
 trusting smiles. Me, as he grew older, he treated 
 as a licensed old-time friend. I was the prince s 
 jester. I used to tell him his truths, as the French 
 say. He believed them just enough to feel an agree 
 able irritation in listening; for the rest, doubtless, 
 they seemed as vague and remote as a croaking 
 good-wife s gossip. There were moments, I think, 
 when the eternal blue sky of his mother s temper 
 wearied his capricious brain. At such times he 
 would come and sprawl on the sofa near my little 
 work-table, clipping my threads, mixing my spools, 
 mislaying my various utensils, and criticizing my 
 work without reserve chattering, gossiping, com 
 plaining, boasting. With all his faults Eustace had 
 one sovereign merit that merit without which 
 even the virtues he lacked lose half their charms : 
 he was superbly frank. He was only too trans 
 parent. The light of truth played through his rank 
 pretensions, and against it they stood relieved in 
 his hard tenacity, like young trees against a sunset. 
 He uttered his passions, and uttered them only too 
 loudly; you received ample notice of his vengeance. 
 It came as a matter of course ; he never took it out 
 in talk ; but you were warned. 
 
 If these intense meditations of which I have 
 spoken followed exclusively the vista of his per- 
 
24 Master Eustace 
 
 sonal fortunes, his conversation was hardly more 
 disinterested. It was altogether about himself his 
 ambitions, his ailments, his dreams, his needs, his 
 intentions. He talked a great deal of his property, 
 and, though he had a great aversion to figures, he 
 knew the amount of his expectations before he was 
 out of jackets. He had a shrewd relish for luxury 
 and indeed, as he respected pretty things and used 
 them with a degree of tenderness which he by no 
 means lavished upon animated objects, saving, spar 
 ing, and preserving them, this seemed to me one 
 of his most human traits, though, I admit, an ex 
 pensive virtue and he promised to spend his for 
 tune in books and pictures, in art and travel. His 
 mother was imperiously appealed to to do the honors 
 of his castles in the air. She would look at him 
 always with her doting smile, and with a little glow 
 of melancholy in her eyes a faint tribute to some 
 shadowy chance that even her Eustace might reckon 
 without his host. She would shake her head ten 
 derly, or lean it on his shoulder and murmur, "Who 
 knows, who knows? It s perhaps as foolish, my 
 son, to try and forecast happiness as to attempt to 
 take the measure of misery. We know them each 
 when they come. Whatever comes to us, at all 
 events, we shall meet it together." Resting in this 
 delicious contact, with her arm round his neck and 
 her cheek on his hair, she would close her eyes in 
 
Master Eustace 
 
 a kind of tremor of ecstacy. As I have never had 
 a son myself, I can speak of maternity but by hear 
 say; but I feel as if I knew some of its secrets, as 
 if I had gained from Mrs. Garnyer a revelation of 
 maternal passion. The perfect humility of her J 
 devotion, indeed, seemed to me to point to some 
 motive deeper than vulgar motherhood. It looked 
 like a kind of penance, a kind of pledge. Had she 
 done him some early wrong? Did she meditate 
 some wrong to come? Did she wish to purchase 
 pardon for the past or impunity for the future? 
 One might have fancied from the lad s calm relish 
 of her incense as if it were the fumes of some 
 perfumed chibouque palpitating lazily through his 
 own lips that he had a comfortable sense of some 
 thing to forgive. In fact, he had something to for 
 give us all our dullness, our vulgarity, our not 
 guessing his unuttered desires the want of a super- 
 celestial harmony between our wills and his. I 
 fancied, however, that there were even moments 
 when he turned dizzy on the cope of this awful gulf 
 of his mother s self-sacrifice. Fixing his eyes, then, 
 an instant to steady himself, he took comfort in the 
 thought that she had ceased to suffer her personal 
 ambitions lay dead at the bottom. He could vaguely 
 see them distant, dim, motionless. It was to be 
 hoped that no adventurous ghost of these shuffled 
 passions would climb upward to the light. 
 
26 Master Eustace 
 
 A frequent source of complaint with Eustace, 
 when he had no more immediate displeasure, was 
 that he had not known his father. He had formed 
 a mental image of the late Mr. Garnyer which I am 
 afraid hardly tallied at all points with the original. 
 He knew that his father had been a man of pleasure, 
 and he had painted his portrait in ideal hues. What 
 a charming father a man of pleasure! the boy 
 thought, fancying that gentlemen of this stamp take 
 their pleasure in the nursery. What pleasure they 
 might have shared; what rides, what talks, what 
 games, what adventures what far other hours than 
 those he passed in the deserted billiard-room (this 
 had been one of Mr. Garnyer s pleasures) clicking 
 the idle balls in the stillness. He learned to talk 
 very early of shaping his life on his father s. What 
 he had done his son would do. A dozen odds and 
 ends which had belonged to Mr. Garnyer he carried 
 to his room, where he arranged them on his mantel 
 shelf like relics on a high altar. When he had 
 turned seventeen he began to smoke an old silver- 
 mounted pipe which had his father s initials em 
 bossed on the bowl. "It would be a great blessing," 
 he said as he puffed this pipe it made him dis 
 mally sick, for he hated tobacco "to have some 
 man in the house. It s so fearfully womanish here. 
 No one but you two and HaufT, and what s he but 
 an old woman? Mother, why have you always lived 
 
Master Eustace 27 
 
 in this way? What s the matter with you? You ve 
 got no savoir viure. What are you blushing about? 
 That comes of moping here all your days that you 
 blush for nothing. I don t want my mother to blush 
 for anything or anyone, not even for me. But I 
 give you notice, I can stand it no longer. Now I m 
 seventeen, it s time I should see the world. I m 
 going to travel. My father travelled; he went all 
 over Europe. There s a little French book upstairs, 
 the poems of Parny it s awfully French, too 
 with Henry Garnyer, Paris, 1802, on the fly-leaf. 
 I must go to Paris. I shan t go to college. I ve 
 never been to school. I want to be complete pri 
 vately educated altogether. Very few people are, 
 here; it s quite a distinction. Besides, I know all 
 I want to know. Hauff brought me out some col 
 lege catalogues. They re absurd ; he laughs at them. 
 We did all that three years ago. I know more about 
 books than most young fellows; what I want is 
 knowledge of the world. My father had it, and 
 you haven t, mother. But he had plenty of taste, too. 
 Hauff says that little edition of Parny is very rare. 
 I shall bring home lots of such things. You ll see !" 
 Mrs. Garnyer listened to such effusions of filial emu 
 lation in sad, distracted silence. I couldn t but pity 
 her. She knew that her husband was no proper 
 model for her child ; yet she couldn t in decency turn 
 his heart again his father s memory. She took 
 
28 Master Eustace 
 
 refuge in that attitude of tremulous contemplation 
 which committed her neither to condemnation of 
 her husband nor to approval with her son. 
 
 She had recourse at this period, as I have known 
 her to do before, to a friend attached to a mercantile 
 house in India an old friend, she had told me ; "in 
 fact," she had added, "my only friend, a man to 
 whom I am under immense obligations." Once in 
 six months there came to her from this distant bene 
 factor a large square letter, heavily sealed and 
 covered with foreign post-marks. I used to fancy 
 it a kind of bulletin of advice for the coming half 
 year. Advice about what ? Her cares were so few, 
 her habits so simple, that they offered scanty matter 
 for discussion. But now, of course, came a packet 
 of counsel as to Eustace s absence. I knew that she 
 dreaded it ; but since her oracle had spoken, she wore 
 a brave face. She was certainly a devout postulant. 
 She concealed from Eustace the extent of her de 
 pendence on this far-away adviser, for the boy 
 would have resented such interference, even though 
 it favored his own schemes. She had always read 
 her friend s letters in secret ; this was the only prac 
 tice of her life she failed to share with her son. Me 
 she now for the first time admitted into her con 
 fidence. "Mr. Cope strongly recommends my letting 
 him go," she said. "He says it will make a man 
 of him. He needs to rub against other men. I 
 
Master Eustace 29 
 
 suppose at least," she cried with her usual sweet 
 fatuity, "it will do other men no harm ! Perhaps I 
 don t love him as I ought, and that I must lose him 
 awhile to learn to prize him. If I only get him back 
 again! It would be monstrous that I shouldn t! 
 But why are we cursed with these frantic woes and 
 fears? It s a weary life!" She would have said 
 more if she had known that it was not his departure 
 but his return that was to be cruel. 
 
 The excellent Mr. Hauff was deemed too mild 
 and infirm to cope with the hazards of travel; but 
 a companion was secured in the person of his 
 nephew, an amiable young German who claimed to 
 possess erudition and discretion in equal manner. 
 For a week before he left us Eustace was so serene 
 and joyous of humor as to double his mother s sense 
 of loss. "I give her into your care/ he said to me. 
 "If anything happens to her, I shall hold you re 
 sponsible. She is very woe-begone just now, but 
 she ll cheer up yet. But, mother, you re not to be 
 too cheerful, mind. You re not to forget me an in 
 stant. If you do, I ll never forgive you. I insist 
 on being missed. There s little enough merit in 
 loving me when I m here ; I wish to be loved in my 
 absence." For many weeks after he left, he might 
 have been satisfied. His mother wandered about 
 like a churchyard ghost keeping watch near a buried 
 treasure. When his letters began to come, she read 
 
30 Master Eustace 
 
 them over a dozen times, and sat for hours with 
 her eyes closed holding them in her hand. They 
 were wretchedly meagre and hurried ; but their very 
 brevity gratified her. He was prosperous and happy, 
 and could snatch but odd moments from his pleasure- 
 taking. 
 
 One morning, after he had been away some three 
 months, there came two letters, one from Eustace, 
 the other from India, the latter very much in ad 
 vance of its time. Mrs. Garnyer opened the Indian 
 letter first. I was pouring out tea; I observed her 
 from behind the urn. As her eyes ran over the 
 pages she turned deadly pale ; then raising her glance 
 she met mine. Immediately her paleness turned to 
 crimson. She rose to her feet and hurried out of 
 the room, leaving Eustace s letter untouched on the 
 table. This little fact was eloquent, and my curiosity 
 was aroused. Later in the day it was partially 
 satisfied. She came to me with a singular conscious 
 look the look of a sort of oppression of happiness 
 and announced that Mr. Cope was coming home. 
 He had obtained release from his engagements in 
 India, and would arrive in a fortnight. She uttered 
 herewith no words of rejoicing, but I fancied her 
 joy was of the unutterable sort. As the days 
 elapsed, however, her emotion betrayed itself in a 
 restless, aimless flutter of movement, so intense as 
 to seem to me almost painful. She roamed about 
 
Master Eustace 
 
 the house singing to herself, gazing out of the win 
 dows, shifting the chairs and tables, smoothing the 
 curtains, trying vaguely to brighten the faded look 
 of things. Before every mirror she paused and in 
 spected herself, with that frank audacity of pretty 
 women which I have always envied, tucking up a 
 curl of her blond hair or smoothing a crease in 
 those muslins which she always kept so fresh. Of 
 Eustace for the moment she rarely spoke ; the boy s 
 prediction had not been so very much amiss. Who 
 was this wonderful Mr. Cope, this mighty magician ? 
 I very soon learned. He arrived on the day he 
 had fixed, and took up his lodging in the house. 
 From the moment I looked at him, I felt that here 
 was a man I should like. My poor unflattered soul, 
 I suppose, was won by the kindness of his greeting. 
 He had often heard of me, he said; he knew how 
 good a friend I had been to Mrs. Garnyer ; he begged 
 to bespeak a proportionate friendship for himself. 
 I felt as if I were amply thanked for my years of 
 household zeal. But in spite of this pleasant as 
 surance, I had a sense of being for the moment 
 altogether de trop. He was united to his friend by 
 a closer bond than I had suspected. I left them 
 alone with their mutual secrets and effusions, and 
 confined myself to my own room ; though indeed I 
 had noticed between them a sort of sentimental intel 
 ligence, so deep and perfect that many words were 
 
32 Master Eustace 
 
 exchanged without audible speech. Mrs. Garnyer 
 underwent a singular change ; I seemed to know her 
 now for the first time. It was as if she had flung 
 aside a veil which muffled her tones and blurred her 
 features. There was a new decision in her tread, 
 a deeper meaning in her smile. So, at thirty-eight 
 her girlhood had come back to her! She was as 
 full of blushes and random prattle and foolish fal- 
 terings for very pleasure as a young bride. Upon 
 Mr. Cope the years had set a more ineffaceable seal. 
 He was a man of forty-five, but you would have 
 given him ten years more. He had that look which 
 I have always liked of people who have lived in hot 
 climates, a bronzed complexion, and a cool deliber 
 ate gait, as if he had learned to think twice before 
 moving. He was tall and lean, yet extremely mas 
 sive in shape, like a stout man emaciated by cir 
 cumstances. His hair was thin and perfectly white, 
 and he wore a grizzled moustache. He dressed in 
 loose, light-colored garments of those fine Eastern 
 stuffs. I had a singular impression of having seen 
 him before, but I could never say when or where. 
 He was extremely deaf so deaf that I had to 
 force my voice ; though I observed that Mrs. Garn 
 yer easily made him hear by speaking slowly and 
 looking at him. He had peculiarly that patient ap 
 pealing air which you find in very deaf persons less 
 frequently than in the blind, but which has with 
 
Master Eustace 33 
 
 them an even deeper eloquence, enforced as it is by 
 the normal pathos of the eye. It has an espe 
 cially mild dignity where, as in Mr. Cope, it over 
 lies a truly masculine mind. He had been obliged 
 to make good company of himself, and the glimpses 
 that one got of this blessed fellowship in stillness 
 were of a kind to make one long to share it. But 
 with others, too, he was a charming talker, though 
 he was obliged to keep the talk in his own hands. 
 He took your response for granted with a kind of 
 conciliating bonhomie, guessed with a glance at your 
 opinion, and phrased it usually more wittily than 
 you would have done. 
 
 For ten years I had been pitying Mrs, Garnyer; 
 it was odd to find myself envying her. Patient 
 waiting is no loss ; at last her day had come. I had 
 always rather wondered at her patience; it was 
 spiced with a logic all its own. But she had lived 
 by precept and example, by chapter and verse; for 
 his sake it was easy to be wise. I say for "his" 
 sake, because as a matter of course I now connected 
 her visitor with that undefined secret which had 
 been one of my earliest impressions of Mrs. Garn 
 yer. Mr. Cope s presence renewed my memory of 
 it. I fitted the key to the lock, but on coming to 
 open the casket I was disappointed to find that the 
 best of the mystery had evaporated. Mr. Cope, I 
 imagined, had been her first and only love. Her 
 
34 Master Eustace 
 
 parents had frowned on him and forced her into 
 a marriage with poor dissolute Mr. Garnyer a 
 course the more untender as he had already spent 
 half his own property and was likely to make sad 
 havoc with his wife s. He had a high social value, 
 which the girl s own family, who were plain enough 
 people to have had certain primitive scruples in 
 larger measure, deemed a compensation for his 
 vices. The discarded lover, thinking she had not 
 resisted as firmly as she might, embarked for India, 
 and there, half in spite, half in despair, married as 
 sadly remiss as herself. She had trifled with his 
 happiness ; he lived to repent. His wife lived as 
 well to perpetuate his misery ; it was my belief that 
 she had only recently died, and that this event was 
 the occasion of his return. When he arrived he 
 wore a weed on his hat; the next day it had disap 
 peared. Reunion had come to them in the after 
 noon of life, when the tricks and graces of passion 
 are no longer becoming; but when these have spent 
 themselves something of passion still is left, and 
 this they were free to enjoy. They had begun to 
 enjoy it with the chastened zeal of which I caught 
 the aroma. Such was my reading of the riddle. 
 Right or not, at least it made sense. 
 
 I had promised Eustace to write to him, and one 
 afternoon as I sat alone, well pleased to have a 
 theme, I despatched him a long letter full of the 
 
Master Eustace 35 
 
 praises of Mr. Cope, and by implication of the echo 
 of his mother s happiness. I wished to anticipate 
 his possible suspicions and reconcile him with the 
 altered situation. But after I had posted my letter, 
 it seemed to me that I had spoken too frankly. I 
 doubted whether, even amid the wholesome novelty 
 of travel, he had unlearned the old trick of jealousy. 
 Jealousy surely would have been quite misplaced, 
 for Mr. Cope s affection for his hostess embraced 
 her boy in its ample scope. He regretted the lad s 
 absence; he manifested the kindliest interest in 
 everything that spoke of him ; he turned over his 
 books, he looked at his sketches, he examined and 
 compared the half dozen portraits which the fond 
 mother had caused to be executed at various stages 
 of his growth. One hot day, when poor old Mr. 
 Hauff travelled out from town for news of his pupil, 
 he made a point of being introduced and of shaking 
 his hand. The old man stayed to dinner, and on 
 Mr. Cope s proposition we drank the boy s health 
 in brimming glasses. The old German of course 
 wept profusely; it was Eustace s mission to make 
 people cry. I fancied too I saw a tear on Mr. 
 Cope s lid. The cup of his contentment was full; 
 at a touch it overflowed. On the whole, however, 
 he took this bliss of reunion more quietly than his 
 friend. He was a melancholy man. He had the 
 air of one for whom the moral of this fable of life 
 
36 Master Eustace 
 
 has greater charms than the plot, and who has made 
 up his mind to ask no favors of destiny. When he 
 met me, he used to smile gently, frankly, saying 
 little; but I had a vast relish for his smile. It 
 seemed to say much to murmur, "Receive my com 
 pliments. You and I are a couple of tested souls ; 
 we understand each other. We are not agog with 
 the privileges of existence, like charity children on 
 a picnic. We have had, each of us, to live for 
 years without the thing we once fancied gave life 
 its only value. We have tasted of bondage, and 
 patience, taken up as a means, has grown grateful 
 as an end. It has cured us of eagerness." So 
 easily it gossiped, the smile of our guest. No won 
 der I liked it. 
 
 One evening, a month after his advent, Mrs. 
 Garnyer came to me with a strange embarrassed 
 smile. "I have something to tell you," she said; 
 "something that will surprise you. Do you con 
 sider me a very old woman? I am old enough to 
 be wiser, you ll say. But I ve never been so wise 
 as to-day. I m engaged to Mr. Cope. There ! make 
 the best of it. I have no apologies to make to any 
 one/ she went o<n with a kind of defiant manner. 
 "It s between ourselves. If we suit each other, it s 
 no one s business. I know what I m about. He 
 means to remain in this country ; we should be con 
 stantly together and extremely intimate. As he 
 
Master Eustace 37 
 
 says, I m young enough to be what do they call it ? 
 compromised. Of course, therefore, I m young 
 enough to marry. It will make no difference with 
 you ; you ll stay with me all the same. Who cares, 
 after all, what I do? No one but Eustace, and he 
 will thank me for giving him such a father. Ah, 
 I shall do well by my boy!" she cried, clasping her 
 hands with ecstacy. "I shall do better than he 
 knows. My property, it appears, is dreadfully en 
 tangled. Mr. Garnyer did as he pleased with it; 
 I was given to him with my hands tied. Mr. Cope 
 has been looking into it, and he tells me that it will 
 be a long labor to restore order. I have been living 
 all these years at the mercy of unprincipled strangers. 
 But now I have given up everything to Mr. Cope. 
 He ll drive the money-changers from the temple! 
 It s a small reward to marry him. Eustace has no 
 head for money matters; he only knows how to 
 spend. For years now he needn t think of them. 
 Mr. Cope is our providence. Don t be afraid; 
 Eustace won t blaspheme! and at last he ll have a 
 companion the best, the wisest, the kindest. You 
 know how he used to long for one how tired he 
 was of me and you. It will be a new life. Oh, I m 
 a happy mother at last at last! Don t look 
 at me so hard; I m a blushing bride, remember. 
 Smile, laugh, kiss me. There ! You re a good 
 creature. I shall make my boy a present the hand- 
 
38 Master Eustace 
 
 somest that ever was made ! Poor Mr. Cope ! I m 
 happier than he. I have had my boy all these years, 
 and he has had none. He has the heart of a father. 
 He has longed for a son. Do you know," she added 
 with a strange deepening of her smile, "that I think 
 he marries me as much for my son s sake as for 
 my own? He marries me at all events, boy and 
 all." This speech was uttered with a forced and 
 hurried animation which betrayed the effort to cheat 
 herself into pure enthusiasm. The matter was not 
 quite so simple as she tried to believe. Nevertheless, 
 I was deeply pleased, and I kissed her in genuine 
 sympathy. The more I thought of it the better I 
 liked the marriage. It relieved me personally of a 
 burdensome sense of ineffectual care, and it filled 
 out solidly a kind of defenceless breach which had 
 always existed on the worldly face of Mrs. Garn- 
 yer s position. Moreover, it promised to be full of 
 wholesome profit for Eustace. It was a pity that 
 Eustace had but a slender relish for wholesome profit. 
 I ventured to hope, however, that his high esteem 
 for his father s memory had been, at bottom, the 
 expression of a need for counsel and support, and 
 of a capacity to grant respect if there should be 
 something of inspiration in it. Yet I took the 
 liberty of suggesting to Mrs. Garnyer that she per 
 haps counted too implicitly on her son s concurrence ; 
 that he was always in opposition; that a margin 
 
Master Eustace 39 
 
 should* be left for his possible jealousy. Of course 
 I was called a suspicious wretch for my pains. 
 
 "For what do you take him?" she cried. "He ll 
 thank me on his knees. I shall place them face to 
 face. Eustace has instinct! A word to the wise, 
 says the proverb. I know what I m about." 
 
 She knew it, I think, hardly as well as she de 
 clared. I had deemed it my duty to make a modest 
 little speech of congratulation to the bridegroom 
 elect. He blushed somewhat to my surprise but 
 he answered me with a grave, grateful bow. He 
 was preoccupied; Mrs. Garnyer was of a dozen dif 
 ferent minds about her wedding-day. I had taken 
 for granted that they would wait for Eustace s 
 return; but I was somewhat startled on learning 
 that Mr. Cope disapproved of further delay. They 
 had waited twenty years! Mrs. Garnyer told me 
 that she had not announced the news to Eustace. 
 She wished it to be a "surprise." She seemed, how 
 ever, not altogether to believe in her surprise. Poor 
 lady! she had made herself a restless couch. One 
 evening, coming into the library, I found Mr. Cope 
 pleading his cause. For the first time I saw him 
 excited. This hint of autumnal ardor was very be 
 coming. He turned appealingly to me. "You have 
 great authority with this lady," he said. "Plead my 
 case. Are we people to care for Mrs. Grundy? 
 Has she been so very civil to us? We don t marry 
 
40 Master Eustace 
 
 to please her. I don t see why she should arrange 
 the wedding. Mrs. Garnyer has no trousseau to 
 buy, no cards to send. Indeed, I think any more 
 airs and graces are rather ridiculous. They don t 
 belong to our years. There s little Master Grundy, 
 I know," he went on, smiling "a most honorable 
 youth! But I ll take charge of him. I should like 
 vastly, of course, to have him at the wedding; but 
 one of these days I shall make up for the breach 
 of ceremony by punctually attending his own." It 
 was only an hour before this, as it happened, that 
 I had received Eustace s answer to my letter. It 
 was brief and hasty, but he had found time to insert 
 some such words as this : "I don t at all thank you 
 for your news of Mr. Cope. I knew that my mother 
 only wanted a chance to forget me and console her 
 self, as they say in France. Demonstrative mothers 
 always do. I m like Hamlet I don t approve of 
 mothers consoling themselves. Mr. Cope may be 
 an excellent fellow I ve no doubt he is; but I do 
 hope he will have made his visit by the time I get 
 back. The house isn t large enough for both of us. 
 You ll find me a bigger man than when I left home. 
 I give you warning. I ve got a roaring black mous 
 tache, and I m proportionately fiercer." I said noth 
 ing about this letter. A week later they were mar 
 ried. The time will always be memorable to me, 
 apart from this matter of my story, from the 
 
. Master Eustace 41 
 
 intense and overwhelming heat which then pre 
 vailed. It had lasted several days when the wedding 
 took place ; it bade fair to continue unbroken. The 
 ceremony was performed by the little old Episcopal 
 clergyman whose ministrations Mrs. Garnyer had 
 regularly attended, and who had always given her 
 a vague parochial countenance. His sister, a mature 
 spinster who wore her hair cut short, and called 
 herself "strong-minded," and, thus qualified, had 
 made overtures to Mrs. Garnyer this lady and my 
 self were the only witnesses. The marriage had 
 nothing of a festive air; it seemed a grave sacrifice 
 to the unknown god. Mrs. Garnyer was very much 
 oppressed by the heat; in the vestibule, on leaving 
 the church, she fainted. They had arranged to go 
 for a week to the seaside, to a place they had known 
 of old. When she had revived we placed her in 
 the carriage, and they immediately started. I, of 
 course, remained in charge of the empty house, 
 vastly envying them their seaside breezes. 
 
 On the morning after the wedding, sitting alone 
 in the darkened library, I heard a rapid tread in 
 the hall. My first thought of course was of burglars 
 my second of Eustace. In a moment he came 
 striding into the room. His step, his glance, his 
 whole outline foretold trouble. He was amazingly 
 changed, and all for the better. He seemed taller, 
 older, manlier. He was bronzed by travel and 
 
42 Master Eustace 
 
 dressed with great splendor. The moustache he had 
 mentioned, though but a slender thing as yet, gave 
 him, to my eye, a formidable foreign look. He gave 
 me no greeting. 
 
 "Where s my mother?" he cried. 
 
 My heart rose to my throat; his tone seemed to 
 put us horribly in the wrong. "She s away for a 
 day," I said. "But you" and I took his hand 
 "pray, where have you dropped from?" 
 
 "From New York, from shipboard, from South 
 ampton. Is this the way my mother receives me?" 
 
 "Why, she never dreamed you were coming." 
 
 "She got no letter? I wrote from New York." 
 
 "Your letter never came. She left town yester 
 day, for a week." 
 
 He looked at me hard. "How comes it you re , 
 not with her?" 
 
 "I am not needed. She has she has " But 
 
 I faltered. 
 
 "Say it say it !" he cried ; and he stamped his 
 foot. "She has a companion." 
 
 "Mr. Cope went with her," I said, in a still, small 
 voice. I was ashamed of my tremor, I was out 
 raged by his imperious manner, but the thought of 
 worse to come unnerved me. 
 
 "Mr. Cope ah!" he answered, with an indefin 
 able accent. He looked about the room with a kind 
 of hungry desire to detect some invidious difference 
 
Master Eustace 43 
 
 as a trace of Mr. Cope s passage. Then flinging 
 himself into a chair, "What infernal heat !" he went 
 on. "What a hideous climate you ve got here ! Do 
 bring me a glass of water." 
 
 I brought him his glass, and stood before him as 
 he quickly drank it. "Don t think you re not wel 
 come," I ventured to say, "if I ask what has brought 
 you home so suddenly." 
 
 He gave me another hard look over the top of 
 his glass. "A suspicion. It s none too soon. Tell 
 me what is going on between my mother and Mr. 
 Cope." 
 
 "Eustace," I said, "before I answer you, let me 
 remind you of the respect which under all circum 
 stances you owe your mother." 
 
 He sprang from his chair. "Respect ! I m right, 
 then. They mean to marry ! Speak !" And as I 
 hesitated, "You needn t speak," he cried. "I see it 
 in your face. Thank God I m here !" 
 
 His violence aroused me. "If you have a will 
 to enforce in the matter," I said, "you are indeed 
 none too soon. You re too late. Your mother is 
 married." I spoke passionately, but in a moment 
 I repented of my words. 
 
 "MARRIED!" the poor boy shouted. "Married, 
 you say !" He turned deadly pale and stood staring 
 at me with his mouth wide open. Then, trembling 
 in all his limbs, he dropped into a chair. For some 
 
44 Master Eustace 
 
 moments he was silent, gazing at me with fierce 
 stupefaction, overwhelmed by the treachery of fate. 
 "Married!" he went on. "When, where, how? 
 Without me without notice without shame ! And 
 you stood and watched it, as you stand and tell 
 me now! I called you friend!" he cried, with the 
 bitterest reproach. "But if my mother betrays me, 
 what can I expect of you? Married !" he repeated. 
 "Is the devil in it? I ll unmarry her! When 
 when when?" And he seized me by the arm. 
 "Yesterday, Eustace. I entreat you to be calm/ 
 "Calm ? Is it a case for calmness ? She was calm 
 enough that she couldn t wait for her son!" He 
 flung aside the hand I had laid upon his to soothe 
 him, and began a furious march about the room. 
 "What has come to her? Is she mad ? Has she lost 
 her head, her heart, her memory all that made her 
 mine? You re joking come, it s a horrible 
 dream?" And he stopped before me, glaring 
 through fiery tears. "Did she hope to keep it a 
 secret? Did she hope to hide away her husband in 
 a cupboard? Her husband! And I I I what 
 has she done with me? Where am I in this devil s 
 game? Standing here crying like a schoolboy for 
 a cut finger for the bitterest of disappointments! 
 She has blighted my life she has blasted my rights. 
 She has insulted me dishonored me. Am I a man 
 to treat in that fashion? Am I a man to be made 
 
Master Eustace 45 
 
 light of? Brought up as a flower and trampled as 
 a weed! Bound in cotton and steeped in vitriol! 
 You needn t speak" I had tried, for pity, to remon 
 strate. "You can say nothing but bald folly. 
 There s nothing to be said but this that I m in 
 sulted. Do you understand?" He uttered the word 
 with a concentrated agony of vanity. "I guessed 
 it from the first. I knew it was coming. Mr. Cope 
 Mr. Cope always Mr. Cope. It poisoned my 
 journey it poisoned my pleasure it poisoned 
 Italy. You don t know what that means. But what 
 matter, so long as it has poisoned my home ? I held 
 my tongue I swallowed my rage; I was patient, 
 I was gentle, I forbore. And for this! I could 
 have damned him with a word! At the seaside, 
 hey? Enjoying the breezes splashing in the surf 
 picking up shells. It s idyllic, it s ideal great 
 heavens, it s fabulous, it s monstrous! It s well 
 she s not here. I don t answer for myself. Yes, 
 madam, stare, stare, wring your hands! You see 
 an angry man, an outraged man, but a man, mind 
 you ! He means to act as one." 
 
 This sweeping torrent of unreason I had vainly 
 endeavored to arrest. He pushed me aside, strode 
 out of the room, and went bounding upstairs to his 
 own chamber, where I heard him close the door 
 with a terrible bang and turn the key. My hope 
 was that his passion would expend itself in this first 
 
46 Master Eustace 
 
 explosion ; I was glad to bear the brunt of it. But 
 I deemed it my duty to communicate with his 
 mother. I wrote her a hurried line: "Eustace is 
 back very ill. Come home." This I intrusted to 
 the coachman, with injunctions to carry it in per 
 son to the place of her sojourn. I believed that if 
 she started immediately on the receipt of it, she 
 might reach home late at night. Those were days 
 of private conveyances. Meanwhile I did my best 
 to pacify the poor young man. There was some 
 thing terrible and portentous in his rage ; he seemed 
 absolutely rabid. This was the sweet compliance, 
 the fond assent, on which his mother had counted ; 
 this was the "surprise" ! I went repeatedly to his 
 chamber door with soft speeches and urgent prayers 
 and offers of luncheon, of wine, of vague womanly 
 comfort. But there came no answer but shouts and 
 imprecations, and finally a sullen silence. Late in 
 the day I heard him from the window order the 
 gardener to saddle his horse; and in a short time 
 he came stamping downstairs, booted and spurred, 
 pale, dishevelled, with bloodshot eyes, "Where are 
 you going," I said, "in this awful heat?" 
 
 "To ride ride ride myself cool!" he cried. 
 "There s nothing so hot as my rage!" And in a 
 moment he was in the saddle and bounding out of 
 the gate. I went up to his room. It s wild disorder 
 bore vivid evidence of the tumult of his temper. A 
 
Master Eustace 47 
 
 dozen things were strewn broken on the floor; old 
 letters were lying crumpled and torn; I was sick 
 ened by the sight of a pearl necklace, snatched from 
 his gaping valise, and evidently purchased as a 
 present to his mother, ground into fragments on the 
 carpet as if by his boot-heels. His father s relics 
 were standing in a row untouched on the mantel 
 shelf, save for a couple of pistols mounted with his 
 initials in silver, which were tossed upon the table. 
 I made a brave effort to thrust them into a drawer 
 and turn the key, but to my eternal regret I was 
 afraid to touch them. Evening descended and wore 
 away ; but neither Eustace nor his mother returned. 
 I sat gloomily enough on the verandah, listening for 
 wheels or hoofs. Toward midnight a carriage 
 rattled over the gravel; my friend descended with 
 her husband at the door. She fluttered into my arms 
 with a kind of shrinking yet impetuous dread. 
 "Where is he how is he?" she cried. 
 
 I was spared the pain of answering, for at the 
 same moment I heard Eustace s horse clatter into 
 the stable-yard. He had rapidly dismounted and 
 passed into the house by one of the side windows, 
 which opened from the piazza into the drawing- 
 room. There the lamps \vere lighted. I led in my 
 companions. Eustace had crossed the threshold of 
 the window ; the lamp-light fell upon him, relieving 
 him against the darkness. His mother with a shriek 
 
48 Master Eustace 
 
 flung herself toward him, but in an instant with a 
 deeper cry she stopped short, pressing her hand to 
 her heart. He had raised his hand, and, with a 
 gesture which had all the spiritual force of a blow, 
 he had cast her off. "Ah, my son, my son!" she 
 cried with a piteous moan, and looking round at us 
 in wild bewilderment. 
 
 "I m not your son!" said the boy in a voice half 
 stifled with passion. "I give you up! You re not 
 my mother! Don t touch me! You ve cheated me 
 you ve betrayed me you ve insulted me!" In 
 this mad peal of imprecations, it was still the note 
 of vanity which rang clearest. 
 
 I looked at Mr. Cope. He was deadly pale. He 
 had seen the lad s gesture; he was unable to hear 
 his words. He sat down in the nearest chair and 
 eyed him wonderingly. I hurried to his poor wife s 
 relief. She seemed smitten with a sudden tremor, 
 a deadly chill. She clasped her hands, but she could 
 barely find her voice. "Eustace my boy my 
 darling my own do you know what you say? 
 Listen, listen, Eustace. It s all for you that you 
 should love me more. I ve done my best. I seem 
 to have been hasty, but hasty to do for you to do 
 
 for you " Her strength deserted her; she burst 
 
 into tears. "He curses me he denies me!" she 
 cried. "He has killed me!" 
 
 "Cry, cry!" Eustace retorted; "cry as I ve been 
 
Master Eustace 49 
 
 crying! But don t be falser than you have been. 
 That you couldn t even wait ! And you prate of my 
 happiness ! Is my happiness in a broken home in 
 a disputed heart in a bullying stepfather! You ve 
 chosen him big and strong! Cry your eyes out 
 you re no mother of mine." 
 
 "He s killing me he s killing me," groaned his 
 mother. "O Heaven! if I dared to speak, I should 
 kill him!" She turned to her husband. "Go to 
 him go to him !" she cried. "He s ill, he s mad 
 he doesn t know what he says. Take his hand in 
 yours look at him, soothe him, heal him. It s the 
 hot weather," she rambled on. "Let him feel your 
 touch ! Eustace, Eustace, be healed !" 
 
 Poor Mr. Cope had risen to his feet, passing his 
 handkerchief over his forehead, on which the per 
 spiration stood in great drops. He went slowly 
 toward the young man, bending his eyes on him 
 half in entreaty, half in command. Before him he 
 stopped and frankly held out his hand. Eustace 
 eyed him defiantly from head to foot him and his 
 proffered friendship, enforced as it was by a gaze 
 of the most benignant authority. Then pushing his 
 hand savagely down, "Hypocrite!" he roared close 
 to his face "can you hear that?" and marched 
 bravely out of the room. Mr. Cope shook his head 
 with a world of tragic meaning, and for an instant 
 exchanged with his wife a long look brimming with 
 
J30 Master Eustace 
 
 anguish. She fell upon his neck shaken with re 
 sounding sobs. But soon recovering herself, "Go 
 to him," she urged, "follow him; say everything, 
 spare nothing. No matter for me; I ve got my 
 blow." 
 
 I helped her up to her room. Her strength had 
 completely left her; she but half undressed and let 
 me lay her on her bed. She was in a state of the 
 intensest excitement. Every nerve in her body was 
 thrilling and ringing. She kept murmuring to her 
 self, with a kind of heart-breaking incoherency. 
 "Nothing can hurt me now ; I needn t be spared. 
 Nothing can disgrace me or grace me. I ve got 
 my blow. It s my fault all, all, all ! I heaped up 
 folly on folly and weakness on weakness. My 
 heart s broken ; it will never serve again. You have 
 been right, my dear I perverted him, I taught him 
 to strike. Oh, what a blow ! He s hard he s hard. 
 He s cruel. He has no heart. He s blind with van 
 ity and egotism. But it matters little now ; I shan t 
 live to suffer. I ve suffered enough. I m dying, 
 my friend, I m dying." 
 
 In this broken strain the poor lady poured out 
 the bitterness of her grief. I used every art to soothe 
 and console her, but I felt that the tenderest spot in 
 her gentle heart had received an irreparable bruise. 
 "I don t want to live," she murmured. "I m disil 
 lusioned. It could never be patched up ; we should 
 
Master Eustace 51 
 
 never be the same. He has shown the bottom of his 
 soul. It s bad." 
 
 In spite of my efforts to restore her to calmness, 
 she became not more excited, for her strength 
 seemed to be ebbing and her voice was low but 
 more painfully and incoherently garrulous. Never 
 theless, from her distressing murmur I gathered the 
 glimmer of a meaning. She seemed to wish to make 
 a kind of supreme confession. I sat on the cope 
 of her bed, with her hand in mine. From time to 
 time, above her loud whispers, I heard the sound of 
 the two gentlemen s voices. Adjoining her chamber 
 was a large dressing-room ; beyond this was 
 Eustace s apartment. The three rooms opened upon 
 a long uncovered balcony. 
 
 Mr. Cope had followed the young man to his own 
 chamber, and was addressing him in a low, steady 
 voice. Eustace apparently was silent ; but there was 
 something sullen and portentous to my ear in this 
 unnatural absence of response. 
 
 "What have you thought of me, my friend, all 
 these years?" his mother asked. "Have I seemed 
 to you like other women ? I haven t been like others. 
 I have tried to be so and you see you see! I^et 
 me tell you. It don t matter whether you despise 
 me I shan t know it. These are my last words; 
 let them be frank." 
 
 They were not, however, so frank as she intended. 
 
52 Master Eustace 
 
 She seemed to lose herself in a dim wilderness of 
 memories ; her faculty wandered, faltered, stumbled. 
 Not from her words they were ambiguous but 
 from her silence and from the rebound of my own 
 impassioned sympathy, as it were, I guessed the 
 truth. It blossomed into being vivid and distinct; 
 it exhaled a long illuminating glow upon the past 
 a lurid light upon the present. Strange it seemed 
 now that my suspicions had been so late to bear 
 fruit; but our imagination is always too timid. 
 Now all things were clear! Heaven knows that in 
 this unpitying light I felt no contempt for the poor 
 woman who lay before me, panting from her vio 
 lated soul. 
 
 Poor victims of destiny! If I could only bring 
 them to terms ! For the moment, however, the un 
 happy mother and wife demanded all my atten 
 tion. I left her and passed along the balcony, in 
 tending to summon her husband. The light in 
 Eustace s room showed me the young man and his 
 companion. They sat facing each other in momen 
 tary silence. Mr. Cope s two hands were on his 
 knees, his eyes were fixed on the carpet, his teeth 
 were set as if, baffled, irate, desperate, he were pre 
 paring to play his last card. Eustace was looking 
 at him hard, with a terribly untender gaze. It made 
 me sick. I was on f e point of rushing in and adjur 
 ing Eustace by the truth. But suddenly Mr. Cope 
 
Master Eustace 53 
 
 raised his eyes and exchanged with the boy a look 
 with which he seemed to read his very soul. He 
 waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss fond 
 patience. 
 
 "If you were to see yourself as I see you," he 
 said, "you would be vastly amazed ; you would know 
 your absurd appearance. Young as you are, you 
 are rotten with arrogance and pride. What would 
 you say if I were to tell you that, least of men, you 
 have reason to be proud? Your stable boy there 
 has more. There s a leak in your vanity; 
 there s a blot on your escutcheon! You force me 
 to strong measures. Let me tell you, in the teeth 
 of your monstrous egotism, what you are. You re 
 a " 
 
 I knew what was coming, but I hadn t the heart 
 to hear it. The word, ringing out, overtook my ear 
 as I hurried back to Mrs. Cope. It was followed 
 by a loud, incoherent cry, the sound, prolonged for 
 some moments, of a scuffle, and then the report of 
 a pistol. This was lost in the noise of crashing 
 glass. Mrs. Cope rose erect in bed and shrieked 
 aloud, "He has killed him and me." I caught her 
 in my arms ; she breathed her last. I laid her gently 
 on the bed and made my trembling way, by the bal 
 cony, to Eustace s room. The first glance reassured 
 me. Neither of the men was visibly injured; the 
 pistol lay smoking on the floor. Eustace had sunk 
 
54 Master Eustace 
 
 into a chair with his head buried in his hands. I 
 saw his face crimson through his fingers. 
 
 "It s not murder," Mr. Cope said to me as I 
 crossed the threshold, "but it has just missed being 
 suicide. It has been fatal only to the looking-glass." 
 The mirror was shivered. 
 
 "It is murder," I answered, seizing Eustace by the 
 arm and forcing him to rise. "You have killed your 
 mother. This is your father!" 
 
 My friend paused and looked at me with a 
 triumphant air, as if she was very proud of her 
 effect. Of course I had foreseen it half an hour 
 ago. "What a dismal tale," I said. "But it s inter 
 esting. Of course Mrs. Cope recovered." 
 
 She was silent an instant. "You re like me," she 
 answered. "Your imagination is timid." 
 
 "I confess," I rejoined, "I am rather at a loss 
 how to dispose of our friend Eustace. I don t see 
 how the two could very well shake hands nor yet 
 how they couldn t." 
 
 "They did once and but once. They were for 
 years, each in his way, lonely men. They were 
 never reconciled. The trench had been dug too 
 deep. Even the poor lady buried there didn t avail 
 to fill it up. Yet the son was forgiven the father 
 never!" 
 
LONGSTAFF S MARRIAGE 
 
LONGSTAFF S MARRIAGE 
 
 FORTY years ago that traditional and anec- 
 dotical liberty of young American women, 
 which is notoriously the envy of their for 
 eign sisters, was not so firmly established as at the 
 present hour; yet it was sufficiently recognized to 
 make it no scandal thaj: so pretty a girl as Diana 
 Belfield should start for the grand tour of Europe 
 under no more imposing protection than that of her 
 cousin and intimate friend, Miss Agatha Gosling. 
 She had, from the European point of view, beauty 
 enough to make her enterprise perilous the beauty 
 foreshadowed in her name, which might have been 
 given her in prevision of her tall, light figure, her 
 nobly poised head, weighted with a coronal of au 
 burn braids, her frank quick glance and her rapid 
 gliding step. She used often to walk about with a 
 big dog who had the habit of bounding at her side 
 and tossing his head against her outstretched hand ; 
 and she had, moreover, a trick of carrying her long 
 
 57 
 
58 Master Eustace 
 
 parasol always folded, for she was not afraid of the 
 sunshine, across her shoulder, in the fashion of a 
 soldier s musket on a march. Thus equipped, she 
 looked wonderfully like that charming antique 
 statue of the goddess of the chase which we en 
 counter in various replicas in half the museums of 
 the world. You half expected to see a sandal-shod 
 foot peep out beneath her fluttering robe. It was 
 with this tread of the wakeful huntress that she 
 stepped upon the old sailing-vessel which was to 
 bear her to the lands she had dreamed of. Behind 
 her, with a great many shawls and satchels, came 
 her little kinswoman, with quite another demarche. 
 Agatha Gosling was not a beauty but she was the 
 most judicious and most devoted of companions. 
 These two persons had come together on the death 
 of Diana s mother and the taking possession by the 
 young lady of her patrimony. The first use she 
 made of her inheritance was to divide it with 
 Agatha, who had not a penny of her own ; the next 
 was to purchase a letter of credit upon a European 
 banker. The cousins had contracted a classical 
 friendship, they had determined to be sufficient to 
 each other, like the Ladies of Llangollen. Only, 
 though their friendship was exclusive, their Llan 
 gollen was to be comprehensive. They would tread 
 the pavements of historic cities and stand in the 
 colored light-shafts of Gothic cathedrals, wander on 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 59 
 
 tinkling mules through mountain-gorges and sit 
 among dark-eyed peasants by southern seas. It may 
 seem singular that a beautiful girl with a pretty 
 fortune should have been left to seek the supreme 
 satisfaction of life in friendship tempered by sight 
 seeing; but Diana herself considered this pastime no 
 beggarly alternative. Though she never told it 
 herself, her biographer may do so ; she had had, in 
 vulgar parlance, a hundred offers. To say that she 
 had declined them is to say too little ; she had really 
 scorned them. They had come from honorable and 
 amiable men, and it was not her suitors in them 
 selves that she disrelished ; it was simply the idea of 
 marrying. She found it insupportable : a fact which 
 completes her analogy with the mythic divinity to 
 whom I have likened her. She was passionately 
 single, fiercely virginal; and in the straight-glanc 
 ing gray eyes which provoked men to admire, there 
 was a certain silvery ray which forbade them to 
 hope. The fabled Diana took a fancy to a beauti 
 ful shepherd, but the real one had not yet found, 
 sleeping or waking, her Endymion. 
 
 Thanks to this defensive eyebeam, the dangerous 
 side of our heroine s enterprise was slow to define 
 itself; thanks, too, to the exquisite decency of her 
 companion. Agatha Gosling had an almost Quaker 
 ish purity and dignity; a bristling dragon could not 
 have been a better safeguard than this glossy, gray- 
 
60 Master Eustace 
 
 breasted dove. Money, too, is a protection, and 
 Diana had enough to purchase privacy. She trav 
 eled extensively, and saw all the churches and pic 
 tures, the castles and cottages included in the list 
 which had been drawn up by the two friends in 
 evening talks, at home, between two wax candles. 
 In the evening they used to read aloud to each other 
 from "Corinne" and "Childe Harold," and they 
 kept a diary in common, at which they "collabo 
 rated," like French playwrights, and which was 
 studded with quotations from the authors I have 
 mentioned. This lasted a year, at the end of which 
 they found themselves a trifle weary. A snug post 
 ing-carriage was a delightful habitation, but looking 
 at miles of pictures was very fatiguing to the back. 
 Buying souvenirs and trinkets under foreign arcades 
 was a most absorbing occupation; but inns were 
 dreadfully apt to be draughty, and bottles of hot 
 water, for application to the feet, had a disagree 
 able way of growing lukewarm. For these and 
 other reasons .our heroines determined to take a 
 winter s rest, and for this purpose they betook them 
 selves to the charming town of Nice, which was 
 then but in the infancy of its fame. It was simply 
 one of the hundred hamlets of the Riviera, a place 
 where the blue waves broke on an almost empty 
 strand, and the olive-trees sprouted at the doors of 
 the inns. In those days Nice was Italian, and the 
 
^ Longstaff s Marriage 61 
 
 "Promenade des Anglais" existed only in an em 
 bryonic form. Exist, however, it did, practically, 
 and British invalids, in moderate numbers, might 
 have been seen taking the January sunshine beneath 
 London umbrellas, before the many-twinkling sea. 
 Our young Americans quietly took their place in 
 this harmless society. They drove along the coast, 
 through the strange, dark, huddled fishing- villages, 
 and they rode on donkeys among the bosky hills. 
 They painted in water-colors and hired a piano; 
 they subscribed to the circulating library and took 
 lessons in the language of Silvio Pellico from an 
 old lady with very fine eyes, who wore an enormous 
 brooch of cracked malachite, and gave herself out 
 as the widow of a Roman exile. 
 
 They used to go and sit by the sea, each provided 
 with a volume from the circulating library ; but they 
 never did much with their books. The sunshine 
 made the page too dazzling, and the people who 
 strolled up and down before them were more enter 
 taining than the ladies and gentlemen in the novels. 
 ^They looked at them constantly from under their 
 umbrellas ; they learned to know them all by sight. 
 Many of their fellow-visitors were invalids, mild, 
 slow-moving consumptives. But that women enjoy 
 the exercise of pity, I should have said that these 
 pale promenaders were a saddening spectacle. In 
 several of them, however, our friends took a per- 
 
62 Master Eustace 
 
 sonal interest ; they watched them from day to day ; 
 they noticed their changing color; they had their 
 ideas about who was getting better and who was 
 getting worse. They did little, however, in the way 
 of making acquaintances, partly because con 
 sumptive people are no great talkers, and partly 
 because this was also Diana s disposition. She said 
 to her friend that they had not come to Europe 
 to pay morning-calls; they had left their best bon 
 nets and card-cases behind them. At the bottom of 
 her reserve was the apprehension that she should 
 be "admired ;" which was not fatuity, but simply an 
 inference based upon uncomfortable experience. 
 She had seen in Europe, for the first time, certain 
 horrid men, polished adventurers, with offensive 
 looks and mercenary thoughts ; and she had a whole 
 some fear that one of these gentlemen might ap 
 proach her through some accidental breach in her 
 reserve. Agatha Gosling, who had neither in 
 reminiscence nor in prospect the same reasons for 
 being on the defensive, would have been glad to 
 extend the circle of her intimacy, and would even 
 have consented to put on a best bonnet for the pur 
 pose. But she had to content herself with an 
 occasional murmur of small talk, on a bench before 
 the sea, with two or three English ladies of the 
 botanizing class; jovial little spinsters who wore 
 stout boots, gauntlets, and "uglies," and in pursuit 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 63 
 
 of wayside flowers scrambled into places where the 
 first-mentioned articles were uncompromisingly 
 visible. For the rest, Agatha contented herself with 
 spinning suppositions about the people she never 
 spoke to. She framed a great deal of hypothetic 
 gossip, invented theories and explanations, gen 
 erally of the most charitable quality. Her com 
 panion took no part in these harmless devisings, 
 except to listen to them with an indolent smile. She 
 seldom honored her fellow-mortals with finding 
 apologies for them, and if they wished her to read 
 their history, they must write it out in the largest 
 letters. 
 
 There was one person at Nice upon whose biog 
 raphy, if it had been laid before her in this fashion, 
 she probably would have bestowed a certain amount 
 of attention. Agatha had noticed the gentleman 
 first; or Agatha, at least, had first spoken of him. 
 He was young and he looked interesting; Agatha 
 had indulged in a good deal of wondering as to 
 whether or no he belonged to the invalid category. 
 She preferred to believe that one of his lungs was 
 "affected" ; it certainly made him more interesting. 
 He used to stroll about by himself and sit for a long 
 time in the sun, with a book peeping out of his 
 pocket. This book he never opened ; he was always 
 staring at the sea. I say always, but my phrase 
 demands an immediate modification; he looked at 
 
64 Master Eustace 
 
 the sea whenever he was not looking at Diana Bel- 
 field. He was tall and fair, slight, and, as. Agatha 
 Gosling said, aristocratic-looking. He dressed 
 with a certain careless elegance, which Agatha 
 deemed picturesque ; she declared one day that he 
 reminded her of a love-sick prince. She learned 
 eventually from one of the botanizing spinsters that 
 he was not a prince, that he was simply an English 
 gentleman, Mr. Reginald Longstaff. There re 
 mained the possibility that he was love-sick; but 
 this point could not be so easily settled. Agatha s 
 informant had assured her, however, that if they 
 were not princes, the Longstaffs, who came from a 
 part of the country in which she had visited, and 
 owned great estates there, had a pedigree which 
 many princes might envy. It was one of the oldest 
 and the best of English names; they were one of 
 the innumerable untitled country families who held 
 their heads as high as the highest. This poor Mr. 
 Longstaff was a beautiful specimen of a young Eng 
 lish gentleman; he looked so gentle, yet so brave; 
 so modest, yet so cultivated ! The ladies spoke of 
 him habitually as "poor" Mr. Longstaff, for they 
 now took for granted there was something the 
 matter with him. At last Agatha Gosling discov 
 ered what it was, and made a solemn proclamation 
 of the same. The matter with poor Mr. Longstaff 
 was simply that he was in love with Diana ! It was 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 65 
 
 certainly natural to suppose he was in love with some 
 one, and, as Agatha said, it could not possibly be 
 with herself. Mr. Longstaff was pale, with 
 crumpled locks; he never spoke to anyone; he was 
 evidently preoccupied, and this mild, candid face 
 was a sufficient proof that the weight on his heart 
 was not a bad conscience. What could it be, then, 
 but an unrequited passion? It was, however, equally 
 pertinent to inquire why Mr. Longstaff took no steps 
 to bring about a requital. 
 
 "Why in the world does he not ask to be intro 
 duced to you?" Agatha Gosling demanded of her 
 companion. 
 
 Diana replied, quite without eagerness, that it was 
 plainly because he had nothing to say to her, and 
 she declared with a trifle more emphasis that she 
 was incapable of furnishing him a topic of con 
 versation. She added that she thought they had 
 gossiped enough about the poor man, and that if 
 by any chance he should have the bad taste to speak 
 to them, she should certainly go away and leave 
 him alone with Miss Gosling. It is true, however, 
 that at an earlier period, she had let fall the remark 
 that he was quite the most "distinguished" person 
 at Nice; and afterward, though, she was never the 
 first to allude to him, she had more than once let 
 her companion pursue the theme for some time with 
 out reminding her of its futility. The one person to 
 
66 Master Eustace 
 
 whom Mr. Longstaff was observed to speak was an 
 elderly man of foreign aspect who approached him 
 occasionally in the most deferential manner, and 
 whom Agatha Gosling supposed to be his servant. 
 This individual was apparently an Italian; he had 
 an obsequious attitude, a pair of grizzled whiskers, 
 an insinuating smile. He seemed to come to Mr. 
 Longstaff for orders; presently he went away to 
 execute them, and Agatha noticed that on retiring, 
 he always managed to pass in front of her com 
 panion, on whom he fixed his respectful but pene 
 trating gaze. "He knows the secret," she always 
 said, with gentle jocoseness ; "he knows what is the 
 matter with his master and he wants to see whether 
 he approves of you. Old servants never want their 
 masters to marry, and I think this worthy man is 
 rather afraid of you. At any rate, the way he stares 
 at you tells the whole story/ 
 
 "Everyone stares at me!" said Diana, wearily. 
 "A cat may look at a king." 
 
 As the weeks went by, Agatha Gosling quite 
 made up her mind that it was Mr. Longstaff s lungs. 
 The poor young man s invalid character was now 
 most apparent; he could hardly hold up his head 
 or drag one foot after the other; his servant was 
 always near him to give him an arm or to hand him 
 an extra overcoat. No one, indeed, knew, with 
 certainty, that he was consumptive; but Agatha 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 67 
 
 agreed with the lady who had given the informa 
 tion about his pedigree, that this fact was in itself 
 extremely suspicious; for, as the little English 
 woman forcibly remarked, unless he were ill, why 
 should he make such a mystery of it ? Consumption 
 declaring itself in a young man of family and for 
 tune was particularly sad; such people had often 
 diplomatic reasons for pretending to enjoy excel 
 lent health. It kept the legacy-hunters and the 
 hungry next-of-kin from worrying them to death. 
 Agatha observed that this poor gentleman s last 
 hours seemed likely to be only too lonely. She felt 
 very much like offering to nurse him; for, being 
 no relation, he could not accuse her of mercenary 
 motives. From time to time he got up from the 
 bench where he habitually sat, and strolled slowly 
 past the two friends. Every time that he came near 
 them, Agatha had a singular feeling, a conviction 
 that now he was really going to speak to them, in 
 tones of the most solemn courtesy. She could not 
 fancy him speaking otherwise. He began, at a dis 
 tance, by fixing his grave, soft eyes on Diana, and, 
 as he advanced, you would have said that he was 
 coming straight up to her with some tremulous 
 compliment. But as he drew nearer, his intentness 
 seemed to falter; he strolled more slowly, he looked 
 away at the sea, and he passed in front of her with 
 out having the courage to let his eyes rest upon her. 
 
68 Master Eustace 
 
 Then he passed back again in the same fashion, 
 sank down upon his bench, fatigued apparently by 
 his aimless stroll, and fell into a melancholy reverie. 
 To enumerate these small incidents in his deport 
 ment is to give it a melodramatic cast which it was 
 far from possessing; something in his manner 
 saved it from the shadow of impertinence, and it 
 may be affirmed that not a single idler on the sunny 
 shore suspected his speechless "attentions." 
 
 "I wonder why it doesn t annoy us more that 
 he should look at us so much/ said Agatha Gos 
 ling, one day. 
 
 "That who should look at us?" asked Diana, not 
 at all affectedly. 
 
 Agatha fixed her eyes for a moment on her friend, 
 and then said gently: 
 
 "Mr. Longstaff. Now, don t say Who is Mr. 
 LongstafT? " she added. 
 
 "I have got to learn, really," said Diana "that 
 the person you appear to mean, does look at us. I 
 have never caught him in the act." 
 
 "That is because whenever you turn your eyes 
 toward him he looks away. He is afraid to meet 
 them. But I see him." 
 
 These words were exchanged one day as the two 
 friends sat as usual before the twinkling sea; and, 
 beyond them, as usual, lounged Reginald Long- 
 staff. Diana bent her head faintly forward and 
 
Longstaf s Marriage 69 
 
 glanced toward him. He was looking full at her 
 and their eyes met, apparently for the first time. 
 Diana dropped her own upon her book again, and 
 then, after a silence of some moments, "It does 
 annoy me," she said. Presently she added that she 
 would go home and write a letter, and, though she 
 had never taken a step in Europe without having 
 Agatha by her side, Miss Gosling now allowed her 
 to depart unattended. "You won t mind going 
 alone?" Agatha had asked. "It is but three min 
 utes, you know." 
 
 Diana replied that she preferred to go alone, 
 and she moved away, with her parasol over her 
 shoulder. 
 
 Agatha Gosling had a particular reason for this 
 rupture of their maidenly custom. She felt a strong 
 conviction that if she were left alone, Mr. Long- 
 staff would come and speak to her and say some 
 thing very important, and she deferred to this 
 conviction without the sense of doing anything im 
 modest. There was something solemn about it; it 
 was a sort of presentiment; but it did not frighten 
 her; it only made her feel very kind and appreci 
 ative. It is true that when at the end of ten minutes 
 (they had seemed rather long), she saw him rise 
 from his seat and slowly come toward her, she was 
 conscious of a certain trepidation. Mr. Longstaff 
 drew near; at last, he was close to her; he stopped 
 
70 Master Eustace 
 
 and stood looking at her. She had averted her 
 head, so as not to appear to expect him; but now 
 she looked round again, and he very gravely lifted 
 his hat. 
 
 "May I take the liberty of sitting down?" he 
 asked. 
 
 Agatha bowed in silence, and, to make room for 
 him, moved a blue shawl of Diana s, which was 
 lying on the bench; he slowly sank into the place 
 and then said very gently: 
 
 "I have ventured to speak to you, because I have 
 something particular to say." His voice trembled 
 and he was extremely pale. His eyes, which Agatha 
 thought very handsome, had a remarkable expres 
 sion. 
 
 "I am afraid you are ill," she said, with great 
 kindness. "I have often noticed you and pitied 
 you." 
 
 "I thought you did, a little/ the young man 
 answered. "That is why I made up my mind to 
 speak to you." 
 
 "You are getting worse," said Agatha, softly. 
 
 "Yes, I am getting worse; I am dying. I am 
 perfectly conscious of it ; I have no illusions. I am 
 weaker every day; I shall last but a few weeks." 
 This was said very simply; sadly but not lugu 
 briously. 
 
 But Agatha felt almost awe-stricken ; there stirred 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 71 
 
 in her heart a delicate sense of sisterhood with this 
 beautiful young man who sat there and talked thus 
 submissively of death. 
 
 "Can nothing be done?" she said. 
 
 He shook his head and smiled a little. "Nothing 
 but to try and get what pleasure I can from this 
 little remnant of life." 
 
 Though he smiled she felt that he was very 
 serious; that he was, indeed, deeply agitated, and 
 trying to master his emotion. 
 
 "I am afraid you get very little pleasure," 
 Agatha rejoined. "You seem entirely alone." 
 
 "I am entirely alone. I have no family, no 
 near relations. I am absolutely alone." 
 
 Agatha rested her eyes on him compassionately, 
 and then 
 
 "You ought to have spoken to us," she said. 
 
 He sat looking at her; he had taken off his hat; 
 he was slowly passing his hand over his forehead. 
 "You see I do at last !" 
 
 "You wanted to before?" 
 
 "Very often." 
 
 "I thought so !" said Agatha, with a candor which 
 was in itself a dignity. 
 
 "But I couldn t," said Mr. Longstaff. "I never 
 saw you alone." 
 
 Before she knew it Agatha was blushing a little ; 
 for, to the ear, simply, his words implied that it 
 
72 Master Eustace 
 
 was to her only he would appeal for the pleasure 
 he had coveted. But the next instant she had be 
 come conscious that what he meant was simply that 
 he admired her companion so much that he was 
 afraid of her, and that, daring to speak to herself, 
 he thought her a much smaller and less interesting 
 personage. Her blush immediately faded ; for there 
 was no resentment to keep the color in her cheek; 
 and there was no resentment still when she per 
 ceived that, though her neighbor was looking 
 straight at her, with his inspired, expanded eyes, 
 he was thinking too much of Diana to have noticed 
 this little play of confusion. 
 
 "Yes, it s very true," she said. "It is the first 
 time my friend has left me." 
 
 "She is very beautiful," said Mr. Longstaff. 
 
 "Very beautiful, and as good as she is beauti 
 ful." 
 
 "Yes, yes," he rejoined, solemnly. "I am sure 
 of that. I know it !" 
 
 "I know it even better than you," said Agatha, 
 smiling a little. 
 
 "Then you will have all the more patience with 
 what I want to say to you. It is very strange; it 
 will make you think, at first, that I am perhaps out 
 of my mind. But I am not ; I am thoroughly reason 
 able. You will see." Then he paused a moment; 
 his voice had begun to tremble again. 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 73 
 
 "I know what you are going to say/ said Agatha, 
 very gently. "You are in love with my friend." 
 
 Mr. Longstaff gave her a look of devoted grati 
 tude ; he lifted up the edge of the blue shawl, which 
 he had often seen Diana wear, and pressed it to his 
 lips. 
 
 "I am extremely grateful !" he exclaimed. "You 
 don t think me crazy, then?" 
 
 "If you are crazy, there have been a great many 
 madmen!" said Agatha. 
 
 "Of course there have been a great many. I have 
 said that to myself, and it has helped me. They 
 have gained nothing but the pleasure of their love, 
 and I therefore, in gaining nothing and having 
 nothing, am not worse off than the rest. But they 
 had more than I, didn t they? You see I have had 
 absolutely nothing, not eveji a glance," he went 
 on. "I have never even seen her look at me. I have 
 not only never spoken to her, but I have never been 
 near enough to speak to her. This is all I have 
 ever had, to lay my hand on something she has. 
 worn! and yet for the past month I have thought 
 of her night and day. Sitting over there, a hundred 
 rods away, simply because she was sitting in this 
 place, in the same sunshine, looking out on the same 
 sea : that was happiness enough for me. I am dy 
 ing, but for the last five weeks that has kept me 
 alive. It was for that I got up every day and came 
 
74 Master Eustace 
 
 out here ; but for that, I should have staid at home 
 and never have got up again. I have never sought 
 to be presented to her, because I didn t wish to 
 trouble her for nothing. It seemed to me it would 
 be an impertinence to tell her of my admiration. 
 I have nothing to offer her, I am but the shadow 
 of a living man, and if I were to say to her, 
 Madam, I love you/ she could only answer, "Well, 
 sir, what then? Nothing nothing! To speak to 
 her of what I felt seemed only to open the lid of a 
 grave in her face. It was more delicate not to do 
 that ; so I kept my distance and said nothing. Even 
 this, as I say, has been a happiness, but it has been 
 a happiness that has tired me out. This is the last 
 of it. I must give up and make an end !" And he 
 stopped, panting a little and apparently exhausted 
 with his eloquence. 
 
 Agatha had always "heard of love at first sight; 
 she had read of it in poems and romances, but she 
 had never been so near to it as this. It seemed to 
 her most beautiful, and she believed in it devoutly. 
 It made Mr. Longstaff brilliantly interesting ; it cast 
 a glory over the details of his face and person, and 
 the pleading inflections of his voice. The little 
 English ladies had been right; he was certainly a 
 perfect gentleman. She could trust him. 
 
 "Perhaps if you stay at home awhile you will 
 get better," she said, soothingly. 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 75 
 
 Her tone seemed to him such an indication that 
 she accepted the propriety and naturalness of his 
 passion that he put out his hand and for an instant 
 laid it on her own. 
 
 "I knew you were reasonable I knew I could 
 talk to you. But I shall not get well. All the great 
 doctors say so, and I believe them. If the passionate 
 desire to get well for a particular purpose could 
 work a miracle and cure a mortal disease, I should 
 have seen the miracle two months ago. To get well 
 and have a right to speak to your friend that was 
 my passionate desire. But I am worse than ever; 
 I am very weak and I shall not be able to come out 
 any more. It seemed to me to-day that I should 
 never see you again, and yet I wanted so much to 
 be able to tell you this ! It made me very unhappy. 
 What a wonderful chance it is that she went away! 
 I must be grateful ! if heaven doesn t grant my great 
 prayers it grants my small ones. I beg you to 
 render me this service. Tell her what I have told 
 you. Not now not till I am gone. Don t trouble . 
 her with it while I am in life. Please promise me 
 that. But when I am dead it will seem less im 
 portunate, because then you can speak of me in the 
 past. It will be like a story. My servant will come 
 and tell you. Then say to her You were his last 
 thought, and it was his last wish that you should 
 know it. He slowly got up and put out his hand ; 
 
76 Master Eustace 
 
 his servant, who had been standing at a distance, 
 came forward with obsequious solemnity, as if it 
 were part of his duty to adapt his deportment to 
 the tone of his master s conversation. Agatha Gos 
 ling took the young man s hand and he stood and 
 looked at her a moment longer. She too had risen 
 to her feet ; she was much impressed. 
 
 "You won t tell her until after ?" he said 
 
 pleadingly. She shook her head. "And then you 
 will tell her, faithfully?" She nodded, he pressed 
 her hand, and then, having raised his hat, he took 
 his servant s arm and slowly moved away. 
 
 Agatha kept her word ; she said nothing to Diana 
 about her interview. The young Americans came 
 out and sat upon the shore the next day, and the 
 next, and the next, and Agatha watched intently for 
 Mr. Longstaff s re-appearance. But she watched in 
 vain ; day after day he was absent, and his absence 
 confirmed his sad prediction. She thought all this 
 a wonderful thing to happen to a woman, and as 
 she glanced askance at her beautiful companion, she 
 was almost irritated at seeing her sit there so care 
 less and serene, while a poor young man was dying, 
 as one might say, of love for her. At moments she 
 wondered whether, in spite of her promise, it was 
 not her Christian duty to tell Diana his story and 
 give her the chance to go to him. But it occurred 
 to Agatha, who knew very well that her companion 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 77 
 
 had a certain stately pride in which she herself was 
 lacking, that even if she were told of his condition 
 Diana might decline to do anything; and this she 
 felt to be a most painful contingency. Besides, she 
 had promised, and she always kept her promises. 
 But her thoughts were constantly with Mr. Long- 
 staff, and the romance of the affair. This made 
 her melancholy and she talked much less than usual. 
 Suddenly she was aroused from a reverie by hearing 
 Diana express a careless curiosity as to what had 
 become of the solitary young man who used to sit 
 on the neighboring bench and do them the honor to 
 stare at them. 
 
 For almost the first time in her life, Agatha Gos 
 ling deliberately dissembled. 
 
 "He has either gone away, or he has taken to his 
 bed. I believe he is dying alone, in some wretched 
 mercenary lodging." 
 
 "I prefer to believe something more cheerful," 
 said Diana. "I believe he is gone to Paris and is 
 eating a beautiful dinner at the Trois Freres Pro- 
 vengaux." 
 
 Agatha for a moment said nothing; and 
 then 
 
 "I don t think you care what becomes of him," 
 she ventured to observe. 
 
 "My dear child, why should I care?" Diana de 
 manded. 
 
78 Master Eustace 
 
 And Agatha Gosling was forced to admit that 
 there really was no particular reason. But the event 
 contradicted her. Three days afterward she took a 
 long drive with her friend, from which they returned 
 only as dusk was closing in. As they descended from 
 the carriage at the door of their lodging she ob 
 served a figure standing in the street, slightly apart, 
 which even in the early darkness had an air of 
 familiarity. A second glance assured her that Mr. 
 LongstafFs servant was hovering there in the hope 
 of catching her attention. She immediately deter 
 mined to give him a liberal measure of it. Diana 
 left the vehicle and passed into the house, while 
 the coachman fortunately asked for orders for the 
 morrow. Agatha briefly gave such as were neces 
 sary, and then, before going in, turned to the hover 
 ing figure. It approached on tiptoe, hat in hand, and 
 shaking its head very sadly. The old man wore an 
 air of animated affliction which indicated that Mr. 
 Longstaff was a generous master, and he proceeded 
 to address Miss Gosling in that macaronic French 
 which is usually at the command of Italian do 
 mestics who have seen the world. 
 
 "I stole away from my dear gentleman s bedside 
 on purpose to have ten words with you. The old 
 woman at the fruit-stall opposite told me that you 
 had gone to drive, so I waited ; but it seemed to me 
 a thousand years till you returned !" 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 79 
 
 "But you have not left your master alone?" said 
 Agatha. 
 
 "He has two Sisters of Charity heaven reward 
 them! They watch with him night and day. He 
 is very low, pauvre cher homme!" And the old man 
 looked at his interlocutress with that clear, human, 
 sympathetic glance with which Italians of all classes 
 bridge over the social gulf. Agatha felt that he 
 knew his master s secret, and that she might dis 
 cuss it with him freely. 
 
 "Is he dying?" she asked. 
 
 "That s the question, dear lady! He is very low. 
 The doctors have given him up ; but the doctors don t 
 know his malady. They have felt his dear body 
 all over, they have sounded his lungs, and looked 
 at his tongue and counted his pulse ; they know what 
 he eats and drinks it s soon told ! But they haven t 
 seen his mind, dear lady. I have ; and so far I m a 
 better doctor than they. I know his secret I know 
 that he loves the beautiful girl above!" and the old 
 man pointed to the upper windows of the house. 
 
 "Has your master taken you into his confidence ?" 
 Agatha demanded. 
 
 He hesitated a moment; then shaking his head a 
 little and laying his hand on his heart 
 
 "Ah, dear lady," he said, "the point is whether 
 I have taken him into mine. I have not, I con 
 fess ; he is too far gone. But I have determined to 
 
80 Master Eustace 
 
 be his doctor and to try a remedy the others have 
 never thought of. Will you help me?" 
 
 "If I can," said Agatha. "What is your remedy?" 
 The old man pointed to the upper windows of 
 the house again. 
 
 "Your lovely friend ! Bring her to his bedside." 
 "If he is dying," said Agatha, "how would that 
 help him?" 
 
 "He s dying for want of it. That s my idea at 
 least, and I think it s worth trying. If a young 
 man loves a beautiful woman, and, having never so 
 much as touched the tip of her glove, falls into a 
 mortal illness and wastes away, it requires no great 
 wit to see that his illness doesn t come from his 
 having indulged himself too grossly. It comes 
 rather from the opposite cause! If he sinks when 
 she s away, perhaps he ll come up when she s there. 
 At any rate, that s my theory; and any theory is 
 good that will save a dying man. Let the Diana 
 come and stand a moment by his bed, and lay her 
 hand upon his. We shall see what happens. If 
 he gets well, it s worth while; if he doesn t, there 
 is no harm done. A young lady risks nothing in 
 going to see a poor gentleman who lies in a stupor 
 between two holy women." 
 
 Agatha was much impressed with this picturesque 
 reasoning, but she answered that it was quite im 
 possible that her beautiful friend should go upon 
 
Longstaf s Marriage 81 
 
 this pious errand without a special invitation from 
 Mr. Longstaff. Even should he beg Diana to come 
 to him Agatha was by no means sure her companion 
 would go; but it was very certain she would not 
 take such an extraordinary step at the mere sugges 
 tion of a servant. 
 
 "But you, dear lady, have the happiness not to 
 be a servant," the old man rejoined. "Let the sug 
 gestion be yours." 
 
 "From me it could come with no force, for what 
 am I supposed to know about your poor master?" 
 
 "You have not told the Diana what he told you 
 the other day?" 
 
 Agatha answered this question by another ques 
 tion. 
 
 "Did he tell you what he had told me ?" 
 
 The old man tapped his forehead an instant and 
 smiled. 
 
 "A good servant, you know, dear lady, needs 
 never to be told things ! If you have not repeated 
 my master s words to your beautiful friend, I beg 
 you most earnestly to do so. I am afraid she is 
 rather cold." 
 
 Agatha glanced a moment at the upper windows 
 and then she gave a silent nod. She wondered 
 greatly to find herself discussing Diana s character 
 with this aged menial; but the situation was so 
 strange and romantic that one s old landmarks of 
 
82 Master Eustace 
 
 propriety were quite obliterated, and it seemed 
 natural that a valet de chambre shoud be as frank 
 and familiar as a servant in an old-fashioned com 
 edy. 
 
 "If it is necessary that my dear master shall send 
 for the young lady," Mr. LongstafFs domestic re 
 sumed, "I think I can promise you that he will! 
 Let me urge you, meanwhile, to talk to her! If 
 she is cold, melt her down. Prepare her to find 
 him very interesting. If you could see him, poor 
 gentleman, lying there as still and handsome as if 
 he were his own monument in a campo santo, I think 
 he would interest you." 
 
 This seemed to Agatha a very touching image, 
 but she came to a sense that her interview with Mr. 
 LongstafFs representative, now unduly prolonged, 
 was assuming a nocturnal character. She abruptly 
 brought it to a close, after having assured her inter 
 locutor that she would reflect upon what he had 
 told her, and she rejoined her companion in the 
 deepest agitation. Late that evening her agitation 
 broke out. She went into Diana s room, where she 
 found this young lady standing white-robed before 
 her mirror, with her auburn tresses rippling down 
 to her knees; and then, taking her two hands, she 
 told the story of the young Englishman s passion, 
 told of his coming to talk to her that day that Diana 
 had left her alone on the bench by the sea, and of 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 83 
 
 his venerable valet having, a couple of hours before, 
 sought speech of her on the same subject. Diana 
 listened, at first with a rosy flush, and then with a 
 cold, an almost cruel, frown. 
 
 "Take pity upon him," said Agatha Gosling, 
 "take pity on him and go and see him." 
 
 "I don t understand," said her companion, "and 
 it seems to me very disagreeable. What is Mr. 
 Longstaff to me?" But before they separated, 
 Agatha had persuaded her to say that if a message 
 really should come from the young man s death -bed, 
 she would not refuse him the light of her presence. 
 
 The message really came, brought of course by 
 the invalid s zealous chamberlain. He re-appeared 
 on the morrow, announcing that his master very 
 humbly begged for the honor of ten minutes con 
 versation with the two ladies. They consented to 
 follow him, and he led the way to Mr. LongstafFs 
 apartments. Diana still wore her cloudy brow, but 
 it made her look terribly handsome. Under the old 
 man s guidance they passed through a low green 
 door in a yellow wall, across a tangled garden full 
 of orange-trees and winter roses, and into a white- 
 wainscoted saloon, where they were presently left 
 alone before a great classic, Empire clock, perched 
 upon a frigid southern chimney-piece. They waited, 
 however, but a few moments; the door of an ad 
 joining room opened and the Sisters of Charity, 
 
84 Master Eustace 
 
 in white-winged hoods and with their hands thrust 
 into the loose sleeves of the opposite arm, came 
 forth and stood with downcast eyes on either side 
 of the threshold. Then the old servant appeared 
 between them and beckoned to the two young girls 
 to advance. The latter complied with a certain hesi 
 tation, and he led them into the chamber of the 
 dying man. Here, pointing to the bed, he silently 
 left them and withdrew; not closing, however, the 
 door of communication of the saloon, where he took 
 up his station with the Sisters of Charity. 
 
 Diana and her companion stood together in the 
 middle of the darker room, waiting for an invita 
 tion to approach their summoner. He lay in his 
 bed, propped up on pillows, with his arms outside 
 the counterpane. For a moment he simply gazed 
 at them ; he was as white as the sheet that covered 
 him, and he certainly looked like a dying man. But 
 he had the strength to bend forward and to speak in 
 a soft, distinct voice. 
 
 "Would you be so kind," said Mr. Longstaff, 
 "as to come nearer?" 
 
 Agatha Gosling gently pushed her friend for 
 ward, but she followed her to the bedside. Diana 
 stood there, her frown had melted away; and the 
 young man sank back upon his pillows and looked 
 at her. A faint color came into his face, and he 
 clasped his two hands together on his breast. For 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 85 
 
 some moments he simply gazed at the beautiful girl 
 before him. It was an awkward situation for her, 
 and Agatha expected her at any moment to turn 
 away in disgust. But, slowly, her look of proud 
 compulsion, of mechanical compliance, was ex 
 changed for something more patient and pitying. 
 The young Englishman s face expressed a kind of 
 spiritual ecstasy which, it was impossible not to feel, 
 gave a peculiar sanctity to the occasion. 
 
 "It was very generous of you to come," he said 
 at last. "I hardly ventured to hope you would. I 
 suppose you know I suppose your friend, who 
 listened to me so kindly, has told you." 
 
 "Yes, she knows," murmured Agatha "she 
 knows." 
 
 "I did not intend you should know until after my 
 death," he went on; "but," and he paused a 
 moment and shook his clasped hands together, "I 
 couldn t wait! And when I felt that I couldn t 
 wait, a new idea, a new desire, came into my mind." 
 He was silent again for an instant, still looking with 
 worshipful entreaty at Diana. The color in his face 
 deepened. "It is something that you may do for 
 me. You will think it a most extraordinary re 
 quest ; but, in my position, a man grows bold. Dear 
 lady, will you marry me?" 
 
 "Oh, dear!" cried Agatha Gosling, just audibly. 
 Her companion said nothing. Her attitude seemed 
 
86 Master Eustace 
 
 to say that in this remarkable situation, one thing 
 was no more surprising than another. But she paid 
 Mr. LongstafFs proposal the respect of slowly seat 
 ing herself in a chair which had been placed near 
 his bed; here she rested in maidenly majesty, with 
 her eyes fixed on the ground. 
 
 "It will help me to die happy, since die I must!" 
 the young man continued. "It will enable me to do 
 something for you the only thing I can do. I 
 have property, lands, houses, a great many beauti 
 ful things, things I have loved, and am very sorry 
 to be leaving behind me. Lying here helpless and 
 hopeless through so many days, the thought has 
 come to me of what a bliss it would be to know that 
 they would rest in your hands. If you were my 
 wife, they would rest there safely. You might be 
 spared much annoyance ; and it is not only that. It 
 is a fancy I have beyond that. It would be the feel 
 ing of it! I am fond of life. I don t want to die; 
 but since I must die, it would be a happiness to have 
 got just this out of life this joining of our hands 
 before a priest. You could go away then. For you 
 it would make no change it would be no burden. 
 But I should have a few hours in which to lie and 
 think of my happiness." 
 
 There was something in the young man s tone 
 so simple and sincere, so tender and urgent, that 
 Agatha Gosling was touched to tears. She turned 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 87 
 
 away to hide them, and went on tiptoe to the win 
 dow, where she wept silently. Diana apparently 
 was not unmoved. She raised her eyes, and let them 
 rest kindly on those of Mr. Longstaff, who con 
 tinued softly to urge his proposal. "It would be a 
 great charity," he said, "a great condescension ; and 
 it can produce no consequence to you that you could 
 regret. It can only give you a larger liberty. You 
 know very little about me, but I have a feeling that, 
 so far as belief goes, you can believe me, and that 
 is all I ask of you. I don t ask you to love me, 
 that takes time. It is something I cannot pretend to. 
 It is only to consent to the form, the ceremony. I 
 have seen the English clergyman; he says he will 
 perform it. He will tell you, besides, all about me, 
 that I am an English gentleman, and that the 
 name I offer you is one of the best in the world/ 
 It was strange to hear a dying man lie there and 
 argue his point in this categorical fashion ; but now, 
 apparently, his argument was finished. There was 
 a deep silence, and Agatha thought it would be 
 delicate on her own part to retire. She moved 
 quietly into the adjoining room, where the two 
 Sisters of Charity still stood with their hands in 
 their sleeves, and the old Italian valet was taking 
 snuff with a melancholy gesture, like a perplexed 
 diplomatist. Agatha turned her back to these peo 
 ple, and, approaching a window again, stood looking 
 
88 Master Eustace 
 
 out into the garden upon the orange-trees and the 
 winter roses. It seemed to her that she had been 
 listening to the most beautiful, most romantic, and 
 most eloquent of declarations. How could Diana 
 be insensible to it? She earnestly hoped her com 
 panion would consent to the solemn and interesting 
 ceremony proposed by Mr. Longstaff, and though 
 her delicacy had prompted her to withdraw, it per 
 mitted her to listen eagerly to what Diana would 
 say. Then (as she heard nothing) it was eclipsed 
 by the desire to go back and whisper, with a sym 
 pathetic kiss, a word of counsel. She glanced round 
 again at the Sisters of Charity, who appeared to 
 have perceived that the moment was one of sus 
 pense. One of them detached herself, and, as 
 Agatha returned, followed her a few steps into the 
 room. Diana had got up from her chair. She was 
 looking about her uneasily. She grasped at 
 Agatha s hand. Reginald Longstaff lay there with 
 his wasted face and his brilliant eyes, looking at 
 them both. Agatha took her friend s two hands in 
 both her own. 
 
 "It is very little to do, dearest," she murmured, 
 "and it will make him very happy." 
 
 The young man appeared to have heard her, and 
 he repeated her words in a tone of intense entreaty. 
 
 "It is very little to do, dearest." 
 
 Diana looked round at him an instant. Then, for 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 89 
 
 an instant, she covered her face with her two hands. 
 Removing them, but holding them still against her 
 cheeks, she looked at her companion with eyes that 
 Agatha always remembered eyes through which a 
 thin gleam of mockery flashed from the seriousness 
 of her face. 
 
 "Suppose, after all, he should get well?" she 
 murmured. 
 
 Longstaff heard it; he gave a long, soft moan, 
 and turned away. The Sister immediately ap 
 proached his bed, on the other side, dropped on her 
 knees and bent over him, while he leaned his head 
 against the great white cape along which her crucifix 
 depended. Diana stood a moment longer, looking 
 at him; then, gathering her shawl together with a 
 great dignity, she slowly walked out of the room. 
 Agatha could do nothing but follow her. The old 
 Italian, holding the door open for them to pass out, 
 made them an exaggerated obeisance. 
 
 In the garden Diana paused, with a flush in her 
 cheek, and said, 
 
 "If he could die with it, he could die without it!" 
 But beyond the garden gate, in the empty sunny 
 street, she suddenly burst into tears. 
 
 Agatha made no reproaches, no comments; but 
 her companion, during the rest of the day, spoke of 
 Mr. Longstaff several times with an almost pas 
 sionate indignation. She pronounced his conduct 
 
90 Master Eustace 
 
 indelicate, egotistic, impertinent; she declared that 
 she had found the scene most revolting. Agatha, 
 for the moment, remained silent, but the next day 
 she attempted to suggest something in apology for 
 the poor young man. Then Diana, with great em 
 phasis, begged her to be so good as never to men 
 tion his name again ; and she added that he had put 
 her completely out of humor with Nice, from which 
 place they would immediately take their departure. 
 This they did without delay; they began to travel 
 again. Agatha heard no more of Reginald Long- 
 staff; the English ladies who had been her original 
 source of information with regard to him had now 
 left Nice ; otherwise she would have written to them 
 for news. That is, she would have thought of writ 
 ing to them ; I suspect that, on the whole, she would 
 have denied herself this satisfaction, on the ground 
 of loyalty to her friend. Agatha, at any rate, could 
 only drop a tear, at solitary hours, upon the young 
 man s unanswered prayer and early death. It must 
 be confessed, however, that sometimes, as the weeks 
 elapsed, a certain faint displeasure mingled itself 
 with her sympathy a wish that, roughly speaking, 
 poor Mr. Longstaff had left them alone. Since that 
 strange interview at his bedside things had not gone 
 well ; the charm of their earlier contentment seemed 
 broken. Agatha said to herself that, really, if she 
 were superstitious, she might fancy that Diana s 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 91 
 
 conduct on this occasion had brought them under 
 an evil charm. It was no superstition, certainly, to 
 think that this young lady had lost a certain even 
 ness of temper. She was impatient, absent-minded, 
 indifferent, capricious. She expressed unaccountable 
 opinions and proposed unnatural plans. It is true 
 that disagreeable things were constantly happening 
 to them things which would have taxed the most 
 unruffled spirit. Their post-horses broke down, 
 their postilions were impertinent, their luggage went 
 astray, their servants betrayed them. The heavens 
 themselves seemed to join in the conspiracy, and for 
 days together were dark and ungenerous, treating 
 them only to wailing winds and watery clouds. It 
 was, in a large measure, in the light of after years 
 that Agatha judged this period, but even at the time 
 she felt it to be depressing, uncomfortable, un 
 natural. Diana apparently shared this feeling, 
 though she never openly avowed it. She took refuge 
 in a kind of haughty silence, and whenever a new 
 contretemps came to her knowledge, she simply 
 greeted it with a bitter smile which Agatha always 
 interpreted as an ironical reflection on poor, fan 
 tastic, obtrusive Mr. Longstaff, who, through some 
 mysterious action upon the machinery of nature, 
 had turned the tide of their fortunes. At the end 
 of the summer, suddenly, Diana proposed they 
 should go home, in the tone of a person who gives 
 
92 Master Eustace 
 
 up a hopeless struggle. Agatha assented, and the 
 two ladies returned to America, much to the relief 
 of Miss Gosling, who had an uncomfortable sense 
 that there was something unexpressed and unregu 
 lated between them, which gave their conversation 
 a resemblance to a sultry morning. But at home 
 they separated very tenderly, for Agatha had to 
 go and devote herself to her nearer kinsfolk in the 
 country. These good people after her long absence 
 were exacting, so that for two years she saw nothing 
 of her late companion. 
 
 She often, however, heard from her, and Diana 
 figured in the town gossip that was occasionally 
 wafted to her rural home. She sometimes figured 
 strangely as a rattling coquette, who carried on 
 flirtations by the hundred and broke hearts by the 
 dozen. This had not been Diana s former char 
 acter and Agatha found matter for meditation in 
 the change. But the young lady s own letters said 
 little of her admirers and displayed no trophies. 
 They came very fitfully sometimes at the rate of a 
 dozen a month and sometimes not at all; but they 
 were usually of a serious and abstract cast and con 
 tained the author s opinions upon life, death, reli 
 gion and immortality. Mistress of her actions and 
 of a pretty fortune, it might have been expected 
 that news would come in trustworthy form of 
 Diana s at last accepting one of her rumored lovers. 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 93 
 
 Such news in fact came, and it was apparently trust 
 worthy, inasmuch as it proceeded from the young 
 lady herself. She wrote to Agatha that she was to 
 be married, and Agatha immediately congratulated 
 her upon her happiness. Then Diana wrote back 
 that though she was to be married she was not at 
 all happy; and she shortly afterward added that she 
 had broken off her projected union and that her 
 felicity was smaller than ever. Poor Agatha was 
 sorely perplexed and found it a comfort that a 
 month after this her friend should have sent her a 
 peremptory summons to come to her. She im 
 mediately obeyed. Arriving, after a long journey, 
 at the dwelling of her young hostess, she saw Diana 
 at the farther end of the drawing-room, with her 
 back turned, looking out of the window. She was 
 evidently watching for Agatha, but Miss Gosling 
 had come in, by accident, through a private en 
 trance which was not visible from the window. She 
 gently approached her friend and then Diana turned. 
 She had her two hands laid upon her cheeks and 
 her eyes were sad; her face and attitude suggested 
 something that Agatha had seen before and kept 
 the memory of. While she kissed her Agatha re 
 membered that it was just so she had stood for 
 that last moment before poor Mr. Longstaff. 
 
 "Will you come abroad with me again?" Diana 
 asked. "I am very ill." 
 
94 Master Eustace 
 
 "Dearest, what is the matter?" said Agatha. 
 
 "I don t know; I believe I am dying. They tell 
 me this place is bad for me ; that I must have another 
 climate; that I must move about. Will you take 
 care of me? I shall be very easy to take care of 
 now." 
 
 Agatha, for all answer, embraced her afresh, and 
 as soon after this as possible the two friends em 
 barked again for Europe. Miss Gosling had lent 
 herself the more freely to .this scheme as her com 
 panion s appearance seemed a striking confirmation 
 of her words. Not, indeed, that she looked as if 
 she were dying, but in the two years that had elapsed 
 since their separation she had wasted and faded. 
 She looked more than two years older and the bril 
 liancy of her beauty was dimmed. She was pale 
 and languid, and she moved more slowly than when 
 she seemed a goddess treading the forest leaves. 
 The beautiful statue had grown human and taken 
 on some of the imperfections of humanity. And 
 yet the doctors by no means affirmed that she had 
 a mortal malady, and when one of them was asked 
 by an inquisitive matron why he had recommended 
 this young lady to cross the seas, he replied with a 
 smile that it was a principle in his system to pre 
 scribe the remedies that his patients acutely de 
 sired. 
 
 At present the fair travelers had no misadven- 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 95 
 
 tures. The broken charm had removed itself; the 
 heavens smiled upon them and their postilions 
 treated them like princesses. Diana, too, had com 
 pletely recovered her native placidity; she was the 
 gentlest, the most docile, the most reasonable of 
 women. She was silent and subdued as was natural 
 in an invalid, though in one important particular 
 her demeanor was certainly at variance with the 
 idea of debility. She relished movement much more 
 than rest, and constant change of place became the 
 law of her days. She wished to see all the places 
 that she had not seen before, and all the old ones 
 over again. 
 
 "If I am really dying," she said, smiling softly. 
 "I must leave my farewell cards everywhere." So 
 she lived in a great open carriage, leaning back in 
 it and looking, right and left, at everything she 
 passed. On her former journey to Europe she had 
 seen but little of England, and now she would visit 
 the whole of this famous island. So she rolled for 
 weeks through the beautiful English landscape, past 
 meadows and hedge-rows, over the avenues of great 
 estates and under the walls of castles and abbeys. 
 For the English parks and manors, the "Halls" and 
 "Courts," she had an especial admiration, and into 
 the grounds of such as were open to appreciative 
 tourists she made a point of penetrating. Here she 
 stayed her carriage beneath the oaks and beeches, 
 
96 Master Eustace 
 
 and sat for an hour at a time listening to night 
 ingales and watching browsing deer. She never 
 failed to visit a residence that lay on her road, and 
 as soon as she arrived at a place she inquired punc 
 tiliously whether there were any fine country-seats 
 in the neighborhood. In this fashion she spent a 
 whole summer. Through the autumn she continued 
 to wander restlessly; she visited, on the Continent, 
 a hundred watering-places and travelers resorts. 
 The beginning of the winter found her in Rome, 
 where she confessed to extreme fatigue and deter 
 mined to seek repose. 
 
 "I am weary, weary," she said to her companion. 
 "I didn t know how weary I was. I feel like sinking 
 down in this City of Rest, and resting here for 
 ever." 
 
 She took a lodging in an old palace, where her 
 chamber was hung with ancient tapestries, and her 
 drawing-room decorated with the arms of a pope. 
 Here, giving way to her fatigue, she ceased to 
 wander. The only thing she did was to go every 
 day to St. Peter s. She went nowhere else. She 
 sat at her window all day with a big book in her 
 lap, which she never read, looking out into a Roman 
 garden at a fountain plashing into a weedy alcove, 
 and half a dozen nymphs in mottled marble. Some 
 times she told her companion that she was happier 
 this way than she had ever been, in this way, and 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 97 
 
 in going to St. Peter s. In the great church she 
 often spent the whole afternoon. She had a servant 
 behind her, carrying a stool. He placed her stool 
 against a marble pilaster, and she sat there for a 
 long time, looking up into the airy hollow of the 
 dome and over the peopled pavement. She noticed 
 every one who passed her, but Agatha, lingering 
 beside her, felt less at liberty, she hardly knew why, 
 to murmur a sportive commentary on the people 
 about them than she had felt when they sat upon 
 the shore at Nice. 
 
 One day Agatha left her and strolled about the 
 church by herself. The ecclesiastical life of Rome 
 had not shrunken to its present smallness, and in 
 one corner or another of St. Peter s, there was 
 always some point of worship. Agatha found enter 
 tainment, and was absent for half an hour. When 
 she came back, she found her companion s place 
 deserted, and she sat down on the empty stool to 
 await her re-appearance. Some time elapsed and 
 she wandered away in quest of her. She found her 
 at last, near one of the side-altars; but she was not 
 alone. A gentleman stood before her whom she 
 appeared just to have encountered. Her face was 
 very pale, and its expression led Agatha to look 
 straightway at the stranger. Then she saw he was 
 no stranger; he was Reginald Longstaff! He, too, 
 evidently had been much startled, but he was al- 
 
98 Master Eustace 
 
 ready recovering himself. He stood very gravely 
 an instant longer ; then he silently bowed to the two 
 ladies and turned away. 
 
 Agatha felt at first as if she had seen a ghost; 
 but the impression was immediately corrected by the 
 fact that Mr. Longstaff s aspect was very much less 
 ghostly than it had been in life. He looked like a 
 strong man; he held himself upright and had a flush 
 of color. What Agatha saw in Diana s face was not 
 surprise; it was a pale radiance which she waited a 
 moment to give a name to. Diana put out her hand 
 and laid it in her arm, and her touch helped Agatha 
 to know what it was that her face expressed. Then 
 she felt too that this knowledge itself was not a 
 surprise; she seemed to have been waiting for it. 
 She looked at her friend again and Diana was beau 
 tiful. Diana blushed and became more beautiful 
 yet. Agatha led her back to her seat near the marble 
 pilaster. 
 
 "So you were right/ Agatha said presently. "He 
 would, after all, have got well." 
 
 Diana would not sit down; she motioned to her 
 servant to bring away the stool, and continued to 
 move toward the door. She said nothing until she 
 stood without, in the great square of the colon 
 nades and fountains. Then she spoke: 
 
 "I am right now, but I was wrong then. He got 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 99 
 
 well because I refused him. I gave him a hurt that 
 cured him." 
 
 That evening, beneath the Roman lamps, in the 
 great drawing-room of the arms of the pope, a 
 remarkable conversation took place between the two 
 friends. Diana wept and hid her face ; but her tears 
 and her shame were gratuitous. Agatha felt, as 
 I have said, that she had already guessed all the 
 unexplained, and it was needless for her companion 
 to tell her that three weeks after she had refused 
 Reginald Longstaff she insanely loved him. It was 
 needless that Diana should confess that his image 
 had never been out of her mind, that she believed 
 he was still among the living, and that she had come 
 back to Europe with a desperate hope of meeting 
 him. It was in this hope that she had wandered 
 from town to town, and noticed all the passers ; and 
 it was in this hope that she had lingered in so many 
 English parks. She knew her love was very strange ; 
 she could only say it had consumed her. It had all 
 come upon her afterward, in retrospect, in medita 
 tion. Or rather, she supposed, it had been there 
 always since she first saw him, and the revulsion 
 from displeasure to pity, after she left his bedside, 
 had brought it out. And with it came the faith 
 that he had indeed got well, both of his malady and 
 of his own passion. This was her punishment! 
 And then she spoke with a divine simplicity which 
 
100 Master Eustace 
 
 Agatha, weeping a little too, wished that, if this 
 possibility were a fact, the young man might have 
 heard. "I am so glad he is well and strong. And 
 that he looks so handsome and so good !" And she 
 presently added, "Of course he has got well only 
 to hate me. He wishes never to see me again. Very 
 good. I have had my wish; I have seen him once 
 more. That was what I wanted and I can die con 
 tent." 
 
 It seemed, in fact, as if she were going to die. 
 She went no more to St. Peter s, and exposed her 
 self to no more encounters with Mr. Longstaff. 
 She sat at her window and looked out at the mottled 
 dryads and the cypresses, or wandered about her 
 quarter of the palace with a vaguely smiling resig 
 nation. Agatha watched her with a sadness that 
 was less submissive. This too was something that 
 she had heard of, that she had read of in poetry 
 and fable, but that she had never supposed she 
 should see; her companion was dying of love! 
 Agatha pondered many things and resolved upon 
 several. The first of these latter was sending for 
 the doctor. This personage came, and Diana let 
 him look at her through his spectacles, and hold 
 her white wrist. He announced that she was ill, 
 and she smiled and said she knew it; and then he 
 gave her a little phial of gold-colored fluid, which 
 he bade her to drink. He recommended her to re- 
 
Long staff s Marriage I Ol 
 
 main in Rome, as the climate exactly suited her 
 complaint. Agatha s second desire was to see Mr. 
 Longstaff, who had appealed to her, she reflected, 
 in the day of his own tribulation, and whom she 
 therefore had a right to approach at present. She 
 disbelieved, too, that the passion which led him to 
 take that extraordinary step at Nice was extinct; 
 such passions as that never died. If he had made 
 no further attempt to see Diana it was because he 
 believed that she was still as cold as when she turned 
 away from his death-bed. It must be added, more 
 over, that Agatha felt a lawful curiosity to learn 
 how from that death-bed he had risen again into 
 blooming manhood. 
 
 On this last point, all elucidation left something 
 unexplained. Agatha went to St. Peter s, feeling 
 sure that sooner or later she should encounter him 
 there. At the end of a week she perceived him, and 
 seeing her, he immediately came and spoke to her. 
 As Diana had said, he was now extremely hand 
 some, and he looked particularly good. He was a 
 blooming, gallant, quiet, young English gentleman. 
 He seemed much embarrassed, but his manner to 
 Agatha expressed the highest consideration. 
 
 "You must think me a dreadful imposter," he 
 said, very gravely. "But I was dying, or I be 
 lieved I was." 
 
102 Master Eustace 
 
 "And by what miracle did you recover?" 
 He was silent a moment, and then he said : 
 "I suppose it was by the miracle of wounded 
 pride!" Then she noticed that he asked nothing 
 about Diana; and presently she felt that he knew 
 she was thinking of this. "The strangest part of 
 it," he added, "was that when I came back to 
 strength, what had gone before had become as a 
 simple dream. And what happened to me here the 
 other day," he went on, "failed to make it a reality 
 again!" 
 
 Agatha looked at him a moment in silence, and 
 saw again that he was handsome and kind ; and then 
 dropping a sigh over the wonderful mystery of 
 things, she turned sadly away. That evening, Diana 
 said to her : 
 
 "I know that you have seen him!" 
 Agatha came to her and kissed her. 
 "And I am nothing to him now?" 
 
 "My own dearest " murmured Agatha. 
 
 Diana had drunk the little phial of gold-colored 
 liquid; but after this, she ceased to wander about 
 the palace; she never left her room. The old doc 
 tor was with her constantly now, and he continued 
 to say that the air of Rome was very good for her 
 complaint. Agatha watched her in helpless sad 
 ness; she saw her fading and sinking, and yet she 
 was unable to comfort her. She tried it once in 
 
Long staff s Marriage 103 
 
 saying hard things about Mr. Longstaff , in pointing 
 out that he had not been honorable; rising herein 
 to a sublime hypocrisy, for, on that last occasion 
 at St. Peter s, the poor girl had felt a renewed per 
 sonal admiration, the quickening of a private 
 flame; she saw nothing but his good looks and his 
 kind manner. 
 
 "What did he want what did he mean, after 
 all?" she ingenuously murmured, leaning over 
 Diana s sofa. "Why should he have been wounded 
 at what you said? It would have been part of the 
 bargain that he should not get well. Did he mean 
 to take an unfair advantage to make you his wife 
 under false pretenses? When you put your finger 
 on the weak spot, why should he resent it? No, 
 it was not honorable." 
 
 Diana smiled sadly; she had no false shame now, 
 and she spoke of this thing as if it concerned an 
 other person. 
 
 "He would have counted on my forgiving him !" 
 she said. A little while after this, she began to 
 sink more rapidly. Then she called her friend to 
 her, and said simply: "Send for him!" And as 
 Agatha looked perplexed and distressed, she added, 
 "I know he is still in Rome." 
 
 Agatha at first was at a loss where to find him, 
 but among the benefits of the papal dispensation 
 was the fact that the pontifical police could in- 
 
104 Master Eustace 
 
 stantly help you to lay your hand upon any sojourner 
 in the Eternal City. Mr. Longstaff had a passport 
 in detention by the government, and this document 
 formed a basis of instruction to the servant whom 
 Agatha sent to investigate the authorities. The ser 
 vant came back with the news that he had seen the 
 distinguished stranger, who would wait upon the 
 ladies at the hour they had proposed. When this 
 hour came and Mr. Longstaff was announced, Diana 
 said to her companion that she must remain with 
 her. It was an afternoon in spring; the high win 
 dows into the palace garden were open, and the 
 room was filled with great sheaves and stocks of 
 the abundant Roman flowers. Diana sat in a deep 
 armchair. 
 
 It was certainly a difficult position for Reginald 
 Longstaff. He stopped on the threshold and looked 
 awhile at the woman to whom he had made his 
 extraordinary offer; then, pale and agitated, he ad 
 vanced rapidly toward her. He was evidently 
 shocked at the state in which he found her ; he took 
 her hand, and, bending over it, raised it to his lips. 
 She fixed her eyes on him a little, and she smiled 
 a little. 
 
 "It is I who am dying now," she said. "And 
 now I want to ask something of you to ask what 
 you asked of me/ 
 
 He stared, and a deep flush of color came into 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 105 
 
 his face; he hesitated for an appreciable moment. 
 Then lowering his head with a movement of assent 
 he kissed her hand again. 
 
 "Come back to-morrow," she said; "that is all I 
 ask of you." 
 
 He looked at her again for a while in silence; 
 then he abruptly turned and left her. She sent for 
 the English clergyman and told him that she was a 
 dying woman, and that she wanted the marriage 
 service read beside her couch. The clergyman, too, 
 looked at her, marvelling; but he consented to 
 humor so tenderly romantic a whim and made an 
 appointment for the afternoon of the morrow. 
 Diana was very tranquil. She sat motionless, with 
 her hands clasped and her eyes closed. Agatha wan 
 dered about, arranging and re-arranging the flowers. 
 On the morrow she encountered Mr. Longstaff in 
 one of the outer rooms. He had come before his 
 time. She made this objection to his being ad 
 mitted ; but he answered that he knew he was early 
 and had come with intention; he wished to spend 
 the intervening hour with his prospective bride. So 
 he went in and sat down by her couch again, and 
 Agatha, leaving them alone, never knew what passed 
 between them. At the end of the hour the clergy 
 man arrived, and read the marriage service to them, 
 pronouncing the nuptial blessing, while Agatha stood 
 by as witness. Mr. Longstaff went through all this 
 
106 Master Eustace 
 
 with a solemn, inscrutable face, and Agatha, ob 
 serving him, said to herself that one must at least 
 do him the justice to admit that he was performing 
 punctiliously what honor demanded. When the 
 clergyman had gone he asked Diana when he might 
 see her again. 
 
 "Never!" she said, with her strange smile. And 
 she added "I shall not live long now." 
 
 He kissed her face, but he was obliged to leave 
 her. He gave Agatha an anxious look as if he 
 wished to say something to her, but she preferred 
 not to listen to him. After this Diana sank rapidly. 
 The next day, Reginald Longstaff came back and 
 insisted upon seeing Agatha. 
 
 "Why should she die?" he asked. "I want her 
 to live." 
 
 "Have you forgiven her?" said Agatha. 
 
 "She saved me !" he cried. 
 
 Diana consented to see him once more ; there were 
 two doctors in attendance now, and they also had 
 consented. He knelt down beside her bed and asked 
 her to live. But she feebly shook her head. 
 
 "It would be wrong of me," she said. 
 
 Later, when he came back once more, Agatha 
 told him she was gone. He stood wondering, with 
 tears in his eyes. 
 
 "I don t understand," he said. "Did she love me 
 or not?" 
 
Longstaff s Marriage 107 
 
 "She loved you," said Agatha, "more than she 
 believed you could now love her; and it seemed to 
 her that, when she had had her moment of happi 
 ness, to leave you at liberty was the tenderest way 
 she could show it!" 
 
THEODOLINDE 
 
THEODOLINDE 
 
 I HAD invited the excellent fellow to dinner, and 
 had jbegun to wonder, the stroke of half -past 
 six having sounded, why he did not present 
 himself. At last I stepped out upon the balcony 
 and looked along the street in the direction from 
 which, presumably, he would approach. A Parisian 
 thoroughfare is always an entertaining spectacle, 
 and I had still much of a stranger s alertness of 
 attention. Before long, therefore, I quite forgot 
 my unpunctual guest in my relish of the multifarious 
 animation of the brilliant city. It was a perfect 
 evening toward the end of April ; there was a charm 
 ing golden glow on the opposite housetops, which 
 looked toward the west; there was a sort of vernal 
 odor in the street, mingling with the emanations of 
 the restaurant across the way, whose door now 
 always stood open ; with the delightful aroma of the 
 chocolate-shop which occupied the ground floor of 
 the house in whose entresol I was lodged ; and, as I 
 
 in 
 
112 Master Eustace 
 
 fancied, with certain luscious perfumes hovering 
 about the brilliantly-polished window of the hair 
 dresser s establishment adjacent to the restaurant. 
 Then there was a woman in a minutely-fluted cap 
 selling violets in a little handcart, which she gently 
 pushed along over the smooth asphalt, and which, 
 as she passed, left a sensible trace in the thick mild 
 air. All this made a thoroughly Parisian mixture, 
 and I envied Sanguinetti the privilege of spending 
 his life in a city in which even the humblest of one s 
 senses was the medium of poetic impressions. 
 There was poetry in the warm, succulent exhala 
 tions of the opposite restaurant, where, among the 
 lighted lamps, I could see the little tables glittering 
 with their glass and silver, the tenderly-brown rolls 
 nestling in the petals of the folded napkins, the 
 waiters in their snowy aprons standing in the various 
 attitudes of imminent empressement, the agreeable 
 dame de comptoir sitting idle for the moment and 
 rubbing her plump white hands. To a person so 
 inordinately fond of chocolate as myself there was 
 literally a pretty little box half emptied of large 
 soft globules of the compound standing at that 
 moment on my table, for all the world as if I had 
 been a sweet-toothed school-girl there was of 
 course something very agreeable in the faint upward 
 gusts of the establishment in my rez-de-chawsee. 
 Presently, too, it appeared to me that the savors 
 
Theodolinde 113 
 
 peculiar to the hairdressing-shop had assumed an 
 extraordinary intensity, and that my right-hand 
 nostril was in the act of being titillated by what 
 might fairly be called the very poetry of cosmetics. 
 Glancing that way again, I perceived the source of 
 this rich effluvium. The hairdresser s door was 
 open, and a person whom I took to be his wife had 
 come to inhale upon the threshold the lighter atmos 
 phere of the street. She stood there for some mo 
 ments looking up and down, and I had time to see 
 that she was very pretty. She wore a plain black silk 
 dress, and one needed to know no more of millinery 
 than most men to observe that it was admirably fitted 
 to a charming figure. She had a little knot of pink 
 ribbon at her throat and a bunch of violets in her 
 rounded bosom. Her face seemed to me at once 
 beautiful and lively two merits that are not always 
 united; for smiles, I have observed, are infrequent 
 with women who are either very ugly or very pretty. 
 Her light-brown hair was, naturally enough, dressed 
 with consummate art, and the character of her 
 beauty being suggestive of purity and gentleness, 
 she looked (her black silk dress apart) like a Ma 
 donna who should have been coiffee in the Rue de la 
 Paix. What a delightful person for a barber s 
 wife! I thought; and I saw her sitting in the little 
 front shop at the desk and taking the money with 
 a gracious smile from the gentlemen who had been 
 
114 Master Eustace 
 
 having their whiskers trimmed in the inner sanctu 
 ary. I touched my own whiskers, and straightway 
 decided that they needed trimming. In a few 
 moments this lovely woman stepped out upon the 
 pavement, and strolled along in front of the shop- 
 window on a little tour of inspection. She stood 
 there a moment, looking at the brilliant array of 
 brightly-capped fla9ons, of ivory toilet-implements, 
 of detached human tresses disposed in every variety 
 of fashionable convolution: she inclined her head 
 to one side and gently stroked her chin. I was able 
 to perceive that even with her back turned she was 
 hardly less pretty than when seen in front her 
 back had, as they say, so much chic. The inclina 
 tion of her head denoted contentment, even com 
 placency ; and, indeed, well it might, for the window 
 was most artistically arranged. Its principal glory 
 was conferred by two waxen heads of lovely ladies, 
 such as are usually seen in hairdressers windows; 
 and these wig-wearing puppets, which maintained a 
 constant rotary movement, seemed to be a triumph 
 of the modeller s art. One of the revolving ladies 
 was dark, and the other fair, and each tossed back 
 her head and thrust out her waxen bosom and parted 
 her rosy lips in the most stylish manner conceivable. 
 Several persons passing by had stopped to admire 
 them. In a few moments a second inmate came to 
 the door of the shop, and said a word to the bar- 
 
Theodolinde 115 
 
 ber s pretty wife. This was not the barber himself, 
 but a young woman apparently employed in the 
 shop. She was a nice-looking young woman 
 enough, but she had by no means the beauty of her 
 companion, who, to my regret, on hearing her voice 
 instantly went in. 
 
 After this I fell to watching something else, 
 I forget what: I had quite forgotten Sanguinetti. 
 I think I was looking at a gentleman and lady who 
 had come into the restaurant and placed themselves 
 near the great sheet of plate glass which separated 
 the interior from the street. The lady, who had 
 the most wonderfully arched eyebrows, was evi 
 dently ordering the dinner, and I was struck with 
 the profusion of its items. At last she began to 
 eat her soup, with her little finger very much curled 
 out, and then my gaze wandered toward the hair 
 dresser s window again. This circumstance re 
 minded me that I was really very good-natured to 
 be waiting so placidly for that dilatory Sanguinetti. 
 There he stood in front of the coiffeur s, staring as 
 intently and serenely into the window as if he had 
 the whole evening before him. I waited a few 
 moments to give him a chance to move on, but he 
 remained there rapt in contemplation. What in the 
 world was he looking at ? Had he spied something 
 that could play a part in his collection? For San 
 guinetti was a collector, and had a room full of old 
 
116 Master Eustace 
 
 crockery and uncomfortable chairs. But he "cared 
 for nothing that was not a hundred years old, and 
 the pretty things in the hairdresser s window all 
 bore the stamp of the latest Parisian manufacture 
 were part and parcel of that modern rubbish 
 which he so cordially despised. What, then, had so 
 forcibly arrested his attention? Was the poor fel 
 low thinking of buying a new chignon or a solitary 
 pendent curl for the object of his affections? This 
 could hardly be, for to my almost certain knowledge 
 his affections had no object save the faded crockery 
 and the singular chairs I have mentioned. I had, 
 indeed, more than once thought it a pity that he 
 should not interest himself in some attractive little 
 woman, for he might end by marrying her ; and that 
 would be a blessing, inasmuch as she would prob 
 ably take measures for his being punctual when he 
 was asked out to dinner. I tapped on the edge of 
 the little railing which served as my window-guard, 
 but the noise of the street prevented this admoni 
 tion from reaching his ear. He was decidedly quite 
 too absorbed. Then I ventured to hiss at him in 
 the manner of the Latin races a mode of address 
 to which I have always had a lively aversion, but 
 which, it must be confessed, proceeding from Latin 
 lips, reaches its destination in cases in which a nobler 
 volume of sound will stop halfway. Still, like the 
 warrior s widow in Tennyson s song, he neither 
 
Theodolinde 117 
 
 spake nor moved. But here, suddenly, I compre 
 hended the motive of his immobility: he was look 
 ing of course at the barber s beautiful wife, the 
 pretty woman with the face of a Madonna and the 
 coiffure of a duchess, whom I myself had just found 
 so charming. This was really an excuse, and I 
 felt disposed to allow him a few moments grace. 
 There was evidently an unobstructed space behind 
 the window through which this attractive person 
 could bo perceived as she sat at her desk in some 
 attitude of graceful diligence adding up the items 
 of a fine lady s little indebtedness for rouge-pots 
 and rice-powder or braiding ever so neatly the long 
 tresses of a fausse natte of the fashionable color. I 
 promised myself to look out for this unobstructed 
 space the very first time I should pass. 
 
 I gave my tarrying guest another five minutes 
 grace, during which the lamps were lighted in the 
 hairdresser s shop. The window now became ex 
 tremely brilliant; the ivory brushes and the little 
 silver mirrors glittered and flashed ; the colored cos 
 metics in the little toilet-bottles acquired an almost 
 appetizing radiance; and the beautiful waxen ladies, 
 tossing back their heads more than ever from their 
 dazzling busts, seemed to sniff up the agreeable 
 atmosphere. Of course the hairdresser s wife had 
 become even more vividly visible, and so, evidently, 
 Sanguinetti was finding out. He moved no more 
 
118 Master Eustace 
 
 than if he himself had been a barber s block. This 
 was all very well, but now, seriously, I was hungry, 
 and I felt extremely disposed to fling a flower-pot 
 at him. I had an array of these ornaments in the 
 balcony. Just then my servant came into the room ; 
 and beckoning to this functionary I pointed out to 
 him the gentleman at the barber s window, and bade 
 him go down into the street and interrupt Mr. 
 Sanguinetti s contemplations. He departed, de 
 scended, and I presently saw him cross the way. 
 Just as he drew near my friend, however, the latter 
 turned round abruptly and looked at his watch. 
 Then, with an obvious sense of alarm, he moved 
 quickly forward, but he had not gone -five steps 
 before he paused again and cast back a supreme 
 glance at the object of his admiration. He raised 
 his hand to his lips, and, upon my word, he looked 
 as if he was kissing it. My servant now accosted 
 him with a bow, and motioned toward my balcony, 
 but Sanguinetti, without looking up, simply passed 
 quickly across to my door. He might well be shy 
 about looking up kissing his hand in the street to 
 pretty dames de comptoir: for a modest little man, 
 who was supposed to care for nothing but bric-a- 
 brac, and not to be in the least what is called "enter 
 prising" with women, this was certainly a very 
 pretty jump. And the hairdresser s wife? Had 
 she, on her side, been kissing her finger-tips to him ? 
 
Theodolinde 119 
 
 I thought it very possible, and remembered that I 
 had always heard that Paris is the city of gal 
 lantry. 
 
 Sanguinetti came in, blushing a good deal, and 
 saying that he was extremely sorry to have kept 
 me waiting. 
 
 "Oh," I answered, "I understand it very well. 
 I have been watching you from my window for the 
 last quarter of an hour/ 
 
 He smiled a little, blushing still. "Though I have 
 lived in Paris for fifteen years," he said, "you know 
 I always look at the shops. One never knows what 
 one may pick up." 
 
 "You have a taste," I said, "for picking up pretty 
 faces. That is certainly a very pretty one at the 
 hairdresser s." 
 
 Poor Sanguinetti was really very modest: my 
 "chaff" discomposed him, and he began to fidget and 
 protest. 
 
 "Oh !" I went on, "your choice does great honor 
 to your taste. She s a very lovely creature: I ad 
 mire her myself." 
 
 He looked at me a moment with his soup-spoon 
 poised. He was always a little afraid of me : he 
 was sure I thought him a very flimsy fellow, with 
 his passion for cracked teacups and scraps of old 
 brocade. But now he seemed a trifle reassured: 
 he would talk a little if he dared. "You know there 
 
120 Master Eustace 
 
 are two of them," he said, "but one is much more 
 beautiful than the other." 
 
 "Precisely," I answered "the fair one." 
 
 "My dear friend," murmured my guest, "she is 
 the most beautiful object I ever beheld." 
 
 "That, perhaps," I said, "is going a little too far. 
 But she is uncommonly handsome." 
 
 "She is quite perfect," Sanguinetti declared, fin 
 ishing his soup. And presently he added, "Shall 
 I tell you what she looks like?" 
 
 "Like a fashionable angel," I said. 
 
 "Yes," he answered, smiling, "or like a Madonna 
 who should have had her hair dressed over there." 
 
 "My dear fellow," I said, "that is just the com 
 parison I hit upon a while ago." 
 
 "That proves the truth of it. It is a real Ma 
 donna type." 
 
 "A little Parisianized," I rejoined, "about the 
 corners of the mouth." 
 
 "Possibly," said Sanguinetti. "But the mouth is 
 her loveliest feature." 
 
 "Could you see her well?" I inquired as I helped 
 him to a sweetbread. 
 
 "Beautifully especially after the gas was 
 lighted." 
 
 "Had you never noticed her before?" 
 
 "Never, strangely enough. But though, as I say, 
 I am very fond of shop-windows, I confess to al- 
 
TJieodolinde 121 
 
 ways having had a great prejudice against those of: 
 the hairdressers." 
 
 "You see," I said, "how wrong you were." 
 "No, not in general: this is an exception. The 
 women are usually hideous. They have the most 
 impossible complexions: they are always fearfully 
 sallow. There is one of them in my street, three 
 doors from my own house : you would say she was 
 
 made of " And he paused a moment for his 
 
 comparison. "You would say she was made of 
 tallow." 
 
 We finished our sweetbreads, and, I think, talked 
 of something else, my companion presently drawing 
 from his pocket and exhibiting with some elation a 
 little purchase in the antiquarian line which he had 
 made that morning. It was a small coffee-cup of 
 the Sevres manufacture and of the period of Louis 
 XV., very delicately painted over with nosegays and 
 garlands. I was far from being competent in such 
 matters, but Sanguinetti assured me that it bore a 
 certain little earmark which made it a precious acqui 
 sition. And he put it back into its little red morocco 
 case, and fell a-musing with his eyes wandering 
 toward the window. He was fond of old gimcracks 
 and knickknacks of every order and epoch, but he 
 had, I knew, a special tenderness for the productions 
 of the baser period of the French monarchy. His 
 collection of snuff-boxes and flowered screens was 
 
122 Master Eustace 
 
 highly remarkable might, I suppose, have been 
 called celebrated. In spite of his very foreign name, 
 he was a genuine compatriot of my own, and indeed 
 our acquaintance had begun with our being, as very 
 small boys, at school together. There was a tradi 
 tion that Sanguinetti s grandfather had been an 
 Italian image-vender in the days when those gen 
 tlemen might have claimed in America to be the only 
 representatives of a care for the fine arts. In the 
 early part of the century they were also less numer 
 ous than they have since become, and it was believed 
 that the founder of the Transatlantic stock of the 
 Sanguinettis had by virtue of his fine Italian eyes, 
 his slouched hat, his earrings, his persuasive elo 
 quence, his foreign idioms and his little tray of 
 plaster effigies and busts been deemed a personage 
 of sufficient importance to win the heart and hand 
 of the daughter of a well-to-do attorney in the State 
 of Vermont. This lady had brought her husband a 
 property which he had invested in some less brittle 
 department of the Italian trade, and, prospering as 
 people, alas ! prospered in those good old days, had 
 bequeathed, much augmented, to the father of my 
 guest. My companion, who had several sisters, was 
 brought up like a little gentleman, and showed symp 
 toms even at the earliest age of his mania for refuse 
 furniture. At school he used to collect old slate- 
 pencils and match-boxes : I suppose he inherited the 
 
TJieodolinde 123 
 
 taste from his grandfather, who had perambulated 
 the country with a tray covered with the most use 
 less ornaments (like a magnified chess-board) upon 
 his head. When he was twenty years old San- 
 guinetti lost his father and got his share of the 
 patrimony, with which he immediately came to 
 Europe, where he had lived these seventeen years. 
 When I first saw him on coming to Paris, I asked 
 him if he meant never to go back to New York, 
 and I very well remember his answer: "My dear 
 fellow" (in a very mournful tone), "what can you 
 get there? The things are all second-rate, and dur 
 ing the Louis Quinze period, you know, our poor 
 
 dear country was really really " And he 
 
 shook his head very slowly and expressively. 
 
 I answered that there were (as I had been told) 
 very good spinning-wheels and kitchen-settles, but 
 he rejoined that he cared only for that which was 
 truly elegant. He was a most simple-minded and 
 amiable little bachelor, and would have done any 
 thing possible to oblige a friend, but he made no 
 secret of his conviction thaf "pretty things" were 
 the only things in the world worth troubling one s 
 self about. He was very near-sighted, and was 
 always putting up his glass to look at something on 
 your chimney-piece or your side-table. He had a 
 lingering, solemn way of talking about the height 
 of Madame de Pompadour s heels and the different 
 
124 Master Eustace 
 
 shapes of old Dutch candlesticks ; and though many 
 of his fellow-country people thought him very "af 
 fected," he always seemed to me the least preten 
 tious of men. He never read the newspapers for 
 their politics, and didn t pretend to: he read them 
 only for their lists of auction-sales. I had a great 
 kindness for him, he seemed to me such a pure- 
 minded mortal, sitting there in his innocent com 
 pany of Dresden shepherdesses and beauties whose 
 smiles were stippled on the lids of snuff-boxes. 
 There is always something agreeable in a man who 
 is a perfect example of a type ; and Sanguinetti was 
 all of one piece. He was the perfect authority upon 
 pretty things. 
 
 He kept looking at the window, as I have said, 
 and it required no great shrewdness to guess that 
 his thoughts had stepped out of it and were hover 
 ing in front of the hairdresser s etalage. I was in 
 clined to humor his enthusiasm, for it amused me 
 to see a man who had hitherto found a pink-faced 
 lady on a china plate a sufficiently substantial ob 
 ject of invocation, led captive by a charmer who 
 would, as the phrase is, have something to say for 
 herself. 
 
 "Shouldn t you like to have a closer view of her?" 
 I asked with a sympathetic smile. 
 
 He glanced at me and blushed again: That 
 lovely creature?" 
 
Theodolinde 125 
 
 "That lovely creature. Shouldn t you have liked 
 to get nearer?" 
 
 "Indeed I should. That sheet of plate-glass is a 
 great vexation." 
 
 "But why didn t you make a pretext for going 
 into the shop? You might have bought a tooth 
 brush." 
 
 "I don t know that I should have gained much/ 
 said Sanguinetti simply. 
 
 "You would have seen her move : her movement 
 is charming." 
 
 "Her movement is the poetry of motion. But 
 I could see that outside." 
 
 "My dear fellow," I urged, "you are not enter 
 prising enough. In your place I should get a foot 
 ing in the shop." 
 
 He fixed his clear little near-sighted eyes upon 
 me. "Yes, yes," he said, "it would certainly be 
 delightful to be able to sit there and watch her: it 
 would be more comfortable than standing outside." 
 
 "Je crois bien! But sitting there and watching 
 her? You go rather far." 
 
 "I suppose I should be rather in the way. But 
 every now and then she would turn her face toward 
 me. And I don t know," he added, "but that she 
 is as pretty behind as before." 
 
 "You make; an observation that I made myself. 
 She has so much chic" 
 
126 Master Eustace 
 
 Sanguinetti kissed his finger-tips with a move 
 ment that he had learned of his long Parisian so 
 journ. "The poetry of chic But I shall go 
 
 further," he presently pursued. "I don t despair, 
 I don t despair." And he paused with his hands in 
 his pockets, tilting himself back in his seat. 
 
 "You don t despair of what?" 
 
 "Of making her my own." 
 
 I burst out laughing: "Your own, my dear fel 
 low! You are more enterprising than I thought. 
 But what do you mean? I don t suppose that under 
 the circumstances you can marry her?" 
 
 "No: under the circumstances, unfortunately, I 
 can t. But I can have her always there." 
 
 "Always where?" 
 
 "At home, in my room. It s just the place for her." 
 
 "Ah, my good friend," I rejoined, laughing, but 
 slightly scandalized, "that s a matter of opinion." 
 
 "It s a matter of taste. I think it would suit 
 her." 
 
 A matter of taste, indeed, this question of com 
 mon morality! Sanguinetti was more Parisianized 
 than I had supposed, and I reflected that Paris was 
 certainly a very dangerous place, since it had got 
 the better of his inveterate propriety. But I was 
 not too much shocked to be still a good deal amused, 
 
 "Of course I shall not go too fast," he went on. 
 "I shall not be too abrupt," 
 
Theodolinde 127 
 
 Tray don t." 
 
 "I shall approach the matter gradually. I shall 
 go into the shop several times to buy certain things. 
 First a pot of cold cream, then a piece of soap, then 
 a bottle of glycerine. I shall go into a great many 
 ecstasies and express no end of admiration. Mean 
 while, she will slowly move around, and every now 
 and then she will look at me. And so, little by 
 little, I will come to the great point." 
 "Perhaps you will not be listened to." 
 "I will make a very handsome offer." 
 "What sort of an offer do you mean?" 
 "I am ashamed to tell you : you will call it throw 
 ing away money." 
 
 An offer of money ! He was really very crude. 
 Should I too come to this if I continued to live in 
 Paris? "Oh," I said, "if you think that money 
 
 simply will do it " 
 
 "Why, you don t suppose," he exclaimed, "that 
 I expect to have her for nothing? * He was actually 
 cynical, and I remained silent. "But I shall not be 
 happy again at least for a long time" he went 
 on, "unless I succeed. I have always dreamed of 
 just such a woman as that ; and now at last, when I 
 behold her perfect image and embodiment, why I 
 simply can t do without her." He was evidently 
 very sincere. 
 
 "You are simply in love," I said. 
 
128 Master Eustace 
 
 He looked at me a moment, and blushed : "Yes, 
 I honestly believe I am. It s very absurd." 
 
 "From some point of view or other," I said, "love 
 is always absurd;" and I decided that the matter 
 was none of my business. 
 
 We talked of other things for an hour, but before 
 he took leave of me Sanguinetti reverted to the 
 Beautiful Being at the hairdresser s. "I am sure 
 you will think me a great donkey," he said, "for 
 taking that that creature so seriously;" and he 
 nodded in the direction of the other side of the 
 street. 
 
 "I was always taught in Boston," I answered, 
 "that it is our duty to take things seriously." 
 
 I made a point, of course, the next day of stop 
 ping at the hairdresser s window for the purpose 
 of obtaining another glimpse of the remarkable 
 woman who had made such an impression upon 
 my friend. I found, in fact, that there was a large 
 aperture in the back of the window it came just 
 between the two beautiful dolls through which it 
 was very possible to see what was going on in a 
 considerable part of the shop. Just then, however, 
 the object of Sanguinetti s admiration was not 
 within the range of vision of a passer-by, and I 
 waited some time without her appearing. At last, 
 having improvised a purchase, I entered the 
 aromatic precinct. To my vexation, the attendant 
 
Theodolinde 129 
 
 who came forward to serve me was not the charming 
 woman whom I had seen the evening before on the 
 pavement, but the young person of inferior attrac 
 tions who had come to the door to call her. This 
 young person also wore a black silk dress and had 
 a very neat figure: she was beautifully coiffee and 
 very polite. But she was a very different affair 
 from Sanguinetti s friend, and I rather grudged the 
 five francs that I paid her for the little bottle of 
 lavender water that I didn t want. What should I 
 do with a bottle of lavender water? I would give 
 it to Sanguinetti. I lingered in the shop under 
 half a dozen pretexts, but still saw no sign of its 
 lovelier inmate. The other young woman stood 
 smiling and rubbing her hands, answering my ques 
 tions and giving explanations with high-pitched 
 urbanity. At last I took up my little bottle and laid 
 my hand upon the door-knob. At that moment a 
 velvet curtain was raised at the back of the shop, 
 and the hairdresser s wife presented herself. She 
 stood there a moment with the curtain lifted, look 
 ing out and smiling: on her beautiful head was 
 poised a crisp little morning-cap. Yes, she was 
 lovely, and I really understood Sanguinetti s sudden 
 passion. But I could not stand there staring at her, 
 and I had exhausted my expedients : I was obliged 
 to withdraw. I came and stood in front of the 
 shop, however, and presently she approached the 
 
130 Master Eustace 
 
 window. She looked into it to see if it was in 
 proper order. She was still smiling she seemed 
 always to be smiling but she gave no sign of seeing 
 me, and I felt that if there had been a dozen men 
 standing there, she would have worn that same 
 sweetly unconscious mask. She glanced about her 
 a moment, and then, extending a plump little 
 white hand, she gave a touch to the back hair of 
 one of the waxen ladies the right-hand one, the 
 blond. 
 
 A couple of hours later, rising from breakfast, 
 I repaired to my little balcony, from which post of 
 observation I instantly espied a figure stationed at 
 the hairdresser s window. If I had not recognized 
 it otherwise, the absorbed, contemplative droop of 
 its head would at once have proved it to be San- 
 guinetti. "Why does he not go inside?" I asked 
 myself. "He can t look at her properly out there." 
 At this conclusion he appeared himself to have 
 arrived, for he suddenly straightened himself up 
 and entered the establishment. He remained within 
 a long time. I grew tired of waiting for him to 
 reappear, and went back to my armchair to finish 
 reading the Debats. I had just accomplished this 
 somewhat arduous feat when I heard the lame 
 tinkle of my door-bell, a few moments after which 
 Sanguinetti was ushered in. 
 
 He really looked love-sick : he was pale and heavy- 
 
Theodolinde 131 
 
 eyed. "My too-susceptible friend," I said, "you 
 are very far gone." 
 
 "Yes," he answered: "I am really in love. It 
 is too ridiculous. Please don t tell anyone." 
 
 "I shall certainly tell no one," I declared. "But 
 it does not seem to me exactly ridiculous." 
 
 He gave me a grateful stare: "Ah, if you don t 
 find it so, tant inieux." 
 
 "Regrettable, rather: that s what I should call 
 it." 
 
 He gave me another stare : "You think I can t 
 afford it?" 
 
 "It is not so much that." 
 
 "You think it won t look well? I will arrange 
 it so that the harshest critic will be disarmed. This 
 morning," he added in a moment, "she looks lovelier 
 than ever." 
 
 "Yes, I have had a glimpse of her myself," I 
 said. "And you have been in the shop ?" 
 
 "I have spent half an hour there. I thought it 
 best to go straight to the point." 
 
 "What did you say? 
 
 "I said the simple truth that I have an intense 
 desire to possess her." 
 
 "And the hairdresser s wife? how did she take 
 it?" 
 
 "She seemed a good deal amused." 
 
 "Amused, simply? Nothing more?" 
 
132 Master Eustace 
 
 "I think she was a little flattered." 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Yes," my companion rejoined, "for, after all, 
 her own exquisite taste is half the business." To 
 this proposition I cordially assented, and San- 
 guinetti went on: "But, after all, too, the dear 
 creature won t lose that in coming to me. I shall 
 make arrangements to have her hair dressed regu 
 larly." 
 
 "I see that you mean to do things en prince. Who 
 is it that dresses her hair? 
 
 "The coiffeur himself." 
 
 "The husband?" 
 
 "Exactly. They say he is the best in Paris." 
 
 "The best husband?" I asked. 
 
 "My dear fellow, be serious the best coiffeur." 
 
 "It will certainly be very obliging of him." 
 
 "Of course," said Sanguinetti, "I shall pay him 
 
 for his visits, as if as if " And he paused 
 
 a moment. 
 
 "As if what?" 
 
 "As if she were one of his fine ladies. His wife 
 tells me that he goes to all the duchesses." 
 
 "Of course," I replied, "that will be something. 
 But still " 
 
 "You mean," said my companion, "that I live so 
 far away? I know that, but I will pay him his 
 cab-fare." 
 
Theodolinde 133 
 
 I looked at him, and I couldn t help it I began 
 to laugh. I had never seen such a strange mixture 
 of ardor and coolness. 
 
 "Ah/ he exclaimed, blushing, "you do think it 
 ridiculous ?" 
 
 "Yes," I said, "coming to this point, I confess it 
 makes me laugh." 
 
 "I don t care," Sanguinetti declared with amiable 
 doggedness : "I mean to keep her to myself." 
 
 Just at this time my attention was much taken up 
 by the arrival in Paris of some relatives who had no 
 great talent for assimilating their habits to foreign 
 customs, and who carried me about in their train 
 as cicerone and interpreter. For three or four 
 weeks I was constantly in their company, and I 
 saw much less of Sanguinetti that I had done 
 before. He used to appear, however, at odd mo 
 ments in my rooms, being, as may be imagined, 
 very often in the neighborhood. I always asked 
 him for the latest tidings of his grand passion, which 
 had begun to glow with a fervor that made him per 
 fectly indifferent to the judgment of others. The 
 poor fellow was most sincerely in love. 
 
 "Je suis tout a ma passion," he would say when 
 I asked him the news. "Until that matter is settled 
 I can think of nothing else. I have always been so 
 when I have wanted a thing intensely. It has be- 
 
134 Master Eustace 
 
 come a monomania, a fixed idea ; and naturally this 
 case is not an exception." 
 
 He was always going into the shop. "We talk 
 it over," he said. "She can t make up her mind." 
 
 "I can imagine the difficulty," I answered. 
 
 "She says it s a great change." 
 
 "I can also imagine that." 
 
 "I never see the husband," said Sanguinetti. "He 
 is always away with his duchesses. But she 
 talks it over with him. At first he wouldn t listen 
 to it." 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 "He said it would be an irreparable loss. But 
 I am in hopes he will come round. He can get on 
 very well with the other." 
 
 "The other? the little dark one? She is not 
 nearly so pretty." 
 
 "Of course not. But she isn t bad in her way. 
 I really think," said Sanguinetti, "that he will come 
 round. If he does not, we will do without his con 
 sent, and take the consequences. He will not be 
 sorry, after all, to have the money." 
 
 You may be sure that I felt plenty of surprise at 
 the business-like tone in which Sanguinetti dis 
 cussed this unscrupulous project of becoming the 
 "possessor" of another man s wife. There was cer 
 tainly no hypocrisy about it: he had quite passed 
 beyond the stage at which it is deemed needful to 
 
Theodolinde 135 
 
 throw a sop to propriety. But I said to myself that 
 this was doubtless the Parisian tone, and that since 
 it had made its mark upon so perfect a little model 
 of social orthodoxy as my estimable friend, nothing 
 was more possible than that I too should become 
 equally perverted. Whenever, after this, San- 
 guinetti came in, he had something to say at first 
 about the lovely creature across the way. "Have 
 you noticed her this morning?" he would demand. 
 "She is really enchanting. I thought of asking 
 leave to kiss her." 
 
 "I wonder you should ask leave," I answered. "I 
 should suppose you would do it without leave, and 
 count upon being forgiven." 
 
 "I am afraid of hurting her," he said. "And 
 then if I should be seen from the street, it would 
 look rather absurd." 
 
 I could only say that he seemed to me a very 
 odd mixture of audacity and discretion, but he went 
 on without heeding my comments: "You may 
 laugh at the idea, but, upon my word, to me she is 
 different every day : she has never the same expres 
 sion. Sometimes she s a little melancholy some 
 times she s in high spirits." 
 
 "I should say she was always smiling." 
 
 "Superficially, yes/ said Sanguinetti. "That s all 
 the vulgar see. But there s something beneath it 
 the most delicious little pensive look. At bottom 
 
136 Master Eustace 
 
 she s sad. She s weary of her position there, it s so 
 public." 
 
 "Yesterday she was very pale/ he would say at 
 another time. "I m sure she wants rest. That con 
 stant movement can t be good for her. It s true/* 
 he added, "that she moves very slowly." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "she seemed to me to move very 
 slowly." 
 
 "And so beautifully! Still, with me," Sanguinetti 
 went on, "she shall be perfectly quiet: I will see 
 how that suits her." 
 
 "I should think," I objected, "that she would 
 need a little exercise." 
 
 He stared a moment, and then accused me, as 
 he often did, of "making game of him." "There 
 is something in your tone in saying that," he de 
 clared; but he very shortly afterward forgot my 
 sarcastic tendencies, and came to announce to me 
 a change in the lady s coiffure : "Have you noticed 
 that she has her hair dressed differently? I don t 
 know that I like it : it covers up her forehead. But 
 it s beautifully done, it s entirely new, and you will 
 see that it will set the fashion for all Paris." 
 
 "Do they take the fashion from her?" I asked. 
 
 "Always. All the knowing people keep a note of 
 her successive coiffures." 
 
 "And when you have carried her off, what will 
 the knowing people do?" 
 
Theodolinde 137 
 
 "They will go by the other, the dark one 
 Mademoiselle Clementine." 
 
 "Is that her name ? And the name of your sweet 
 heart?" 
 
 Sanguinetti looked at me an instant with his usual 
 helplessly mistrustful little blush, and then he an 
 swered, "Theodolinde." 
 
 When I asked him how his suit was prospering, 
 he usually replied that he believed it to be merely a 
 question of time. "We keep talking it over, and 
 in that way, at any rate, I can see her. The poor 
 woman can t get used to the idea." 
 
 "I should think not." 
 
 "She says it would change everything that the 
 shop would be a different place without her. She 
 is so well known, so universally admired. I tell her 
 that it will not be impossible to get a clever sub 
 stitute; and she answers that, clever as the sub 
 stitute may be, she will never have the peculiar charm 
 of Theodolinde." 
 
 "Ah! she herself is aware then of this peculiar 
 charm?" 
 
 "Perfectly, and it delights her to have me talk 
 about it." 
 
 A part of the charm s peculiarity, I reflected, was 
 that it was not spoiled by the absence of modesty; 
 yet I also remembered the coiffeur s handsome wife 
 had looked extremely modest. Sanguinetti, how- 
 
138 Master Eustace 
 
 ever, appeared bent upon ministering to her vanity : 
 I learned that he was making her presents. "I have 
 given her a pair of earrings," he announced, "and 
 she is wearing them now. Do notice them as you 
 pass. They are great big amethysts, and are ex 
 tremely becoming." 
 
 I looked out for our beautiful friend the next 
 time I left the house, but she was not visible through 
 the hairdresser s window. Her plainer companion 
 was waiting upon a fine lady, presumably one of 
 the duchesses, while Madame Theodolinde herself, 
 I supposed, was posturing before one of the mirrors 
 in the inner apartment with Sanguinetti s big ame 
 thysts in her ears. 
 
 One day he told me that he had determined to 
 buy her a parure, and he greatly wished I would 
 come and help him choose it. I called him an ex 
 travagant dog, but I good-naturedly consented to 
 accompany him to the jeweler s. He led me to the 
 Palais Royal, and there, somewhat to my surprise, 
 introduced me into one of those dazzling little shops 
 which wear upon their front in neat gilt letters 
 the candid announcement, "Imitation." Here you 
 may purchase any number of glittering gems for 
 the most trifling sum, and indulge at a moderate 
 expense a pardonable taste for splendor. And the 
 splendor is most effective, the glitter of the counter 
 feit jewels most natural. It is only the sentiment 
 
Theodolinde 139 
 
 of the thing, you say to yourself, that prevents you 
 from making all your purchases of jewelry in one 
 of these convenient establishments; though, indeed, 
 as their proprietors very aptly remark, five thou 
 sand dollars more is a good deal to pay for senti 
 ment. Of this expensive superstition, however, I 
 should have expected Sanguinetti to be guilty. 
 
 "You are not going to get a real set ?" I asked. 
 
 He seemed a little annoyed : "Wouldn t you in 
 that case blow me up for my extravagance?" 
 
 "It is highly probable. And yet a present of 
 false jewelry ! The handsomer it is, you know, the 
 more ridiculous it is." 
 
 "I have thought of that," said my friend, "and 
 I confess I am rather ashamed of myself. I should 
 like to give her a real set. But, you see, I want 
 diamonds and sapphires, and a real set such as I 
 desire would cost about twenty thousand dollars. 
 
 That s a good deal for for " And he paused 
 
 a moment. 
 
 "For a barber s wife," I said to myself. 
 
 "Besides," my companion added, "she won t know 
 the difference." I thought he rather under-esti 
 mated her intelligence : a pretty Parisienne was, by 
 instinct, a judge of parures. I remembered, how 
 ever, that he had rarely spoken of this lady s intel 
 lectual qualities : he had dwelt exclusively upon her 
 beauty and sweetness. So I stood by him while he 
 
140 Master Eustace 
 
 purchased for two hundred francs a gorgeous neck 
 lace and coronet of the stones of Golconda. His 
 passion was an odd affair altogether, and an oddity 
 the more or the less hardly mattered. He remarked, 
 moreover, that he had at home a curious collection 
 of artificial gems, and that these things would be 
 an interesting addition to his stock. "I shall make 
 her wear them all," he exclaimed ; and I wondered 
 how she would like it. 
 
 He told me afterwards that his offering had been 
 most gratefully received, that she was now wearing 
 the wonderful necklace, and that she looked lovelier 
 than ever. 
 
 That evening, however, I stopped before the shop 
 to catch a glimpse, if possible, of the barber s lady 
 thus splendidly adorned. I had seldom been fortu 
 nate enough to espy her, and on this occasion I 
 turned away disappointed. Just as I was doing so 
 I perceived something which suggested that she was 
 making a fool of my amiable friend. On the radiant 
 bosom of one of the great waxen dolls in her win 
 dow glittered a necklace of brilliants which bore a 
 striking resemblance to the article I had helped 
 Sanguinetti to select. She had made over her 
 lover s tribute to this rosy effigy, to whom, it must 
 be confessed, it was very becoming. 
 
 Yet, for all this, I was out in my calculation. A 
 week later Sanguinetti came into my rooms with a 
 
Theodolinde 141 
 
 radiant countenance, and announced to me the con 
 summation of his dream. "She is mine! she is 
 mine! mine only!" he cried, dropping into a chair. 
 
 "She has left the shop?" I demanded. 
 
 "Last night at eleven o clock. We went off in 
 a cab." 
 
 "You have her at home ?" 
 
 "For ever and ever!" he declared ecstatically. 
 
 "My dear fellow, my compliments !" 
 
 "It was not an easy matter," he went on. "But 
 I held her in my arms." 
 
 I renewed my compliments, and said I hoped she 
 was happy; and he declared that she was smiling 
 more than ever. Positively! And he added that I 
 must immediately come and see her : he was im 
 patient to present me. Nothing, I answered, would 
 give me greater pleasure, but meanwhile what did 
 the husband say? 
 
 "He grumbles a bit," said Sanguinetti, "but I 
 gave him five hundred francs." 
 
 "You have got off easily," I said ; and I promised 
 that at my first moment of leisure I would call upon 
 my friend s new companion. I saw him three or 
 four times before this moment arrived, and he 
 assured me that she had made a happy man of 
 him. "Whenever I have greatly wanted a thing, 
 waited for it, and at last got it, I have always been 
 in bliss for a month afterward," he said. "But 
 
142 Master Eustace 
 
 I think that this time my pleasure will really last/ 
 
 "It will last as long, I hope, as she does herself/ 
 I answered. 
 
 "I am sure it will. This is the sort of thing 
 yes, smile away in which I get my happiness." 
 
 "Vous n etes pas difficile," I rejoined. 
 
 "Of course she s perishable," he added in a mo 
 ment. 
 
 "Ah !" said I, "you must take good care of her." 
 
 And a day or two later, on his coming for me, 
 I went with him to his apartment. His rooms were 
 charming, and lined from ceiling to floor with the 
 "pretty things" of the occupant tapestries and 
 bronzes, terra-cotta medallions and precious speci 
 mens of porcelain. There were cabinets and tables 
 charged with similar treasures : the place was a per 
 fect little museum. Sanguinetti led me through two 
 or three rooms, and then stopped near a window, 
 close to which, half hidden by the curtain, stood a 
 lady, with her head turned away from us, looking 
 out. In spite of our approach, she stood motion 
 less until my friend went up to her and with a 
 gallant, affectionate movement placed his arm round 
 her waist. Hereupon she slowly turned and gazed 
 at me with a beautiful brilliant face and large quiet 
 eyes. 
 
 "It is a pity she creaks," said my companion as 
 I was making my bow. And then, as I made it, 
 
Theodolinde 143 
 
 I perceived with amazement and amusement the 
 cause of her creaking. She existed only from the 
 waist upward, and the skirt of her dress was a very 
 neat pedestal covered with red velvet. Sanguinetti 
 gave another loving twist, and she slowly revolved 
 again, making a little gentle squeal. She exhibited 
 the back of her head, with its beautifully braided 
 tresses resting upon her sloping waxen shoulders. 
 She was the right-hand effigy of the coiffeur s win 
 dow the blond! Her movement, as Sanguinetti 
 had claimed, was particularly commendable, and of 
 all his pretty things she was certainly the prettiest. 
 
A LIGHT MAN 
 
A LIGHT MAN 
 
 And I what I seem to my friend, you see 
 What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess. 
 
 What I seem to myself, do you ask of me? 
 No hero, I confess. 
 
 A LIGHT WOMAN. BROWNING S MEN AND WOMEN. 
 
 APRIL 4, 1857. I have changed my sky with 
 out changing my mind. I resume these old 
 notes in a new world. I hardly know of 
 what use they are; but it s easier to preserve the 
 habit than to break it. I have been at home now a 
 week at home, forsooth! And yet after all, it is 
 home. Pm dejected, I m bored, I m blue. How 
 can a man be more at home than that? Neverthe 
 less, I m the citizen of a great country, and for that 
 matter, of a great city. I walked to-day some ten 
 miles or so along Broadway, and on the whole I 
 don t blush for my native land. We re a capable 
 race and a good-looking withal ; and I don t see why 
 we shouldn t prosper as well as another. This, by 
 the way, ought to be a very encouraging reflection. 
 
 147 
 
148 Master Eustace 
 
 A capable fellow and a good-looking withal ; I don t 
 see why he shouldn t die a millionnaire. At all 
 events he must set bravely to work. When a man 
 has, at thirty-two, a net income of considerably less 
 than nothing, he can scarcely hope to overtake a 
 fortune before he himself is overtaken by age and 
 philosophy- two deplorable obstructions. I m 
 afraid that one of them has already planted itself in 
 my path. What am I? What do I wish? Whither 
 do I tend? What do I believe? I am constantly 
 beset by these impertinent whisperings. Formerly 
 it was enough that I was Maximus Austin; that I 
 was endowed with a cheerful mind and a good 
 digestion; that one day or another, when I had 
 come to the end, I should return to America and 
 begin at the beginning; that, meanwhile, existence 
 was sweet in in the Rue Tranchet. But now! 
 Has the sweetness really passed out of life? Have 
 I eaten the plums and left nothing but the bread 
 and milk and corn-starch, or whatever the horrible 
 concoction is? we had it to-day for dinner. 
 Pleasure, at least, I imagine pleasure pure and 
 simple, pleasure crude, brutal and vulgar this poor 
 flimsy delusion has lost all its prettiness. I shall 
 never again care for certain things and indeed for 
 certain persons. Of such things, of such persons, I 
 firmly maintain, however, that I was never an en 
 thusiastic votary. It would be more to my credit, 
 
A Light Man 149 
 
 I. suppose, if I had been. More would be forgiven 
 me if I had loved a little more, if into all my folly 
 and egotism I had put a little more naivete and sin 
 cerity. Well, I did the best I could, I was at once 
 too bad and too good for it all. At present, if s far 
 enough off; I ve put the sea between us. I m 
 stranded. I sit high and dry, scanning the horizon 
 for a friendly sail, or waiting for a high tide to set 
 me afloat. The wave of pleasure has planted me 
 here in the sand. Shall I owe my rescue to the wave 
 of pain? At moments my heart throbs with a sort 
 of ecstatic longing to expiate my stupid peccadil 
 loes. I see, as through a glass, darkly, the beauty 
 of labor and love. Decidedly, I m willing to work. 
 It s written. 
 
 7th. My sail is in sight ; it s at hand ; I ve all but 
 boarded the vessel. I received this morning a letter 
 from the best man in the world. Here it is : 
 
 DEAR MAX : I see this very moment, in the old newspaper 
 which had already passed through my hands without yielding 
 up its most precious item, the announcement of your arrival 
 in New York. To think of your having perhaps missed the 
 grasp of my hand. Here it is, dear Max to rap on the 
 knuckles, if you like. When I say I have just read of your 
 arrival, I mean that twenty minutes have elapsed by the clock. 
 These have been spent in conversation with my excellent 
 friend Mr. Frederick Sloane your excellent self being the 
 subject. I haven t time to say more about Mr. Sloane than 
 that he is very anxious to make your acquaintance, and that, 
 if your time is not otherwise predestined, he would esteem 
 it a particular favor to have you pass a month under his roof 
 the ample roof which covers my own devoted head. It ap- 
 
150 Master Eustace 
 
 pears that he knew your mother very intimately, and he has a 
 taste for visiting the amenities of the parents upon the chil 
 dren ; the original ground of my own connection with him 
 was that he had been a particular friend of my father. You 
 may have heard your mother speak of him a perfect eccen 
 tric, but a charming one. He will make you most welcome. 
 But whether or no you come for his sake, come for mine. 
 I have a hundred questions on the end of my pen, but I can t 
 drop them, lest I should lose the mail. You ll not refuse me 
 without an excellent reason, and I shan t excuse you, even 
 then. So the sooner the better. Yours more than ever, 
 
 THEODORE LISLE. 
 
 Theodore s letter is of course very kind, but it s 
 perfectly obscure. My mother may have had the 
 highest regards for Mr. Sloane, but she never men 
 tioned his name in my hearing. Who is he, what 
 is he, and what is the nature of his relations with 
 Theodore? I shall learn betimes. I have written 
 to Theodore that I gladly accept (I believe I sup 
 pressed the "gladly" though) his friend s invita 
 tion, and that I shall immediately present myself. 
 What better can I do? I shall, at the narrowest 
 calculation, obtain food and lodging while I invoke 
 the fates. I shall have a basis of operations. D., 
 it appears, is a long day s journey, but delicious 
 when you reach it. I m curious to see a delicious 
 \ American town. And a month s stay! Mr. Fred 
 erick Sloane, whoever you are, vous faites bien les 
 chose s, and the little that I know of you is very much 
 to your credit. You enjoyed the friendship of my 
 dear mother, you possess the esteem of my incom- 
 
A Light Man 151 
 
 parable Theodore, you commend yourself to my own 
 affection. At this rate, I shan t grudge it. 
 
 D , 1 4th. I have been here since Thursday 
 
 evening three days. As we rattled up to the 
 tavern in the village, I perceived from the top of 
 the coach, in the twilight, Theodore beneath the 
 porch, scanning the vehicle, with all his affectionate 
 soul in his eyes. I made hardly more than two down 
 ward strides into his arms or, at all events, into 
 his hands. He has grown older, of course, in these 
 five years, but less so than I had expected. His is 
 one of those smooth unwrinkled souls that infuse 
 a perennial fairness and freshness into the body. 
 As tall as ever, moreover, and as lean and clean. 
 How short and fat and dark and debauched he 
 makes one feel ! By nothing he says or means, of 
 course, but merely by his old unconscious purity and 
 simplicity that slender aspiring rectitude which 
 makes him remind you of the tower of an English 
 abbey. He greeted me with smiles, and stares, and 
 formidable blushes. He assures me that he never 
 would have known me, and that five years have 
 quite transformed my physiognomy. I asked him 
 if it was for the better? He looked at me hard 
 for a moment, with his eyes of blue, and then, for 
 all answer, he blushed again. 
 
 On my arrival we agreed to walk over from the 
 village. He dismissed his wagon with my trunk, 
 
152 Master Eustace 
 
 and we went arm-in-arm through the dusk. The 
 town is seated at the foot of certain mountains, 
 whose names I have yet to learn, and at the head of 
 a vast sheet of water which, as yet, too, I know 
 only as "The Lake." The road hitherward soon 
 leaves the village and wanders in rural loveliness by 
 the lakeside. Sometimes the water is hidden by 
 clumps of trees, behind which we heard it lapping 
 and gurgling in the darkness ; sometimes it stretches 
 out from your feet in unspotted beauty, offering its 
 broad white bosom to the embrace of the dark fra 
 ternal hills. The walk from the tavern takes some 
 half an hour, in which space Theodore had explained 
 his position to my comparative satisfaction. Mr. 
 Sloane is old, widowed and rich ; his age is seventy- 
 two, and as his health is thoroughly broken, is prac 
 tically even greater; and his fortune Theodore, 
 characteristically, doesn t know its numerical for 
 mula. It s probably a round million. He has lived 
 much abroad, and in the thick of things; he has 
 had adventures and passions and all that sort of 
 thing; and now, in the evening of his days, like an 
 old French diplomat, he takes it into his head to 
 write his memoirs. To this end he has taken poor 
 Theodore to his generous side, to serve as his guide, 
 philosopher and friend. He has been a great 
 scribbler, says Theodore, all his days, and he pro 
 poses to incorporate a large amount of promiscuous 
 
A Light Man 153 
 
 literary matter into this singular record of his 
 existence. Theodore s principal function seems to 
 be to get him to leave things out. In fact, the poor 
 boy seems troubled in conscience. His patron s 
 lucubrations have taken the turn of all memoirs, 
 and become tout bonnement immoral. On the 
 whole, he declares they are a very odd mixture a 
 jumble of pretentious trash and of excellent good 
 sense. I can readily understand it. The old man 
 bores me, puzzles me, and amuses me. 
 
 He was in waiting to receive me. We found 
 him in his library which, by the way, is simply 
 the most delightful apartment that I ever smoked 
 a cigar in a room for a lifetime. At one end 
 stands a great fireplace, with a florid, fantastic 
 mantel-piece in carved white marble an importa 
 tion, of course, and as one may say, an interpola 
 tion; the groundwork of the house, the "fixtures," 
 being throughout plain, solid and domestic. Over 
 the mantel-shelf is a large landscape painting, a soi- 
 disant Gainsborough, full of the mellow glory of 
 an English summer. Beneath it stands a fantastic 
 litter of French bronzes and outlandish chinoiseries. 
 Facing the door, as you enter, is a vast window set 
 in a recess, with cushioned seats and large clear 
 panes, stationed as it were at the very apex of the 
 lake (which forms an almost perfect oval) and com 
 manding a view of its whole extent. At the other 
 
154 Master Eustace 
 
 end, opposite the fire-place, the wall is studded, from 
 floor to ceiling, with choice foreign paintings, placed 
 in relief against the orthodox crimson screen. 
 Elsewhere the walls are covered with books, ar 
 ranged neither in formal regularity nor quite 
 helter-skelter, but in a sort of genial mutual incon 
 gruity, which tells that sooner or later each volume 
 feels sure of leaving the ranks and returning into 
 different company. Mr. Sloane uses his books. 
 His two passions, according to Theodore, are read 
 ing and talking; but to talk he must have a book 
 in his hand. The charm of the room lies in the 
 absence of the portentous soberness the browns, 
 and blacks, and greys which distinguish most 
 rooms of its class. It s a sort of female study. 
 There are half a dozen light colors scattered about 
 pink in the carpet, tender blue in the curtains, 
 yellow in the chairs. The result is a general 
 look of brightness, and lightness, and unpe- 
 dantic elegance. You perceive the place to be 
 the home, not of a man of learning, but of a 
 man of fancy. 
 
 He rose from his chair the man of fancy, to 
 greet me the man of fact. As I looked upon him, 
 in the lamp-light, it seemed to me, for the first five 
 minutes, that I had seldom seen a worse-favored 
 human creature. It took me then five minutes to 
 get the point of view ; then I began to admire. He 
 
^ A Light Man 155 
 
 is under-sized, or at best of my own moderate 
 stature, bent and contracted with years ; thin, how 
 ever, where I am stout, and light where I am heavy. 
 In color we re about equally dark. Mr. Sloane, 
 however, is curiously pale, with a dead opaque yellow 
 pallor. Literally, it s a magnificent yellow. His 
 skin is of just the hue and apparent texture of some 
 old crumpled Oriental scroll. I know a dozen 
 painters who would give more than they have to ar 
 rive at the exact "tone" of his thick-veined saffron- 
 colored hands his polished ivory knuckles. His 
 eyes are circled with red, but within their unhealthy 
 orbits they scintillate like black diamonds. His 
 nose, owing to the falling away of other portions 
 of his face, has assumed a grotesque, unnatural 
 prominence ; it describes an immense arch, gleaming 
 like parchment stretched on ivory. He has kept his 
 teeth, but replaced his hair by a dead black wig; of 
 course he s clean shaven. In his dress he has a 
 muffled, wadded look, and an apparent aversion to 
 linen, inasmuch as none is visible on his person. He 
 seems neat enough, but not fastidious. At first, 
 as I say, I fancied him monstrously ugly; but on 
 further acquaintance I perceived that what I had 
 taken for ugliness is nothing but the incomplete re 
 mains of remarkable good looks. The lines of his 
 features are delicate ; his nose, ceteris paribus, would 
 be extremely handsome ; his eyes are the eyes of a 
 
156 Master Eustace 
 
 mind, not of a body. There is intelligence on his 
 brow and sweetness on his lips. 
 
 He offered his two hands, as Theodore intro 
 duced me ; I gave him my own, and he stood smiling 
 upon me like some quaint old image in ivory and 
 ebony, scanning my face with the sombre sparkle 
 of his gaze. "Good heaven !" he said, at last, "how 
 much you look like your father." I sat down, and 
 for half an hour we talked of many things; of my 
 journey, of my impressions of home, of my remi 
 niscences of Europe, and, by implication, of my 
 prospects. His voice is aged and cracked, but he 
 uses it with immense energy. Mr. Sloane is not yet 
 in his dotage, by a long shot. He nevertheless 
 makes himself out a woefully old man. In reply 
 to an inquiry I made about his health, he fa 
 vored me with a long list of his infirmities 
 (some of which are very trying, certainly) and 
 assured me that he had but a mere pinch of vitality 
 left. 
 
 "I live," he said, "out of mere curiosity." 
 
 "I have heard of people dying," I answered, "from 
 the same motive." 
 
 He looked at me a moment, as if to ascertain 
 whether I was making light of his statement. And 
 then, after a pause, "Perhaps you don t know," 
 said he, with a certain vague pomposity, "that I 
 disbelieve in a future life." 
 
A Light Man 157 
 
 Poor Theodore! at these words he got up and 
 walked to the fire. 
 
 "Well, we shan t quarrel about that," said I. 
 Theodore turned round, staring. 
 
 "Do you mean that you agree with me ?" the old 
 man asked. 
 
 "I certainly haven t come here to talk theology. 
 Dear me, Mr. Sloane," I said, "don t ask me to 
 disbelieve, and I ll never ask you to believe." 
 
 "Come," cried Mr. Sloane, rubbing his hands, 
 "you ll not persuade me you re a Christian like 
 your friend Theodore there." 
 
 "Like Theodore assuredly not." And then, 
 somehow, I don t know why, at the thought of 
 Theodore s Christianism , I burst into a laugh. 
 "Excuse me, my dear fellow," I said, "you know, 
 for the last ten years I have lived in Catholic 
 countries." 
 
 "Good, good, good!" cried Mr. Sloane, rubbing 
 his hands and clapping them together, and laugh 
 ing with high relish. 
 
 "Dear me," said Theodore, smiling, but vaguely 
 apprehensive, too and a little touched, perhaps, by 
 my involuntary reflection upon the quality of his 
 faith, "I hope you re not a Roman Catholic." 
 
 I saw the old man, with his hands locked, eyeing 
 me shrewdly, and waiting for my answer. I pon 
 dered a moment in mock gravity. "I shall make my 
 
158 Master Eustace 
 
 confession," I said. "I ve been in the East, you 
 know. I m a Mohammedan!" 
 
 Hereupon Mr. Sloane broke out into a wheezy 
 ecstasy of glee. Verily, I thought, if he lives for 
 curiosity, he s easily satisfied. 
 
 We went into dinner, in the constitution of which 
 I should have been at loss to suggest the shadow of 
 an improvement. I observed, by the way, that for 
 a victim of paralysis, neuralgia, dyspepsia, and a 
 thousand other ills, Mr. Sloane plies a most incon 
 sequential knife and fork. Sweets, and spices, and 
 condiments seem to be the chief of his diet. After 
 dinner he dismissed us, in consideration of my 
 natural desire to see my friend in private. Theo 
 dore has capital quarters a chamber and sitting- 
 room as luxurious as a man (or as a woman, for 
 that matter) could possibly wish. We talked till 
 near midnight of ourselves and of our lemon- 
 colored host below. That is, I spoke of myself, 
 and Theodore listened ; and then Theodore told of 
 Mr. Sloane and I listened. His commerce with the 
 old man has sharpened his wits. Sloane has taught 
 him to observe and judge, and Theodore turns 
 around, observes, judges him! He has become 
 quite the critic and analyst. There is something 
 very pleasant in the sagacity of virtue, in discern 
 ment without bitterness, penetration without spite. 
 Theodore has all these unalloyed graces, to say 
 
A Light Man 159 
 
 nothing of an angelic charity. At midnight we re 
 paired to the library to take leave of our host till the 
 morrow an attention which, under all circum 
 stances, he formally exacts. As I gave him my 
 hand he held it again and looked at me as he had 
 done on my arrival. "Good heaven/ he said, at 
 last, "how much you look like your mother!" 
 
 To-night, at the end of my third day, I begin to 
 feel decidedly at home. The fact is, I m supremely 
 comfortable. The house is pervaded by an indefin 
 able, irresistible air of luxury and privacy. Mr. 
 Frederick Sloane must be a horribly corrupt old 
 mortal. Already in his hateful, delightful presence 
 I have become heartily reconciled to doing nothing. 
 But with Theodore on one side, I honestly believe 
 I can defy Mr. Sloane on the other. The former 
 asked me this morning, with real solicitude, in 
 allusion to the bit of dialogue I have quoted above 
 on matters of faith, if I had actually ceased to care 
 for divine things. I assured him that I would 
 rather utterly lose my sense of the picturesque, than 
 do anything to detract from the splendor of religious 
 worship. Some of the happiest hours of my life, 
 I told him, have been spent in cathedrals. He looked 
 at me awhile, in friendly sadness. "I hardly know," 
 he said, "whether you are worse than Mr. Sloane, 
 or better." 
 
 But Theodore is, after all, in duty bound to give 
 
160 Master Eustace 
 
 a man a long rope in these matters. His own rope 
 is one of the longest. He reads Voltaire with Mr. 
 Sloane, and Emerson in his own room. He s the 
 stronger man of the two; he has the bigger stomach. 
 Mr. Sloane delights, of course, in Voltaire, but he 
 can t read a line of Emerson. Theodore delights 
 in Emerson, and has excellent taste in the matter of 
 Voltaire. It appears that since we parted in Paris, 
 five years ago, his conscience has dwelt in many 
 lands. C est toute une histoire which he tells very 
 nicely. He left college determined to enter the 
 ministry, and came abroad to lay the basis of his 
 theological greatness in some German repository of 
 science. He appears to have studied, not wisely but 
 too well. Instead of faith full-armed and serene, 
 there sprang from the labor of his brain a myriad 
 abortive doubts, piping for sustenance. He went 
 for a winter to Italy, where, I take it, he was not 
 quite so much afflicted as he ought to have been, at 
 the sight of the beautiful spiritual repose which he 
 had missed. It was after this that we spent those 
 three months together in Brittany the best-spent 
 three months of my whole ten years abroad. Theo 
 dore inoculated me, I think, with a little of his 
 sacred fermentation, and I infused into his con 
 science something of my vulgar indifference; and 
 we agreed together that there were a few good 
 things left health, friendship, a summer sky, and 
 
A Light Man 161 
 
 the lovely by-ways of an old French province. He 
 came home, returned to theology, accepted a "call," 
 and made an attempt to respond to it. But the 
 inner voice failed him. His outlook was cheerless 
 enough. During his absence his married sister, the 
 elder one, had taken the other to live with her, re 
 lieving Theodore of the charge of contribution to 
 her support. But suddenly, behold the husband, the 
 brother-in-law, dies, leaving a mere fragment of 
 property; and the two ladies, with their two little 
 girls, are afloat in the wide world. Theodore finds 
 himself at twenty-six without an income, without a 
 profession, and with a family of four females to 
 support. Well, in his quiet way, he draws on his 
 courage. The history of the two years which pre 
 ceded his initiation here is a simple record of prac 
 tical manly devotion. He rescued his sisters and 
 nieces from the deep waters, placed them high and 
 dry, established them somewhere in decent gen 
 tility and then found at last that his strength had 
 left him had dropped dead like an over-ridden 
 horse. In short, he had worked himself ill. It was 
 now his sisters turn. They nursed him with all the 
 added tenderness of gratitude for the past and 
 terror of the future, and brought him safely through 
 a grievous malady. Meanwhile Mr. Sloane, having 
 decided to treat himself to a private secretary and 
 suffered dreadful mischance in three successive ex- 
 
162 Master Eustace 
 
 periments, had heard of Theodore s situation and 
 his merits; had furthermore recognized in him the 
 son of an early and intimate friend, and had finally 
 offered him the very comfortable position which he 
 now occupies. There is a decided incongruity be 
 tween Theodore as a man as Theodore, in fine 
 and the dear fellow as the intellectual agent, con 
 fidant, complaisant, purveyor, pander what you 
 will of a battered old cynic and worldly dilettante. 
 There seems at first sight a perfect want of agree 
 ment between his character and his function. One 
 is gold and the other brass, or something very like 
 it. But on reflection I perfectly conceive that he 
 should, under the circumstances, have accepted Mr. 
 Sloane s offer and been content to do his duties. 
 Just heaven ! Theodore s contentment in such a 
 case is a theme for the moralist a better moralist 
 than I. The best and purest mortals are an odd 
 mixture, and in none of us does honestly exist totus, 
 teres, atque rotundus. Ideally, Theodore hasn t the 
 smallest business dans cette galere. It offends my 
 sense of propriety to find him here. I feel like ad 
 monishing him as a friend that he has knocked at 
 the wrong door, and that he had better retreat 
 before he is brought to the blush. Really, as I say, 
 I suppose he might as well be here, as reading Emer 
 son "evenings," in the back parlor, to those two 
 very plain sisters judging from their photographs. 
 
A Light Man 163 
 
 Practically it hurts no one to compromise with his 
 tendencies. Poor Theodore was weak, depressed, 
 out of work. Mr. Sloane offers him a lodging and 
 a salary in return for after all, merely a little 
 forbearance. All he has to do is to read to the 
 old man, lay down the book awhile, with his finger 
 in the place, and let him talk; take it up again, 
 read another dozen pages and submit to another 
 commentary. Then to write a dozen pages under 
 his dictation to suggest a word, polish off a 
 period, or help him out with a reluctant idea or a 
 half -remembered fact. This is all, I say; and yet 
 this is much. Theodore s apparent success proves 
 it to be much, as well as the old man s satisfaction. 
 It s a part ; he plays it. He uses tact ; he has taken 
 a reef in his pride; he has clipped the sting of his 
 conscience, he listens, he talks, conciliates, accom 
 modates, flatters does it as well as many a worse 
 man does it far better than I. I might dominate 
 Mr. Sloane, but I doubt that I could serve him. But 
 after all, it s not a matter of better and worse. In 
 every son of woman there are two men the prac 
 tical man and the dreamer. We live for our 
 dreams but, meanwhile, we live by our wits. 
 When the dreamer is a poet, his brother is an artist. 
 Theodore is essentially a man of taste. If he were 
 not destined to become a high priest among moral 
 ists, he might be a prince among connoisseurs. He 
 
164 Master Eustace 
 
 plays his part then, artistically, with taste, with 
 relish with all the finesse of his delicate fancy. 
 How can Mr. Sloane fail to believe that he possesses 
 a paragon? He is no such fool as to misconceive a 
 belle ame when a belle dme comes in his way. He 
 confidentially assured me this morning that Theo 
 dore has the most beautiful mind in the world, but 
 that it s a pity he s so simple as not to suspect it. 
 If he only doesn t ruin him with his flattery! 
 
 1 9th. I m certainly fortunate among men. This 
 morning when, tentatively, I spoke of understaying 
 my month, Mr. Sloane rose from his seat in horror, 
 and declared that for the present I must regard his 
 house as my home. "Come, come," he said, "when 
 you leave this place where do you intend to go?" 
 Where, indeed? I graciously allowed Mr. Sloane 
 to have the best of the argument. Theodore assures 
 me that he appreciates these and other affabilities, 
 and that I have made what he calls a "conquest" of 
 his venerable heart. Poor, battered, bamboozled 
 old organ! he would have one believe that it has a 
 most tragical record of capture and recapture. At 
 all events, it appears that I m master of the citadel. 
 For the present I have no wish to evacuate. I 
 feel, nevertheless, in some far-off corner of my 
 soul, that I ought to shoulder my victorious banner 
 and advance to more fruitful triumphs. 
 
 I blush for my slothful inaction. It isn t that I m 
 
A Light Man 165 
 
 willing to stay here a month, but that I m willing 
 to stay here six. Such is the charming, disgusting 
 truth. Have I actually outlived the age of energy? 
 Have I survived my ambition, my integrity, my self- 
 respect? Verily I ought to have survived the habit 
 of asking myself silly questions. I made up my 
 mind long ago that I care deeply for nothing save 
 my own personal comfort, and I don t care for that 
 sufficiently to secure it at the cost of acute tem 
 porary suffering. I have a passion for nothing 
 not even for life. I know very well the appearance 
 I make in the world. I pass for intelligent, well- 
 informed, accomplished, amiable, strong. I m sup 
 posed to have a keen relish for letters, for music, 
 for science, for art. There was a time when I 
 fancied I cared for scientific research; but I know 
 now that I care for it as little as I really do for 
 Shakespeare, for Rubens, for Rossini. When I 
 was younger, I used to find a certain entertainment 
 in the contemplation of men and women. I liked 
 to see them hurrying on each other s heels across 
 the stage. But I m sick and tired of them now; 
 not that I m a misanthrope, God forbid. They re 
 not worth hating. I never knew but one creature 
 who was, and her I went and loved. To* be con 
 sistent, I ought to have hated my mother and now 
 I ought to hate Theodore. But I don t truly, on 
 the whole, I don t any more than I love him. I 
 
166 Master Eustace 
 
 firmly believe that a large portion of his happiness 
 rests upon his devout conviction that I really care 
 for him. He believes in that, as he believes in all 
 the rest of it in my knowledge, my music, my un 
 derlying "earnestness," my sense of beauty and love 
 of truth. Oh, for a man among them all a fellow 
 with eyes in his head eyes that would look me 
 through and through, and flash out in scorn of my 
 nothingness. Then, perhaps, I might answer him 
 with rage; then, perhaps, I might feel a simple, 
 healthy emotion. 
 
 In the name of bare nutrition in the fear of 
 starvation what am I to do? (I was obliged this 
 morning to borrow ten dollars from Theodore, who 
 remembered gleefully that he has been owing me no 
 less than twenty-five dollars for the past four years, 
 and in fact has preserved a note to this effect.) 
 Within the last week I have hatched a desperate 
 scheme. I have deliberately conceived the idea of 
 marrying money. Why not accept and utilize the 
 goods of the gods? It is not my fault, after all, if 
 I pass for a superior fellow. Why not admit that 
 practically, mechanically as I may say maritally, 
 I may be a superior fellow? I warrant myself, at 
 least, thoroughly gentle. I should never beat my 
 wife; I doubt that I should ever snub her. Assume 
 that her fortune has the proper number of zeros 
 and that she herself is one of them, and I can 
 
A Light Man 167 
 
 actually imagine her adoring me. It s not impos 
 sible that I ve hit the nail and solved my riddle. 
 Curiously, as I look back upon my brief career, it 
 all seems to tend in a certain way to this consum 
 mation. It has its graceful curves and crooks, in 
 deed, and here and there a passionate tangent; but 
 on the whole, if I were to unfold it here a la Ho 
 garth, what better legend could I scrawl beneath 
 the series of pictures than So-and-So s Progress to 
 a Mercenary Marriage? 
 
 Coming events do what we all know with their 
 shadows. My glorious destiny is, perhaps, not far 
 off. I already feel throughout my person a mag 
 nificent languor as from the possession of past 
 opulence. Or is it simply my sense of perfect well- 
 being in this perfectly appointed home ? Is it simply 
 the absolutely comfortable life I lead in this delicious 
 old house ? At all events, the house is delicious, and 
 my only complaint of Mr. Sloane is, that instead of 
 an old widower, he s not an old widow (or I a 
 young maid), so that I might marry him, survive 
 him, and dwell forever in this rich and mellow home. 
 As I write here, at my bedroom table, I have only 
 to stretch out an arm and raise the window curtain, 
 to see the thick-planted garden budding and breath 
 ing, and growing in the moonshine. Far above, in 
 the liquid darkness, sails the glory-freighted orb of 
 the moon ; beneath, in its light, lies the lake, in mur- 
 
168 Master Eustace 
 
 muring, troubled sleep; around stand the gentle 
 mountains, wearing the cold reflection on their 
 shoulders, or hiding it away in their glens. So much 
 for midnight. To-morrow the sun will be lovely 
 with the beauty of day. Under one aspect or an 
 other I have it always before me. At the end of 
 the garden is moored a boat, in which Theodore 
 and I have repeatedly explored the surface of the 
 lake, and visited the mild wilderness of its shores. 
 What lovely landward caves and bays what alder- 
 smothered creeks what lily-sheeted pools what 
 sheer steep hillsides, darkening the water with the 
 downward image of their earthly greenness. I con 
 fess that in these excursions Theodore does the 
 rowing and I the contemplation. Mr. Sloane avoids 
 the water on account of the dampness, he says; 
 but because he s afraid of drowning, I suspect. 
 
 22d. Theodore is right. The bonhomme has 
 taken me into his favor. I protest I don t see how 
 he was to escape it. I doubt that there has ever 
 been a better flattered man. I don t blush for it. 
 In one coin or another I must repay his hospitality 
 which is certainly very liberal. Theodore advises 
 him, helps him, comforts him ; I amuse him, surprise 
 him % deprave him. This is speaking vastly well for 
 my power. He pretends to be surprised at nothing, 
 and to possess in perfection poor, pitiable old fop 
 the art nil admirari; but repeatedly, I know, I 
 
A Light Man 169 
 
 have clear outskipped his fancy. As for his de 
 pravity, it s a very pretty piece of wickedness, but 
 it strikes me as a purely intellectual matter. I 
 imagine him never to have had any downright 
 senses. He may have been unclean; morally, he s 
 not over savory now; but he never can have been 
 what the French call a viveur. He s too delicate, 
 he s of a feminine turn; and what woman was ever 
 a viveur? He likes to sit in his chair, and read 
 scandal, talk scandal, make scandal, so far as he 
 may without catching a cold or incurring a head 
 ache. I already feel as if I had known him a life 
 time. I read him as clearly, I think, as if I had. 
 I know the type to which he belongs; I have en 
 countered, first and last, a round dozen of speci 
 mens. He s neither more nor less than a gossip 
 a gossip flanked by a coxcomb and an egotist. He s 
 shallow, vain, cold, superstitious, timid, pretentious, 
 capricious; a pretty jumble of virtues! And yet, 
 for all this, he has his good points. His caprices 
 are sometimes generous, I imagine ; and his aversion 
 to the harsh, cruel, and hideous, frequently takes the 
 form of positive kindness and charity. His mem 
 ory (for trifles) is remarkable, and (where his own 
 performances are not involved) his taste is excel 
 lent. He has no will for evil more than for good. 
 He is the victim, however, of more illusions with 
 regard to himself than I ever knew a human heart 
 
170 Master Eustace 
 
 to find lodging for. At the age of twenty, poor, 
 ignorant and remarkably handsome, he married a 
 woman of immense wealth, many years his senior. 
 At the end of three years she very considerately 
 went out of the world, and left him to the enjoy 
 ment of his freedom and riches. If he had remained 
 poor, he might from time to time have rubbed at 
 random against the truth, and would still be wear 
 ing a few of its sacred smutches on his sleeve. But 
 he wraps himself in his money as in a wadded dress 
 ing gown, and goes trundling through life on his 
 little gold wheels, as warm and close as an unweaned 
 baby. The greater part of his career, from his 
 marriage to within fifteen years ago, was spent in 
 Europe, which, superficially, he knows very well. 
 He has lived in fifty places, known hundreds of 
 people, and spent thousands of dollars. At one 
 time, I believe, he spent a few thousands too many, 
 trembled for an instant on the verge of a pecuniary 
 crash ; but recovered himself, and found himself 
 more frightened than hurt, but loudly admonished 
 to lower his pitch. He passed five years in a species 
 of penitent seclusion on the lake of I forget what 
 (his genius seems to be partial to lakes) , and formed 
 the rudiments of his present magnificent taste for 
 literature ; I can t call it anything but magnificent, 
 so long as it must needs have Theodore Lisle as a 
 ministrant. At the close of this period, by economy, 
 
A Light Man 171 
 
 he had become a rich man again. The control and 
 discipline exercised during these years upon his 
 desires and his natural love of luxury, must have 
 been the sole act of real resolution in the history of 
 Mr. Sloane s life. It was rendered possible by his 
 morbid, his actually pusillanimous dread of pov 
 erty; he doesn t feel safe without half a million 
 between him and starvation. Meanwhile he had 
 turned from a young man into an old man; his 
 health was broken, his spirit was jaded, and I 
 imagine, to do him justice, that he began to feel 
 certain natural, filial longings for this dear Amer 
 ican mother of us all. They say the most hopeless 
 truants and triflers have come to it. He came to 
 it, at all events; he packed up his books and pic 
 tures and gimcracks, and bade farewell to Europe. 
 This house which he now occupies belonged to his 
 wife s estate. She had, for sentimental reasons of 
 her own, commended it to his particular regard. 
 On his return he came to see it, fancied it, turned 
 a parcel of carpenters and upholsterers into it, and 
 by inhabiting it for twelve years, transformed it 
 into the perfect dwelling which I find it. Here he 
 has spent all his time, with the exception of a regular 
 winter s visit to New York a practice recently dis 
 continued, owing to the aggravation of his physical 
 condition and the projection of these famous 
 memoirs. His life has finally come to be passed in 
 
172 Master Eustace 
 
 comparative solitude. He tells of various distant 
 relatives, as well as intimate friends of both sexes, 
 who used formerly to be largely entertained at his 
 cost, but with each of them, in the course of time, 
 he seems to have clipped the thread of intercourse. 
 Throughout life, evidently, he has shown great 
 delicacy of tact in keeping himself clean of para 
 sites. Rich, lonely and vain, he must have been 
 fair game for the race of social sycophants and 
 cormorants; and it s richly to the credit of his 
 shrewdness and good sense, that he has suffered so 
 little havoc in substance and happiness. Apparently 
 they ve been a sad lot of bunglers. I maintain that 
 he s to be how shall I say it? possessed. But you 
 must work in obedience to certain definite laws. 
 Doctor Jones, his physician, tells me that in point 
 of fact he has had for the past ten years an unbroken 
 series of favorites, proteges, and heirs presumptive; 
 but that each, in turn, by some fatally false move 
 ment, has fairly unjointed his nose. The doctor 
 declares, moreover, that they were, at best, a wofully 
 common set of people. Gradually the old man seems 
 to have developed a preference for two or three 
 strictly exquisite intimates, over a throng of your 
 vulgar charmers. His tardy literary schemes, too 
 fruit of his all but sapless senility have absorbed 
 more and more of his time and attention. The end 
 of it all is, therefore, that Theodore and I have him 
 
A Light Man 173 
 
 quite to ourselves, and that it behooves us to keep 
 our noses on our faces, and our heads on our 
 shoulders. 
 
 Poor, pretentious old simpleton! It s not his 
 fault, after all, that he fancies himself a great little 
 man. How are you to judge of the stature of man 
 kind when men have forever addressed you on their 
 knees ? Peace and joy to his innocent fatuity ! He 
 believes himself the most rational of men; in fact, 
 he s the most vapidly sentimental. He fancies him 
 self a philosopher, a thinker, a student. His philos 
 ophy and his erudition are quite of a piece; they 
 would lie at ease in the palm of Theodore s hand. 
 He prides himself on his good manners, his urban 
 ity, his unvarying observance of the becoming. My 
 private impression is, that his cramped old bosom 
 contains unsuspected treasures of cunning im 
 pertinence. He takes his stand on his speculative 
 audacity his direct, undaunted gaze at the uni 
 verse; in truth, his mind is haunted by a hundred 
 dingy old-world spectres and theological phan 
 tasms. He fancies himself one of the weightiest of 
 men ; he is essentially one of the lightest. He deems 
 himself ardent, impulsive, passionate, magnanimous 
 capable of boundless enthusiasm for an idea or a 
 sentiment. It is clear to me that, on no occasion 
 of pure, disinterested action can he ever have taken 
 a timely, positive second step. He fancies, finally, 
 
174 Master Eustace 
 
 that he has drained the cup of life to the dregs ; that 
 he has known, in its bitterest intensity, every emo 
 tion of which the human spirit is capable; that he 
 has loved, struggled, and suffered. Stuff and non 
 sense, all of it. He has never loved any one but 
 himself; he has never suffered from anything but 
 an undigested supper or an exploded pretension ; he 
 has never touched with the end of his lips the vulgar 
 bowl from which the mass of mankind quaffs its 
 great floods of joy and sorrow. Well, the long and 
 short of it all is, that I honestly pity him. He may 
 have given sly knocks in his life, but he can t hurt 
 me. I pity his ignorance, his weakness, his timidity. 
 He has tasted the real sweetness of life no more 
 than its bitterness; he has never dreamed, or wan 
 dered, or dared ; he has never known any but mer 
 cenary affection; neither men nor women have 
 risked aught for him for his good spirits, his good 
 looks, and his poverty. How I should like to give 
 him, for once, a real sensation! 
 
 26th. I took a row this morning with Theodore 
 a couple of miles along the lake, to a point where 
 we went ashore and lounged away an hour in the 
 sunshine, which is still very comfortable. Poor 
 Theodore seems troubled about many things. For 
 one, he is troubled about me; he is actually more 
 anxious about my future than I myself; he thinks 
 better of me than I do of myself ; he is so deucedly 
 
A Light Man 175 
 
 conscientious, so scrupulous, so averse to giving 
 offence or to brusquer any situation before it has 
 played itself out, that he shrinks from betraying his 
 apprehensions or asking any direct questions. But 
 I know that he is dying to extort from me some 
 positive profession of practical interest and faith. 
 I catch myself in the act of taking heaven forgive 
 me! a half-malicious joy in confounding his ex 
 pectations leading his generous sympathies off 
 the scent by various extravagant protestations of 
 mock cynicism and malignity. But in Theodore I 
 have so firm a friend that I shall have a long row 
 to hoe if I ever find it needful to make him for 
 swear his devotion abjure his admiration. He 
 admires me that s absolute; he takes my moral 
 infirmities for the eccentricities of genius, and they 
 only impart an extra flavor a haut gout to the 
 richness of my charms. Nevertheless, I can see that 
 he is disappointed. I have even less to show, after 
 this lapse of years, than he had hoped. Heaven 
 help us! little enough it must strike him as being. 
 What an essential absurdity there is in our being 
 friends at all. I honestly believe we shall end with 
 hating each other. They are all very well now 
 our diversity, our oppugnancy, our cross purposes; 
 now that we are at play together they serve as a 
 theme for jollity. But when we settle down to work 
 ah me! for the tug of war. I wonder, as it is, 
 
176 Master Eustace 
 
 that Theodore keeps his patience with me. His 
 education since we parted should tend logically to 
 make him despise me. He has studied, thought, 
 suffered, loved loved those very plain sisters and 
 nieces. Poor me ! how should I be virtuous ? I have 
 no sisters, plain or pretty! nothing to love, work 
 for, live for. Friend Theodore, if you are going 
 one of these days to despise me and drop me 
 in the sacred name of comfort, come to the 
 point at once, and make an end of our common 
 agony ! 
 
 He is troubled, too, about Mr. Sloane. His atti 
 tude towards the bonhomme quite passes my com 
 prehension. It s the queerest jumble of contraries. 
 He penetrates him, contemns him yet respects and 
 admires him. It all comes of the poor boy s shrink 
 ing New England conscience. He s afraid to give 
 his perceptions a fair chance, lest, forsooth, they 
 should look over his neighbor s wall. He ll not 
 understand that he may as well sacrifice the old 
 man for a lamb as for a sheep. His view of the 
 gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue of cobwebs 
 a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wide-drawn 
 charities, and hair-breadth scapes from utter dam 
 nation, and sudden platitudes of generosity ; fit, all 
 of it, to make an angel curse ! 
 
 The man s a perfect egotist and fool," say I, 
 "but I like him." Now Theodore likes him or 
 
A Light Man 177 
 
 rather wants to like him; but he can t reconcile it 
 to his self-respect fastidious deity! to like a fool. 
 Why the deuce can t he leave it alone altogether? 
 It s a purely practical matter. He ought to do the 
 duties of his place all the better for having his head 
 clear of officious sentiment. I don t believe in dis 
 interested service; and Theodore is too desperately 
 bent on preserving his disinterestedness. With me, 
 it s different. I m perfectly free to love the bon- 
 homme for a fool. I m neither a scribe nor a 
 Pharisee; I m ah me, what am I? 
 
 And then, Theodore is troubled about his sisters. 
 He s afraid he s not doing his duty by them. He 
 thinks he ought to be with them to be getting a 
 larger salary, to be teaching his nieces. I m not 
 versed in such questions. Perhaps he ought. 
 
 MAY 3d. This morning Theodore sent me word 
 that he was ill and unable to get up; upon which I 
 immediately repaired to his bedside. He had caught 
 cold, was sick and a little feverish. I urged him to 
 make no attempt to leave his room, and assured him 
 that I would do what I could to reconcile Mr. Sloane 
 to his non-attendance. This I found an easy matter. 
 I read to him for a couple of hours, wrote four let 
 ters one in French and then talked a good two 
 hours more. I have done more talking, by the way, 
 in the last fortnight, than in any previous twelve 
 months much of it, too, none of the wisest, nor, 
 
178 Master Eustace 
 
 I may add, of the most fastidiously veracious. In 
 a little discussion, two or three days ago, with Theo 
 dore, I came to the point and roundly proclaimed 
 that in gossiping with Mr. Sloane I made no scruple, 
 for our common satisfaction, of discreetly using the 
 embellishments of fiction. My confession gave him 
 "that turn," as Mrs. Gamp would say, that his 
 present illness may be the result of it. Nevertheless, 
 poor, dear fellow, I trust he ll be on his legs to 
 morrow. This afternoon, somehow, I found my 
 self really in the humor of talking. There was 
 something propitious in the circumstances; a hard, 
 cold rain without, a wood-fire in the library, the 
 bonhomme puffing cigarettes in his armchair, beside 
 him a portfolio of newly imported prints and photo 
 graphs, and Theodore tucked safely away in bed. 
 Finally, when I brought our tete-a-tete to a close 
 (taking good care to understay my welcome) Mr. 
 Sloane seized me by both hands and honored me 
 with one of his venerable grins. "Max," he said 
 "you must let me call you Max you re the most 
 delightful man I ever knew." 
 
 Verily, there s some virtue left in me yet. I 
 believe I fairly blushed. 
 
 "Why didn t I know you ten years ago?" the 
 old man went on. "Here are ten years lost." 
 
 "Ten years ago, my dear Mr. Sloane," quoth 
 Max, "I was hardly worth your knowing." 
 
A Light Man 179 
 
 "But I did know you!" cried the bonhomme. "I 
 knew you in knowing your mother/ 
 
 Ah ! my mother again. When the old man begins 
 that chapter I feel like telling him to blow out his 
 candle and go to bed. 
 
 "At all events," he continued, "we must make 
 the most of the years that remain. I m a poor sick 
 old fellow, but I ve no notion of dying. You ll not 
 get tired of me and want to go away?" 
 
 "I m devoted to you, sir," I said. "But I must 
 be looking up some work, you know." 
 
 "Work ! Bah ! I ll give you work. I ll give you 
 wages." 
 
 "I m afraid," I said, with a smile, "that you ll 
 want to give me the wages without the work." 
 And then I declared that I must go up and look at 
 poor Theodore. 
 
 The bonhomme still kept my hands. "I wish 
 very much," he said, "that I could get you to love 
 me as well as you do poor Theodore." 
 
 "Ah, don t talk about love, Mr. Sloane. I m no 
 lover." 
 
 "Don t you love your friend?" 
 
 "Not as he deserves." 
 
 "Nor as he loves you, perhaps ?" 
 
 "He loves me, I m afraid, far more than I de 
 serve." 
 
 "Well, Max," my host pursued, "we can be good 
 
180 Master Eustace 
 
 friends, all the same. We don t need a hocus-pocus 
 of false sentiment. We are men, aren t we? men 
 of sublime good sense." And just here, as the old 
 man looked at me, the pressure of his hands deep 
 ened to a convulsive grasp, and the bloodless mask 
 of his countenance was suddenly distorted with a 
 nameless fear. "Ah, my dear young man!" he 
 cried, "come and be a son to me the son of my 
 age and desolation! For God s sake don t leave me 
 to pine and die alone!" 
 
 I was amazed and I may say I was moved. Is 
 it true, then, that this poor old heart contains such 
 measureless depths of horror and longing? I take 
 it that he s mortally afraid of death. I assured him 
 on my honor that he may henceforth call upon me 
 for any service. 
 
 8th. Theodore s indisposition turned out more 
 serious than I expected. He has been confined to 
 his room till to-day. This evening he came down 
 to the library in his dressing gown. Decidedly, Mr. 
 Sloane is an eccentric, but hardly, as Theodore 
 thinks, a "charming" one. There is something ex 
 tremely curious in the exhibition of his caprices 
 the incongruous fits and starts, as it were, of his 
 taste. For some reason, best known to himself, he 
 took it into his head to deem it a want of delicacy, 
 of respect, of savoir-vivrc of heaven knows what 
 that poor Theodore, who is still weak and Ian- 
 
A Light Man 181 
 
 guid, should enter the sacred precinct of his study 
 in the vulgar drapery of a dressing-gown. The 
 sovereign trouble with the bonhomme is an absolute 
 lack of the instinct of justice. He s of the real 
 feminine turn I believe I have written it before 
 without a ray of woman s virtues. I honestly 
 believe that I might come into his study in my 
 night-shirt and he would smile upon it as a pic 
 turesque deshabille. But for poor Theodore to-night 
 there was nothing but scowls and frowns, and barely 
 a civil inquiry about his health. But poor Theodore 
 is not such a fool, either ; he ll not die of a snubbing ; 
 I never said he was a weakling. Once he fairly 
 saw from what quarter the wind blew, he bore the 
 master s brutality with the utmost coolness and gal 
 lantry. Can it be that Mr. Sloane really wishes to 
 drop him? The delicious old brute! He under 
 stands favor and friendship only as a selfish rap 
 ture a reaction, an infatuation, an act of aggres 
 sive, exclusive patronage. It s not a bestowal with 
 him, but a. transfer, and half his pleasure in caus 
 ing his sun to shine is that being woefully near its 
 setting it will produce a number of delectable 
 shadows. He wants to cast my shadow, I suppose, 
 on Theodore; fortunately I m not altogether an 
 opaque body. Since Theodore was taken ill he has 
 been into his room but once, and has sent him none 
 but the scantiest messages. I, too, have been much 
 
182 Master Eustace 
 
 less attentive than I should have wished to be ; but 
 my time has not been my own. It has been, every 
 moment of it, at Mr. Sloane s disposal. He actually 
 runs after me; he devours me; he makes a fool of 
 himself, and is trying hard to make one of me. I find 
 that he will stand that, in fact, he actually enjoys 
 a certain kind of humorous snubbing. He likes 
 anything that will tickle his fancy, impart a flavor 
 to our relations, remind him of his old odds and 
 ends of novels and memoirs. I have fairly stepped 
 into Theodore s shoes, and done with what I feel 
 in my bones to be vastly inferior skill and taste 
 all the reading, writing, condensing, expounding, 
 transcribing and advising that he has been accus 
 tomed to do. I have driven with the bonhomme; 
 played chess and cribbage with him ; and beaten him, 
 bullied him, contradicted him; and forced him into 
 going out on the water under my charge. Who shall 
 say, after this, that I haven t done my best to dis 
 courage his advances, confound his benevolence? 
 As yet, my efforts are vain ; in fact they quite turn 
 to my own confusion. Mr. Sloane is so vastly 
 thankful at having escaped from the lake with his 
 life that he seems actually to look upon me as a 
 kind of romantic preserver and protector. Faugh! 
 what tiresome nonsense it all is! But one thing is 
 certain, it can t last forever. Admit that he has 
 cast Theodore out and taken me in. He will speedily 
 
A Light Man 183 
 
 discover that he has made a pretty mess of it, and 
 that he had much better have left well enough alone. 
 He likes my reading and writing now, but in a month 
 he ll begin to hate them. He ll miss Theodore s 
 healthy, unerring, impersonal judgment. What an 
 advantage that pure and luminous nature has over 
 mine, after all. I m for days, he s for years; he 
 for the long run, I for the short. I, perhaps, am 
 intended for success, but he alone for happiness. 
 He holds in his heart a tiny sacred particle, which 
 leavens his whole being and keeps it pure and 
 sound a faculty of admiration and respect. For 
 him human nature is still a wonder and a mystery; 
 it bears a divine stamp Mr. Sloane s tawdry or 
 ganism as well as the best. 
 
 1 3th. I have refused, of course, to supplant 
 Theodore further, in the exercise of his functions, 
 and he has resumed his morning labors with Mr. 
 Sloane. I, on my side, have spent these morning 
 hours in scouring the country on that capital black 
 mare, the use of which is one of the perquisites of 
 Theodore s place. The days have been magnificent 
 the heat of the sun tempered by a murmuring, 
 wandering wind, the whole north a mighty ecstasy 
 of sound and verdure, the sky a far-away vault of 
 bended blue. Not far from the mill at M., the other 
 end of the lake, I met, for the third time, that very 
 pretty young girl who reminds me so forcibly of 
 
184 Master Eustace 
 
 A. L. She makes so very frank and fearless a use 
 of her eyes that I ventured to stop and bid her good- 
 morning. She seems nothing loth to an acquaint 
 ance. She s an out-and-out barbarian in speech, 
 but her eyes look as if they had drained the noon 
 day heavens of their lustre. These rides do me 
 good; I had got into a sadly worrying, brooding 
 habit of thought. 
 
 What has got into Theodore I know not ; his ill 
 ness seems to have left him strangely affected. He 
 has fits of sombre reserve, alternating with spasms 
 of extravagant gayety. He avoids me at times for 
 hours together, and then he comes and looks at me 
 with an inscrutable smile, as if he were on the 
 verge of a burst of confidence which again is swal 
 lowed up in the darkness of his silence. Is he 
 hatching some astounding benefit to his species? 
 Is he working to bring about my removal to a higher 
 sphere of action? Nous verrons bien. 
 
 1 8th. Theodore threatens departure. He re 
 ceived this morning a letter from one of his sisters 
 the young widow announcing her engagement 
 to a minister whose acquaintance she has recently 
 made, and intimating her expectation of an immedi 
 ate union with the gentleman a ceremony which 
 would require Theodore s attendance. Theodore, 
 in high good humor, read the letter aloud at break 
 fast and to tell the truth a charming letter it was. 
 
A Light Man 185 
 
 He then spoke of his having to go on to the wed 
 ding; a proposition to which Mr. Sloane graciously 
 assented but with truly startling amplitude. "I 
 shall be sorry to lose you after so happy a connec 
 tion," said the old man. Theodore turned pale, 
 stared a moment, and then, recovering his color and 
 his composure, declared that he should have no ob 
 jection in life to coming back. 
 
 "Bless your soul!" cried the bonkomme, "you 
 don t mean to say you ll leave your little sister all 
 alone?" 
 
 To which Theodore replied that he would ar 
 range for her to live with his brother-in-law. "It s 
 the only proper thing," he declared, in a tone which 
 was not to be gainsaid. It has come to this, then, 
 that Mr. Sloane actually wants to turn him out of 
 the house. Oh, the precious old fool! He keeps 
 smiling an uncanny smile, which means, as I read 
 it, that if the poor boy once departs he shall never 
 return on the old footing for all his impudence ! 
 
 2Oth. This morning, at breakfast, we had a ter 
 rific scene. A letter arrives for Theodore ; he opens 
 it, turns white and red, frowns, falters, and then in 
 forms us that the clever widow has broken off her 
 engagement. No wedding, therefore, and no de 
 parture for Theodore. The bonhomme was furi 
 ous. In his fury he took the liberty of calling poor 
 Mrs. Parker (the sister) a very impolite name. 
 
186 Master Eustace 
 
 Theodore rebuked him, with perfect good taste, and 
 kept his temper. 
 
 "If. my opinions don t suit you, Mr. Lisle," the 
 old man broke out, "and my mode of expressing 
 them displeases you, you know you can easily re 
 move yourself from within my jurisdiction." 
 
 "My dear Mr. Sloane," said Theodore, "your 
 opinions, as a general rule, interest me deeply, and 
 have never ceased to act most beneficially upon the 
 formation of my own. Your mode of expressing 
 them is charming, and I wouldn t for the world, 
 after all our pleasant intercourse, separate from you 
 in bitterness. Only, I repeat, your qualification of 
 my sister s conduct was perfectly uncalled for. If 
 you knew her, you would be the first to admit it." 
 
 There was something in Theodore s aspect and 
 manner, as he said these words, which puzzled me 
 all the morning. After dinner, finding myself alone 
 with him, I told him I was glad he was not obliged 
 to go away. He looked at me with the mysterious 
 smile I have mentioned a smile which actually 
 makes him handsome thanked me and fell into 
 meditation. As this bescribbled chronicle is the rec 
 ord of my follies, as well as of my haut fails, I 
 needn t hesitate to say that, for a moment, I was 
 keenly exasperated. What business has poor, trans 
 parent Theodore to put on the stony mask of the 
 sphinx and play the inscrutable? What right has 
 
A Light Man 187 
 
 he to do so with me especially, in whom he has al 
 ways professed an absolute confidence? Just as I 
 was about to cry out, "Come, my dear boy, this af 
 fectation of mystery has lasted quite long enough 
 favor me at last with the result of your cogitation !" 
 as I was on the point of thus expressing my im 
 patience of his continued solemnity of demeanor, the 
 oracle at last addressed itself to utterance. 
 
 "You see, my dear Max," he said, "I can t, in 
 justice to myself, go away in obedience to any such 
 intimation as that vouchsafed to me this morning. 
 What do you think of my actual footing here ?" 
 
 Theodore s actual footing here seemed to me es 
 sentially uncomfortable; of course I said so. 
 
 "Nay, I assure you it s not," he answered. "I 
 should feel, on the contrary, very uncomfortable to 
 think that I d come away, except by my own choice. 
 You see a man can t afford to cheapen himself. 
 What are you laughing at?" 
 
 "I m laughing, in the first place, my dear fellow, 
 to hear on your lips the language of cold calculation; 
 and in the second place, at your odd notion of the 
 process by which a man keeps himself up in the 
 market" 
 
 "I assure you that it s the correct notion. I came 
 here as a favor to Mr. Sloane; it was expressly 
 understood so. The occupation was distasteful to 
 me. I had from top to bottom to accommodate my- 
 
188 Master Eustace 
 
 self to my duties. I had to compromise with a dozen 
 convictions, preferences, prejudices. I don t take such 
 things easily ; I take them hard ; and when once the 
 labor is achieved I can t consent to have it thrown 
 away. If Mr. Sloane needed me then, he needs me 
 still. I am ignorant of any change having taken 
 place in his intentions, or in his means of satisfying 
 them. I came not to amuse him, but to do a certain 
 work ; I hope to remain until the work is completed. 
 To go away sooner is to make a confession of in 
 capacity which, I protest, costs too great a sacrifice 
 to my vanity." 
 
 Theodore spoke these words with a face which 
 I have never seen him wear; a fixed, mechanical 
 smile; a hard, dry glitter in his eyes; a harsh, 
 strident tone in his voice in his whole physiog 
 nomy a gleam, as it were, a note of defiance. Now 
 I confess that for defiance I have never been con 
 scious of an especial relish. When I m defied, I m 
 ugly. "My dear man," I replied, "your sentiments 
 do you prodigious credit. Your very ingenious 
 theory of your present situation, as well as your ex 
 tremely pronounced sense of your personal value, 
 are calculated to insure you a degree of practical suc 
 cess which can very well dispense with the further 
 ance of my poor good wishes." Oh, the grimness 
 of his listening smile and I suppose I may add of 
 my own physiognomy! But I have ceased to be 
 
A Light Man 189 
 
 puzzled. Theodore s conduct for the past ten days 
 is suddenly illumined with a backward, lurid ray. 
 Here are a few plain truths, which it behooves me 
 to take to heart commit to memory. Theodore is 
 jealous of me. Theodore hates me. Theodore has 
 been seeking for the past three months to see his 
 name written, last but not least, in a certain testa 
 mentary document : "Finally, I bequeath to my dear 
 young friend, Theodore Lisle, in return for inval 
 uable services and unfailing devotion, the bulk of my 
 
 property, real and personal, consisting of " 
 
 (hereupon follows an exhaustive enumeration of 
 houses, lands, public securities, books, pictures, 
 horses, and dogs). It is for this that he has toiled, 
 and watched, and prayed; submitted to intellectual 
 weariness and spiritual torture ; made his terms with 
 levity, blasphemy, and insult. For this he sets his 
 teeth and tightens his grasp; for this he ll fight. 
 Merciful powers! it s an immense weight off one s 
 mind. There are nothing, then, but vulgar, common 
 laws ; no sublime exceptions, no transcendent anom 
 alies. Theodore s a knave, a hypo nay, nay ; stay, 
 irreverent hand! Theodore s a man! Well, that s 
 all I want. He wants fight he shall have it. Have 
 I got, at last, my simple, natural emotion? 
 
 2 1 st. I have lost no time. This evening, late, 
 after I had heard Theodore go to his room (I had 
 left the library early, on the pretext of having let- 
 
190 Master Eustace 
 
 ters to write) I repaired to Mr. Sloane, who had 
 not yet gone to bed, and informed him that it is 
 necessary I shall at once leave him, and seek some 
 occupation in New York. He felt the blow ; it 
 brought him straight down on his marrow-bones. 
 He went through the whole gamut of his arts and 
 graces; he blustered, whimpered, entreated, flat 
 tered. He tried to drag in Theodore s name; but 
 this I, of course, prevented. But, finally, why, why, 
 WHY, after all my promises of fidelity, must I thus 
 cruelly desert him? Then came my supreme 
 avowal : I have spent my last penny ; while I stay, 
 I m a beggar. The remainder of this extraordinary 
 scene I have no power to describe : how the bon- 
 homme, touched, inflamed, inspired, by the thought 
 of my destitution, and at the same time annoyed, 
 perplexed, bewildered at having to commit himself 
 to any practical alleviation of it, worked himself into 
 a nervous frenzy which deprived him of a clear sense 
 of the value of his words and his actions ; how I, 
 prompted by the irresistible spirit of my desire to 
 leap astride of his weakness, and ride it hard into 
 the goal of my dreams, cunningly contrived to keep 
 his spirit at the fever point, so that strength, and 
 reason, and resistance should burn themselves out. 
 I shall probably never again have such a sensation 
 as I enjoyed to-night actually feel a heated human 
 heart throbbing, and turning, and struggling in my 
 
A Light Man 191 
 
 grasp; know its pants, its spasms, its convulsions, 
 and its final senseless quiescence. At half -past one 
 o clock, Mr. Sloane got out of his chair, went to his 
 secretary, opened a private drawer, and took out a 
 folded paper. This is my will," he said, "made 
 some seven weeks ago. If you ll stay with me, I ll 
 destroy it." 
 
 "Really, Mr. Sloane," I said, "if you think my 
 purpose is to exert any pressure upon your testa 
 mentary inclinations " 
 
 "I ll tear it in pieces," he cried; "I ll burn it up. 
 I shall be as sick as a dog to-morrow ; but I ll do it. 
 A-a-h !" 
 
 He clapped his hand to his side, as if in sudden, 
 overwhelming pain, and sank back fainting into his 
 chair. A single glance assured me that he was un 
 conscious. I possessed myself of the paper, opened 
 it, and perceived that the will is almost exclusively in 
 Theodore s favor. For an instant, a savage, puerile 
 feeling of hate sprang erect in my bosom, and I 
 came within an ace of obeying my foremost impulse 
 that of casting the document into the fire. For 
 tunately, my reason overtook my passion, though 
 for a moment twas an even race. I replaced the 
 paper in the secretary, closed it, and rang the bell for 
 Robert (the old man s servant). Before he came I 
 stood watching the poor, pale remnant of mortality 
 before me, and wondering whether those feeble life- 
 
192 Master Eustace 
 
 gasps were numbered. He was as white as a sheet, 
 grimacing with pain horribly ugly. Suddenly, he 
 opened his eyes; they met my own; I fell on my 
 knees and took his hands. They closed on mine 
 with a grasp strangely akin to the rigidity of death. 
 Nevertheless, since then he has revived, and has re 
 lapsed again into a comparatively healthy sleep. 
 Robert seems to know how to deal with him. 
 
 22d. Mr. Sloane is seriously ill out of his mind 
 and unconscious of people s identity. The doctor 
 has been here, off and on, all day, but this evening 
 reports improvement. I have kept out of the old 
 man s room, and confined myself to my own, reflect 
 ing largely upon the odd contingency of his immedi 
 ate death. Does Theodore know of the will? 
 Would it occur to him to divide the property? 
 Would it occur to me, in his place? We met at 
 dinner, and talked in a grave, desultory, friendly 
 fashion. After all, he s an excellent fellow. I 
 don t hate him. I don t even dislike him. He jars 
 on me, il m agace; but that s no reason why I should 
 do him an evil turn. Nor shall I. The property is 
 a fixed idea, that s all. I shall get it if I can. We re 
 fairly matched. Before heaven, no, we re not fairly 
 matched ! Theodore has a conscience. 
 
 23d. I m restless and nervous and for good 
 reasons. Scribbling here keeps me quiet. This 
 morning Mr. Sloane is better; feeble and uncertain 
 
A Light Man 193 
 
 in mind, but unmistakably on the mend. I may 
 confess now that I feel relieved of a weighty bur 
 den. Last night I hardly slept a wink. I lay awake 
 listening to the pendulum of my clock. It seemed 
 to say "He lives he dies." I fully expected to 
 have it stop suddenly at dies. But it kept going all 
 the morning, and to a decidedly more lively tune. In 
 the afternoon the old man sent for me. I found 
 him in his great muffled bed, with his face the color 
 of damp chalk, and his eyes glowing faintly, like 
 torches half -stamped out. I was forcibly struck 
 with the utter loneliness of his lot. For all human 
 attendance, my villainous self grinning at his bed 
 side, and old Robert without, listening, doubtless, at 
 the keyhole. The bonhomme stared at me stupidly ; 
 then seemed to know me, and greeted me with a 
 sickly smile. It was some moments before he was 
 able to speak. At last he faintly bade me to descend 
 into the library, open the secret drawer of the sec 
 retary (which he contrived to direct me how to do), 
 possess myself of his will, and burn it up. He ap 
 pears to have forgotten his having removed it, night 
 before last. I told him that I had an insurmount 
 able aversion to any personal dealings with the docu 
 ment. He smiled, patted the back of my hand, and 
 requested me, in that case, to get it, at least, and 
 bring it to him. I couldn t deny him that favor? 
 No, I couldn t, indeed. I went down to the library, 
 
194 Master Eustace 
 
 therefore, and on entering the room found Theo 
 dore standing by the fireplace with a bundle of 
 papers. The secretary was open. I stood still, look 
 ing from the ruptured cabinet to the documents in 
 his hand. Among them I recognized, by its shape 
 and size, the paper of which I had intended to pos 
 sess myself. Without delay I walked straight up 
 to him. He looked surprised, but not confused. 
 "I m afraid I shall have to trouble you," I said, "to 
 surrender one of those papers." 
 
 "Surrender, Max? To anything of your own you 
 are perfectly welcome. I didn t know, however, that 
 you made use of Mr. Sloane s secretary. I was 
 looking up some notes of my own making, in which 
 I conceive I have a property." 
 
 "This is what I want, Theodore," I said; and I 
 drew the will, unfolded, from between his hands. 
 As I did so his eyes fell upon the superscription, 
 "Last Will and Testament. March. F. S." He 
 flushed a splendid furious crimson. Our eyes met. 
 Somehow I don t know how or why, or for that 
 matter why not I burst into a violent peal of laugh 
 ter. Theodore stood staring, with two hot, bitter 
 tears in his eyes. 
 
 "Of course you think," he said, "that I came to 
 ferret out that thing." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders those of my body only. 
 I confess, morally, I was on my knees with contri- 
 
A Light Man 195 
 
 tion, but there was a fascination in it a fatality. I 
 remembered that in the hurry of my movements, the 
 other evening, I had replaced the will simply in one 
 of the outer drawers of the cabinet, among Theo 
 dore s own papers ; doubtless where he had taken it 
 up. "Mr. Sloane sent me for it," I said. 
 
 "Very good, I m glad to hear he s well enough to 
 think of such things." 
 
 "He means to destroy it." 
 
 "I hope, then, he has another made." 
 
 "Mentally, I suppose he has." 
 
 Unfortunately, his weakness isn t mental or ex 
 clusively so." 
 
 "Oh, he ll live to make a dozen more," I said. 
 "Do you know the purport of this, one ?" 
 
 Theodore s color, by this time, had died away into 
 a sombre paleness. He shook his head. The dog- 
 gedness of the movement provoked me. I wished to 
 arouse his curiosity. "I have his commission," I 
 rejoined, "to destroy it." 
 
 Theodore smiled superbly. "It s not a task I 
 envy you," he said. 
 
 "I should think not especially if you knew the 
 import of the will." He stood with folded arms, 
 regarding me with the remote contempt of his rich 
 blue eyes. I couldn t stand it. "Come, it s your 
 property," I cried. "You re sole legatee. I give it 
 up to you." And I thrust the paper into his hand. 
 
196 Master Eustace 
 
 He received it mechanically ; but after a pause, be 
 thinking himself, he unfolded it and cast his eyes 
 over the contents. Then he slowly refolded it and 
 held it a moment with a tremulous hand. "You say 
 that Mr. Sloane directed you to destroy it?" he fi 
 nally asked. 
 
 "I say so." 
 
 "And that you know the contents ?" 
 
 "Exactly." 
 
 "And that you were about to comply?" 
 
 "On the contrary, I declined." 
 
 Theodore fixed his eyes, for a moment, on the 
 superscription, and then raised them again to my 
 face. "Thank you, Max," he said "You ve left 
 me a real satisfaction." He tore the sheet across 
 and threw the bits into the fire. We stood watch 
 ing them burn. "Now he can make another," said 
 Theodore. 
 
 "Twenty others," I replied. 
 
 "No," said Theodore, "you ll take care of that." 
 
 "Upon my soul," I cried, "you re bitter!" 
 
 "No, not now. I worked off all my bitterness in 
 these few words." 
 
 "Well, in consideration of that, I excuse them." 
 
 "Just as you please." 
 
 "Ah," said I, "there s a little bitterness left!" 
 
 "No, nothing but indifference. Farewell." And 
 he put out his hand. 
 
A Light Man 197 
 
 "Are you going away ?" 
 
 "Of course I am. Farewell/ 
 
 "Farewell, then. But isn t your departure rather 
 sudden?" 
 
 "I ought to have gone three weeks ago three 
 weeks ago." I had taken his hand, he pulled it away, 
 covered his face, and suddenly burst into tears. 
 
 "Is that indifference ?" I asked. 
 
 "It s something you ll never know," he cried. 
 "It s shame! I m not sorry you should see it. It 
 will suggest to you, perhaps, that my heart has never 
 been in this filthy contest. Let me assure you, at 
 any rate, that it hasn t ; that it has had nothing but 
 scorn for the base perversion of my pride and my 
 ambition. These tears are tears of joy at their re 
 turn the return of the prodigals! Tears of sor 
 row sorrow 
 
 He was unable to go on. He sank into a chair, 
 burying his face in his handkerchief. 
 
 "For God s sake, Theodore," I said, "stick to the 
 joy." 
 
 He rose to his feet again. "Well," he said, "it 
 was for your sake that I parted with my self-re 
 spect ; with your assistance I recover it." 
 
 "How for my sake?" 
 
 "For whom but you would I have gone as far as 
 I did? For what other purpose than that of keep 
 ing our friendship whole would I have borne you 
 
198 Master Eustace 
 
 company into this narrow pass? A man whom I 
 loved less I would long since have parted with. 
 You were needed you and your incomparable gifts 
 to bring me to this. You ennobled, exalted, en 
 chanted the struggle. I did value my prospects of 
 coming into Mr. Sloane s property. I valued them 
 for my poor sister s sake, as well as for my own, so 
 long as they were the natural reward of conscien 
 tious service, and not the prize of hypocrisy and 
 cunning. With another man than you I never would 
 have contested such a prize. But I loved you, even 
 as my rival. You played with me, deceived me, be 
 trayed me. I held my ground, hoping and longing 
 to purge you of your error by the touch of your old 
 pledges of affection. I carried them in my heart. 
 For Mr. Sloane, from the moment that, under your 
 magical influence, he revealed his extraordinary 
 foibles, I had nothing but contempt." 
 
 "And for me now ?" 
 
 "Don t ask me. I don t trust myself." 
 
 "Hate, I suppose." 
 
 "Is that the best you can imagine ? Farewell." 
 
 "Is it a serious farewell farewell forever?" 
 
 "How can there be any other?" 
 
 "I m sorry that such should be your point of view. 
 It s characteristic. All the more reason then that 
 I should say a word in self-defence. You accuse me 
 of having played with you, deceived you, betrayed 
 
A Light Man 199 
 
 you.* It seems to me that you re quite off the track. 
 You say you loved me. If so, you ought to love me 
 still. It wasn t for my virtue ; for I never had any, 
 or pretended to any. In anything I have done re 
 cently, therefore, there has been no inconsistency. 
 I never pretended to love you. I don t understand 
 the word, in the sense you attach to it. I don t 
 understand the feeling, between men. To me, love 
 means quite another thing. You give it a meaning 
 of your own; you enjoy the profit of your inven 
 tion ; it s no more than just that you should pay the 
 penalty. Only, it seems to me rather hard that / 
 should pay it." Theodore remained silent; but his 
 brow slowly contracted into an inexorable frown. 
 "Is it still a serious farewell? " I went on. "It 
 seems a pity. After this clearing up, it actually 
 seems to me that I shall be on better terms with you. 
 No man can have a deeper appreciation of your ex 
 cellent faculties, a keener enjoyment of your society, 
 your talk. I should very much regret the loss of 
 them." 
 
 "Have we, then, all this while," said Theodore, 
 "understood each other so little ?" 
 
 "Don t say we and each other/ I think I have 
 understood you." 
 
 "Very likely. It s not for want of my having 
 confessed myself." 
 
 "Well, Theodore, I do you justice. To me you ve 
 
200 Master Eustace 
 
 always been over generous. Try now, and be just." 
 
 Still he stood silent, with his cold, hard frown. 
 It was plain that, if he was to come back to me, it 
 would be from a vast distance. What he was go 
 ing to answer I know not. The door opened, and 
 Robert appeared, pale, trembling, his eyes starting 
 in his head. 
 
 "I verily believe, gentlemen," he cried, "that poor 
 Mr. Sloane is dead in his bed/ 
 
 There was a moment s perfect silence. "Amen," 
 said I. "Yes, Theodore, try and be just." Mr. 
 Sloane had quietly died in my absence. 
 
 24th. Theodore went up to town this morning, 
 having shaken hands with me in silence before he 
 started. Doctor Jones, and Brookes the attorney, 
 have been very officious ; and, by their advice, I have 
 telegraphed to a certain Miss Meredith, a maiden 
 lady, by their account the nearest of kin ; or, in other 
 words, simply a discarded half-niece of the defunct. 
 She telegraphs back that she will arrive in person 
 for the funeral. I shall remain till she comes. I 
 have lost a fortune; but have I irretrievably lost a 
 friend? I m sure I can t say. 
 
BENVOLIO 
 
BENVOLIO 
 
 ONCE upon a time (as if he had lived in a 
 fairy tale) there was a very interesting 
 young man. This is not a fairy tale, and 
 yet our young man was, in some respects, as pretty 
 a fellow as any fairy prince. I call him interesting 
 because his type of character is one I have always 
 found it agreeable to observe. If you fail to con 
 sider him so, I shall be willing to confess that the 
 fault is mine and not his ; I shall have told my story 
 with too little skill. 
 
 His name was Benvolio; that is, it was not; but 
 we shall call him so for the sake both of convenience 
 and of picturesqueness. He was more than twenty- 
 five years old, but he was not yet thirty-five ; he had 
 a little property ; he followed no regular profession. 
 His personal appearance was in the highest degree 
 prepossessing. Having said this, it were perhaps 
 well that I should let you you especially, madam 
 suppose that he exactly corresponded to your idea 
 
 203 
 
204 Master Eustace 
 
 of a well-favored young man; but I am bound to 
 explain definitely wherein it was that he resembled 
 a fairy prince, and I need furthermore to make a 
 record of certain little peculiarities and anomalies in 
 which it is probable that your brilliant conception 
 would be deficient. Benvolio was slim and fair, with 
 clustering locks, remarkably fine eyes, and such a 
 frank, expressive smile that, on the journey through 
 life, it was almost as serviceable to its owner as the 
 magic key, or the enchanted ring, or the wishing- 
 cap, or any other bauble of necromantic properties. 
 Unfortunately this charming smile was not always 
 at his command, and its place was sometimes occu 
 pied by a very dusky and ill-conditioned frown, 
 which rendered the young man no service whatever 
 not even that of frightening people ; for though 
 it expressed extreme irritation and impatience, it 
 was characterized by the brevity of contempt, and 
 the only revenge upon disagreeable things and of 
 fensive people that it seemed to express a desire for 
 on Benvolio s part was that of forgetting and ignor 
 ing them with the utmost possible celerity. It never 
 made any one tremble, though now and then it per 
 haps made sensitive people murmur an imprecation 
 or two. You might have supposed from Benvolio s 
 manner, when he was in good humor (which was 
 the greater part of the time), from his brilliant, in 
 telligent glance, from his easy, irresponsible step, 
 
Benvolio 205 
 
 and in especial from the sweet, clear, lingering, ca 
 ressing tone of his voice the voice as it were of a 
 man whose fortune has been made for him, and who 
 assumes, a trifle egotistically, that the rest of the 
 world is equally at leisure to share with him the 
 sweets of life, to pluck the wayside flowers, and 
 chase the butterflies afield you might have sup 
 posed, I say, from all this luxurious assurance of 
 demeanor, that our hero really had the wishing-cap 
 sitting invisible on his handsome brow, or was 
 obliged only to close his knuckles together a moment 
 to exert an effective pressure upon the magic ring. 
 The young man, I have said, was compounded of 
 many anomalies; I may say more exactly that he 
 was a tissue of absolute contradictions. He did pos 
 sess the magic ring, in a certain fashion; he pos 
 sessed, in other words, the poetic imagination. 
 Everything that fancy could do for him was done in 
 perfection. It gave him immense satisfactions; it 
 transfigured the world; it made very common ob 
 jects sometimes seem radiantly beautiful, and it 
 converted beautiful ones into infinite sources of in 
 toxication. Benvolio had what is called the poetic! 
 temperament. It is rather out of fashion to de4 
 scribe a man in these terms; but I believe, in spite 
 of much evidence to the contrary, that there are 
 poets still ; and if we may call a spade a spade, why 
 should we not call such a person as Benvolio a poet ? 
 
206 Master Eustace 
 
 These contradictions that I speak of ran through 
 his whole nature, and they were perfectly apparent 
 in his habits, in his manners, in his conversation, 
 and even in his person. It was as if the souls of 
 two very different men had been thrown together in 
 the same mould and they had agreed, for conven 
 ience sake, to use the very vulgar phrase of the day, 
 to run the machine in alternation. The machine 
 with Benvolio was always the imagination; but in 
 his different moods it kept a very different tune. To 
 an acute observer his face itself would have be 
 trayed these variations ; and it is certain that his 
 dress, his talk, his way of spending his time, one 
 day and another, abundantly indicated them. Some 
 times he looked very young rosy, radiant, bloom 
 ing, younger than his years. Then suddenly, as the 
 light struck his head in a particular manner, you 
 would see that his golden locks contained a surpris 
 ing number of silver threads ; and with your atten 
 tion quickened by this discovery, you would pro 
 ceed to detect something grave and discreet in his 
 smile something vague and ghostly, like the dim 
 adumbration of the darker half of the lunar disk. 
 You might have met Benvolio, in certain moods, 
 dressed like a man of the highest fashion wear 
 ing his hat on his ear, a rose in his buttonhole, a 
 wonderful intaglio or an antique Syracusan coin, 
 by way of a pin, in his cravat. Then, on the mor- 
 
Benvolio 207 
 
 row, you .would have espied him braving the sun 
 shine in a rusty scholar s coat, with his hat pulled 
 over his brow a costume wholly at odds with flow 
 ers and gems. It was all a matter of fancy ; but his 
 fancy was a weather-cock and faced east or west, 
 as the wind blew. His conversation matched his 
 coat and trousers ; he talked one day the talk of the 
 town ; he chattered, he gossiped, he asked questions 
 and told stories; you would have said that he was 
 a charming fellow for a dinner party or the pauses 
 of a cotillon. The next he either talked philosophy 
 or politics, or said nothing at all ; he was absent and 
 indifferent; he was thinking his own thoughts; he 
 had a book in his pocket, and evidently he was com 
 posing one in his head. At home he lived in two 
 chambers. One was an immense room hung with 
 pictures, lined with books, draped with rugs and 
 tapestries, decorated with a multitude of ingenious 
 devices (for of all these things he was very fond) ; 
 the other, his sleeping-room, was almost as bare as 
 a monastic cell. It had a meagre little strip of car 
 pet on the floor, and a dozen well-thumbed volumes 
 of classic poets and sages on the mantel-shelf. On 
 the wall hung three or four coarsely engraved por 
 traits of the most exemplary of these worthies-; these 
 were the only ornaments. But the room had the 
 charm of a great window, in a deep embrasure, look 
 ing out upon a tangled, silent, moss-grown garden, 
 
208 Master Eustace 
 
 and in the embrasure stood the little ink-blotted table 
 at which Benvolio did most of his poetic scribbling. 
 The windows of his sumptuous sitting-room com 
 manded a wide public square, where people were 
 always passing and lounging, where military music 
 used to play on vernal nights, and half the life of 
 the great town went forward. At the risk of your 
 thinking our hero a sad idler, I will say that he 
 spent an inordinate amount of time in gazing out of 
 / these windows (on either side), with his elbows on 
 the sill. The garden did not belong to the house 
 which he inhabited, but to a neighboring one, and 
 the proprietor, a graceless old miser, was very chary 
 of permits to visit his domain. But Benvolio s fancy 
 used to wander through the alleys without stirring 
 the long arms of the untended plants, and to bend 
 over the heavy-headed flowers without leaving a 
 footprint on their beds. It was here that his hap 
 piest thoughts came to him that inspiration (as we 
 may say, speaking of a man of the poetic tempera 
 ment) descended upon him in silence, and for cer 
 tain divine, appreciable moments stood poised along 
 the course of his scratching quill. It was not, how 
 ever, that he had not spent some very charming 
 hours in the larger, richer apartment. He used to 
 receive his friends there sometimes in great num 
 bers, sometimes at boisterous, many-voiced suppers, 
 which lasted far into the night. When these enter- 
 
Benvolio 209 
 
 tainments were over he never made a direct tran 
 sition to his little scholar s cell, with its garden view. 
 He went out and wandered for an hour through the 
 dark, sleeping streets of the town, ridding himself of 
 the fumes of wine, and feeling not at all tipsy, but 
 intensely, portentously sober. More than once, when 
 he came back and prepared to go to bed, he had seen 
 the first faint glow of dawn trembling upward over 
 the tree tops of his garden. His friends, coming to 
 see him, often found the greater room empty, and, 
 advancing, pounded at the door of his chamber. 
 But he frequently kept quiet, not desiring in the 
 least to see them, knowing exactly what they were 
 going to say, and not thinking it worth hearing. 
 Then, hearing them stride away, and the outer door 
 close behind them, he would come forth and take a 
 turn in his slippers, over his Persian carpets, and 
 glance out of the window and see his defeated visi 
 tant stand scratching his chin in the sunny square, 
 and then laugh lightly to himself as is said to be 
 the habit of the scribbling tribe in moments of pro 
 duction. 
 
 Although he had a family he enjoyed extreme lib 
 erty. His family was so large, his brothers and sis 
 ters so numerous, that he could absent himself con 
 stantly and be little missed. Sometimes he used 
 this privilege freely; he tired of people whom he 
 had seen very often, and he had seen, of course, an 
 
210 Master Eustace 
 
 immense deal of his family. At others he was ex 
 tremely domestic; he suddenly found solitude de 
 pressing, and it seemed to him that if one sought 
 society as a refuge, one needed to be on familiar 
 terms with it, and that with no one was familiarity 
 so natural as among people who had grown up at a 
 common fireside. Nevertheless it frequently oc 
 curred to him for sooner or later everything oc 
 curred to him that he was too independent and ir 
 responsible; that he would be happier if his hands 
 were sometimes tied, so long as the knot were not 
 too tight. His curiosity about all things was great, 
 and he satisfied it largely whenever the occasion 
 offered itself; but as the years went by this pursuit 
 of impartial science appeared to produce a singular 
 result. He became conscious of an intellectual 
 condition similar to that of a palate which has lost 
 its relish. To a man with a disordered appetite all 
 things taste alike, and so it seemed to Benvolio that 
 his imagination was losing its sense of a better and 
 a worse. It had still its glowing moments, its feasts 
 and its holidays ; but, on the whole, the spectacle of 
 human life was growing flat and stale. This is sim 
 ply a wordy way of expressing that pregnantly 
 synthetic fact Benvolio was blase. He knew it, he 
 knew it betimes, and he regretted it acutely. He 
 believed that such a consummation was not abso 
 lutely necessary especially at his time of life; for 
 
Benvolio 211 
 
 he said to himself that there must be a way of using 
 one s faculties which will keep their edges sharp. 
 There was a certain possible economy in one s deal 
 ings with life which would make the two ends meet 
 at the last. What was it ? The wise man s duty was 
 to find it out. One of its rudiments, he believed, 
 was that one grows tired of one s self sooner than 
 of anything else in the world. Idleness, every one 
 admitted, was the greatest of follies; but idleness 
 was subtle and exacted tribute under a hundred 
 plausible disguises. One was often idle when one 
 seemed to be ardently occupied ; one was always idle 
 (it might be concluded) when one s occupations had 
 not a high aim. One was idle therefore when one 
 was working simply for one s self. Curiosity for 
 curiosity s sake, art for art s sake, these were es 
 sentially broken-winded steeds. Ennui was at the 
 end of everything that did not entangle us somehow 
 with human life. To get entangled, therefore, pon 
 dered Benvolio, should be the wise man s aim. Poor 
 Benvolio had to ponder all this, because, as I say, he 
 was a poet and not a man of action. A fine fellow 
 of the latter stamp would have solved the problem 
 without knowing it, and bequeathed to his fellow 
 men not cold formulas but vivid examples. But 
 Benvolio had often said to himself that he was born 
 to imagine great things not to do them; and he 
 had said this by no means sadly, for, on the whole, 
 
212 Master Eustace 
 
 he was very well content with his portion. Imagine 
 them he determined he would, and on a most mag 
 nificent scale. He would entangle himself at least 
 in a mesh of work work of the most profound and 
 elaborate sort. He would handle great ideas, he 
 would enunciate great truths, he would write im 
 mortal verses. In all this there was a large amount 
 of talent and a liberal share of ambition. I will not 
 say that Benvolio was a man of genius ; it may seem 
 to make the distinction too cheap ; but he was at any 
 rate a man with an intellectual passion; and if, being 
 near him, you had been able to listen intently enough, 
 he would, like the great people of his craft, have 
 seemed to emit something of that vague, magical 
 murmur the voice of the infinite which lurks in 
 the involutions of a sea-shell. He himself, by the 
 way, had once made use of this little simile, and 
 had written a poem in which it was melodiously set 
 forth that the poetic minds scattered about the world 
 correspond to the little shells one picks up on the 
 beach, all resonant with the echo of ocean. The 
 whole thing was, of course, rounded off with the 
 sands of time, the waves of history, and other har 
 monious conceits. 
 
II 
 
 BUT (as you are naturally expecting to hear) 
 Benvolio knew perfectly well that there is one way 
 of getting entangled which is far more effectual 
 than any other the way that a charming woman 
 points out. Benvolio was of course in love. Who 
 was his mistress, you ask (I flatter myself with 
 some impatience), and was she pretty, was she kind, 
 was he successful? Hereby hangs my tale, which I 
 must relate categorically. 
 
 Benvolio s mistress was a lady whom (as I can 
 not tell you her real name) it will be quite in keep 
 ing to speak of as the Countess. The Countess was 
 a young widow, who had some time since divested 
 herself of her mourning weeds which indeed she 
 had never worn but very lightly. She was rich, ex 
 tremely pretty, and free to do as pleased her. She 
 was passionately fond of pleasure and admiration, 
 and they gushed forth at her feet in unceasing 
 streams. Her beauty was not of the conventional 
 
 213 
 
214 Master Eustace 
 
 type, but it was dazzlingly brilliant ; few faces were 
 more expressive, more fascinating. Hers was never 
 the same for two days together; it reflected her 
 momentary circumstances with extraordinary vivid 
 ness, and in knowing her you had the advantage of 
 knowing a dozen different women. She was clever 
 and accomplished, and had the credit of being per 
 fectly amiable; indeed, it was difficult to imagine a 
 person combining a greater number of the precious 
 gifts of nature and fortune. She represented felic 
 ity, gaiety, success ; she was made to charm, to play 
 a part, to exert a sway. She lived in a great house, 
 behind high verdure-muffled walls, where other 
 Countesses, in other years, had been the charm and 
 the envy of their time. It was an antiquated quar 
 ter, into which the tide of commerce had lately be 
 gun to roll heavily; but the turbid waves of trade 
 broke in vain against the Countess s enclosure, and 
 if in her garden and her drawing-room you heard 
 the deep uproar of the city, it was only as a vague 
 undertone to sweeter things to music, and witty 
 talk, and tender dialogue. There was something 
 very striking in this unyielding, elegant privacy, in 
 the midst of public toil and traffic. 
 
 Benvolio was a great deal at this lady s house ; he 
 rarely desired better entertainment. I spoke just 
 now of privacy ; but privacy was not what he found 
 there, nor what he wished to find. He went there 
 
Benvolio 215 
 
 when he wished to learn with the least trouble what 
 was going on in the world, for the talk of the people 
 the Countess generally had about her was an epi 
 tome of the gossip, the rumors, the interests, the 
 hopes and fears of polite society. She was a thor 
 oughly liberal hostess; all she asked was to be en 
 tertained; if you would contribute to the common 
 fund of amusement, of discussion, you were a wel 
 come guest. Sooner or later, among your fellow- 
 guests, you encountered every one of consequence. 
 There were frivolous people and wise people; peo 
 ple whose fortune was in their pockets, and people 
 whose fortune was in their brains; people deeply 
 concerned in public affairs, and people concerned 
 only with the fit of their garments or with the num 
 ber of the people who looked round when their 
 names were announced. Benvolio, who liked a large 
 and various social spectacle, appreciated all this; 
 but he was best pleased, as a general thing, when he 
 found the Countess alone. This was often his for 
 tune, for the simple reason that when the Countess 
 expected him, she invariably had herself refused to 
 every one else. This is almost an answer to your 
 inquiry whether Benvolio was successful in his suit. 
 As yet, strictly speaking, there was no suit. Ben 
 volio had never made love to the Countess. This 
 sounds very strange, but it is nevertheless true. He 
 was in love with her ; he thought her the most charm- 
 
216 Master Eustace 
 
 ing creature conceivable; he spent hours with her 
 alone by her own orders ; he had had opportunity 
 he had been up to his neck in opportunity and yet 
 he had never said to her, as would have seemed so 
 natural, "Dear Countess, I beseech you to be my 
 wife." If you are surprised, I may also confide to 
 you that the Countess was; and surprise under the 
 circumstances very easily became displeasure. It is 
 by no means certain that if Benvolio had made the 
 little speech we have just imagined, the Countess 
 would have fallen into his arms, confessed to a 
 mutual flame, and rung in finis to our tale, with the 
 wedding bells. But she nevertheless expected him in 
 civility to pay her this supreme compliment. Her 
 answer would be what it might be ; but his silence 
 was a permanent offence. Every man, roughly 
 speaking, had asked the Countess to marry him, and 
 every man had been told that she was much obliged, 
 but had no idea of marrying. Now here, with the 
 one man who failed to ask her, she had a great idea 
 of it, and his forbearance gave her more to think 
 about than all the importunities of all her other 
 suitors. The truth was she liked Benvolio ex 
 tremely, and his independence rendered him excel 
 lent service. The Countess had a very lively fancy, 
 and she had fingered, nimbly enough, the volume of 
 the young man s merits. She was by nature a trifle 
 cold; she rarely lost her head; she measured each 
 
Benvolio 217 
 
 step as she took it; she had had little fancies and 
 incipient passions ; but on the whole she had thought 
 much more about love than felt it. She had often 
 tried to form an image mentally of the sort of man 
 it would be well for her to love for so it was she 
 expressed it. She had succeeded but indifferently, 
 and her imagination had gone a-begging until the 
 day she met Benvolio. Then it seemed to her that 
 her quest was ended her prize gained. This ner 
 vous, ardent, deep-eyed youth struck her as the har 
 monious counterpart of her own facile personality. 
 This conviction rested with the Countess on a fine 
 sense of propriety which it would be vain to attempt 
 to analyze; he was different from herself and from 
 the other men who surrounded her, and to be com 
 plete it seemed to her that she ought to have some 
 thing of that sort in her train. In the old days she 
 would have had it in the person of a troubadour or 
 a knight-errant ; now, a woman who was in her own 
 right a considerable social figure might conveniently 
 annex it in the form of a husband. I don t know 
 how good a judge the Countess was of such matters, 
 but she believed that the world would hear of Ben 
 volio. She had beauty, ancestry, money, luxury, but 
 she had not genius; and if genius was to be had, 
 why not secure it, and complete the list? This is 
 doubtless a rather coarse statement of the Countess s 
 argument; but you have it thrown in gratis, as it 
 
218 Master Eustace 
 
 were; for all I am bound to tell you is that this 
 charming young woman took a fancy to this clever 
 young man, and that she used to cry sometimes for 
 a quarter of a minute when she imagined he didn t 
 care for her. Her tears were wasted, because he did 
 care for her more even than she would have imag 
 ined if she had taken a favorable view of the case. 
 But Benvolio, I cannot too much repeat, was an ex 
 ceedingly complex character, and there was many a 
 hiatus in the logic of his conduct. The Countess 
 charmed him, excited him, interested him; he did 
 her abundant justice more than justice ; but at the 
 end of all he felt that she failed to satisfy him. If 
 a man could have half a dozen wives and Ben 
 volio had once maintained, poetically, that he ought 
 to have the Countess would do very well for one 
 of them possibly even for the best of them. But 
 she would not serve for all seasons and all moods; 
 she needed a complement, an alternative what the 
 French call a repoussoir. One day he was going to 
 see her, knowing that he was expected. There was 
 to be a number of other people in fact, a very bril 
 liant assembly; but Benvolio knew that a certain 
 touch of the hand, a certain glance of the eye, a cer 
 tain caress of the voice, would be reserved for him 
 alone. Happy Benvolio, you will say, to be going 
 about the world with such charming secrets as this 
 locked up in his young heart ! Happy Benvolio in- 
 
Benvolio 219 
 
 deed ; but mark how he trifled with his happiness. 
 He went to the Countess s gate, but he went no 
 further; he stopped, stood there a moment, frown 
 ing intensely, and biting the finger of his glove ; then 
 suddenly he turned and strode away in the opposite 
 direction. He walked and walked and left the town 
 behind him. He went his way till he reached the 
 country, and here he bent his steps toward a little 
 wood which he knew very well, and whither indeed, 
 on a spring afternoon, when she had taken a fancy 
 to play at shepherd and shepherdess, he had once 
 come with the Countess. He flung himself on the 
 grass, on the edge of the wood not in the same 
 place where he had lain at the Countess s feet, pull 
 ing sonnets out of his pocket and reading them one 
 by one ; a little stream flowed beside him ; opposite, 
 the sun was declining; the distant city lay before 
 him, lifting its towers and chimneys against the red 
 dening western sky. The twilight fell and deep 
 ened and the stars came out. Benvolio lay there 
 thinking that he preferred them to the Countess s 
 wax candles. He went back to town in a 
 farmer s wagon, talking with the honest rustic who 
 drove it. 
 
 Very much in this way, when he had been on the 
 point of knocking at the gate of the Countess s heart 
 and asking ardently to be admitted, he had paused, 
 stood frowning, and then turned short and rambled 
 
220 Master Eustace 
 
 away into solitude. She never knew how near, two 
 or three times, he had come. Two or three times 
 she had accused him of being rude, and this was 
 nothing but the backward swing of the pendulum. 
 One day it seemed to her that he was altogether too 
 vexatious, and she reproached herself with her good 
 nature. She had made herself too cheap; such con 
 duct was beneath her dignity; she would take an 
 other tone. She closed her door to him, and bade 
 her people say, whenever he came, that she was en 
 gaged. At first Benvolio only wondered. Oddly 
 enough, he was not what is commonly called sensi 
 tive ; he never supposed you meant to offend him ; 
 not being at all impertinent himself, he was not on 
 the watch for impertinence in others. Only, when 
 he fairly caught you in the act he was immensely 
 disgusted. Therefore, as I say, he simply wondered 
 what had suddenly made the Countess so busy ; then 
 he remembered certain other charming persons 
 whom he knew, and went to see how the world 
 wagged with them. But they rendered the Countess 
 eminent service : she gained by comparison, and 
 Benvolio began to miss her. All that other charm 
 ing women were who led the life of the world (as it 
 is called) the Countess was in a superior, in a per 
 fect degree ; she was the ripest fruit of a high civili 
 zation; her companions and rivals, beside her, had 
 but a pallid bloom, an acrid savor. Benvolio had a 
 
Benvolio 221 
 
 relish in all things for the best, and he found him 
 self breathing sighs under the Countess s darkened 
 windows. He wrote to her asking why in the world 
 she treated him so cruelly, and then she knew that 
 her charm was working. She was careful not to 
 answer his letter, and to have him refused at her 
 gate as inexorably as ever. It is an ill wind that 
 blows nobody good, and Benvolio, one night after 
 his dismissal, wandered about the moonlit streets till 
 nearly morning, composing the finest verses he had 
 ever produced. The subscribers to the magazine to 
 which he sent them were at least the gainers. But 
 unlike many poets, Benvolio did not on this occa 
 sion bury his passion in his poem; or if he did, its 
 ghost was stalking abroad the very next night. He 
 went again to the Countess s gate, and again it was 
 closed in his face. So, after a very moderate 
 amount of hesitation, he bravely (and with a dex 
 terity which surprised him) scaled her garden wall 
 and dropped down in the moonshine, upon her lawn. 
 I don t know whether she was expecting him, but if 
 she had been, the matter could not have been better 
 arranged. She was sitting in a little niche of shrub 
 bery, with no protector but a microscopic lap-dog. 
 She pretended to be scandalized at his audacity, but 
 his audacity carried the hour. "This time certainly," 
 thought the Countess, "he will make his declaration. 
 He didn t jump that wall, at the risk of his neck, 
 
222 Master Eustace 
 
 0J3 
 
 simply to ask me for a cup of tea." Not a bit of 
 it; Benvolio was devoted, but he was not more ex 
 plicit than before. He declared that this was the 
 happiest hour of his life; that there was a charming 
 air of romance in his position; that, honestly, he 
 thanked the Countess for having made him desper 
 ate; that he would never come to see her again but 
 by the garden wall ; that something, to-night what 
 was it? was vastly becoming to her; that he de 
 voutly hoped she would receive no one else ; that his 
 admiration for her was unbounded; that the stars, 
 finally, had a curious pink light ! He looked at her, 
 through the flower-scented dusk, with admiring 
 eyes; but he looked at the stars as well; he threw 
 back his head and folded his arms, and let the con 
 versation lag while he examined the constellations. 
 He observed also the long shafts of light proceed 
 ing from the windows of the house, as they fell 
 upon the lawn and played among the shrubbery. 
 The Countess had always thought him a strange 
 man, but to-night she thought him stranger than 
 ever. She became satirical, and the point of her 
 satire was that he was after all but a dull fellow ; 
 that his admiration was a poor compliment ; that he 
 would do well to turn his attention to astronomy! 
 In answer to this he came perhaps (to the Countess s 
 sense) as near as he had ever come to making a dec 
 laration. 
 
Benvolio 223 
 
 "Dear lady," he said, "you don t begin to know 
 how much I admire you !" 
 
 She left her place at this, and walked about her 
 lawn, looking 1 at him askance while he talked, trail 
 ing her embroidered robe over the grass, and finger 
 ing the folded petals of her flowers. He made a 
 sort of sentimental profession of faith; he assured 
 her that she represented his ideal of a certain sort 
 of woman. This last phrase made her pause a mo 
 ment and stare at him, wide-eyed. "Oh, I mean the 
 finest sort," he cried "the sort that exerts the wid 
 est sway. You represent the world and everything 
 that the world can give, and you represent them at 
 their best in their most generous, most graceful, 
 most inspiring form. If a man were a revolutionist, 
 you would reconcile him to society. You are a di 
 vine embodiment of all the amenities, the refine 
 ments, the complexities of life ! You are the flower 
 of urbanity, of culture, of tradition! You are the 
 product of so many influences that it widens one s 
 horizon to know you; of you too it is true that to 
 admire you is a liberal education! Your charm is 
 irresistible; I never approach you without feeling 
 it." 
 
 Compliments agreed with the Countess, as we may 
 say ; they not only made her happier, but they made 
 her better. It became a matter of conscience with 
 her to deserve them. These were magnificent ones, 
 
224 Master Eustace 
 
 and she was by no means indifferent to them. Her 
 cheek faintly flushed, her eyes vaguely glowed, and 
 though her beauty, in the literal sense, was question 
 able, all that Benvolio said of her had never seemed 
 more true. He said more in the same strain, and 
 she listened without interrupting him. But at last 
 she suddenly became impatient ; it seemed to her that 
 this was after all a tolerably inexpensive sort of 
 tribute. But she did not betray her impatience with 
 any petulance; she simply shook her finger a mo 
 ment, to enjoin silence, and then she said, in a voice 
 of extreme gentleness "You have too much imagi 
 nation!" He answered that to do her perfect jus 
 tice, he had too little. To this she replied that it 
 was not of her any longer he was talking; he had 
 left her far behind. He was spinning fancies about 
 some highly subtilized figment of his brain. The 
 best answer to this, it seemed to Benvolio, was to 
 seize her hand and kiss it. I don t know what the 
 Countess thought of this form of argument ; I incline 
 to think it both pleased and vexed her; it was at 
 once too much and too little. She snatched her 
 hand away and went rapidly into the house. Al 
 though Benvolio immediately followed her, he was 
 unable to overtake her ; she had retired into impene 
 trable seclusion. A short time afterward she left 
 town and went for the summer to an estate which 
 she possessed in a distant part of the country. 
 
Ill 
 
 BENVOLIO was extremely fond of the country, but 
 he remained in town after all his friends had de 
 parted. Many of them made him say he would come 
 and see them. He promised, or half promised, but 
 when he reflected that in almost every case he would 
 find a house full of fellow-guests, to whose pursuits 
 he would have to conform, and that if he rambled 
 away with a valued duodecimo in his pocket to spend 
 thq morning alone in the woods, he would be de 
 nounced as a marplot and a selfish brute, he felt no 
 great desire to pack his bag. He had, as we know, 
 his moods of expansion and of contraction ; he had 
 been tolerably expansive for many months past, and 
 now the tide of contraction had set in. And then I 
 suspect the foolish fellow had no money to travel 
 withal. He had lately put all his available funds 
 into the purchase of a picture an estimable work 
 of the Venetian school, suddenly thrown into the 
 market. It was offered for a moderate sum, and 
 
 225 
 
226 Master Eustace 
 
 Benvolio, who was one of the first to see it, secured 
 it and hung it triumphantly in his room. It had all 
 the classic Venetian glow, and he used to lie on his 
 divan by the hour, gazing at it. It had, indeed, a 
 peculiar property, of which I have known no other 
 example. Most pictures that are remarkable for 
 their color (especially if they have been painted a 
 couple of centuries) need a flood of sunshine on the 
 canvas to bring it out. But this one seemed to have 
 a hidden radiance of its own, which showed bright 
 est when the room was half darkened. When Ben 
 volio wished especially to enjoy his treasure he 
 dropped his Venetian blinds, and the picture glowed 
 forth into the cool dusk with enchanting effect. It 
 represented, in a fantastic way, the story of Per 
 seus and Andromeda the beautiful naked maiden 
 chained to a rock, on which, with picturesque incon 
 gruity, a wild fig-tree was growing ; the green Adri 
 atic tumbling at her feet, and a splendid brown- 
 limbed youth in a curious helmet hovering near her 
 on a winged, horse. The journey his fancy made 
 as he lay and looked at his picture Benvolio pre 
 ferred to any journey he might make by the public 
 conveyances. 
 
 But he resorted for entertainment, as he had often 
 done before, to the windows overlooking the old 
 garden behind his house. As the summer deepened 
 of course the charm of the garden increased. It 
 
Benvolio 227 
 
 grew more tangled and bosky and mossy, and sent 
 forth sweeter and heavier odors into the neighbor 
 ing air. It was a perfect solitude : Benvolio had 
 never seen a visitor there. One day, therefore, at 
 this time, it puzzled him most agreeably to perceive 
 a young girl sitting under one of the trees. She 
 sat there a long time, and though she was at a dis 
 tance, he managed, by looking long enough, to make 
 out that she was pretty. She was dressed in black, 
 and when she left her place her step had a kind of 
 nun-like gentleness and demureness. Although she 
 was alone, she seemed shy and half -startled. She 
 wandered away and disappeared from sight, save 
 that here and there he saw her white parasol gleam 
 ing in the gaps of the foliage. Then she came back 
 to her seat under the great tree, and remained there 
 for some time, arranging in her lap certain flowers 
 that she had gathered. Then she rose again and 
 vanished, and Benvolio waited in vain for her re 
 turn. She had evidently gone into the house. The 
 next day he saw her again, and the next, and the 
 next. On these occasions she had a book in her 
 hand, and she sat in her former place a long time, 
 and read it with an air of great attention. Now and 
 then she raised her head and glanced toward the 
 house as if to keep something in sight which di 
 vided her care ; and once or twice she laid down her 
 book and tripped away to her hidden duties with a 
 
228 Master Eustace 
 
 lighter step than she had shown the first day. Ben- 
 volio had a fancy that she had an invalid parent, or 
 a relation of some kind, who was unable to walk, 
 and had been moved into a window overlooking the 
 garden. She always took up her book again when 
 she came back, and bent her pretty head over it with 
 charming earnestness. Benvolio had already discov 
 ered that her head was pretty. He fancied it re 
 sembled a certain exquisite little head on a Greek 
 silver coin which lay, with several others, in an agate 
 cup on his table. You see he had also already taken 
 to fancying, and I offer this as the excuse for his 
 staring at his modest neighbor by the hour in this 
 inordinately idle fashion. But he was not really 
 idle, because he was I can t say falling in love with 
 her : he knew her too little for that, and besides, he 
 was in love with the Countess but because he was 
 at any rate cudgelling his brains about her. Who 
 was she ? what was she ? why had he never seen her 
 before? The house in which she apparently lived 
 was on another street from Benvolio s own, but he 
 went out of his way on purpose to look at it. It 
 was an ancient, gray, sad-faced structure, with 
 grated windows on the ground floor ; it looked like a 
 convent or a prison. Over a wall, beside it, there 
 tumbled into the street some stray tendrils of a wild 
 vine from Benvolio s garden. Suddenly Benvolio 
 began to fancy that the book the young girl in the 
 
Benvolio 229 
 
 garden was reading was none other than a volume 
 of his own, put forth some six months before. His 
 volume had a white cover and so had this; white 
 covers are rather rare, and there was nothing im 
 possible either in this young lady s reading his book 
 or in her finding it interesting. Very many other 
 women had done the same. Benvolio s neighbor had 
 a pencil in her pocket, which she every now and then 
 drew forth, to make with it a little mark on her 
 page. This quiet gesture gave the young man an 
 exquisite pleasure. 
 
 I am ashamed to say how much time he spent, for 
 a week, at his window. Every day the young girl 
 came into the garden. At last there befell a rainy 
 day a long, warm summer s rain and she stayed 
 within doors. He missed her quite acutely, and 
 wondered, half-smiling, half-frowning, at her ab 
 sence making such a difference with him. He actu 
 ally depended upon her. He didn t know her name ; 
 he knew neither the color of her eyes nor the shade 
 of her hair, nor the sound of her voice ; it was very 
 likely that if he were to meet her face to face else 
 where, he would not recognize her. But she inter 
 ested him ; he liked her ; he found her little indefinite, 
 black-dressed figure sympathetic. He used to find 
 the Countess sympathetic, and certainly the Countess 
 was as unlike this quiet garden nymph as she could 
 very well be and be yet a charming woman. Ben- 
 
230 Master Eustace 
 
 volio s sympathies, as we know, were broad. After 
 the rain the young girl came out again, and now she 
 had another book, having apparently finished Ben- 
 volio s. He was gratified to observe that she be 
 stowed upon this one a much more wandering at 
 tention. Sometimes she let it drop listlessly at her 
 side, and seemed to lose herself in maidenly reverie. 
 Was she thinking how much more beautiful Ben 
 volio s verses were than others of the day? Was 
 she perhaps repeating them to herself? It charmed 
 Benvolio to suppose she might be; for he was not 
 spoiled in this respect. The Countess knew none 
 of his poetry by heart ; she was nothing of a reader. 
 She had his book on her table, but he once noticed 
 that half the leaves were uncut. 
 
 After a couple of days of sunshine the rain came 
 back again, to our hero s infinite annoyance, and this 
 time it lasted several days. The garden lay drip 
 ping and desolate; its charm had quite departed. 
 These days passed gloomily for Benvolio ; he decided 
 that rainy weather, in summer, in town, was intol 
 erable. He began to think of the Gountess again. 
 He was sure that over her broad lands the summer 
 sun was shining. He saw them, in envious fancy, 
 studded with joyous Watteau groups, feasting and 
 making music under the shade of ancestral beeches. 
 What a charming life! he thought what brilliant, 
 enchanted, memorable days ! He had said the very 
 
Benvolio 231 
 
 reverse of all this, as you remember, three weeks 
 before. I don t know that he had ever formulated 
 the idea that men of imagination are not bound to 
 be consistent, but he certainly conformed to its spirit. 
 We are not, however, by any means at the end of 
 his inconsistencies. He immediately wrote a letter 
 to the Countess asking her if he might pay her a 
 visit. 
 
 Shortly after he had sent his letter the weather 
 mended, and he went out to take a walk. The sun 
 was near setting; the streets were all ruddy and 
 golden with its light, and the scattered rain-clouds, 
 broken into a thousand little particles, were flecking 
 the sky like a shower of opals and amethysts. Ben 
 volio stopped, as he sauntered along, to gossip a 
 while with his friend the bookseller. The book 
 seller was a foreigner and a man of taste ; his shop 
 was on the corner of the great square. When Ben 
 volio went in he was serving a lady, and the lady 
 was dressed in black. Benvolio just now found it 
 natural to notice a lady who was dressed in black, 
 and the fact that this lady s face was averted made 
 observation at once more easy and more fruitless. 
 But at last her errand was finished; she had been 
 ordering several books, and the bookseller was writ 
 ing down their names. Then she turned round, and 
 Benvolio saw her face. He stood staring at her 
 most inconsiderately, for he felt an immediate cer- 
 
232 Master Eustace 
 
 tainty that she was the bookish damsel of the gar 
 den. She gave a glance round the shop, at the books 
 on the walls, at the prints and busts, the apparatus of 
 learning, in various forms, that it contained, and 
 then, with the gentle, half -furtive step which Ben- 
 volio now knew so well, she took her departure. 
 Benvolio seized the startled bookseller by the two 
 hands and besieged him with questions. The book 
 seller, however, was able to answer but few of them. 
 The young girl had been in his shop but once before, 
 and had simply left an address, without any name. 
 It was the address of which Benvolio had assured 
 himself. The books she had ordered were all learned 
 works disquisitions on philosophy, on history, on 
 the natural sciences. She seemed an expert in such 
 matters. For some of the volumes that she had 
 just bespoken the bookseller was to send to foreign 
 countries; the others were to be despatched that 
 evening to the address which the young girl had 
 left. As Benvolio stood there the bibliophilist gath 
 ered these latter together, and while he was so en 
 gaged he uttered a little cry of distress : one of the 
 volumes of a set was missing. The book was a rare 
 one, and it would be hard to repair the loss. Ben 
 volio on the instant had an inspiration ; he demanded 
 leave of his friend to act as messenger: he would 
 carry the books, as if he came from the shop, and 
 he would explain the absence of the lost volume, and 
 
Benvolio 233 
 
 the bookseller s views about replacing it, far better 
 than one of the hirelings. He asked leave, I say, 
 but he did not wait till it was given : he snatched up 
 the pile of books and strode triumphantly away! 
 
IV 
 
 As there was no name on the parcel, Benvolio, on 
 reaching the old gray house, over the wall of whose 
 court an adventurous creeper stretched its long arm 
 into the street, found himself wondering in what 
 terms he should ask to have speech of the person for 
 whom the books were intended. At any hazard he 
 was determined not to retreat until he had caught a 
 glimpse of the interior and its inhabitants ; for this 
 was the same man, you must remember, who had 
 scaled the moonlit wall of the Countess s garden. 
 An old serving woman in a quaint cap answered his 
 summons, and stood blinking out at the fading day 
 light from a little wrinkled white face, as if she 
 had never been compelled to take so direct a look at 
 it before. He informed her that he had come from 
 the bookseller s, and that he had been charged with 
 a personal message for the venerable gentleman who 
 had bespoken the parcel. Might he crave license to 
 speak with him ? This obsequious phrase was an im- 
 
 234 
 
Benvolio 235 
 
 provisation of the moment: of course it was hit or 
 miss. But Benvolio had an indefinable conviction 
 that it was rightly aimed; the only thing that sur 
 prised him was the quiet complaisance of the old 
 woman. 
 
 "If it s on a bookish errand you come, sir," she 
 said with a little wheezy sigh, "I suppose I only do 
 my duty in admitting you !" 
 
 She led him into the house, through various dusky 
 chambers, and at last ushered him into an apartment 
 of which the side opposite to the door was occupied 
 by a broad, low casement. Through its small old 
 panes there came a green dim light the light of 
 the low western sun shining through the wet trees 
 of the famous garden. Everything else was ancient 
 and brown; the walls were covered with tiers upon 
 tiers of books. Near the window, in the still twi 
 light, sat two persons, one of whom rose as Ben 
 volio came in. This was the young girl of the gar 
 den the young girl of an hour since at the book 
 seller s. The other was an old man who turned his 
 head, but otherwise sat quite still. 
 
 Both his movements and his stillness immediately 
 announced to Benvolio s fine sense that he was blind. 
 In his quality of poet Benvolio was inventive; a 
 brain that is constantly cudgelled for rhymes is tol- 
 erably alert. In a few moments, therefore, he had 
 given a vigorous push to the wheel of fortune. Va- 
 
236 Master Eustace 
 
 rious things had happened. He had made a soft, 
 respectful speech, he hardly knew about what ; and 
 the old man had told him he had a delectable voice 
 a voice that seemed to belong rather to a person 
 of education than to a tradesman s porter. Benvolio 
 confessed to having picked up an education, and the 
 old man had thereupon bidden the young girl offer 
 him a seat. Benvolio chose his seat where he could 
 see her, as she sat at the low-browed casement. The 
 bookseller on the square thought it likely Benvolio 
 would come back that evening and give him an ac 
 count of his errand, and before he closed his shop he 
 looked up and down the street, to see whether the 
 young man was approaching. Benvolio came, but 
 the shop was closed. He didn t notice it : he walked 
 three times round the great Place without noticing 
 it. He was thinking of something else. He had 
 sat all the evening with the blind old scholar and 
 his daughter, and he was thinking intently, ardently 
 of them. When I say of them, of course I mean of 
 the daughter. 
 
 A few days afterward he got a note from the 
 Countess saying it would give her pleasure to re 
 ceive his visit. He immediately wrote to her that, 
 with a thousand regrets, he found himself urgently 
 occupied in town and must beg leave to defer his 
 departure for a day or two. The regrets were per 
 fectly sincere, but the plea was none the less valid. 
 
Benvolio 237 
 
 Benvolio had become deeply interested in his tran 
 quil neighbors, and, for the moment, a certain way 
 the young girl had of looking at him fixing her 
 eyes, first, with a little vague, half-absent smile, on 
 an imaginary point above his head, and then slowly 
 dropping them till they met his own was quite suf 
 ficient to make him happy. He had called once more 
 on her father, and once more, and yet once more, 
 and he had a vivid prevision that he would often 
 call again. He had been in the garden and found its 
 mild mouldiness even more delightful on a nearer 
 view. He had pulled off his very ill-fitting mask, 
 and let his neighbors know that his trade was not to 
 carry parcels, but to scribble verses. The old man 
 had never heard of his verses ; he read nothing that 
 had been published later than the sixth century ; and 
 nowadays he could read only with his daughter s 
 eyes. Benvolio had seen the little white volume on 
 the table, and assured himself it was his own; and 
 he noted the fact that in spite of its well-thumbed 
 air, the young girl had never given her father a hint 
 of its contents, I said just now that several things 
 had happened in the first half hour of Benvolio s 
 first visit. One of them was that this modest maiden 
 fell most positively in love with him. What hap 
 pened when she learned that he was the author of 
 the little white volume I hardly know how to ex 
 press ; her innocent passion, I suppose, passed from 
 
238 Master Eustace 
 
 the positive to the superlative degree. Benvolio pos 
 sessed an old quarto volume, bound in Russia 
 leather, about which there clung an agreeable pung 
 ent odor. In this old quarto he kept a sort of diary 
 if that can be called a diary in which a whole 
 year had sometimes been allowed to pass without 
 an entry. On the other hand, there were some in 
 terminable records of a single day. Turning it over 
 you would have chanced, not infrequently, upon the 
 name of the Countess; and at this time you would 
 have observed on every page some mention of "the 
 Professor" and of a certain person named Scholas- 
 tica. Scholastica, we immediately guess, was the 
 Professor s daughter. Very likely this was not her 
 own name, but it was the name by which Benvolio 
 preferred to know her, and we needn t be more ex 
 act than he. By this time, of course, he knew a great 
 deal about her, and about her venerable sire. The 
 Professor, before the loss of his eyesight and his 
 health, had been one of the stateliest pillars of the 
 University. He was now an old man ; he had mar 
 ried late in life. When his infirmities came upon 
 him he gave up his chair and his classes and buried 
 himself in his library. He made his daughter his 
 reader and his secretary, and his prodigious memory 
 assisted her clear young voice and her steady-mov 
 ing pen. He was held in great honor in the scho 
 lastic world; learned men came from afar to con- 
 
Benvolio 239 
 
 suit the blind sage, and to appeal to his wisdom as 
 to the ultimate law. The University settled a pen 
 sion upon him, and he dwelt in a dusky corner, 
 among the academic shades. The pension was small, 
 but the old scholar and the young girl lived with 
 conventual simplicity. It so happened, however, 
 that he had a brother, or rather a half brother, who 
 was not a bookish man, save as regarded his ledger 
 and day-book. This personage had made money in 
 trade, and had retired, wifeless and childless, into 
 the old gray house attached to Benvolio s garden. 
 He had the reputation of a skinflint, a curmudgeon, 
 a bloodless old miser who spent his days in shuf 
 fling about his mouldy old house, making his pock 
 ets jingle, and his nights in lifting his money-bags 
 out of trapdoors, and counting over his hoard. He 
 was nothing but a chilling shadow, an evil name, a 
 pretext for a curse : no one had ever seen him, much 
 less crossed his threshold. But it seemed that he 
 had a soft spot in his heart. He wrote one day to 
 his brother, whom he had not seen for years, that 
 the rumor had come to him that he was blind, infirm, 
 and poor; that he himself had a large house with a 
 garden behind it, and that if the Professor was not 
 too proud, he was welcome to come and lodge there. 
 The Professor had come in this way a few weeks 
 before, and though it would seem that to a sightless 
 old ascetic all lodgings might be the same, he took 
 
240 Master Eustace_ 
 
 a great satisfaction in this one. His daughter found 
 it a paradise, compared with their two narrow cham 
 bers under the old gable of the University, where, 
 amid the constant coming and going of students, a 
 young girl was compelled to lead a cloistered life. 
 Benvolio had assigned as his motive for. intru 
 sion, when he had been obliged to confess to his real 
 character, an irresistible desire to ask the old man s 
 opinion on certain knotty points of philosophy. 
 This was a pardonable fiction, for the event, at any 
 rate, justified it. Benvolio, when he was fairly 
 launched in a philosophical discussion, forgot that 
 there was anything in the world but metaphysics ; he 
 revelled in transcendent abstractions, and became 
 unconscious of all concrete things even of that 
 most brilliant of concrete things, the Countess. He 
 longed to embark on a voyage of discovery on the 
 great sea of pure reason. He knew that from such 
 voyages the deep-browed adventurer rarely returns ; 
 but if he finds an El Dorado of thought, why should 
 he regret the dusky world of fact? Benvolio had 
 much high discourse with the Professor, who was 
 a devout Neo-Platonist, and whose venerable wit 
 had spun to subtler tenuity the ethereal speculations 
 of the Alexandrian school. Benvolio at this season 
 vowed that study and science were the only game in 
 life worth the candle, and wondered how he could 
 ever for an instant have thought otherwise. He 
 
Benvolio 241 
 
 turned off a little poem in the style of Milton s "Pen- 
 seroso," which, if it had not quite the merit of that 
 famous effusion, was at least the young man s own 
 happiest performance. When Benvolio liked a thing 
 he liked it as a whole it appealed to all his senses. 
 He relished its accidents, its accessories, its mate 
 rial envelope. In the satisfaction he took in his 
 visits to the Professor it would have been hard to 
 say where the charm of philosophy began or ended. 
 If it began with a glimpse of the old man s mild, 
 sightless blue eyes, sitting fixed beneath his shaggy 
 white brows like patches of pale winter sky under 
 a high-piled cloud, it hardly ended before it reached 
 the little black bow on Scholastica s slipper ; and cer 
 tainly it had taken a comprehensive sweep in the in 
 terval. There was nothing in his friends that the 
 appreciative fellow did not feel an immense kindness 
 for. Their seclusion, their stillness, their super- 
 simple notions of the world and the world s ways, 
 the faint, musty perfume of the University which 
 hovered about them, their brown old apartment, im 
 penetrable to the rumors of the town all these 
 things were part of the charm. Then the essence 
 of it perhaps was that in this silent, simple life the 
 intellectual key, if you touched it, was so finely reso 
 nant. In the way of thought there was nothing into 
 which his friends were not initiated nothing they 
 could not understand. The mellow light of their 
 
242 Master Eustace 
 
 low-browed room, streaked with the moted rays that 
 slanted past the dusky bookshelves, was the atmos 
 phere of culture. All this made them, humble folk 
 as they were, not so simple as they at first appeared. 
 They, too, in their own fashion, knew the world; 
 they were not people to be patronized ; to visit them 
 was not a condescension but a privilege. 
 
 In the Professor this was not surprising. He 
 had passed fifty years in arduous study, and it was 
 proper to his character and his office that he should 
 be erudite, impressive, and venerable. But sweet 
 Scholastica seemed to Benvolio at first almost gro 
 tesquely wise. She was an anomaly, a prodigy, a 
 charming monstrosity. Charming, at any rate, she 
 was, and as pretty, I must lose no more time in say 
 ing, as had seemed likely to Benvolio at his window. 
 And yet, even on a nearer view, her prettiness shone 
 forth slowly and half-dimly. It was as if it had 
 been covered with a series of film-like veils, which 
 had to be successively drawn aside. And then it 
 was such a homely, shrinking, subtle prettiness, that 
 Benvolio, in the private record I have mentioned, 
 never thought of calling it by the arrogant name of 
 beauty. He called it by no name at all ; he contented 
 himself with enjoying it with looking into the 
 young girl s mild gray eyes and saying things, on 
 purpose, that caused her candid smile to deepen until 
 (like the broadening ripple of a lake) it reached a 
 
Benvolio 243 
 
 certain dimple in her left cheek. This was its maxi 
 mum ; no smile could do more, and Benvolio desired 
 nothing better. Yet I cannot say he was in love 
 with the young girl ; he only liked her. But he liked 
 her, no doubt, as a man likes a thing but once in his 
 life. As he knew her better the oddity of her learn 
 ing quite faded away; it seemed delightfully natural, 
 and he only wondered why there were not more 
 women of the same pattern. Scholastica had im 
 bibed the wine of science instead of her mother s 
 milk. Her mother had died in her infancy, leaving 
 her cradled in an old folio, three-quarters opened, 
 like a wide V. Her father had been her nurse, her 
 playmate, her teacher, her life-long companion, her 
 only friend. He taught her the Greek alphabet be 
 fore she knew her own, and fed her with crumbs 
 from his own scholastic revels. She had taken sub 
 missively what was given her, and, without know 
 ing it, she grew up a learned maiden. 
 
 Benvolio perceived that she was not in the least 
 a woman of genius. The passion for knowledge, of 
 its own motion, would never have carried her far. 
 But she had a clear, tranquil, natural mind, which 
 gave back an exact, definite image of everything that 
 was presented to it; the sort of intelligence, Ben 
 volio said, which had been, as a minimum, every 
 one s portion in the golden age, and would be again 
 the golden mean in the millennium. And then she 
 
244 Master Eustace 
 
 was so teachable, so diligent, so indefatigable. Slen 
 der and meagre as she was, and rather pale, too, with 
 being much within doors, she was never tired, she 
 never had a headache, she never closed her book or 
 laid down a pen with a sigh. For helping a man, 
 Benvolio thought it was an exquisite organism. 
 What a work he might do on summer mornings and 
 winter nights with that brightly demure little crea 
 ture at his side, transcribing, recollecting, sympa 
 thizing! He wondered how much she cared for 
 these things herself; whether a woman could care 
 for them without being dry and harsh. It was in a 
 great measure for information on this point that 
 he used to question her eyes with the frequency that 
 I have mentioned. But they never gave him a per 
 fectly direct answer, and this was why he came and 
 came again. They seemed to him to say, "If you 
 could lead a student s life for my sake, I could be a 
 life-long household scribe for yours." Was it di 
 vine philosophy that made Scholastica charming, or 
 was it she that made philosophy divine? I cannot 
 relate everything that came to pass between these 
 young people, and I must leave a great deal to your 
 imagination. The summer waned, and when the 
 autumnal shadow began to gnaw the bright edge of 
 the days, the quiet couple in the old gray house had 
 expanded to a talkative trio. For Benvolio the days 
 had passed very fast ; the trio had talked of so many 
 
Benvolio 245 
 
 things. He had spent many an hour in the garden 
 with the young girl, strolling in the weedy paths, or 
 resting on a moss-grown bench. She was a delight 
 ful listener, because while she was perfectly defer 
 ential, she was also perfectly attentive. Benvolio 
 had had women fix very beautiful eyes upon him, 
 and watch with an air of ecstasy the movement of 
 his lips, and yet had found them three minutes after 
 ward quite incapable of saying what he was talking 
 about. Scholastica followed him and, without ef 
 fort or exultation, understood him. 
 
You will say that my description of Benvolio has 
 done him injustice, and that, far from being the 
 sentimental weathercock I have depicted, he is prov 
 ing himself a model of constancy. But mark the 
 sequel. It was at this moment, precisely, that, one 
 morning, having gone to bed the night before sing 
 ing paeans to divine philosophy, he woke up with a 
 headache, and in the worst of humors with it. He 
 remembered Scholastica telling him that she never 
 had headaches, and the memory quite annoyed him. 
 He was in the mood for declaring her a neat little 
 mechanical toy, wound up to turn pages and write 
 a pretty hand, but with neither a head nor a heart 
 that was capable of human ailments. He fell asleep 
 again, and in one of those brief but vivid dreams 
 that sometimes occur in the morning hours, he had 
 a brilliant vision of the Countess. She was human 
 beyond a doubt, and duly familiar with headaches 
 and heartaches. He felt an irresistible desire to see 
 
 246 
 
Benvolio 247 
 
 her and to tell her that he adored her. This satis 
 faction was not unattainable, and before the day 
 was over he was well on his way toward enjoying 
 it. He found the Countess holding her usual court, 
 and making a merry world of it. He had meant 
 to stay with her a week; he stayed two months 
 the most entertaining months of his life. I cannot 
 pretend, of course, to enumerate the diversions of 
 this fortunate circle, nor to say just how Benvolio 
 spent every hour of his time. But if the summer 
 had passed quickly with him, the autumn moved 
 with a tread as light. He thought once in a while 
 of Scholastica and her father once in a while, I 
 say, when present occupations suffered his thoughts 
 to wander. This was not often, for the Countess 
 had always, as the phrase is, a dozen irons on the 
 fire. You see the negative, with Benvolio, always 
 implied as distinct a positive, and his excuse for 
 being inconstant on one side was that he was at that 
 time very constant on another. He developed at this 
 period a talent as yet untried and unsuspected : he 
 proved himself capable of writing brilliant dramatic 
 poetry. The long autumn evenings, in a great coun 
 try house, offered the ideal setting for the much- 
 abused pastime known as private theatricals. The 
 Countess had a theatre, and abundant material for a 
 troupe of amateur players ; all that was lacking was 
 a play exactly adapted to her resources. She pro- 
 
248 Master Eustace 
 
 posed to Benvolio to write one; the idea took his 
 fancy; he shut himself up in the library, and in a 
 week produced a masterpiece. He had found the 
 subject one day when he was pulling over the Count 
 ess s books in an old MS. chronicle written by the 
 chaplain of one of her late husband s ancestors. It 
 was the germ of an admirable drama, and Benvolio 
 enjoyed vastly the work of bringing it to maturity. 
 All his genius, all his imagination went into it. This 
 was their proper mission, he cried to himself the 
 study of warm human passions, the painting of 
 rich dramatic pictures, not the bald excogitation of 
 cold metaphysical formulas. His play was acted 
 with brilliant success, the Countess herself repre 
 senting the heroine. Benvolio had never seen her 
 act, and had no idea she possessed the talent; but 
 she was inimitable, she was a natural artist. What 
 gives charm to life, Benvolio hereupon said to him 
 self, is the element of the unexpected, the unfore 
 seen ; and this one finds only in women of the Count 
 ess s type. And I should do wrong to imply that he 
 here made an invidious comparison, because he did 
 not even think of Scholastica. His play was re 
 peated several times, and people were invited to see 
 it from all the country round. There was a great 
 bivouac of servants in the castle court; in the cold 
 November nights a bonfire was lighted to keep the 
 servants warm. It was a great triumph for Ben- 
 
Benvolio 249 
 
 volio, and he frankly enjoyed it. He knew he en 
 joyed it, and how great a triumph it was, and he 
 felt every disposition to drain the cup to the last 
 drop. He relished his own elation, and found him 
 self excellent company. He began immediately an 
 other drama a comedy this time and he was 
 greatly interested to observe that when his work 
 was fairly on the stocks he found himself regarding 
 all the people about him as types and available fig 
 ures. Everything paid tribute to his work; every 
 thing presented itself as possible material. Life, 
 really, on these terms was becoming very interest 
 ing, and for several nights the laurels of Moliere 
 kept Benvolio awake. 
 
 Delightful as this was, however, it could not last 
 forever. At the beginning of the winter the Count 
 ess returned to town, and Benvolio came back with 
 her, his unfinished comedy in his pocket. During 
 much of the journey he was silent and abstracted, 
 and the Countess supposed he was thinking of how 
 he should make the most of that capital situation in 
 his third act. The Countess s perspicuity was just 
 sufficient to carry her so far to lead her, in other 
 words, into plausible wrong conjectures. Benvolio 
 was really wondering what in the name of mystery 
 had suddenly become of his inspiration, and why his 
 comedy had turned stale on his hands as the cracking 
 of the post-boy s whip. He looked out at the scrubby 
 
250 Master Eustace 
 
 fields, the rusty woods, the sullen sky, and asked 
 himself whether that was the world to which it had 
 been but yesterday his high ambition to hold up the 
 mirror. The Countess s dame de compagnie sat op 
 posite to him in the carriage. Yesterday he thought 
 her, with her pale, discreet face, and her eager move 
 ments that pretended to be indifferent, a finished 
 specimen of an entertaining genus. To-day he could 
 only say that if there was a whole genus, it was a 
 thousand pities, for the poor lady struck him as mis 
 erably false and servile. The real seemed hideous; 
 he felt homesick for his dear familiar rooms be 
 tween the garden and the square, and he longed to 
 get into them and bolt his door and bury himself in 
 his old arm-chair and cultivate idealism for ever 
 more. The first thing he actually did on getting into 
 them was to go to the window and look out into the 
 garden. It had greatly changed in his absence, and 
 the old maimed statues, which all summer had been 
 comfortably muffled in verdure, were now, by an 
 odd contradiction of propriety, standing white and 
 naked in the cold. I don t exactly know how soon 
 it was that Benvolio went back to see his neighbors. 
 It was after no great interval, and yet it was not 
 immediately. He had a bad conscience, and he was 
 wondering what he should say to them. It seemed 
 to him now (though he had not thought of it sooner) 
 that they might accuse him of neglecting them. He 
 
Benvolio 251 
 
 had cultivated their friendship, he had professed the 
 highest esteem for them, and then he had turned 
 his back on them without farewell, and without a 
 word of explanation. He had not written to them ; 
 in truth, during his sojourn with the Countess, it 
 would not have been hard for him to persuade him 
 self that they were people he had only dreamed 
 about, or read about, at most, in some old volume 
 of memoirs. People of their value, he could now 
 imagine them saying, were not to be taken up and 
 dropped in that summary fashion; and if friendship 
 was not to be friendship as they themselves under 
 stood it, it was better that he should forget them at 
 once, for all time. It is perhaps too much to affirm 
 that he could imagine them saying all this ; they were 
 too mild and civil, too unused to acting in self-de 
 fence. But they might easily receive him in a way 
 that would irresistibly imply it, for a man of any 
 delicacy. He felt profaned, dishonored, almost con 
 taminated; so that perhaps when he did at last re 
 turn to his friends, it was because that was the sim 
 plest way to be purified. How did they receive him? 
 I told you a good way back that Scholastica was in 
 love with him, and you may arrange the scene in 
 your fancy in any manner that best accords with this 
 circumstance. Her forgiveness, of course, when 
 once that chord was touched, was proportionate to 
 her resentment. But Benvolio took refuge both 
 
252 Master Eustace 
 
 from his own compunctions and from the young 
 girl s reproaches, in whatever form these were con 
 veyed, in making a full confession of what he was 
 pleased to call his frivolity. As he walked through 
 the naked garden with Scholastica, kicking the wrin 
 kled leaves, he told her the whole story of his so 
 journ with the Countess. The young girl listened 
 with bright intentness, as she would have listened to 
 some thrilling chapter of romance; but she neither 
 sighed, nor looked wistful, nor seemed to envy the 
 Countess, or to repine at her own dull fashion of 
 life. It was all too remote for comparison; it was 
 not, for Scholistica, among the things that might 
 have been. Benvolio talked to her about the Count 
 ess, without reserve. If she liked it, he found on 
 his side that it eased his mind ; and as he said noth 
 ing that the Countess would not have been flattered 
 by, there was no harm done. Although, however, 
 Benvolio uttered nothing but praise of this distin 
 guished lady, he was very frank in saying that she 
 and her way of life always left him at the end in a 
 worse humor than when they found him. They 
 were very well in their way, he said, but their way 
 was not his way, or could not be in the long run; 
 for him, he was convinced, the only happiness was 
 in seclusion, meditation, concentration. Scholastica 
 answered that it gave her extreme pleasure to hear 
 this, for it was her father s belief that Benvolio 
 
Benvolio 253 
 
 had a great aptitude for philosophical research, and 
 that it was a sacred duty with him to devote his days 
 and his nights to it. 
 
 "And what is your own belief?" Benvolio asked, 
 remembering that the young girl knew several of 
 his poems by heart. 
 
 Her answer was very simple : "I believe you re a 
 poet." 
 
 "And a poet oughtn t to run the risk of turning 
 pedant?" 
 
 "No," she answered; "a poet ought to run all 
 risks even that one which for a poet, perhaps, is 
 the most cruel. But he ought to evade them all!" 
 
 Benvolio took great satisfaction in hearing that 
 the Professor deemed that he had in him the making 
 of a philosopher, and it gave an impetus to the zeal 
 with which he returned to work 
 
VI 
 
 OF COURSE even the most zealous student cannot 
 work always, and often, after a very philosophical 
 day, Benvolio spent with the Countess a very senti 
 mental morning. It is my duty as a veracious his 
 torian not to conceal the fact that he discoursed to 
 the Countess about Scholastica. He gave such a 
 puzzling description of her that the Countess de 
 clared that she must be a delightfully quaint crea 
 ture, and that it would be vastly amusing to know 
 her. She hardly supposed Benvolio was in love with 
 this little book-worm in petticoats, but to make sure 
 if that might be called making sure she deliber 
 ately asked him. He said No; he hardly saw how 
 he could be, since he was in love with the Countess 
 herself ! For a while this answer satisfied her, but 
 as the winter went by she began to wonder whether 
 there was not such a thing as a man being in love 
 with two women at once. During many months 
 that followed Benvolio led a kind of double life. 
 
 254 
 
Benvolio V55 
 
 Sometimes it charmed him and gave him an inspir 
 ing sense of personal power. He haunted the domi 
 cile of his gentle neighbors, and drank deep of 
 philosophy, history, and all the garnered wisdom of 
 the ages; and he made appearances as frequent in 
 the Countess s drawing-room, where he played his 
 part with magnificent zest and ardor. It was a life 
 of alternation, and variation, and contrast, and it 
 really demanded a vigorous and elastic tempera 
 ment. Sometimes his own seemed to him quite in 
 adequate to the occasion he felt fevered, bewil 
 dered, exhausted. But when it came to the point, 
 it was impossible to give up either his worldly hab 
 its or his studious aspirations. Benvolio raged in 
 wardly at the cruel limitations of the human mind, 
 and declared it was a great outrage that a man 
 should not be personally able to do everything he 
 could imagine doing. I hardly know how she con 
 trived it, but the Countess was at this time a more 
 engaging woman than she had ever been. Her 
 beauty acquired an ampler and richer cast, and she 
 had a manner of looking at you, as she slowly turned 
 away, which had lighted a hopeless flame in many 
 a youthful breast. Benvolio one day felt in the 
 mood for finishing his comedy, and the Countess 
 and her friends acted it. Its success was no less 
 brilliant than that of its predecessor, and the mana 
 ger of the theatre immediately demanded the privi- 
 
256 Master Eustace 
 
 lege of producing it. You will hardly believe me, 
 however, when I tell you that on the night that his 
 comedy was introduced to the public its eccentric 
 author sat discussing the absolute and the relative 
 with the Professor and his daughter. Benvolio had 
 all winter been observing that Scholastica never 
 looked so pretty as when she sat, of a winter s night, 
 plying a quiet needle in the mellow circle of a cer 
 tain antique brass lamp. On the night in question 
 he happened to fall a-thinking of this picture, and 
 he tramped out across the snow for the express pur 
 pose of looking at it. It was sweeter even than his 
 memory promised, and it drew every thought of his 
 theatrical honors from his head. Scholastica gave 
 him some tea, and her tea, for mysterious reasons, 
 was delicious ; better, strange to say, than that of 
 the Countess, who, however, it must be added, re 
 covered her ground in coffee. The Professor s 
 miserly brother owned a ship which made voyages 
 to China, and brought him goodly chests of the in 
 comparable plant. He sold the cargo for great 
 sums, but he kept a chest for himself. It was al 
 ways the best one, and he had at this time carefully 
 measured a part of his annual quantum into a piece 
 of flossy tissue paper, made it into a little parcel, 
 and presented it to Scholastica. This is the secret 
 history of Benvolio s fragrant cups. While he was 
 drinking them on the night I speak of I am 
 
Benvolio 257 
 
 ashamed to say how many he drank his name, at 
 the theatre, was being tossed across the footlights to 
 a brilliant, clamorous multitude, who hailed him as 
 the redeemer of the national stage. But I am not 
 sure that he even told his friends that his play 
 was being acted. Indeed, this was hardly possible, 
 for I meant to say just now that he had forgot 
 ten it. 
 
 It is very certain, however, that he enjoyed the 
 criticisms the next day in the newspapers. Radiant 
 and jubilant, he went to see the Countess. He found 
 her looking terribly dark. She had been at the 
 theatre, prepared to revel in his triumph to place 
 on his head with her own hand, as it were, the laurel 
 awarded by the public ; and his absence had seemed 
 to her a sort of personal slight. Yet his triumph 
 had nevertheless given her an exceeding pleasure, 
 for it had been the seal of her secret hopes of him. 
 Decidedly he was to be a great man, and this was 
 not the moment for letting him go! At the same 
 time there was something impressive in this extraor 
 dinary lapse in his eagerness in his finding it so 
 easy to forget his honors. It was only an intellec 
 tual Croesus, the Countess said to herself, who could 
 afford to keep so loose an account. But she in 
 sisted on knowing where he had been, and he told 
 her he had been discussing philosophy and tea with 
 the Professor. 
 
258 Master Eustace 
 
 "And was not the daughter there?" the Countess 
 demanded. 
 
 "Most sensibly !" he cried. And then he added in! 
 a moment "I don t know whether I ever told 
 you, but she s almost as pretty as you." 
 
 The Countess resented the compliment to Scholas- 
 tica much more than she enjoyed the compliment to 
 herself. She felt an extreme curiosity to see this 
 inky-fingered little nobody, who was spoken of thus 
 freely in the same breath with herself; and as she 
 seldom failed, sooner or later, to compass her de 
 sires, she succeeded at last in catching a glimpse of 
 her innocent rival. To do so she was obliged to set 
 a great deal of machinery in motion. She made 
 Benvolio give a lunch, in his rooms, to some ladies 
 who professed a desire to see his works of art, and 
 of whom she constituted herself the chaperon. She 
 took care that he threw open the room thai looked 
 into the garden, and here, at the window, she spent 
 much of her time. There was but a chance that 
 Scholastica would come forth into the garden, but it 
 was a chance worth staking something upon. The 
 Countess gave to it time and temper, and she was 
 finally rewarded. Scholastica came out. The poor 
 girl strolled about for half an hour, in profound un 
 consciousness that the Countess s fine eyes were de 
 vouring her. The impression she made was singu 
 lar. The Countess found her both pretty and ugly : 
 
Benvolio 259 
 
 she did not admire her herself, but she understood 
 that Benvolio might. For herself personally she de 
 tested her, and when Scholastica went in and she 
 turned away from the window, her first movement 
 was to pass before a mirror, which showed her some 
 thing that, impartially considered, seemed to her a 
 thousand times more beautiful. The Countess made 
 no comments, and took good care Benvolio did not 
 suspect the trick she had played him. There was 
 something more she promised herself to do, and she 
 impatiently awaited her opportunity. 
 
 In the middle of the winter she announced to him 
 that she was going to spend ten days in the coun 
 try : she had received the most attractive accounts of 
 the state of things on her estate. There had been 
 great snow-falls, and the sleighing was magnificent ; 
 the lakes and streams were solidly frozen, there was 
 an unclouded moon, and the resident gentry were 
 skating, half the night, by torch-light. The Count 
 ess was passionately fond both of sleighing and skat 
 ing, and she found this picture irresistible. And 
 then she was charitable, and observed that it would 
 be a kindness to the poor resident gentry, whose 
 usual pleasures were of a frugal sort, to throw open 
 her house and give a ball or two, with the village fid 
 dlers. Perhaps even they might organize a bear- 
 hunt an entertainment at which, if properly con 
 ducted, a lady might be present as spectator. The 
 
260 Master Eustace 
 
 Countess told Benvolio all this one day as he sat 
 with her in her boudoir, in the fire-light, during the 
 hour that precedes dinner. She had said more than 
 once that he must decamp that she must go and 
 dress for dinner; but neither of them had moved. 
 She did not invite him to go with her to the country ; 
 she only watched him as he sat gazing with a frown 
 at the firelight the crackling light of the great logs 
 which had been cut in the Countess s bear-haunted 
 forests. At last she rose impatiently, and fairly 
 turned him out. After he had gone she stood for a 
 moment looking at the fire with the tip of her foot 
 on the fender. She had not to wait long; he came 
 back within the minute came back and begged her 
 leave to go with her to the country to skate with 
 her in the crystal moonlight and dance with her 
 to the sound of the village fiddles. It hardly matters 
 in what terms his petition was granted : the notable 
 point is that he made it. He was her only compan 
 ion, and when they were established in the castle the 
 hospitality extended to the resident gentry was less 
 abundant than had been promised. Benvolio, how 
 ever, did not complain of the absence of it, because, 
 for the week or so, he was passionately in love with 
 his hostess. They took long sleigh-rides and drank 
 deep of the poetry of winter. The blue shadows on 
 the snow, the cold amber lights in the west, the leaf 
 less twigs against the snow-charged sky, all gave 
 
Benvolio 261 
 
 them extraordinary pleasure. The nights were even 
 better, when the great silver stars, before the moon- 
 rise, glittered on the polished ice, and the young 
 Countess and her lover, firmly joining hands, 
 launched themselves into motion and into the dark 
 ness and went skimming for miles with their winged 
 steps. On their return, before the great chimney- 
 place in the old library, they lingered a while and 
 drank little cups of wine heated with spices. It was 
 perhaps here, cup in hand this point is uncertain 
 that Benvolio broke through the last bond of his re 
 serve, and told the Countess that he loved her, in a 
 manner that quite satisfied her. To be his in all 
 solemnity, his only and his forever this he explic 
 itly, passionately, imperiously demanded of her. 
 After this she gave her ball to her country neigh 
 bors, and Benvolio danced, to a boisterous, swinging 
 measure, with a dozen ruddy beauties dressed in the 
 fashions of the year before last. The Countess 
 danced with the lusty male counterparts of these 
 damsels, but she found plenty of chances to watch 
 Benvolio. Toward the end of the evening she saw 
 him looking grave and bored, with very much such 
 a frown in his forehead as when he had sat staring 
 at the fire that last day in her boudoir. She said to 
 herself for the hundredth time that he was the odd 
 est of mortals. 
 
 On their return to the city she had frequent oc- 
 
262 Master Eustace 
 
 casion to say it again. He looked at moments as if 
 he had repented of his bargain as if it did not at all 
 suit him that his being the Countess s only lover 
 should involve her being his only mistress. She 
 deemed now that she had acquired the right to make 
 him give an account of his time, and he did not con 
 ceal the fact that the first thing he had done after 
 his return was to go to see his eccentric neighbors. 
 She treated him hereupon to a passionate outburst 
 of jealousy ; called Scholastica a dozen harsh names 
 a dingy little Quakeress, a little underhand, hypo 
 critical Puritan ; demanded he should promise never 
 to speak to her again, and summoned him to make a 
 choice once for all. Would he belong to her, or to 
 that odious little blue-stocking? It must be one 
 thing or the other ; he must take her or leave her ; it 
 was impossible she should have a lover who could be 
 so little depended upon. The Countess did not say 
 this made her unhappy, but she repeated a dozen 
 times that it made her ridiculous. Benvolio turned 
 very pale ; she had never seen him so before ; a great 
 struggle was evidently taking place within him. A 
 terrible scene was the consequence. He broke out 
 into reproaches and imprecations; he accused the 
 Countess of being his bad angel, of making him neg 
 lect his best faculties, mutilate his genius, squander 
 his life ; and yet he confessed that he was committed 
 to her; that she fascinated him beyond resistance, 
 
Eenvolio 263 
 
 and that, at any sacrifice, he must still be her slave. 
 This confession gave the Countess uncommon satis 
 faction, and made up in a measure for the unflatter 
 ing remarks that accompanied it. She on her side 
 confessed what she had always been too proud to 
 acknowledge hitherto that she cared vastly for 
 him, and that she had waited for long months for 
 him to say something of this kind. They parted on 
 terms which it is hard to define full of mutual re 
 sentment and devotion, at once adoring and hating 
 each other. All this was deep and stirring emotion, 
 and Benvolio, as an artist, always in one way or an 
 other found his profit in emotion, even when it lac 
 erated or suffocated him. There was, moreover, a 
 sort of elation in having burnt his ship behind him, 
 and he vowed to seek his fortune, in the tumult of the 
 life and action. He did no work ; his power of work, 
 for the time at least, was paralyzed. Sometimes this 
 frightened him ; it seemed as if his genius were dead, 
 his career cut short; at other moments his faith 
 soared supreme; he heard, in broken murmurs, the 
 voice of the muse, and said to himself that he was 
 only resting, waiting, storing up knowledge. Be 
 fore long he felt tolerably tranquil again ; ideas be 
 gan to come to him, and the world to seem entertain 
 ing. He demanded of the Countess that, without 
 further delay, their union should be solemnized. 
 But the Countess, at that interview I have just re- 
 
264 Master Eustace 
 
 lated, had in spite of her high spirit received a great 
 fright. Benvolio, stalking up and down with 
 clinched hands and angry eyes, had seemed to her a 
 terrible man to marry; and though she was con 
 scious of a strong will of her own, as well as of 
 robust nerves, she had shuddered at the thought that 
 such scenes might recur. She had hitherto seen lit 
 tle but the mild and caressing, or at most the joyous 
 and fantastic side of her friend s disposition ; but it 
 now appeared that there was another side to be taken 
 into account, and that if Benvolio had talked of sac 
 rifices, these were not all to be made by him. They 
 say the world likes its master that a horse of high 
 spirit likes being well ridden. This may be true in 
 the long run; but the Countess, who was essentially 
 a woman of the world, was not yet prepared to sur 
 render her own luxurious liberty in tribute. She 
 admired Benvolio the more now that she was afraid 
 of him, but at the same time she liked him a trifle 
 less. She answered that marriage was a very seri 
 ous matter ; that they had lately had a taste of each 
 other s tempers; that they had better wait a while 
 longer ; that she had made up her mind to travel for 
 a year, and that she strongly recommended him to 
 come with her, for travelling was notoriously an 
 excellent test of friendship. 
 
VII 
 
 SHE went to Italy, and Benvolio went with her; 
 brt before he went he paid a visit to his other mis 
 tress. He flattered himself that he had burned his 
 ships behind him, but the fire was still visibly smoul 
 dering. It is true, nevertheless, that he passed a 
 very strange half -hour with Scholastica and her 
 father. The young girl, had greatly changed; she 
 barely greeted him; she looked at him coldly. He 
 had no idea her face could wear that look ; it vexed 
 him to find it there. He had not been to see her in 
 many weeks, and he now came to tell her that he was 
 going away for a year : it is true these were not con 
 ciliatory facts. But she had taught him to think 
 that she possessed in perfection the art of trustful 
 resignation, of unprotesting, cheerful patience vir 
 tues that sat so gracefully on her bended brow that 
 the thought of their being at any rate supremely be 
 coming took the edge from his remorse at making 
 them necessary. But now Scholastica looked older, 
 
 265 
 
266 Master Eustace 
 
 as well as sadder, and decidedly not so pretty. Her 
 figure was meagre, her movements angular, her com 
 plexion, even, not so pure as he had fancied. After 
 the first minute he avoided her eye ; it made her un 
 comfortable. Her voice she scarcely allowed him to 
 hear. The Professor, as usual, was serene and 
 frigid, impartial and transcendental. There was a 
 chill in the air, a shadow between them. Benvolio 
 went so far as to wonder that he had ever found a 
 charm in the young girl, and his present disillusion 
 ment gave him even more anger than pain. He 
 took leave abruptly and coldly, and puzzled his brain 
 for a long time afterward over the mystery of Scho- 
 lastica s reserve. 
 
 The Countess had said that travelling was a test of 
 friendship; in this case friendship (or whatever the 
 passion was to be called) bade fair for some time to 
 resist the test. Benvolio passed six months of the 
 liveliest felicity. The world has nothing better to 
 offer to a man of sensibility than a first visit to Italy 
 during those years of life when perception is at its 
 keenest, when discretion has arrived, and yet youth 
 has not departed. He made with the Countess a long, 
 slow progress through the lovely land, from the Alps 
 to the Sicilian Sea; and it seemed tohim that his imagi 
 nation, his intellect, his genius, expanded with every 
 breath and ripened with every glance. The Countess 
 was in an almost equal ecstasy, and their sympathy 
 
Benvolio 267 
 
 was perfect in all points save the lady s somewhat 
 indiscriminate predilection for assemblies and recep 
 tions. She had a thousand letters of introduction to 
 deliver, and they entailed a vast deal of social ex 
 ertion. Often, on balmy nights when he would have 
 preferred to meditate among the ruins of the Forum, 
 or to listen to the moonlit ripple of the Adriatic, 
 Benvolio found himself dragged away to kiss the 
 hand o-f a decayed princess, or to take a pinch from 
 the snuff-box of an epicurean cardinal. But the 
 ardinals, the princesses, the ruins, the warm south 
 ern tides which seemed the voice of history itself 
 hese and a thousand other things resolved them 
 selves into a vast pictorial spectacle the very stuff 
 that inspiration is made of. Everything he had 
 written before coming to Italy now appeared to him 
 worthless ; this was the needful stamp, the consecra 
 tion of talent. One day, however, this pure felicity 
 was clouded ; by a trifle you will say, possibly, but 
 you must remember that in men of Benvolio s dispo 
 sition primary impulses are almost always produced 
 by trifles light as air. The Countess, speaking of 
 the tone of voice of some one they had met, hap 
 pened to say that it reminded her of the voice of that 
 queer little woman at home the daughter of the 
 blind professor. Was this pure inadvertence, or 
 was it malicious design? Benvolio never knew, 
 though he immediately demanded of her, in sur- 
 
268 Master Eustace 
 
 prise, when and where she had heard Scholastica s 
 voice. His whole attention was aroused ; the Coun 
 tess perceived it, and for a moment she hesitated. 
 Then she bravely proclaimed that she had seen the 
 young girl in the musty old book-room where she 
 spent her dreary life. At these words, uttered in a 
 profoundly mocking tone, Benvolio had an extraor 
 dinary sensation. He was walking with the Count 
 ess in the garden of a palace, and they had just ap 
 proached the low balustrade of a terrace which com 
 manded a magnificent view. On one side were vio 
 let Apenines, dotted here and there with a gleam 
 ing castle or convent; on the other stood the great 
 palace through whose galleries the two had just been 
 strolling, with its walls incrusted with medallions 
 and its cornice charged with statues. But Benvolio s 
 heart began to beat ; the tears sprang to his eyes ; the 
 perfect landscape around him faded away and turned 
 to nothing, and there rose before him, distinctly, 
 vividly present, the old brown room that looked into 
 the dull northern garden, tenanted by the quiet fig 
 ures he had once told himself that he loved. He 
 had a choking sensation and a sudden, overwhelm 
 ing desire to return to his own country. 
 
 The Countess would say nothing more than that 
 the fancy had taken her one day to go and see Scho- 
 lastica. "I suppose I may go where I please!" she 
 cried in the tone of the great lady who is accustomed 
 
Benvolio 269 
 
 to believe that her glance confers honor wherever it 
 falls. "I m sure I did her no harm. She s a good 
 little creature, and it s not her fault if she s so un 
 fortunately plain." Benvolio looked at her intently, 
 but he saw that he would learn nothing from her 
 that she did not choose to tell. As he stood there 
 he was amazed to find how natural or at least how 
 easy it was to disbelieve her. She had been with 
 the young girl : that accounted for anything ; it ac 
 counted abundantly for Scholastica s painful con 
 straint. What had the Countess said and done? 
 what infernal trick had she played upon the poor 
 girl s simplicity? He helplessly wondered, but he 
 felt that she could be trusted to hit her mark. She 
 had done him the honor to be jealous, and to alienate 
 Scholastica she had invented some infernally plaus 
 ible charge against himself. He felt sick and angry, 
 and for a week he treated his companion with the 
 coldest civility. The charm was broken, the cup of 
 pleasure was drained. This remained no secret to 
 the Countess, who was profoundly vexed at her own 
 indiscretion. At last she abruptly told Benvolio that 
 the test had failed ; they must separate ; he would 
 please her by taking his leave. He asked no second 
 permission, but bade her farewell in the midst of her 
 little retinue, and went journeying out of Italy with 
 no other company than his thick-swarming memories 
 and projects. 
 
270 Master Eustace 
 
 The first thing he did on reaching home was to 
 repair to the Professor s abode. The old man s 
 chair, for the first time, was empty, and Scholastica 
 was not in the room. He went out into the garden, 
 where, after wandering hither and thither, he found 
 the young girl seated on a secluded bench. She was 
 dressed, as usual, in black ; but her head was droop 
 ing, her empty hands were folded, and her face was 
 sadder even than when he had last seen her. If she 
 had been changed then, she was doubly changed 
 now. Benvolio looked round, and as the Professor 
 was nowhere visible, he immediately guessed the 
 cause of her affliction. The good old man had gone 
 to join his immortal brothers, the classic sages, and 
 Scholastica was utterly alone. She seemed fright 
 ened at seeing him, but he took her hand, and she 
 let him sit down beside her. "Whatever you were 
 once told that made you think ill of me is detestably 
 false," he said. "I have a boundless friendship for 
 you, and now more than ever I should like to show 
 it." She slowly gathered courage to meet his eyes ; 
 she found them reassuring, and at last, though she 
 never told him in what way her mind had been pois 
 oned, she suffered him to believe that her old confi 
 dence had come back. She told him how her father 
 had died and how, in spite of the high philosophical 
 maxims he had bequeathed to her for her consola 
 tion, she felt very lonely and helpless. Her uncle 
 
Benvolio 271 
 
 had offered her a maintenance, meagre but sufficient ; 
 she had the old serving-woman to keep her company, 
 and she meant to live where she was and occupy her 
 self with collecting 1 her father s papers and giving 
 them to the world according to a plan for which he 
 had left particular directions. She seemed irresist 
 ibly appealing and touching and yet full of secret 
 dignity and self-support. Benvolio fell in love with 
 her on the spot, and only abstained from telling her 
 so because he remembered just in time that he had 
 an engagement with the Countess which had not yet 
 been formally rescinded. He paid her a long visit, 
 and they went in together and rummaged over her 
 father s books and papers. The old scholar s liter 
 ary memoranda proved to be extremely valuable. 
 It would be a great work and a most interesting en 
 terprise to give them to the world. When Scholas- 
 tica heard Benvolio s high estimate of them her 
 cheek began to glow and her spirit to revive. The 
 present then was secure, she seemed to say to her 
 self, and she would have occupation for many a 
 month. He offered to give her every assistance in 
 his power, and in consequence he came daily to see 
 her. Scholastica lived so much out of the world 
 that she was not obliged to trouble herself about gos 
 sip. Whatever jests were aimed at the young man 
 for his visible devotion to a mysterious charmer, he 
 was very sure that her ear was never wounded by 
 
272 Master Eustace __^ 
 
 base insinuations. The old serving-woman sat in a 
 corner, nodding over her distaff, and the two friends 
 held long confabulations over yellow manuscripts in 
 which the commentary, it must be confessed, did not 
 always adhere very closely to the text. Six months 
 elapsed, and Benvolio found an ineffable charm in 
 this mild mixture of sentiment and study. He had 
 never in his life been so long of the same mind; it 
 really seemed as if, as the phrase is, the fold was 
 taken for ever, as if he had done with the world 
 and were ready to live henceforth in the closet. He 
 hardly thought of the Countess, and they had no cor 
 respondence. She was in Italy, in Greece, in the 
 East, in the Holy Land, in places and situations that 
 taxed the imagination. 
 
 One day, in the darkness of the vestibule, after he 
 had left Scholastica, he was arrested by a little old 
 man of sordid aspect, of whom he could make out 
 hardly more than a pair of sharply-glowing little 
 eyes and an immense bald head, polished like an 
 ivory ball. He was a quite terrible little figure in 
 his way, and Benvolio at first was frightened. "Mr. 
 Poet," said the old man, "let me say a single word. 
 I give my niece a maintenance. She may do what 
 she likes. But she forfeits every stiver of her al 
 lowance and her expectations if she is fool enough 
 to marry a fellow who scribbles rhymes. I m told 
 they are sometimes an hour finding two that will 
 
Benvolio 273 
 
 match ! Good evening, Mr. Poet !" Benvolio heard 
 a sound like the faint jingle of loose coin in a trow- 
 sers pocket, and the old man abruptly retreated into 
 his domiciliary gloom. Benvolio had never seen him 
 before, and he had no wish ever to see him again. 
 He had not proposed to himself to marry Scholas- 
 tica, and even if he had, I am pretty sure he would 
 now have taken the modest view of the matter, and 
 decided that his hand and heart were an insufficient 
 compensation for the forfeiture of a miser s fortune. 
 The young girl never spoke of her uncle : he lived 
 quite alone apparently, haunting his upper chambers 
 like a restless ghost, and sending her, by the old 
 serving-woman, her slender monthly allowance, 
 wrapped up in a piece of old newspaper. It was 
 shortly after this that the Countess at last came 
 back. Benvolio had been taking one of his long cus 
 tomary walks, and passing through the park on his 
 way home, he had sat down on a bench to rest. In 
 a few moments a carriage came rolling by ; in it sat 
 the Countess beautiful, sombre, solitary. He rose 
 with a ceremonious salute, and she went her way. 
 But in five minutes she passed back again, and this 
 time her carriage stopped. She gave him a single 
 glance, and he got in. For a week afterward Scho- 
 lastica vainly awaited him. What had happened? 
 It had happened that though she had proved herself 
 both false and cruel, the Countess again asserted 
 
274 Master Eustace __ 
 
 her charm, and our precious hero again succumbed 
 to it. But he resumed his visits to Scholastica after 
 an interval of neglect not long enough to be unpar 
 donable ; the only difference was that now they were 
 not so frequent. 
 
 My story draws to a close, for I am afraid you 
 have already lost patience with our young man s 
 eternal comings and goings. Another year ran its 
 course, and the Professor s manuscripts were ar 
 ranged in great piles, and almost ready for the 
 printer. Benvolio had had a constant hand in the 
 work, and had found it exceedingly interesting; it 
 involved inquiries and researches of the most stimu 
 lating and profitable kind. Scholastica was very 
 happy. Her friend was often absent for many days, 
 during which she knew he was leading the great 
 world s life ; but she had learned that if she patiently 
 waited, the pendulum would swing back and he 
 would reappear and bury himself in their books and 
 papers and talk. And it was not all work and no 
 play between them either ; they talked of everything 
 that came into their heads, and Benvolio by no means 
 forbade himself to descant on those things touching 
 which this sacred vow of personal ignorance had 
 been taken for his companion. He took her wholly 
 into his poetic confidence/and read her everything 
 he had written since his return from Italy. The 
 more he worked the more he desired to work; and 
 
Benvolio 275 
 
 so, at this time, occupied as he was with editing the 
 Professor s manuscripts, he had never been so pro 
 ductive on his own account. He wrote another 
 drama, on an Italian subject, which was performed 
 with magnificent success ; and this he had discussed 
 with Scholastica scene by scene and speech by speech. 
 He proposed to her to come and see it acted from a 
 covered box, where her seclusion would be com 
 plete. She seemed for an instant to feel the force of 
 the temptation ; then she shook her head with a frank 
 smile, and said it was better not. The play was dedi 
 cated to the Countess, who had suggested the sub 
 ject to him in Italy, where it had been imparted to 
 her, as a family anecdote, by one of her old prin 
 cesses. This easy, fruitful double life might have 
 lasted for ever but for two most regrettable events. 
 Might have lasted I say; you observe I do not affirm 
 it positively. Scholastica became preoccupied and 
 depressed; she was suffering a secret annoyance. 
 She concealed it as far as she might from her friend, 
 and with some success; for although he suspected 
 something and questioned her, she persuaded him 
 that it was his own fancy. In reality it was no fancy 
 at all, but the very uncomfortable fact that her 
 shabby old uncle, the miser, was making himself ex 
 cessively disagreeable to her. He had told Benvolio 
 that she might do as pleased her, but he had recently 
 revoked this amiable concession. He informed her 
 
276 Master Eustace 
 
 one day by means of an illegible note, scrawled with 
 a blunt pencil, on the back of an old letter, that her 
 beggarly friend the poet came to see her altogether 
 too often ; that he was determined she never should 
 marry a crack-brained rhymester; and that before 
 the sacrifice became too painful she would be so 
 good as to dismiss Mr. Benvolio. This was accom 
 panied by an intimation, more explicit than gra 
 cious, that he opened his money bags only for those 
 who deferred to his incomparable wisdom. Scho- 
 lastica was poor, and simple, and lonely; but she was 
 proud, for all that, with a silent pride of her own, 
 and her uncle s charity, proffered on these terms, 
 became intolerably bitter to her soul. She sent him 
 word that she thanked him for his past liberality, 
 but she would no longer be a charge upon him. She 
 said to herself that she could work ; she had a su 
 perior education ; many women, she knew, supported 
 themselves. She even found something inspiring in 
 the idea of going out into the world of which she 
 knew so little, to seek her fortune. Her great desire, 
 however, was to keep her situation a secret from 
 Benvolio, and to prevent his knowing the sacrifice 
 she was making for him. This it is especially that 
 proves she was proud. It so befell that circum 
 stances made secrecy possible. I don t know 
 whether the Countess had always an idea of mar 
 rying Benvolio, but her unquenchable vanity still 
 
Benvolio 277 
 
 suffered from the spectacle of his divided allegiance, 
 and it suggested to her a truly malignant revenge. 
 A brilliant political mission, for a particular pur 
 pose, was about to be despatched to a neighboring 
 government, and half a dozen young men of emi 
 nence were to be attached to it. The Countess had 
 influence at court, and without saying anything to 
 Benvolio, she immediately urged his claim to a post, 
 on the ground of his distinguished services to litera 
 ture. She pulled her wires so cleverly that in a very 
 short time she had the pleasure of presenting him his 
 appointment, on a great sheet of parchment, from 
 which the royal seal dangled by a blue ribbon. It 
 involved an exile of but a few weeks, and to this, 
 with her eye on the sequel of her project, she was 
 able to resign herself. Benvolio s imagination took 
 fire at the thought of spending a month at a foreign 
 court, in the very hotbed of consummate diplomacy; 
 this was a phase of experience with which he was 
 as yet unacquainted. He departed, and no sooner 
 had he gone than the Countess, at a venture, waited 
 upon Scholastica. She knew she was poor, and she 
 believed that in spite of her homely virtues she 
 would not, if the opportunity was placed in a cer 
 tain light, prove implacably indisposed to better her 
 fortunes. She knew nothing of the young girl s 
 contingent expectations from her uncle, and her in 
 terference, at this juncture, was simply a remark- 
 
278 Master Eustace 
 
 able coincidence. She laid before her a proposal 
 from a certain great lady, whose husband, an emi 
 nent general, had just been dubbed governor of an 
 island on the other side of the globe. This lady 
 desired a preceptress for her children ; she had heard 
 of Scholastica s merit, and she ventured to hope that 
 she might persuade her to accompany her to the an 
 tipodes and reside in her family. The offer was 
 brilliant; to Scholastica it seemed mysteriously and 
 providentially opportune. Nevertheless she hesi 
 tated, and demanded time for reflection; without 
 telling herself why, she wished to wait till Benvolio 
 returned. He wrote her two or three letters, full of 
 the echoes of his actual life, and without a word 
 about the things that were nearer her own experi 
 ence. The month elapsed, but he was still absent. 
 Scholastica, who was in correspondence with the 
 governor s wife, delayed her decision from week to 
 week. She had sold her father s manuscripts to a 
 publisher, at a very poor bargain, and gone, mean 
 while, to live in a convent. At last the governor s 
 lady demanded her ultimatum. The poor girl 
 scanned the horizon, and saw no rescuing friend; 
 Benvolio was still at the court of Illyria ! What she 
 saw was the Countess s fine eyes eagerly watching 
 her over the top of her fan. They seemed to con 
 tain a horrible menace, and to hold somehow her 
 happiness at their mercy. Her heart sank; she 
 
Benvolio 279 
 
 gathered up her few possessions and set sail, with 
 her illustrious protectors, for the antipodes. Shortly 
 after her departure Benvolio returned. He felt a 
 terrible pang of rage and grief when he learned that 
 she had gone ; he went to the Countess, prepared to 
 accuse her of the Basest treachery. But she checked 
 his reproaches by arts that she had never gone so far 
 as to use before, and promised him that if he would 
 trust her, he should never miss that pale-eyed little 
 governess. It can hardly be supposed that he be 
 lieved her, but he appears to have been guilty of let 
 ting* himself be persuaded without belief. For some 
 time after this he almost lived with the Countess. 
 He had, with infinite pains, purchased from his 
 neighbor, the miser, the right of occupancy of the 
 late Professor s apartment. The repulsive old man, 
 in spite of his aversion to rhymesters, had not re 
 sisted the financial argument, and seemed greatly 
 amazed that a poet should have a dollar to spend. 
 Scholastica had left all things in their old places, but 
 Benvolio, for the present, never went into the room. 
 He turned the key in the door, and kept it in his 
 waistcoat pocket, where, while he was with the 
 Countess, hrs fingers fumbled with it. Several 
 months rolled by, and the Countess s promise was 
 not verified. He missed Scholastica intensely, and 
 missed her more as time elapsed. He began at last 
 to go to the old room with the garden, and to try 
 
280 Master Eustace 
 
 to do some work there. He succeeded in a fashion, 
 but it seemed dreary doubly dreary when he re 
 flected what it might have been. Suddenly he ceased 
 to visit the Countess ; a long time passed without her 
 seeing him. She met him at another house, and had 
 some remarkable words with him. She covered him 
 with reproaches that were doubtless deserved, but he 
 made her an answer that caused her to open her eyes 
 and flush, and admit afterward that, for a clever 
 woman, she had been a great fool. "Don t you see," 
 he said "can t you imagine that I cared for you 
 only by contrast? You took the trouble to kill the 
 contrast, and with it you killed everything else. 
 For a constancy I prefer this!" And he tapped 
 his poetic brow. He never saw the Countess again. 
 I rather regret now that I said at the beginning of 
 my story that it was not to be a fairy tale ; other 
 wise I should be at liberty to say, with harmonious 
 geniality, that if Benvolio missed Scholastica he 
 missed the Countess also, and led an extremely fret 
 ful and unproductive life, until one day he sailed 
 for the antipodes and brought Scholastica home. 
 After this he began to produce again; only, many 
 people said, his poetry had become dismally dull. 
 But excuse me; I am writing as if this were a fairy 
 tale! 
 
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