world before me, full of interesting female faces and charming female figures, what course did it become me to take? To go back to my country-house, and mope over the loss of a woman who had deliberately deserted me? or to send for a courier and a traveling carriage, and forget her gayly among foreign people and foreign scenes? In the state of my temper at that moment, the idea of a pleasure tour in Europe fired my imagination. I first astonished the people at the hotel by ordering all further inquiries after the missing Mrs. Van Brandt to be stopped; and then I opened my writing desk and wrote to tell my mother frankly and fully of my new plans.
The answer arrived by return of post.
To my surprise and delight, my good mother was not satisfied with only formally approving of my new resolution. With an energy which I had not ventured to expect from her, she had made all her arrangements for leaving home, and had started for Edinburgh to join me as my traveling companion. 'You shall not go away alone, George,' she wrote, 'while I have strength and spirits to keep you company.'
In three days from the time when I read those words our preparations were completed, and we were on our way to the Continent.
CHAPTER XIII. NOT CURED YET.
WE visited France, Germany, and Italy; and we were absent from England nearly two years.
Had time and change justified my confidence in them? Was the image of Mrs. Van Brandt an image long since dismissed from my mind?
No! Do what I might, I was still (in the prophetic language of Dame Dermody) taking the way to reunion with my kindred spirit in the time to come. For the first two or three months of our travels I was haunted by dreams of the woman who had so resolutely left me. Seeing her in my sleep, always graceful, always charming, always modestly tender toward me, I waited in the ardent hope of again beholding the apparition of her in my waking hours—of again being summoned to meet her at a given place and time. My anticipations were not fulfilled; no apparition showed itself. The dreams themselves grew less frequent and less vivid and then ceased altogether. Was this a sign that the days of her adversity were at an end? Having no further need of help, had she no further remembrance of the man who had tried to help her? Were we never to meet again?
I said to myself: 'I am unworthy of the name of man if I don't forget her now!' She still kept her place in my memory, say what I might.
I saw all the wonders of Nature and Art which foreign countries could show me. I lived in the dazzling light of the best society that Paris, Rome, Vienna could assemble. I passed hours on hours in the company of the most accomplished and most beautiful women whom Europe could produce—and still that solitary figure at Saint Anthony's Well, those grand gray eyes that had rested on me so sadly at parting, held their place in my memory, stamped their image on my heart.
Whether I resisted my infatuation, or whether I submitted to it, I still longed for her. I did all I could to conceal the state of my mind from my mother. But her loving eyes discovered the secret: she saw that I suffered, and suffered with me. More than once she said: 'George, the good end is not to be gained by traveling; let us go home.' More than once I answered, with the bitter and obstinate resolution of despair: 'No. Let us try more new people and more new scenes.' It was only when I found her health and strength beginning to fail under the stress of continual traveling that I consented to abandon the hopeless search after oblivion, and to turn homeward at last.
I prevailed on my mother to wait and rest at my house in London before she returned to her favorite abode at the country-seat in Perthshire. It is needless to say that I remained in town with her. My mother now represented the one interest that held me nobly and endearingly to life. Politics, literature, agriculture—the customary pursuits of a man in my position—had none of them the slightest attraction for me.
We had arrived in London at what is called 'the height of the season.' Among the operatic attractions of that year—I am writing of the days when the ballet was still a popular form of public entertainment—there was a certain dancer whose grace and beauty were the objects of universal admiration. I was asked if I had seen her, wherever I went, until my social position, as the one man who was indifferent to the reigning goddess of the stage, became quite unendurable. On the next occasion when I was invited to take a seat in a friend's box, I accepted the proposal; and (far from willingly) I went the way of the world—in other words, I went to the opera.
The first part of the performance had concluded when we got to the theater, and the ballet had not yet begun. My friends amused themselves with looking for familiar faces in the boxes and stalls. I took a chair in a corner and waited, with my mind far away from the theater, from the dancing that was to come. The lady who sat nearest to me (like ladies in general) disliked the neighborhood of a silent man. She determined to make me talk to her.
'Do tell me, Mr. Germaine,' she said. 'Did you ever see a theater anywhere so full as this theater is to- night?'
She handed me her opera-glass as she spoke. I moved to the front of the box to look at the audience.
It was certainty a wonderful sight. Every available atom of space (as I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of the building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward, my range of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that distance, the excellent glass which had been put into my hands brought the faces of the audience close to me. I looked first at the persons who occupied the front row of seats in the gallery stalls.
Moving the opera-glass slowly along the semicircle formed by the seats, I suddenly stopped when I reached the middle.
My heart gave a great leap as if it would bound out of my body. There was no mistaking
She sat in front—but not alone. There was a man in the stall immediately behind her, who bent over her and spoke to her from time to time. She listened to him, so far as I could see, with something of a sad and weary look. Who was the man? I might, or might not, find that out. Under any circumstances, I determined to speak to Mrs. Van Brandt.
The curtain rose for the ballet. I made the best excuse I could to my friends, and instantly left the box.
It was useless to attempt to purchase my admission to the gallery. My money was refused. There was not even standing room left in that part of the theater.
But one alternative remained. I returned to the street, to wait for Mrs. Van Brandt at the gallery door until the performance was over.
