Who was the man in attendance on her—the man whom I had seen sitting behind her, and talking familiarly over her shoulder? While I paced backward and forward before the door, that one question held possession of my mind, until the oppression of it grew beyond endurance. I went back to my friends in the box, simply and solely to look at the man again.
What excuses I made to account for my strange conduct I cannot now remember. Armed once more with the lady's opera-glass (I borrowed it and kept it without scruple), I alone, of all that vast audience, turned my back on the stage, and riveted my attention on the gallery stalls.
There he sat, in his place behind her, to all appearance spell-bound by the fascinations of the graceful dancer. Mrs. Van Brandt, on the contrary, seemed to find but little attraction in the spectacle presented by the stage. She looked at the dancing (so far as I could see) in an absent, weary manner. When the applause broke out in a perfect frenzy of cries and clapping of hands, she sat perfectly unmoved by the enthusiasm which pervaded the theater. The man behind her (annoyed, as I supposed, by the marked indifference which she showed to the performance) tapped her impatiently on the shoulder, as if he thought that she was quite capable of falling asleep in her stall. The familiarity of the action—confirming the suspicion in my mind which had already identified him with Van Brandt—so enraged me that I said or did something which obliged one of the gentlemen in the box to interfere. 'If you can't control yourself,' he whispered, 'you had better leave us.' He spoke with the authority of an old friend. I had sense enough left to take his advice, and return to my post at the gallery door.
A little before midnight the performance ended. The audience began to pour out of the theater.
I drew back into a corner behind the door, facing the gallery stairs, and watched for her. After an interval which seemed to be endless, she and her companion appeared, slowly descending the stairs. She wore a long dark cloak; her head was protected by a quaintly shaped hood, which looked (on
'It's wasting money,' he said, 'to go to the expense of taking
'I am not well,' she answered with her head down and her eyes on the ground. 'I am out of spirits to- night.'
'Will you ride home or walk?'
'I will walk, if you please.'
I followed them unperceived, waiting to present myself to her until the crowd about them had dispersed. In a few minutes they turned into a quiet by-street. I quickened my pace until I was close at her side, and then I took off my hat and spoke to her.
She recognized me with a cry of astonishment. For an instant her face brightened radiantly with the loveliest expression of delight that I ever saw on any human countenance. The moment after, all was changed. The charming features saddened and hardened. She stood before me like a woman overwhelmed by shame—without uttering a word, without taking my offered hand.
Her companion broke the silence.
'Who is this gentleman?' he asked, speaking in a foreign accent, with an under-bred insolence of tone and manner.
She controlled herself the moment he addressed her. 'This is Mr. Germaine,' she answered: 'a gentleman who was very kind to me in Scotland.' She raised her eyes for a moment to mine, and took refuge, poor soul, in a conventionally polite inquiry after my health. 'I hope you are quite well, Mr. Germaine,' said the soft, sweet voice, trembling piteously.
I made the customary reply, and explained that I had seen her at the opera. 'Are you staying in London?' I asked. 'May I have the honor of calling on you?'
Her companion answered for her before she could speak.
'My wife thanks you, sir, for the compliment you pay her. She doesn't receive visitors. We both wish you good- night.'
Saying those words, he took off his hat with a sardonic assumption of respect; and, holding her arm in his, forced her to walk on abruptly with him. Feeling certainly assured by this time that the man was no other than Van Brandt, I was on the point of answering him sharply, when Mrs. Van Brandt checked the rash words as they rose to my lips.
'For my sake!' she whispered, over her shoulder, with an imploring look that instantly silenced me. After all, she was free (if she liked) to go back to the man who had so vilely deceived and deserted her. I bowed and left them, feeling with no common bitterness the humiliation of entering into rivalry with Mr. Van Brandt.
I crossed to the other side of the street. Before I had taken three steps away from her, the old infatuation fastened its hold on me again. I submitted, without a struggle against myself, to the degradation of turning spy and following them home. Keeping well behind, on the opposite side of the way, I tracked them to their own door, and entered in my pocket-book the name of the street and the number of the house.
The hardest critic who reads these lines cannot feel more contemptuously toward me than I felt toward myself. Could I still love a woman after she had deliberately preferred to me a scoundrel who had married her while he was the husband of another wife? Yes! Knowing what I now knew, I felt that I loved her just as dearly as ever. It was incredible, it was shocking; but it was true. For the first time in my life, I tried to take refuge from my sense of my own degradation in drink. I went to my club, and joined a convivial party at a supper table, and poured glass after glass of champagne down my throat, without feeling the slightest sense of exhilaration, without losing for an instant the consciousness of my own contemptible conduct. I went to my bed in despair; and through the wakeful night I weakly cursed the fatal evening at the river-side when I had met her for the first time. But revile her as I might, despise myself as I might, I loved her—I loved her still!
Among the letters laid on my table the next morning there were two which must find their place in this narrative.
The first letter was in a handwriting which I had seen once before, at the hotel in Edinburgh. The writer was Mrs. Van Brandt.
'For your own sake' (the letter ran) 'make no attempt to see me, and take no notice of an invitation which I fear you will receive with this note. I am living a degraded life. I have sunk beneath your notice. You owe it to yourself, sir, to forget the miserable woman who now writes to you for the last time, and bids you gratefully a last farewell.'
