Doctor Claudius, A True Story Part 8

"But is not the Countess an American?" asked Claudius.

"Yes, certainly. Old Southern family settled north."

"In that case," said Claudius, "the provocation is sufficient. Let us send flowers immediately." And he took his hat from the table.

Thought Mr. Barker, "My show Doctor is going it;" but he translated his thoughts into English.

"I think that is a good idea. I will send for a carriage."

"It is only a step," said Claudius, "we had much better walk."

"Well, anything to oblige you."

Claudius had good taste in such things, and the flowers he sent were just enough to form a beautiful _ensemble_, without producing an impression of lavish extravagance. As Mr. Barker had said, the sending of flowers is a "pretty habit,"--a graceful and gentle fas.h.i.+on most peculiar to America. There is no country where the custom is carried to the same extent; there is no other country where on certain occasions it is requested, by advertis.e.m.e.nt in the newspapers, "that no flowers be sent." Countess Margaret was charmed, and though Miss Skeat, who loved roses and lilies, poor thing, offered to arrange them and put them in water, the dark lady would not let her touch them. She was jealous of their beauty.

The time seemed long to Claudius, though he went in the meanwhile with Barker and the British aristocracy to certain races. He rather liked the racing, though he would not bet. The Duke lost some money, and Barker won a few hundred francs from a Russian acquaintance. The Duke drank curacao and pota.s.s water, and Mr. Barker drank champagne, while Claudius smoked innumerable cigarettes. There were a great many bright dresses, there was a great deal of shouting, and the congregation of the horse-cads was gathered together.

"It does not look much like Newmarket, does it?" said the Duke.

"More like the Paris Exposition, without the exposition," said Barker.

"Do you have much racing in America?" asked Claudius.

"Just one or two," answered Barker, "generally on wheels."

"Wheels?"

"Yes. Trotting. Ag'd nags in sulkies. See how fast they can go a mile,"

explained the Duke. "Lots of shekels on it too, very often."

At last the evening came, and Claudius appeared in Barker's room arrayed in full evening-dress. As Barker had predicted to himself, the result was surprising. Claudius was far beyond the ordinary stature of men, and the close-fitting costume showed off his athletic figure, while the pale, aquiline features, with the yellow heard that looked gold at night, contrasted in their refinement with the ma.s.sive proportions of his frame, in a way that is rarely seen save in the races of the far north or the far south.

The Countess received them graciously, and Miss Skeat was animated. The flowers that Claudius had sent the day before were conspicuously placed on a table in the drawing-room. Mr. Barker, of course, took in the Countess, and Miss Skeat put her arm in that of Claudius, inwardly wondering how she could have overlooked the fact that he was so excessively handsome. They sat at a round table on which were flowers, and a large block of ice in a crystal dish.

"Do you understand Russian soups?" asked Margaret of Claudius, as she deposited a spoonful of a wonderful looking _pate_ in the middle of her _consomme_.

"Alas" said the Doctor, "I am no gastronome. At least my friend Mr.

Barker tells me so, but I have great powers of adaptation. I shall follow your example, and shall doubtless fare sumptuously."

"Do not fear," said she, "you shall not have any more strange and Cossack things to eat. I like some Russian things, but they are so tremendous, that unless you have them first you cannot have them at all."

"I think it is rather a good plan," said Barker, "to begin with something characteristic. It settles the plan of action in one's mind, and helps the memory."

"Do you mean in things in general, or only in dinner?" asked the Countess.

"Oh, things in general, of course. I always generalise. In conversation, for instance. Take the traditional English stage father. He always devotes himself to everlasting perdition before he begins a sentence,--and then you know what to expect."

"On the principle of knowing the worst--I understand," said Margaret.

"As long as people understand each other," Claudius put in, "it is always better to plunge _in medias res_ from the first."

"Yes, Dr. Claudius, you understand that very well;" and Margaret turned towards him as she spoke.

"The Doctor understands many things," said Barker in parenthesis.

"You have not yet reported the progress of the crusade," continued the Countess, "I must know all about it at once."

"I have been plotting and planning in the spirit, while my body has been frequenting the frivolities of this over-masculine world," answered the Doctor. At this point Miss Skeat attacked Mr. Barker about the North American Indians, and the conversation paired off, as it will under such circ.u.mstances.

Claudius was in good spirits and talked wittily, half in jest, one would have thought, but really in earnest, about what was uppermost in his mind, and what he intended should be uppermost in the world. It was a singular conversation, in the course of which he sometimes spoke very seriously; but the Countess did not allow herself the luxury of being serious, though it was an effort to her to laugh at the enthusiasm of his language, for he had a strong vitality, and something of the gift which carries people away. But Margaret had an impression that Claudius was making love, and had chosen this attractive ground upon which to open his campaign. She could not wholly believe him different from other men--at least she would not believe so soon--and her instinct told her that the fair-haired student admired her greatly.

Claudius, for his part, wondered at himself, when he found a moment to reflect on what he had been saying. He tried to remember whether any of these thoughts had been formulated in his mind a month ago. He was, indeed, conscious that his high reverence for women in the abstract had been growing in him for years, but he had had no idea how strong his belief had grown in this reverence as an element in social affairs.

Doubtless the Doctor had often questioned why it was that women had so little weight in the scale, why they did so little of all they might do, and he had read something of their doings across the ocean. But it had all been vague, thick, and foggy, whereas now it was all sharp and clean-edged. He had made the first step out of his dreams in that he had thought its realisation possible, and none but dreamers know how great and wide that step is. The first faint dawning, "It may be true, after all," is as different from the remote, listless view of the shadowy thought incapable of materialisation, as a landscape picture seen by candle-light is different from the glorious reality of the scene it represents. Therefore, when Claudius felt the awakening touch, and saw his ideal before him, urging him, by her very existence which made it possible, to begin the fight, he felt the blood run quickly in his veins, and his blue eyes flashed again, and the words came flowing easily and surely from his lips. But he wondered at his own eloquence, not seeing yet that the divine spark had kindled his genius into a broad flame, and not half understanding what he felt.

It is late in the day to apostrophise love. It has been done too much by people who persuade themselves that they love because they say they do, and because it seems such a fine thing. Poets and cynics, and good men and bad, have had their will of the poor little G.o.d, and he has grown so shy and retiring that he would rather not be addressed, or described, or photographed in type, for the benefit of the profane. He is chary of using pointed shafts, and most of his target practice is done with heavy round-tipped arrows that leave an ugly black bruise where they strike, but do not draw the generous blood. He lurks in out-of-the-way places and mopes, and he rarely springs out suddenly on unwary youth and maid, as he used to in the good old days before Darwin and La Rochefoucauld destroyed the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul,--or man's belief in them, which is nearly the same. Has not the one taught us to see the animal in the angel, and the other to detect the devil in the saint? And yet we talk of our loves as angels and our departed parents as saints, in a gentle, commonplace fas.h.i.+on, as we talk of our articles of faith. The only moderns who apostrophise love with any genuine success are those who smack their lips sensuously at his flesh and blood, because they are too blind to see the lovely soul that is enshrined therein, and they have too little wit to understand that soul and body are one.

Mr. Barker, who seemed to have the faculty of carrying on one conversation and listening to another at the same time, struck in when Claudius paused.

"The Professor, Countess," he began, "is one of those rare individuals who indulge in the most unbounded enthusiasm. At the present time I think, with all deference to his superior erudition, that he is running into a dead wall. We have seen something of the 'woman's rights'

question in America. Let us take him over there and show him what it all means."

"My friend," answered Claudius, "you are one of those hardened sceptics for whom nothing can be hoped save a deathbed repentance. When you are mortally hit and have the alternative of marriage or death set before you in an adequately lively manner, you will, of course, elect to marry.

Then your wife, if you get your deserts, will rule you with a rod of iron, and you will find, to your cost, that the woman who has got you has rights, whether you like it or not, and that she can use them."

"Dollars and cents," said Barker grimly, "that is all."

"No, it is not all," retorted Claudius. "A wise Providence has provided women in the world who can make it very uncomfortable for sinners like you, and if you do not reform and begin a regular course of wors.h.i.+p, I hope that one of them will get you."

"Thanks. And if I repent and make a pilgrimage on my knees to every woman I know, what fate do you predict? what countless blessings are in store for me?"

The Countess was amused at the little skirmish, though she knew that Claudius was right. Barker, with all his extreme politeness and his pleasant speeches, had none of the knightly element in his character.

"You never can appreciate the 'countless blessings' until you are converted to woman-wors.h.i.+p, my friend," said Claudius, evading the question. "But," he added, "perhaps the Countess might describe them to you."

But Margaret meant to do nothing of the kind. She did not want to continue the general conversation on the topic which seemed especially Claudius's own, particularly as Mr. Barker seemed inclined to laugh at the Doctor's enthusiasm. So she changed the subject, and began asking the American questions about the races on the previous day.

"Of course," she said, "I do not go anywhere now."

The dinner pa.s.sed off very pleasantly. Miss Skeat was instructed in the Knickerbocker and Boston peerage, so to speak, by the intelligent Mr.

Barker, who did not fail, however, to hint at the superiority of Debrett, who does not hesitate to tell, and boldly to print in black and white, those distinctions of rank which he considers necessary to the salvation of society; whereas the enterprising compilers of the "Boston Blue Book" and the "New York List" only divide society up into streets, mapping it out into so many square feet and so much frontage of dukes, marquesses, generals, and "people we don't know." Miss Skeat listened to the disquisition on the rights of birth with rapt attention, and the yellow candle-light played pleasantly on her old corners, and her ancient heart fluttered sympathetically. Margaret, on the other side, made Claudius talk about his youth, and took infinite pleasure in listening to his tales of the fresh Northern life he had led as a boy.

The Doctor had the faculty of speech and told his stories with a certain vigour that savoured of the sea.

"I hope you will both come and see me," said the Countess, as the two men took their departure; but as she spoke she looked at Barker.

Half an hour later they sat in their sitting-room at the hotel, and Barker sipped a little champagne while Claudius smoked cigarettes, as usual. As usual, also, they were talking. It was natural that two individuals endowed with the faculty of expressing their thoughts, and holding views for the most part diametrically opposed, should have a good deal to say to each other. The one knew a great deal, and the other had seen a great deal; both were given to looking at life rather seriously than the reverse. Barker never deceived himself for a moment about the reality of things, and spent much of his time in the practical adaptation of means to ends he had in view; he was superficial in his knowledge, but profound in his actions. Claudius was an intellectual seeker after an outward and visible expression of an inward and spiritual truth which he felt must exist, though he knew he might spend a lifetime in the preliminary steps towards its attainment. Just now they were talking of marriage.

"It is detestable," said Claudius, "to think how mercenary the marriage contract is, in all civilised and uncivilised countries. It ought not to be so--it is wrong from the very beginning."