by Henry James
‘She told you?’ smiled Lyon’s neighbour.
‘Oh, of course I proposed to her too. But she evidently thinks so herself!’ he added.
When the ladies left the table the host as usual bade the gentlemen draw together, so that Lyon found himself opposite to Colonel Capadose. The conversation was mainly about the ‘run,’ for it had apparently been a great day in the hunting-field. Most of the gentlemen communicated their adventures and opinions, but Colonel Capadose’s pleasant voice was the most audible in the chorus. It was a bright and fresh but masculine organ, just such a voice as, to Lyon’s sense, such a ‘fine man’ ought to have had. It appeared from his remarks that he was a very straight rider, which was also very much what Lyon would have expected. Not that he swaggered, for his allusions were very quietly and casually made; but they were all too dangerous experiments and close shaves. Lyon perceived after a little that the attention paid by the company to the Colonel’s remarks was not in direct relation to the interest they seemed to offer; the result of which was that the speaker, who noticed that he at least was listening, began to treat him as his particular auditor and to fix his eyes on him as he talked. Lyon had nothing to do but to look sympathetic and assent—Colonel Capadose appeared to take so much sympathy and assent for granted. A neighbouring squire had had an accident; he had come a cropper in an awkward place—just at the finish—with consequences that looked grave. He had struck his head; he remained insensible, up to the last accounts: there had evidently been concussion of the brain. There was some exchange of views as to his recovery—how soon it would take place or whether it would take place at all; which led the Colonel to confide to our artist across the table that he shouldn’t despair of a fellow even if he didn’t come round for weeks—for weeks and weeks and weeks—for months, almost for years. He leaned forward; Lyon leaned forward to listen, and Colonel Capadose mentioned that he knew from personal experience that there was really no limit to the time one might lie unconscious without being any the worse for it. It had happened to him in Ireland, years before; he had been pitched out of a dogcart, had turned a sheer somersault and landed on his head. They thought he was dead, but he wasn’t; they carried him first to the nearest cabin, where he lay for some days with the pigs, and then to an inn in a neighbouring town—it was a near thing they didn’t put him under ground. He had been completely insensible—without a ray of recognition of any human thing—for three whole months; had not a glimmer of consciousness of any blessed thing. It was touch and go to that degree that they couldn’t come near him, they couldn’t feed him, they could scarcely look at him. Then one day he had opened his eyes—as fit as a flea!
‘I give you my honour it had done me good—it rested my brain.’ He appeared to intimate that with an intelligence so active as his these periods of repose were providential. Lyon thought his story very striking, but he wanted to ask him whether he had not shammed a little—not in relating it, but in keeping so quiet. He hesitated however, in time, to imply a doubt—he was so impressed with the tone in which Colonel Capadose said that it was the turn of a hair that they hadn’t buried him alive. That had happened to a friend of his in India—a fellow who was supposed to have died of jungle fever—they clapped him into a coffin. He was going on to recite the further fate of this unfortunate gentleman when Mr. Ashmore made a move and every one got up to adjourn to the drawing-room. Lyon noticed that by this time no one was heeding what his new friend said to him. They came round on either side of the table and met while the gentlemen dawdled before going out.
‘And do you mean that your friend was literally buried alive?’ asked Lyon, in some suspense.
Colonel Capadose looked at him a moment, as if he had already lost the thread of the conversation. Then his face brightened—and when it brightened it was doubly handsome. ‘Upon my soul he was chucked into the ground!’
‘And was he left there?’
‘He was left there till I came and hauled him out.’
‘You came?’
‘I dreamed about him—it’s the most extraordinary story: I heard him calling to me in the night. I took upon myself to dig him up. You know there are people in India—a kind of beastly race, the ghouls—who violate graves. I had a sort of presentiment that they would get at him first. I rode straight, I can tell you; and, by Jove, a couple of them had just broken ground! Crack—crack, from a couple of barrels, and they showed me their heels, as you may believe. Would you credit that I took him out myself? The air brought him to and he was none the worse. He has got his pension—he came home the other day; he would do anything for me.’
‘He called to you in the night?’ said Lyon, much startled.
‘That’s the interesting point. Now what was it? It wasn’t his ghost, because he wasn’t dead. It wasn’t himself, because he couldn’t. It was something or other! You see India’s a strange country—there’s an element of the mysterious: the air is full of things you can’t explain.’
They passed out of the dining-room, and Colonel Capadose, who went among the first, was separated from Lyon; but a minute later, before they reached the drawing-room, he joined him again. ‘Ashmore tells me who you are. Of course I have often heard of you—I’m very glad to make your acquaintance; my wife used to know you.’
‘I’m glad she remembers me. I recognised her at dinner and I was afraid she didn’t.’
‘Ah, I daresay she was ashamed,’ said the Colonel, with indulgent humour.
‘Ashamed of me?’ Lyon replied, in the same key.
‘Wasn’t there something about a picture? Yes; you painted her portrait.’
‘Many times,’ said the artist; ‘and she may very well have been ashamed of what I made of her.’
‘Well, I wasn’t, my dear sir; it was the sight of that picture, which you were so good as to present to her, that made me first fall in love with her.’
‘Do you mean that one with the children—cutting bread and butter?’
‘Bread and butter? Bless me, no—vine leaves and a leopard skin—a kind of Bacchante.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Lyon; ‘I remember. It was the first decent portrait I painted. I should be curious to see it to-day.’
‘Don’t ask her to show it to you—she’ll be mortified!’ the Colonel exclaimed.
‘Mortified?’
‘We parted with it—in the most disinterested manner,’ he laughed. ‘An old friend of my wife’s—her family had known him intimately when they lived in Germany—took the most extraordinary fancy to it: the Grand Duke of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein, don’t you know? He came out to Bombay while we were there and he spotted your picture (you know he’s one of the greatest collectors in Europe), and made such eyes at it that, upon my word—it happened to be his birthday—she told him he might have it, to get rid of him. He was perfectly enchanted—but we miss the picture.’
‘It is very good of you,’ Lyon said. ‘If it’s in a great collection—a work of my incompetent youth—I am infinitely honoured.’
‘Oh, he has got it in one of his castles; I don’t know which—you know he has so many. He sent us, before he left India—to return the compliment—a magnificent old vase.’
‘That was more than the thing was worth,’ Lyon remarked.
Colonel Capadose gave no heed to this observation; he seemed to be thinking of something. After a moment he said, ‘If you’ll come and see us in town she’ll show you the vase.’ And as they passed into the drawing-room he gave the artist a friendly propulsion. ‘Go and speak to her; there she is—she’ll be delighted.’
Oliver Lyon took but a few steps into the wide saloon; he stood there a moment looking at the bright composition of the lamplit group of fair women, the single figures, the great setting of white and gold, the panels of old damask, in the centre of each of which was a single celebrated picture. There was a subdued lustre in the scene and an air as of the shining trains of dresses tumbled over the carpet. At the furthest end of the room sat Mrs. Capadose, rather isolated; sh
e was on a small sofa, with an empty place beside her. Lyon could not flatter himself she had been keeping it for him; her failure to respond to his recognition at table contradicted that, but he felt an extreme desire to go and occupy it. Moreover he had her husband’s sanction; so he crossed the room, stepping over the tails of gowns, and stood before his old friend.
‘I hope you don’t mean to repudiate me,’ he said.
She looked up at him with an expression of unalloyed pleasure. ‘I am so glad to see you. I was delighted when I heard you were coming.’
‘I tried to get a smile from you at dinner—but I couldn’t.’
‘I didn’t see—I didn’t understand. Besides, I hate smirking and telegraphing. Also I’m very shy—you won’t have forgotten that. Now we can communicate comfortably.’ And she made a better place for him on the little sofa. He sat down and they had a talk that he enjoyed, while the reason for which he used to like her so came back to him, as well as a good deal of the very same old liking. She was still the least spoiled beauty he had ever seen, with an absence of coquetry or any insinuating art that seemed almost like an omitted faculty; there were moments when she struck her interlocutor as some fine creature from an asylum—a surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind. Her noble pagan head gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected air—the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination, but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life. Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded her of incidents, pleasures and pains, asked her about her father and the others; and she told him in return that she was so impressed with his own fame, his brilliant position in the world, that she had not felt very sure he would speak to her or that his little sign at table was meant for her. This was plainly a perfectly truthful speech—she was incapable of any other—and he was affected by such humility on the part of a woman whose grand line was unique. Her father was dead; one of her brothers was in the navy and the other on a ranch in America; two of her sisters were married and the youngest was just coming out and very pretty. She didn’t mention her stepmother. She asked him about his own personal history and he said that the principal thing that had happened to him was that he had never married.
‘Oh, you ought to,’ she answered. ‘It’s the best thing.’
‘I like that—from you!’ he returned.
‘Why not from me? I am very happy.’
‘That’s just why I can’t be. It’s cruel of you to praise your state. But I have had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of your husband. We had a good bit of talk in the other room.’
‘You must know him better—you must know him really well,’ said Mrs. Capadose.
‘I am sure that the further you go the more you find. But he makes a fine show, too.’
She rested her good gray eyes on Lyon. ‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’
‘Handsome and clever and entertaining. You see I’m generous.’
‘Yes; you must know him well,’ Mrs. Capadose repeated.
‘He has seen a great deal of life,’ said her companion.
‘Yes, we have been in so many places. You must see my little girl. She is nine years old—she’s too beautiful.’
‘You must bring her to my studio some day—I should like to paint her.’
‘Ah, don’t speak of that,’ said Mrs. Capadose. ‘It reminds me of something so distressing.’
‘I hope you don’t mean when you used to sit to me—though that may well have bored you.’
‘It’s not what you did—it’s what we have done. It’s a confession I must make—it’s a weight on my mind! I mean about that beautiful picture you gave me—it used to be so much admired. When you come to see me in London (I count on your doing that very soon) I shall see you looking all round. I can’t tell you I keep it in my own room because I love it so, for the simple reason–-‘ And she paused a moment.
‘Because you can’t tell wicked lies,’ said Lyon.
‘No, I can’t. So before you ask for it–-‘
‘Oh, I know you parted with it—the blow has already fallen,’ Lyon interrupted.
‘Ah then, you have heard? I was sure you would! But do you know what we got for it? Two hundred pounds.’
‘You might have got much more,’ said Lyon, smiling.
‘That seemed a great deal at the time. We were in want of the money—it was a good while ago, when we first married. Our means were very small then, but fortunately that has changed rather for the better. We had the chance; it really seemed a big sum, and I am afraid we jumped at it. My husband had expectations which have partly come into effect, so that now we do well enough. But meanwhile the picture went.’
‘Fortunately the original remained. But do you mean that two hundred was the value of the vase?’ Lyon asked.
‘Of the vase?’
‘The beautiful old Indian vase—the Grand Duke’s offering.’
‘The Grand Duke?’
‘What’s his name?—Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. Your husband mentioned the transaction.’
‘Oh, my husband,’ said Mrs. Capadose; and Lyon saw that she coloured a little.
Not to add to her embarrassment, but to clear up the ambiguity, which he perceived the next moment he had better have left alone, he went on: ‘He tells me it’s now in his collection.’
‘In the Grand Duke’s? Ah, you know its reputation? I believe it contains treasures.’ She was bewildered, but she recovered herself, and Lyon made the mental reflection that for some reason which would seem good when he knew it the husband and the wife had prepared different versions of the same incident. It was true that he did not exactly see Everina Brant preparing a version; that was not her line of old, and indeed it was not in her eyes to-day. At any rate they both had the matter too much on their conscience. He changed the subject, said Mrs. Capadose must really bring the little girl. He sat with her some time longer and thought—perhaps it was only a fancy—that she was rather absent, as if she were annoyed at their having been even for a moment at cross-purposes. This did not prevent him from saying to her at the last, just as the ladies began to gather themselves together to go to bed: ‘You seem much impressed, from what you say, with my renown and my prosperity, and you are so good as greatly to exaggerate them. Would you have married me if you had known that I was destined to success?’
‘I did know it.’
‘Well, I didn’t’
‘You were too modest.’
‘You didn’t think so when I proposed to you.’
‘Well, if I had married you I couldn’t have married him—and he’s so nice,’ Mrs. Capadose said. Lyon knew she thought it—he had learned that at dinner—but it vexed him a little to hear her say it. The gentleman designated by the pronoun came up, amid the prolonged handshaking for good-night, and Mrs. Capadose remarked to her husband as she turned away, ‘He wants to paint Amy.’
‘Ah, she’s a charming child, a most interesting little creature,’ the Colonel said to Lyon. ‘She does the most remarkable things.’
Mrs. Capadose stopped, in the rustling procession that followed the hostess out of the room. ‘Don’t tell him, please don’t,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell him what?’
‘Why, what she does. Let him find out for himself.’ And she passed on.
‘She thinks I swagger about the child—that I bore people,’ said the Colonel. ‘I hope you smoke.’ He appeared ten minutes later in the smoking-room, in a brilliant equipment, a suit of crimson foulard covered with little white spots. He gratified Lyon’s eye, made him feel that the modern age has its splendour too and its opportunities for costume. If his wife was an antique he was a fine specimen of the period of colour: he might have passed for a Venetian of the sixteenth century. They were a remarkable couple
, Lyon thought, and as he looked at the Colonel standing in bright erectness before the chimney-piece while he emitted great smoke-puffs he did not wonder that Everina could not regret she had not married him. All the gentlemen collected at Stayes were not smokers and some of them had gone to bed. Colonel Capadose remarked that there probably would be a smallish muster, they had had such a hard day’s work. That was the worst of a hunting-house—the men were so sleepy after dinner; it was devilish stupid for the ladies, even for those who hunted themselves—for women were so extraordinary, they never showed it. But most fellows revived under the stimulating influences of the smoking-room, and some of them, in this confidence, would turn up yet. Some of the grounds of their confidence—not all of them—might have been seen in a cluster of glasses and bottles on a table near the fire, which made the great salver and its contents twinkle sociably. The others lurked as yet in various improper corners of the minds of the most loquacious. Lyon was alone with Colonel Capadose for some moments before their companions, in varied eccentricities of uniform, straggled in, and he perceived that this wonderful man had but little loss of vital tissue to repair.