The Tree of Knowledge Part 77

CHAPTER L.

"Eyes," he said, "now throbbing thro' me are ye eyes which did undo me?

Shining eyes, like antique jewels set in Parian marble stone?

Underneath that calm white forehead, are ye ever burning torrid.

O'er the desolate sand desert of my heart, and life alone?"

_Lady Geraldine's Courtship._

It was a beautiful May evening. The air seemed full of incense, the trees which clothe the heights of Heidelberg were just one sheet of snowy blossom. The dull red castle was gilded by the slanting rays of the sun, and for a few moments stood out more decidedly that it is wont to do from the background of hills which surround it. The Neckar lay broad and calm under the light, at one end of the view lost in a narrowing gorge, at the other emerging wide into a seemingly limitless plain.

Down the stream a boat was slowly floating. The current was taking her down quite fast enough to please her inmates. The young man's sculls lay idly skimming the surface of the shining water, and his eyes were turned up towards the bowery heights and the romantic ruin which lay to his right.

The lady in the stern lay back with one hand and wrist clasped lightly on the rudder-lines; but there was little need for very accurate steering, as the season was too early and the stream too strong to tempt many boats out on the water.

"By Jove, how lovely everything looks this evening! like a city in a dream," said Osmond Allonby, for it was he, turning up a face of artistic enjoyment to the lovely scene, with its quaint old roofs cl.u.s.tering down to the river, and its faint blue haze enveloping city and pinewoods alike in the mystery and stillness of evening.

"Charming," said his companion, Mrs. Frederick Orton, as she roused herself, and let her eye follow the direction of his. "Let us land, and stroll up to the _Schloss_. It will be fine to see the sun set from that height."

"Ah! you are improving, I see. Learning, under my tuition, to appreciate the beauties of nature," said Osmond, in a tone which seemed to imply considerable intimacy.

He was a good deal changed for the worse in the few short months which had elapsed since the shattering of his hopes. It seemed as though his entire will had concentrated itself towards one aim, which, when removed, left his whole moral nature in fragments. His mouth looked hard and mocking, his eyes like those of one who sat up late, his whole manner had degenerated and taken a different tone.

His falling in with the Ortons in Paris had been about the worst thing which could possibly have befallen him. Ottilie's bitter hatred of Percivale and Elsa made her a dangerously sympathetic confidante. With one of those impulses of kind-heartedness which she was not wholly without, she had commissioned the forlorn young man to paint her portrait. This was at the time when his utter solitude and misery were so great, that his better nature was on the point of rea.s.serting itself and sending him back to his forsaken home. But the daily sittings in Mrs. Orton's luxurious boudoir supplied his craving better than a return to duty would have done. She made a _protege_ of him. He was good-looking and had plenty to say for himself, his present sardonic and bitter frame of mind was amusing. He fell into the habit of escorting her about when, as frequently happened, her husband was too indolent to accompany her. When they moved from Paris, he went with them. She declared she should be dull without him. For several reasons it suited them better to remain abroad, and Osmond had grown to believe that he could not set foot in England till after Elsa's marriage. The notice of that event in the newspapers did not, however, seem to quicken his desire to go back and take up the broken threads of his life. He was content to dawdle on at Ottilie's side, railing at fate, sneering at the world, and growing every day less able to retrieve himself, and face disappointment like a man.

Ottilie laughed at his remark, as she laughed at all his sneers, whether directed against herself or others.

"Oh, you'll do wonders with me, if you keep on the course of training long enough," she said. "Now pull a few strokes on the bow side. I want to go in."

"This is a sweet place.... I should like to make some stay in it," said Osmond, musingly.

"Like most Edens, you would find there was a snake in it," said she, laughing.

"Might I ask whether you mean anything particular by that remark?"

"What makes you ask?"

"I fancied there was a hidden meaning in it, somehow."

"My dear boy, your penetration is fast becoming a thing to dread. Yes, if you will have it, there _was_ a special meaning. I looked at the visitors' list this morning, and saw, among the arrivals----"

She paused. They were just in sh.o.r.e. The young man shipped his sculls, leaned his arms on his knees, and faced her steadily.

"Well--who were among the arrivals?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Percivale," she answered, rising. He sprang up to help her to land.

"What a mercy all that folly is over and done with," he said; and laughed, the harsh and dreary laugh proving the falsity of his words as he uttered them.

Turning to the boat he collected her wraps, paid the boatman, and then turned absently towards the town.

"We were going to the castle, I think?"

They set off walking in silence. At last Osmond abruptly broke out:

"They are returning from their honeymoon, I suppose."

"Doubtless. They are soon tired of seclusion; but Mrs. Percivale is no lover of seclusion; she had too much of that in her youth. What she wants now is to have her fling; and that is the very thing which does not by any means meet her husband's wishes."

"Why not? Is he jealous of her?" asked Osmond, in dry, hard tones.

"Jealous? He may be. I daresay she will give him cause; but that is not his reason for not wishing to appear very conspicuously before the public."

"Do you know the real reason?" asked Osmond, after a pause, staring at the ground.

"Broadly speaking, yes, I do. But not the details; they are too carefully concealed. Osmond, my young friend, if you want to be revenged on your successful rival, as is the fashion in the story-books, I could surely show you the easiest way in the world to do it."

"You could?" he said, with a momentary flash of unmistakable interest.

"I could indeed. I mean it."

"Rubbish," he said, in the unceremonious way of addressing her which he had rapidly acquired.

"Oh, very well, if you contradict me flatly--"

"I didn't contradict. I only thought it was another flight of that brilliant fancy of yours."

"It is no fancy, but a solid fact," said she, vehemently, "that n.o.body knows who Percivale's father was. There! You have it in black and white."

Osmond gave a long whistle, and mused a few minutes in silence. At last--

"Won't do, my friend," said he. "She would never have been allowed to marry a man who could give no account of his antecedents."

"Oh--you think so! You are as clever as all the rest of them! I tell you the man is an adventurer--a mere adventurer! He had no difficulty in bamboozling that old idiot Henry Fowler, who was taken in by him from the first moment he saw him. As for the women, they could none of them see beyond his red beard and his red sash. It is as clever a case of fraud as I ever saw."

Osmond laughed bitterly.

"If it were fraud how can you prove it?" he said. "It is of no use to set indefinite reports afloat. There are hundreds of them already, but n.o.body believes them. And how can you get at facts?"

"Let me have Mrs. Elsa alone for half-an-hour, and I will engage to know as much as she does by the end of that time."

"And how much does she know?"

"Everything there is to tell."

"How in the world do you know that?"