"A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for whom nature intended her."
"Perhaps with her help," I said, "he may in time become her ideal."
"There's a long road before him," growled Dan.
It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara's elopment with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed. His buoyant self-assurance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court Circular_ for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand Duke? What [duplicated line of text] I think of that! and such like. Was not money master of the world? Ay, and the nobs should be made to acknowledge it!
But as he had gulped down glass after glass the brag had died away.
"No children," he had whispered to me across the table; "that's what I can't understand. Nearly four years and no children! What'll be the good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? Damn these rotten popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?"
It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight. She had heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and see her.
"I thought you would rather hear it quietly," said Norah, "than learn it from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this.
She did wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her."
Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My goddess had a heart, passions, was a mere human creature like myself.
From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world.
So some youthful page of Arthur's court may have felt, learning the Great Queen was but a woman.
I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me that Madame G-- would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her glass, a loose shawl about her shoulders.
"Excuse my shaking hands," she said. "This damned hole is like a furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act."
She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with grease.
"D'you know my husband?" she continued. "Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver."
The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man.
"Delighted to meet Mr. Kelver," he said, speaking in excellent English. "Any friend of my wife's is always a friend of mine."
He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether he was offended or not.
"I am glad I saw you," she continued. "Do you remember a girl called Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
"Yes," I answered, "I remember her."
"Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago." She was rubbing paint into her cheeks as she spoke. "She asked me if ever I saw you to give you this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since."
She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father's office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my outstretched palm.
"Quite a pretty little romance," laughed the Baron.
"That's all," added the woman at the glass. "She said you would understand."
From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never to see again that look upon a woman's face.
"Thank you," I said. "Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I shall always wear it."
Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.