The Salzburg Tales (34 page)

“All goes well today,” he said to himself, “and lucky at cards, lucky in love, for both are chiefly games of chance, and merely require a good memory, a bit of bravado and a lucky star.”

He looked at the lights shining in the house opposite, and cried:

“Love, most hideous of passions, callous to the misery of the bereft and brutally spilling blood, filling sickbeds and wrecking tranquillity: more terrible than cupidity, for a man will hesitate to poison an old man for a few pieces of paper, but love thinks itself justice, reason, divine afflatus, and will kill the old man for a few hours in its mistress's embrace.”

And this was no mockery, for at that moment his heart turned sick at the thought that he intended to ravish his wife from Sir Solomon. Underneath the window, at the moment, passed a poor boy with a poor girl, the boy making a face and bellowing to astonish the girl by his indecorum, and rubbing his hands over her thighs. Isidor was ashamed: they both went off laughing.

Isidor turned on the light without drawing the curtains and stood at the window: he presently saw someone at a window on a higher floor in the mansion, at the corner of the house, where the apartments looked into the courtyard, but he did not know who this person was, and immediately the curtains were drawn.

Without forgetting his invocation to love, but obedient to his passion, he went into the street and paced up and down many times, straining his short-sighted eyes at all of the lighted windows in the facades over the street and over the courtyard, hoping to see Sara's shadow. He walked there a long time: one after another, the lights were extinguished; but in the suite which looked on both street and courtyard, the lights burned late, and through one of the windows he imagined he saw the ornate canopy of an old-fashioned bed. The light continued to burn, as the jealous fire burned in his breast: at
last, he could bear the pain no more, and returning home, he flung himself on his bed and sobbed bitterly.

The next morning he arose with a slight headache due to eye-strain and sleeplessness. He waited at his window behind the curtain till he saw the lady's maid at the front-door (she knew him for a hopeless lover by this time and befriended him, in the general interests of the sex). He said:

“Which is the bedroom of Lady Perez?”

The maid indicated a series of windows on the second-floor over the garden-courtyard, the same that he had stared at so long the night before. He gave her some money and begged her to leave the window-curtains undrawn when her mistress was dressing that evening, so that he could see her passing and repassing in her room.

“And do not let her on any account know,” he said, but with such an accent that the maid knew she might very well let her mistress know.

That evening the curtains were undrawn, and the following evening also; and on the third evening, while Isidor walked in the light of the full moon, Sara appeared at the window for a moment in a dazzling gown, wearing diamonds and delicately powdered.

Meanwhile, the young man was working up a connection in the City. The sudden deflation of Van Laer's bubble had caused the wizard's suicide; thus Isidor was spared an unprofitable entanglement. Nothing that the young man turned his hand to failed, and he began to find himself too rich for the middle-class chambers opposite the Perez house: but he could not move. To his great dis- comfort, he had, towards the end of the summer, to make a prolonged visit to Amsterdam, and in the stress of his life there, and with the distraction of some charming women, the wives and friends of his connections, he passed entire days without thinking of Sara; but in the evening she regained her sway.

After four months he arrived in London, via Paris, by the boat-train which arrives at five thirty-five in the afternoon: he passed the
dreary journey up recalling the happenings of the past year, and he rushed straight home to his old quarters, as if he were flying to greet old friends. The Perez house was dark.

The next morning he discovered that the Perez family had moved to another part of London, and it was impossible at his present careful rate of expenditure for him to live near them.

T
HROUGHOUT
the winter his good fortune followed him and his name was mentioned in association with a new banking concern, designed to be an issuing house of the best sort, in which Sir Solomon Perez was a prime mover. Thus, at the end of eighteen months, the young man who had been shown the “Boulanger Sisters” was a guest among many at the new home of Sir Solomon. The rich old man had met him several times before this, but had never mentioned the incident of eighteen months ago.

One evening in May, Isidor found himself sitting in a salon, decorated with original sanguines and mezzotints, admiring the profile of Sir Solomon, who was telling his guests that the South of England the last winter had reminded him of his boyhood in the Low Countries.

Lady Perez moved about among the guests, supple and voluptuous. The arches of her eyebrows were high and her eyes, long and never wide open, always in the shape of a clove, rolled lustrously upon her listener, and when she laughed, throwing back her head a little and looking provocatively sideways upon Isidor, he reeled just as if the place were overheated, or he had taken too much wine. At one time she called to him from a group of three men, where she was talking:

“Mr Stevenson, you have never seen Buda? You should go there, you should live there, you would enjoy it, with your exotic tastes and your love of bizarre people. It is the sweetest of cities—O, do not think it is patriotism, for people from all parts of the world visit it, and worship it; especially the English, though.”

He approached the group.

“You were born in Buda-Pesth, Lady Perez?”

She answered in a deep contralto:

“Yes, and we lived there in the winter season, which is brilliant, but in the summer we lived on our estate about five hours out, on the great plains of the Fata Morgana: ah,” she said after a pause, throwing a deeper note into her voice, “on the plains of illusion. People come from all over the West to our plains to see the Fata Morgana, but I was born there.” And she smiled at her husband, who was standing near, and who smiled wisely at her. But Isidor thought he caught a reference intended for himself alone.

During the next two months he appeared at the house several times at her invitation, and she had herself fallen so wildly in love with him that she even rashly approached the point of betraying her passion when she was in some pettish argument with her husband. If he found himself in a crowded salon, Isidor could not take his eyes from her, and he observed, despite his absorption, that Sir Solomon also watched her continually. He feared to betray himself by some involuntary remark too warm, and several times felt that if he did not rise at once, he would make a scene, because he was suffocating with love: his forehead was an anvil on which Vulcan beat, and he had no substance beneath the heart which swung violently in his stuffy vaulted chest. But to leave the room was impossible, for somehow she, or Sir Perez, always engaged him in conversation: he overcame the cruel moment. He marvelled (knowing that she loved him), that she could move about with such grace and composure, between her husband and him. The beauty of the old man and his intelligence were also a reproach to Isidor, who found himself in a painful physical turmoil: and he hesitated many a time, considering how his business future perhaps depended on the old banker.

When he spoke to Sara he found that she suffered the same feelings! She would listen with a faraway look, twisting a fringe or a lace in her hand, and say at the end, with a start: “That is exactly what I feel,” and he would be glad he had expressed their
common feelings so aptly: or she would cling to his arm or his neck, palpitating with emotion, suffocating him with her excessive love. He said to himself that this excess would pass when she was happy with him for a certain time. At last she agreed to meet him in the city. He took her to the British Museum, for safety, and showed her the rings and jewels of the ancient Romans.

“This is a wedding-ring; this is an engagement ring given to his young fiancée by a certain Lucullus: I wish I had the same right to place it on your finger.”

Everything they saw had a personal reference: in the clay two thousand years old a crack appeared, and the tongues of today's fire shot out.

At last they decided on a desperate measure. The plan was Isidor's, as will appear from its form. They came to it after he had discussed his plans for the future and his certainty of success.

Mr Stevenson begged Sir Solomon Perez to grant him a private interview on a subject of the gravest personal import: and when he said it was not a banking matter, Sir Solomon obligingly invited him to his home for the following Sunday afternoon. During the week Sara was like a weathercock, at one moment loving to her husband, at another insolent and provocative. She asked him several times about the visit of Isidor, in such a pointed way, and with such airs of impertinence and excitement that Sir Solomon suspected Isidor's plan, thought it too wild and yet was prepared for it: but to his wife he said nothing and was as agreeable as he could be. On the Sunday agreed upon, Sir Solomon received Isidor in a small salon, in Lady Perez's presence, and they had afternoon tea. Isidor became more and more uncomfortable under Sir Solomon's courtesies. After tea, Sir Solomon insisted graciously:

“If you wish to discuss this personal matter to which you referred …”

Isidor thought: “He does not suspect: what can he say when he knows?” He glanced at Sara, wishing she would go out of the room:
but she was deeply moved, and greatly enjoying the trepidation of the moment: it suited her natural penchant for drama.

Isidor said:

“Sir Solomon, I respect and admire you. I am going to grieve you deeply and perhaps make a bitter enemy of you. That is a rash thing for a man to whom your association and kind words mean so much, and whom you have greeted with the warmest cordiality. You must know that I do not speak without having convinced myself that there is no other means than this, and that, come what may, this is the most honourable and least painful way to conduct a deplorable affair. I am speaking from the depths of my heart and I am in great distress.”

Sir Solomon had paled a little, to hear his worst expectations fulfilled. Isidor did not look at him, but went on.

“Eighteen months ago, in the City, I heard of the beauty of Lady Perez. I made opportunities to see her, out of curiosity, and became her passionate admirer. I laid myself out to please her and I won her affection. I beg you to believe what I must say, that my love for your wife has grown into an overmastering and inexorable passion: if I were offered every opportunity in life, I would throw them all away, if as a condition, I had to renounce entirely the society of Lady Perez. If I only were concerned, I would try to be content with simply seeing her, taking a cup of coffee from her hands, hearing her talk about her native country—”

A slight smile passed over Sir Solomon's serious face.

“But my feelings do not concern you. She has allowed me to speak for her also, since she is ashamed as I am, and as helpless. She loves me also, and I fear she feels she would be unhappy if she could not see me. However, we have both decided to speak to you, before our unhappy love ruins one or the other of us, or forces us to commit some secret act which would prohibit us from approaching you. We have endeavoured to crush our love, considering where it was leading us—and we have been unable to: we even feel that our
love is so great that it would overcome many obstacles to bring about our union. We are helpless, we are like two shipwrecked persons drifting on to the cliffs, and we wish you to be aware of our danger.”

Sir Solomon had grown extremely pale. He stroked his beard with his olive-skinned hand, on which was a diamond ring, and said in a quiet voice:

“Did you ever think of going away and leaving her to herself?”

“I was in Amsterdam all last winter,” said Isidor.

“My wife is a volatile creature,” said the old man, “and as impressionable as a bowl of water: she ripples to every breath, and when left to herself, immediately becomes calm and forgetful of all that has gone before.”

“Do you think that is the case this time? You must ask her yourself,” said Isidor in a lamentable tone.

Sir Solomon looked up at his wife, who had risen and moved away from the light. She was at the mantelpiece, with one arm resting high, and standing straight, looked passionately from her husband to her lover. Even Sir Solomon, in his weakness, disappointment and age, was impressed with her fierce egotistic waywardness. There was a silence for some moments: the wife trembled and the young man felt his energy ebbing from him. Then the husband said:

“You love him, Sara?”

“Yes, passionately.”

“Do you wish to marry her?” said the husband.

“That would be my dearest wish,” said the young man sighing.

“Then if you love her and will establish her, take her,” concluded Sir Solomon, and rising smartly, he walked off very erect, and begging to be excused for the time being, left the room. This exit had a surprising effect on the lovers: but after thirty seconds' dismay, Isidor jumped up and went over and stood close to Sara: they experienced the delirium of lovers unexpectedly united, but they did not embrace. The husband came back and told the abashed pair that he supposed Sara would wish to depart at once, and that naturally she would take
with her not only what belonged to her from her father's estate, but what he had himself given her: that he would divorce Sara, and in the meantime that the young couple should go immediately to the Continent.

This sudden acquisition of an establishment and a bride, left Isidor slightly unsteady, but he accepted with alacrity the Buda- Pesth beauty, her swooning romantic soul and her father's settlement which, despite the legends, was not considerable. It was arranged that Lady Perez should depart from her husband's house in three days, during her husband's absence on a business trip, and that thereafter she should call herself Mrs Stevenson. The rapidity with which these arrangements were made somewhat shocked the future Mrs Stevenson, who had been prepared for a long, grand and tragic series of events, leading up to a splendid renouncement with sighs and tears, on someone's part. But Isidor, when he got out in the street, in the cool of the evening, shook his head in wonder and said to himself: