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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
a child, so now, after twenty years, I have but to breathe it to
myself, and, if I will, the actual world melts away, and I am
journeying in dreamland. Whether I will or not, it always stirs a sad,
sweet emotion in my heart. I wonder why. Tirala-tirala—I dare say,
for another, any six notes, struck at haphazard, would signify as
much. But for me—ah, if I could seize the sentiment it has for me,
and translate it into English words, I should have achieved a sort of
miracle. For me, it is the voice of a spirit, sighing something
unutterable. It is an elixir, distilled of unearthly things, six lucent
drops; I drink them, and I am transported into another atmosphere,
and I see visions. It is Aladdin’s lamp; I touch it, and cloud-capped
towers and gorgeous palaces are mine in the twinkling of an eye. It
is my wishing-cap, my magic-carpet, my key to the Castle of
Enchantment.

The Castle of Enchantment....

When I was a child the Castle of Enchantment meant—the Future;
the great mysterious Future, away, away there, beneath the
uttermost horizon, where the sky is luminious with tints of rose and
pearl; the ineffable Future, when I should be grownup, when I
should be a Man, and when the world would be my garden, the
world and life, and all their riches, mine to explore, to adventure in,
to do as I pleased with! The Future and the World, the real World,
the World that lay beyond our village, beyond the Forest of
Granjolaye, farther than Bayonne, farther even than Pau; the World
one read of and heard strange legends of: Paris, and Bagdad, and
England, and Peru. Oh, how I longed to see it; how hard it was to
wait; how desperately hard to think of the immense number of long
years that must be worn through somehow, before it could come
true.
 But—tirala-tirala!—my little broken bar of music was a touchstone.
At the sound of it, at the thought of it, the Present was spirited
away; Saint-Graal and all our countryside were left a thousand miles
behind; and the Future and the World opened their portals to me,
and I wandered in them where I would. In a sort of trance, with
wide eyes and bated breath, I wandered in them, through
enraptured hours. Believe me, it was a Future, it was a World, of
quite unstinted magnificence. My many-pinnacled Castle of
Enchantment was built of gold and silver, ivory, alabaster, and
mother-of-pearl; the fountains in its courts ran with perfumed
waters; and its pleasaunce was an orchard of pomegranates—one
had no need to spare one’s colours. I dare say, too, that it was
rather vague, wrapped in a good deal of roseate haze, and of an
architecture that could scarcely have been reduced to ground-plans
and elevations; but what of that? And oh, the people, the people by
whom the World and the Future were inhabited, the cavalcading
knights, the beautiful princesses! And their virtues, and their graces,
and their talents Î There were no ugly people, of course, no stupid
people, no disagreeable people; everybody was young and
handsome, gallant, generous, and splendidly dressed. And
everybody was astonishingly nice to me, and it never seemed to
occur to anybody that I wasn’t to have my own way in everything.
And I had it. Love and wealth, glory, and all manner of romance—I
had them for the wishing. The stars left their courses to fight for me.
And the winds of heaven vied with each other to prosper my
galleons.
To be sure, it was nothing more nor other than the day-dream of
every child. But it happened that that little accidental fragment of a
phrase of music had a quite peculiar power to send me off dreaming
it.
 I suppose it must be that we pass the Castle of Enchantment
while we are asleep. For surely, at first, it is before us—we are
moving towards it; we can see it shining in the distance; we shall
reach it to-morrow, next week, next year. And then—and then, one
morning, we wake up, and lo! it is behind us. We have passed it—we
are sailing away from it—we can’t turn back. We have passed the
Castle of Enchantment! And yet, it was only to reach it that we made
our weary voyage, toiling through hardships and perils and
discouragements, forcing our impatient hearts to wait; it was only
the hope, the certain hope, of reaching it at last, that made our
toiling and our waiting possible. And now—we have passed it. We
are sailing away from it. We can’t turn back. We can only look back
—with the bitterness that every heart knows. If we look forward,
what is there to see, save grey waters, and then a darkness that we
fear to enter?

When I was a child, it was the great world and the future into
which my talisman carried me, dreaming desirous dreams; the great
world, all gold and marble, peopled by beautiful princesses and
cavalcading knights; the future, when I should be grown-up, when I
should be a Man.
Well, I am grown-up now, and I have seen something of the great
world—something of its gold and marble, its cavalcading knights and
beautiful princesses. But if I care to dream desirous dreams, I touch
my talisman, and wish myself back in the little world of my
childhood. Tirala-tirala—I breathe it softly, softly; and the sentiment
of my childhood comes and fills my room like a fragrance. I am at
Saint-Graal again; and my grandmother is seated at her window,
knitting; and André is bringing up the milk from the farm; and my
cousin Elodie is playing her exercises on the piano; and Hélène and I
are walking in the garden—Hélène in her short white frock, with a
red sash, and her black hair loose down her back. All round us grow
innumerable flowers, and innumerable birds are singing in the air,
and the frogs are croaking, croaking in our pond. And farther off, the
sun shines tranquilly on the chestnut-trees of the Forest of
Granjolaye; and farther still, the Pyrenees gloom purple.... It is not
much, perhaps it is not very wonderful; but oh, how my heart yearns
to recover it, how it aches to realise that it never can.

In the Morning (says Paraschkine) the Eastern Rim of the Earth

was piled high with Emeralds and Rubies, as if the Gods had massed
their Riches there; but he—ingenuous Pilgrim—who set forth to
reach this Treasure-hoard, and to make the Gods’ Riches his,
seemed presently to have lost his Way; he could no longer discern
the faintest Glint of the Gems that had tempted him: until, in the
Afternoon, chancing to turn his Head, he saw a bewildering Sight—
the Emeralds and Rubies were behind him, immeasurably far behind,
piled up in the West.
Where is the Castle of Enchantment? When do we pass it? Ah,
well, thank goodness, we all have talismans (like my little broken bit
of a forgotten tune) whereby we are enabled sometimes to visit it in
spirit, and to lose ourselves during enraptured moments among its
glistening, labyrinthine halls.
 THE INVISIBLE PRINCE

A
t a masked ball given by the Countess Wohenhoffen, in
Vienna, during carnival week, a year ago, a man draped in the
embroidered silks of a Chinese mandarin, his features entirely
concealed by an enormous Chinese head in cardboard, was standing
in the Wintergarten, the big, dimly lighted conservatory, near the
door of one of the gilt-and-white reception-rooms, rather a stolid-
seeming witness of the multi-coloured romp within, when a voice
behind him said, “How do you do, Mr. Field?”—a woman’s voice, an
English voice.
The mandarin turned round.
From a black mask, a pair of blue-grey eyes looked into his broad,
bland Chinese face; and a black domino dropped him an extravagant
little curtsey.
“How do you do?” he responded. “I’m afraid I’m not Mr. Field; but
I’ll gladly pretend I am, if you’ll stop and talk with me. I was dying
for a little human conversation.”
“Oh, you’re afraid you’re not Mr. Field, are you?” the mask replied
derisively. “Then why did you turn when I called his name?”
“You mustn’t hope to disconcert me with questions like that,” said
he. “I turned because I liked your voice.”
He might quite reasonably have liked her voice, a delicate, clear,
soft voice, somewhat high in register, with an accent, crisp, chiselled,
concise, that suggested wit as well as distinction. She was rather
tall, for a woman; one could divine her slender and graceful, under
the voluminous folds of her domino.
She moved a little away from the door, deeper into the
conservatory. The mandarin kept beside her. There, amongst the
palms, a fontaine lumineuse was playing, rhythmically changing
colour. Now it was a shower of rubies; now of emeralds or
amethysts, of sapphires, topazes, or opals.
“How pretty,” she said, “and how frightfully ingenious. I am
wondering whether this wouldn’t be a good place to sit down. What
do you think?” And she pointed with a fan to a rustic bench.
“I think it would be no more than fair to give it a trial,” he
assented.
So they sat down on the rustic bench, by the fontaine lumineuse.
“In view of your fear that you’re not Mr. Field, it’s rather a
coincidence that at a masked ball in Vienna you should just happen
to be English, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Oh, everybody’s more or less English, in these days, you know,”
said he.
“There’s some truth in that,” she admitted, with a laugh. “What a
diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy
arranging the electric lights to shine through a dome of purple glass,
and look like stars. They do look like stars, don’t they? Slightly over-
dressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars,
all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple glass is removed,
and you get the sun—the real sun. Do you notice the delicious
fragrance of lilac? If one hadn’t too exacting an imagination, one
might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air
garden, on a night in May.... Yes, everybody is more or less English,
in these days. That’s precisely the sort of thing I should have
expected Victor Field to say.”
“By-the-bye,” questioned the mandarin, “if you don’t mind
increasing my stores of knowledge, who is this fellow Field?”
“This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?” said she. “That’s just what I
wish you’d tell me.”
“I’ll tell you with pleasure, after you’ve supplied me with the
necessary data,” he promised cheerfully.
“Well, by some accounts, he’s a little literary man in London,” she
remarked.
 “Oh, come! You never imagined that I was a little literary man in
London,” protested he.
“You might be worse,” she retorted. “However, if the phrase
offends you, I’ll say a rising young literary man, instead. He writes
things, you know.”
“Poor chap, does he? But then, that’s a way they have, rising
young literary persons?” His tone was interrogative.
“Doubtless,” she agreed. “Poems and stories and things. And book
reviews, I suspect. And even, perhaps, leading articles in the
newspapers.”
“Toute la lyre enfin? What they call a penny-a-liner?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what he’s paid. I should think he’d get
rather more than a penny. He’s fairly successful. The things he does
aren’t bad,” she said.
“I must look ’em up,” said he. “But meantime, will you tell me how
you came to mistake me for him? Has he the Chinese type? Besides,
what on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the
Countess Wohenhoffen’s?”
“He was standing near the door, over there,” she told him, sweetly,
“dying for a little human conversation, till I took pity on him. No, he
hasn’t exactly the Chinese type, but he’s wearing a Chinese
costume, and I should suppose he’d feel uncommonly hot in that
exasperatingly placid Chinese head. I’m nearly suffocated, and I’m
only wearing a loup. For the rest, why shouldn’t he be here?”
“If your loup bothers you, pray take it off. Don’t mind me,” he
urged gallantly.
“You’re extremely good,” she responded. “But if I should take off
my loup, you’d be sorry. Of course, manlike, you’re hoping that I’m
young and pretty.”
“Well, and aren’t you?”
“I’m a perfect fright. I’m an old maid.”
“Thank you. Manlike, I confess I was hoping you’d be young and
pretty. Now my hope has received the strongest confirmation. I’m
sure you are,” he declared triumphantly.
“Your argument, with a meretricious air of subtlety, is facile and
superficial. Don’t pin your faith to it. Why shouldn’t Victor Field be
here?” she persisted.
“The Countess only receives tremendous swells. It’s the most
exclusive house in Europe.”
“Are you a tremendous swell?” she wondered.
“Rather!” he asseverated. “Aren’t you?”
She laughed a little, and stroked her fan, a big fan of fluffy black
feathers.
“That’s very jolly,” said he.
“What?” said she.
“That thing in your lap.”
“My fan?”
“I expect you’d call it a fan.”
“For goodness’ sake, what would you call it?” cried she.
“I should call it a fan.”
She gave another little laugh. “You have a nice instinct for the mot
juste,” she informed him.
“Oh, no,” he disclaimed, modestly. “But I can call a fan a fan,
when I think it won’t shock the sensibilities of my hearer.”
“If the Countess only receives tremendous swells,” said she, “you
must remember that Victor Field belongs to the Aristocracy of
Talent.”
“Oh, quant à ça, so, from the Wohenhoffens’ point of view, do the
barber and the horse-leech. In this house, the Aristocracy of Talent
dines with the butler.”
“Is the Countess such a snob?” she asked.
“No; she’s an Austrian. They draw the line so absurdly tight in
Austria.”
“Well, then, you leave me no alternative,” she argued, “but to
conclude that Victor Field is a tremendous swell. Didn’t you notice, I
bobbed him a curtsey?”
“I took the curtsey as a tribute to my Oriental magnificence,” he
confessed. “Field doesn’t sound like an especially patrician name. I’d
give anything to discover who you are. Can’t you be induced to tell
me? I’ll bribe, entreat, threaten—I’ll do anything you think might
persuade you.”
“I’ll tell you at once, if you’ll own up that you’re Victor Field,” said
she.
“Oh, I’ll own up that I’m Queen Elizabeth if you’ll tell me who you
are. The end justifies the means.”
“Then you are Victor Field?” she pursued him eagerly.
“If you don’t mind suborning perjury, why should I mind
committing it?” he reflected. “Yes. And now, who are you?”
“No; I must have an unequivocal avowal,” she stipulated. “Are you
or are you not Victor Field?”
“Let us put it at this,” he proposed, “that I’m a good serviceable
imitation; an excellent substitute when the genuine article is not
procurable.”
“Of course, your real name isn’t anything like Victor Field,” she
declared, pensively.
“I never said it was. But I admire the way in which you give with
one hand and take back with the other.”
“Your real name——” she began. “Wait a moment... Yes, now I
have it. Your real name... It’s rather long. You don’t think it will bore
you?”
“Oh, if it’s really my real name, I daresay I’m hardened to it,” said
he.
“Your real name is Louis Charles Ferdinand Stanislas John Joseph
Emmanuel Maria Anna.”
“Mercy upon me,” he cried, “what a name! You ought to have
broken it to me in instalments. And it’s all Christian name at that.
Can’t you spare me just a little rag of a surname, for decency’s
sake?” he pleaded.
 “The surnames of royalties don’t matter, Monseigneur,” she said,
with a flourish.
“Royalties? What? Dear me, here’s rapid promotion! I am royal
now! And a moment ago I was a little penny-a-liner in London.”
“L’un n’empêche pas l’autre. Have you never heard the story of
the Invisible Prince?” she asked.
“I adore irrelevancy,” said he. “I seem to have read something
about an invisible prince, when I was young. A fairy tale, wasn’t it?”
“The irrelevancy is only apparent. The story I mean is a story of
real life. Have you ever heard of the Duke of Zeln?”
“Zeln? Zeln?” he repeated, reflectively. “No, I don’t think so.”
She clapped her hands. “Really, you do it admirably. If I weren’t
perfectly sure of my facts, I believe I should be taken in. Zeln, as
any history would tell you, as any old atlas would show you, was a
little independent duchy in the centre of Germany.”
“Poor dear thing! Like Jonah in the centre of the whale,” he
murmured, sympathetically.
“Hush. Don’t interrupt. Zeln was a little independent German
duchy, and the Duke of Zeln was its sovereign. After the war with
France it was absorbed by Prussia. But the ducal family still rank as
royal highnesses. Of course, you’ve heard of the Leczinskis?”
“Lecz———-what?” said he.
“Leczinski,” she repeated.
“How do you spell it?”
“L—e—c—z—i—n—s—k—i.”
“Good. Capital. You have a real gift for spelling,” he exclaimed.
“Will you be quiet,” she said, severely, “and answer my question?
Are you familiar with the name?”
“I should never venture to be familiar with a name I didn’t know,”
he asserted.
“Ah, you don’t know it? You have never heard of Stanislas
Leczinski, who was king of Poland? Of Marie Leczinska, who married
Louis XV.?”
“Oh, to be sure. I remember. The lady whose portrait one sees at
Versailles.”
“Quite so. Very well,” she continued, “the last representative of the
Leczinskis, in the elder line, was the Princess Anna Leczinska, who,
in 1858, married the Duke of Zeln. She was the daughter of John
Leczinski, Duke of Grodnia and Governor of Galicia, and of the
Archduchess Henrietta d’.ste, a cousin of the Emperor of Austria. She
was also a great heiress, and an extremely handsome woman. But
the Duke of Zeln was a bad lot, a viveur, a gambler, a spendthrift.
His wife, like a fool, made her entire fortune over to him, and he
proceeded to play ducks and drakes with it. By the time their son
was born he’d got rid of the last farthing. Their son wasn’t born till
’63, five years after their marriage. Well, and then, what do you
suppose the Duke did?”
“Reformed, of course. The wicked husband always reforms when a
child is born, and there’s no more money,” he generalised.
“You know perfectly well what he did,” said she. “He petitioned the
German Diet to annul the marriage. You see, having exhausted the
dowry of the Princess Anna, it occurred to him that if she could only
be got out of the way, he might marry another heiress, and have the
spending of another fortune.”
“Clever dodge,” he observed. “Did it come off?”
“It came off, all too well. He based his petition on the ground that
the marriage had never been.... I forget what the technical term is.
Anyhow, he pretended that the princess had never been his wife
except in name, and that the child couldn’t possibly be his. The
Emperor of Austria stood by his connection, like the loyal gentleman
he is; used every scrap of influence he possessed to help her. But
the duke, who was a Protestant (the princess was of course a
Catholic), the duke persuaded all the Protestant States in the Diet to
vote in his favour. The Emperor of Austria was powerless, the Pope
was powerless. And the Diet annulled the marriage.”
“Ah,” said the mandarin.
 “Yes,” she went on. “The marriage was annulled, and the child
declared illegitimate. Ernest Augustus, as the duke was somewhat
inconsequently named, married again, and had other children, the
eldest of whom is the present bearer of the title—the same Duke of
Zeln one hears of, quarrelling with the croupiers at Monte Carlo. The
Princess Anna, with her baby, came to Austria. The Emperor gave
her a pension, and lent her one of his country houses to live in—
Schloss Sanct-Andreas. Our hostess, by-the-bye, the Countess
Wohenhoffen, was her intimate friend and her première dame
d’honneur.”
“Ah,” said the mandarin.
“But the poor princess had suffered more than she could bear. She
died when her child was four years old. The Countess Wohenhoffen
took the infant, by the Emperor’s desire, and brought him up with
her own son Peter. He was called Prince Louis Leczinski. Of course,
in all moral right, he was the Hereditary Prince of Zeln. His
legitimacy, for the rest, and his mother’s innocence, are perfectly
well established, in every sense but a legal sense, by the fact that he
has all the physical characteristics of the Zeln stock. He has the Zeln
nose and the Zeln chin, which are as distinctive as the Habsburg lip.”
“I hope, for the poor young man’s sake, though, that they’re not
so unbecoming?” questioned the mandarin.
“They’re not exactly pretty,” answered the mask. “The nose is a
thought too long, the chin is a trifle too short. However, I daresay
the poor young man is satisfied. As I was about to tell you, the
Countess Wohenhoflen brought him up, and the Emperor destined
him for the Church. He even went to Rome and entered the Austrian
College. He’d have been on the high road to a cardinalate by this
time if he’d stuck to the priesthood, for he had strong interest. But,
lo and behold, when he was about twenty, he chucked the whole
thing up.”
“Ah? Histoire de femme?”
“Very likely,” she assented, “though I’ve never heard any one say
so. At all events, he left Rome, and started upon his travels. He had
no money of his own, but the Emperor made him an allowance. He
started upon his travels, and he went to India, and he went to
America, and he went to South Africa, and then, finally, in ’87 or ’88,
he went—no one knows where. He totally disappeared, vanished
into space. He’s not been heard of since. Some people think he’s
dead. But the greater number suppose that he tired of his false
position in the world, and one fine day determined to escape from it,
by sinking his identity, changing his name, and going in for a new
life under new conditions. They call him the Invisible Prince. His
position was rather an ambiguous one, wasn’t it? You see, he was
neither one thing nor the other. He had no état-civil. In the eyes of
the law he was a bastard, yet he knew himself to be the legitimate
son of the Duke of Zeln. He was a citizen of no country, yet he was
the rightful heir to a throne. He was the last descendant of Stanislas
Leczinski, yet it was without authority that he bore his name. And
then, of course, the rights and wrongs of the matter were only
known to a few. The majority of people simply remembered that
there had been a scandal. And (as a wag once said of him) wherever
he went, he left his mother’s reputation behind him. No wonder he
found the situation irksome. Well, there is the story of the Invisible
Prince.”
“And a very exciting, melodramatic little story, too. For my part, I
suspect your Prince met a boojum. I love to listen to stories. Won’t
you tell me another? Do, please,” he pressed her.
“No, he didn’t meet a boojum,” she returned. “He went to
England, and set up for an author. The Invisible Prince and Victor
Field are one and the same person.”
“Oh, I say! Not really!” he exclaimed.
“Yes, really.”
“What makes you think so?” he wondered.
“I’m sure of it,” said she. “To begin with, I must confide to you
that Victor Field is a man I’ve never met.”
“Never met...?” he gasped. “But, by the blithe way in which you
were laying his sins at my door, a little while ago, I supposed you
were sworn confederates.”
“What’s the good of masked balls, if you can’t talk to people
you’ve never met?” she submitted. “I’ve never met him, but I’m one
of his admirers. I like his little poems. And I’m the happy possessor
of a portrait of him. It’s a print after a photograph. I cut it from an
illustrated paper.”
“I really almost wish I was Victor Field,” he sighed. “I should feel
such a glow of gratified vanity.”
“And the Countess Wohenhoffen,” she added, “has at least twenty
portraits of the Invisible Prince—photographs, miniatures, life-size
paintings, taken from the time he was born, almost, to the time of
his disappearance. Victor Field and Louis Leczinski have
countenances as like each other as two halfpence.”
“An accidental resemblance, doubtless.”
“No, it isn’t an accidental resemblance,” she affirmed.
“Oh, then you think it’s intentional?” he quizzed.
“Don’t be absurd. I might have thought it accidental, except for
one or two odd little circumstances. Primo, Victor Field is a guest at
the Wohenhoffens’ ball.”
“Oh, he is a guest here?”
“Yes, he is,” she said. “You are wondering how I know. Nothing
simpler. The same costumier who made my domino, supplied his
Chinese dress. I noticed it at his shop. It struck me as rather nice,
and I asked whom it was for. The costumier said, for an Englishman
at the Hôtel de Bade. Then he looked in his book, and told me the
Englishman’s name. It was Victor Field. So, when I saw the same
Chinese dress here to-night, I knew it covered the person of one of
my favourite authors. But I own, like you, I was a good deal
surprised. What on earth should a little London literary man be doing
at the Countess Wohenhoffen’s? And then I remembered the
astonishing resemblance between Victor Field and Louis Leczinski;
and I remembered that to Louis Leczinski the Countess Wohenhoffen
had been a second mother; and I reflected that though he chose to
be as one dead and buried for the rest of the world, Louis Leczinski
might very probably keep up private relations with the Countess. He
might very probably come to her ball, incognito, and safely masked.
I observed also that the Countess’s rooms were decorated
throughout with white lilac. But the white lilac is the emblematic
flower of the Leczinskis; green and white are their family colours.
Wasn’t the choice of white lilac on this occasion perhaps designed as
a secret compliment to the Prince? I was taught in the schoolroom
that two and two make four.”
“Oh, one can see that you’ve enjoyed a liberal education,” he
apprised her. “But where were you taught to jump to conclusions?
You do it with a grace, an assurance. I too have heard that two and
two make four; but first you must catch your two and two. Really, as
if there couldn’t be more than one Chinese costume knocking about
Vienna, during carnival week! Dear, good, sweet lady, it’s of all
disguises the disguise they’re driving hardest, this particular season.
And then to build up an elaborate theory of identities upon the mere
chance resemblance of a pair of photographs! Photographs indeed!
Photographs don’t give the complexion. Say that your Invisible
Prince is dark, what’s to prevent your literary man from being fair or
sandy? Or vice versa? And then, how is a little German Polish
princeling to write poems and things in English? No, no, no; your
reasoning hasn’t a leg to stand on.”
“Oh, I don’t mind its not having legs,” she laughed, “so long as it
convinces me. As for writing poems and things in English, you
yourself said that everybody is more or less English, in these days.
German princes are especially so. They all learn English, as a second
mother-tongue. You see, like Circassian beauties, they are mostly
bred up for the marriage market; and nothing is a greater help
towards a good sound remunerative English marriage, than a
knowledge of the language. However, don’t be frightened. I must
take it for granted that Victor Field would prefer not to let the world
know who he is. I happen to have discovered his secret. He may
trust to my discretion.”
“You still persist in imagining that I’m Victor Field?” he murmured
sadly.
 “I should have to be extremely simple-minded,” she announced,
“to imagine anything else. You wouldn’t be a male human being if
you had sat here for half an hour patiently talking about another
man.”
“Your argument,” said he, “with a meretricious air of subtlety, is
facile and superficial. I thank you for teaching me that word. I’d sit
here till doomsday talking about my worst enemy, for the pleasure of
talking with you.”
“Perhaps we have been talking of your worst enemy. Whom do the
moralists pretend a man’s worst enemy is wont to be?” she asked.
“I wish you would tell me the name of the person the moralists
would consider your worst enemy,” he replied.
“I’ll tell you directly, as I said before, if you’ll own up,” she offered.
“Your price is prohibitive. I’ve nothing to own up to.”
“Well then—good night,” she said.
Lightly, swiftly, she fled from the conservatory, and was soon
irrecoverable in the crowd.

The next morning Victor Field left Vienna for London; but before
he left he wrote a letter to Peter Wohenhoffen. In the course of it he
said: “There was an Englishwoman at your ball last night with the
reasoning powers of a detective in a novel. By divers processes of
elimination and induction, she had formed all sorts of theories about
no end of things. Among others, for instance, he was willing to bet
her hali-dome that a certain Prince Louis Leczinski, who seems to
have gone on the spree some years ago, and never to have come
home again—she was willing to bet anything you like that Leczinski
and I—moi qui vous parle—were to all intents and purposes the
same. Who was she, please? Rather a tall woman, in a black
domino, with grey eyes, or greyish-blue, and a nice voice.”
 In the answer which he received from Peter Wohenhoffen towards
the end of the week, Peter said: “There were nineteen
Englishwomen at my mother’s party, all of them rather tall, with nice
voices, and grey or blue-grey eyes. I don’t know what colours their
dominoes were. Here is a list of them.”
The names that followed were names of people whom Victor Field
almost certainly would never meet. The people Victor knew in
London were the sort of people a little literary man might be
expected to know. Most of them were respectable; some of them
even deemed themselves rather smart, and patronised him right
Britishly. But the nineteen names in Peter Wohenhoffen’s list (”Oh,
me! Oh, my!” cried Victor) were names to make you gasp.
All the same, he went a good deal to Hyde Park during the
season, and watched the driving.
“Which of all those haughty high-born beauties is she?” he
wondered futilely.
And then the season passed, and then the year; and little by little,
of course, he ceased to think about her.

One afternoon last May, a man, habited in accordance with the

fashion of the period, stopped before a hairdresser’s shop in
Knightsbridge somewhere, and, raising his hat, bowed to the three
waxen ladies who simpered from the window.
“Oh! It’s Mr. Field!” a voice behind him cried. “What are those
cryptic rites that you’re performing? What on earth are you bowing
into a hairdresser’s window for?”—a smooth, melodious voice, tinged
by an inflection that was half ironical, half bewildered.
“I was saluting the type of English beauty,” he answered, turning.
“Fortunately, there are divergencies from it,” he added, as he met
the puzzled smile of his interlocutrice; a puzzled smile indeed, but,
like the voice, by no means without its touch of irony.
She gave a little laugh; and then, examining the models critically,
“Oh?” she questioned. “Would you call that the type? You place the
type high. Their features are quite faultless, and who ever saw such
complexions?”
“It’s the type, all the same,” said he. “Just as the imitation
marionette is the type of English breeding.”
“The imitation marionette? I’m afraid I don’t follow,” she
confessed.
“The imitation marionettes. You’ve seen them at little theatres in
Italy. They’re actors who imitate puppets. Men and women who try
to behave as if they weren’t human, as if they were made of starch
and whalebone, instead of flesh and blood.”
“Ah, yes,” she assented, with another little laugh. “That would be
rather typical of our insular methods. But do you know what an
engaging, what a reviving spectacle you presented, as you stood
there flourishing your hat? What do you imagine people thought?
And what would have happened to you if I had just chanced to be a
policeman instead of a friend?”
“Would you have clapped your handcuffs on me?” he enquired. “I
suppose my conduct did seem rather suspicious. I was in the
deepest depth of dejection. One must give some expression to one’s
sorrow.”
“Are you going towards Kensington?” she asked, preparing to
move on.
“Before I commit myself, I should like to be sure whether you are,”
he replied.
“You can easily discover with a little perseverance.”
He placed himself beside her, and together they walked towards
Kensington.
She was rather taller than the usual woman, and slender. She was
exceedingly well-dressed; smartly, becomingly; a jaunty little hat of
strangely twisted straw, with an aigrette springing defiantly from it;
a jacket covered with mazes and labyrinths of embroidery; at her
throat a big knot of white lace, the ends of which fell winding in a
creamy cascade to her waist (do they call the thing a jabot?); and
then....
But what can a man trust himself to write of these esoteric
matters? She carried herself extremely well, too: with grace, with
distinction, her head held high, even thrown back a little,
superciliously. She had an immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red
hair? Yellow hair? Red hair with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow
hair with red fires shimmering through it? In a single loose, full
billow it swept away from her forehead, and then flowed into half-a-
thousand rippling, crinkling, capricious undulations. And her skin had
the sensitive colouring, the fineness of texture, that are apt to
accompany red hair when it’s yellow, yellow hair when it’s red. Her
face, with its pensive, quizzical eyes, it’s tip-tilted nose, it’s rather
large mouth, and the little mocking quirks and curves the lips took,
was an alert, arch, witty face; a delicate high-bred face; and withal a
somewhat sensuous, emotional face; the face of a woman with a
vast deal of humour in her soul, a vast deal of mischief; of a woman
who would love to tease you, and mystify you, and lead you on, and
put you off; and yet who, in her own way, at her own time, would
know supremely well how to be kind.
But it was mischief rather than kindness that glimmered in her
eyes at present, as she asked, “You were in the deepest depths of
dejection. Poor man! Why?”
“I can’t precisely determine,” said he, “whether the sympathy that
seems to vibrate in your voice is genuine or counterfeit.”
“Perhaps it’s half and half,” she suggested. “But my curiosity is
unmixed. Tell me your troubles.”
“The catalogue is long. I’ve sixteen hundred million. The weather,
for example. The shameless beauty of this radiant spring day. It’s
enough to stir all manner of wild pangs and longings in the heart of
an octogenarian. But, anyhow, when one’s life is passed in a
dungeon, one can’t perpetually be singing and dancing from mere
exuberance of joy, can one?”
“Is your life passed in a dungeon?” she exclaimed.
“Indeed, indeed, it is. Isn’t yours?”
“It had never occurred to me that it was.”
“You’re lucky. Mine is passed in the dungeons of Castle Ennui,” he
said.
“Oh, Castle Ennui. Ah, yes. You mean you’re bored?”
“At this particular moment I’m savouring the most exquisite
excitement,” he professed. “But in general, when I am not working
or sleeping, I’m bored to extermination—incomparably bored. If only
one could work and sleep alternately, twenty-four hours a day, the
year round! There’s no use trying to play in London. It’s so hard to
find a playmate. The English people take their pleasures without
salt.”
“The dungeons of Castle Ennui,” she repeated meditatively. “Yes,
we are fellow-prisoners. I’m bored to extermination too. Still,” she
added, “one is allowed out on parole, now and again. And
sometimes one has really quite delightful little experiences.”
“It would ill become me, in the present circumstances, to dispute
that,” he answered, bowing.
“But the castle waits to reclaim us afterwards, doesn’t it?” she
mused. “That’s rather a happy image, Castle Ennui.”
“I’m extremely glad you approve of it. Castle Ennui is the Bastille
of modern life. It is built of prunes and prisms; it has its outer court
of Convention, and its inner court of Propriety; it is moated round by
Respectability, and the shackles its inmates wear are forged of dull
little duties and arbitrary little rules. You can only escape from it at
the risk of breaking your social neck, or remaining a fugitive from
social justice to the end of your days. Yes, it is a fairly decent little
image.”
“A bit out of something you’re preparing for the press?” she
hinted.
 “Oh, how unkind of you!” he cried. “It was absolutely
extemporaneous.”
“One can never tell, with vous autres gens-de-lettres“ she
laughed.
“It would be friendlier to say nous autres gens desprit,’ he
submitted.
“Aren’t we proving to what degree nous autres gens d’esprit sont
bêtes,” she remarked, “by continuing to walk along this narrow
pavement, when we can get into Kensington Gardens by merely
crossing the street? Would it take you out of your way?”
“I have no way. I was sauntering for pleasure, if you can believe
me. I wish I could hope that you have no way either. Then we could
stop here, and crack little jokes together the livelong afternoon,” he
said, as they entered the Gardens.
“Alas, my way leads straight back to the Castle. I’ve promised to
call on an old woman in Campden Hill,” said she.
“Disappoint her. It’s good for old women to be disappointed. It
whips up their circulation.”
“I shouldn’t much regret disappointing the old woman,” she
admitted, “and I should rather like an hour or two of stolen freedom.
I don’t mind owning that I’ve generally found you, as men go, a
moderately interesting man to talk with. But the deuce of it is... You
permit the expression?”
“I’m devoted to the expression.”
“The deuce of it is, I’m supposed to be driving,” she explained.
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. So many suppositions in this world are
baseless,” he reminded her.
“But there’s the prison van,” she said. “It’s one of the tiresome
rules in the female wing of Castle Ennui that you’re always
supposed, more or less, to be driving. And though you may cheat
the authorities by slipping out of the prison van directly it’s turned
the corner, and sending it on ahead, there it remains, a factor that
can’t be eliminated. The prison van will relentlessly await my arrival
in the old woman’s street.”
“That only adds to the sport. Let it wait. When a factor can’t be
eliminated, it should be haughtily ignored. Besides, there are higher
considerations. If you leave me, what shall I do with the rest of this
weary day?”
“You can go to your club.”
He threw up his hand. “Merciful lady! What sin have I committed?
I never go to my club, except when I’ve been wicked, as a penance.
If you will permit me to employ a metaphor—oh, but a tried and
trusty metaphor—when one ship on the sea meets another in
distress, it stops and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous
engagements and the prison van and everything. Shall we cross to
the north, and see whether the Serpentine is in its place? Or would
you prefer to inspect the eastern front of the Palace? Or may I offer
you a penny chair?”
“I think a penny chair would be the maddest of the three
dissipations,” she decided.
And they sat down in penny chairs.
“It’s rather jolly here, isn’t it?” said he. “The trees, with their black
trunks, and their leaves, and things. Have you ever seen such
sumptuous foliage? And the greensward, and the shadows, and the
sunlight, and the atmosphere, and the mistiness—isn’t it like pearl-
dust and gold-dust floating in the air? It’s all got up to imitate the
background of a Watteau. We must do our best to be frivolous and
ribald, and supply a proper foreground. How big and fleecy and
white the clouds are. Do you think they’re made of cotton-wool? And
what do you suppose they paint the sky with? There never was such
a brilliant, breath-taking blue. It’s much too nice to be natural. And
they’ve sprinkled the whole place with scent, haven’t they? You
notice how fresh and sweet it smells. If only one could get rid of the
sparrows—the cynical little beasts! hear how they’re chortling—and
the people, and the nursemaids and children. I have never been able
to understand why they admit the public to the parks.”
 “Go on,” she encouraged him. “You’re succeeding admirably in
your effort to be ribald.”
“But that last remark wasn’t ribald in the least—it was desperately
sincere. I do think it’s inconsiderate of them to admit the public to
the parks. They ought to exclude all the lower classes, the People, at
one fell swoop, and then to discriminate tremendously amongst the
others.”
“Mercy, what undemocratic sentiments!” she cried. “The People,
the poor dear People—what have they done?”
“Everything. What haven’t they done? One could forgive their
being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their
ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their
protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can’t
forgive is their venality. They’re so mercenary. They’re always
thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching
their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh,
no, believe me, there’s no health in the People. Ground down under
the iron heel of despotism, reduced to a condition of hopeless
serfdom, I don’t say that they might not develop redeeming virtues.
But free, but sovereign, as they are in these days, they’re everything
that is squalid and sordid and offensive. Besides, they read such
abominably bad literature.”
“In that particular they’re curiously like the aristocracy, aren’t
they?” said she. “By-the-bye, when are you going to publish another
book of poems?”
“Apropos of bad literature?”
“Not altogether bad. I rather like your poems.”
“So do I,” said he. “It’s useless to pretend that we haven’t tastes
in common.”
They were both silent for a bit. She looked at him oddly, an
inscrutable little light flickering in her eyes. All at once she broke out
with a merry trill of laughter.
“What are you laughing at?” he demanded.
 “I’m hugely amused,” she answered.
“I wasn’t aware that I’d said anything especially good.”
“You’re building better than you know. But if I am amused, you
look ripe for tears. What is the matter?”
“Every heart knows its own bitterness,” he answered. “Don’t pay
the least attention to me. You mustn’t let moodiness of mine cast a
blight upon your high spirits.”
“No fear,” she assured him. “There are pleasures that nothing can
rob of their sweetness. Life is not all dust and ashes. There are
bright spots.”
“Yes, I’ve no doubt there are,” he said.
“And thrilling little adventures—no?” she questioned.
“For the bold, I dare say.”
“None but the bold deserve them. Sometimes it’s one thing, and
sometimes it’s another.”
“That’s very certain,” he agreed.
“Sometimes, for instance,” she went on, “one meets a man one
knows, and speaks to him. And he answers with a glibness! And
then, almost directly, what do you suppose one discovers?”
“What?” he asked.
“One discovers that the wretch hasn’t the ghost of a notion who
one is—that he’s totally and absolutely forgotten one!”
“Oh, I say! Really?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, really. You can’t deny that that’s an exhilarating little
adventure.”
“I should think it might be. One could enjoy the man’s
embarrassment,” he reflected.
“Or his lack of embarrassment. Some men are of an assurance, of
a sang froid! They’ll place themselves beside you, and walk with
you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the
livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never
breathe a hint of their perplexity. They’ll brazen it out.”
 “That’s distinctly heroic, Spartan, of them, don’t you think?” he
said. “Internally, poor dears, they’re very likely suffering agonies of
discomfiture.”
“We’ll hope they are. Could they decently do less?” said she.
“And fancy the mental struggles that must be going on in their
brains,” he urged. “If I were a man in such a situation I’d throw
myself upon the woman’s mercy. I’d say, ’Beautiful, sweet lady! I
know I know you. Your name, your entirely charming and
appropriate name, is trembling on the tip of my tongue. But, for
some unaccountable reason, my brute of a memory chooses to play
the fool. If you’ve a spark of Christian kindness in your soul, you’ll
come to my rescue with a little clue.’.rdquo;
“If the woman had a Christian sense of the ridiculous in her soul, I
fear you’d throw yourself on her mercy in vain,” she warned him.
“What is the good of tantalising people?”
“Besides,” she continued, “the woman might reasonably feel
slightly humiliated to find herself forgotten in that bare-faced
manner.”
“The humiliation surely would be all the man’s. Have you heard
from the Wohenhoffens lately?”
“The—what? The—who?” She raised her eyebrows.
“The Wohenhoffens,” he repeated.
“What are the Wohenhoffens? Are they persons? Are they things?”
“Oh, nothing. My enquiry was merely dictated by a thirst for
knowledge. It occurred to me vaguely that you might have worn a
black domino at a masked ball they gave, the Wohenhoffens. Are
you sure you didn’t?”
“I’ve a great mind to punish your forgetfulness by pretending that
I did,” she teased.
“She was rather tall, like you, and she had grey eyes, and a nice
voice, and a laugh that was sweeter than the singing of nightingales.
She was monstrously clever, too, with a flow of language that would
have made her a leader in any sphere. She was also a perfect fiend.
I have always been anxious to meet her again, in order that I might
ask her to marry me. I’m strongly disposed to believe that she was
you. Was she?” he pleaded.
“If I say yes, will you at once proceed to ask me to marry you?”
she asked.
“Try it and see.”
“Ce n’est pas la peine. It occasionally happens that a woman’s
already got a husband.”
“She said she was an old maid.”
“Do you dare to insinuate that I look like an old maid?” she cried.
“Yes.”
“Upon my word!”
“Would you wish me to insinuate that you look like anything so
insipid as a young girl? Were you the woman of the black domino?”
he persisted.
“I should need further information, before being able to make up
my mind. Are the—what’s their name?—Wohenheimer?—are the
Wohenheimers people one can safely confess to knowing? Oh,
you’re a man, and don’t count. But a woman? It sounds a trifle
Jewish, Wohenheimer. But of course there are Jews and Jews.”
“You’re playing with me like the cat in the adage,” he sighed. “It’s
too cruel. No one is responsible for his memory.”
“And to think that this man took me down to dinner not two
months ago!” she murmured in her veil.
“You’re as hard as nails. In whose house? Or—stay. Prompt me a
little. Tell me the first syllable of your name. Then the rest will come
with a rush.”
“My name is Matilda Muggins.”
“I’ve a great mind to punish your untruthfulness by pretending to
believe you,” said he. “Have you really got a husband?”
“Why do you doubt it?” said she.
“I don’t doubt it. Have you?”
 “I don’t know what to answer.”
“Don’t you know whether you’ve got a husband?” he protested.
“I don’t know what I’d better let you believe. Yes, on the whole, I
think you may as well assume that I’ve got a husband,” she
concluded.
“And a lover, too?” he asked.
“Really! I like your impertinence!” She bridled. “I only asked to
show a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an indignant
negative. You’re an Englishwoman, and you’re nice. Oh, one can see
with half an eye that you’re nice. But that a nice Englishwoman
should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should have side-
whiskers. It’s only the reg’lar bad-uns in England who have lovers.
There’s nothing between the family pew and the divorce court. One
nice Englishwoman is a match for the whole Eleven Thousand
Virgins of Cologne.”
“To hear you talk, one might fancy you were not English yourself.
For a man of the name of Field, you’re uncommonly foreign. You
look rather foreign too, you know, by-the-bye. You haven’t at all an
English cast of countenance,” she considered.
“I’ve enjoyed the advantages of a foreign education. I was
brought up abroad,” he explained.
“Where your features unconsciously assimilated themselves to a
foreign type? Where you learned a hundred thousand strange little
foreign things, no doubt? And imbibed a hundred thousand
unprincipled little foreign notions? And all the ingenuous little foreign
prejudices and misconceptions concerning England?” she
questioned.
“Most of them,” he assented.
“Perfide Albion? English hypocrisy?” she pursued.
“Oh, yes, the English are consummate hypocrites. But there’s only
one objection to their hypocrisy—it so rarely covers any wickedness.
It’s such a disappointment to see a creature stalking towards you,
laboriously draped in sheep’s clothing, and then to discover that it’s
only a sheep. You, for instance, as I took the liberty of intimating a
moment ago, in spite of your perfectly respectable appearance, are a
perfectly respectable woman. If you weren’t, wouldn’t I be making
furious love to you, though!”
“As I am, I can see no reason why you shouldn’t make furious love
to me, if it would amuse you. There’s no harm in firing your pistol at
a person who’s bullet-proof,” she laughed.
“No; it’s merely a wanton waste of powder and shot,” said he.
“However, I shouldn’t stick at that. The deuce of it is.... You permit
the expression?”
“I’m devoted to the expression.”
“The deuce of it is, you profess to be married.”
“Do you mean to say that you, with your unprincipled foreign
notions, would be restrained by any such consideration as that?” she
wondered.
“I shouldn’t be for an instant—if I weren’t in love with you.”
“Comment donc? Déjà?” she cried with a laugh.
“Oh, déjà! Why not? Consider the weather—consider the scene. Is
the air soft, is it fragrant? Look at the sky—good heavens!—and the
clouds, and the shadows on the grass, and the sunshine between
the trees. The world is made of light today, of light and colour, and
perfume and music. Tutt’ intorno canta amort amor, amore! What
would you have? One recognises one’s affinity. One doesn’t need a
lifetime. You began the business at the Wohenhoffens’ ball. To-day
you’ve merely put on the finishing touches.”
“Oh, then I am the woman you met at the masked ball?” she
cried.
“Look me in the eye, and tell me you’re not,” he defied her.
“I haven’t the faintest interest in telling you I’m not. On the
contrary, it rather pleases me to let you imagine that I am.”
“She owed me a grudge, you know. I hoodwinked her like
everything,” he confided.
 “Oh, did you? Then, as a sister woman, I should be glad to serve
as her instrument of vengeance. Do you happen to have such a
thing as a watch about you?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he said.
“Will you be good enough to tell me what o’clock it is?”
“What are your motives for asking?”
“I’m expected at home at five.”
“Where do you live?”
“What are the motives for asking?”
“I want to call upon you.”
“You might wait till you’re invited.”
“Well, invite me—quick!”
“Never.”
“Never?”
“Never, never, never,” she asseverated. “A man who’s forgotten me
as you have!”
“But if I’ve only met you once at a masked ball........”
“Can’t you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me
for that woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the
wound?” she demanded.
“But if you won’t invite me to call upon you, how and when am I
to see you again?”
“I haven’t an idea,” she answered, cheerfully. “I must go now.
Good bye.” She rose.
“One moment,” he interposed. “Before you go will you allow me to
look at the palm of your left hand?”
“What for?”
“I can tell fortunes. I’m extremely good at it,” he boasted. “I’ll tell
you yours.”
“Oh, very well,” she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly
she pulled off her glove.
 He took her hand, a beautifully slender, nervous hand, warm and
soft, with rosy, tapering fingers.
“Oho! you are an old maid after all,” he cried. “There’s no wedding
ring.”
“You villain!” she gasped, snatching the hand away.
“I promised to tell your fortune. Haven’t I told it correctly?”
“You needn’t rub it in, though. Eccentric old maids don’t like to be
reminded of their condition.”
“Will you marry me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Partly from curiosity. Partly because it’s the only way I can think
of, to make sure of seeing you again. And then, I like your hair. Will
you?”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“The stars forbid. And I’m ambitious. In my horoscope it is written
that I shall either never marry at all, or—marry royalty.”
“Oh, bother ambition! Cheat your horoscope. Marry me. Will you?”
“If you care to follow me,” she said, rising again, “you can come
and help me to commit a little theft.”
He followed her to an obscure and sheltered corner of a flowery
path, where she stopped before a bush of white lilac.
“There are no keepers in sight, are there?” she questioned.
“I don’t see any,” he said.
“Then allow me to make you a receiver of stolen goods,” said she,
breaking off a spray, and handing it to him.
“Thank you. But I’d rather have an answer to my question.”
“Isn’t that an answer?”
“Is it?”
“White lilac—to the Invisible Prince?”
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