She turned her tortured eyes away. “I have not the heart.”
This made Ashmead look at her more attentively. “Why, what is the matter?” said he. “You are in trouble. I declare you are trembling, and your eyes are filling. My poor lady—in Heaven's name, what is the matter?”
“Hush!” said Ina; “not so loud.” Then she looked him in the face a little while, blushed, hesitated, faltered, and at last laid one white hand upon her bosom, that was beginning to heave, and said, with patient dignity, “My old friend—I—am—deserted.”
Ashmead looked at her with amazement and incredulity. “Deserted!” said he, faintly. “You—deserted!!!”
“Yes,” said she, “deserted; but perhaps not forever.” Her noble eyes filled to the brim, and two tears stood ready to run over.
“Why, the man must be an idiot!” shouted Ashmead.
“Hush! not so loud. That waiter is listening: let me come to your table.”
She came and sat down at his table, and he sat opposite her. They looked at each other. He waited for her to speak. With all her fortitude, her voice faltered, under the eye of sympathy. “You are my old friend,” she said. “I'll try and tell you all.” But she could not all in a moment, and the two tears trickled over and ran down her cheeks; Ashmead saw them, and burst out, “The villain!—the villain!”
“No, no,” said she, “do not call him that. I could not bear it. Believe me, he is no villain.” Then she dried her eyes, and said, resolutely, “If I am to tell you, you must not apply harsh words to him. They would close my mouth at once, and close my heart.”
“I won't say a word,” said Ashmead, submissively; “so tell me all.”
Ina reflected a moment, and then told her tale. Dealing now with longer sentences, she betrayed her foreign half.
“Being alone so long,” said she, “has made me reflect more than in all my life before, and I now understand many things that, at the time, I could not. He to whom I have given my love, and resigned the art in which I was advancing—with your assistance—is, by nature, impetuous and inconstant. He was born so, and I the opposite. His love for me was too violent to last forever in any man, and it soon cooled in him, because he is inconstant by nature. He was jealous of the public: he must have all my heart, and all my time, and so he wore his own passion out. Then his great restlessness, having now no chain, became too strong for our happiness. He pined for change, as some wanderers pine for a fixed home. Is it not strange? I, a child of the theater, am at heart domestic. He, a gentleman and a scholar, born, bred, and fitted to adorn the best society, is by nature a Bohemian.
“One word: is there another woman?”
“No, not that I know of; Heaven forbid!” said Ina. “But there is something very dreadful: there is gambling. He has a passion for it, and I fear I wearied him by my remonstrances. He dragged me about from one gambling-place to another, and I saw that if I resisted he would go without me. He lost a fortune while we were together, and I do really believe he is ruined, poor dear.”
Ashmead suppressed all signs of ill-temper, and asked, grimly, “Did he quarrel with you, then?”
“Oh, no; he never said an unkind word to me; and I was not always so forbearing, for I passed months of torment. I saw that affection, which was my all, gliding gradually away from me; and the tortured will cry out. I am not an ungoverned woman, but sometimes the agony was intolerable, and I complained. Well, that agony, I long for it back; for now I am desolate.”
“Poor soul! How could a man have the heart to leave you? how could he have the face?”
“Oh, he did not do it shamelessly. He left me for a week, to visit friends in England. But he wrote to me from London. He had left me at Berlin. He said that he did not like to tell me before parting, but I must not expect to see him for six weeks; and he desired me to go to my mother in Denmark. He would send his next letter to me there. Ah! he knew I should need my mother when his second letter came. He had planned it all, that the blow might not kill me. He wrote to tell me he was a ruined man, and he was too proud to let me support him: he begged my pardon for his love, for his desertion, for ever having crossed my brilliant path like a dark cloud. He praised me, he thanked me, he blessed me; but he left me. It was a beautiful letter, but it was the death-warrant of my heart. I was abandoned.”
Ashmead started up and walked very briskly, with a great appearance of business requiring vast dispatch, to the other end of the salle; and there, being out of Ina's hearing, he spoke his mind to a candlestick with three branches. “D—n him! Heartless, sentimental scoundrel! D—n him! D—n him!”
Having relieved his mind with this pious ejaculation, he returned to Ina at a reasonable pace and much relieved, and was now enabled to say, cheerfully, “Let us take a business view of it. He is gone—gone of his own accord. Give him your blessing—I have given him mine—and forget him.”
“Forget him! Never while I live. Is that your advice? Oh, Mr. Ashmead! And the moment I saw your friendly face, I said to myself, 'I am no longer alone: here is one that will help me.'”
“And so I will, you may be sure of that,” said Ashmead, eagerly. “What is the business?”
“The business is to find him. That is the first thing.”
“But he is in England.”
“Oh, no; that was eight months ago. He could not stay eight months in any country; besides, there are no gambling-houses there.”
“And have you been eight months searching Europe for this madman?”
“No. At first pride and anger were strong, and I said, 'Here I stay till he comes back to me and to his senses.'”
“Brava!”
“Yes; but month after month went by, carrying away my pride and my anger, and leaving my affection undiminished. At last I could bear it no longer; so, as he would not come to his senses—”
“You took leave of yours, and came out on a wild-goose chase,” said Ashmead, but too regretfully to affront her.
“It was,” said Ina; “I feel it. But it is not one now, because I have you to assist me with your experience and ability. You will find him for me, somehow or other. I know you will.”
Let a woman have ever so little guile, she must have tact, if she is a true woman. Now, tact, if its etymology is to be trusted, implies a fine sense and power of touch; so, in virtue of her sex, she pats a horse before she rides him, and a man before she drives him. There, ladies, there is an indictment in two counts; traverse either of them if you can.
Joseph Ashmead, thus delicately but effectually manipulated, swelled with gratified vanity and said, “You are quite right; you can't do this sort of thing yourself; you want an agent.”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, you have got one. Now let me see—fifty to one he is not at Homburg at all. If he is, he most likely stays at Frankfort. He is a swell, is he not?”
“Swell!” said the Anglo-Dane, puzzled. “Not that I am aware of.” She was strictly on her guard against vituperation of her beloved scamp.
“Pooh, pooh!” said Ashmead; “of course he is, and not the sort to lodge in Homburg.”
“Then behold my incompetence!” said Ina.
“But the place to look for him is the gambling-saloon. Been there?”
“Oh, no.”
“Then you must.”
“What! Me! Alone?”
“No;