Eugene Pickering | Page 4

at once so familiar and so strange. We had our backs
turned to him, so that I could not look at him again. When the music
ceased we left our places, and I went to consign my friend to her
mamma on the terrace. In passing, I saw that my young man had
departed; I concluded that he only strikingly resembled some one I
knew. But who in the world was it he resembled? The ladies went off
to their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into the
gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at roulette. Gradually I
filtered through to the inner edge, near the table, and, looking round,
saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite to me. He was watching the
game, with his hands in his pockets; but singularly enough, now that I
observed him at my leisure, the look of familiarity quite faded from his
face. What had made us call his appearance odd was his great length
and leanness of limb, his long, white neck, his blue, prominent eyes,
and his ingenuous, unconscious absorption in the scene before him. He
was not handsome, certainly, but he looked peculiarly amiable and if
his overt wonderment savoured a trifle of rurality, it was an agreeable
contrast to the hard, inexpressive masks about him. He was the verdant
offshoot, I said to myself, of some ancient, rigid stem; he had been
brought up in the quietest of homes, and he was having his first glimpse
of life. I was curious to see whether he would put anything on the table;
he evidently felt the temptation, but he seemed paralysed by chronic
embarrassment. He stood gazing at the chinking complexity of losses
and gains, shaking his loose gold in his pocket, and every now and then
passing his hand nervously over his eyes.
Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play to have many
thoughts for each other; but before long I noticed a lady who evidently
had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table. She was seated

about half-way between my friend and me, and I presently observed
that she was trying to catch his eye. Though at Homburg, as people said,
"one could never be sure," I yet doubted whether this lady were one of
those whose especial vocation it was to catch a gentleman's eye. She
was youthful rather than elderly, and pretty rather than plain; indeed, a
few minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought her wonderfully
pretty. She had a charming gray eye and a good deal of yellow hair
disposed in picturesque disorder; and though her features were meagre
and her complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental,
artificial gracefulness. She was dressed in white muslin very much
puffed and filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, relieved here and there
by a pale blue ribbon. I used to flatter myself on guessing at people's
nationality by their faces, and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This faded,
crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a German--such a
German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature. Was she not a
friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of
aesthetics-- something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures,
however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident
friend was making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an
ungloved hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed rings--turquoises,
sapphires, and lapis--she beckoned him to come to her. The gesture was
executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with an
appealing smile. He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to suppose
that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was immediately
repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the roots of his
hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the lady's chair.
By the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping his forehead with
his pocket-handkerchief. She tilted back, looked up at him with the
same smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said something,
interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head. She was
asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying no. Old
players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back on them they
can put her into good-humour again by having their stakes placed by a
novice. Our young man's physiognomy had seemed to his new
acquaintance to express the perfection of inexperience, and, like a
practical woman, she had determined to make him serve her turn.
Unlike most of her neighbours, she had no little pile of gold before her,

but she drew from her pocket a double napoleon,