Now that Gordon was gone, at any rate, gone for good, and not to return, he felt a sudden and singular sense of freedom. It was a feeling of unbounded expansion, quite out of proportion, as he said to himself, to any assignable cause. Everything suddenly appeared to have become very optional; but he was quite at a loss what to do with his liberty. It seemed a harmless use to make of it, in the afternoon, to go and pay another visit to the ladies who lived at the confectioner’s. Here, however, he met a reception which introduced a fresh element of perplexity into the situation that Gordon had left behind him. The door was opened to him by Mrs. Vivian’s maid-servant, a sturdy daughter of the Schwartzwald, who informed him that the ladies—with much regret—were unable to receive any one.
“They are very busy—and they are ill,” said the young woman, by way of explanation.
Bernard was disappointed, and he felt like arguing the case.
“Surely,” he said, “they are not both ill and busy! When you make excuses, you should make them agree with each other.”
The Teutonic soubrette fixed her round blue eyes a minute upon the patch of blue sky revealed to her by her open door.
“I say what I can, lieber Herr. It ‘s not my fault if I ‘m not so clever as a French mamsell. One of the ladies is busy, the other is ill. There you have it.”
“Not quite,” said Bernard. “You must remember that there are three of them.”
“Oh, the little one—the little one weeps.”
“Miss Evers weeps!” exclaimed Bernard, to whom the vision of this young lady in tears had never presented itself.
“That happens to young ladies when they are unhappy,” said the girl; and with an artless yet significant smile she carried a big red hand to the left side of a broad bosom.
“I am sorry she is unhappy; but which of the other ladies is ill?”
“The mother is very busy.”
“And the daughter is ill?”
The young woman looked at him an instant, smiling again, and the light in her little blue eyes indicated confusion, but not perversity.
“No, the mamma is ill,” she exclaimed, “and the daughter is very busy. They are preparing to leave Baden.”
“To leave Baden? When do they go?”
“I don’t quite know, lieber Herr; but very soon.”
With this information Bernard turned away. He was rather surprised, but he reflected that Mrs. Vivian had not proposed to spend her life on the banks of the Oos, and that people were leaving Baden every day in the year. In the evening, at the Kursaal, he met Captain Lovelock, who was wandering about with an air of explosive sadness.
“Damn it, they ‘re going—yes, they ‘re going,” said the Captain, after the two young men had exchanged a few allusions to current events. “Fancy their leaving us in that heartless manner! It ‘s not the time to run away—it ‘s the time to keep your rooms, if you ‘re so lucky as to have any. The races begin next week and there ‘ll be a tremendous crowd. All the grand-ducal people are coming. Miss Evers wanted awfully to see the Grand Duke, and I promised her an introduction. I can’t make out what Mrs. Vivian is up to. I bet you a ten-pound note she ‘s giving chase. Our friend Wright has come back and gone off again, and Mrs. Vivian means to strike camp and follow. She ‘ll pot him yet; you see if she does n’t!”
“She is running away from you, dangerous man!” said Bernard.
“Do you mean on account of Miss Evers? Well, I admire Miss Evers—I don’t mind admitting that; but I ain’t dangerous,” said Captain Lovelock, with a lustreless eye. “How can a fellow be dangerous when he has n’t ten shillings in his pocket? Desperation, do you call it? But Miss Evers has n’t money, so far as I have heard. I don’t ask you,” Lovelock continued—“I don’t care a damn whether she has or not. She ‘s a devilish charming girl, and I don’t mind telling you I ‘m hit. I stand no chance—I know I stand no chance. Mrs. Vivian ‘s down on me, and, by Jove, Mrs. Vivian ‘s right. I ‘m not the husband to pick out for a young woman of expensive habits and no expectations. Gordon Wright’s the sort of young man that ‘s wanted, and, hang me, if Mrs. Vivian did n’t want him so much for her own daughter, I believe she ‘d try and bag him for the little one. Gad, I believe that to keep me off she would like to cut him in two and give half to each of them! I ‘m afraid of that little woman. She has got a little voice like a screw-driver. But for all that, if I could get away from this cursed place, I would keep the girl in sight—hang me if I would n’t! I ‘d cut the races—dash me if I would n’t! But I ‘m in pawn, if you know what that means. I owe a beastly lot of money at the inn, and that impudent little beggar of a landlord won’t let me out of his sight. The luck ‘s dead against me at those filthy tables; I have n’t won a farthing in three weeks. I wrote to my brother the other day, and this morning I got an answer from him—a cursed, canting letter of good advice, remarking that he had already paid my debts seven times. It does n’t happen to be seven; it ‘s only six, or six and a half! Does he expect me to spend the rest of my life at the Hotel de Hollande? Perhaps he would like me to engage as a waiter there and pay it off by serving at the table d’hote. It would be convenient for him the next time he comes abroad with his seven daughters and two governesses. I hate the smell of their beastly table d’hote! You ‘re sorry I ‘m hard up? I ‘m sure I ‘m much obliged to you. Can you be of any service? My dear fellow, if you are bent on throwing your money about the place I ‘m not the man to stop you.” Bernard’s winnings of the previous night were burning a hole, as the phrase is, in his pocket. Ten thousand francs had never before seemed to him so heavy a load to carry, and to lighten the weight of his good luck by lending fifty pounds to a less fortunate fellow-player was an operation that not only gratified his good-nature but strongly commended itself to his conscience. His conscience, however, made its conditions. “My dear Longueville,” Lovelock went on, “I have always gone in for family feeling, early associations, and all that sort of thing. That ‘s what made me confide my difficulties to Dovedale. But, upon my honor, you remind me of the good Samaritan, or that sort of person; you are fonder of me than my own brother! I ‘ll take fifty pounds with pleasure, thank you, and you shall have them again—at the earliest opportunity. My earliest convenience—will that do? Damn it, it is a convenience, is n’t it? You make your conditions. My dear fellow, I accept them in advance. That I ‘m not to follow up Miss Evers—is that what you mean? Have you been commissioned by the family to buy me off? It ‘s devilish cruel to take advantage of my poverty! Though I ‘m poor, I ‘m honest. But I am honest, my dear Longueville; that ‘s the point. I ‘ll give you my word, and I ‘ll keep it. I won’t go near that girl again—I won’t think of her till I ‘ve got rid of your fifty pounds. It ‘s a dreadful encouragement to extravagance, but that ‘s your lookout. I ‘ll stop for their beastly races and the young lady shall be sacred.”
Longueville called the next morning at Mrs. Vivian’s, and learned that the three ladies had left Baden by the early train, a couple of hours before. This fact produced in his mind a variety of emotions—surprise, annoyance, embarrassment. In spite of his effort to think it natural they should go, he found something precipitate and inexplicable in the manner of their going, and he declared to himself that one of the party, at least, had been unkind and ungracious in not giving him a chance to say good-bye. He took refuge by anticipation, as it were, in this reflection, whenever, for the next three or four days, he foresaw himself stopping short, as he had done before, and asking himself whether he had done an injury to Angela Vivian. This was an idle and unpractical question, inasmuch as the answer was not forthcoming; whereas it was quite simple and conclusive to say, without the note of interrogation, that she was, in spite of many attractive points, an abrupt and capricious young woman. During the three or four days in question, Bernard lingered on at Baden, uncertain what to do or where to go, feeling as if he had received a sudden check—a sort of spiritual snub—which arrested the accumulation of motive. Lovelock, also, whom Bernard saw every day, appeared to think that destiny had given him a slap in the face, for he had not enjoyed the satisfaction of a last interview with Miss Evers.
“I thought she might have written me a note,” said the Captain; “but it appears she does n’t write. Some girls don’t write, you know.”
Bernard remarked that it was possible Lovelock would still have news of Miss Blanche; and before he left Baden he learned that she had addressed her forsaken swain a charming little note from Lausanne, where the three ladies had paused in their flight from Baden, and where Mrs. Vivian had decreed that for the present they should remain.
“I ‘m devilish glad she writes,” said Captain Lovelock; “some girls do write, you know.”
Blanche found Lausanne most horrid after Baden, for whose delights she languished. The delights of Baden, however, were not obvious just now to her correspondent, who had taken Bernard’s fifty pounds into the Kursaal and left them there. Bernard, on learning his misfortune, lent him another fifty, with which he performed a second series of unsuccessful experiments; and our hero was not at his ease until he had passed over to his luckless friend the whole amount of his own winnings, every penny of which found its way through Captain Lovelock’s fingers back into the bank. When this operation was completed, Bernard left Baden, the Captain gloomily accompanying him to the station.
I have said that there had come over Bernard a singular sense of freedom. One of the uses he made of his freedom was to undertake a long journey. He went to the East and remained absent from Europe for upward of two years—a period of his life of which it is not proposed to offer a complete history. The East is a wonderful region, and Bernard, investigating the mysteries of Asia, saw a great many curious and beautiful things. He had moments of keen enjoyment; he laid up a great store of impressions and even a considerable sum of knowledge. But, nevertheless, he was not destined to look back upon this episode with any particular complacency. It was less delightful than it was supposed to be; it was less successful than it might have been. By what unnatural element the cup of pleasure was adulterated, he would have been very much at a loss to say; but it was an incontestable fact that at times he sipped it as a medicine, rather than quaffed it as a nectar. When people congratulated him on his opportunity of seeing the world, and said they envied him the privilege of seeing it so well, he felt even more than the usual degree of irritation produced by an insinuation that fortune thinks so poorly of us as to give us easy terms. Misplaced sympathy is the least available of superfluities, and Bernard at this time found himself thinking that there was a good deal of impertinence in the world. He would, however, readily have confessed that, in so far as he failed to enjoy his Oriental wanderings, the fault was his own; though he would have made mentally the gratifying reflection that never was a fault less deliberate. If, during the period of which I speak, his natural gayety had sunk to a minor key, a partial explanation may be found in the fact that he was deprived of the society of his late companion. It was an odd circumstance that the two young men had not met since Gordon’s abrupt departure from Baden. Gordon went to Berlin, and shortly afterward to America, so that they were on opposite sides of the globe. Before he returned to his own country, Bernard made by letter two or three offers to join him in Europe, anywhere that was agreeable to him. Gordon answered that his movements were very uncertain, and that he should be sorry to trouble Bernard to follow him about. He had put him to this inconvenience in making him travel from Venice to Baden, and one such favor at a time was enough to ask, even of the most obliging of men. Bernard was, of course, afraid that what he had told Gordon about Angela Vivian was really the cause of a state of things which, as between two such good friends, wore a perceptible resemblance to alienation. Gordon had given her up; but he bore Bernard a grudge for speaking ill of her, and so long as this disagreeable impression should last, he preferred not to see him. Bernard was frank enough to charge the poor fellow with a lingering rancor, of which he made, indeed, no great crime. But Gordon denied the allegation, and assured him that, to his own perception, there was no decline in their intimacy. He only requested, as a favor and as a tribute to “just susceptibilities,” that Bernard would allude no more either to Miss Vivian or to what had happened at Baden. This request was easy to comply with, and Bernard, in writing, strictly conformed to it; but it seemed to him that the act of doing so was in itself a cooling-off. What would be a better proof of what is called a “tension” than an agreement to avoid a natural topic? Bernard moralized a little over Gordon’s “just susceptibilities,” and felt that the existence of a perverse resentment in so honest a nature was a fact gained to his acquaintance with psychological science. It cannot be said, however, that he suffered this fact to occupy at all times the foreground of his consciousness. Bernard was like some great painters; his foregrounds were very happily arranged. He heard nothing of Mrs. Vivian and her daughter, beyond a rumor that they had gone to Italy; and he learned, on apparently good authority, that Blanche Evers had returned to New York with her mother. He wondered whether Captain Lovelock was still in pawn at the Hotel de Hollande. If he did not allow himself to wonder too curiously whether he had done a harm to Gordon, it may be affirmed that he was haunted by the recurrence of that other question, of which mention has already been made. Had he done a harm to Angela Vivian, and did she know that he had done it? This inquiry by no means made him miserable, and it was far from awaiting him regularly on his pillow. But it visited him at intervals, and sometimes in the strangest places—suddenly, abruptly, in the stillness of an Indian temple, or amid the shrillness of an Oriental crowd. He became familiar with it at last; he called it his Jack-in-the-box. Some invisible touch of circumstance would press the spring, and the little image would pop up, staring him in the face and grinning an interrogation. Bernard always clapped down the lid, for he regarded this phenomenon as strikingly inane. But if it was more frequent than any pang of conscience connected with the remembrance of Gordon himself, this last sentiment was certainly lively enough to make it a great relief to hear at last a rumor that the excellent fellow was about to be married. The rumor reached him at Athens; it was vague and indirect, and it omitted the name of his betrothed. But Bernard made the most of it, and took comfort in the thought that his friend had recovered his spirits and his appetite for matrimony.
It was not till our hero reached Paris, on his return from the distant East, that the rumor I have just mentioned acquired an appreciable consistency. Here, indeed, it took the shape of authentic information. Among a number of delayed letters which had been awaiting him at his banker’s he found a communication from Gordon Wright. During the previous year or two his correspondence with this trusted—and trusting—friend had not been frequent, and Bernard had received little direct news of him. Three or four short letters had overtaken him in his wanderings—letters as cordial, to all appearance, if not as voluminous, as the punctual missives of an earlier time. Bernard made a point of satisfying himself that they were as cordial; he weighed them in the scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed to him on the whole that there was no relaxation of Gordon’s epistolary tone. If he wrote less often than he used to do, that was a thing that very commonly happened as men grew older. The closest intimacies, moreover, had phases and seasons, intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend had, in fact, averted his countenance from him, this was simply the accomplishment of a periodical revolution which would bring them in due order face to face again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing tolerably often and writing always in the friendliest tone. He made it a matter of conscience—he liked to feel that he was treating Gordon generously, and not demanding an eye for an eye. The letter he found in Paris was so short that I may give it entire.
“My dear Bernard (it ran), I must write to you before I write to any one else, though unfortunately you are so far away that you can’t be the first to congratulate me. Try and not be the last, however. I am going to be married—as soon as possible. You know the young lady, so you can appreciate the situation. Do you remember little Blanche Evers, whom we used to see three years ago at Baden-Baden? Of course you remember her, for I know you used often to talk with her. You will be rather surprised, perhaps, at my having selected her as the partner of a life-time; but we manage these matters according to our lights. I am very much in love with her, and I hold that an excellent reason. I have been ready any time this year or two to fall in love with some simple, trusting, child-like nature. I find this in perfection in this charming young girl. I find her so natural and fresh. I remember telling you once that I did n’t wish to be fascinated—that I wanted to estimate scientifically the woman I should marry. I have altogether got over that, and I don’t know how I ever came to talk such nonsense. I am fascinated now, and I assure you I like it! The best of it is that I find it does n’t in the least prevent my estimating Blanche. I judge her very fairly—I see just what she is. She ‘s simple—that ‘s what I want; she ‘s tender—that ‘s what I long for. You will remember how pretty she is; I need n’t remind you of that. She was much younger then, and she has greatly developed and improved in these two or three years. But she will always be young and innocent—I don’t want her to improve too much. She came back to America with her mother the winter after we met her at Baden, but I never saw her again till three months ago. Then I saw her with new eyes, and I wondered I could have been so blind. But I was n’t ready for her till then, and what makes me so happy now is to know that I have come to my present way of feeling by experience. That gives me confidence—you see I am a reasoner still. But I am under the charm, for all my reason. We are to be married in a month—try and come back to the wedding. Blanche sends you a message, which I will give you verbatim. ‘Tell him I am not such a silly little chatterbox as I used to be at Baden. I am a great deal wiser; I am almost as clever as Angela Vivian.’ She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian very clever—but it is not true that she is equally so. I am very happy; come home and see.”
Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States in time for Gordon’s wedding, which took place at midsummer. Bernard, arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some months’ standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation, whether he appeared happy. The first effect of the letter I have just quoted had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series of reflections which were quite the negative of surprise; and these operations of Bernard’s mind had finally merged themselves in a simple sentiment of jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to minister to Gordon’s strenuous needs than the light-hearted and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time. Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose—the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view of human responsibilities. What a singular selection—what a queer infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error carried almost to the point of naivetae. He exclaimed that Blanche Evers was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright’s stamp always ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways, and it pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally speaking, to have a kittenish wife. He had within himself a fund of common sense to draw upon, so that to espouse a paragon of wisdom would be but to carry water to the fountain. He could easily make up for the deficiencies of a wife who was a little silly, and if she charmed and amused him, he could treat himself to the luxury of these sensations for themselves. He was not in the least afraid of being ruined by it, and if Blanche’s birdlike chatter and turns of the head had made a fool of him, he knew it perfectly well, and simply took his stand upon his rights. Every man has a right to a little flower-bed, and life is not all mere kitchen-gardening. Bernard rapidly extemporized this rough explanation of the surprise his friend had offered him, and he found it all-sufficient for his immediate needs. He wrote Blanche a charming note, to which she replied with a great deal of spirit and grace. Her little letter was very prettily turned, and Bernard, reading it over two or three times, said to himself that, to do her justice, she might very well have polished her intellect a trifle during these two or three years. As she was older, she could hardly help being wiser. It even occurred to Bernard that she might have profited by the sort of experience that is known as the discipline of suffering. What had become of Captain Lovelock and that tender passion which was apparently none the less genuine for having been expressed in the slang of a humorous period? Had they been permanently separated by judicious guardians, and had she been obliged to obliterate his image from her lightly-beating little heart? Bernard had felt sure at Baden that, beneath her contemptuous airs and that impertinent consciousness of the difficulties of conquest by which a pretty American girl attests her allegiance to a civilization in which young women occupy the highest place—he had felt sure that Blanche had a high appreciation of her handsome Englishman, and that if Lovelock should continue to relish her charms, he might count upon the advantages of reciprocity. But it occurred to Bernard that Captain Lovelock had perhaps been faithless; that, at least, the discourtesy of chance and the inhumanity of an elder brother might have kept him an eternal prisoner at the Hotel de Hollande (where, for all Bernard knew to the contrary, he had been obliged to work out his destiny in the arduous character of a polyglot waiter); so that the poor young girl, casting backward glances along the path of Mrs. Vivian’s retreat, and failing to detect the onward rush of a rescuing cavalier, had perforce believed herself forsaken, and had been obliged to summon philosophy to her aid. It was very possible that her philosophic studies had taught her the art of reflection; and that, as she would have said herself, she was tremendously toned down. Once, at Baden, when Gordon Wright happened to take upon himself to remark that little Miss Evers was bored by her English gallant, Bernard had ventured to observe, in petto, that Gordon knew nothing about it. But all this was of no consequence now, and Bernard steered further and further away from the liability to detect fallacies in his friend. Gordon had engaged himself to marry, and our critical hero had not a grain of fault to find with this resolution. It was a capital thing; it was just what he wanted; it would do him a world of good. Bernard rejoiced with him sincerely, and regretted extremely that a series of solemn engagements to pay visits in England should prevent his being present at the nuptials.
They were well over, as I have said, when he reached New York. The honeymoon had waned, and the business of married life had begun. Bernard, at the end, had sailed from England rather abruptly. A friend who had a remarkably good cabin on one of the steamers was obliged by a sudden detention to give it up, and on his offering it to Longueville, the latter availed himself gratefully of this opportunity of being a little less discomposed than usual by the Atlantic billows. He therefore embarked at two days’ notice, a fortnight earlier than he had intended and than he had written to Gordon to expect him. Gordon, of course, had written that he was to seek no hospitality but that which Blanche was now prepared—they had a charming house—so graciously to dispense; but Bernard, nevertheless, leaving the ship early in the morning, had betaken himself to an hotel. He wished not to anticipate his welcome, and he determined to report himself to Gordon first and to come back with his luggage later in the day. After purifying himself of his sea-stains, he left his hotel and walked up the Fifth Avenue with all a newly-landed voyager’s enjoyment of terrestrial locomotion. It was a charming autumn day; there was a golden haze in the air; he supposed it was the Indian summer. The broad sidewalk of the Fifth Avenue was scattered over with dry leaves—crimson and orange and amber. He tossed them with his stick as he passed; they rustled and murmured with the motion, and it reminded him of the way he used to kick them in front of him over these same pavements in his riotous infancy. It was a pleasure, after many wanderings, to find himself in his native land again, and Bernard Longueville, as he went, paid his compliments to his mother-city. The brightness and gayety of the place seemed a greeting to a returning son, and he felt a throb of affection for the freshest, the youngest, the easiest and most good-natured of great capitals. On presenting himself at Gordon’s door, Bernard was told that the master of the house was not at home; he went in, however, to see the mistress. She was in her drawing-room, alone; she had on her bonnet, as if she had been going out. She gave him a joyous, demonstrative little welcome; she was evidently very glad to see him. Bernard had thought it possible she had “improved,” and she was certainly prettier than ever. He instantly perceived that she was still a chatterbox; it remained to be seen whether the quality of her discourse were finer.
“Well, Mr. Longueville,” she exclaimed, “where in the world did you drop from, and how long did it take you to cross the Atlantic? Three days, eh? It could n’t have taken you many more, for it was only the other day that Gordon told me you were not to sail till the 20th. You changed your mind, eh? I did n’t know you ever changed your mind. Gordon never changes his. That ‘s not a reason, eh, because you are not a bit like Gordon. Well, I never thought you were, except that you are a man. Now what are you laughing at? What should you like me call you? You are a man, I suppose; you are not a god. That ‘s what you would like me to call you, I have no doubt. I must keep that for Gordon? I shall certainly keep it a good while. I know a good deal more about gentlemen than I did when I last saw you, and I assure you I don’t think they are a bit god-like. I suppose that ‘s why you always drop down from the sky—you think it ‘s more divine. I remember that ‘s the way you arrived at Baden when we were there together; the first thing we knew, you were standing in the midst of us. Do you remember that evening when you presented yourself? You came up and touched Gordon on the shoulder, and he gave a little jump. He will give another little jump when he sees you to-day. He gives a great many little jumps; I keep him skipping about! I remember perfectly the way we were sitting that evening at Baden, and the way you looked at me when you came up. I saw you before Gordon—I see a good many things before Gordon. What did you look at me that way for? I always meant to ask you. I was dying to know.”
“For the simplest reason in the world,” said Bernard. “Because you were so pretty.”
“Ah no, it was n’t that! I know all about that look. It was something else—as if you knew something about me. I don’t know what you can have known. There was very little to know about me, except that I was intensely silly. Really, I was awfully silly that summer at Baden—you would n’t believe how silly I was. But I don’t see how you could have known that—before you had spoken to me. It came out in my conversation—it came out awfully. My mother was a good deal disappointed in Mrs. Vivian’s influence; she had expected so much from it. But it was not poor Mrs. Vivian’s fault, it was some one’s else. Have you ever seen the Vivians again? They are always in Europe; they have gone to live in Paris. That evening when you came up and spoke to Gordon, I never thought that three years afterward I should be married to him, and I don’t suppose you did either. Is that what you meant by looking at me? Perhaps you can tell the future. I wish you would tell my future!”
“Oh, I can tell that easily,” said Bernard.
“What will happen to me?”
“Nothing particular; it will be a little dull—the perfect happiness of a charming woman married to the best fellow in the world.”
“Ah, what a horrid future!” cried Blanche, with a little petulant cry. “I want to be happy, but I certainly don’t want to be dull. If you say that again you will make me repent of having married the best fellow in the world. I mean to be happy, but I certainly shall not be dull if I can help it.”
“I was wrong to say that,” said Bernard, “because, after all, my dear young lady, there must be an excitement in having so kind a husband as you have got. Gordon’s devotion is quite capable of taking a new form—of inventing a new kindness—every day in the year.”
Blanche looked at him an instant, with less than her usual consciousness of her momentary pose.
“My husband is very kind,” she said gently.
She had hardly spoken the words when Gordon came in. He stopped a moment on seeing Bernard, glanced at his wife, blushed, flushed, and with a loud, frank exclamation of pleasure, grasped his friend by both hands. It was so long since he had seen Bernard that he seemed a good deal moved; he stood there smiling, clasping his hands, looking him in the eyes, unable for some moments to speak. Bernard, on his side, was greatly pleased; it was delightful to him to look into Gordon’s honest face again and to return his manly grasp. And he looked well—he looked happy; to see that was more delightful yet. During these few instants, while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard’s elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of his own pleasure. He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life. He looked as if something had happened to him—as, in fact, something had. Bernard saw a latent spark in his friend’s eye that seemed to question his own for an impression of Blanche—to question it eagerly, and yet to deprecate judgment. He saw, too—with the fact made more vivid by Gordon’s standing there beside her in his manly sincerity and throwing it into contrast—that Blanche was the same little posturing coquette of a Blanche whom, at Baden, he would have treated it as a broad joke that Gordon Wright should dream of marrying. He saw, in a word, that it was what it had first struck him as being—an incongruous union. All this was a good deal for Bernard to see in the course of half a minute, especially through the rather opaque medium of a feeling of irreflective joy; and his impressions at this moment have a value only in so far as they were destined to be confirmed by larger opportunity.
“You have come a little sooner than we expected,” said Gordon; “but you are all the more welcome.”
“It was rather a risk,” Blanche observed. “One should be notified, when one wishes to make a good impression.”
“Ah, my dear lady,” said Bernard, “you made your impression—as far as I am concerned—a long time ago, and I doubt whether it would have gained anything to-day by your having prepared an effect.”
They were standing before the fire-place, on the great hearth-rug, and Blanche, while she listened to this speech, was feeling, with uplifted arm, for a curl that had strayed from her chignon.
“She prepares her effects very quickly,” said Gordon, laughing gently. “They follow each other very fast!”
Blanche kept her hand behind her head, which was bent slightly forward; her bare arm emerged from her hanging sleeve, and, with her eyes glancing upward from under her lowered brows, she smiled at her two spectators. Her husband laid his hand on Bernard’s arm.
“Is n’t she pretty?” he cried; and he spoke with a sort of tender delight in being sure at least of this point.
“Tremendously pretty!” said Bernard. “I told her so half an hour before you came in.”
“Ah, it was time I should arrive!” Gordon exclaimed.
Blanche was manifestly not in the least discomposed by this frank discussion of her charms, for the air of distinguished esteem adopted by both of her companions diminished the crudity of their remarks. But she gave a little pout of irritated modesty—it was more becoming than anything she had done yet—and declared that if they wished to talk her over, they were very welcome; but she should prefer their waiting till she got out of the room. So she left them, reminding Bernard that he was to send for his luggage and remain, and promising to give immediate orders for the preparation of his apartment. Bernard opened the door for her to pass out; she gave him a charming nod as he stood there, and he turned back to Gordon with the reflection of her smile in his face. Gordon was watching him; Gordon was dying to know what he thought of her. It was a curious mania of Gordon’s, this wanting to know what one thought of the women he loved; but Bernard just now felt abundantly able to humor it. He was so pleased at seeing him tightly married.
“She ‘s a delightful creature,” Bernard said, with cordial vagueness, shaking hands with his friend again.
Gordon glanced at him a moment, and then, coloring a little, looked straight out of the window; whereupon Bernard remembered that these were just the terms in which, at Baden, after his companion’s absence, he had attempted to qualify Angela Vivian. Gordon was conscious—he was conscious of the oddity of his situation.
“Of course it surprised you,” he said, in a moment, still looking out of the window.
“What, my dear fellow?”
“My marriage.”
“Well, you know,” said Bernard, “everything surprises me. I am of a very conjectural habit of mind. All sorts of ideas come into my head, and yet when the simplest things happen I am always rather startled. I live in a reverie, and I am perpetually waked up by people doing things.”
Gordon transferred his eyes from the window to Bernard’s face—to his whole person.
“You are waked up? But you fall asleep again!”
“I fall asleep very easily,” said Bernard.
Gordon looked at him from head to foot, smiling and shaking his head.
“You are not changed,” he said. “You have travelled in unknown lands; you have had, I suppose, all sorts of adventures; but you are the same man I used to know.”
“I am sorry for that!”
“You have the same way of representing—of misrepresenting, yourself.”
“Well, if I am not changed,” said Bernard, “I can ill afford to lose so valuable an art.”
“Taking you altogether, I am glad you are the same,” Gordon answered, simply; “but you must come into my part of the house.”
Yes, he was conscious—he was very conscious; so Bernard reflected during the two or three first days of his visit to his friend. Gordon knew it must seem strange to so irreverent a critic that a man who had once aspired to the hand of so intelligent a girl—putting other things aside—as Angela Vivian should, as the Ghost in “Hamlet” says, have “declined upon” a young lady who, in force of understanding, was so very much Miss Vivian’s inferior; and this knowledge kept him ill at his ease and gave him a certain pitiable awkwardness. Bernard’s sense of the anomaly grew rapidly less acute; he made various observations which helped it to seem natural. Blanche was wonderfully pretty; she was very graceful, innocent, amusing. Since Gordon had determined to marry a little goose, he had chosen the animal with extreme discernment. It had quite the plumage of a swan, and it sailed along the stream of life with an extraordinary lightness of motion. He asked himself indeed at times whether Blanche were really so silly as she seemed; he doubted whether any woman could be so silly as Blanche seemed. He had a suspicion at times that, for ends of her own, she was playing a part—the suspicion arising from the fact that, as usually happens in such cases, she over-played it. Her empty chatter, her futility, her childish coquetry and frivolity—such light wares could hardly be the whole substance of any woman’s being; there was something beneath them which Blanche was keeping out of sight. She had a scrap of a mind somewhere, and even a little particle of a heart. If one looked long enough one might catch a glimpse of these possessions. But why should she keep them out of sight, and what were the ends that she proposed to serve by this uncomfortable perversity? Bernard wondered whether she were fond of her husband, and he heard it intimated by several good people in New York who had had some observation of the courtship, that she had married him for his money. He was very sorry to find that this was taken for granted, and he determined, on the whole, not to believe it. He was disgusted with the idea of such a want of gratitude; for, if Gordon Wright had loved Miss Evers for herself, the young lady might certainly have discovered the intrinsic value of so disinterested a suitor. Her mother had the credit of having made the match. Gordon was known to be looking for a wife; Mrs. Evers had put her little feather-head of a daughter very much forward, and Gordon was as easily captivated as a child by the sound of a rattle. Blanche had an affection for him now, however; Bernard saw no reason to doubt that, and certainly she would have been a very flimsy creature indeed if she had not been touched by his inexhaustible kindness. She had every conceivable indulgence, and if she married him for his money, at least she had got what she wanted. She led the most agreeable life conceivable, and she ought to be in high good-humor. It was impossible to have a prettier house, a prettier carriage, more jewels and laces for the adornment of a plump little person. It was impossible to go to more parties, to give better dinners, to have fewer privations or annoyances. Bernard was so much struck with all this that, advancing rapidly in the intimacy of his gracious hostess, he ventured to call her attention to her blessings. She answered that she was perfectly aware of them, and there was no pretty speech she was not prepared to make about Gordon.
“I know what you want to say,” she went on; “you want to say that he spoils me, and I don’t see why you should hesitate. You generally say everything you want, and you need n’t be afraid of me. He does n’t spoil me, simply because I am so bad I can’t be spoiled; but that ‘s of no consequence. I was spoiled ages ago; every one spoiled me—every one except Mrs. Vivian. I was always fond of having everything I want, and I generally managed to get it. I always had lovely clothes; mamma thought that was a kind of a duty. If it was a duty, I don’t suppose it counts as a part of the spoiling. But I was very much indulged, and I know I have everything now. Gordon is a perfect husband; I believe if I were to ask him for a present of his nose, he would cut it off and give it to me. I think I will ask him for a small piece of it some day; it will rather improve him to have an inch or two less. I don’t say he ‘s handsome; but he ‘s just as good as he can be. Some people say that if you are very fond of a person you always think them handsome; but I don’t agree with that at all. I am very fond of Gordon, and yet I am not blinded by affection, as regards his personal appearance. He ‘s too light for my taste, and too red. And because you think people handsome, it does n’t follow that you are fond of them. I used to have a friend who was awfully handsome—the handsomest man I ever saw—and I was perfectly conscious of his defects. But I ‘m not conscious of Gordon’s, and I don’t believe he has got any. He ‘s so intensely kind; it ‘s quite pathetic. One would think he had done me an injury in marrying me, and that he wanted to make up for it. If he has done me an injury I have n’t discovered it yet, and I don’t believe I ever shall. I certainly shall not as long as he lets me order all the clothes I want. I have ordered five dresses this week, and I mean to order two more. When I told Gordon, what do you think he did? He simply kissed me. Well, if that ‘s not expressive, I don’t know what he could have done. He kisses me about seventeen times a day. I suppose it ‘s very improper for a woman to tell any one how often her husband kisses her; but, as you happen to have seen him do it, I don’t suppose you will be scandalized. I know you are not easily scandalized; I am not afraid of you. You are scandalized at my getting so many dresses? Well, I told you I was spoiled—I freely acknowledge it. That ‘s why I was afraid to tell Gordon—because when I was married I had such a lot of things; I was supposed to have dresses enough to last for a year. But Gordon had n’t to pay for them, so there was no harm in my letting him feel that he has a wife. If he thinks I am extravagant, he can easily stop kissing me. You don’t think it would be easy to stop? It ‘s very well, then, for those that have never begun!”
Bernard had a good deal of conversation with Blanche, of which, so far as she was concerned, the foregoing remarks may serve as a specimen. Gordon was away from home during much of the day; he had a chemical laboratory in which he was greatly interested, and which he took Bernard to see; it was fitted up with the latest contrivances for the pursuit of experimental science, and was the resort of needy young students, who enjoyed, at Gordon’s expense, the opportunity for pushing their researches. The place did great honor to Gordon’s liberality and to his ingenuity; but Blanche, who had also paid it a visit, could never speak of it without a pretty little shudder.
“Nothing would induce me to go there again,” she declared, “and I consider myself very fortunate to have escaped from it with my life. It ‘s filled with all sorts of horrible things, that fizzle up and go off, or that make you turn some dreadful color if you look at them. I expect to hear a great clap some day, and half an hour afterward to see Gordon brought home in several hundred small pieces, put up in a dozen little bottles. I got a horrid little stain in the middle of my dress that one of the young men—the young savants—was so good as to drop there. Did you see the young savants who work under Gordon’s orders? I thought they were too forlorn; there is n’t one of them you would look at. If you can believe it, there was n’t one of them that looked at me; they took no more notice of me than if I had been the charwoman. They might have shown me some attention, at least, as the wife of the proprietor. What is it that Gordon ‘s called—is n’t there some other name? If you say ‘proprietor,’ it sounds as if he kept an hotel. I certainly don’t want to pass for the wife of an hotel-keeper. What does he call himself? He must have some name. I hate telling people he ‘s a chemist; it sounds just as if he kept a shop. That ‘s what they call the druggists in England, and I formed the habit while I was there. It makes me feel as if he were some dreadful little man, with big green bottles in the window and ‘night-bell’ painted outside. He does n’t call himself anything? Well, that ‘s exactly like Gordon! I wonder he consents to have a name at all. When I was telling some one about the young men who work under his orders—the young savants—he said I must not say that—I must not speak of their working ‘under his orders.’ I don’t know what he would like me to say! Under his inspiration!”
During the hours of Gordon’s absence, Bernard had frequent colloquies with his friend’s wife, whose irresponsible prattle amused him, and in whom he tried to discover some faculty, some quality, which might be a positive guarantee of Gordon’s future felicity. But often, of course, Gordon was an auditor as well; I say an auditor, because it seemed to Bernard that he had grown to be less of a talker than of yore. Doubtless, when a man finds himself united to a garrulous wife, he naturally learns to hold his tongue; but sometimes, at the close of one of Blanche’s discursive monologues, on glancing at her husband just to see how he took it, and seeing him sit perfectly silent, with a fixed, inexpressive smile, Bernard said to himself that Gordon found the lesson of listening attended with some embarrassments. Gordon, as the years went by, was growing a little inscrutable; but this, too, in certain circumstances, was a usual tendency. The operations of the mind, with deepening experience, became more complex, and people were less apt to emit immature reflections at forty than they had been in their earlier days. Bernard felt a great kindness in these days for his old friend; he never yet had seemed to him such a good fellow, nor appealed so strongly to the benevolence of his disposition. Sometimes, of old, Gordon used to irritate him; but this danger appeared completely to have passed away. Bernard prolonged his visit; it gave him pleasure to be able to testify in this manner to his good will. Gordon was the kindest of hosts, and if in conversation, when his wife was present, he gave precedence to her superior powers, he had at other times a good deal of pleasant bachelor-talk with his guest. He seemed very happy; he had plenty of occupation and plenty of practical intentions. The season went on, and Bernard enjoyed his life. He enjoyed the keen and brilliant American winter, and he found it very pleasant to be treated as a distinguished stranger in his own land—a situation to which his long and repeated absences had relegated him. The hospitality of New York was profuse; the charm of its daughters extreme; the radiance of its skies superb. Bernard was the restless and professionless mortal that we know, wandering in life from one vague experiment to another, constantly gratified and never satisfied, to whom no imperious finality had as yet presented itself; and, nevertheless, for a time he contrived to limit his horizon to the passing hour, and to make a good many hours pass in the drawing-room of a demonstrative flirt.
For Mrs. Gordon was a flirt; that had become tolerably obvious. Bernard had known of old that Blanche Evers was one, and two or three months’ observation of his friend’s wife assured him that she did not judge a certain ethereal coquetry to be inconsistent with the conjugal character. Blanche flirted, in fact, more or less with all men, but her opportunity for playing her harmless batteries upon Bernard were of course exceptionally large. The poor fellow was perpetually under fire, and it was inevitable that he should reply with some precision of aim. It seemed to him all child’s play, and it is certain that when his back was turned to his pretty hostess he never found himself thinking of her. He had not the least reason to suppose that she thought of him—excessive concentration of mind was the last vice of which he accused her. But before the winter was over, he discovered that Mrs. Gordon Wright was being talked about, and that his own name was, as the newspapers say, mentioned in connection with that of his friend’s wife. The discovery greatly disgusted him; Bernard Longueville’s chronicler must do him the justice to say that it failed to yield him an even transient thrill of pleasure. He thought it very improbable that this vulgar rumor had reached Gordon’s ears; but he nevertheless—very naturally—instantly made up his mind to leave the house. He lost no time in saying to Gordon that he had suddenly determined to go to California, and that he was sure he must be glad to get rid of him. Gordon expressed no surprise and no regret. He simply laid his hand on his shoulder and said, very quietly, looking at him in the eyes—
“Very well; the pleasantest things must come to an end.”
It was not till an hour afterwards that Bernard said to himself that his friend’s manner of receiving the announcement of his departure had been rather odd. He had neither said a word about his staying longer nor urged him to come back again, and there had been (it now seemed to Bernard) an audible undertone of relief in the single sentence with which he assented to his visitor’s withdrawal. Could it be possible that poor Gordon was jealous of him, that he had heard this loathsome gossip, or that his own observation had given him an alarm? He had certainly never betrayed the smallest sense of injury; but it was to be remembered that even if he were uneasy, Gordon was quite capable, with his characteristic habit of weighing everything, his own honor included, in scrupulously adjusted scales, of denying himself the luxury of active suspicion. He would never have let a half suspicion make a difference in his conduct, and he would not have dissimulated; he would simply have resisted belief. His hospitality had been without a flaw, and if he had really been wishing Bernard out of his house, he had behaved with admirable self-control. Bernard, however, followed this train of thought a very short distance. It was odious to him to believe that he could have appeared to Gordon, however guiltlessly, to have invaded even in imagination the mystic line of the marital monopoly; not to say that, moreover, if one came to that, he really cared about as much for poor little Blanche as for the weather-cock on the nearest steeple. He simply hurried his preparations for departure, and he told Blanche that he should have to bid her farewell on the following day. He had found her in the drawing-room, waiting for dinner. She was expecting company to dine, and Gordon had not yet come down.
She was sitting in the vague glow of the fire-light, in a wonderful blue dress, with two little blue feet crossed on the rug and pointed at the hearth. She received Bernard’s announcement with small satisfaction, and expended a great deal of familiar ridicule on his project of a journey to California. Then, suddenly getting up and looking at him a moment—
“I know why you are going,” she said.
“I am glad to hear my explanations have not been lost.”
“Your explanations are all nonsense. You are going for another reason.”
“Well,” said Bernard, “if you insist upon it, it ‘s because you are too sharp with me.”
“It ‘s because of me. So much as that is true.” Bernard wondered what she was going to say—if she were going to be silly enough to allude to the most impudent of fictions; then, as she stood opening and closing her blue fan and smiling at him in the fire-light, he felt that she was silly enough for anything. “It ‘s because of all the talk—it ‘s because of Gordon. You need n’t be afraid of Gordon.”
“Afraid of him? I don’t know what you mean,” said Bernard, gravely.
Blanche gave a little laugh.
“You have discovered that people are talking about us—about you and me. I must say I wonder you care. I don’t care, and if it ‘s because of Gordon, you might as well know that he does n’t care. If he does n’t care, I don’t see why I should; and if I don’t, I don’t see why you should!”
“You pay too much attention to such insipid drivel in even mentioning it.”
“Well, if I have the credit of saying what I should n’t—to you or to any one else—I don’t see why I should n’t have the advantage too. Gordon does n’t care—he does n’t care what I do or say. He does n’t care a pin for me!”
She spoke in her usual rattling, rambling voice, and brought out this declaration with a curious absence of resentment.
“You talk about advantage,” said Bernard. “I don’t see what advantage it is to you to say that.”
“I want to—I must—I will! That ‘s the advantage!” This came out with a sudden sharpness of tone; she spoke more excitedly. “He does n’t care a button for me, and he never did! I don’t know what he married me for. He cares for something else—he thinks of something else. I don’t know what it is—I suppose it ‘s chemistry!”
These words gave Bernard a certain shock, but he had his intelligence sufficiently in hand to contradict them with energy.
“You labor under a monstrous delusion,” he exclaimed. “Your husband thinks you fascinating.”
This epithet, pronounced with a fine distinctness, was ringing in the air when the door opened and Gordon came in. He looked for a moment from Bernard to his wife, and then, approaching the latter, he said, softly—
“Do you know that he leaves us to-morrow?”