 | A passionate pilgrim |  |
Eugene Pickering.
1. I.
IT was at Homburg, several years ago, before the
gaming had been suppressed. The evening was
very warm, and all the world was gathered on the
terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it, to
listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world,
rather, for the crowd was equally dense in the gaming-rooms,
around the tables. Everywhere the crowd was
great. The night was perfect, the season was at its
height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long
shafts of unnatural light into the dusky woods, and
now and then, in the intervals of the music, one might
almost hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic
call of the croupiers rise above the watching silence
of the saloons. I had been strolling with a friend, and
we at last prepared to sit down. Chairs, however, were
scarce. I had captured one, but it seemed no easy
matter to find a mate for it. I was on the point of
giving up in despair and proposing an adjournment to
a young man lounging back on one of the objects of
my quest, with his feet supported on the rounds of
another. This was more than his share of luxury,
and I promptly approached him. He evidently belonged
to the race which has the credit of knowing
best, at home and abroad, how to make itself comfortable;
but something in his appearance suggested that
his present attitude was the result of inadvertence
rather than egotism. He was staring at the conductor
of the orchestra and listening intently to the
music. His hands were locked round his long legs,
and his mouth was half open, with rather a foolish
air. “There are so few chairs,” I said, “that I must
beg you to surrender this second one.” He started,
stared, blushed, pushed the chair away with awkward
alacrity, and murmured something about not having
noticed that he had it.
“What an odd-looking youth!” said my companion,
who had watched me, as I seated myself beside
her.
“Yes, he 's odd-looking; but what is odder still is
that I 've seen him before, that his face is familiar to
me, and yet that I can't place him.” The orchestra
was playing the Prayer from Der Freischütz, but Weber's
lovely music only deepened the blank of memory.
Who the deuce was he? where, when, how, had I
should be 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 savored 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
see whether he would put anything on the table; he
evidently felt the temptation, but he seemed paralyzed
by chronic embarrassment. He stood gazing at the
rattling cross-fire 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
neighbors 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 was
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 blond 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 frilled, 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
aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived,
was a German, — such a German, somehow,
as I had seen imaged in literature. Was she not a
friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a
muse, a priestess of æsthetics, — something in the
way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however,
were speedily merged in wonderment as to what
my different 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,
their stakes placed by an absolute 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 neighbors,
she had no little pile of gold before her, but she drew
from her pocket a double napoleon, put it into his
hand, and bade him place it on a number of his own
choosing. He was evidently filled with a sort of
delightful trouble; he enjoyed the adventure, but he
shrank from the hazard. I would have staked the
coin on its being his companion's last; for, although
she still smiled intently as she watched his hesitation,
there was anything but indifference in her pale,
pretty face. Suddenly, in desperation, he reached over
and laid the piece on the table. My attention was
diverted at this moment by my having to make way
for a lady with a great many flounces, before me, to
give up her chair to a rustling friend to whom she had
promised it; when I again looked across at the lady
in white muslin, she was drawing in a very goodly
pile of gold with her little blue-gemmed claw. Good
luck and bad, at the Homburg tables, were equally
undemonstrative, and this fair adventuress rewarded
her young friend for the sacrifice of his innocence
with a single, rapid, upward smile. He had innocence
gleeful, conscious laugh, in the midst of which his
eyes encountered my own. Then, suddenly, the familiar
look which had vanished from his face flickered
up unmistakably; it was the boyish laugh of a boyhood's
friend. Stupid fellow that I was, I had been
looking at Eugene Pickering!
Though I lingered on for some time longer, he
failed to recognize me. Recognition, I think, had
kindled a smile in my own face; but, less fortunate
than he, I suppose my smile had ceased to be boyish.
Now that luck had faced about again, his companion
played for herself, — played and won hand over hand.
At last she seemed disposed to rest on her gains, and
proceeded to bury them in the folds of her muslin.
Pickering had staked nothing for himself, but as he
saw her prepare to withdraw, he offered her a double
napoleon and begged her to place it. She shook her
head with great decision, and seemed to bid him put
it up again; but he, still blushing a good deal, urged
her with awkward ardor, and she at last took it from
him, looked at him a moment fixedly, and laid it on
a number. A moment later the croupier was raking
it in. She gave the young man a little nod which
seemed to say, “I told you so”; he glanced round
the table again and laughed; she left her chair,
and he made a way for her through the crowd. Before
looked down on the esplanade. The lamps were out,
but the warm starlight vaguely illumined a dozen
figures scattered in couples. One of these figures, I
thought, was a lady in a white dress.
I had no intention of letting Pickering go without
reminding him of our old acquaintance. He had been
a very droll boy, and I was curious to see what had
become of his drollery. I looked for him the next
morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last
discovered his whereabouts. But he was out, the
waiter said; he had gone to walk an hour before. I
went my way, confident that I should meet him in
the evening. It was the rule with the Homburg
world to spend its evenings at the Kursaal, and Pickering,
apparently, had already discovered a good reason
for not being an exception. One of the charms
of Homburg is the fact that of a hot day you may
walk about for a whole afternoon in unbroken shade.
The umbrageous gardens of the Kursaal mingle with
the charming Hardtwald, which, in turn, melts away
into the wooded slopes of the Taunus Mountains.
To the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for
an hour through mossy glades and the still, perpendicular
gloom of the fir woods. Suddenly, on the
grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a young
man stretched at his length in the sun-checkered
sky. My step was so noiseless on the turf, that before
he saw me, I had time to recognize Pickering
again. He looked as if he had been lounging there
for some time; his hair was tossed about as if he
had been sleeping; on the grass near him, beside
his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived
me he jerked himself forward, and I stood
looking at him without elucidating, — purposely, to
give him a chance to recognize me. He put on his
glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up
at me with an air of general trustfulness, but without
a sign of knowing me. So at last I introduced
myself. Then he jumped up and grasped my hands
and stared and blushed and laughed and began a
dozen random questions, ending with a demand as
to how in the world I had known him.
“Why, you 're not changed so utterly,” I said, “and,
after all, it 's but fifteen years since you used to do
my Latin exercises for me.”
“Not changed, eh?” he answered, still smiling, and
yet speaking with a sort of ingenuous dismay.
Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been
in those Latin days a victim of juvenile irony. He
used to bring a bottle of medicine to school and
take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and
every day at two o'clock, half an hour before the rest
came and fetched him away in a carriage.
His extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his
bottle of medicine, which suggested a vague analogy
with the phial of poison in the tragedy, caused him
to be called Juliet. Certainly, Romeo's sweetheart
hardly suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing
joke in Verona. Remembering these things, I
hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was
still the same good fellow who used to do my Latin
for me. “We were capital friends, you know,” I
went on, “then and afterwards.”
“Yes, we were very good friends,” he said, “and
that makes it the stranger I should n't have known
you. For you know as a boy I never had many
friends, nor as a man either. You see,” he added,
passing his hand over his eyes, “I 'm dazed and bewildered
at finding myself for the first time — alone.”
And he jerked back his shoulders nervously and
threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted
position. I wondered whether the old nurse
with the bushy eyebrows had remained attached to
his person up to a recent period, and discovered
presently that, virtually at least, she had. We had
the whole summer day before us, and we sat down
on the grass together and overhauled our old memories.
It was as if we had stumbled upon an ancient
a heap of childish playthings, — tin soldiers and torn
story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is
what we remembered, between us.
He had made but a short stay at school, — not
because he was tormented, for he thought it so fine
to be at school at all that he held his tongue at
home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine
bottle; but because his father thought he was
learning bad manners. This he imparted to me in
confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased
my oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who
had appeared to me, in glimpses, as a sort of high-priest
of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower,
— a fact which seemed to produce in him a
sort of preternatural concentration of parental dignity.
He was a majestic man, with a hooked nose,
a keen, dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions
of his own as to how a boy — or his boy, at any
rate — should be brought up. First and foremost,
he was to be a “gentleman”; which seemed to mean,
chiefly, that he was always to wear a muffler and
gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread
and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment,
seemed hostile to these observances, and Eugene
was taken home again, to be moulded into
urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was
prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell upon me,
born as I was under quite another star; my parents
were appealed to, and I was allowed for a few
months to have my lessons with Eugene. The tutor,
I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene
was treated like a prince, while I got all the questions
and the raps with the ruler. And yet I remember
never being jealous of my happier comrade,
and striking up, for the time, a huge boyish friendship.
He had a watch and a pony and a great
store of picture-books, but my envy of these luxuries
was tempered by a vague compassion, which left me
free to be generous. I could go out to play alone,
I could button my jacket myself, and sit up till I
was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a step
without a prior petition, or spend half an hour in
the garden without a formal report of it when he
came in. My parents, who had no desire to see me
inoculated with importunate virtues, sent me back to
school at the end of six months. After that I never
saw Eugene. His father went to live in the country,
to protect the lad's morals, and Eugene faded, in
reminiscence, into a pale image of the depressing
effects of education. I think I vaguely supposed
that he would melt into thin air, and indeed began
gradually to doubt of his existence and to regard
in as one grew older. It seemed natural that
I should have no more news of him. Our present
meeting was my first assurance that he had really
survived all that muffling and coddling.
I observed him now with a good deal of interest, for
he was a rare phenomenon, — the fruit of a system
persistently and uninterruptedly applied. He struck
me, in a fashion, like certain young monks I had seen
in Italy; he had the same candid, unsophisticated
cloister-face. His education had been really almost
monastic. It had found him, evidently, a very compliant,
yielding subject; his gentle, affectionate spirit
was not one of those that need to be broken. It had
bequeathed him, now that he stood on the threshold
of the great world, an extraordinary freshness of impression
and alertness of desire, and I confess that, as
I looked at him and met his transparent blue eye, I
trembled for the unwarned innocence of such a soul.
I became aware, gradually, that the world had already
wrought a certain work upon him and roused him to a
restless, troubled self-consciousness. Everything about
him pointed to an experience from which he had been
debarred; his whole organism trembled with a dawning
sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This appealing
tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept
shifting himself about on the grass, thrusting his hands
forehead, breaking out to say something and rushing
off to something else. Our sudden meeting had
greatly excited him, and I saw that I was likely to
profit by a certain overflow of sentimental fermentation.
I could do so with a good conscience, for all this
trepidation filled me with a great friendliness.
“It 's nearly fifteen years, as you say,” he began,
“since you used to call me `butter-fingers' for always
missing the ball. That 's a long time to give an account
of, and yet they have been, for me, such eventless,
monotonous years, that I could almost tell their
history in ten words. You, I suppose, have had all
kinds of adventures and travelled over half the world.
I remember you had a turn for deeds of daring; I used
to think you a little Captain Cook in roundabouts, for
climbing the garden fence to get the ball, when I had
let it fly over. I climbed no fences then or since. You
remember my father, I suppose, and the great care he
took of me? I lost him some five months ago. From
those boyish days up to his death we were always
together. I don't think that in fifteen years we spent
half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country,
winter and summer, seeing but three or four people. I
had a succession of tutors, and a library to browse
about in; I assure you I 'm a tremendous scholar. It
was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for
happy.” He spoke of his father at some length
and with a respect which I privately declined to emulate.
Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a cold
egotist, unable to conceive of any larger vocation for
his son than to became a mechanical reflection of himself.
“I know I 've been strangely brought up,” said
my friend, “and that the result is something grotesque;
but my education, piece by piece, in detail, became one
of my father's personal habits, as it were. He took a
fancy to it at first through his intense affection for my
mother and the sort of worship he paid her memory.
She died at my birth, and as I grew up, it seems that I
bore an extraordinary likeness to her. Besides, my
father had a great many theories; he prided himself on
his conservative opinions; he thought the usual American
laissez aller in education was a very vulgar practice,
and that children were not to grow up like dusty
thorns by the wayside. So you see,” Pickering went
on, smiling and blushing, and yet with something of
the irony of vain regret, “I 'm a regular garden plant.
I 've been watched and watered and pruned, and, if
there is any virtue in tending, I ought to take the
prize at a flower-show. Some three years ago my
father's health broke down and he was kept very
much within doors. So, although I was a man grown,
I lived altogether at home. If I was out of his sight
severe attacks of neuralgia, and he used to sit at his
window, basking in the sun. He kept an opera-glass
at hand, and when I was out in the garden he used to
watch me with it. A few days before his death, I was
twenty-seven years old, and the most innocent youth,
I suppose, on the continent. After he died I missed
him greatly,” Pickering continued, evidently with no
intention of making an epigram. “I stayed at home,
in a sort of dull stupor. It seemed as if life offered
itself to me for the first time, and yet as if I did n't
know how to take hold of it.”
He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which
increased as he talked, and there was a singular contrast
between the meagre experience he described and
a certaint radiant intelligence which I seemed to perceive
in his glance and tone. Evidently, he was a
clever fellow, and his natural faculties were excellent.
I imagined he had read a great deal, and recovered, in
some degree, in restless intellectual conjecture, the
freedom he was condemned to ignore in practice. Opportunity
was now offering a meaning to the empty
forms with which his imagination was stored, but it
appeared to him dimly, through the veil of his personal
diffidence.
“I 've not sailed round the world, as you suppose,”
I said, “but I confess I envy you the novelties you
plunged in medias res.”
He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an
allusion, and hesitated a moment. “Yes, I know it.
I came to Bremen in the steamer with a very friendly
German, who undertook to initiate me into the glories
and mysteries of the fatherland. At this season, he
said, I must begin with Homburg. I landed but a
fortnight ago, and here I am.” Again he hesitated, as
if he were going to add something about the scene at
the Kursaal; but suddenly, nervously, he took up the
letter which was lying beside him, looked hard at the
seal with a troubled frown, and then flung it back on
the grass with a sigh.
“How long do you expect to be in Europe?” I
asked.
“Six months, I supposed when I came. But not so
long — now!” And he let his eyes wander to the
letter again.
“And where shall you go — what shall you do?”
“Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday.
But now it is different.”
I glanced at the letter interrogatively, and he gravely
picked it up and put it into his pocket. We talked for
a while longer, but I saw that he had suddenly become
preoccupied; that he was apparently weighing an impulse
to break some last barrier of reserve. At last
a moment appealingly, and cried, “Upon my word, I
should like to tell you everything.”
“Tell me everything, by all means,” I answered,
smiling. “I desire nothing better than to lie here in
the shade and hear everything.”
“Ah, but the question is, will you understand it?
No matter; you think me a queer fellow already. It 's
not easy, either, to tell you what I feel, — not easy for
so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how many ways
he 's queer!” He got up and walked away a moment,
passing his hand over his eyes, then came back rapidly
and flung himself on the grass again. “I said just
now I always supposed I was happy; it 's true; but
now that my eyes are open, I see I was only stultified.
I was like a poodle-dog, led about by a blue
ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on slops. It
was not life; life is learning to know one's self, and in
that sense I 've lived more in the past six weeks than
in all the years that preceded them. I 'm filled with
this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps rising to my
head like the fumes of strong wine. I find I 'm an
active, sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with
passions, with possible convictions, — even with what
I never dreamed of, a possible will of my own! I find
there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and women
to form a thousand relations with. It all lies
and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves. I
stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing,
wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet
afraid of the water. The world beckons and smiles
and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, that
I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems
to hold me back. I 'm full of impulses, but, somehow,
I 'm not full of strength. Life seems inspiring
at certain moments, but it seems terrible and unsafe;
and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself
with merciless forces, when I have learned so well
how to stand aside and let them pass. Why should n't
I turn my back upon it all and go home to — what
awaits me? — to that sightless, soundless country life,
and long days spent among old books? But if a man
is weak, he does n't want to assent beforehand to his
weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there
may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is there
comes and comes again this irresistible impulse to take
my plunge, to let myself swing, to go where liberty
leads me.” He paused a moment, fixing me with his
excited eyes, and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible
smile at his intensity. “`Swing ahead, in
heaven's name,' you want to say, `and much good may
it do you.' I don't know whether you are laughing at
my trepidation or at what possibly strikes you as my
have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have,
I 'm sure I sha' n't prosper in it. I honestly believe I
may safely take out a license to amuse myself. But
it is n't that I think of, any more than I dream of
playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty
words to me; what I long for is knowledge, — some
other knowledge than comes to us in formal, colorless,
impersonal precept. You would understand all this
better if you could breathe for an hour the musty indoor
atmosphere in which I have always lived. To
break a window and let in light and air, — I feel as if
at last I must act!”
“Act, by all means, now and always, when you
have a chance,” I answered. “But don't take things
too hard, now or ever. Your long seclusion makes you
think the world better worth knowing than you 're
likely to find it. A man with as good a head and
heart as yours has a very ample world within himself,
and I 'm no believer in art for art, nor in what's called
`life' for life's sake. Nevertheless, take your plunge,
and come and tell me whether you 've found the pearl
of wisdom.” He frowned a little, as if he thought my
sympathy a trifle meagre. I shook him by the hand
and laughed. “The pearl of wisdom,” I cried, “is
love; honest love in the most convenient concentration
of experience! I advise you to fall in love.” He
pocket the letter of which I 've spoken, held it up,
and shook it solemnly. “What is it?” I asked.
“It 's my sentence!”
“Not of death, I hope!”
“Of marriage.”
“With whom?”
“With a person I don't love.”
This was serious. I stopped smiling and begged
him to explain.
“It 's the singular part of my story,” he said at
last. “It will remind you of an old-fashioned romance.
Such as I sit here, talking in this wild way,
and tossing off invitations to destiny, my destiny is
settled and sealed. I 'm engaged, — I 'm given in
marriage. It 's a bequest of the past, — the past I
never said nay to! The marriage was arranged by
my father, years ago, when I was a boy. The young
girl's father was his particular friend; he was also a
widower, and was bringing up his daughter, on his
side, in the same rigid seclusion in which I was
spending my days. To this day, I 'm unacquainted
with the origin of the bond of union between our
respective progenitors. Mr. Vernor was largely engaged
in business, and I imagine that once upon a
time he found himself in a financial strait and was
helped through it by my father's coming forward with
no security but his word. Of this my father was quite
capable. He was a man of dogmas, and he was sure
to have a precept adapted to the conduct of a gentleman
toward a friend in pecuniary embarrassment.
What's more, he was sure to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor,
I believe, got on his feet, paid his debt, and owed
my father an eternal gratitude. His little daughter
was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to
bring her up to be the wife of his benefactor's son.
So our fate was fixed, parentally, and we have been
educated for each other. I 've not seen my betrothed
since she was a very plain-faced little girl in a sticky
pinafore, hugging a one-armed doll — of the male sex,
I believe — as big as herself. Mr. Vernor is in what 's
called the Eastern trade, and has been living these
many years at Smyrna. Isabel has grown up there
in a white-walled garden, in an orange grove, between
her father and her governess. She is a good deal my
junior; six months ago she was seventeen; when she
is eighteen we 're to marry!”
He related all this calmly enough, without the accent
of complaint, dryly rather and doggedly, as if he
were weary of thinking of it. “It 's a romance indeed,”
I said, “for these dull days, and I heartily
congratulate you. It 's not every young man who
finds, on reaching the marrying age, a wife kept in
charming; I wonder you don't post off to Smyrna.”
“You 're joking,” he answered, with a wounded air,
“and I am terribly serious. Let me tell you the rest.
I never suspected this tender conspiracy till something
less than a year ago. My father, wishing to provide
against his death, informed me of it, solemnly. I was
neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as I remember,
with a sort of emotion which varied only in
degree from that with which I could have hailed the
announcement that he had ordered me a dozen new
shirts. I supposed that it was under some such punctual,
superterrestrial dispensation as this that all young
men were married. Novels and poems indeed said
otherwise; but novels and poems were one thing and
life was another. A short time afterwards he introduced
me to a photograph of my predestined, who has
a pretty, but an extremely inanimate face. After this
his health failed rapidly. One night I was sitting, as
I habitually sat for hours, in his dimly lighted room,
near his bed, to which he had been confined for a
week. He had not spoken for some time, and I supposed
he was asleep, but happening to look at him I
saw his eyes wide open and fixed on me strangely.
He was smiling benignantly, intensely, and in a moment
he beckoned to me. Then, on my going to him
— `I feel that I sha' n't last long,' he said, `but I am
arranged your future.' He was talking of death, and
anything but grief at that moment was doubtless impious
and monstrous; but there came into my heart
for the first time a throbbing sense of being over-governed.
I said nothing, and he thought my silence
was all sorrow. `I sha' n't live to see you married,'
he went on, `but since the foundation is laid, that
little signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I
have never had a thought but for your own personal
advantage. To foresee your future, in its main outline,
to know to a certainty that you 'll be safely domiciled
here, with a wife approved by my judgment, cultivating
the moral fruit of which I have sown the seed, —
this will content me. But, my son, I wish to clear
this bright vision from the shadow of a doubt. I
believe in your docility; I believe I may trust the
salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I
must remember that when I am removed, you will
stand here alone, face to face with a myriad nameless
temptations to perversity. The fumes of unrighteous
pride may rise into your brain and tempt
you, in the interest of a vain delusion which it
will call your independence, to shatter the edifice
I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask
you for a promise, — the solemn promise you owe my
condition.' And he grasped my hand. `You will
to the young girl whom an influence as devoted as that
which has governed your own young life has moulded
into everything amiable; you will marry Isabel Vernor.'
There was something portentous in this rigid
summons. I was frightened. I drew away my hand
and asked to be trusted without any such terrible vow.
My reluctance startled my father into a suspicion that
the vain delusion of independence had already been
whispering to me. He sat up in his bed and looked
at me with eyes which seemed to foresee a lifetime
of odious ingratitude. I felt the reproach; I feel it
now. I promised! And even now I don't regret my
promise nor complain of my father's tenacity. I feel,
somehow, as if the seeds of ultimate rest had been
sown in those unsuspecting years, — as if after many
days I might gather the mellow fruit. But after many
days! I 'll keep my promise, I 'll obey; but I want
to live first!”
“My dear fellow, you 're living now. All this
passionate consciousness of your situation is a very
ardent life. I wish I could say as much for my
own.”
“I want to forget my situation. I want to spend
three months without thinking of the past or the
future, grasping whatever the present offers me.
Yesterday, I thought I was in a fair way to sail with
And he held up his letter again.
“What is it?”
“A letter from Smyrna.”
“I see you have not yet broken the seal.”
“No, nor do I mean to, for the present. It contains
bad news.”
“What do you call bad news?”
“News that I 'm expected in Smyrna in three weeks.
News that Mr. Vernor disapproves of my roving about
the world. News that his daughter is standing expectant
at the altar.”
“Is n't this pure conjecture?”
“Conjecture, possibly, but safe conjecture. As soon
as I looked at the letter, something smote me at the
heart. Look at the device on the seal, and I 'm sure
you 'll find it 's Tarry not!” And he flung the letter
on the grass.
“Upon my word, you had better open it,” I said.
“If I were to open it and read my summons, do you
know what I should do? I should march home and
ask the Oberkellner how one gets to Smyrna, pack my
trunk, take my ticket, and not stop till I arrived. I
know I should; it would be the fascination of habit.
The only way, therefore, to wander to my rope's end
is to leave the letter unread.”
“In your place,” I said, “curiosity would make me
open it.”
He shook his head. “I have no curiosity! For
these many weeks the idea of my marriage has ceased
to be a novelty, and I have contemplated it mentally
in every possible light. I fear nothing from that side,
but I do fear something from conscience. I want my
hands tied. Will you do me a favor? Pick up the
letter, put it into your pocket, and keep it till I ask
you for it. When I do, you may know that I am at
my rope's end.”
I took the letter, smiling. “And how long is your
rope to be? The Homburg season does n't last forever.”
“Does it last a month? Let that be my season! A
month hence you 'll give it back to me.”
“To-morrow, if you say so. Meanwhile, let it rest in
peace!” And I consigned it to the most sacred interstice
of my pocket-book. To say that I was disposed
to humor the poor fellow would seem to be saying that
I thought his demand fantastic. It was his situation,
by no fault of his own, that was fantastic, and he was
only trying to be natural. He watched me put away
the letter, and when it had disappeared gave a soft sigh
of relief. The sigh was natural, and yet it set me
thinking. His general recoil from an immediate responsibility
imposed by others might be wholesome
enough; but if there was an old grievance on one side,
was there not possibly a new-born delusion on the
that might serve as a warning; so I told him, abruptly,
that I had been an undiscovered spectator, the night
before, of his exploits at roulette.
He blushed deeply, but he met my eyes with the
same radiant frankness.
“Ah, you saw then,” he cried, “that wonderful
lady?”
“Wonderful she was indeed. I saw her afterwards,
too, sitting on the terrace in the starlight. I imagine
she was not alone.”
“No, indeed, I was with her — for nearly an hour.
Then I walked home with her.”
“Verily! And did you go in?”
“No, she said it was too late to ask me; though in
a general way, she declared she did not stand upon
ceremony.”
“She did herself injustice. When it came to losing
your money for you, she made you insist.”
“Ah, you noticed that too?” cried Pickering, still
quite unconfused. “I felt as if the whole table was
staring at me; but her manner was so gracious and
reassuring that I concluded she was doing nothing unusual.
She confessed, however, afterwards, that she is
very eccentric. The world began to call her so, she
said, before she ever dreamed of it, and at last finding
that she had the reputation, in spite of herself, she
she chooses.”
“In other words, she is a lady with no reputation to
lose?”
Pickering seemed puzzled, and smiled a little. “Is
n't that what you say of bad women?”
“Of some — of those who are found out.”
“Well,” he said, still smiling, “I have n't yet found
out Madame Blumenthal.”
“If that 's her name, I suppose she 's German.”
“Yes; but she speaks English so well that you
might almost doubt it. She is very clever. Her husband
's dead.”
I laughed, involuntarily, at the conjunction of these
facts, and Pickering's clear glance seemed to question
my mirth. “You have been so bluntly frank with
me,” I said, “that I too must be frank. Tell me, if
you can, whether this clever Madame Blumenthal,
whose husband is dead, has given an edge to your desire
for a suspension of communication with Smyrna.”
He seemed to ponder my question, unshrinkingly.
“I think not,” he said, at last. “I 've had the desire
for three months; I 've known Madame Blumenthal for
less than twenty-four hours.”
“Very true. But when you found this letter of
yours on your plate at breakfast, did you seem for a
moment to see Madame Blumenthal sitting opposite?”
“Opposite?” he repeated, frowning gently.
“Opposite, my dear fellow, or anywhere in the
neighborhood. In a word, does she interest you?”
“Very much!” he cried, with his frown clearing
away.
“Amen!” I answered, jumping up with a laugh.
“And now, if we are to see the world in a month,
there is no time to lose. Let us begin with the Hardtwald.”
Pickering rose, and we strolled away into the forest,
talking of lighter things. At last we reached the edge
of the wood, sat down on a fallen log, and looked out
across an interval of meadow at the long wooded waves
of the Taunus. What my friend was thinking of, I
can't say; I was revolving his quaint history and letting
my wonderment wander away to Smyrna. Suddenly
I remembered that he possessed a portrait of
the young girl who was waiting for him there in a
white-walled garden. I asked him if he had it with
him. He said nothing, but gravely took out his
pocket-book and drew forth a small photograph. It
represented, as the poet says, a simple maiden in her
flower, — a slight young girl, with a certain childish
roundness of contour. There was no ease in her posture;
she was standing, stiffly and shyly, for her likeness;
she wore a short-waisted white dress; her arms
hung at her sides and her hands were clasped in
dark eyes fixed. But her awkwardness was as pretty
as that of some angular seraph in a mediæval carving,
and in her sober gaze there seemed to lurk the questioning
gleam of childhood. “What is this for?” her
charming eyes appeared to ask; “why have I been
decked, for this ceremony, in a white frock and amber
beads?”
“Gracious powers!” I said to myself; “what an
enchanting thing is innocence!”
“That portrait was taken a year and a half ago,”
said Pickering, as if with an effort to be perfectly just.
“By this time, I suppose, she looks a little wiser.”
“Not much, I hope,” I said, as I gave it back.
“She 's lovely!”
“Yes, poor girl, she 's lovely — no doubt!” And he
put the thing away without looking at it.
We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly:
“My dear fellow,” I said, “I should take some
satisfaction in seeing you immediately leave Homburg.”
“Immediately?”
“To-day — as soon as you can get ready.”
He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he
blushed. “There 's something I 've not told you,” he
said; “something that your saying that Madame Blumenthal
has no reputation to lose has made me half
afraid to tell you.”
“I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has
asked you to come and check her numbers for her at
roulette again.”
“Not at all!” cried Pickering, with a smile of
triumph. “She says that she plays no more, for the
present. She has asked me to come and take tea with
her this evening.”
“Ah, then,” I said, very gravely, “of course you
can't leave Homburg.”
He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as
if he were expecting me to laugh. “Urge it strongly,”
he said in a moment. “Say it 's my duty, — command
me.”
I did n't quite understand him, but, feathering the
shaft with a harmless expletive, I told him that unless
he followed my advice, I would never speak to him
again.
He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground
with his stick. “Good!” he cried. “I wanted an
occasion to break a rule, — to leap an obstacle. Here
it is! I stay!”
I made him a mock bow for his energy. “That 's
very fine,” I said; “but now, to put you in a proper
mood for Madame Blumenthal's tea, we 'll go and listen
to the band play Schubert under the lindens.”
And we walked back through the woods.
I went to see Pickering the next day, at his inn,
to hear the sound of a loud voice within. My knock
remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced myself.
I found no company, but I discovered my friend walking
up and down the room and apparently declaiming
to himself from a little volume bound in white vellum.
He greeted me heartily, threw his book on the table,
and said that he was taking a German lesson.
“And who is your teacher?” I asked, glancing at
the book.
He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered,
after an instant's delay, “Madame Blumenthal.”
“Indeed! Has she written a grammar?” I inquired.
“It 's not a grammar; it 's a tragedy.” And he
handed me the book.
I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, in a very
large margin, a Trauerspiel in five acts, entitled Cleopatra.
There were a great many marginal corrections
and annotations, apparently from the author's hand;
the speeches were very long, and there was an inordinate
number of soliloquies by the heroine. One
of them, I remember, toward the end of the play,
began in this fashion:—
“What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation
but deception? — reality that pales before the
beside mine? But let me believe in some intenser
bliss and seek it in the arms of death!”
“It seems decidedly passionate,” I said. “Has the
tragedy ever been acted?”
“Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells
me that she had it played at her own house in
Berlin, and that she herself undertook the part of
the heroine.”
Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort
to sharpen his perception of the ridiculous, but it
seemed to me an unmistakable sign of his being
under the charm, that this information was very
soberly offered. He was preoccupied, and irresponsive
to my experimental observations on vulgar topics,
— the hot weather, the inn, the advent of Adelina
Patti. At last he uttered his thoughts, and announced
that Madame Blumenthal had turned out
an extraordinarily interesting woman. He seemed to
have quite forgotten our long talk in the Hardtwald,
and betrayed no sense of this being a confession that
he had taken his plunge and was floating with the
current. He only remembered that I had spoken
slightingly of the lady and hinted that it behooved
me to amend my opinion. I had received the day
before so strong an impression of a sort of spiritual
fastidiousness in my friend's nature, that on hearing
consciousness, and observing how the echoes of the
past were immediately quenched in its music, I said
to myself that it had certainly taken a delicate hand
to regulate that fine machinery. No doubt Madame
Blumenthal was a clever woman. It is a good German
custom, at Homburg, to spend the hour preceding
dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten;
Mozart and Beethoven, for organisms in which
the interfusion of soul and sense is peculiarly mysterious,
are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite.
Pickering and I conformed, as we had done the day
before, to the fasion, and when we were seated
under the trees, he began to expatiate on his friend's
merits.
“I don't know whether she is eccentric or not,”
he said; “to me every one seems eccentric, and it 's
not for me, yet awhile, to measure people by my
narrow precedents. I never saw a gaming-table in
my life before, and supposed that a gamester was, of
necessity, some dusky villain with an evil eye. In
Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people play at
roulette as they play at billiards, and her own venerable
mother originally taught her the rules of the
game. It is a recognized source of subsistence for
decent people with small means. But I confess
Madame Blumenthal might do worse things than
beautiful. I have never been in the habit of thinking
positive beauty the most excellent thing in a
woman. I have always said to myself that if my
heart was ever to be captured it would be by a sort
of general grace, — a sweetness of motion and tone,
— on which one could count for soothing impressions,
as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly
in tune. Madame Blumenthal has it, — this
grace that soothes and satisfies; and it seems the
more perfect that it keeps order and harmony in a
character really passionately ardent and active. With
her multifarious impulses and accomplishments nothing
would be easier than that she should seem restless
and over-eager and importunate. You will know
her, and I leave you to judge whether she does.
She has every gift, and culture has done everything
for each. What goes on in her mind, I of course
can't say; what reaches the observer — the admirer
— is simply a penetrating perfume of intelligence,
mingled with a penetrating perfume of sympathy.”
“Madame Blumenthal,” I said, smiling, “might be
the loveliest woman in the world, and you the object
of her choicest favors, and yet what I should
most envy you would be, not your peerless friend,
but your beautiful imagination.”
“That 's a polite way of calling me a fool,” said
hope I shall be a long time coming to that.”
“You 'll make the journey fast if you travel by
express trains. But pray tell me, have you ventured
to intimate to Madame Blumenthal your high opinion
of her?”
“I don't know what I may have said. She listens
even better than she talks, and I think it possible
I may have made her listen to a great deal
of nonsense. For after the first few words I exchanged
with her I was conscious of an extraordinary
evaporation of all my old diffidence. I have,
in truth, I suppose,” he added, in a moment, “owing
to my peculiar circumstances, a great accumulated
fund of unuttered things of all sorts to get rid of.
Last evening, sitting there before that lovely woman,
they came swarming to my lips. Very likely I
poured them all out. I have a sense of having
enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and
of seeing her lovely eyes shining through it opposite
to me, like stars above a miasmatic frog-pond.”
And here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke
off into an ardent parenthesis, and declared that
Madame Blumenthal's eyes had something in them
that he had never seen in any others. “It was
a jumble of crudities and inanities,” he went on,
“which must have seemed to her terribly farcical;
having poured them out before her; and I imagine
I might have gone far without finding another woman
in whom such an exhibition would have provoked
so little of mere cold amusement.”
“Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary,” I surmised,
“entered into your situation with warmth.”
“Exactly so, — the greatest! She 's wise, she knows,
she has felt, she has suffered, and now she understands!”
“She told you, I imagine, that she understood you
to a t, and she offered to be your guide, philosopher,
and friend.”
“She spoke to me,” Pickering answered, after a
pause, “as I had never been spoken to before, and she
offered me, in effect, formally, all the offices of a
woman's friendship.”
“Which you as formally accepted?”
“To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but
allow ne to say I don't care!” Pickering cried, with
an air of genial aggression which was the most inoffensive
thing in the world. “I was very much moved;
I was, in fact, very much excited. I tried to say
something, but I could n't; I had had plenty to say
before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last
I took refuge in an abrupt retreat.”
“Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your
pocket!”
“Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she
came in. Afterwards she kindly offered to read German
aloud with me, for the accent, two or three times
a week. `What shall we begin with?' she asked.
`With this!' I said, and held up the book. And she
let me take it to look it over.”
I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I
had been, I might have had my claws clipped by
Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that Madame
Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to
introduce me. Among the foolish things which, according
to his own account, he had uttered, were some
generous words in my praise, to which she had civilly
replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I
begged that the introduction should not be immediate.
I wished, on the one hand, to let Pickering work
out his destiny without temptation, on my part, to
play providence; and, on the other hand, I had at
Homburg a group of friends with whom for another
week I had promised to spend my leisure hours. For
some days I saw little of Pickering, though we met at
the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the park. I
watched, in spite of my desire to let him alone, for the
signs and portents of the world's action upon him, —
of that portion of the world, in especial, which Madame
Blumenthal had gathered up into her comprehensive
soul. He seemed very happy, and gave me in a dozen
maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always,
after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I
asked myself what experience could really do, that
seclusion had not, to make it bright and fine. Every
now and then I was struck with his deep enjoyment
of some new spectacle, — often trifling enough, — something
foreign, local, picturesque, some detail of manner,
some accident of scenery; and of the infinite freedom
with which he felt he could go and come and rove
and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion,
an awakening, a coming to manhood in a graver fashion;
as one might arrive somewhere, after delays, in
some quiet after-hour which should transmute disappointment
into gratitude for the preternatural vividness
of first impressions. Each time I met him he
spoke a little less of Madame Blumenthal, but let me
know generally that he saw her often, and continued
to admire her — tremendously! I was forced to admit
to myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she was
really the ruling star of this serene efflorescence, she
must be a very fine woman. Pickering had the air
of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the feet
of an austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift
dangling about some supreme incarnation of
levity.
2. II.
MADAME BLUMENTHAL seemed, for the time,
to have abjured the Kursaal, and I never
caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently,
was an interesting study; she wished to pursue
it undiverted.
She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the
opera, where from my chair I perceived her in a box,
looking extremely pretty. Adelina Patti was singing,
and after the rising of the curtain I was occupied with
the stage; but on looking round when it fell for the
entr' acte, I saw that the authoress of Cleopatra had
been joined by her young admirer. He was sitting a
little behind her, leaning forward, looking over her
shoulder, and listening, while she, slowly moving her
fan to and fro and letting her eye wander over the
house, was apparently talking of this person and that.
No doubt she was saying sharp things; but Pickering
was not laughing; his eyes were following her covert
indications; his mouth was half open, as it always was
when he was interested; he looked intensely serious.
I was glad that, having her back to him, she was
moment to present myself and make her my bow;
but just as I was about to leave my place, a gentleman,
whom in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance,
came to occupy the next chair. Recognition and
mutual greetings followed, and I was forced to postpone
my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not
sorry, for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer
would be just the man to give me a fair prose version
of Pickering's lyrical tributes to his friend. He was
an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about
Europe a great deal, in a series of small diplomatic
posts. England especially he had often visited, and
he spoke the language almost without accent. I had
once spent three rainy days with him in the house
of an English friend in the country. He was a sharp
observer and a good deal of a gossip; he knew a little
something about every one, and about some people
everything. His knowledge on social matters generally
had the flavor of all German science; it was
copious, minute, exhaustive. “Do tell me,” I said, as
we stood looking round the house, “who and what is
the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind
her.”
“Who?” he answered, dropping his glass. “Madame
Blumenthal! What? It would take long to
say. Be introduced; it's easily done; you 'll find her
she is.”
“Perhaps I should n't. My friend there has known
her a week, and I don't think he is yet able to give
an accurate account of her.”
He raised his glass again, and after looking awhile,
“I 'm afraid your friend is a little — what do you
call it? — a little `soft.' Poor fellow! he 's not the
first. I 've never known this lady that she had not
some eligible youth hovering about in some such
attitude as that, undergoing the softening process.
She looks wonderfully well, from here. It 's extraordinary
how those women last!”
“You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about
`those women,' that Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed,
for duration, in a certain dilution of respectability?”
“Yes and no. The sort of atmosphere that surrounds
her is entirely of her own making. There is
no reason, in her antecedents, that people should
lower their voice when they speak of her. But some
women are never at their ease till they have given
some odd twist or other to their position before the
world. The attitude of upright virtue is unbecoming,
like sitting too straight in a fauteuil. Don't ask me
for opinions, however; content yourself with a few
facts, and an anecdote. Madame Blumenthal is Prussian,
an old Westphalian Grafin, with principles marshalled
out like Frederick the Great's grenadiers. She was
poor, however, and her principles were an insufficient
dowry for Anastasia, who was married very young
to a shabby Jew, twice her own age. He was supposed
to have money, but I 'm afraid he had less
than was nominated in the bond, or else that his
pretty young wife spent it very fast. She has been
a widow these six or eight years, and living, I imagine,
in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion. I suppose
she is some thirty-four or five years old. In
winter one hears of her in Berlin, giving little suppers
to the artistic rabble there; in summer one often
sees her across the green table at Ems and Wiesbaden.
She 's very clever, and her cleverness has
spoiled her. A year after her marriage she published
a novel, with her views on matrimony, in the
George Sand manner, but really out-Heroding Herod.
No doubt she was very unhappy; Blumenthal was
an old beast. Since then she has published a lot of
stuff, — novels and poems and pamphlets on every
conceivable theme, from the conversion of Lola Montez,
to the Hegelian philosophy. Her talk is much
better than her writing. Her radical theories on
matrimony made people think lightly of her at a
time when her rebellion against it was probably only
she drove her shuttle, and when she came to the
end of her yarn, she found that society had turned
its back. She tossed her head, declared that at last
she could breathe the air of freedom, and formally
announced her adhesion to an `intellectual' life. This
meant unlimited camaraderie with scribblers and
daúbers, Hegelian philosophers and Hungarian pianists
waiting for engagements. But she has been admired
also by a great many really clever men; there
was a time, in fact, when she turned a head as well
set on its shoulders as this one!” And Niedermeyer
tapped his forehead. “She has a great charm, and,
literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for all that,
I 'm not going to speak to her; I 'm not going near
her box. I 'm going to leave her to say, if she does
me the honor to observe the omission, that I too
have gone over to the Philistines. It 's not that; it
is that there is something sinister about the woman.
I 'm too old to have it frighten me, but I 'm good-natured
enough to have it pain me. Her quarrel
with society has brought her no happiness, and her
outward charm is only the mask of a dangerous discontent.
Her imagination is lodged where her heart
should be! So long as you amuse it, well and good;
she 's radiant. But the moment you let it flag, she 's
capable of dropping you without a pang. If you
but there have been two or three, I believe, who
have almost broken their necks in the fall.”
“You 're reversing your promise,” I said, “and giving
me an opinion, but not an anecdote.”
“This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine
made her acquaintance in Berlin, and though he was
no longer a young man and had never been what 's
called a susceptible one, he took a great fancy to
Madame Blumenthal. He 's a major in the Prussian
artillery, — grizzled, grave, a trifle severe, a man every
way firm in the faith of his fathers. It 's a proof of
Anastasia's charm that such a man should have got
into the way of calling on her every day for a month.
But the major was in love, or next door to it! Every
day that he called he found her scribbling away at a
little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper.
She used to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for
a quarter of an hour, till she had finished her chapter;
she was writing a novel, and it was promised to a publisher.
Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name
of the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had
never read a work of fiction in his life, but he knew
by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's literature, when
put forth in pink covers, was subversive of several
respectable institutions. Besides, he did n't believe in
women knowing how to write at all, and it irritated
his nose for the press; irritated him the more that, as
I say, he was in love with her and that he ventured to
believe she had a kindness for his years and his honors.
And yet she was not such a woman as he could
easily ask to marry him. The result of all this was
that he fell into the way of railing at her intellectual
pursuits and saying he should like to run his sword
through her pile of papers. A woman was clever
enough when she could guess her husband's wishes,
and learned enough when she could spell out her
prayer-book. At last, one day, Madame Blumenthal
flung down her pen and announced in triumph that
she had finished her novel. Clorinda had danced her
dance. The major, by way of congratulating her, declared
that her novel was coquetry and vanity and that
she propagated vicious paradoxes on purpose to make a
noise in the world and look picturesque and passionate.
He added, however, that he loved her in spite of her
follies, and that if she would formally abjure them he
would as formally offer her his hand. They say that in
certain cases women like being frightened and snubbed.
I don't know, I 'm sure; I don't know how much
pleasure, on this occasion, was mingled with Anastasia's
wrath. But her wrath was very quiet, and the major
assured me it made her look terribly handsome. `I
have told you before,' she says, `that I write from an
my conscience. You call my poor efforts coquetry,
vanity, the desire to produce a sensation. I can prove
to you that it is the quiet labor itself I care for, and
not the world's more or less flattering attention to it!'
And seizing the manuscript of Clorinda she thrust it
into the fire. The major stands staring, and the first
thing he knows she is sweeping him a great courtesy
and bidding him farewell forever. Left alone and
recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the
embers and then proceeds to thump vigorously at the
lady's door. But it never opened, and from that day
to the day three months ago when he told me the tale,
he had not beheld her again.
“By Jove, it 's a striking story,” I said. “But the
question is, what does it prove?”
“Several things. First (what I was careful not to
tell my friend), that Madame Blumenthal cared for
him a trifle more than he supposed; second, that he
cares for her more than ever; third, that the performance
was a master stroke, and that her allowing him
to force an interview upon her again is only a question
of time.”
“And last?” I asked.
“This is another anecdote. The other day, Unter
den Linden, I saw on a bookseller's counter a little
pink-covered romance: Sophronia, by Madame Blumenthal.
abuse of asterisks; every two or three pages
the narrative was adorned with a portentous blank,
crossed with a row of stars.”
“Well, but poor Clorinda?” I objected, as Niedermeyer
paused.
“Sophronia, my dear fellow, is simply Clorinda renamed
by the baptism of fire. The fair author comes
back, of course, and finds Clorinda tumbled upon the
floor, a good deal scorched, but on the whole more
frightened than hurt. She picks her up, brushes her
off, and sends her to the printer. Wherever the flames
had burnt a hole, she swings a constellation! But if
the major is prepared to drop a penitent tear over the
ashes of Clorinda, I sha' n't whisper to him that the
urn is empty.”
Even Adelina Patti's singing, for the next half-hour,
but half availed to divert me from my quickened curiosity
to behold Madame Blumenthal face to face. As
soon as the curtain had fallen again, I repaired to her
box and was ushered in by Pickering with zealous
hospitality. His glowing smile seemed to say to me,
“Ay, look for yourself, and adore!” Nothing could
have been more gracious than the lady's greeting, and
I found, somewhat to my surprise, that her prettiness
lost nothing on a nearer view. Her eyes indeed were
the finest I have ever seen, — the softest, the deepest,
faded and jaded in her physiognomy, her movements,
her smile, and the tone of her voice, especially when
she laughed, had an almost girlish frankness and spontaneity.
She looked at you very hard with her radiant
gray eyes, and she indulged in talking in a superabundance
of restless, zealous gestures, as if to make you
take her meaning in a certain very particular and rather
superfine sense. I wondered whether after a while
this might not fatigue one's attention; then, meeting
her charming eyes, I said, No! not for ages, at least
She was very clever, and, as Pickering had said, she
spoke English admirably. I told her, as I took my
seat beside her, of the fine things I had heard about
her from my friend, and she listened, letting me run
on some time, and exaggerate a little, with her fine
eyes fixed full upon me. “Really?” she suddenly
said, turning short round upon Pickering, who stood
behind us, and looking at him in the same way, “is
that the way you talk about me?”
He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly
began to laugh; it was then I observed how
sweet her voice was in laughter. We talked after
this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented
her on her excellent English, and asked
if she had learned it in England.
“Heaven forbid!” she cried. “I 've never been
with the — ” I wondered what she was going to say;
the fogs, the smoke, or whist with six-penny stakes?
— “I should never get on,” she said, “with the Aristocracy!
I 'm a fierce democrat, I 'm not ashamed of
it. I hold opinions which would make my ancestors
turn in their graves. I was born in the lap of feudalism.
I 'm a daughter of the crusaders. But I 'm a
revolutionist! I have a passion for freedom, — boundless,
infinite, ineffable freedom. It 's to your great
country I should like to go. I should like to see
the wonderful spectacle of a great people free to do
everything it chooses, and yet never doing anything
wrong!”
I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom
and our virtue had their limits, and she turned quickly
about and shook her fan with a dramatic gesture at
Pickering. “No matter, no matter!” she cried, “I
should like to see the country which produced that
wonderful young man. I think of it as a sort of
Arcadia, — a land of the golden age. He 's so delightfully
innocent! In this stupid old Germany, if
a young man is innocent, he 's a fool; he has no
brains; he 's not a bit interesting. But Mr. Pickering
says the most naïf things, and after I have laughed
five minutes at their simplicity, it suddenly occurs
to me that they are very wise, and I think them
him. “I call them inspired solecisms, and I treasure
them up. Remember that when I next laugh at
you!”
Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe
that he was in a state of beatific exaltation which
weighed Madame Blumenthal's smiles and frowns in
an equal balance. They were equally hers; they were
links alike in the golden chain. He looked at me
with eyes that seemed to say, “Did you ever hear such
wit? Did you ever see such grace?” I imagine he
was but vaguely conscious of the meaning of her
words; her gestures, her voice and glance, made an
irresistible harmony. There is something painful in
the spectacle of absolute inthralment, even to an excellent
cause. I gave no response to Pickering's challenge,
but embarked upon some formal tribute to the
merits of Adelina Patti's singing. Madame Blumenthal,
as became a “revolutionist,” was obliged to confess
that she could see no charm in it; it was meagre,
it was trivial, it lacked soul. “You must know that
in music, too,” she said, “I think for myself!” And
she began with a great many flourishes of her fan to
expound what it was she thought. Remarkable things,
doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst
of the exposition, the curtain rose again. “You can't
be a great artist without a great passion!” Madame
Madame Patti's voice rose wheeling like a skylark,
and rained down its silver notes. “Ah, give me
that art,” I whispered, “and I 'll leave you your passion!”
And I departed for my own place in the orchestra.
I wondered afterwards whether the speech had
seemed rude, and inferred that it had not, on receiving
a friendly nod from the lady, in the lobby, as the
theatre was emptying itself. She was on Pickering's
arm, and he was taking her to her carriage. Distances
are short in Homburg, but the night was rainy, and
Madame Blumenthal exhibited a very pretty satinshod
foot as a reason why, though but a penniless
creature, she should not walk home. Pickering left us
together a moment while he went to hail the vehicle,
and my companion seized the opportunity, as she said,
to beg me to be so very kind as to come and see her.
It was for a particular reason! It was reason enough
for me, of course I answered, that I could grasp at the
shadow of a permission. She looked at me a moment
with that extraordinary gaze of hers, which seemed so
absolutely audacious in its candor, and answered that I
paid more compliments than our young friend there,
but that she was sure I was not half so sincere. “But
it 's about him I want to talk,” she said. “I want to
ask you many things: I want you to tell me all about
him. He interests me, but you see my sympathies
trust my own impressions. They have misled me more
than once!” And she gave a little tragic shudder.
I promised to come and compare notes with her, and
we bade her farewell at her carriage door. Pickering
and I remained awhile, walking up and down the long
glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had not taken many
steps before I became aware that I was beside a man
in the very extremity of love. “Is n't she wonderful?”
he asked, with an implicit confidence in my
sympathy which it cost me some ingenuity to elude.
If he was really in love, well and good! For although,
now that I had seen her, I stood ready to confess to
large possibilities of fascination on Madame Blumenthal's
part, and even to certain possibilities of sincerity
of which I reserved the precise admeasurement, yet it
seemed to me less ominous to have him give the reins
to his imagination than it would have been to see him
stand off and cultivate an “admiration” which should
pique itself on being discriminating. It was on his
fundamental simplicity that I counted for a happy
termination of his experiment, and the former of these
alternatives seemed to me to prove most in its favor.
I resolved to hold my tongue and let him run his
course. He had a great deal to say about his happiness,
about the days passing like hours, the hours like
minutes, and about Madame Blumenthal being a “revelation.”
to what she sometimes is in the way of brilliancy,
— in the way of repartee. If you could only hear her
when she tells her adventures!”
“Adventures?” I inquired. “Has she had adventures?”
“Of the most wonderful sort!” cried Pickering, with
rapture. “She has n't vegetated, like me! She has
lived in the tumult of life. When I listen to her
reminiscences, it 's like hearing the opening tumult of
one of Beethoven's symphonies, as it loses itself in a
triumphant harmony of beauty and faith!”
I could only bow, but I desired to know before we
separated what he had done with that troublesome
conscience of his. “I suppose you know, my dear
fellow,” I said, “that you 're simply in love. That 's
what they call your state of mind.”
He replied with a brightening eye, as if he were
delighted to hear it. “So Madame Blumenthal told
me,” he cried, “only this morning!” And seeing, I
suppose, that I was slightly puzzled, “I went to drive
with her,” he continued; “we drove to Königstein, to
see the old castle. We scrambled up into the heart
of the ruin and sat for an hour in one of the crumbling
old courts. Something in the solemn stillness
of the place unloosed my tongue; and while she sat
on an ivied stone, on the edge of the plunging wall, I
looking at me, breaking off little bits of stone and
letting them drop down into the valley. At last she
got up and nodded at me two or three times silently,
with a smile, as if she were applauding me for a solo
on the violin. `You 're in love,' she said. `It 's a
perfect case!' And for some time she said nothing
more. But before we left the place she told me that
she owed me an answer to my speech. She thanked
me heartily, but she was afraid that if she took me
at my word she would be taking advantage of my
inexperience. I had known few women, I was too
easily pleased, I thought her better than she really
was. She had great faults; I must know her longer
and find them out; I must compare her with other
women, — women younger, simpler, more innocent,
more ignorant; and then if I still did her the honor
to think well of her, she would listen to me again.
I told her that I was not afraid of preferring any
woman in the world to her, and then she repeated,
`Happy man, happy man! you 're in love, you 're in
love!”'
I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of
days later, in some agitation of thought. It has been
proved that there are, here and there, in the world,
such people as sincere attitudinizers; certain characters
cultivate fictitious emotions in perfect good faith.
it was conceivable that, taking vanity and
charity together, she should care more for his welfare
than for her own entertainment; and her offer to
abide by the result of hazardous comparison with
other women was a finer stroke than her fame — and
indeed than probability — had seemed to foreshadow.
She received me in a shabby little sitting-room, littered
with uncut books and newspapers, many of
which I saw at a glance were French. One side of it
was occupied by an open piano, surmounted by a jar
full of white roses. They perfumed the air; they
seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering's
devotion. Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this
devotion was reading the Revue des Deux Mondes.
The purpose of my visit was not to admire Madame
Blumenthal on my own account, but to ascertain how
far I might safely leave her to work her will upon my
friend. She had impugned my sincerity the evening
of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to
abstain from compliments and not to place her on her
guard against my penetration. It is needless to narrate
our interview in detail; indeed, to tell the perfect
truth, I was punished for my ambition to read
her too clearly by a temporary eclipse of my own
perspicacity. She sat there so questioning, so perceptive,
so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal, that
hands with Pickering on her being a wonderful woman.
I have never liked to linger, in memory, on
that half-hour. The result of it was to prove that
there were many more things in the composition of a
woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her
imagination in the place of her heart, than were
dreamt of in my philosophy. Yet, as I sat there
stroking my hat and balancing the account between
nature and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very
competent philosopher. She had said she wished me
to tell her everything about our friend, and she questioned
me, categorically, as to his family, his fortune,
his antecedents, and his character. All this was natural
in a woman who had received a passionate declaration
of love, and it was expressed with an air of
charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there
was really no mistake about his being a supremely
fine fellow, and that if I chose to be explicit, I might
deepen her conviction to disinterested ecstasy, which
might have almost inspired me to invent a good
opinion, if I had not had one at hand. I told her
that she really knew Pickering better than I did, and
that until we met at Homburg, I had not seen him
since he was a boy.
“But he talks to you freely,” she answered; “I know
you 're his confidant. He has told me certainly a
keeping something back; as if he were holding something
behind him, and showing me only one hand at
once. He seems often to be hovering on the edge of
a secret. I have had several friendships in my life,
— thank Heaven! but I have had none more dear to
me than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the
painful sense of my friend being half afraid of me; of
his thinking me terrible, strange, perhaps a trifle out
of my wits. Poor me! If he only knew what a plain
good soul I am, and how I only want to know him
and befriend him!”
These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity
which made mistrust seem cruel. How much better
I might play providence over Pickering's experiments
with life, if I could engage the fine instincts of this
charming woman on the providential side! Pickering's
secret was, of course, his engagement to Miss
Vernor; it was natural enough that he should have
been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame
Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl's
face had not faded from my memory; I could n't rid
myself of the fancy that in going further Pickering
might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal's professions
seemed a virtual promise to agree with me,
and after a momentary hesitation I said that my friend
had, in fact, a substantial secret, and that it appeared
of it. In as few words as possible I told her that
Pickering stood pledged by filial piety to marry a
young lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my
story; when I had finished it there was a faint flush
of excitement in each of her cheeks. She broke out
into a dozen exclamations of admiration and compassion.
“What a wonderful tale — what a romantic situation!
No wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless
and unsatisfied; no wonder he wished to put off
the day of submission. And the poor little girl at
Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like
the heroine of an Eastern tale! She would give the
world to see her photograph; did I think Mr. Pickering
would show it to her? But never fear; she
would ask nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous
story, and if she had invented it herself, people
would have said it was absurdly improbable.” She
left her seat and took several turns about the room,
smiling to herself and uttering little German cries of
wonderment. Suddenly she stopped before the piano
and broke into a little laugh; the next moment she
buried her face in the great bouquet of roses. It was
time I should go, but I was indisposed to leave her
without obtaining some definite assurance that, as far
as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl at
Smyrna more than the young man at Homburg.
in telling you all this.”
She had taken one of the roses from the vase and
was arranging it in the front of her dress. Suddenly,
looking up, “Leave it to me, leave it to me!” she
cried. “I 'm interested!” And with her little blue-gemmed
hand she tapped her forehead. “I 'm interested,
— don't interfere!”
And with this I had to content myself. But more
than once, for the day following, I repented of my
zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a white
rose in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too
human. In the evening, at the Kursaal, I looked
for Pickering, but he was not visible, and I reflected
that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate,
seemed to Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing
a cooling-term to his passion. Very late, as I
was turning away, I saw him arrive, — with no small
satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know
immediately in what way I had attempted to serve
him. But he straightway passed his arm through
my own and led me off toward the gardens. I saw
that he was too excited to allow me prior speech.
“I 've burnt my ships!” he cried, when we were
out of earshot of the crowd. “I 've told her everything.
I 've insisted that it 's simple torture for me
to wait, with this idle view of loving her less. It 's
enough now to override her reluctance. I 've cast
off the millstone from round my neck. I care for
nothing, I know nothing but that I love her with
every pulse of my being, — and that everything
else has been a hideous dream, from which she
may wake me into blissful morning with a single
word!”
I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him
gravely. “You have told her, you mean, of your engagement
to Miss Vernor?”
“The whole story! I 've given it up, — I 've thrown
it to the winds. I 've broken utterly with the past.
It may rise in its grave and give me its curse, but
it can't frighten me now. I 've a right to be happy.
I 've a right to be free, I 've a right not to bury
myself alive. It was n't I who promised! I was n't
born then. I myself, my soul, my mind, my option,
— all this is but a month old! Ah,” he went on,
“if you knew the difference it makes, — this having
chosen and broken and spoken! I 'm twice the man
I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her;
there was a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge
and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the
midst of my love. But now I 'm afraid of nothing
but of being too happy.”
I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence.
fanned himself. “Let me perfectly understand,” I
said at last. “You 've asked Madame Blumenthal
to be your wife?”
“The wife of my intelligent choice.”
“And does she consent?”
“She asks three days to decide.”
“Call it four! She has known your secret since
this morning. I 'm bound to let you know I told
her.”
“So much the better!” cried Pickering, without
apparent resentment or surprise. “It 's not a brilliant
offer for such a woman, and in spite of what I
have at stake I feel that it would be brutal to press
her.”
“What does she say,” I asked in a moment, “to
your breaking your promise?”
Pickering was too much in love for false shame.
“She tells me,” he answered bravely, “that she loves
me too much to find courage to condemn me. She
agrees with me that I have a right to be happy. I
ask no exemption from the common law. What I
claim is simply freedom to try to be!”
Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion
that I had expected Madame Blumenthal to
make use of my information. But the matter now
was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was
over either fortune.
The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on
whom, after our talk at the opera, I had left a card.
We gossiped awhile, and at last he said suddenly:
“By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda.
The major is in Homburg!”
“Indeed!” said I. “Since when?”
“These three days.”
“And what is he doing?”
“He seems,” said Niedermeyer with a laugh, “to be
chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal.
That is, I went with him the morning of
his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would
suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I
hope it was received.”
“I can assure you it was,” I cried. “I saw the
lady fairly nestling her head in it. But I advise
the major not to build upon that. He has a rival.”
“Do you mean the soft young man of the other
night?”
“Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness
seems to have served him. He has offered her everything,
and she has not yet refused it.” I had handed
my visitor a cigar and he was puffing it in silence.
At last he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to
Madame Blumenthal; and, on my affirmative, inquired
“or you 'll call me soft.”
He knocked away his ashes, eying me askance.
“I 've noticed your friend about,” he said, “and even
if you had not told me, I should have known he was
in love. After he has left his adored, his face wears
for the rest of the day the expression with which he
has risen from her feet, and more than once I 've felt
like touching his elbow, as you would that of a man
who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his
overshoes. You say he has offered our friend everything;
but, my dear fellow, he has n't everything to
offer her. He 's as amiable, evidently, as the morning,
but madame has no taste for daylight.”
“I assure you,” said I, “Pickering is a very interesting
fellow.”
“Ah, there it is! Has n't he some story or other?
is n't he an orphan, or natural child, or consumptive,
or contingent heir to great estates? She 'll read his
little story to the end, and close the book very tenderly
and smooth down the cover, and then, when he
least expects it, she 'll toss it into the dusty limbo of
all her old romances. She 'll let him dangle, but she 'll
let him drop!”
“Upon my word,” I cried with heat, “if she does,
she 'll be a very unprincipled little creature!”
Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never said
she was a saint!”
Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared
to take his simple word for this consummation,
and in the evening I received a communication which
fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and
it ran as follows:—
“My dear Friend, — I have every hope of being
happy, but I am to go to Wiesbaden to learn my fate.
Madame Blumenthal goes thither this afternoon to
spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany
her. Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of
the event.
One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers
is to dine in rotation at the different tables d'hôtes. It
so happened that, a couple of days later, Niedermeyer
took pot-luck at my hotel and secured a seat beside
my own. As we took our places I found a letter on
my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost
no time in opening it. It contained but three lines:—
“I 'm happy — I 'm accepted — an hour ago. I can
hardly believe it 's your poor old
I placed the note before Niedermeyer: not exactly
in triumph, but with the alacrity of all privileged confutation.
He looked at it much longer than was needful
felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school
of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing
it back, “Has your friend mentioned,” he asked, “Madame
Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?”
“You look very wise. I give it up!” said I.
“She 's gone there to make the major follow her.
He went by the next train.”
“And has the major, on his side, dropped you
a line?”
“He 's not a letter-writer.”
“Well,” said I, pocketing my letter, “with this
document in my hand I 'm bound to reserve my
judgment. We 'll have a bottle of Johannisberg,
and drink to the triumph of virtue.”
For a whole week more I heard nothing from
Pickering, — somewhat to my surprise, and, as the
days went by, not a little to my discomposure. I had
expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in
an occasional brief bulletin, and his silence was possibly
an indication that it had been clouded. At
last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received
no answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired
to his former lodging at Homburg, where I
thought it possible he had left property which he
would sooner or later send for. There I learned that
he had indeed just telegraphed from Cologne for
a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause
of his silence. The next day I received three words
in answer, — a simple, uncommented request that I
would come to him. I lost no time, and reached
him in the course of a few hours. It was dark
when I arrived, and the city was sheeted in a cold,
autumnal rain. Pickering had stumbled, with an indifference
which was itself a symptom of distress,
on a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him
sitting over a smouldering fire in a vast, dingy chamber,
which looked as if it had grown gray with watching
the ennui of ten generations of travellers. Looking
at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he
was in extreme tribulation. He was pale and haggard;
his face was five years older. Now, at least,
in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life.
I was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly
to bitterness; but I spared him all importunate
curiosity, and let him take his time. I assented,
tacitly, to the symptoms of his trouble, and
we made for a while a feeble effort to discuss the
picturesqueness of Cologne. At last he rose and
stood a long time looking into the fire, while I
slowly paced the length of the dusky room.
“Well!” he said as I came back; “I wanted
knowledge, and I certainly know something I did n't
enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related
the history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly
on details; he evidently never was to gush as freely
again as he had done during the prosperity of his
suit. He had been accepted one evening, as explicitly
as his imagination could desire, and had gone
forth in his rapture and roamed about till nearly
morning in the gardens of the Conversation House,
taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer
night into his confidence. “It 's worth it all, almost,”
he said, “to have been wound up for an hour to that
celestial pitch. No man, I 'm sure, can ever know it
but once.” The next morning he had repaired to
Madame Blumenthal's lodging and had been met, to
his amazement, by a naked refusal to see him. He
had strode about for a couple of hours — in another
mood — and then had returned to the charge. The
servant handed him a three-cornered note; it contained
these words: “Leave me alone to-day; I 'll give you
ten minutes to-morrow evening.” Of the next thirty-six
hours he could give no coherent account, but at
the appointed time Madame Blumenthal had received
him. Almost before she spoke there had come to
him a sense of the depth of his folly in supposing
he knew her. “One has heard all one's
days,” he said, “of people removing the mask; it 's
she stood with her mask in her hand. Her face,” he
went on gravely, after a pause, — “her face was horrible!”
“I give you ten minutes,” she had said, pointing
to the clock. “Make your scene, tear your hair,
brandish your dagger!” And she had sat down and
folded her arms. “It 's not a joke,” she cried, “it 's
dead earnest; let 's get through with it. You 're dismissed!
Have you nothing to say?” He had stammered
some frantic demand for an explanation; and
she had risen and come near him, looking at him
from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more excited
than she wished to have him see. “I 've done
with you!” she said with a smile; “you ought to
have done with me! It has all been delightful, but
there are excellent reasons why it should come to an
end.” “You 've been playing a part, then,” he had
gasped out; “you never cared for me?” “Yes; till
I knew you; till I saw how far you 'd go. But now
the story 's finished; we 've reached the dénouement.
We 'll close the book and be good friends.” “To see
how far I would go?” he had repeated. “You led
me on, meaning all the while to do this?” “I led
you on, if you will. I received your visits in season
and out! Sometimes they were very entertaining;
sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you
were such a very curious case of — what shall I call
and bad together. I wanted to make you commit
yourself unmistakably. I should have preferred not
to bring you to this place: but that too was necessary.
Of course I can't marry you; I can do better.
Thank your fate for it. You 've thought wonders
of me for a month, but your good-humor would n't
last. I 'm too old and too wise; you 're too young
and too foolish. It seems to me that I 've been very
good to you; I 've entertained you to the top of
your bent, and, except perhaps that I 'm a little
brusque just now, you 've nothing to complain of. I
would have let you down more gently if I could
have taken another month to it; but circumstances
have forced my hand. Abuse me, revile me, if you
like. I 'll make every allowance!” Pickering listened
to all this intently enough to perceive that, as
if by some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground
had broken away at his feet, and that he must recoil.
He turned away in dumb amazement. “I don't know
how I seemed to be taking it,” he said, “but she
seemed really to desire — I don't know why — something
in the way of reproach and vituperation. But
I could n't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I
was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air, —
to shake her off and come to my senses. `Have
you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she cried, as
treated you to talk enough?' I believe I answered.
`You 'll write to me then, when you get home?' `I
think not,' said I. `Six months hence, I fancy, you 'll
come and see me!' `Never!' said I. `That 's a
confession of stupidity,' she answered. `It means
that, even on reflection, you 'll never understand the
philosophy of my conduct.' The word `philosophy'
seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled.
`I 've given you,' she went on, `all that you gave
me. Your passion was an affair of the head.' `I
only wish you had told me sooner,' I exclaimed, `that
you considered it so!' And I went my way. The
next day I came down the Rhine. I sat all day on
the boat, not knowing where I was going, where to
get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed
to me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw
the cathedral towers here looming over the city. They
seemed to say something to me, and when the boat
stopped, I came ashore. I 've been here a week: I
have n't slept at night, — and yet it has been a week
of rest!”
It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to
recover, and that his own philosophy, if left to take
its time, was adequate to the occasion. After his
story was told I recurred to his grievance but once, —
that evening, later, as we were about to separate for
was some truth in her account of your relations. You
were using her, intellectually, and all the while, without
your knowing it, she was using you. It was
diamond cut diamond. Her needs were the more
superficial and she came to an end first.” He frowned
and turned uneasily away, but he offered no denial.
I waited a few moments, to see if he would remember,
before we parted, that he had a claim to make
upon me. But he seemed to have forgotten it.
The next day we strolled about the picturesque old
city, and of course, before long, went into the cathedral.
Pickering said little; he seemed intent upon
his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar near
a chapel, in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving
him to his meditations, I wandered through the church.
When I came back I saw he had something to say.
But before he had spoken, I laid my hand on his
shoulder and looked at him with a significant smile.
He slowly bent his head and dropped his eyes, with
a mixture of assent and humility. I drew forth his
letter from where it had lain untouched for a month,
placed it silently on his knee, and left him to deal
with it alone.
Half an hour later I returned to the same place,
but he had gone, and one of the sacristans, hovering
about and seeing me looking for Pickering, said he
gloomy chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and
down. I should doubtless have been at a loss to say
just what effect I expected his letter to produce; but
his actual aspect surprised me. He was flushed, excited,
a trifle irritated.
“Evidently,” I said, “you 've read your letter.”
“I owe you a report of it,” he answered. “When
I gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice.”
“You called it a `summons,' I remember.”
“I was a great fool! It 's a release!”
“From your engagement?”
“From everything! The letter, of course, is from
Mr. Vernor. He desires to let me know at the earliest
moment, that his daughter, informed for the first time
a week before of what was expected of her, positively
refuses to be bound by the contract or to assent to
my being bound. She had been given a week to
reflect and had spent it in inconsolable tears. She
had resisted every form of persuasion; from compulsion,
writes Mr. Vernor, he naturally shrinks. The
young lady considers the arrangement `horrible.' After
accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she
presumes at last to have a taste of her own. I confess
I 'm surprised; I had been given to believe that she
was idiotically passive and would remain so to the
on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates
that in case of non-compliance she threatens
him with an attack of brain fever. Mr. Vernor condoles
with me handsomely, and lets me know that
the young lady's attitude has been a great shock to
his own nerves. He adds that he will not aggravate
such regret as I may do him the honor to entertain,
by any allusion to his daughter's charms and to the
magnitude of my loss, and he concludes with the hope
that, for the comfort of all concerned, I may already
have amused my fancy with other `views.' He reminds
me in a postscript that, in spite of this painful
occurrence, the son of his most valued friend will
always be a welcome visitor at his house. I am free,
he observes; I have my life before me; he recommends
an extensive course of travel. Should my
wanderings lead me to the East, he hopes that no
false embarrassment will deter me from presenting
myself at Smyrna. He will insure me at least a
friendly reception. It 's a very polite letter.”
Polite as the letter was, Pickering seemed to find
no great exhilaration in having this famous burden
so handsomely lifted from his conscience. He fell
a-brooding over his liberation in a manner which you
might have deemed proper to a renewed sense of
bondage. “Bad news” he had called his letter originally;
flat contradiction to his foreboding, there was no impulsive
voice to reverse the formula and declare the
news was good. The wings of impulse in the poor
fellow had of late been terribly clipped. It was an
obvious reflection, of course, that if he had not been
so doggedly sure of the matter a month before, and
had gone through the form of breaking Mr. Vernor's
seal, he might have escaped the purgatory of Madame
Blumenthal's blandishments. But I left him to moralize
in private; I had no desire, as the phrase is, to
rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were following
another train; I was saying to myself that if to those
gentle graces of which her young visage had offered
to my fancy the blooming promise, Miss Vernor added
in this striking measure the capacity for magnanimous
action, the amendment to my friend's career had been
less happy than the rough draught. Presently, turning
about, I saw him looking at the young lady's
photograph. “Of course, now,” he said, “I have no
right to keep it!” And before I could ask for another
glimpse of it, he had thrust it into the fire.
“I am sorry to be saying it just now,” I observed
after a while, “but I should n't wonder if Miss Vernor
were a lovely creature.”
“Go and find out,” he answered gloomily. “The
coast is clear. My part,” he presently added, “is to
think,” he went on suddenly, “that for a poor fellow
who asked nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in
a quiet corner, it has been rather a cruel pushing
about?”
Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the
right to demand a clean page on the book of fate, and
a fresh start. Mr. Vernor's advice was sound; he
should seek diversion in the grand tour of Europe. If
he would allow it to the zeal of my sympathy, I would
go with him on his way. Pickering assented without
enthusiasm; he had the discomfited look of a man
who, having gone to some cost to make a good appearance
in a drawing-room, should find the door suddenly
shammed in his face. We started on our journey,
however, and little by little his enthusiasm returned.
He was too capable of enjoying fine things to remain
permanently irresponsive, and after a fortnight spent
among pictures and monuments and antiquities, I felt
that I was seeing him for the first time in his best and
healthiest mood. He had had a fever and then he had
had a chill; the pendulum had swung right and left
in a manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at
last, it was working back to an even, natural beat.
He recovered in a measure the generous eloquence
with which he had fanned his flame at Homburg, and
talked about things with something of the same passionate
inn at Bruges with a lame foot, he came home and
treated me to a rhapsody about a certain meek-faced
virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder
sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal.
He had his dull days and his sombre moods, — hours
of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and go
without remonstrance, because I fancied they always
left him a trifle more alert and resolute. One evening,
however, he sat hanging his head in so doleful a fashion
that I took the bull by the horns and told him he had
by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and
owed it to himself to banish that woman forever from
his thoughts.
He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush:
“That woman?” he said. “I was not thinking of
Madame Blumenthal!”
After this I gave another construction to his melancholy.
Taking him with his hopes and fears, at the
end of six weeks of active observation and keen
sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be.
We made our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight
at Venice. There something happened which I
had been confidently expecting; I had said to myself
that it was merely a question of time. We had
passed the day at Torcello, and came floating back in
the glow of the sunset, with measured oar-strokes.
go!”
We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally
asked him, Where? His answer was delayed by our
getting in to the Piazzetta. I stepped ashore first and
then turned to help him. As he took my hand he
met my eyes, consciously, and it came: “To Smyrna!”
A couple of days later he started. I had risked the
conjecture that Miss Vernor was a lovely creature, and
six months afterwards he wrote me that I was right.
| A passionate pilgrim | |