 | II. A passionate pilgrim |  |
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.
| II. A passionate pilgrim | |