Chapter 16
It was not till our hero reached Paris, on his return from the distant East,
that the rumor I have just mentioned acquired an appreciable consistency.
Here, indeed, it took the shape of authentic information. Among a number
of delayed letters which had been awaiting him at his banker's he found a
communication from Gordon Wright. During the previous year or two his
correspondence with this trusted — and trusting — friend had not been
frequent, and Bernard had received little direct news of him. Three or
four short letters had overtaken him in his wanderings — letters as cordial,
to all appearance, if not as voluminous, as the punctual missives of an
earlier time. Bernard made a point of satisfying himself that they were as
cordial; he weighed them in the scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed to
him on the whole that there was no relaxation of Gordon's epistolary tone.
If he wrote less often than he used to do, that was a thing that very
commonly happened as men grew older. The closest intimacies, moreover,
had phases and seasons, intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend
had, in fact, averted his countenance from him, this was simply the
accomplishment of a periodical revolution which would bring them in due
order face to face again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing
tolerably often and writing always in the friendliest tone. He made it a
matter of conscience — he liked to feel that he was treating Gordon
generously, and not demanding an eye for an eye. The letter he found in
Paris was so short that I may give it entire.
My dear Bernard (it ran), I must write to you before I write to
any one else, though unfortunately you are so far away that you can't be
the first to congratulate me. Try and not be the last, however. I am going
to be married — as soon as possible. You know the young lady, so you can
appreciate the situation. Do you remember little Blanche Evers, whom we
used to see three years ago at Baden-Baden? Of course you remember her,
for I know you used often to talk with her. You will be rather surprised,
perhaps, at my having selected her as the partner of a life-time; but we
manage these
matters according to our lights. I am very much in love with
her, and I hold that an excellent reason. I have been ready any time this
year or two to fall in love with some simple, trusting, child-like nature. I
find this in perfection in this charming young girl. I find her so natural
and fresh. I remember telling you once that I did n't wish to be
fascinated — that I wanted to estimate scientifically the woman I should
marry. I have altogether got over that, and I don't know how I ever came
to talk such nonsense. I am fascinated now, and I assure you I like it! The
best of it is that I find it does n't in the least prevent my estimating
Blanche. I judge her very fairly — I see just what she is. She 's simple — that 's
what I want; she 's tender — that 's what I long for. You will remember
how pretty she is; I need n't remind you of that. She was much younger
then, and she has greatly developed and improved in these two or three
years. But she will always be young and innocent — I don't want her to
improve too much. She came back to America with her mother the winter
after we met her at Baden, but I never saw her again till three months
ago. Then I saw her with new eyes, and I wondered I could have been so
blind. But I was n't ready for her till then, and what makes me so happy
now is to know that I have come to my present way of feeling by
experience. That gives me confidence — you see I am a reasoner still. But I
am under the charm, for all my reason. We are to be married in a
month — try and come back to the wedding. Blanche sends you a message,
which I will give you verbatim. `Tell him I am not such a silly little
chatterbox as I used to be at Baden. I am a great deal wiser; I am almost
as clever as Angela Vivian.' She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian
very clever — but it is not true that she is equally so. I am very happy;
come home and see.
Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States
in time for Gordon's wedding, which took place at midsummer. Bernard,
arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some
months' standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation,
whether he appeared happy. The first effect of the letter I have just quoted
had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series of reflections
which were quite the negative of surprise;
and these operations of
Bernard's mind had finally merged themselves in a simple sentiment of
jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he felt jovial
about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom he had chosen.
Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly
incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to
minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted and
empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for
Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time.
Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose — the prettiest of little geese,
perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for
a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view of
human responsibilities. What a singular selection — what a queer
infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of
criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error
carried almost to the point of
naïveté. He exclaimed that
Blanche Evers was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright's
stamp always ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew
very much better what he was about in this case than he had done in
trying to solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian.
This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they
paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who
were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what
the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure in
finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways, and it
pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally speaking, to
have a kittenish wife. He had within himself a fund of common sense to
draw upon, so that to espouse a paragon of wisdom would be but to carry
water to the fountain. He could easily make up for the deficiencies of a
wife who was a little silly, and if she charmed and amused him, he could
treat himself to the luxury of these sensations for themselves. He was not
in the least afraid of being ruined by it, and if Blanche's birdlike chatter
and turns of the head had made a fool of him, he knew it perfectly well,
and simply took his stand upon his rights. Every man has a right to a little
flower-bed, and life is not all mere kitchen-gardening.
Bernard rapidly
extemporized this rough explanation of the surprise his friend had offered
him, and he found it all-sufficient for his immediate needs. He wrote
Blanche a charming note, to which she replied with a great deal of spirit
and grace. Her little letter was very prettily turned, and Bernard, reading
it over two or three times, said to himself that, to do her justice, she
might very well have polished her intellect a trifle during these two or
three years. As she was older, she could hardly help being wiser. It even
occurred to Bernard that she might have profited by the sort of experience
that is known as the discipline of suffering. What had become of Captain
Lovelock and that tender passion which was apparently none the less
genuine for having been expressed in the slang of a humorous period? Had
they been permanently separated by judicious guardians, and had she been
obliged to obliterate his image from her lightly-beating little heart?
Bernard had felt sure at Baden that, beneath her contemptuous airs and
that impertinent consciousness of the difficulties of conquest by which a
pretty American girl attests her allegiance to a civilization in which young
women occupy the highest place — he had felt sure that Blanche had a high
appreciation of her handsome Englishman, and that if Lovelock should
continue to relish her charms, he might count upon the advantages of
reciprocity. But it occurred to Bernard that Captain Lovelock had perhaps
been faithless; that, at least, the discourtesy of chance and the inhumanity
of an elder brother might have kept him an eternal prisoner at the
Hôtel de Hollande (where, for all Bernard knew to the contrary, he
had been obliged to work out his destiny in the arduous character of a
polyglot waiter); so that the poor young girl, casting backward glances
along the path of Mrs. Vivian's retreat, and failing to detect the onward
rush of a rescuing cavalier, had perforce believed herself forsaken, and
had been obliged to summon philosophy to her aid. It was very possible
that her philosophic studies had taught her the art of reflection; and that,
as she would have said herself, she was tremendously toned down. Once,
at Baden, when Gordon Wright happened to take upon himself to remark
that little Miss Evers was bored by her English gallant, Bernard had
ventured to observe,
in petto, that Gordon knew nothing about it. But
all this was of no consequence now, and Bernard steered further and further
away from the liability to detect fallacies in his friend. Gordon had
engaged himself to marry, and our critical hero had not a grain of fault to
find with this resolution. It was a capital thing; it was just what he
wanted; it would do him a world of good. Bernard rejoiced with him
sincerely, and regretted extremely that a series of solemn engagements to
pay visits in England should prevent his being present at the nuptials.
They were well over, as I have said, when he reached New York.
The honeymoon had waned, and the business of married life had begun.
Bernard, at the end, had sailed from England rather abruptly. A friend
who had a remarkably good cabin on one of the steamers was obliged by a
sudden detention to give it up, and on his offering it to Longueville, the
latter availed himself gratefully of this opportunity of being a little less
discomposed than usual by the Atlantic billows. He therefore embarked at
two days' notice, a fortnight earlier than he had intended and than he had
written to Gordon to expect him. Gordon, of course, had written that he
was to seek no hospitality but that which Blanche was now prepared — they
had a charming house — so graciously to dispense; but Bernard,
nevertheless, leaving the ship early in the morning, had be taken himself
to an hotel. He wished not to anticipate his welcome, and he determined
to report himself to Gordon first and to come back with his luggage later
in the day. After purifying himself of his sea-stains, he left his hotel and
walked up the Fifth Avenue with all a newly-landed voyager's enjoyment
of terrestrial locomotion. It was a charming autumn day; there was a
golden haze in the air; he supposed it was the Indian summer. The broad
sidewalk of the Fifth Avenue was scattered over with dry leaves — crimson
and orange and amber. He tossed them with his stick as he passed; they
rustled and murmured with the motion, and it reminded him of the way he
used to kick them in front of him over these same pavements in his riotous
infancy. It was a pleasure, after many wanderings, to find himself in his
native land again, and Bernard Longueville, as he went, paid his
compliments to his mother-city. The brightness and gayety of the place
seemed a greeting to a returning son, and he felt a
throb of affection for
the freshest, the youngest, the easiest and most good-natured of great
capitals. On presenting himself at Gordon's door, Bernard was told that
the master of the house was not at home; he went in, however, to see the
mistress. She was in her drawing-room, alone; she had on her bonnet, as
if she had been going out. She gave him a joyous, demonstrative little
welcome; she was evidently very glad to see him. Bernard had thought it
possible she had
improved,
and she was certainly prettier than
ever. He instantly perceived that she was still a chatterbox; it remained to
be seen whether the quality of her discourse were finer.
Well, Mr. Longueville,
she exclaimed,
where in
the world did you drop from, and how long did it take you to cross the
Atlantic? Three days, eh? It could n't have taken you many more, for it
was only the other day that Gordon told me you were not to sail till the
20th. You changed your mind, eh? I did n't know you ever changed your
mind. Gordon never changes his. That 's not a reason, eh, because you
are not a bit like Gordon. Well, I never thought you were, except that you
are a man. Now what are you laughing at? What should you like me call
you? You are a man, I suppose; you are not a god. That 's what you
would like me to call you, I have no doubt. I must keep that for Gordon?
I shall certainly keep it a good while. I know a good deal more about
gentlemen than I did when I last saw you, and I assure you I don't think
they are a bit god-like. I suppose that 's why you always drop down from
the sky — you think it 's more divine. I remember that 's the way you
arrived at Baden when we were there together; the first thing we knew,
you were standing in the midst of us. Do you remember that evening
when you presented yourself? You came up and touched Gordon on the
shoulder, and he gave a little jump. He will give another little jump when
he sees you to-day. He gives a great many little jumps; I keep him
skipping about! I remember perfectly the way we were sitting that evening
at Baden, and the way you looked at me when you came up. I saw you
before Gordon — I see a good many things before Gordon. What did you
look at me that way for? I always meant to ask you. I was dying to
know.
For the simplest reason in the world,
said Bernard.
Because you were so pretty.
Ah no, it was n't that! I know all about that look. It was
something else — as if you knew something about me. I don't know what
you can have known. There was very little to know about me, except that
I was intensely silly. Really, I was awfully silly that summer at
Baden — you would n't believe how silly I was. But I don't see how you
could have known that — before you had spoken to me. It came out in my
conversation — it came out awfully. My mother was a good deal
disappointed in Mrs. Vivian's influence; she had expected so much from
it. But it was not poor Mrs. Vivian's fault, it was some one's else. Have
you ever seen the Vivians again? They are always in Europe; they have
gone to live in Paris. That evening when you came up and spoke to
Gordon, I never thought that three years afterward I should be married to
him, and I don't suppose you did either. Is that what you meant by
looking at me? Perhaps you can tell the future. I wish you would tell my
future!
Oh, I can tell that easily,
said Bernard.
What will happen to me?
Nothing particular; it will be a little dull — the perfect happiness
of a charming woman married to the best fellow in the world.
Ah, what a horrid future!
cried Blanche, with a little
petulant cry.
I want to be happy, but I certainly don't want to be
dull. If you say that again you will make me repent of having married the
best fellow in the world. I mean to be happy, but I certainly shall not be
dull if I can help it.
I was wrong to say that,
said Bernard,
because,
after all, my dear young lady, there must be an excitement in having so
kind a husband as you have got. Gordon's devotion is quite capable of
taking a new form — of inventing a new kindness — every day in the
year.
Blanche looked at him an instant, with less than her usual
consciousness of her momentary pose.
My husband is very kind,
she said gently.
She had hardly spoken the words when Gordon came in. He stopped
a moment on seeing Bernard, glanced at his wife, blushed, flushed, and
with a loud, frank exclamation of pleasure,
grasped his friend by both
hands. It was so long since he had seen Bernard that he seemed a good
deal moved; he stood there smiling, clasping his hands, looking him in the
eyes, unable for some moments to speak. Bernard, on his side, was
greatly pleased; it was delightful to him to look into Gordon's honest face
again and to return his manly grasp. And he looked well — he looked
happy; to see that was more delightful yet. During these few instants,
while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard's
elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of his
own pleasure. He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he
looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life. He looked as if
something had happened to him — as, in fact, something had. Bernard saw a
latent spark in his friend's eye that seemed to question his own for an
impression of Blanche — to question it eagerly, and yet to deprecate
judgment. He saw, too — with the fact made more vivid by Gordon's
standing there beside her in his manly sincerity and throwing it into
contrast — that Blanche was the same little posturing coquette of a Blanche
whom, at Baden, he would have treated it as a broad joke that Gordon
Wright should dream of marrying. He saw, in a word, that it was what it
had first struck him as being — an incongruous union. All this was a good
deal for Bernard to see in the course of half a minute, especially through
the rather opaque medium of a feeling of irreflective joy; and his
impressions at this moment have a value only in so far as they were
destined to be confirmed by larger opportunity.
You have come a little sooner than we expected,
said
Gordon;
but you are all the more welcome.
It was rather a risk,
Blanche observed.
One
should be notified, when one wishes to make a good impression.
Ah, my dear lady,
said Bernard,
you made your
impression — as far as I am concerned — a long time ago, and I doubt
whether it would have gained anything to-day by your having prepared an
effect.
They were standing before the fire-place, on the great hearth-rug,
and Blanche, while she listened to this speech, was feeling, with uplifted
arm, for a curl that had strayed from her chignon.
She prepares her effects very quickly,
said Gordon,
laughing gently.
They follow each other very fast!
Blanche kept her hand behind her head, which was bent slightly
forward; her bare arm emerged from her hanging sleeve, and, with her
eyes glancing upward from under her lowered brows, she smiled at her
two spectators. Her husband laid his hand on Bernard's arm.
Is n't she pretty?
he cried; and he spoke with a sort of
tender delight in being sure at least of this point.
Tremendously pretty!
said Bernard.
I told her so
half an hour before you came in.
Ah, it was time I should arrive!
Gordon exclaimed.
Blanche was manifestly not in the least discomposed by this frank
discussion of her charms, for the air of distinguished esteem adopted by
both of her companions diminished the crudity of their remarks. But she
gave a little pout of irritated modesty — it was more becoming than anything
she had done yet — and declared that if they wished to talk her over, they
were very welcome; but she should prefer their waiting till she got out of
the room. So she left them, reminding Bernard that he was to send for his
luggage and remain, and promising to give immediate orders for the
preparation of his apartment. Bernard opened the door for her to pass out;
she gave him a charming nod as he stood there, and he turned back to
Gordon with the reflection of her smile in his face. Gordon was watching
him; Gordon was dying to know what he thought of her. It was a curious
mania of Gordon's, this wanting to know what one thought of the women
he loved; but Bernard just now felt abundantly able to humor it. He was
so pleased at seeing him tightly married.
She 's a delightful creature,
Bernard said, with cordial
vagueness, shaking hands with his friend again.
Gordon glanced at him a moment, and then, coloring a little, looked
straight out of the window; whereupon Bernard remembered that these
were just the terms in which, at Baden, after his companion's absence, he
had attempted to qualify Angela Vivian. Gordon was conscious — he was
conscious of the oddity of his situation.
Of course it surprised you,
he said, in a moment, still
looking out of the window.
What, my dear fellow?
My marriage.
Well, you know,
said Bernard,
everything
surprises me. I am of a very conjectural habit of mind. All sorts of ideas
come into my head, and yet when the simplest things happen I am always
rather startled. I live in a reverie, and I am perpetually waked up by
people doing things.
Gordon transferred his eyes from the window to Bernard's face — to
his whole person.
You are waked up? But you fall asleep again!
I fall asleep very easily,
said Bernard.
Gordon looked at him from head to foot, smiling and shaking his
head.
You are not changed,
he said.
You have travelled
in unknown lands; you have had, I suppose, all sorts of adventures; but
you are the same man I used to know.
I am sorry for that!
You have the same way of representing — of misrepresenting,
yourself.
Well, if I am not changed,
said Bernard,
I can ill
afford to lose so valuable an art.
Taking you altogether, I am glad you are the same,
Gordon answered, simply;
but you must come into my part of the
house.