Chapter 2
Two months later Bernard Longueville was at Venice, still under the
impression that he was leaving Italy. He was not a man who made plans
and held to them. He made them, indeed — few men made more — but he
made them as a basis for variation. He had gone to Venice to spend a
fortnight, and his fortnight had taken the form of eight enchanting weeks.
He had still a sort of conviction that he was carrying out his plans; for it
must be confessed that where his pleasure was concerned he had
considerable skill in accommodating his theory to his practice. His
enjoyment of Venice was extreme, but he was roused from it by a
summons he was indisposed to resist. This consisted of a letter from an
intimate friend who was living in Germany — a friend whose name was
Gordon Wright. He had been spending the winter in Dresden, but his
letter bore the date of Baden-Baden. As it was not long, I may give it
entire.
I wish very much that you would come to this place. I think
you have been here before, so that you know how pretty it is, and how
amusing. I shall probably be here the rest of the summer. There are some
people I know and whom I want you to know. Be so good as to arrive.
Then I will thank you properly for your various Italian rhapsodies. I can't
reply on the same scale — I have n't the time. Do you know what I am
doing? I am making love. I find it a most absorbing occupation. That is
literally why I have not written to you before. I have been making love
ever since the last of May. It takes an immense amount of time, and
everything else has got terribly behindhand. I don't mean to say that the
experiment itself has gone on very fast; but I am trying to push it forward.
I have n't yet had time to test its success; but in this I want your help.
You know we great physicists never make an experiment without an
`assistant' — a humble individual who burns his fingers and stains his
clothes in the cause of science, but whose interest in the problem is only
indirect. I want you to be my assistant, and I will guarantee that your
burns and stains shall not be dangerous. She is an extremely interesting
girl, and I really want you to see her — I want to know what
you think of
her. She wants to know you, too, for I have talked a good deal about you.
There you have it, if gratified vanity will help you on the way. Seriously,
this is a real request. I want your opinion, your impression. I want to see
how she will affect you. I don't say I ask for your advice; that, of course,
you will not undertake to give. But I desire a definition, a
characterization; you know you toss off those things. I don't see why I
should n't tell you all this — I have always told you everything. I have
never pretended to know anything about women, but I have always
supposed that you knew everything. You certainly have always had the
tone of that sort of omniscience. So come here as soon as possible and let
me see that you are not a humbug. She 's a very handsome girl.
Longueville was so much amused with this appeal that he very soon
started for Germany. In the reader, Gordon Wright's letter will, perhaps,
excite surprise rather than hilarity; but Longueville thought it highly
characteristic of his friend. What it especially pointed to was Gordon's
want of imagination — a deficiency which was a matter of common jocular
allusion between the two young men, each of whom kept a collection of
acknowledged oddities as a playground for the other's wit. Bernard had
often spoken of his comrade's want of imagination as a bottomless pit,
into which Gordon was perpetually inviting him to lower himself.
My dear fellow,
Bernard said,
you must really excuse
me; I cannot take these subterranean excursions. I should lose my breath
down there; I should never come up alive. You know I have dropped
things down — little jokes and metaphors, little fantasies and paradoxes — and
I have never heard them touch bottom!
This was an epigram on the
part of a young man who had a lively play of fancy; but it was none the
less true that Gordon Wright had a firmly-treading, rather than a winged,
intellect. Every phrase in his letter seemed, to Bernard, to march in
stout-soled walking-boots, and nothing could better express his attachment
to the process of reasoning things out than this proposal that his friend
should come and make a chemical analysis — a geometrical survey — of the
lady of his love.
That I shall have any difficulty in forming an
opinion, and any difficulty in expressing it when formed —
of this he has as
little idea as that he shall have any difficulty in accepting it when
expressed.
So Bernard reflected, as he rolled in the train to
Munich.
Gordon's mind,
he went on,
has no
atmosphere; his intellectual process goes on in the void. There are no
currents and eddies to affect it, no high winds nor hot suns, no changes of
season and temperature. His premises are neatly arranged, and his
conclusions are perfectly calculable.
Yet for the man on whose character he so freely exercised his wit
Bernard Longueville had a strong affection. It is nothing against the
validity of a friendship that the parties to it have not a mutual
resemblance. There must be a basis of agreement, but the structure reared
upon it may contain a thousand disparities. These two young men had
formed an alliance of old, in college days, and the bond between them had
been strengthened by the simple fact of its having survived the sentimental
revolutions of early life. Its strongest link was a sort of mutual respect.
Their tastes, their pursuits were different; but each of them had a high
esteem for the other's character. It may be said that they were easily
pleased; for it is certain that neither of them had performed any very
conspicuous action. They were highly civilized young Americans, born to
an easy fortune and a tranquil destiny, and unfamiliar with the glitter of
golden opportunities. If I did not shrink from disparaging the constitution
of their native land for their own credit, I should say that it had never
been very definitely proposed to these young gentlemen to distinguish
themselves. On reaching manhood, they had each come into property
sufficient to make violent exertion superfluous. Gordon Wright, indeed,
had inherited a large estate. Their wants being tolerably modest, they had
not been tempted to strive for the glory of building up commercial
fortunes — the most obvious career open to young Americans. They had,
indeed, embraced no career at all, and if summoned to give an account of
themselves would, perhaps, have found it hard to tell any very impressive
story. Gordon Wright was much interested in physical science, and had
ideas of his own on what is called the endowment of research. His ideas
had taken a practical shape, and he had distributed money very freely
among the investigating classes, after which he had gone to
spend a couple
of years in Germany, supposing it to be the land of laboratories. Here we
find him at present, cultivating relations with several learned bodies and
promoting the study of various tough branches of human knowledge, by
paying the expenses of difficult experiments. The experiments, it must be
added, were often of his own making, and he must have the honor of
whatever brilliancy attaches, in the estimation of the world, to such
pursuits. It was not, indeed, a brilliancy that dazzled Bernard Longueville,
who, however, was not easily dazzled by anything. It was because he
regarded him in so plain and direct a fashion, that Bernard had an
affection for his friend — an affection to which it would perhaps be difficult
to assign a definite cause. Personal sympathies are doubtless caused by
something; but the causes are remote, mysterious to our daily vision, like
those of the particular state of the weather. We content ourselves with
remarking that it is fine or that it rains, and the enjoyment of our likes
and dislikes is by no means apt to borrow its edge from the keenness of
our analysis. Longueville had a relish for fine quality — superior savour;
and he was sensible of this merit in the simple, candid, manly,
affectionate nature of his comrade, which seemed to him an excellent thing
of its kind. Gordon Wright had a tender heart and a strong will — a
combination which, when the understanding is not too limited, is often the
motive of admirable actions. There might sometimes be a question
whether Gordon's understanding were sufficiently unlimited, but the
impulses of a generous temper often play a useful part in filling up the
gaps of an incomplete imagination, and the general impression that Wright
produced was certainly that of intelligent good-nature. The reasons for
appreciating Bernard Longueville were much more manifest. He pleased
superficially, as well as fundamentally. Nature had sent him into the world
with an armful of good gifts. He was very good-looking — tall, dark, agile,
perfectly finished, so good-looking that he might have been a fool and yet
be forgiven. As has already been intimated, however, he was far from
being a fool. He had a number of talents, which, during three or four
years that followed his leaving college, had received the discipline of the
study of the law. He had not made much of the law; but he had made
something of
his talents. He was almost always spoken of as
accomplished;
people asked why he did n't do something.
This question was never satisfactorily answered, the feeling being that
Longueville did more than many people in causing it to be asked.
Moreover, there was one thing he did constantly — he enjoyed himself. This
is manifestly not a career, and it has been said at the outset that he was
not attached to any of the recognized professions. But without going into
details, he was a charming fellow — clever, urbane, free-handed, and with
that fortunate quality in his appearance which is known as distinction.