PLATONIC PROSPECTS.
She met Quintard the next afternoon at a tea. She was standing with a
group of people when he joined her. After a moment he asked her to go
over to the other side of the room and talk to him. She was somewhat
amused at his directness, but went with him to a sofa and ignored the
rest of the company for a half-hour.
At the end of that time she drew a long sigh of relief. He was not her
ideal; he was commonplace. He talked very well, but with none of
Cryder’s brilliancy. He was even a little didactic, a quality she
detested. And he had none of the tact of an accomplished man of the
world. She was not surprised to hear that he had not been to five
entertainments in as many years. There was no subtle flattery in his
manner; he did not appear to take any personal interest in her whatever;
sometimes he appeared inattentive to what she was saying. She wondered
why he had insisted upon talking to her. Moreover, he was cold, and
coldness and her ideal had never shaken hands. He looked as if nothing
could move that calm self-control, that slow, somewhat stiff formality.
She saw him several times during the next two weeks, but never alone. In
the mean time she heard much of him. His personal appearance, his
wealth, his exile and its cause, made him an interesting figure, and
people began to remember and compare all the tales regarding him which
had floated across the Atlantic during the last five years. These tales
were of a highly adventurous nature, and were embroidered and fringed.
Quintard was not very grateful. He went out seldom, and got away as soon
as he could. This, of course, made people wonder what he was doing.
Hermia heard all these stories with some surprise. They seemed so
incongruous with the man. Assuredly there was neither romance nor love
of adventure in him; he was quite matter-of-fact; he might have been a
financier. She thought, however, that he had humor enough to be amused
at the stories he had inspired.
One evening he found her alone. The night was cold, and she was sitting
in a heap in a big arm-chair by the fire, huddled up in a soft, bright,
Japanese gown. She did not rise as he entered, and he looked at her
calmly and took a seat on the other side of the hearth.
“You look comfortable,” he said. “Those gowns are the warmest things in
the world. I have one that I wear when I sit by the fire all night and
think. If my dinner does not agree with me, I do not sleep like a lamb.”
This was romantic! Hermia had a fine contempt for people who recognized
the existence of their internal organs. She raised her brows. “Why do
you eat too much?” she demanded.
“Because I happen to feel like it at the time. The philosophy of life is
to resist as few temptations as you conveniently can. I have made it a
habit to resist but three.”
“And they are?”
“To tell a woman I love her, to make love to the wife of a friend, and
to have a girl on my conscience. The latter is a matter of comfort, not
of principle. The girl of to-day nibbles the apple with her eyes wide
open.”
Hermia did not know whether she was angry or not. Her experience with
Cryder had affected her peculiarly. He had the super-refinement of all
artificial natures, and there had been nothing in his influence to
coarsen the fiber of her mind. Moreover, he had barely ruffled the
surface of her nature. She always had a strange feeling of standing
outside of herself, of looking speculatively on while the material and
insignificant part of her “played at half a love with half a lover.”
She was not used to such abrupt statements, but she was too much
interested to change the conversation.
“Do you mean that you never tell a woman when you love her?” she asked,
after a moment.
“If I loved a woman I should tell her so, of course. I make it a
principle never to tell a woman that I love her, because I never do. It
saves trouble and reproaches.”
Hermia leaned forward. “Did not you love Mrs. Maitland?” she asked.
The color mounted to Quintard’s face.
“My dear Miss Suydam, this is the nineteenth century—the latter
quarter. Love of that sort is an episode, a detached link.” He leaned
forward and smiled. “I suppose you think I talk like the villain in the
old-fashioned novel,” he said. “But codes of all sorts have their
evolutions and modifications. The heroes of the past would cut a
ridiculous figure in the civilization of to-day. I am not a villain. I
am merely a man of my prosaic times.”
It was as she had thought—no romance, no love of the past. But the man
had a certain power; there was no denying that. And his audacity and
brutal frankness, so different from Cryder’s cold-blooded acting,
fascinated her.
“Oh, no! I do not think you a villain,” she said; “only I don’t see how
you could have had the cruelty to——”
“I am inclined to be faithful, Miss Suydam,” he interrupted. “In my
extreme youth it was the reverse, but experience has taught me to
appreciate and to hold on to certain qualities when I find them—for in
combination they are rare. When one comes to the cross-roads, and shakes
hands good-bye with Youth, his departing comrade gives him a little
packet. The packet is full of seeds, and the label is ‘philosophy.’”
“I found that packet long before I got to the cross-roads,” said Hermia,
with a laugh—“that is, if I ever had any youth. How old are you?”
“Oh, only thirty-four as yet. But I got to the cross-roads rather early.
What do you mean by saying that you never had any youth?”
“Nothing. Are all those European stories about you true?”
“What stories?”
“Oh! all those stories about women. They say you have had the most
dreadful adventures.”
Quintard shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what the stories are,” he
said. “Nor do I particularly care. I am not posing as a masculine Circe
or a destroyer of households. You must remember that there are more than
two classes of women in the world. There are many women who are without
any particular ties, who live a drifting, Bohemian sort of existence,
who may have belonged to society once, but have exhausted it, and prefer
the actualities of life. These women are generally the most
companionable in every respect. And they are more or less indifferent to
public opinion.”
“I was sure of one thing!” exclaimed Hermia; “but, if possible, you have
made me more sure: you have not a spark of romance in you.”
An expression of shyness crossed Quintard’s face, and he hesitated a
moment.
“Oh, well, you know, nobody has in these days,” he said, awkwardly.
“What would people do with romance? They would never find any one to
share it.”
“No,” said Hermia, with a laugh, “probably they would not.”
He went away soon after, and she did not see him again for a week.
Cryder came the next night, and Hermia had never liked him less. He was
as entertaining as usual, but he was more like highly-charged mineral
water than ever. He spoke of his personal adventures; they were tame and
flat. Nothing he said could grasp her, hold her. He seemed merely an
embodied intellect, a clever, bloodless egoist, babbling eternally about
his little self. As she sat opposite him, she wondered how she had
managed to stand him so long. She was glad Quintard had come to relieve
the monotony. He was the sort of man she would care to have for a
friend.
* * * * *