I have no wish, and if I had the wish I should not have the art, to keep
back the fact that these young people were evidently very much taken
with each other. They showed their mutual pleasure so plainly that even
I could see it. As for Mrs. March, she was as proud of it as if she had
invented them and set them going in their advance toward each other,
like two mechanical toys.
I confess that with reference to what my wife had told me of this young
lady's behavior when she was with her mother, her submissiveness, her
entire self-effacement, up to a certain point, I did not know quite what
to make of her present independence, not to say freedom. I thought she
might perhaps have been kept so strictly in the background, with young
men, that she was rather disposed to make the most of any chance at them
which offered. If the young man in this case was at no pains to hide his
pleasure in her society, one might say that she was almost eager to show
her delight in his. If it was a case of love at first sight, the
earliest glimpse had been to the girl, who was all eyes for Glendenning.
It was very pretty, but it was a little alarming, and perhaps a little
droll, even. She was actually making the advances, not consciously, but
helplessly; fondly, ignorantly, for I have no belief, nor had my wife (a
much more critical observer), that she knew how she was giving herself
away.
I thought perhaps that she was in the habit from pride, or something
like it, of holding herself in check, and that this blameless excess
which I saw was the natural expansion from an inner constraint. But what
I really knew was that the young people got on very rapidly, in an
acquaintance that prospered up to the last moment I saw them together.
This was just before the _Corinthian_ drew up to her landing at
Montreal, when Miss Bentley (we had learned her name) came to us from
the point where she was standing with Glendenning and said that now she
must go to her mother, and took a sweet leave of my wife. She asked
where we were going to stay in Montreal and whether we were going on to
Quebec; and said her mother would wish to send Mrs. March her card.
When she was gone, Glendenning explained, with rather superfluous
apology, that he had offered to see the ladies to a hotel, for he was
afraid that at this crowded season they might not find it easy to get
rooms, and he did not wish Mrs. Bentley, who was an invalid, to have any
anxieties about it. He bade us an affectionate, but not a disconsolate
adieu, and when we had got into the modest conveyance (if an omnibus is
modest) which was to take us to the Ottawa House, we saw him drive off
to the St. Lawrence Hall (it was twenty-five years ago) in one of those
vitreous and tinkling Montreal landaus, with Mrs. and Miss Bentley and
Mrs. Bentley's maid.
We were still so young as to be very much absorbed in the love affairs
of other people; I believe women always remain young enough for that;
and Mrs. March talked about the one we fancied we had witnessed the
beginning of pretty much the whole evening. The next morning we got
letters from Boston, telling us how the children were and all that they
were doing and saying. We had stood it very well, as long as we did not
hear anything about them, and we had lent ourselves in a sort of
semi-forgetfulness of them to the associations of the past when they
were not; but now to learn that they were hearty and happy, and that
they sent love and kisses, was too much. With one mind we renounced the
notion of going on to Quebec; we found that we could just get the
ten-o'clock train that would reach Boston by eleven that night, and we
made all haste and got it. We had not been really at peace, we
perceived, till that moment since we had bidden the children good-bye.