We certainly did not take it for the sake of being near the Bentleys,
neither of whom had given us particular reason to desire their further
acquaintance, though the young lady had agreeably modified herself when
apart from her mother. In fact, we went to Gormanville because it was an
exceptional chance to get a beautiful place for a very little money,
where we could go early and stay late. But no sooner had we acted from
this quite personal, not to say selfish, motive than we were rewarded
with the sweetest overtures of neighborliness by the Bentleys. They
waited, of course, till we were settled in our house before they came to
call upon Mrs. March, but they had been preceded by several hospitable
offerings from their garden, their dairy, and their hen-house, which
were very welcome in the days of our first uncertainty as to
trades-people. We analyzed this hospitality as an effect of that sort of
nature in Mrs. Bentley which can equally assert its superiority by
blessing or banning. Evidently, since chance had again thrown us in her
way, she would not go out of it to be offensive, but would continue in
it, and make the best of us.
No doubt Glendenning had talked us into the Bentleys; and this my wife
said she hated most of all; for we should have to live up to the notion
of us imparted by a young man from the impressions of the moment when he
saw us purple in the light of his dawning love. In justice to
Glendenning, however, I must say that he did nothing, by a show of his
own assiduities, to urge us upon the Bentleys after we came to
Gormanville. If we had not felt so sure of him, we might have thought he
was keeping his regard for us a little too modestly in the background.
He made us one cool little call, the evening of our arrival, in which he
had the effect of anxiety to get away as soon as possible; and after
that we saw him no more until he came with Miss Bentley and her mother a
week later. His forbearance was all the more remarkable because his
church and his rectory were just across the street from the Conwell
place, at the corner of another street, where we could see their wooden
gothic in the cold shadow of the maples with which the green in front of
them was planted.
During all that time Glendenning's personal elevation remained invisible
to us, and we began to wonder if he were not that most lamentable of
fellow-creatures, a clerical snob. I am not sure still that he might not
have been so in some degree, there was such a mixture of joy that was
almost abject in his genuine affection for us when Mrs. Bentley openly
approved us on her first visit. I dare say he would not have quite
abandoned us in any case; but he must have felt responsible for us, and
it must have been such a load off him when she took that turn with us.
She called in the afternoon, and the young people dropped in again the
same evening, and took the trouble to win back our simple hearts. That
is, Miss Bentley showed herself again as frank and sweet as she had been
on the boat when she joined my wife after dinner and left her mother in
her state-room. Glendenning was again the Glendenning of our first
meeting, and something more. He fearlessly led the way to intimacies of
feeling with an expansion uncommon even in an accepted lover, and we
made our conclusions that however subject he might be to his
indefinitely future mother-in-law, he would not be at all so to his
wife, if she could help it. He took the lead, but because she gave it
him; and she displayed an aptness for conjugal submissiveness which
almost amounted to genius. Whenever she spoke to either of us, it was
with one eye on him to see if he liked what she was saying. It was so
perfect that I doubted if it could last; but my wife said a girl like
that could keep it up till she dropped. I have never been sure that she
liked us as well as he did; I think it was part of her intense loyalty
to seem to like us a great deal more.
She was deeply in love, and nothing but her ladylike breeding kept her
from being openly fond. I figured her in a sort of impassioned
incandescence, such as only a pure and perhaps cold nature could burn
into; and I amused myself a little with the sense of Glendenning's
apparent inadequacy. Sweet he was, and admirably gentle and fine; he had
an unfailing good sense, and a very ready wisdom, as I grew more and
more to perceive. But he was an inch or so shorter than Miss Bentley,
and in his sunny blondness, with his golden red beard and hair, and his
pinkish complexion, he wanted still more the effect of an emotional
equality with her. He was very handsome, with features excellently
regular; his smile was celestially beautiful; innocent gay lights danced
in his blue eyes, through lashes and under brows that were a lighter
blond than his beard and hair.