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.