It was not till our hero reached Paris, on his return from the distant
East, that the rumor I have just mentioned acquired an appreciable
consistency. Here, indeed, it took the shape of authentic information.
Among a number of delayed letters which had been awaiting him at
his banker’s he found a communication from Gordon Wright. During
the previous year or two his correspondence with this trusted--and
trusting--friend had not been frequent, and Bernard had received little
direct news of him. Three or four short letters had overtaken him in his
wanderings--letters as cordial, to all appearance, if not as voluminous,
as the punctual missives of an earlier time. Bernard made a point of
satisfying himself that they were as cordial; he weighed them in the
scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed to him on the whole that there
was no relaxation of Gordon’s epistolary tone. If he wrote less often
than he used to do, that was a thing that very commonly happened as men
grew older. The closest intimacies, moreover, had phases and seasons,
intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend had, in fact, averted
his countenance from him, this was simply the accomplishment of a
periodical revolution which would bring them in due order face to face
again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing tolerably often
and writing always in the friendliest tone. He made it a matter of
conscience--he liked to feel that he was treating Gordon generously,
and not demanding an eye for an eye. The letter he found in Paris was so
short that I may give it entire.
“My dear Bernard (it ran), I must write to you before I write to any
one else, though unfortunately you are so far away that you can’t be the
first to congratulate me. Try and not be the last, however. I am going
to be married--as soon as possible. You know the young lady, so you can
appreciate the situation. Do you remember little Blanche Evers, whom we
used to see three years ago at Baden-Baden? Of course you remember
her, for I know you used often to talk with her. You will be rather
surprised, perhaps, at my having selected her as the partner of a
life-time; but we manage these matters according to our lights. I am
very much in love with her, and I hold that an excellent reason. I have
been ready any time this year or two to fall in love with some simple,
trusting, child-like nature. I find this in perfection in this charming
young girl. I find her so natural and fresh. I remember telling you
once that I did n’t wish to be fascinated--that I wanted to estimate
scientifically the woman I should marry. I have altogether got over
that, and I don’t know how I ever came to talk such nonsense. I am
fascinated now, and I assure you I like it! The best of it is that I
find it does n’t in the least prevent my estimating Blanche. I judge her
very fairly--I see just what she is. She ‘s simple--that ‘s what I want;
she ‘s tender--that ‘s what I long for. You will remember how pretty she
is; I need n’t remind you of that. She was much younger then, and she
has greatly developed and improved in these two or three years. But she
will always be young and innocent--I don’t want her to improve too much.
She came back to America with her mother the winter after we met her at
Baden, but I never saw her again till three months ago. Then I saw her
with new eyes, and I wondered I could have been so blind. But I was n’t
ready for her till then, and what makes me so happy now is to know that
I have come to my present way of feeling by experience. That gives me
confidence--you see I am a reasoner still. But I am under the charm, for
all my reason. We are to be married in a month--try and come back to the
wedding. Blanche sends you a message, which I will give you verbatim.
‘Tell him I am not such a silly little chatterbox as I used to be at
Baden. I am a great deal wiser; I am almost as clever as Angela Vivian.’
She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian very clever--but it is not true
that she is equally so. I am very happy; come home and see.”
Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States in
time for Gordon’s wedding, which took place at midsummer. Bernard,
arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some
months’ standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation,
whether he appeared happy. The first effect of the letter I have just
quoted had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series
of reflections which were quite the negative of surprise; and these
operations of Bernard’s mind had finally merged themselves in a simple
sentiment of jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he
felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom
he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed
highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less
shaped to minister to Gordon’s strenuous needs than the light-hearted
and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained
for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time.
Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose--the prettiest of little geese,
perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for
a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view
of human responsibilities. What a singular selection--what a queer
infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of
criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error
carried almost to the point of naivetae. He exclaimed that Blanche Evers
was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright’s stamp always
ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much
better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to
solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This
was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid,
in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who
were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what
the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure
in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways,
and it pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally
speaking, to have a kittenish wife. He had within himself a fund of
common sense to draw upon, so that to espouse a paragon of wisdom would
be but to carry water to the fountain. He could easily make up for the
deficiencies of a wife who was a little silly, and if she charmed and
amused him, he could treat himself to the luxury of these sensations for
themselves. He was not in the least afraid of being ruined by it, and if
Blanche’s birdlike chatter and turns of the head had made a fool of him,
he knew it perfectly well, and simply took his stand upon his rights.
Every man has a right to a little flower-bed, and life is not all mere
kitchen-gardening. Bernard rapidly extemporized this rough explanation
of the surprise his friend had offered him, and he found it
all-sufficient for his immediate needs. He wrote Blanche a charming
note, to which she replied with a great deal of spirit and grace. Her
little letter was very prettily turned, and Bernard, reading it over two
or three times, said to himself that, to do her justice, she might very
well have polished her intellect a trifle during these two or three
years. As she was older, she could hardly help being wiser. It even
occurred to Bernard that she might have profited by the sort of
experience that is known as the discipline of suffering. What had become
of Captain Lovelock and that tender passion which was apparently none
the less genuine for having been expressed in the slang of a humorous
period? Had they been permanently separated by judicious guardians, and
had she been obliged to obliterate his image from her lightly-beating
little heart? Bernard had felt sure at Baden that, beneath her
contemptuous airs and that impertinent consciousness of the difficulties
of conquest by which a pretty American girl attests her allegiance to a
civilization in which young women occupy the highest place--he had felt
sure that Blanche had a high appreciation of her handsome Englishman,
and that if Lovelock should continue to relish her charms, he might
count upon the advantages of reciprocity. But it occurred to Bernard
that Captain Lovelock had perhaps been faithless; that, at least, the
discourtesy of chance and the inhumanity of an elder brother might have
kept him an eternal prisoner at the Hotel de Hollande (where, for
all Bernard knew to the contrary, he had been obliged to work out his
destiny in the arduous character of a polyglot waiter); so that the poor
young girl, casting backward glances along the path of Mrs. Vivian’s
retreat, and failing to detect the onward rush of a rescuing cavalier,
had perforce believed herself forsaken, and had been obliged to summon
philosophy to her aid. It was very possible that her philosophic studies
had taught her the art of reflection; and that, as she would have said
herself, she was tremendously toned down. Once, at Baden, when Gordon
Wright happened to take upon himself to remark that little Miss Evers
was bored by her English gallant, Bernard had ventured to observe,
in petto, that Gordon knew nothing about it. But all this was of no
consequence now, and Bernard steered further and further away from the
liability to detect fallacies in his friend. Gordon had engaged himself
to marry, and our critical hero had not a grain of fault to find with
this resolution. It was a capital thing; it was just what he wanted; it
would do him a world of good. Bernard rejoiced with him sincerely, and
regretted extremely that a series of solemn engagements to pay visits in
England should prevent his being present at the nuptials.
They were well over, as I have said, when he reached New York. The
honeymoon had waned, and the business of married life had begun.
Bernard, at the end, had sailed from England rather abruptly. A friend
who had a remarkably good cabin on one of the steamers was obliged by a
sudden detention to give it up, and on his offering it to Longueville,
the latter availed himself gratefully of this opportunity of being a
little less discomposed than usual by the Atlantic billows. He therefore
embarked at two days’ notice, a fortnight earlier than he had intended
and than he had written to Gordon to expect him. Gordon, of course, had
written that he was to seek no hospitality but that which Blanche was
now prepared--they had a charming house--so graciously to dispense;
but Bernard, nevertheless, leaving the ship early in the morning, had
betaken himself to an hotel. He wished not to anticipate his welcome,
and he determined to report himself to Gordon first and to come back
with his luggage later in the day. After purifying himself of his
sea-stains, he left his hotel and walked up the Fifth Avenue with all
a newly-landed voyager’s enjoyment of terrestrial locomotion. It was a
charming autumn day; there was a golden haze in the air; he supposed
it was the Indian summer. The broad sidewalk of the Fifth Avenue was
scattered over with dry leaves--crimson and orange and amber. He tossed
them with his stick as he passed; they rustled and murmured with the
motion, and it reminded him of the way he used to kick them in front of
him over these same pavements in his riotous infancy. It was a pleasure,
after many wanderings, to find himself in his native land again,
and Bernard Longueville, as he went, paid his compliments to his
mother-city. The brightness and gayety of the place seemed a greeting to
a returning son, and he felt a throb of affection for the freshest,
the youngest, the easiest and most good-natured of great capitals. On
presenting himself at Gordon’s door, Bernard was told that the master of
the house was not at home; he went in, however, to see the mistress.
She was in her drawing-room, alone; she had on her bonnet, as if she had
been going out. She gave him a joyous, demonstrative little welcome; she
was evidently very glad to see him. Bernard had thought it possible she
had “improved,” and she was certainly prettier than ever. He instantly
perceived that she was still a chatterbox; it remained to be seen
whether the quality of her discourse were finer.
“Well, Mr. Longueville,” she exclaimed, “where in the world did you drop
from, and how long did it take you to cross the Atlantic? Three days,
eh? It could n’t have taken you many more, for it was only the other day
that Gordon told me you were not to sail till the 20th. You changed
your mind, eh? I did n’t know you ever changed your mind. Gordon never
changes his. That ‘s not a reason, eh, because you are not a bit like
Gordon. Well, I never thought you were, except that you are a man. Now
what are you laughing at? What should you like me call you? You are a
man, I suppose; you are not a god. That ‘s what you would like me
to call you, I have no doubt. I must keep that for Gordon? I shall
certainly keep it a good while. I know a good deal more about gentlemen
than I did when I last saw you, and I assure you I don’t think they
are a bit god-like. I suppose that ‘s why you always drop down from the
sky--you think it ‘s more divine. I remember that ‘s the way you arrived
at Baden when we were there together; the first thing we knew, you
were standing in the midst of us. Do you remember that evening when you
presented yourself? You came up and touched Gordon on the shoulder, and
he gave a little jump. He will give another little jump when he sees you
to-day. He gives a great many little jumps; I keep him skipping about!
I remember perfectly the way we were sitting that evening at Baden, and
the way you looked at me when you came up. I saw you before Gordon--I
see a good many things before Gordon. What did you look at me that way
for? I always meant to ask you. I was dying to know.”
“For the simplest reason in the world,” said Bernard. “Because you were
so pretty.”
“Ah no, it was n’t that! I know all about that look. It was something
else--as if you knew something about me. I don’t know what you can
have known. There was very little to know about me, except that I was
intensely silly. Really, I was awfully silly that summer at Baden--you
would n’t believe how silly I was. But I don’t see how you could
have known that--before you had spoken to me. It came out in
my conversation--it came out awfully. My mother was a good deal
disappointed in Mrs. Vivian’s influence; she had expected so much from
it. But it was not poor Mrs. Vivian’s fault, it was some one’s else.
Have you ever seen the Vivians again? They are always in Europe; they
have gone to live in Paris. That evening when you came up and spoke to
Gordon, I never thought that three years afterward I should be married
to him, and I don’t suppose you did either. Is that what you meant by
looking at me? Perhaps you can tell the future. I wish you would tell my
future!”
“Oh, I can tell that easily,” said Bernard.
“What will happen to me?”
“Nothing particular; it will be a little dull--the perfect happiness of
a charming woman married to the best fellow in the world.”
“Ah, what a horrid future!” cried Blanche, with a little petulant cry.
“I want to be happy, but I certainly don’t want to be dull. If you say
that again you will make me repent of having married the best fellow in
the world. I mean to be happy, but I certainly shall not be dull if I
can help it.”
“I was wrong to say that,” said Bernard, “because, after all, my dear
young lady, there must be an excitement in having so kind a husband
as you have got. Gordon’s devotion is quite capable of taking a new
form--of inventing a new kindness--every day in the year.”
Blanche looked at him an instant, with less than her usual consciousness
of her momentary pose.
“My husband is very kind,” she said gently.
She had hardly spoken the words when Gordon came in. He stopped a moment
on seeing Bernard, glanced at his wife, blushed, flushed, and with a
loud, frank exclamation of pleasure, grasped his friend by both hands.
It was so long since he had seen Bernard that he seemed a good deal
moved; he stood there smiling, clasping his hands, looking him in
the eyes, unable for some moments to speak. Bernard, on his side, was
greatly pleased; it was delightful to him to look into Gordon’s honest
face again and to return his manly grasp. And he looked well--he looked
happy; to see that was more delightful yet. During these few instants,
while they exchanged a silent pledge of renewed friendship, Bernard’s
elastic perception embraced several things besides the consciousness of
his own pleasure. He saw that Gordon looked well and happy, but that he
looked older, too, and more serious, more marked by life. He looked as
if something had happened to him--as, in fact, something had. Bernard
saw a latent spark in his friend’s eye that seemed to question his
own for an impression of Blanche--to question it eagerly, and yet
to deprecate judgment. He saw, too--with the fact made more vivid by
Gordon’s standing there beside her in his manly sincerity and throwing
it into contrast--that Blanche was the same little posturing coquette of
a Blanche whom, at Baden, he would have treated it as a broad joke that
Gordon Wright should dream of marrying. He saw, in a word, that it was
what it had first struck him as being--an incongruous union. All this
was a good deal for Bernard to see in the course of half a minute,
especially through the rather opaque medium of a feeling of irreflective
joy; and his impressions at this moment have a value only in so far as
they were destined to be confirmed by larger opportunity.
“You have come a little sooner than we expected,” said Gordon; “but you
are all the more welcome.”
“It was rather a risk,” Blanche observed. “One should be notified, when
one wishes to make a good impression.”
“Ah, my dear lady,” said Bernard, “you made your impression--as far as I
am concerned--a long time ago, and I doubt whether it would have gained
anything to-day by your having prepared an effect.”
They were standing before the fire-place, on the great hearth-rug, and
Blanche, while she listened to this speech, was feeling, with uplifted
arm, for a curl that had strayed from her chignon.
“She prepares her effects very quickly,” said Gordon, laughing gently.
“They follow each other very fast!”
Blanche kept her hand behind her head, which was bent slightly forward;
her bare arm emerged from her hanging sleeve, and, with her eyes
glancing upward from under her lowered brows, she smiled at her two
spectators. Her husband laid his hand on Bernard’s arm.
“Is n’t she pretty?” he cried; and he spoke with a sort of tender
delight in being sure at least of this point.
“Tremendously pretty!” said Bernard. “I told her so half an hour before
you came in.”
“Ah, it was time I should arrive!” Gordon exclaimed.
Blanche was manifestly not in the least discomposed by this frank
discussion of her charms, for the air of distinguished esteem adopted by
both of her companions diminished the crudity of their remarks. But
she gave a little pout of irritated modesty--it was more becoming than
anything she had done yet--and declared that if they wished to talk her
over, they were very welcome; but she should prefer their waiting till
she got out of the room. So she left them, reminding Bernard that he
was to send for his luggage and remain, and promising to give immediate
orders for the preparation of his apartment. Bernard opened the door for
her to pass out; she gave him a charming nod as he stood there, and
he turned back to Gordon with the reflection of her smile in his face.
Gordon was watching him; Gordon was dying to know what he thought of
her. It was a curious mania of Gordon’s, this wanting to know what one
thought of the women he loved; but Bernard just now felt abundantly able
to humor it. He was so pleased at seeing him tightly married.
“She ‘s a delightful creature,” Bernard said, with cordial vagueness,
shaking hands with his friend again.
Gordon glanced at him a moment, and then, coloring a little, looked
straight out of the window; whereupon Bernard remembered that these were
just the terms in which, at Baden, after his companion’s absence, he
had attempted to qualify Angela Vivian. Gordon was conscious--he was
conscious of the oddity of his situation.
“Of course it surprised you,” he said, in a moment, still looking out of
the window.
“What, my dear fellow?”
“My marriage.”
“Well, you know,” said Bernard, “everything surprises me. I am of a very
conjectural habit of mind. All sorts of ideas come into my head, and yet
when the simplest things happen I am always rather startled. I live in a
reverie, and I am perpetually waked up by people doing things.”
Gordon transferred his eyes from the window to Bernard’s face--to his
whole person.
“You are waked up? But you fall asleep again!”
“I fall asleep very easily,” said Bernard.
Gordon looked at him from head to foot, smiling and shaking his head.
“You are not changed,” he said. “You have travelled in unknown lands;
you have had, I suppose, all sorts of adventures; but you are the same
man I used to know.”
“I am sorry for that!”
“You have the same way of representing--of misrepresenting, yourself.”
“Well, if I am not changed,” said Bernard, “I can ill afford to lose so
valuable an art.”
“Taking you altogether, I am glad you are the same,” Gordon answered,
simply; “but you must come into my part of the house.”