Bernard prepared for Gordon’s arrival in Paris, which, according to his
letter, would take place in a few days. He was not intending to stop in
England; Blanche desired to proceed immediately to the French capital,
to confer with her man-milliner, after which it was probable that they
would go to Italy or to the East for the winter. “I have given her a
choice of Rome or the Nile,” said Gordon, “but she tells me she does n’t
care a fig where we go.”
I say that Bernard prepared to receive his friends, and I mean that he
prepared morally--or even intellectually. Materially speaking, he could
simply hold himself in readiness to engage an apartment at a hotel and
to go to meet them at the station. He expected to hear from Gordon
as soon as this interesting trio should reach England, but the first
notification he received came from a Parisian hotel. It came to him in
the shape of a very short note, in the morning, shortly before lunch,
and was to the effect that his friends had alighted in the Rue de la
Paix the night before.
“We were tired, and I have slept late,” said Gordon; “otherwise you
should have heard from me earlier. Come to lunch, if possible. I want
extremely to see you.”
Bernard, of course, made a point of going to lunch. In as short a time
as possible he found himself in Gordon’s sitting-room at the Hotel
Middlesex. The table was laid for the midday repast, and a gentleman
stood with his back to the door, looking out of the window. As Bernard
came in, this gentleman turned and exhibited the ambrosial beard, the
symmetrical shape, the monocular appendage, of Captain Lovelock.
The Captain screwed his glass into his eye, and greeted Bernard in his
usual fashion--that is, as if he had parted with him overnight.
“Oh, good morning! Beastly morning, is n’t it? I suppose you are come to
luncheon--I have come to luncheon. It ought to be on table, you know--it
‘s nearly two o’clock. But I dare say you have noticed foreigners are
never punctual--it ‘s only English servants that are punctual. And they
don’t understand luncheon, you know--they can’t make out our eating at
this sort of hour. You know they always dine so beastly early. Do you
remember the sort of time they used to dine at Baden?--half-past five,
half-past six; some unearthly hour of that kind. That ‘s the sort of
time you dine in America. I found they ‘d invite a man at half-past six.
That ‘s what I call being in a hurry for your food. You know they always
accuse the Americans of making a rush for their victuals. I am bound
to say that in New York, and that sort of place, the victuals were very
good when you got them. I hope you don’t mind my saying anything about
America? You know the Americans are so deucedly thin-skinned--they
always bristle up if you say anything against their institutions. The
English don’t care a rap what you say--they ‘ve got a different sort
of temper, you know. With the Americans I ‘m deuced careful--I never
breathe a word about anything. While I was over there I went in for
being complimentary. I laid it on thick, and I found they would take all
I could give them. I did n’t see much of their institutions, after all;
I went in for seeing the people. Some of the people were charming--upon
my soul, I was surprised at some of the people. I dare say you know some
of the people I saw; they were as nice people as you would see anywhere.
There were always a lot of people about Mrs. Wright, you know; they
told me they were all the best people. You know she is always late for
everything. She always comes in after every one is there--looking so
devilish pretty, pulling on her gloves. She wears the longest gloves I
ever saw in my life. Upon my word, if they don’t come, I think I will
ring the bell and ask the waiter what ‘s the matter. Would n’t you ring
the bell? It ‘s a great mistake, their trying to carry out their ideas
of lunching. That ‘s Wright’s character, you know; he ‘s always trying
to carry out some idea. When I am abroad, I go in for the foreign
breakfast myself. You may depend upon it they had better give up trying
to do this sort of thing at this hour.”
Captain Lovelock was more disposed to conversation than Bernard had
known him before. His discourse of old had been languid and fragmentary,
and our hero had never heard him pursue a train of ideas through so
many involutions. To Bernard’s observant eye, indeed, the Captain was
an altered man. His manner betrayed a certain restless desire to be
agreeable, to anticipate judgment--a disposition to smile, and be civil,
and entertain his auditor, a tendency to move about and look out of the
window and at the clock. He struck Bernard as a trifle nervous--as
less solidly planted on his feet than when he lounged along the Baden
gravel-walks by the side of his usual companion--a lady for whom,
apparently, his admiration was still considerable. Bernard was curious
to see whether he would ring the bell to inquire into the delay
attending the service of lunch; but before this sentiment, rather idle
under the circumstances, was gratified, Blanche passed into the room
from a neighboring apartment. To Bernard’s perception Blanche, at least,
was always Blanche; she was a person in whom it would not have occurred
to him to expect any puzzling variation, and the tone of her little,
soft, thin voice instantly rang in his ear like an echo of yesterday’s
talk. He had already remarked to himself that after however long
an interval one might see Blanche, she re-appeared with an air of
familiarity. This was in some sense, indeed, a proof of the agreeable
impression she made, and she looked exceedingly pretty as she now
suddenly stopped on seeing our two gentlemen, and gave a little cry of
surprise.
“Ah! I did n’t know you were here. They never told me. Have you been
waiting a long time? How d’ ye do? You must think we are polite.”
She held out her hand to Bernard, smiling very graciously. At Captain
Lovelock she barely glanced. “I hope you are very well,” she went on to
Longueville; “but I need n’t ask that. You ‘re as blooming as a rose.
What in the world has happened to you? You look so brilliant--so fresh.
Can you say that to a man--that he looks fresh? Or can you only say that
about butter and eggs?”
“It depends upon the man,” said Captain Lovelock. “You can’t say that a
man ‘s fresh who spends his time in running about after you!”
“Ah, are you here?” cried Blanche with another little cry of surprise.
“I did n’t notice you--I thought you were the waiter. This is what
he calls running about after me,” she added, to Bernard; “coming to
breakfast without being asked. How queerly they have arranged the
table!” she went on, gazing with her little elevated eyebrows at this
piece of furniture. “I always thought that in Paris, if they could
n’t do anything else, they could arrange a table. I don’t like that
at all--those horrid little dishes on each side! Don’t you think those
things ought to be off the table, Mr. Longueville? I don’t like to see
a lot of things I ‘m not eating. And I told them to have some
flowers--pray, where are the flowers? Do they call those things
flowers? They look as if they had come out of the landlady’s bonnet! Mr.
Longueville, do look at those objects.”
“They are not like me--they are not very fresh,” laughed Bernard.
“It ‘s no great matter--we have not got to eat them,” growled Captain
Lovelock.
“I should think you would expect to--with the luncheon you usually
make!” rejoined Blanche. “Since you are here, though I did n’t ask you,
you might as well make yourself useful. Will you be so good as to ring
the bell? If Gordon expects that we are going to wait another quarter of
an hour for him he exaggerates the patience of a long-suffering wife. If
you are very curious to know what he is about, he is writing letters, by
way of a change. He writes about eighty a day; his correspondents
must be strong people! It ‘s a lucky thing for me that I am married
to Gordon; if I were not he might write to me--to me, to whom it ‘s a
misery to have to answer even an invitation to dinner! To begin with, I
don’t know how to spell. If Captain Lovelock ever boasts that he has
had letters from me, you may know it ‘s an invention. He has never had
anything but telegrams--three telegrams--that I sent him in America
about a pair of slippers that he had left at our house and that I did
n’t know what to do with. Captain Lovelock’s slippers are no trifle
to have on one’s hands--on one’s feet, I suppose I ought to say. For
telegrams the spelling does n’t matter; the people at the office correct
it--or if they don’t you can put it off on them. I never see anything
nowadays but Gordon’s back,” she went on, as they took their places at
table--“his noble broad back, as he sits writing his letters. That ‘s my
principal view of my husband. I think that now we are in Paris I ought
to have a portrait of it by one of the great artists. It would be such a
characteristic pose. I have quite forgotten his face and I don’t think I
should know it.”
Gordon’s face, however, presented itself just at this moment; he came in
quickly, with his countenance flushed with the pleasure of meeting his
old friend again. He had the sun-scorched look of a traveller who has
just crossed the Atlantic, and he smiled at Bernard with his honest
eyes.
“Don’t think me a great brute for not being here to receive you,” he
said, as he clasped his hand. “I was writing an important letter and I
put it to myself in this way: ‘If I interrupt my letter I shall have to
come back and finish it; whereas if I finish it now, I can have all the
rest of the day to spend with him.’ So I stuck to it to the end, and now
we can be inseparable.”
“You may be sure Gordon reasoned it out,” said Blanche, while her
husband offered his hand in silence to Captain Lovelock.
“Gordon’s reasoning is as fine as other people’s feeling!” declared
Bernard, who was conscious of a desire to say something very pleasant to
Gordon, and who did not at all approve of Blanche’s little ironical tone
about her husband.
“And Bernard’s compliments are better than either,” said Gordon,
laughing and taking his seat at table.
“I have been paying him compliments,” Blanche went on. “I have been
telling him he looks so brilliant, so blooming--as if something had
happened to him, as if he had inherited a fortune. He must have been
doing something very wicked, and he ought to tell us all about it,
to amuse us. I am sure you are a dreadful Parisian, Mr. Longueville.
Remember that we are three dull, virtuous people, exceedingly bored
with each other’s society, and wanting to hear something strange and
exciting. If it ‘s a little improper, that won’t spoil it.”
“You certainly are looking uncommonly well,” said Gordon, still smiling,
across the table, at his friend. “I see what Blanche means--”
“My dear Gordon, that ‘s a great event,” his wife interposed.
“It ‘s a good deal to pretend, certainly,” he went on, smiling always,
with his red face and his blue eyes. “But this is no great credit to me,
because Bernard’s superb condition would strike any one. You look as if
you were going to marry the Lord Mayor’s daughter!”
If Bernard was blooming, his bloom at this juncture must have deepened,
and in so doing indeed have contributed an even brighter tint to his
expression of salubrious happiness. It was one of the rare occasions of
his life when he was at a loss for a verbal expedient.
“It ‘s a great match,” he nevertheless murmured, jestingly. “You must
excuse my inflated appearance.”
“It has absorbed you so much that you have had no time to write to me,”
said Gordon. “I expected to hear from you after you arrived.”
“I wrote to you a fortnight ago--just before receiving your own letter.
You left New York before my letter reached it.”
“Ah, it will have crossed us,” said Gordon. “But now that we have your
society I don’t care. Your letters, of course, are delightful, but that
is still better.”
In spite of this sympathetic statement Bernard cannot be said to have
enjoyed his lunch; he was thinking of something else that lay before him
and that was not agreeable. He was like a man who has an acrobatic feat
to perform--a wide ditch to leap, a high pole to climb--and who has a
presentiment of fractures and bruises. Fortunately he was not obliged to
talk much, as Mrs. Gordon displayed even more than her usual vivacity,
rendering her companions the graceful service of lifting the burden of
conversation from their shoulders.
“I suppose you were surprised to see us rushing out here so suddenly,”
she observed in the course of the repast. “We had said nothing about
it when you last saw us, and I believe we are supposed to tell you
everything, ain’t we? I certainly have told you a great many things, and
there are some of them I hope you have n’t repeated. I have no doubt
you have told them all over Paris, but I don’t care what you tell in
Paris--Paris is n’t so easily shocked. Captain Lovelock does n’t repeat
what I tell him; I set him up as a model of discretion. I have told him
some pretty bad things, and he has liked them so much he has kept them
all to himself. I say my bad things to Captain Lovelock, and my good
things to other people; he does n’t know the difference and he is
perfectly content.”
“Other people as well often don’t know the difference,” said Gordon,
gravely. “You ought always to tell us which are which.”
Blanche gave her husband a little impertinent stare.
“When I am not appreciated,” she said, with an attempt at superior
dryness, “I am too proud to point it out. I don’t know whether you know
that I ‘m proud,” she went on, turning to Gordon and glancing at Captain
Lovelock; “it ‘s a good thing to know. I suppose Gordon will say that I
ought to be too proud to point that out; but what are you to do when no
one has any imagination? You have a grain or two, Mr. Longueville; but
Captain Lovelock has n’t a speck. As for Gordon, je n’en parle pas! But
even you, Mr. Longueville, would never imagine that I am an interesting
invalid--that we are travelling for my delicate health. The doctors have
n’t given me up, but I have given them up. I know I don’t look as if I
were out of health; but that ‘s because I always try to look my best.
My appearance proves nothing--absolutely nothing. Do you think my
appearance proves anything, Captain Lovelock?”
Captain Lovelock scrutinized Blanche’s appearance with a fixed and
solemn eye; and then he replied--
“It proves you are very lovely.”
Blanche kissed her finger-tips to him in return for this compliment.
“You only need to give Captain Lovelock a chance,” she rattled on, “and
he is as clever as any one. That ‘s what I like to do to my friends--I
like to make chances for them. Captain Lovelock is like my dear little
blue terrier that I left at home. If I hold out a stick he will jump
over it. He won’t jump without the stick; but as soon as I produce it he
knows what he has to do. He looks at it a moment and then he gives his
little hop. He knows he will have a lump of sugar, and Captain Lovelock
expects one as well. Dear Captain Lovelock, shall I ring for a lump?
Would n’t it be touching? Garcon, un morceau de sucre pour Monsieur
le Capitaine! But what I give Monsieur le Capitaine is moral sugar! I
usually administer it in private, and he shall have a good big morsel
when you go away.”
Gordon got up, turning to Bernard and looking at his watch.
“Let us go away, in that case,” he said, smiling, “and leave Captain
Lovelock to receive his reward. We will go and take a walk; we will go
up the Champs Elysees. Good morning, Monsieur le Capitaine.”
Neither Blanche nor the Captain offered any opposition to this proposal,
and Bernard took leave of his hostess and joined Gordon, who had already
passed into the antechamber.