Some three evenings after he received this last report of the progress
of affairs in Paris, Bernard, upon whom the burden of exile sat none the
more lightly as the days went on, turned out of the Strand into one of
the theatres. He had been gloomily pushing his way through the various
London densities--the November fog, the nocturnal darkness, the jostling
crowd. He was too restless to do anything but walk, and he had been
saying to himself, for the thousandth time, that if he had been guilty
of a misdemeanor in succumbing to the attractions of the admirable girl
who showed to such advantage in letters of twelve pages, his fault was
richly expiated by these days of impatience and bereavement. He gave
little heed to the play; his thoughts were elsewhere, and, while they
rambled, his eyes wandered round the house. Suddenly, on the other
side of it, he beheld Captain Lovelock, seated squarely in his
orchestra-stall, but, if Bernard was not mistaken, paying as little
attention to the stage as he himself had done. The Captain’s eyes, it
is true, were fixed upon the scene; his head was bent a little, his
magnificent beard rippled over the expanse of his shirt-front. But
Bernard was not slow to see that his gaze was heavy and opaque, and
that, though he was staring at the actresses, their charms were lost
upon him. He saw that, like himself, poor Lovelock had matter for
reflection in his manly breast, and he concluded that Blanche’s
ponderous swain was also suffering from a sense of disjunction. Lovelock
sat in the same posture all the evening, and that his imagination had
not projected itself into the play was proved by the fact that during
the entractes he gazed with the same dull fixedness at the curtain.
Bernard forebore to interrupt him; we know that he was not at this
moment socially inclined, and he judged that the Captain was as little
so, inasmuch as causes even more imperious than those which had operated
in his own case must have been at the bottom of his sudden appearance in
London. On leaving the theatre, however, Bernard found himself detained
with the crowd in the vestibule near the door, which, wide open to the
street, was a scene of agitation and confusion. It had come on to rain,
and the raw dampness mingled itself with the dusky uproar of the Strand.
At last, among the press of people, as he was passing out, our hero
became aware that he had been brought into contact with Lovelock,
who was walking just beside him. At the same moment Lovelock noticed
him--looked at him for an instant, and then looked away. But he
looked back again the next instant, and the two men then uttered that
inarticulate and inexpressive exclamation which passes for a sign of
greeting among gentlemen of the Anglo-Saxon race, in their moments of
more acute self-consciousness.
“Oh, are you here?” said Bernard. “I thought you were in Paris.”
“No; I ain’t in Paris,” Lovelock answered with some dryness. “Tired of
the beastly hole!”
“Oh, I see,” said Bernard. “Excuse me while I put up my umbrella.”
He put up his umbrella, and from under it, the next moment, he saw the
Captain waving two fingers at him out of the front of a hansom. When
he returned to his hotel he found on his table a letter superscribed in
Gordon Wright’s hand. This communication ran as follows:
“I believe you are making a fool of me. In Heaven’s name, come back to
Paris! G. W.”
Bernard hardly knew whether to regard these few words as a further
declaration of war, or as an overture to peace; but he lost no time in
complying with the summons they conveyed. He started for Paris the
next morning, and in the evening, after he had removed the dust of his
journey and swallowed a hasty dinner, he rang at Mrs. Vivian’s door.
This lady and her daughter gave him a welcome which--I will not say
satisfied him, but which, at least, did something toward soothing the
still unhealed wounds of separation.
“And what is the news of Gordon?” he presently asked.
“We have not seen him in three days,” said Angela.
“He is cured, dear Bernard; he must be. Angela has been wonderful,” Mrs.
Vivian declared.
“You should have seen mamma with Blanche,” her daughter said, smiling.
“It was most remarkable.”
Mrs. Vivian smiled, too, very gently.
“Dear little Blanche! Captain Lovelock has gone to London.”
“Yes, he thinks it a beastly hole. Ah, no,” Bernard added, “I have got
it wrong.”
But it little mattered. Late that night, on his return to his own rooms,
Bernard sat gazing at his fire. He had not begun to undress; he was
thinking of a good many things. He was in the midst of his reflections
when there came a rap at his door, which the next moment was flung open.
Gordon Wright stood there, looking at him--with a gaze which Bernard
returned for a moment before bidding him to come in. Gordon came in and
came up to him; then he held out his hand. Bernard took it with great
satisfaction; his last feeling had been that he was very weary of this
ridiculous quarrel, and it was an extreme relief to find it was over.
“It was very good of you to go to London,” said Gordon, looking at him
with all the old serious honesty of his eyes.
“I have always tried to do what I could to oblige you,” Bernard
answered, smiling.
“You must have cursed me over there,” Gordon went on.
“I did, a little. As you were cursing me here, it was permissible.”
“That ‘s over now,” said Gordon. “I came to welcome you back. It seemed
to me I could n’t lay my head on my pillow without speaking to you.”
“I am glad to get back,” Bernard admitted, smiling still. “I can’t
deny that. And I find you as I believed I should.” Then he added,
seriously--“I knew Angela would keep us good friends.”
For a moment Gordon said nothing. Then, at last--
“Yes, for that purpose it did n’t matter which of us should marry her.
If it had been I,” he added, “she would have made you accept it.”
“Ah, I don’t know!” Bernard exclaimed.
“I am sure of it,” said Gordon earnestly--almost argumentatively. “She
‘s an extraordinary woman.”
“Keeping you good friends with me--that ‘s a great thing. But it ‘s
nothing to her keeping you good friends with your wife.”
Gordon looked at Bernard for an instant; then he fixed his eyes for some
time on the fire.
“Yes, that is the greatest of all things. A man should value his
wife. He should believe in her. He has taken her, and he should keep
her--especially when there is a great deal of good in her. I was a great
fool the other day,” he went on. “I don’t remember what I said. It was
very weak.”
“It seemed to me feeble,” said Bernard. “But it is quite within a man’s
rights to be a fool once in a while, and you had never abused of the
license.”
“Well, I have done it for a lifetime--for a lifetime.” And Gordon took
up his hat. He looked into the crown of it for a moment, and then he
fixed his eyes on Bernard’s again. “But there is one thing I hope you
won’t mind my saying. I have come back to my old impression of Miss
Vivian.”
“Your old impression?”
And Miss Vivian’s accepted lover frowned a little.
“I mean that she ‘s not simple. She ‘s very strange.”
Bernard’s frown cleared away in a sudden, almost eager smile.
“Say at once that you dislike her! That will do capitally.”
Gordon shook his head, and he, too, almost smiled a little.
“It ‘s not true. She ‘s very wonderful. And if I did dislike her, I
should struggle with it. It would never do for me to dislike your wife!”
After he had gone, when the night was half over, Bernard, lying awake
a while, gave a laugh in the still darkness, as this last sentence came
back to him.
On the morrow he saw Blanche, for he went to see Gordon. The latter, at
first, was not at home; but he had a quarter of an hour’s talk with his
wife, whose powers of conversation were apparently not in the smallest
degree affected by anything that had occurred.
“I hope you enjoyed your visit to London,” she said. “Did you go to buy
Angela a set of diamonds in Bond Street? You did n’t buy anything--you
did n’t go into a shop? Then pray what did you go for? Excuse my
curiosity--it seems to me it ‘s rather flattering. I never know anything
unless I am told. I have n’t any powers of observation. I noticed you
went--oh, yes, I observed that very much; and I thought it very strange,
under the circumstances. Your most intimate friend arrived in Paris, and
you choose the next day to make a little tour! I don’t like to see you
treat my husband so; he would never have done it to you. And if you did
n’t stay for Gordon, you might have staid for Angela. I never heard of
anything so monstrous as a gentleman rushing away from the object of his
affection, for no particular purpose that any one could discover, the
day after she has accepted him. It was not the day after? Well, it was
too soon, at any rate. Angela could n’t in the least tell me what
you had gone for; she said it was for a ‘change.’ That was a charming
reason! But she was very much ashamed of you--and so was I; and at last
we all sent Captain Lovelock after you to bring you back. You came back
without him? Ah, so much the better; I suppose he is still looking for
you, and, as he is n’t very clever, that will occupy him for some time.
We want to occupy him; we don’t approve of his being so idle. However,
for my own part, I am very glad you were away. I was a great deal at
Mrs. Vivian’s, and I should n’t have felt nearly so much at liberty
to go if I had known I should always find you there making love to
Mademoiselle. It would n’t have seemed to me discreet,--I know what you
are going to say--that it ‘s the first time you ever heard of my wishing
to avoid an indiscretion. It ‘s a taste I have taken up lately,--for the
same reason you went to London, for a ‘change.’” Here Blanche paused
for an appreciable moment; and then she added--“Well, I must say, I have
never seen anything so lovely as Mrs. Vivian’s influence. I hope mamma
won’t be disappointed in it this time.”
When Bernard next saw the other two ladies, he said to them that he
was surprised at the way in which clever women incurred moral
responsibilities.
“We like them,” said Mrs. Vivian. “We delight in them!”
“Well,” said Bernard, “I would n’t for the world have it on my
conscience to have reconciled poor Gordon to Mrs. Blanche.”
“You are not to say a word against Blanche,” Angela declared. “She ‘s a
little miracle.”
“It will be all right, dear Bernard,” Mrs. Vivian added, with soft
authority.
“I have taken a great fancy to her,” the younger lady went on.
Bernard gave a little laugh.
“Gordon is right in his ultimate opinion. You are very strange!”
“You may abuse me as much as you please; but I will never hear a word
against Mrs. Gordon.”
And she never would in future; though it is not recorded that Bernard
availed himself in any special degree of the license offered him in
conjunction with this warning.
Blanche’s health within a few days had, according to her own account,
taken a marvellous turn for the better; but her husband appeared still
to think it proper that they should spend the winter beneath a brilliant
sun, and he presently informed his friends that they had at last settled
it between them that a voyage up the Nile must be, for a thoroughly
united couple, a very agreeable pastime. To perform this expedition
advantageously they must repair to Cairo without delay, and for this
reason he was sure that Bernard and Angela would easily understand their
not making a point of waiting for the wedding. These happy people
quite understood it. Their nuptials were to be celebrated with extreme
simplicity. If, however, Gordon was not able to be present, he, in
conjunction with his wife, bought for Angela, as a bridal gift, a
necklace of the most beautiful pearls the Rue de la Paix could furnish;
and on his arrival at Cairo, while he waited for his dragoman to give
the signal for starting, he found time, in spite of the exactions of
that large correspondence which has been more than once mentioned in the
course of our narrative, to write Bernard the longest letter he had
ever addressed to him. The letter reached Bernard in the middle of his
honeymoon.