I had half expected that Mrs. Church would make me feel the weight of her
disapproval of my own share in that little act of revelry in the English
Garden. But she maintained her claim to being a highly reasonable
woman—I could not but admire the justice of this pretension—by
recognising my irresponsibility. I had taken her daughter as I found
her, which was, according to Mrs. Church’s view, in a very equivocal
position. The natural instinct of a young man, in such a situation, is
not to protest but to profit; and it was clear to Mrs. Church that I had
had nothing to do with Miss Aurora’s appearing in public under the
insufficient chaperonage of Miss Ruck. Besides, she liked to converse,
and she apparently did me the honour to believe that of all the members
of the Pension Beaurepas I had the most cultivated understanding. I
found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the incident I have
just narrated, and I approached her with a view of making my peace with
her, if this should prove necessary. But Mrs. Church was as gracious as
I could have desired; she put her marker into her book, and folded her
plump little hands on the cover. She made no specific allusion to the
English Garden; she embarked, rather, upon those general considerations
in which her refined intellect was so much at home.
“Always at your studies, Mrs. Church,” I ventured to observe.
“Que voulez-vous? To say studies is to say too much; one doesn’t study
in the parlour of a boarding-house. But I do what I can; I have always
done what I can. That is all I have ever claimed.”
“No one can do more, and you seem to have done a great deal.”
“Do you know my secret?” she asked, with an air of brightening
confidence. And she paused a moment before she imparted her secret—“To
care only for the _best_! To do the best, to know the best—to have, to
desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s what I have always done, in
my quiet little way. I have gone through Europe on my devoted little
errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best. And it has not been for
myself alone; it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the best.
We are not rich, but I can say that.”
“She has had you, madam,” I rejoined finely.
“Certainly, such as I am, I have been devoted. We have got something
everywhere; a little here, a little there. That’s the real secret—to get
something everywhere; you always can if you are devoted. Sometimes it
has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper insight into the
history of art; every little counts you know. Sometimes it has been just
a glimpse, a view, a lovely landscape, an impression. We have always
been on the look-out. Sometimes it has been a valued friendship, a
delightful social tie.”
“Here comes the ‘European society,’ the poor daughter’s bugbear,” I said
to myself. “Certainly,” I remarked aloud—I admit, rather perversely—“if
you have lived a great deal in pensions, you must have got acquainted
with lots of people.”
Mrs. Church dropped her eyes a moment; and then, with considerable
gravity, “I think the European pension system in many respects
remarkable, and in some satisfactory. But of the friendships that we
have formed, few have been contracted in establishments of this kind.”
“I am sorry to hear that!” I said, laughing.
“I don’t say it for you, though I might say it for some others. We have
been interested in European homes.”
“Oh, I see!”
“We have the _éntree_ of the old Genevese society I like its tone. I
prefer it to that of Mr. Ruck,” added Mrs. Church, calmly; “to that of
Mrs. Ruck and Miss Ruck—of Miss Ruck especially.”
“Ah, the poor Rucks haven’t any tone at all,” I said “Don’t take them
more seriously than they take themselves.”
“Tell me this,” my companion rejoined, “are they fair examples?”
“Examples of what?”
“Of our American tendencies.”
“‘Tendencies’ is a big word, dear lady; tendencies are difficult to
calculate. And you shouldn’t abuse those good Rucks, who have been very
kind to your daughter. They have invited her to go and stay with them in
Thirty-Seventh Street.”
“Aurora has told me. It might be very serious.”
“It might be very droll,” I said.
“To me,” declared Mrs. Church, “it is simply terrible. I think we shall
have to leave the Pension Beaurepas. I shall go back to Madame
Chamousset.”
“On account of the Rucks?” I asked.
“Pray, why don’t they go themselves? I have given them some excellent
addresses—written down the very hours of the trains. They were going to
Appenzell; I thought it was arranged.”
“They talk of Chamouni now,” I said; “but they are very helpless and
undecided.”
“I will give them some Chamouni addresses. Mrs. Ruck will send a _chaise
à porteurs_; I will give her the name of a man who lets them lower than
you get them at the hotels. After that they _must_ go.”
“Well, I doubt,” I observed, “whether Mr. Ruck will ever really be seen
on the Mer de Glace—in a high hat. He’s not like you; he doesn’t value
his European privileges. He takes no interest. He regrets Wall Street,
acutely. As his wife says, he is very restless, but he has no curiosity
about Chamouni. So you must not depend too much on the effect of your
addresses.”
“Is it a frequent type?” asked Mrs. Church, with an air of self-control.
“I am afraid so. Mr. Ruck is a broken-down man of business. He is
broken down in health, and I suspect he is broken down in fortune. He
has spent his whole life in buying and selling; he knows how to do
nothing else. His wife and daughter have spent their lives, not in
selling, but in buying; and they, on their side, know how to do nothing
else. To get something in a shop that they can put on their backs—that
is their one idea; they haven’t another in their heads. Of course they
spend no end of money, and they do it with an implacable persistence,
with a mixture of audacity and of cunning. They do it in his teeth and
they do it behind his back; the mother protects the daughter, and the
daughter eggs on the mother. Between them they are bleeding him to
death.”
“Ah, what a picture!” murmured Mrs. Church. “I am afraid they are
very-uncultivated.”
“I share your fears. They are perfectly ignorant; they have no
resources. The vision of fine clothes occupies their whole imagination.
They have not an idea—even a worse one—to compete with it. Poor Mr.
Ruck, who is extremely good-natured and soft, seems to me a really tragic
figure. He is getting bad news every day from home; his business is
going to the dogs. He is unable to stop it; he has to stand and watch
his fortunes ebb. He has been used to doing things in a big way, and he
feels mean, if he makes a fuss about bills. So the ladies keep sending
them in.”
“But haven’t they common sense? Don’t they know they are ruining
themselves?”
“They don’t believe it. The duty of an American husband and father is to
keep them going. If he asks them how, that’s his own affair. So, by way
of not being mean, of being a good American husband and father, poor Ruck
stands staring at bankruptcy.”
Mrs. Church looked at me a moment, in quickened meditation. “Why, if
Aurora were to go to stay with them, she might not even be properly fed!”
“I don’t, on the whole, recommend,” I said, laughing, “that your daughter
should pay a visit to Thirty-Seventh Street.”
“Why should I be subjected to such trials—so sadly _éprouvée_? Why
should a daughter of mine like that dreadful girl?”
“_Does_ she like her?”
“Pray, do you mean,” asked my companion, softly, “that Aurora is a
hypocrite?”
I hesitated a moment. “A little, since you ask me. I think you have
forced her to be.”
Mrs. Church answered this possibly presumptuous charge with a tranquil,
candid exultation. “I never force my daughter!”
“She is nevertheless in a false position,” I rejoined. “She hungers and
thirsts to go back to her own country; she wants ‘to come’ out in New
York, which is certainly, socially speaking, the El Dorado of young
ladies. She likes any one, for the moment, who will talk to her of that,
and serve as a connecting-link with her native shores. Miss Ruck
performs this agreeable office.”
“Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with Miss Ruck to America she
would drop her afterwards.”
I complimented Mrs. Church upon her logical mind, but I repudiated this
cynical supposition. “I can’t imagine her—when it should come to the
point—embarking with the famille Ruck. But I wish she might go,
nevertheless.”
Mrs. Church shook her head serenely, and smiled at my inappropriate zeal.
“I trust my poor child may never be guilty of so fatal a mistake. She is
completely in error; she is wholly unadapted to the peculiar conditions
of American life. It would not please her. She would not sympathise.
My daughter’s ideal is not the ideal of the class of young women to which
Miss Ruck belongs. I fear they are very numerous; they give the
tone—they give the tone.”
“It is you that are mistaken,” I said; “go home for six months and see.”
“I have not, unfortunately, the means to make costly experiments. My
daughter has had great advantages—rare advantages—and I should be very
sorry to believe that _au fond_ she does not appreciate them. One thing
is certain: I must remove her from this pernicious influence. We must
part company with this deplorable family. If Mr. Ruck and his ladies
cannot be induced to go to Chamouni—a journey that no traveller with the
smallest self-respect would omit—my daughter and I shall be obliged to
retire. We shall go to Dresden.”
“To Dresden?”
“The capital of Saxony. I had arranged to go there for the autumn, but
it will be simpler to go immediately. There are several works in the
gallery with which my daughter has not, I think, sufficiently
familiarised herself; it is especially strong in the seventeenth century
schools.”
As my companion offered me this information I perceived Mr. Ruck come
lounging in, with his hands in his pockets, and his elbows making acute
angles. He had his usual anomalous appearance of both seeking and
avoiding society, and he wandered obliquely toward Mrs. Church, whose
last words he had overheard. “The seventeenth century schools,” he said,
slowly, as if he were weighing some very small object in a very
large-pair of scales. “Now, do you suppose they _had_ schools at that
period?”
Mrs. Church rose with a good deal of precision, making no answer to this
incongruous jest. She clasped her large volume to her neat little bosom,
and she fixed a gentle, serious eye upon Mr. Ruck.
“I had a letter this morning from Chamouni,” she said.
“Well,” replied Mr. Ruck, “I suppose you’ve got friends all over.”
“I have friends at Chamouni, but they are leaving. To their great
regret.” I had got up, too; I listened to this statement, and I
wondered. I am almost ashamed to mention the subject of my agitation. I
asked myself whether this was a sudden improvisation, consecrated by
maternal devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. “They are
giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would like them. I would
suggest your telegraphing. The weather is glorious,” continued Mrs.
Church, “and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary
distinctness.”
Mr. Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. “Well,” he said,
“I don’t know as I want to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal
attraction, isn’t it?”
“There are many others. I thought I would offer you an—an exceptional
opportunity.”
“Well,” said Mr. Ruck, “you’re right down friendly. But I seem to have
more opportunities than I know what to do with. I don’t seem able to
take hold.”
“It only needs a little decision,” remarked Mrs. Church, with an air
which was an admirable example of this virtue. “I wish you good-night,
sir.” And she moved noiselessly away.
Mr. Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; then he
transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. “Does she own a hotel over
there?” he asked. “Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?”