of thought. It has been proved that there are, here and there, in the
world, such people as sincere impostors; certain characters who cultivate
fictitious emotions in perfect good faith. Even if this clever lady
enjoyed poor Pickering's bedazzlement, it was conceivable that, taking
vanity and charity together, she should care more for his welfare than
for her own entertainment; and her offer to abide by the result of
hazardous comparison with other women was a finer stroke than her
reputation had led me to expect. She received me in a shabby little
sitting-room littered with uncut books and newspapers, many of which I
saw at a glance were French. One side of it was occupied by an open
piano, surmounted by a jar full of white roses. They perfumed the air;
they seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering's devotion.
Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this devotion was reading the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The purpose of my visit was not to admire
Madame Blumenthal on my own account, but to ascertain how far I might
safely leave her to work her will upon my friend. She had impugned my
sincerity the evening of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to
abstain from compliments, and not to place her on her guard against my
penetration. It is needless to narrate our interview in detail; indeed,
to tell the perfect truth, I was punished for my rash attempt to surprise
her by a temporary eclipse of my own perspicacity. She sat there so
questioning, so perceptive, so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal,
that I was quite ready at the end of half an hour to subscribe to the
most comprehensive of Pickering's rhapsodies. She was certainly a
wonderful woman. I have never liked to linger, in memory, on that half-
hour. The result of it was to prove that there were many more things in
the composition of a woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her
imagination in the place of her heart than were dreamt of in my
philosophy. Yet, as I sat there stroking my hat and balancing the
account between nature and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very
competent philosopher. She had said she wished me to tell her everything
about our friend, and she questioned me as to his family, his fortune,
his antecedents, and his character. All this was natural in a woman who
had received a passionate declaration of love, and it was expressed with
an air of charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there was really
no mistake about his being a most distinguished young man, and that if I
chose to be explicit, I might deepen her conviction to disinterested
ecstasy, which might have almost provoked me to invent a good opinion, if
I had not had one ready made. I told her that she really knew Pickering
better than I did, and that until we met at Homburg I had not seen him
since he was a boy.
"But he talks to you freely," she answered; "I know you are his
confidant. He has told me certainly a great many things, but I always
feel as if he were keeping something back; as if he were holding
something behind him, and showing me only one hand at once. He seems
often to be hovering on the edge of a secret. I have had several
friendships in my life--thank Heaven! but I have had none more dear to me
than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the painful sense of my
friend being half afraid of me; of his thinking me terrible, strange,
perhaps a trifle out of my wits. Poor me! If he only knew what a plain
good soul I am, and how I only want to know him and befriend him!"
These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity which made mistrust seem
cruel. How much better I might play providence over Pickering's
experiments with life if I could engage the fine instincts of this
charming woman on the providential side! Pickering's secret was, of
course, his engagement to Miss Vernor; it was natural enough that he
should have been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame
Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl's face had not faded
from my memory; I could not rid myself of the suspicion that in going
further Pickering might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal's professions
seemed a virtual promise to agree with me, and, after some hesitation, I
said that my friend had, in fact, a substantial secret, and that perhaps
I might do him a good turn by putting her in possession of it. In as few
words as possible I told her that Pickering stood pledged by filial piety
to marry a young lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my story; when
I had finished it there was a faint flush of excitement in each of her
cheeks. She broke out into a dozen exclamations of admiration and
compassion. "What a wonderful tale--what a romantic situation! No
wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless and unsatisfied; no wonder he
wished to put off the day of submission. And the poor little girl at
Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like the heroine of an
Eastern tale! She would give the world to see her photograph; did I
think Mr. Pickering would show it to her? But never fear; she would ask
nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous story, and if she had
invented it herself, people would have said it was absurdly improbable."
She left her seat and took several turns about the room, smiling to
herself, and uttering little German cries of wonderment. Suddenly she
stopped before the piano and broke into a little laugh; the next moment
she buried her face in the great bouquet of roses. It was time I should
go, but I was indisposed to leave her without obtaining some definite
assurance that, as far as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl
at Smyrna more than the young man at Homburg.
"Of course you know what I wished in telling you this," I said, rising.
"She is evidently a charming creature, and the best thing he can do is to
marry her. I wished to interest you in that view of it."
She had taken one of the roses from the vase and was arranging it in the
front of her dress. Suddenly, looking up, "Leave it to me, leave it to
me!" she cried. "I am interested!" And with her little blue-gemmed hand
she tapped her forehead. "I am deeply interested!"
And with this I had to content myself. But more than once the next day I
repented of my zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a white rose
in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too human. In the evening, at
the Kursaal, I looked for Pickering, but he was not visible, and I
reflected that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate, seemed to
Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing a cooling-term to his passion.
Very late, as I was turning away, I saw him arrive--with no small
satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know immediately in what
way I had attempted to serve him. But he straightway passed his arm
through my own and led me off towards the gardens. I saw that he was too
excited to allow me to speak first.
"I have burnt my ships!" he cried, when we were out of earshot of the
crowd. "I have told her everything. I have insisted that it's simple
torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. It's well
enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her
reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care
for nothing, I know nothing, but that I love her with every pulse of my
being--and that everything else has been a hideous dream, from which she
may wake me into blissful morning with a single word!"
I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him gravely. "You have told
her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?"
"The whole story! I have given it up--I have thrown it to the winds. I
have broken utterly with the past. It may rise in its grave and give me
its curse, but it can't frighten me now. I have a right to be happy, I
have a right to be free, I have a right not to bury myself alive. It was
not _I_ who promised--I was not born then. I myself, my soul, my mind,
my option--all this is but a month old! Ah," he went on, "if you knew
the difference it makes--this having chosen and broken and spoken! I am
twice the man I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was
a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge and cleverness about her, which
oppressed me in the midst of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but
of being too happy!"
I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused a moment,
and took off his hat and fanned himself. "Let me perfectly understand,"
I said at last. "You have asked Madame Blumenthal to be your wife?"
"The wife of my intelligent choice!"
"And does she consent?"
"She asks three days to decide."
"Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. I am bound
to let you know I told her."
"So much the better!" cried Pickering, without apparent resentment or
surprise. "It's not a brilliant offer for such a woman, and in spite of
what I have at stake, I feel that it would be brutal to press her."
"What does she say to your breaking your promise?" I asked in a moment.
Pickering was too much in love for false shame. "She tells me that she
loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. She agrees with me that
I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption from the common law. What
I claim is simply freedom to try to be!"
Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had expected
Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information. But the matter now was
quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid my companion not
work himself into a fever over either fortune.
The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk at
the opera, I had left a card. We gossiped a while, and at last he said
suddenly, "By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda. The
major is at Homburg!"
"Indeed!" said I. "Since when?"
"These three days."
"And what is he doing?"
"He seems," said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied in
sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the
morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him
but a small haystack of white roses. I hope it was received."
"I can assure you it was," I cried. "I saw the lady fairly nestling her
head in it. But I advise the major not to build upon that. He has a
rival."
"Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?"
"Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to have served
him. He has offered her everything, and she has not yet refused it." I
had handed my visitor a cigar, and he was puffing it in silence. At last
he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to Madame Blumenthal, and, on
my affirmative, inquired what I thought of her. "I will not tell you," I
said, "or you'll call _me_ soft."
He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance. "I have noticed your
friend about," he said, "and even if you had not told me, I should have
known he was in love. After he has left his adored, his face wears for
the rest of the day the expression with which he has risen from her feet,
and more than once I have felt like touching his elbow, as you would that
of a man who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his overshoes.
You say he has offered our friend everything; but, my dear fellow, he has
not everything to offer her. He evidently is as amiable as the morning,
but the lady has no taste for daylight."
"I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow," I said.
"Ah, there it is! Has he not some story or other? Isn't he an orphan,
or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent heir to great estates?
She will read his little story to the end, and close the book very
tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, when he least expects it,
she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her other romances. She will
let him dangle, but she will let him drop!"
"Upon my word," I cried, with heat, "if she does, she will be a very
unprincipled little creature!"
Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. "I never said she was a saint!"
Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his simple
word for this event, and in the evening I received a communication which
fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and it ran as
follows:--
"My Dear Friend--I have every hope of being happy, but I am to go to
Wiesbaden to learn my fate. Madame Blumenthal goes thither this
afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany her.
Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the result.
E. P."
One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in rotation at
the different tables d'hote. It so happened that, a couple of days
later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and secured a seat beside
my own. As we took our places I found a letter on my plate, and, as it
was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in opening it. It contained but
three lines--
"I am happy--I am accepted--an hour ago. I can hardly believe it's
your poor friend
E. P."
I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with
the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer
than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt
it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At
last, folding the note and handing it back, "Has your friend mentioned
Madame Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?" he asked.
"You look very wise. I give it up!" said I.
"She is gone there to make the major follow her. He went by the next
train."
"And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?"
"He is not a letter-writer."
"Well," said I, pocketing my letter, "with this document in my hand I am
bound to reserve my judgment. We will have a bottle of Johannisberg, and
drink to the triumph of virtue."
For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering--somewhat to my
surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure. I
had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief
bulletins, and his silence was possibly an indication that it had been
clouded. At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received no
answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired to his former lodging
at Homburg, where I thought it possible he had left property which he
would sooner or later send for. There I learned that he had indeed just
telegraphed from Cologne for his luggage. To Cologne I immediately
despatched a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause of his
silence. The next day I received three words in answer--a simple
uncommented request that I would come to him. I lost no time, and
reached him in the course of a few hours. It was dark when I arrived,
and the city was sheeted in a cold autumnal rain. Pickering had
stumbled, with an indifference which was itself a symptom of distress, on
a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him sitting over a
smouldering fire in a vast dingy chamber which looked as if it had grown
gray with watching the _ennui_ of ten generations of travellers. Looking
at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he was in extreme
tribulation. He was pale and haggard; his face was five years older.
Now, at least, in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life! I
was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly to bitterness; but I
spared him all importunate curiosity, and let him take his time. I
accepted tacitly his tacit confession of distress, and we made for a
while a feeble effort to discuss the picturesqueness of Cologne. At last
he rose and stood a long time looking into the fire, while I slowly paced
the length of the dusky room.
"Well!" he said, as I came back; "I wanted knowledge, and I certainly
know something I didn't a month ago." And herewith, calmly and
succinctly enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related the
history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly on details; he
evidently never was to gush as freely again as he had done during the
prosperity of his suit. He had been accepted one evening, as explicitly
as his imagination could desire, and had gone forth in his rapture and
roamed about till nearly morning in the gardens of the
Conversation-house, taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer night
into his confidence. "It is worth it all, almost," he said, "to have
been wound up for an hour to that celestial pitch. No man, I am sure,
can ever know it but once." The next morning he had repaired to Madame
Blumenthal's lodging and had been met, to his amazement, by a naked
refusal to see him. He had strode about for a couple of hours--in
another mood--and then had returned to the charge. The servant handed
him a three-cornered note; it contained these words: "Leave me alone to-
day; I will give you ten minutes to-morrow evening." Of the next thirty-
six hours he could give no coherent account, but at the appointed time
Madame Blumenthal had received him. Almost before she spoke there had
come to him a sense of the depth of his folly in supposing he knew her.
"One has heard all one's days," he said, "of people removing the mask;
it's one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with her
mask in her hand. Her face," he went on gravely, after a pause--"her
face was horrible!" . . . "I give you ten minutes," she had said,
pointing to the clock. "Make your scene, tear your hair, brandish your
dagger!" And she had sat down and folded her arms. "It's not a joke,"
she cried, "it's dead earnest; let us have it over. You are
dismissed--have you nothing to say?" He had stammered some frantic
demand for an explanation; and she had risen and come near him, looking
at him from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more excited than she
wished him to see. "I have done with you!" she said, with a smile; "you
ought to have done with me! It has all been delightful, but there are
excellent reasons why it should come to an end." "You have been playing a
part, then," he had gasped out; "you never cared for me?" "Yes; till I
knew you; till I saw how far you would go. But now the story's finished;
we have reached the _denoument_. We will close the book and be good
friends." "To see how far I would go?" he had repeated. "You led me on,
meaning all the while to do _this_!" "I led you on, if you will. I
received your visits, in season and out! Sometimes they were very
entertaining; sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you were such a
very curious case of--what shall I call it?--of sincerity, that I
determined to take good and bad together. I wanted to make you commit
yourself unmistakably. I should have preferred not to bring you to this
place; but that too was necessary. Of course I can't marry you; I can do
better. So can you, for that matter; thank your fate for it. You have
thought wonders of me for a month, but your good-humour wouldn't last. I
am too old and too wise; you are too young and too foolish. It seems to
me that I have been very good to you; I have entertained you to the top
of your bent, and, except perhaps that I am a little brusque just now,
you have nothing to complain of. I would have let you down more gently
if I could have taken another month to it; but circumstances have forced
my hand. Abuse me, curse me, if you like. I will make every allowance!"
Pickering listened to all this intently enough to perceive that, as if by
some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground had broken away at his feet,
and that he must recoil. He turned away in dumb amazement. "I don't
know how I seemed to be taking it," he said, "but she seemed really to
desire--I don't know why--something in the way of reproach and
vituperation. But I couldn't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I
was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air--to shake her off and
come to my senses. 'Have you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she
cried, as if she were disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the
door. 'Haven't I treated you to talk enough?' I believed I answered.
'You will write to me then, when you get home?' 'I think not,' said I.
'Six months hence, I fancy, you will come and see me!' 'Never!' said I.
'That's a confession of stupidity,' she answered. 'It means that, even
on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of my conduct.'
The word 'philosophy' seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled.
'I have given you all that you gave me,' she went on. 'Your passion was
an affair of the head.' 'I only wish you had told me sooner that you
considered it so!' I exclaimed. And I went my way. The next day I came
down the Rhine. I sat all day on the boat, not knowing where I was
going, where to get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed to
me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers
here looming over the city. They seemed to say something to me, and when
the boat stopped, I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have not
slept at night--and yet it has been a week of rest!"
It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to recover, and that his own
philosophy, if left to take its time, was adequate to the occasion. After
his story was once told I referred to his grievance but once--that
evening, later, as we were about to separate for the night. "Suffer me
to say that there was some truth in _her_ account of your relations," I
said. "You were using her intellectually, and all the while, without
your knowing it, she was using you. It was diamond cut diamond. Her
needs were the more superficial, and she got tired of the game first." He
frowned and turned uneasily away, but without contradicting me. I waited
a few moments, to see if he would remember, before we parted, that he had
a claim to make upon me. But he seemed to have forgotten it.
The next day we strolled about the picturesque old city, and of course,
before long, went into the cathedral. Pickering said little; he seemed
intent upon his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar near a chapel,
in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving him to his meditations, I
wandered through the church. When I came back I saw he had something to
say. But before he had spoken I laid my hand on his shoulder and looked
at him with a significant smile. He slowly bent his head and dropped his
eyes, with a mixture of assent and humility. I drew forth from where it
had lain untouched for a month the letter he had given me to keep, placed
it silently on his knee, and left him to deal with it alone.
Half an hour later I returned to the same place, but he had gone, and one
of the sacristans, hovering about and seeing me looking for Pickering,
said he thought he had left the church. I found him in his gloomy
chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and down. I should doubtless have
been at a loss to say just what effect I expected the letter from Smyrna
to produce; but his actual aspect surprised me. He was flushed, excited,
a trifle irritated.
"Evidently," I said, "you have read your letter."
"It is proper I should tell you what is in it," he answered. "When I
gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice."
"You called it a 'summons,' I remember."
"I was a great fool! It's a release!"
"From your engagement?"
"From everything! The letter, of course, is from Mr. Vernor. He desires
to let me know at the earliest moment that his daughter, informed for the
first time a week before of what had been expected of her, positively
refuses to be bound by the contract or to assent to my being bound. She
had been given a week to reflect, and had spent it in inconsolable tears.
She had resisted every form of persuasion! from compulsion, writes Mr.
Vernor, he naturally shrinks. The young lady considers the arrangement
'horrible.' After accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she
pretends at last to have a taste of her own. I confess I am surprised; I
had been given to believe that she was stupidly submissive, and would
remain so to the end of the chapter. Not a bit of it. She has insisted
on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates that in case of
non-compliance she threatens him with an attack of brain fever. Mr.
Vernor condoles with me handsomely, and lets me know that the young
lady's attitude has been a great shock to his nerves. He adds that he
will not aggravate such regret as I may do him the honour to entertain,
by any allusions to his daughter's charms and to the magnitude of my
loss, and he concludes with the hope that, for the comfort of all
concerned, I may already have amused my fancy with other 'views.' He
reminds me in a postscript that, in spite of this painful occurrence, the
son of his most valued friend will always be a welcome visitor at his
house. I am free, he observes; I have my life before me; he recommends
an extensive course of travel. Should my wanderings lead me to the East,
he hopes that no false embarrassment will deter me from presenting myself
at Smyrna. He can promise me at least a friendly reception. It's a very
polite letter."