in having this famous burden so handsomely lifted from his spirit. He
began to brood over his liberation in a manner which you might have
deemed proper to a renewed sense of bondage. "Bad news," he had called
his letter originally; and yet, now that its contents proved to be in
flat contradiction to his foreboding, there was no impulsive voice to
reverse the formula and declare the news was good. The wings of impulse
in the poor fellow had of late been terribly clipped. It was an obvious
reflection, of course, that if he had not been so stiffly certain of the
matter a month before, and had gone through the form of breaking Mr.
Vernor's seal, he might have escaped the purgatory of Madame Blumenthal's
sub-acid blandishments. But I left him to moralise in private; I had no
desire, as the phrase is, to rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were
following another train; I was saying to myself that if to those gentle
graces of which her young visage had offered to my fancy the blooming
promise, Miss Vernor added in this striking measure the capacity for
magnanimous action, the amendment to my friend's career had been less
happy than the rough draught. Presently, turning about, I saw him
looking at the young lady's photograph. "Of course, now," he said, "I
have no right to keep it!" And before I could ask for another glimpse of
it, he had thrust it into the fire.
"I am sorry to be saying it just now," I observed after a while, "but I
shouldn't wonder if Miss Vernor were a charming creature."
"Go and find out," he answered, gloomily. "The coast is clear. My part
is to forget her," he presently added. "It ought not to be hard. But
don't you think," he went on suddenly, "that for a poor fellow who asked
nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in a quiet corner, it has been
rather a cruel pushing about?"
Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the right to demand a
clean page on the book of fate and a fresh start. Mr. Vernor's advice
was sound; he should amuse himself with a long journey. If it would be
any comfort to him, I would go with him on his way. Pickering assented
without enthusiasm; he had the embarrassed look of a man who, having gone
to some cost to make a good appearance in a drawing-room, should find the
door suddenly slammed in his face. We started on our journey, however,
and little by little his enthusiasm returned. He was too capable of
enjoying fine things to remain permanently irresponsive, and after a
fortnight spent among pictures and monuments and antiquities, I felt that
I was seeing him for the first time in his best and healthiest mood. He
had had a fever, and then he had had a chill; the pendulum had swung
right and left in a manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at
last, it was working back to an even, natural beat. He recovered in a
measure the generous eloquence with which he had fanned his flame at
Homburg, and talked about things with something of the same passionate
freshness. One day when I was laid up at the inn at Bruges with a lame
foot, he came home and treated me to a rhapsody about a certain
meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than
his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his
sombre moods--hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and
go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a trifle
more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging his head
in so doleful a fashion that I took the bull by the horns and told him he
had by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and that he owed it
to himself to banish that woman for ever from his thoughts.
He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush--"That woman?" he said.
"I was not thinking of Madame Blumenthal!"
After this I gave another construction to his melancholy. Taking him
with his hopes and fears, at the end of six weeks of active observation
and keen sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be. We made
our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight at Venice. There something
happened which I had been confidently expecting; I had said to myself
that it was merely a question of time. We had passed the day at
Torcello, and came floating back in the glow of the sunset, with measured
oar-strokes. "I am well on the way," Pickering said; "I think I will
go!"
We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally asked him, Where? His
answer was delayed by our getting into the Piazzetta. I stepped ashore
first and then turned to help him. As he took my hand he met my eyes,
consciously, and it came. "To Smyrna!"
A couple of days later he started. I had risked the conjecture that Miss
Vernor was a charming creature, and six months afterwards he wrote me
that I was right.