After a ten-mile pull on the river, a shandygaff of Bass and champagne
is comforting to the oarsman. It is accounted pleasant to pay a patient
creditor an outlawed debt. But a poet has held that the most pleasurable
thing imaginable is to awake on a summer morning with the consciousness
of being in love. Even in winter the sensation ought not to be
disagreeable; yet when to the consciousness of being in love is added
the belief that the love is returned, then the bleakest day of all the
year must seem like a rose of June.
Tristrem passed the night in dreams that told of Her. He strayed through
imperishable beauties, through dawns surrounded by candors of hope. The
breath of brooks caressed him, he was enveloped in the sorceries of a
sempiternal spring. The winds, articulate with song, choired to the
skies ululations and messages of praise. Each vista held a promise. The
horizon was a prayer fulfilled. He saw grief collapse and joy enthroned.
From bird and blossom he caught the incommunicable words of love. And
when from some new witchery he at last awoke, he smiled--the real was
fairer than the dream.
For some time he loitered in the gardens which his fancy disclosed,
spectacular-wise, for his own delight, until at last he bethought him of
the new duties of his position and of the accompanying necessity of
making those duties known to those to whom he was related. Then, after a
breakfast of sliced oranges and coffee, he rang for the servant and told
him to ask his father whether he could spare a moment that morning. In a
few minutes the servant returned. "Mr. Varick will be happy to see you,
sir," he said.
"What did he say?" Tristrem asked; "what were his exact words?"
"Well, sir, I said as how you presented your compliments, and could you
see him, and he didn't say nothing; he was feeding the bird. But I could
tell, sir; when Mr. Varick doesn't like a thing, he looks at you and if
he does, he doesn't."
"And he didn't look at you?"
"No, sir, he didn't turn his 'ead."
"H'm," said Tristrem to himself, as he descended the stairs, "I wonder,
when I tell him, whether he will look at me." And the memory of his
father's stare cast a shadow on his buoyant spirits.
On entering the room in which Mr. Varick passed his mornings, Tristrem
found that gentleman seated at a table. In one hand he held a
bronze-colored magazine, and in the other a silver knife. In the window
was a gilt cage in which a bird was singing, and on the table was a
profusion of roses--the room itself was vast and chill. One wall was
lined, the entire length, with well-filled book-shelves. In a corner was
a square pile of volumes, bound in pale sheep, which a lawyer would have
recognized as belonging to the pleasant literature of his profession.
And over the book-shelves was a row of Varicks, standing in the upright
idleness which is peculiar to portraits in oil. It was many years since
Tristrem had entered this room; yet now, save for the scent of flowers
and the bird-cage, it was practically unchanged.
"Father," he began at once, "I would not have ventured to disturb you
if--if--that is, unless I had something important to say." He was
looking at his father, but his father was not looking at him. "It is
this," he continued, irritated in spite of himself by the complete
disinterestedness of one whose son he was; "I am engaged to be married."
At this announcement Mr. Varick fluttered the paper-knife, but said
nothing.
"The young lady is Miss Raritan," he added, and then paused, amazed at
the expression of his father's face. It was as though unseen hands were
torturing it at will. The mouth, cheeks, and eyelids quivered and
twitched, and then abruptly Mr. Varick raised the bronze-colored
magazine, held it before his tormented features, and when he lowered it
again his expression was as apathetic as before.
"You are ill!" Tristrem exclaimed, advancing to him.
But Mr. Varick shook his head, and motioned him back. "It is nothing,"
he answered. "Let me see, you were saying----?"
"I am engaged to Miss Raritan."
"The daughter of----"
"Her father was Roanoke Raritan. He was minister somewhere--to England
or to France, I believe."
While Tristrem was giving this information Mr. Varick went to the
window. He looked at the occupant of the gilt cage, and ran a thumb
through the wires. The bird ruffled its feathers, cocked its head, and
edged gingerly along the perch, reproving the intrusive finger with the
scorn and glitter of two eyes of bead. But the anger of the canary was
brief. In a moment Mr. Varick left the cage, and turned again to his
son.
"Nothing you could do," he said, "would please me better."
"Thank you," Tristrem answered, "I----"
"Are you to be married at once?"
"Not before November, sir."
"I wish it were sooner. I do not approve of protracted engagements. But,
of course, you know your own business best. If I remember rightly, the
father of this young lady did not leave much of a fortune, did he?"
"Nothing to speak of, I believe."
"You have my best wishes. The match is very suitable, very suitable. I
wish you would say as much, with my compliments, to the young lady's
mother. I would do so myself, but, as you know, I am something of an
invalid. You might add that, too--and--er--I don't mean to advise you,
but I would endeavor to hasten the ceremony. In such matters, it is
usual for the young lady to be coy, but it is for the man to be pressing
and resolute. I only regret that her father could not know of it. In
regard to money, your allowance will have to be increased--well, I will
attend to that. There is nothing else, is there? Oh, do me the favor not
to omit to say that I am much pleased. I knew Miss Raritan's father."
Mr. Varick looked up at the ceiling, and put his hand to his mouth. It
was difficult to say whether he was concealing a smile or a yawn. "He
would be pleased, I know." And with that Mr. Varick resumed his former
position, and took up again the magazine.
"It is very good of you," Tristrem began; "I didn't know, of course--you
see, I knew that if you saw the young lady--but what am I calling her a
young lady for?" he asked, in an aside, of himself--"Miss Raritan, I
mean," he continued aloud, "you would think me fortunate as a king's
cousin." He paused. "I am sure," he reflected, "I don't know what I am
talking about. What I say--is sheer imbecility. However," he continued,
again, "I want to thank you. You have seen so little of me that I did
not expect you would be particularly interested, I--I----"
He hesitated again, and then ceased speaking. He had been looking at his
father, and something in his father's stare fascinated and disturbed his
train of thought. For the moment he was puzzled. From his childhood he
had felt that his father disliked him, though the reason of that dislike
he had never understood. It was one of those things that you get so
accustomed to that it is accepted, like baldness, as a matter of course,
as a thing which had to be and could not be otherwise. To his
grandfather, who was at once the most irascible and gentlest of men, and
whom he had loved instinctively, from the first, with the unreasoning
faith that children have--to him he had, in earlier days, spoken more
than once of the singularity of his father's attitude. The old
gentleman, however, had no explanation to give. Or, if he had one, he
preferred to keep it to himself. But he petted the boy outrageously,
with some idea of making up for it all, and of showing that he at least
had love enough for two.
And now, as Tristrem gazed in his father's face, he seemed to decipher
something that was not dislike--rather the contented look of one who
learns of an enemy's disgrace, a compound of malice and of glee.
"That was all I had to say," Tristrem added, with his winning smile, as
though apologizing for the lameness of the conclusion. And thereupon he
left the room and went out to consult a jeweller and bear the tidings to
other ears.
For some time he was absurdly happy. His grandfather received the
announcement of the coming marriage with proper enthusiasm. He laughed
sagaciously at Tristrem's glowing descriptions of the bride that was to
be, and was for going to call on the mother and daughter at once, and
was only prevented on learning that they had both left town.
"But I must write," he said, and write he did, two elaborate letters,
couched in that phraseology at once recondite and simple which made our
ancestors the delightful correspondents that they were. The letters were
old-fashioned indeed. Some of the sentences were enlivened with the
eccentricities of orthography which were in vogue in the days of the
_Spectator_. The handwriting was infamous, and the signature on each was
adorned with an enormous flourish. They were not models for a Perfect
Letter Writer, but they were heartfelt and honest, and they served their
purpose very well.
"And, Tristrem," the old gentleman said, when the addresses had been
dried with a shower of sand and the letters despatched, "you must take
her this, with my love. I gave it to your mother on her wedding day, and
now it should go to her." From a little red case he took a diamond
brooch, set in silver, which he polished reflectively on his sleeve.
"She was very sweet, Tristrem, your mother was--a good girl, and a
pretty one. Did I ever tell you about the time----"
And the old gentleman ran on with some anecdote of the dear dead days in
which his heart was tombed. Tristrem listened with the interest of those
that love. He had heard the story, and many others of a similar tenor,
again and again, but, somehow, he never heard them too often. There was
nothing wearisome to him in such chronicles; and as he sat listening,
and now and then prompting with some forgotten detail, anyone who had
happened on the scene would have accounted it pleasant to watch the
young fellow and the old man talking together over the youth of her who
had been mother to one and daughter to the other.
"See!" said Tristrem at last, when his grandfather had given the brooch
into his keeping. "See! I have something for her too." And with that he
displayed a ruby, unset, that was like a clot of blood. "I shall have it
put in a ring," he explained, "but this might do for a bonnet-pin;" and
then he produced a green stone, white-filmed, that had a heart of
oscillating flame.
Mr. Van Norden had taken the ruby in his hand and held it off at arm's
length, and then between two fingers, to the light, that he might the
better judge of its beauty. But at the mention of the bonnet-pin he
turned to look:
"Surely, Tristrem, you would not give her that; it's an opal."
"And what if it is?"
"But it is not lucky."
Tristrem smiled blithely, with the bravery that comes of
nineteenth-century culture.
"It's a pearl with a soul," he answered, "that's what it is. And if
Viola doesn't like it I'll send it to you."
"God forbid," Mr. Van Norden replied; "if anyone sent me an opal I would
swear so hard that if the devil heard me he'd go in a corner and cross
himself."
At this threat Tristrem burst out laughing, and the old gentleman,
amused in spite of himself at the fantasy of his own speech, burst out
laughing too.
Then there was more chat, and more reminiscences, and much planning as
to how Tristrem should best assume the rank and appanages of the married
state. Tristrem dined with his grandfather that evening, and when Mr.
Van Norden started out to his club for a game of whist, Tristrem
accompanied him as far as the club door.
When they parted, Tristrem was in such spirits that he could have run up
to Central Park and back again. "Divinities of Pindar," he kept
exclaiming--a phrase that he had caught somewhere--"divinities of
Pindar, she is mine."
Thereafter, for several days, he lived, as all true lovers do, on air
and the best tenderloins he could obtain.