During the hot days and nights of the next few weeks Tredennis found
life rather a dreary affair. Gradually the familiar faces he met on the
avenue became fewer and fewer; the houses he knew one after another
assumed their air of summer desertion, offering as their only evidences
of life an occasional colored servant sunning him or herself on the
steps; the crowds of nursery-maids, with their charges, thinned out in
the parks, and the freshness of the leaves was lost under a coating of
dust, while the countenances of those for whom there was no prospect of
relief expressed either a languid sense of injury or the patience of
despair.
"But, after all," Tredennis said, on two or three occasions, as he sat
in one of the parks in the evening,--"after all, I suppose most of them
have--an object," adding the last two words with a faint smile.
He was obliged to confess to himself that of late he found that the work
which he had regarded as his object had ceased to satisfy him. He gave
his attention to it with stern persistence, and refused to spare himself
when he found his attention wandering; he even undertook additional
labor, writing in his moments of leisure several notable articles upon
various important questions of the day, and yet he had time left to hang
heavily on his hands and fill him with weariness; and at last there came
an evening when, after sitting in one of the parks until the lamps were
lighted, he rose suddenly from his seat, and spoke as if to the silence
and shadow about him.
"Why should I try to hide the truth from myself?" he said. "It is too
late for that. I may as well face it like a man, and bear it like one.
Many a brave fellow has carried a bullet in his body down to his grave,
and seldom winced. This is something like that, I suppose, only that
pain"--And he drew a sharp, hard breath, and walked away down the
deserted path without ending the sentence.
He made a struggle after this to resist one poor temptation which beset
him daily,--the temptation to pass through the street in which stood the
familiar house, with its drawn blinds and closed doors. Sometimes, when
he rose in the morning, he was so filled with an unreasoning yearning
for a sight of its blankness that he was overwhelmed by it, and went out
before he breakfasted.
"It is weakness and self-indulgence," he would say; "but it is a very
little thing, and it can hurt no one--it is only a little thing, after
all." And he found a piteous pleasure--at which at first he tried to
smile, but at which before long he ceased even to try to smile--in the
slow walk down the street, on which he could see this window or that,
and remember some day when he had caught a glimpse of Bertha through it,
or some night he had spent in the room within when she had been gayer
than usual, or quieter,--when she had given him some new wound, perhaps,
or when she had half-healed an old one in some mood of relenting he had
not understood.
"There is no reason why I should understand any woman," was his simple
thought. "And why should I understand her, unless she chose to let me?
She is like no other woman."
He was quite sure of this. In his thoughts of her he found every word
and act of hers worth remembering and even repeating mentally again and
again for the sake of the magnetic grace which belonged only to herself,
and it never once occurred to him that his own deep sympathy and tender
fancy might brighten all she did.
"When she speaks," he thought, "how the dullest of them stir and listen!
When she moves across a room, how natural it is to turn and look at her,
and be interested in what she is going to do! What life I have seen her
put in some poor, awkward wretch by only seating herself near him and
speaking to him of some common thing! One does not know what her gift
is, and whether it is well for her or ill that it was given her, but one
sees it in the simplest thing she does."
It was hard to avoid giving himself up to such thoughts as these, and
when he most needed refuge from them he always sought it in the society
of the professor; so there were few evenings when he did not spend an
hour or so with him, and their friendship grew and waxed strong until
there could scarcely have been a closer bond between them.
About two weeks after Richard Amory's departure, making his call later
than usual one evening, he met, coming down the steps, Mr. Arbuthnot,
who stopped, with his usual civility, to shake hands with him.
"It is some weeks since we have crossed each other's paths, colonel," he
said, scrutinizing him rather closely: "and, in the meantime, I am
afraid you have not been well."
"Amory called my attention to the fact a short time ago," responded
Tredennis, "and so did the professor. So, perhaps, there is some truth
in it. I hadn't noticed it myself."
"You will presently, I assure you," said Arbuthnot, still regarding him
with an air of interest. "Perhaps Washington doesn't agree with you. I
have heard of people who couldn't stand it. They usually called it
malaria, but I think there was generally something"--He checked himself
somewhat abruptly, which was a rather unusual demonstration on his part,
as it was his habit to weigh his speech with laudable care and
deliberation. "You are going to see the professor?" he inquired.
"Yes," answered Tredennis.
The idea was presenting itself to his mind that there was a suggestion
of something unusual in the questioner's manner; that it was not so
entirely serene as was customary; that there was even a hint of some
inward excitement strong enough to be repressed only by an effort. And
the consciousness of this impressed itself upon him even while a flow of
light talk went on, and Arbuthnot smiled at him from his upper step.
"I have been to see the professor, too," he was saying, "and I felt it
was something of an audacity. His invitations to me have always been of
the most general nature; but I thought I would take the liberty of
pretending that I fancied he regarded them seriously. He was very good
to me, and exhibited wonderful presence of mind in not revealing that he
was surprised to see me. I tried not to stay long enough to tire him,
and he was sufficiently amiable to ask me to come again. He evidently
appreciated the desolation of my circumstances."
"You are finding it dull?" said Tredennis.
"Dull!" repeated Arbuthnot. "Yes; I think you might call it dull. The
people who kindly condescend to notice me in the winter have gone away,
and my dress-coat is packed in camphor. I have ceased to be useful; and,
even if Fate had permitted me to be ornamental, where should I air my
charms? There seems really no reason why I should exist, until next
winter, when I may be useful again, and receive in return my modicum of
entertainment. To be merely a superior young man in a department is not
remunerative in summer, as one ceases to glean the results of one's
superiority. At present I might as well be inferior, and neither dance,
nor talk, nor sing, and be utterly incapacitated by nature for either
carrying wraps or picking up handkerchiefs; and you cannot disport
yourself at the watering-places of the rich and great on a salary of a
hundred dollars a month; and you could only get your sordid 'month's
leave,' if such a thing were possible."
"I--have been dull myself," said Tredennis, hesitantly.
"If it should ever occur to you to drop in and see a fellow-sufferer,"
said Arbuthnot, "it would relieve the monotony of _my_ lot, at least,
and might awaken in me some generous emotions."
Tredennis looked up at him.
"It never has occurred to you so far, I see," was Arbuthnot's light
reply to the look; "but, if it should, don't resist the impulse. I can
assure you it is a laudable one. And my humble apartment has the
advantage of comparative coolness."
When Tredennis entered the library he found the professor sitting in his
usual summer seat, near the window. A newspaper lay open on his knee,
but he was not reading it; he seemed, indeed, to have fallen into a
reverie of a rather puzzling kind.
"Did you meet any one as you came in?" he asked of Tredennis, as soon as
they had exchanged greetings.
"I met Mr. Arbuthnot," Tredennis answered, "and stopped a few moments on
the steps to talk to him."
"He has been entertaining me for the last hour," said the professor,
taking off his glasses and beginning to polish them. "Now, will you tell
me," he asked, with his quiet air of reflective inquiry into an
interesting subject,--"will you tell me why he comes to entertain _me_?"
"He gave me the impression," answered Tredennis, "that his object in
coming was that you might entertain him, and he added that you were very
good to him, and he appeared to have enjoyed his call very much."
"That is his way," responded the professor, impartially. "And a most
agreeable way it is. To be born with such a way as a natural heritage is
to be a social millionnaire. And the worst of it is, that it may be a
gift entirely apart from all morals and substantial virtues. Bertha has
it. I don't know where she got it. Not from me, and not from her poor
mother. I say it _may be_ apart from all morals and substantial virtues.
I don't say it always is. I haven't at all made up my mind what
attributes go along with it in Arbuthnot's case. I should like to
decide. But it would be an agreeable way in a criminal of the deepest
dye. It is certainly agreeable that he should in some subtle manner be
able to place me in the picturesque attitude of a dignified and
entertaining host. I didn't entertain him at all," he added, simply. "I
sat and listened to him."
"He is frequently well worth listening to," commented Tredennis.
"He was well worth listening to this evening," said the professor. "And
yet he was light enough. He had two or three English periodicals under
his arm,--one of them was 'Punch,'--and--and I found myself laughing
quite heartily over it. And then there was something about a new comic
opera, and he seemed to know the libretto by heart, and ran over an air
or so on the piano. And he had been reading a new book, and was rather
clever about it--in his way, of course, but still it was cleverness. And
then he went to the piano again and sang a captivating little love-song
very well, and, after it, got up and said good-night--and on the whole I
regretted it. I liked his pictures, I liked his opera, I liked his talk
of the book, and I liked his little love-song. And how should he know
that an old dry-bones would like a tender little ballad and be touched
by it, and pleased because his sentiment was discovered and pandered to?
Oh, it is the old story. It's his way--it's the way."
"I am beginning to think," said Tredennis, slowly, "that 'his way' might
be called sympathy and good feeling and fine tact, if one wanted to be
specially fair to him."
The professor looked up rather quickly.
"I thought you did not like him," he said.
Tredennis paused a moment, looking down at the carpet as if
deliberating.
"I don't think I do," he said at length; "but it's no fault of his--the
fault lies in me. I haven't the way, and I am at a disadvantage with
him. He is never at a loss, and I am; he is ready-witted and
self-possessed; I am slow and rigid, and I suppose it is human that I
should try to imagine at times that I am at a disadvantage only because
my virtues are more solid than his. They are not more solid; they are
only more clumsy and less available."
"You don't spare yourself," said the professor.
"Why should I spare myself?" said Tredennis, knitting his brows. "After
all, _he_ never spares himself. He knows better. He would be just to me.
Why should I let him place me at a disadvantage again by being unjust to
him? And why should we insist that the only good qualities are those
which are unornamental? It is a popular fallacy. We like to believe it.
It is very easy to suspect a man of being shallow because we are sure we
are deep and he is unlike us. This Arbuthnot"--
"'This Arbuthnot,'" interposed the professor, with a smile. "It is
curious enough to hear you entering upon a defence of 'this Arbuthnot.'
You don't like him, Philip. You don't like him."
"I don't like myself," said Tredennis, "when I am compared with him; and
I don't like the tendency I discover in myself, the tendency to
disparage him. I should like to be fair to him, and I find it
difficult."
"Upon my word," said the professor, "it is rather fine in you to make
the effort, but"--giving him one of the old admiring looks--"you are
always rather fine, Philip."
"It would be finer, sir," said Tredennis, coloring, "if it were not an
effort."
"No," said the professor, quietly, "it would not be half so fine." And
he put out his hand and let it rest upon the arm of the chair in which
Tredennis sat, and so it rested as long as their talk went on.
In the meantime Arbuthnot walked rather slowly down the street, quite
conscious of finding it necessary to make something of an effort to
compose himself. It was his recognition of this necessity which had
caused him to change his first intention of returning to his bachelor
apartment after having made his call upon Professor Herrick. And he felt
the necessity all the more strongly after his brief encounter with
Colonel Tredennis.
"I will go into the park and think it over," he said to himself. "I'll
give myself time."
He turned into Lafayette Park, found a quiet seat, and took out a very
excellent cigar. He was not entirely surprised to see that, as he held
the match to it, his hand was not as steady as usual. Tredennis had
thought him a little pale.
The subject of his reflections, as he smoked his cigar, was a
comparatively trivial incident; taken by itself, but he had not taken it
by itself, because in a flash it had connected itself with a score of
others, which at the times of their occurring had borne no significance
whatever to him.
His visit to the professor had not been made without reasons; but they
had been such reasons as, simply stated to the majority of his ordinary
acquaintance, would have been received with open amazement or polite
discredit, and this principally because they were such very simple
reasons indeed. If such persons had been told that, finding himself
without any vestige of entertainment, he had wandered in upon the
professor as a last resource, or that he had wished to ask of him some
trivial favor, or that he had made his call without any reason whatever,
they would have felt such a state of affairs probable enough; but being
informed that while sitting in the easiest of chairs, in the coolest
possible _negligée_, reading an agreeable piece of light literature, and
smoking a cigar before his open window, he had caught sight of the
professor at _his_ window, sitting with his head resting on his hand,
and being struck vaguely by some air of desolateness and lassitude in
the solitary old figure, had calmly laid aside book and cigar, had put
himself into conventional attire, and had walked across the street with
no other intention than that of making the best of gifts of
entertainment it was certainly not his habit to overvalue,--those to
whom the explanation had been made would have taken the liberty of
feeling it somewhat insufficient, and would, in nine cases out of ten,
privately have provided themselves with a more complicated one,
cautiously insuring themselves against imposture by rejecting at the
outset the simple and unvarnished truth.
Upon the whole, the visit had been a success. On entering, it is true,
he found himself called upon to admire the rapidity with which the
professor recovered from his surprise at seeing him; but, as he had not
been deluded by any hope that his first appearance would awaken
unmistakable delight, he managed to make the best of the situation. His
opening remarks upon the subject of the weather were not altogether
infelicitous, and then he produced his late number of "Punch," and the
professor laughed, and, the ice being broken, conversation flourished,
and there was no further difficulty. He discovered, somewhat to his
surprise, that he was in better conversational trim than usual.
"It is a delusive condition to be in," he explained to the professor;
"but experience has taught me not to be taken in by it and expect future
development. It won't continue, as you no doubt suspect. It is the
result of entire social stagnation for several weeks. I am merely
letting off all my fireworks at once, inspired to the improvidence by
your presence. I am a poor creature, as you know; but even a poor
creature is likely to suffer from an idea a day. The mental
accumulations of this summer, carefully economized, will support me in
penury during the entire ensuing season. I only conjure you not to
betray me when you hear me repeat the same things by instalments at Mrs.
Amory's evenings."
And, saying it, he saw the professor's face change in some subtle way as
he looked at him. What there was in this look and change to make him
conscious of an inward start he could not have told. It was the merest
lifting of the lids, combined with an almost imperceptible movement of
the muscles about the mouth; and yet he found it difficult to avoid
pausing for a moment. But he accomplished the feat, and felt he had
reason to be rather proud of it. "Though what there is to startle him in
my mention of Mrs. Amory's evenings," he reflected, "it would require an
intellect to explain."
Being somewhat given to finding entertainment in quiet speculation upon
passing events, he would doubtless have given some attention to the
incident, even if it had remained a solitary unexplained and mystifying
trifle. But it was not left to stand alone in his mind.
It was not fifteen minutes before, in drawing his handkerchief from his
breast-pocket, he accidentally drew forth with it a letter, which fell
upon the newspaper lying upon the professor's lap, and for a moment
rested there with the address upward.
And the instant he glanced from the pretty feminine envelope to the
professor's face Arbuthnot recognized the fact that something altogether
unexpected had occurred again.
As he had looked from the envelope to the professor, so the professor
looked from the envelope to him. Then he picked the letter up and
returned it.
"It is a letter," Arbuthnot began,--"a letter"--and paused
ignominiously.
"Yes," said the professor, as if he had lost something of his own gentle
self-possession. "I see it is a letter."
It was not a happy remark, nor did Arbuthnot feel his own next effort a
particularly successful one.
"It is a letter from Mrs. Amory," he said. "She is kind enough to write
to me occasionally."
"Yes," responded the professor. "I saw that it was from Bertha. Her hand
is easily recognized."
"It is an unusual hand," said Arbuthnot. "And her letters are very like
herself. When it occurs to her to remember me--which doesn't happen as
frequently as I could wish--I consider myself fortunate. She writes as
she talks, and very few people do that."
He ended with a greater degree of composure than he had begun with, but
to his surprise he felt that his pulses had quickened, and that there
had risen to his face a touch of warmth suggestive of some increase of
color, and he did not enjoy the sensation. He began to open the letter.
"Shall I"--he said, and then suddenly stopped.
He knew why he had stopped, but the professor did not, and to make the
pause and return the letter to its envelope and its place in his pocket
without an explanation required something like hardihood.
"She is well, and seems to be taking advantage of the opportunity to
rest," he said, and picked up his "Punch" again, returning to his
half-finished comment upon its cartoon as if no interruption had taken
place.
As he sat on his seat in the park, apparently given up to undivided
enjoyment of his cigar, his mind was filled with a tumult of thought. He
had not been under the influence of such mental excitement for years.
Suddenly he found himself confronting a revelation perfectly astounding
to him.
"And so _I_ am the man!" he said, at last. "_I_ am the man!"
He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at the end of it with an
air of deliberate reflection, as is the masculine habit.
"It doesn't say much for me," he added, "that I never once suspected
it--not once."
Then he replaced his cigar, with something like a sigh.
"We are a blind lot," he said.
He did not feel the situation a pleasant one; there were circumstances
under which he would have resented it with a vigor and happy ingenuity
of resource which would have stood him in good stead; but there was no
resentment in his present mood. From the moment the truth had dawned
upon him, he had treated it without even the most indirect reference to
his own very natural feelings, and there had been more sacrifice of
himself and his own peculiarities in his action when he had returned the
letter to his pocket than even he himself realized.
"It was not the letter to show him," was his thought. "She does not know
how much she tells me. He would have understood it as I do."
He went over a good deal of ground mentally as he sat in the deepening
dusk, and he thought clearly and dispassionately, as was his habit when
he allowed himself to think at all. By the time he had arrived at his
conclusions it was quite dark. Then he threw the end of his last cigar
away and arose, and there was no denying that he was pale still, and
wore a curiously intense expression.
"If there is one thing neither man nor devil can put a stop to," he
said, "it is an experience such as that. It will go on to one of two
ends,--it will kill her, or she will kill it. The wider of the mark they
shoot, the easier for her; and as for me," he added, with a rather faint
and dreary smile, "perhaps it suits me well enough to be merely an
alleviating circumstance. It's all I'm good for. Let them think as they
please."
And he brushed an atom of cigar-ash from his sleeve with his rather too
finely feminine hand, and walked away.