Buchanan Budd had been doing a good deal of deep thinking of
late--proof positive that the times were out of joint. Budd, of course,
was obliged to do more or less thinking in order to be always correctly
dressed, but it was only a great crisis that could compel him to ponder
really weighty problems for any length of time.
When a subterranean disturbance shakes a city it is the most clumsily
constructed houses that go down first. In like manner, when the most
select circle of society is in trouble, it is the man who has no very
good claim to recognition in that circle who first feels the effects of
the internal agitation.
As Buchanan Budd listened to the current gossip at his clubs, and read
in the newspapers impudent criticisms on the doings of the people with
whom he associated, he came reluctantly, but firmly, to the conclusion
that it behooved him to take some step that would strengthen his
position as a recognized member of the most exclusive social clique in
the country--perhaps in the world.
It did not take him long to decide that the only fitting strategical
move on his part lay along the line of matrimony. Not that he came to
this conviction willingly. He enjoyed life as a bachelor, and he felt
that in taking to himself a wife he would be making a most dangerous
experiment. He could not blind himself to the fact that the unpleasant
publicity at that time being thrust upon certain members of the inner
circle had had its origin in unfortunate marriages. Nevertheless,
he realized that society expected of him, at some time or other, a
personal sacrifice of his liberty on the altar of matrimony; and the
present crisis seemed to be an appropriate moment for propitiating the
powers controlling the inner circle by taking to himself a wife who
would render him safe for the future in any sifting process in which
society might indulge.
After going over the list of eligible young women in his set, he had
decided, without much hesitation, that Gertrude Van Vleck was, as he
put it to himself, the card for him to play. She possessed several
characteristics that rendered her especially eligible. In the first
place, her position in society was thoroughly assured. Furthermore,
she possessed sufficient mental alertness to render her companionable
to a man who had not been quite able to crush all fondness for
originality out of his make-up. Then again--and this was an important
consideration--he had never made love to her. They had been good
friends, to use a rather meaningless phrase, and Budd was encouraged
by the thought that he had never prejudiced his chances with her by
invoking sentiment to add spice to their intercourse.
That she had rejected several suitors was a fact well known to society,
and there had been a good deal of discussion as to Gertrude Van
Vleck’s motive for refusing at least two offers that were generally
considered especially desirable. In weighing this phase of the case,
Buchanan Budd, who was not an abnormally modest man, asked himself if
the explanation of her reluctance to enter into wedlock had not been
due to the fact that he, in certain respects one of the most eligible
bachelors in the city, had hitherto approached her only as a friend. It
is true that she had sometimes appeared to indulge in a little sarcasm
at his expense, but her tongue might have been inspired by pique. What
more likely than that his failure to put any special warmth into his
manner, when she had hoped for something more than friendship, had been
the underlying cause of those shafts of satire that she had sometimes
launched at him? The more Buchanan Budd questioned himself on this
point, the more he became convinced that Gertrude Van Vleck concealed a
fondness for him that she only awaited a change in his manner to reveal.
There was one peculiarity possessed by Budd that might have enabled him
to earn his own living, if fate had not ordained that he should lie on
a bed of roses. When he had decided upon a course of action, he never
hesitated to begin operations at once. But, as he seldom reached any
conclusion that demanded the exercise of energy and directness, there
was something novel and inspiring in the emotions that animated him as
he sent in his card to Gertrude Van Vleck on the very evening on which
he had pursued, while smoking a cigar at his favorite club, the mental
processes outlined above. He felt that there was something Napoleonic
in thus moving on the enemy’s stronghold at once, and he entered her
drawing-room with almost the air of a conqueror. One fact that rendered
bachelorhood so satisfactory to Buchanan Budd was that he possessed
quite a vivid imagination. No man will grow too lonely if he can
constantly delude himself with flattering fancies, and picture himself
as the centre of the universe, with the ends of space to do his bidding.
“And what am I to have from you this evening, Mr. Budd?” asked
Gertrude, seating herself for a chat that she knew would prove
amusing. “Censure for the new woman?”
“No, Miss Van Vleck; I crave advice for the old-fashioned man.”
Gertrude smiled, and her eyes flashed merrily as she exclaimed,--
“There is a mystery here! Mr. Buchanan Budd seeking advice from a
woman whom he suspects of holding advanced ideas! That seems hardly
reasonable.”
There was something in Gertrude Van Vleck’s manner and appearance
that struck Budd as unusual. He had always considered her a handsome
woman, but to-night her eyes were more brilliant, her complexion more
dazzling, than he had ever seen them, while there was something in
the tone of her voice and the movements of her hands that seemed to
indicate suppressed excitement. These phenomena, he argued, augured
well for the advance movement that he, with Napoleonic cleverness, had
determined to order along the entire line of his attack. But the moment
for his forward movement had not quite come. A little skirmishing in
the open field was essential before he ordered up his heavy troops.
“But why is it not reasonable, Miss Van Vleck? Surely, even a
conservative, and, if you please, reactionary, man may feel anxious
to put himself in touch with the new ideas. It may even be that he
honestly desires to embrace as many of the iconoclastic theories of the
day as possible, if for no other purpose than to retain the friendships
he made in the peaceful days before--before”--
“Before the women of our set began to think, you mean,” said Gertrude,
as he hesitated a moment. “It is certainly complimentary on your
part--and so self-sacrificing.” There was a touch of sarcasm in her
voice.
Budd looked at her appealingly. “You hardly do justice to my motives,
Miss Van Vleck. I am honestly anxious to overcome my ancient prejudices
and to put myself in sympathy with the age in which I live. You can do
_so_ much to help me in this--if you will.”
There was a note of tenderness in his voice that Gertrude had never
heard in it before, and she glanced at him suspiciously. She had
derived considerable pleasure, in a mild way, from her friendly
intercourse with Buchanan Budd; and her liking for him had been based,
to a great extent, on the utter absence of flirtatiousness in his
manner. That he had any intention of jeopardizing their friendship by
injecting sentiment into the relationship was a new thought to her.
At that moment it was the most unwelcome suspicion that could have
entered her mind. There is no time when a woman so dreads the advances
of a man to whom she is indifferent as the moment when she admits to
herself that her heart is influenced by another. Buchanan Budd had
unconsciously forced Gertrude Van Vleck into a self-confession that
made her pulse flutter and her cheek turn pale.
“I fear, Mr. Budd,” she went on with nervous vivacity, “that you would
not be willing to follow us very far--no matter how great an effort I
made to put you in sympathy with the new movement. Let me tell you, Mr.
Budd, there is no predicting where it will all end. A woman in Vienna
has applied to the authorities to be appointed chief-executioner. A
Miss Edith Walker is an applicant in Bogota, Columbia, for the office
of chief of police. I see by your face that you are shocked at all
this. I am so glad.”
“Glad that I am shocked?” exclaimed Budd confusedly.
“No, not that; but that I have had the courage to warn you.”
“To warn me?”
“Yes,” answered Gertrude, the former paleness of her cheeks giving
place to a slight flush, “to warn you. Don’t you see that there is
great danger in attempting to keep up with the restless activity of
the _fin-de-siècle_ woman? I think you will be much happier, Mr. Budd,
in sticking to your former convictions, and not attempting to take an
interest in movements and tendencies with which, you know, you are not
in sympathy at heart.”
“But,” persisted Budd, who felt that somehow his plan of campaign
was not working itself out with the success that should attend a
truly Napoleonic manœuvre, “I came here to ask you to help me, not by
throwing cold water on my aspirations, but by telling me how to become
worthy of--of the new woman.”
Gertrude Van Vleck laughed nervously.
“I appreciate the compliment you have paid me, Mr. Budd, but I am
unworthy of the trust you seem to place in me. Frankly, I find it so
difficult to adjust my former, I might say my hereditary, convictions
to the teachings of the day, that I feel that I must remain a follower
instead of a leader, even at the expense of not winning for the cause
so valuable a champion as Mr. Buchanan Budd.”
For the first time since he had opened fire, Buchanan Budd realized
that his skirmish-line had been driven back. But a battle is never lost
until the last charge is made.
“I am sorry,” he said in a musing tone, “that you have not
given me more encouragement in my effort to--to revise my ideas
regarding--regarding woman’s sphere, I think you call it. I assure you,
Miss Van Vleck,” and he bent toward her, “that my motive in asking you
to help me in this matter was not of small importance to myself. I am
very anxious to--to”--
He paused for words with a hesitation that was not at all Napoleonic.
At that moment a servant entered with a card for Miss Van Vleck.
“Mr. John Fenton!” exclaimed Gertrude, with something in her voice that
did not please Buchanan Budd.
Then she turned calmly toward him and asked, “Do you know Mr. Fenton,
Mr. Budd?”
A hitherto unpublished anecdote tells how a daring onlooker approached
Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo and said,--
“Pardon me, Sire, but have you ever met Wellington before?”