VANE stayed with old Dr. Kérouec in Rennes, and found the good
physician kinder than ever. He always called Vane "my son" now, and
he had to submit to numerous embraces, a proceeding he did not like,
for in his manners Vane had that clumsiness in expressing anything
emotional, that Gothic phlegm, about which Saxons grow vainglorious,
and for which Celts detest them.
Every day Vane walked in the garden with his mother--a painful duty,
for she never remembered him. Her dementia was quite harmless now, and
she sometimes spoke to Vane of himself, not knowing him, but never
mentioned his father. Curiously enough her talk was much of Mary, and
of the English girl who had been the object of his boyish affections.
Vane heard casually of her marriage that summer, and was more surprised
than pleased to find how little the news affected him.
Once in a while, however, he caught himself wondering what Miss Thomas
was doing; and a week after his arrival he received a note from her to
thank him for the flowers he had sent. She also said that they were at
some place in Pennsylvania for the summer, far from the madding crowd,
but she found the place very stupid and the people inane. There was
nothing to do there. The men were all young Philadelphians, she wrote,
and generally uninteresting. Vane was glad to get the note, and of
course never thought of replying.
At this time Vane was a handsome, erect fellow, with a large aquiline
nose, and heavy eyebrows shading quiet eyes. Most of the people knew
him well as the doctor's protégé. One day the good old doctor came to
him with an air of much mysterious importance. He passed Vane's arm
through his, and led him to his favorite walk up and down the garden.
"My son," he began, tapping him on the shoulder, and beginning in a way
he evidently thought to be diplomatic, "you are growing older, and it
is not good for you to be alone. Listen! it is time you should marry."
Vane looked up quickly, and then struggled to repress a smile.
"Listen, my child," continued the doctor, much pleased, "I have to
propose a _parti_ of the most charming--but of the most charming! My
wife's own cousin and two hundred thousand livres of _dot_! What say
you?"
Vane was touched, and found it hard to answer.
"My child," the old man went on, "I love you like my own son--my
own son, see you? You are not noble _de naissance--mais, le
cœur--d'ailleurs_, neither are you _rôturier, non plus_. I have spoken
of you to Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-aigue, and Madame la Comtesse
_veut bien_. Her daughter is charming--but a child adorable! You will
let me present you _comme futur_--what say you?"
Vane bent over and took the hand of his old friend. "My father," he
said, "I would do more for you than for any one living. You have been
more than a father to me. God bless you for it! But this I cannot do. I
shall never marry." Vane spoke seriously and with some tragic effect,
like a Manfred or a Werther.
The old man sighed deeply. He knew Vane too well to press the matter.
"Ah!" said he, "you say you will never marry. I know better. You have
seen some American--_quelque petite Américaine rusée_. _Hélas!_ and we
might all have been so happy." The doctor said no more on the subject,
but was sad and quiet during the rest of Vane's visit.
He said nothing afterwards, except on Vane's departure. Then he
pressed his hand: "Ah, consider, my child. A young girl of the most
charming--of the _most_ charming--and two hundred thousand livres of
_dot_!" Vane could only press his hand in return. And the last he saw
of the doctor, he was standing still upon the Dieppe pier, rubbing his
nose with an immense silk pocket-handkerchief.
This was Vane's fifth trip across the Atlantic; and for the first time,
he felt glad when the vessel's prow turned westward. Brittany, for him,
represented the past; America the future. He was an American, after
all. A day after his arrival he would be immersed in Wall Street--up in
all the mysteries of exchange and rates, the stock-list his breviary
and the ribbon of telegraph paper his oracle. Meanwhile, however, he
dozed on the deck and essayed metrical translations of Boccaccio. He
was reading the tale of the pot of basil one day, and thought for about
half a morning of Miss Thomas. What she had to do with his reading, he
could not see. But she was quite the most interesting figure in his
mental gallery. A curious jumble was this modern state of society.
Bare flowers sprang up in strange parterres; exotics grew outside
of hot-houses, and common whiteweed inside. There ought to be some
method of social transplanting; some way of grafting new blossoms on
an old stock. But all American stock was good; American society was
like a world of rounded pebbles grating on a beach; the buried pebbles
were quite as fine as those on top; only these were more stirred and
polished, so their colors came out best. And yet what common, poor
stuff most of them were, after all! A pleasant trade, that of social
lapidary! And Vane, perhaps for the first time, took note of the
women around him. There was a Philadelphia girl, pretty and voluble;
there was a young lady from Michigan, who had been to "college" in
Massachusetts and finished herself abroad, alone, or in company with a
dear friend from Connecticut. There was a girl from Cleveland, wealthy,
marvellous, indescribable; and a young lady from New Orleans, with
all the fire drawn from her cheeks into her eyes. There was a girl--a
young woman, a young lady--a being feminine, from Boston, weighing and
analyzing all things within her somewhat narrow mental horizon; and
a social entity from New York, also of the feminine variety, but of
orbit predicable and conventional eccentricities, her life a function
of two variables, money and fashion. All these women were fair, and
strange to him; and this, perhaps, was the only day of his life that he
had definitely considered women from a contemporary point of view. His
assured income was now eight thousand a year. Four of this went to his
mother, three he spent; the rest he saved.
Coming back to New York, he plunged into a mass of accumulated
duties; it was a week before he found time to see anything of John;
and two weeks before he called on Miss Thomas. He found her in a
rather different mood than usual; a little sadder, a shade more
self-conscious. "It is two weeks before you come to see me, and you did
not answer my letter," she said.
Vane could only bow. "If I had only known you wished me to," he said.
"Ah, well! And what have you seen abroad?"
"Nothing of interest to me now."
"And what are you going to do this winter?"
"I do not know. Stick to my trade," Vane added laughingly.
"And shall we not go on with our reading?"
"I should be only too happy."
"What a conventional expression of willingness--what an enthusiastic
acceptance!"
"Conventions are the safest expressions of the truth."
"What do you mean by 'safest'?"
"The safest to me."
She gave a little laugh, in which Vane joined. "I do not understand
you."
"You mean you are too skilful a fencer to admit it."
"What do you mean by 'fencing'?"
"The manner of our conversations."
"You mean that it is not sincere--that it is badinage? Why do you do
it, then?"
"I am only too ready to change our ground."
"I do not know what you mean."
Vane bowed his disbelief in this remark and rose to go.
"Ah! do not go yet. I am so lonely to-day, and it is just the hour of
the day when there is nothing to do. I have no work and my poor eyes
are too weak to read. They are not even useful!"
"Why do you imply they are not ornamental? Why do you say what you do
not mean?"
"But I do mean it."
"You know you have lovely eyes."
"I thought you never made compliments," she said with a little pleased
laugh.
"You see your weak eyes are strong enough to keep me here." And rising
to go, he extended his hand.
"Ah! do not go yet." And taking his hand, she almost detained it
gently. "I am so glad to see you once more."
Vane laughed again. "Have you read De Musset's '_Il faut qu'une porte
soit ouverte ou fermée_'?"
"No; but I will read it. Why?"
"Because my calls resemble that one. I am continually opening the door
to go. Now if my call could have the same ending!" he added gallantly.
She colored. "She has read it," thought Vane. "_Halte-là!_" And this
time, perhaps rather precipitately, he took his leave for good. Miss
Thomas gave another of her little pleased laughs, after he had closed
the door. Vane had been thoroughly amused, and walked in a very
contented frame of mind to John's. Coming into his smoking-room, he
took a cigar and threw himself at full length upon the lounge. He could
afford occasionally to smoke and take life easily now; it was different
with him from the times, three years back, when he used to get his own
breakfast in the little rooms on Washington Place.
"Well, old man, how goes it?" said John, looking up with a light of
friendship in his gray eyes which Vane's coming always brought to them.
"Capitally! I have been passing the afternoon with Miss Thomas."
"And how was she? Fascinating as ever?"
"_Fascinating_ is not the word I like to use of her. It implies
conscious effort."
Vane was evidently off on a thesis, and Haviland settled himself on
the sofa with a pipe. "I have seen many women whom the world calls
fascinating, and they never attracted me at all. We look, admire and
pass on. Now, Miss Thomas has all the brightness of a woman of the
world, with the simplicity of a country maiden. If she has any charm,
it is because she is just herself, as Nature made her." Vane spoke with
the air of a knight defending abandoned beauty.
"By the way (if you have finished your essay on an inamorata), I saw
Ten Eyck to-day. He has come back from London, with a chance of being
ambassador to Madrid, and is a better match than ever."
"Ten Eyck? Who is Ten Eyck? Oh! I remember. Well, and what of it?" Vane
added, after a pause.
"Oh! nothing, nothing at all. He is the son of one of our New York
Senators, you know; and has a brilliant future before him."
"Bah! The most brilliant future a woman can have is a future with a man
who loves her."
"And where did you pick up that aphorism? Not from your French
education, surely? I believe Miss Thomas loves him."
"I may not be up in American ideas, John, owing to the French education
you sneer at; but I certainly was brought up to resent a remark like
that, made of a young girl I like."
"I don't see what there is insulting in saying that a woman--for she
is a woman, as you yourself admit--loves a man. I think it rather
a compliment. American women rarely do, I can assure you. Their
natures are like a New England spring--the sun must do a devilish
deal of wooing before even so much as a green tendril is visible."
And Haviland, who was just then devoted to the young lady of Puritan
descent whom he has since married, fetched a deep sigh.
Vane began to laugh again.
"Well, well. In time, I, too, shall become a New Yorker. And by the
way, John, speaking of that--is it customary here to invite a young
lady to go to walk with you?"
"Why, certainly, if you like. Miss Thomas has gone many a time, I
fancy."
"I was not thinking of Miss Thomas," said Vane, pettishly.