Felix allowed Charlotte time to plead his cause; and then, on the third
day, he sought an interview with his uncle. It was in the morning; Mr.
Wentworth was in his office; and, on going in, Felix found that
Charlotte was at that moment in conference with her father. She had, in
fact, been constantly near him since her interview with Felix; she had
made up her mind that it was her duty to repeat very literally her
cousin’s passionate plea. She had accordingly followed Mr. Wentworth
about like a shadow, in order to find him at hand when she should have
mustered sufficient composure to speak. For poor Charlotte, in this
matter, naturally lacked composure; especially when she meditated upon
some of Felix’s intimations. It was not cheerful work, at the best, to
keep giving small hammer-taps to the coffin in which one had laid away,
for burial, the poor little unacknowledged offspring of one’s own
misbehaving heart; and the occupation was not rendered more agreeable
by the fact that the ghost of one’s stifled dream had been summoned
from the shades by the strange, bold words of a talkative young
foreigner. What had Felix meant by saying that Mr. Brand was not so
keen? To herself her sister’s justly depressed suitor had shown no sign
of faltering. Charlotte trembled all over when she allowed herself to
believe for an instant now and then that, privately, Mr. Brand might
have faltered; and as it seemed to give more force to Felix’s words to
repeat them to her father, she was waiting until she should have taught
herself to be very calm. But she had now begun to tell Mr. Wentworth
that she was extremely anxious. She was proceeding to develop this
idea, to enumerate the objects of her anxiety, when Felix came in.
Mr. Wentworth sat there, with his legs crossed, lifting his dry, pure
countenance from the Boston _Advertiser_. Felix entered smiling, as if
he had something particular to say, and his uncle looked at him as if
he both expected and deprecated this event. Felix vividly expressing
himself had come to be a formidable figure to his uncle, who had not
yet arrived at definite views as to a proper tone. For the first time
in his life, as I have said, Mr. Wentworth shirked a responsibility; he
earnestly desired that it might not be laid upon him to determine how
his nephew’s lighter propositions should be treated. He lived under an
apprehension that Felix might yet beguile him into assent to doubtful
inductions, and his conscience instructed him that the best form of
vigilance was the avoidance of discussion. He hoped that the pleasant
episode of his nephew’s visit would pass away without a further lapse
of consistency.
Felix looked at Charlotte with an air of understanding, and then at Mr.
Wentworth, and then at Charlotte again. Mr. Wentworth bent his refined
eyebrows upon his nephew and stroked down the first page of the
_Advertiser_. “I ought to have brought a bouquet,” said Felix,
laughing. “In France they always do.”
“We are not in France,” observed Mr. Wentworth, gravely, while
Charlotte earnestly gazed at him.
“No, luckily, we are not in France, where I am afraid I should have a
harder time of it. My dear Charlotte, have you rendered me that
delightful service?” And Felix bent toward her as if someone had been
presenting him.
Charlotte looked at him with almost frightened eyes; and Mr. Wentworth
thought this might be the beginning of a discussion. “What is the
bouquet for?” he inquired, by way of turning it off.
Felix gazed at him, smiling. _“Pour la demande!”_ And then, drawing up
a chair, he seated himself, hat in hand, with a kind of conscious
solemnity.
Presently he turned to Charlotte again. “My good Charlotte, my
admirable Charlotte,” he murmured, “you have not played me false—you
have not sided against me?”
Charlotte got up, trembling extremely, though imperceptibly. “You must
speak to my father yourself,” she said. “I think you are clever
enough.”
But Felix, rising too, begged her to remain. “I can speak better to an
audience!” he declared.
“I hope it is nothing disagreeable,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“It’s something delightful, for me!” And Felix, laying down his hat,
clasped his hands a little between his knees. “My dear uncle,” he said,
“I desire, very earnestly, to marry your daughter Gertrude.” Charlotte
sank slowly into her chair again, and Mr. Wentworth sat staring, with a
light in his face that might have been flashed back from an iceberg. He
stared and stared; he said nothing. Felix fell back, with his hands
still clasped. “Ah—you don’t like it. I was afraid!” He blushed deeply,
and Charlotte noticed it—remarking to herself that it was the first
time she had ever seen him blush. She began to blush herself and to
reflect that he might be much in love.
“This is very abrupt,” said Mr. Wentworth, at last.
“Have you never suspected it, dear uncle?” Felix inquired. “Well, that
proves how discreet I have been. Yes, I thought you wouldn’t like it.”
“It is very serious, Felix,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“You think it’s an abuse of hospitality!” exclaimed Felix, smiling
again.
“Of hospitality?—an abuse?” his uncle repeated very slowly.
“That is what Felix said to me,” said Charlotte, conscientiously.
“Of course you think so; don’t defend yourself!” Felix pursued. “It
_is_ an abuse, obviously; the most I can claim is that it is perhaps a
pardonable one. I simply fell head over heels in love; one can hardly
help that. Though you are Gertrude’s progenitor I don’t believe you
know how attractive she is. Dear uncle, she contains the elements of a
singularly—I may say a strangely—charming woman!”
“She has always been to me an object of extreme concern,” said Mr.
Wentworth. “We have always desired her happiness.”
“Well, here it is!” Felix declared. “I will make her happy. She
believes it, too. Now hadn’t you noticed that?”
“I had noticed that she was much changed,” Mr. Wentworth declared, in a
tone whose unexpressive, unimpassioned quality appeared to Felix to
reveal a profundity of opposition. “It may be that she is only becoming
what you call a charming woman.”
“Gertrude, at heart, is so earnest, so true,” said Charlotte, very
softly, fastening her eyes upon her father.
“I delight to hear you praise her!” cried Felix.
“She has a very peculiar temperament,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“Eh, even that is praise!” Felix rejoined. “I know I am not the man you
might have looked for. I have no position and no fortune; I can give
Gertrude no place in the world. A place in the world—that’s what she
ought to have; that would bring her out.”
“A place to do her duty!” remarked Mr. Wentworth.
“Ah, how charmingly she does it—her duty!” Felix exclaimed, with a
radiant face. “What an exquisite conception she has of it! But she
comes honestly by that, dear uncle.” Mr. Wentworth and Charlotte both
looked at him as if they were watching a greyhound doubling. “Of course
with me she will hide her light under a bushel,” he continued; “I being
the bushel! Now I know you like me—you have certainly proved it. But
you think I am frivolous and penniless and shabby! Granted—granted—a
thousand times granted. I have been a loose fish—a fiddler, a painter,
an actor. But there is this to be said: In the first place, I fancy you
exaggerate; you lend me qualities I haven’t had. I have been a
Bohemian—yes; but in Bohemia I always passed for a gentleman. I wish
you could see some of my old _camarades_—they would tell you! It was
the liberty I liked, but not the opportunities! My sins were all
peccadilloes; I always respected my neighbor’s property—my neighbor’s
wife. Do you see, dear uncle?” Mr. Wentworth ought to have seen; his
cold blue eyes were intently fixed. “And then, _c’est fini!_ It’s all
over. _Je me range_. I have settled down to a jog-trot. I find I can
earn my living—a very fair one—by going about the world and painting
bad portraits. It’s not a glorious profession, but it is a perfectly
respectable one. You won’t deny that, eh? Going about the world, I say?
I must not deny that, for that I am afraid I shall always do—in quest
of agreeable sitters. When I say agreeable, I mean susceptible of
delicate flattery and prompt of payment. Gertrude declares she is
willing to share my wanderings and help to pose my models. She even
thinks it will be charming; and that brings me to my third point.
Gertrude likes me. Encourage her a little and she will tell you so.”
Felix’s tongue obviously moved much faster than the imagination of his
auditors; his eloquence, like the rocking of a boat in a deep, smooth
lake, made long eddies of silence. And he seemed to be pleading and
chattering still, with his brightly eager smile, his uplifted eyebrows,
his expressive mouth, after he had ceased speaking, and while, with his
glance quickly turning from the father to the daughter, he sat waiting
for the effect of his appeal. “It is not your want of means,” said Mr.
Wentworth, after a period of severe reticence.
“Now it’s delightful of you to say that! Only don’t say it’s my want of
character. Because I have a character—I assure you I have; a small one,
a little slip of a thing, but still something tangible.”
“Ought you not to tell Felix that it is Mr. Brand, father?” Charlotte
asked, with infinite mildness.
“It is not only Mr. Brand,” Mr. Wentworth solemnly declared. And he
looked at his knee for a long time. “It is difficult to explain,” he
said. He wished, evidently, to be very just. “It rests on moral
grounds, as Mr. Brand says. It is the question whether it is the best
thing for Gertrude.”
“What is better—what is better, dear uncle?” Felix rejoined urgently,
rising in his urgency and standing before Mr. Wentworth. His uncle had
been looking at his knee; but when Felix moved he transferred his gaze
to the handle of the door which faced him. “It is usually a fairly good
thing for a girl to marry the man she loves!” cried Felix.
While he spoke, Mr. Wentworth saw the handle of the door begin to turn;
the door opened and remained slightly ajar, until Felix had delivered
himself of the cheerful axiom just quoted. Then it opened altogether
and Gertrude stood there. She looked excited; there was a spark in her
sweet, dull eyes. She came in slowly, but with an air of resolution,
and, closing the door softly, looked round at the three persons
present. Felix went to her with tender gallantry, holding out his hand,
and Charlotte made a place for her on the sofa. But Gertrude put her
hands behind her and made no motion to sit down.
“We are talking of you!” said Felix.
“I know it,” she answered. “That’s why I came.” And she fastened her
eyes on her father, who returned her gaze very fixedly. In his own cold
blue eyes there was a kind of pleading, reasoning light.
“It is better you should be present,” said Mr. Wentworth. “We are
discussing your future.”
“Why discuss it?” asked Gertrude. “Leave it to me.”
“That is, to me!” cried Felix.
“I leave it, in the last resort, to a greater wisdom than ours,” said
the old man.
Felix rubbed his forehead gently. “But _en attendant_ the last resort,
your father lacks confidence,” he said to Gertrude.
“Haven’t you confidence in Felix?” Gertrude was frowning; there was
something about her that her father and Charlotte had never seen.
Charlotte got up and came to her, as if to put her arm round her; but
suddenly, she seemed afraid to touch her.
Mr. Wentworth, however, was not afraid. “I have had more confidence in
Felix than in you,” he said.
“Yes, you have never had confidence in me—never, never! I don’t know
why.”
“Oh sister, sister!” murmured Charlotte.
“You have always needed advice,” Mr. Wentworth declared. “You have had
a difficult temperament.”
“Why do you call it difficult? It might have been easy, if you had
allowed it. You wouldn’t let me be natural. I don’t know what you
wanted to make of me. Mr. Brand was the worst.”
Charlotte at last took hold of her sister. She laid her two hands upon
Gertrude’s arm. “He cares so much for you,” she almost whispered.
Gertrude looked at her intently an instant; then kissed her. “No, he
does not,” she said.
“I have never seen you so passionate,” observed Mr. Wentworth, with an
air of indignation mitigated by high principles.
“I am sorry if I offend you,” said Gertrude.
“You offend me, but I don’t think you are sorry.”
“Yes, father, she is sorry,” said Charlotte.
“I would even go further, dear uncle,” Felix interposed. “I would
question whether she really offends you. How can she offend you?”
To this Mr. Wentworth made no immediate answer. Then, in a moment, “She
has not profited as we hoped.”
“Profited? _Ah voilà!_” Felix exclaimed.
Gertrude was very pale; she stood looking down. “I have told Felix I
would go away with him,” she presently said.
“Ah, you have said some admirable things!” cried the young man.
“Go away, sister?” asked Charlotte.
“Away—away; to some strange country.”
“That is to frighten you,” said Felix, smiling at Charlotte.
“To—what do you call it?” asked Gertrude, turning an instant to Felix.
“To Bohemia.”
“Do you propose to dispense with preliminaries?” asked Mr. Wentworth,
getting up.
“Dear uncle, _vous plaisantez!_” cried Felix. “It seems to me that
these are preliminaries.”
Gertrude turned to her father. “I _have_ profited,” she said. “You
wanted to form my character. Well, my character is formed—for my age. I
know what I want; I have chosen. I am determined to marry this
gentleman.”
“You had better consent, sir,” said Felix very gently.
“Yes, sir, you had better consent,” added a very different voice.
Charlotte gave a little jump, and the others turned to the direction
from which it had come. It was the voice of Mr. Brand, who had stepped
through the long window which stood open to the piazza. He stood
patting his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief; he was very much
flushed; his face wore a singular expression.
“Yes, sir, you had better consent,” Mr. Brand repeated, coming forward.
“I know what Miss Gertrude means.”
“My dear friend!” murmured Felix, laying his hand caressingly on the
young minister’s arm.
Mr. Brand looked at him; then at Mr. Wentworth; lastly at Gertrude. He
did not look at Charlotte. But Charlotte’s earnest eyes were fastened
to his own countenance; they were asking an immense question of it. The
answer to this question could not come all at once; but some of the
elements of it were there. It was one of the elements of it that Mr.
Brand was very red, that he held his head very high, that he had a
bright, excited eye and an air of embarrassed boldness—the air of a man
who has taken a resolve, in the execution of which he apprehends the
failure, not of his moral, but of his personal, resources. Charlotte
thought he looked very grand; and it is incontestable that Mr. Brand
felt very grand. This, in fact, was the grandest moment of his life;
and it was natural that such a moment should contain opportunities of
awkwardness for a large, stout, modest young man.
“Come in, sir,” said Mr. Wentworth, with an angular wave of his hand.
“It is very proper that you should be present.”
“I know what you are talking about,” Mr. Brand rejoined. “I heard what
your nephew said.”
“And he heard what you said!” exclaimed Felix, patting him again on the
arm.
“I am not sure that I understood,” said Mr. Wentworth, who had
angularity in his voice as well as in his gestures.
Gertrude had been looking hard at her former suitor. She had been
puzzled, like her sister; but her imagination moved more quickly than
Charlotte’s. “Mr. Brand asked you to let Felix take me away,” she said
to her father.
The young minister gave her a strange look. “It is not because I don’t
want to see you any more,” he declared, in a tone intended as it were
for publicity.
“I shouldn’t think you would want to see me any more,” Gertrude
answered, gently.
Mr. Wentworth stood staring. “Isn’t this rather a change, sir?” he
inquired.
“Yes, sir.” And Mr. Brand looked anywhere; only still not at Charlotte.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated. And he held his handkerchief a few moments to
his lips.
“Where are our moral grounds?” demanded Mr. Wentworth, who had always
thought Mr. Brand would be just the thing for a younger daughter with a
peculiar temperament.
“It is sometimes very moral to change, you know,” suggested Felix.
Charlotte had softly left her sister’s side. She had edged gently
toward her father, and now her hand found its way into his arm. Mr.
Wentworth had folded up the _Advertiser_ into a surprisingly small
compass, and, holding the roll with one hand, he earnestly clasped it
with the other. Mr. Brand was looking at him; and yet, though Charlotte
was so near, his eyes failed to meet her own. Gertrude watched her
sister.
“It is better not to speak of change,” said Mr. Brand. “In one sense
there is no change. There was something I desired—something I asked of
you; I desire something still—I ask it of you.” And he paused a moment;
Mr. Wentworth looked bewildered. “I should like, in my ministerial
capacity, to unite this young couple.”
Gertrude, watching her sister, saw Charlotte flushing intensely, and
Mr. Wentworth felt her pressing upon his arm. “Heavenly Powers!”
murmured Mr. Wentworth. And it was the nearest approach to profanity he
had ever made.
“That is very nice; that is very handsome!” Felix exclaimed.
“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Wentworth; though it was plain that
everyone else did.
“That is very beautiful, Mr. Brand,” said Gertrude, emulating Felix.
“I should like to marry you. It will give me great pleasure.”
“As Gertrude says, it’s a beautiful idea,” said Felix.
Felix was smiling, but Mr. Brand was not even trying to. He himself
treated his proposition very seriously. “I have thought of it, and I
should like to do it,” he affirmed.
Charlotte, meanwhile, was staring with expanded eyes. Her imagination,
as I have said, was not so rapid as her sister’s, but now it had taken
several little jumps. “Father,” she murmured, “consent!”
Mr. Brand heard her; he looked away. Mr. Wentworth, evidently, had no
imagination at all. “I have always thought,” he began, slowly, “that
Gertrude’s character required a special line of development.”
“Father,” repeated Charlotte, _“consent.”_
Then, at last, Mr. Brand looked at her. Her father felt her leaning
more heavily upon his folded arm than she had ever done before; and
this, with a certain sweet faintness in her voice, made him wonder what
was the matter. He looked down at her and saw the encounter of her gaze
with the young theologian’s; but even this told him nothing, and he
continued to be bewildered. Nevertheless, “I consent,” he said at last,
“since Mr. Brand recommends it.”
“I should like to perform the ceremony very soon,” observed Mr. Brand,
with a sort of solemn simplicity.
“Come, come, that’s charming!” cried Felix, profanely.
Mr. Wentworth sank into his chair. “Doubtless, when you understand it,”
he said, with a certain judicial asperity.
Gertrude went to her sister and led her away, and Felix having passed
his arm into Mr. Brand’s and stepped out of the long window with him,
the old man was left sitting there in unillumined perplexity.
Felix did no work that day. In the afternoon, with Gertrude, he got
into one of the boats and floated about with idly-dipping oars. They
talked a good deal of Mr. Brand—though not exclusively.
“That was a fine stroke,” said Felix. “It was really heroic.”
Gertrude sat musing, with her eyes upon the ripples. “That was what he
wanted to be; he wanted to do something fine.”
“He won’t be comfortable till he has married us,” said Felix. “So much
the better.”
“He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral pleasure.
I know him so well,” Gertrude went on. Felix looked at her; she spoke
slowly, gazing at the clear water. “He thought of it a great deal,
night and day. He thought it would be beautiful. At last he made up his
mind that it was his duty, his duty to do just that—nothing less than
that. He felt exalted; he felt sublime. That’s how he likes to feel. It
is better for him than if I had listened to him.”
“It’s better for me,” smiled Felix. “But do you know, as regards the
sacrifice, that I don’t believe he admired you when this decision was
taken quite so much as he had done a fortnight before?”
“He never admired me. He admires Charlotte; he pitied me. I know him so
well.”
“Well, then, he didn’t pity you so much.”
Gertrude looked at Felix a little, smiling. “You shouldn’t permit
yourself,” she said, “to diminish the splendor of his action. He
admires Charlotte,” she repeated.
“That’s capital!” said Felix laughingly, and dipping his oars. I cannot
say exactly to which member of Gertrude’s phrase he alluded; but he
dipped his oars again, and they kept floating about.
Neither Felix nor his sister, on that day, was present at Mr.
Wentworth’s at the evening repast. The two occupants of the chalet
dined together, and the young man informed his companion that his
marriage was now an assured fact. Eugenia congratulated him, and
replied that if he were as reasonable a husband as he had been, on the
whole, a brother, his wife would have nothing to complain of.
Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. “I hope,” he said, “not to be
thrown back on my reason.”
“It is very true,” Eugenia rejoined, “that one’s reason is dismally
flat. It’s a bed with the mattress removed.”
But the brother and sister, later in the evening, crossed over to the
larger house, the Baroness desiring to compliment her prospective
sister-in-law. They found the usual circle upon the piazza, with the
exception of Clifford Wentworth and Lizzie Acton; and as everyone stood
up as usual to welcome the Baroness, Eugenia had an admiring audience
for her compliment to Gertrude.
Robert Acton stood on the edge of the piazza, leaning against one of
the white columns, so that he found himself next to Eugenia while she
acquitted herself of a neat little discourse of congratulation.
“I shall be so glad to know you better,” she said; “I have seen so much
less of you than I should have liked. Naturally; now I see the reason
why! You will love me a little, won’t you? I think I may say I gain on
being known.” And terminating these observations with the softest
cadence of her voice, the Baroness imprinted a sort of grand official
kiss upon Gertrude’s forehead.
Increased familiarity had not, to Gertrude’s imagination, diminished
the mysterious impressiveness of Eugenia’s personality, and she felt
flattered and transported by this little ceremony. Robert Acton also
seemed to admire it, as he admired so many of the gracious
manifestations of Madame Münster’s wit.
They had the privilege of making him restless, and on this occasion he
walked away, suddenly, with his hands in his pockets, and then came
back and leaned against his column. Eugenia was now complimenting her
uncle upon his daughter’s engagement, and Mr. Wentworth was listening
with his usual plain yet refined politeness. It is to be supposed that
by this time his perception of the mutual relations of the young people
who surrounded him had become more acute; but he still took the matter
very seriously, and he was not at all exhilarated.
“Felix will make her a good husband,” said Eugenia. “He will be a
charming companion; he has a great quality—indestructible gaiety.”
“You think that’s a great quality?” asked the old man.
Eugenia meditated, with her eyes upon his. “You think one gets tired of
it, eh?”
“I don’t know that I am prepared to say that,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“Well, we will say, then, that it is tiresome for others but delightful
for one’s self. A woman’s husband, you know, is supposed to be her
second self; so that, for Felix and Gertrude, gaiety will be a common
property.”
“Gertrude was always very gay,” said Mr. Wentworth. He was trying to
follow this argument.
Robert Acton took his hands out of his pockets and came a little nearer
to the Baroness. “You say you gain by being known,” he said. “One
certainly gains by knowing you.”
“What have _you_ gained?” asked Eugenia.
“An immense amount of wisdom.”
“That’s a questionable advantage for a man who was already so wise!”
Acton shook his head. “No, I was a great fool before I knew you!”
“And being a fool you made my acquaintance? You are very
complimentary.”
“Let me keep it up,” said Acton, laughing. “I hope, for our pleasure,
that your brother’s marriage will detain you.”
“Why should I stop for my brother’s marriage when I would not stop for
my own?” asked the Baroness.
“Why shouldn’t you stop in either case, now that, as you say, you have
dissolved that mechanical tie that bound you to Europe?”
The Baroness looked at him a moment. “As I say? You look as if you
doubted it.”
“Ah,” said Acton, returning her glance, “that is a remnant of my old
folly! We have other attractions,” he added. “We are to have another
marriage.”
But she seemed not to hear him; she was looking at him still. “My word
was never doubted before,” she said.
“We are to have another marriage,” Acton repeated, smiling.
Then she appeared to understand. “Another marriage?” And she looked at
the others. Felix was chattering to Gertrude; Charlotte, at a distance,
was watching them; and Mr. Brand, in quite another quarter, was turning
his back to them, and, with his hands under his coat-tails and his
large head on one side, was looking at the small, tender crescent of a
young moon. “It ought to be Mr. Brand and Charlotte,” said Eugenia,
“but it doesn’t look like it.”
“There,” Acton answered, “you must judge just now by contraries. There
is more than there looks to be. I expect that combination one of these
days; but that is not what I meant.”
“Well,” said the Baroness, “I never guess my own lovers; so I can’t
guess other people’s.”
Acton gave a loud laugh, and he was about to add a rejoinder when Mr.
Wentworth approached his niece. “You will be interested to hear,” the
old man said, with a momentary aspiration toward jocosity, “of another
matrimonial venture in our little circle.”
“I was just telling the Baroness,” Acton observed.
“Mr. Acton was apparently about to announce his own engagement,” said
Eugenia.
Mr. Wentworth’s jocosity increased. “It is not exactly that; but it is
in the family. Clifford, hearing this morning that Mr. Brand had
expressed a desire to tie the nuptial knot for his sister, took it into
his head to arrange that, while his hand was in, our good friend should
perform a like ceremony for himself and Lizzie Acton.”
The Baroness threw back her head and smiled at her uncle; then turning,
with an intenser radiance, to Robert Acton, “I am certainly very stupid
not to have thought of that,” she said. Acton looked down at his boots,
as if he thought he had perhaps reached the limits of legitimate
experimentation, and for a moment Eugenia said nothing more. It had
been, in fact, a sharp knock, and she needed to recover herself. This
was done, however, promptly enough. “Where are the young people?” she
asked.
“They are spending the evening with my mother.”
“Is not the thing very sudden?”
Acton looked up. “Extremely sudden. There had been a tacit
understanding; but within a day or two Clifford appears to have
received some mysterious impulse to precipitate the affair.”
“The impulse,” said the Baroness, “was the charms of your very pretty
sister.”
“But my sister’s charms were an old story; he had always known her.”
Acton had begun to experiment again.
Here, however, it was evident the Baroness would not help him. “Ah, one
can’t say! Clifford is very young; but he is a nice boy.”
“He’s a likeable sort of boy, and he will be a rich man.” This was
Acton’s last experiment. Madame Münster turned away.
She made but a short visit and Felix took her home. In her little
drawing-room she went almost straight to the mirror over the
chimney-piece, and, with a candle uplifted, stood looking into it. “I
shall not wait for your marriage,” she said to her brother. “Tomorrow
my maid shall pack up.”
“My dear sister,” Felix exclaimed, “we are to be married immediately!
Mr. Brand is too uncomfortable.”
But Eugenia, turning and still holding her candle aloft, only looked
about the little sitting-room at her gimcracks and curtains and
cushions. “My maid shall pack up,” she repeated. “_Bonté divine_, what
rubbish! I feel like a strolling actress; these are my ‘properties.’”
“Is the play over, Eugenia?” asked Felix.
She gave him a sharp glance. “I have spoken my part.”
“With great applause!” said her brother.
“Oh, applause—applause!” she murmured. And she gathered up two or three
of her dispersed draperies. She glanced at the beautiful brocade, and
then, “I don’t see how I can have endured it!” she said.
“Endure it a little longer. Come to my wedding.”
“Thank you; that’s your affair. My affairs are elsewhere.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Germany—by the first ship.”
“You have decided not to marry Mr. Acton?”
“I have refused him,” said Eugenia.
Her brother looked at her in silence. “I am sorry,” he rejoined at
last. “But I was very discreet, as you asked me to be. I said nothing.”
“Please continue, then, not to allude to the matter,” said Eugenia.
Felix inclined himself gravely. “You shall be obeyed. But your position
in Germany?” he pursued.
“Please to make no observations upon it.”
“I was only going to say that I supposed it was altered.”
“You are mistaken.”
“But I thought you had signed——”
“I have not signed!” said the Baroness.
Felix urged her no further, and it was arranged that he should
immediately assist her to embark.
Mr. Brand was indeed, it appeared, very impatient to consummate his
sacrifice and deliver the nuptial benediction which would set it off so
handsomely; but Eugenia’s impatience to withdraw from a country in
which she had not found the fortune she had come to seek was even less
to be mistaken. It is true she had not made any very various exertion;
but she appeared to feel justified in generalizing—in deciding that the
conditions of action on this provincial continent were not favorable to
really superior women. The elder world was, after all, their natural
field. The unembarrassed directness with which she proceeded to apply
these intelligent conclusions appeared to the little circle of
spectators who have figured in our narrative but the supreme exhibition
of a character to which the experience of life had imparted an
inimitable pliancy. It had a distinct effect upon Robert Acton, who,
for the two days preceding her departure, was a very restless and
irritated mortal. She passed her last evening at her uncle’s, where she
had never been more charming; and in parting with Clifford Wentworth’s
affianced bride she drew from her own finger a curious old ring and
presented it to her with the prettiest speech and kiss. Gertrude, who
as an affianced bride was also indebted to her gracious bounty, admired
this little incident extremely, and Robert Acton almost wondered
whether it did not give him the right, as Lizzie’s brother and
guardian, to offer in return a handsome present to the Baroness. It
would have made him extremely happy to be able to offer a handsome
present to the Baroness; but he abstained from this expression of his
sentiments, and they were in consequence, at the very last, by so much
the less comfortable. It was almost at the very last that he saw
her—late the night before she went to Boston to embark.
“For myself, I wish you might have stayed,” he said. “But not for your
own sake.”
“I don’t make so many differences,” said the Baroness. “I am simply
sorry to be going.”
“That’s a much deeper difference than mine,” Acton declared; “for you
mean you are simply glad!”
Felix parted with her on the deck of the ship. “We shall often meet
over there,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Europe seems to me much larger than
America.”
Mr. Brand, of course, in the days that immediately followed, was not
the only impatient spirit; but it may be said that of all the young
spirits interested in the event none rose more eagerly to the level of
the occasion. Gertrude left her father’s house with Felix Young; they
were imperturbably happy and they went far away. Clifford and his young
wife sought their felicity in a narrower circle, and the latter’s
influence upon her husband was such as to justify, strikingly, that
theory of the elevating effect of easy intercourse with clever women
which Felix had propounded to Mr. Wentworth. Gertrude was for a good
while a distant figure, but she came back when Charlotte married Mr.
Brand. She was present at the wedding feast, where Felix’s gaiety
confessed to no change. Then she disappeared, and the echo of a gaiety
of her own, mingled with that of her husband, often came back to the
home of her earlier years. Mr. Wentworth at last found himself
listening for it; and Robert Acton, after his mother’s death, married a
particularly nice young girl.
The End