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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2534-h.zip b/2534-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2df1b72 --- /dev/null +++ b/2534-h.zip diff --git a/2534-h/2534-h.htm b/2534-h/2534-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2654d9f --- /dev/null +++ b/2534-h/2534-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2098 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Eugene Pickering</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Eugene Pickering, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Eugene Pickering, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Eugene Pickering + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2534] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE PICKERING*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1887 Macmillan and Co. edition of “The +Madonna of the Future et al.” by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. +Proofed by Vanessa M. Mosher, Faith Matievich and Jonesey.</p> +<h1>EUGENE PICKERING<br /> +by Henry James</h1> +<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> +<p>It was at Homburg, several years ago, before the gaming had been +suppressed. The evening was very warm, and all the world was gathered +on the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to listen to +the excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the crowd was +equally dense in the gaming-rooms around the tables. Everywhere +the crowd was great. The night was perfect, the season was at +its height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long shafts of unnatural +light into the dusky woods, and now and then, in the intervals of the +music, one might almost hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic +call of the croupiers rise above the watching silence of the saloons. +I had been strolling with a friend, and we at last prepared to sit down. +Chairs, however, were scarce. I had captured one, but it seemed +no easy matter to find a mate for it. I was on the point of giving +up in despair, and proposing an adjournment to the silken ottomans of +the Kursaal, when I observed a young man lounging back on one of the +objects of my quest, with his feet supported on the rounds of another. +This was more than his share of luxury, and I promptly approached him. +He evidently belonged to the race which has the credit of knowing best, +at home and abroad, how to make itself comfortable; but something in +his appearance suggested that his present attitude was the result of +inadvertence rather than of egotism. He was staring at the conductor +of the orchestra and listening intently to the music. His hands +were locked round his long legs, and his mouth was half open, with rather +a foolish air. “There are so few chairs,” I said, +“that I must beg you to surrender this second one.” +He started, stared, blushed, pushed the chair away with awkward alacrity, +and murmured something about not having noticed that he had it.</p> +<p>“What an odd-looking youth!” said my companion, who had +watched me, as I seated myself beside her.</p> +<p>“Yes, he is odd-looking; but what is odder still is that I +have seen him before, that his face is familiar to me, and yet that +I can’t place him.” The orchestra was playing the +Prayer from Der Freischütz, but Weber’s lovely music only +deepened the blank of memory. Who the deuce was he? where, when, +how, had I known him? It seemed extraordinary that a face should +be at once so familiar and so strange. We had our backs turned +to him, so that I could not look at him again. When the music +ceased we left our places, and I went to consign my friend to her mamma +on the terrace. In passing, I saw that my young man had departed; +I concluded that he only strikingly resembled some one I knew. +But who in the world was it he resembled? The ladies went off +to their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into the gaming-rooms +and hovered about the circle at roulette. Gradually I filtered +through to the inner edge, near the table, and, looking round, saw my +puzzling friend stationed opposite to me. He was watching the +game, with his hands in his pockets; but singularly enough, now that +I observed him at my leisure, the look of familiarity quite faded from +his face. What had made us call his appearance odd was his great +length and leanness of limb, his long, white neck, his blue, prominent +eyes, and his ingenuous, unconscious absorption in the scene before +him. He was not handsome, certainly, but he looked peculiarly +amiable and if his overt wonderment savoured a trifle of rurality, it +was an agreeable contrast to the hard, inexpressive masks about him. +He was the verdant offshoot, I said to myself, of some ancient, rigid +stem; he had been brought up in the quietest of homes, and he was having +his first glimpse of life. I was curious to see whether he would +put anything on the table; he evidently felt the temptation, but he +seemed paralysed by chronic embarrassment. He stood gazing at +the chinking complexity of losses and gains, shaking his loose gold +in his pocket, and every now and then passing his hand nervously over +his eyes.</p> +<p>Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play to have many +thoughts for each other; but before long I noticed a lady who evidently +had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table. She was +seated about half-way between my friend and me, and I presently observed +that she was trying to catch his eye. Though at Homburg, as people +said, “one could never be sure,” I yet doubted whether this +lady were one of those whose especial vocation it was to catch a gentleman’s +eye. She was youthful rather than elderly, and pretty rather than +plain; indeed, a few minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought +her wonderfully pretty. She had a charming gray eye and a good +deal of yellow hair disposed in picturesque disorder; and though her +features were meagre and her complexion faded, she gave one a sense +of sentimental, artificial gracefulness. She was dressed in white +muslin very much puffed and filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, +relieved here and there by a pale blue ribbon. I used to flatter +myself on guessing at people’s nationality by their faces, and, +as a rule, I guessed aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, +I conceived, was a German—such a German, somehow, as I had seen +imagined in literature. Was she not a friend of poets, a correspondent +of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of æsthetics—something +in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however, were +speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident friend was making +of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an ungloved hand, +covered altogether with blue-gemmed rings—turquoises, sapphires, +and lapis—she beckoned him to come to her. The gesture was +executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with an +appealing smile. He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to +suppose that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was immediately +repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the roots of his +hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the lady’s +chair. By the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping his +forehead with his pocket-handkerchief. She tilted back, looked +up at him with the same smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said +something, interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head. +She was asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying +no. Old players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back +on them they can put her into good-humour again by having their stakes +placed by a novice. Our young man’s physiognomy had seemed +to his new acquaintance to express the perfection of inexperience, and, +like a practical woman, she had determined to make him serve her turn. +Unlike most of her neighbours, she had no little pile of gold before +her, but she drew from her pocket a double napoleon, put it into his +hand, and bade him place it on a number of his own choosing. He +was evidently filled with a sort of delightful trouble; he enjoyed the +adventure, but he shrank from the hazard. I would have staked +the coin on its being his companion’s last; for although she still +smiled intently as she watched his hesitation, there was anything but +indifference in her pale, pretty face. Suddenly, in desperation, +he reached over and laid the piece on the table. My attention +was diverted at this moment by my having to make way for a lady with +a great many flounces, before me, to give up her chair to a rustling +friend to whom she had promised it; when I again looked across at the +lady in white muslin, she was drawing in a very goodly pile of gold +with her little blue-gemmed claw. Good luck and bad, at the Homburg +tables, were equally undemonstrative, and this happy adventuress rewarded +her young friend for the sacrifice of his innocence with a single, rapid, +upward smile. He had innocence enough left, however, to look round +the table with a gleeful, conscious laugh, in the midst of which his +eyes encountered my own. Then suddenly the familiar look which +had vanished from his face flickered up unmistakably; it was the boyish +laugh of a boyhood’s friend. Stupid fellow that I was, I +had been looking at Eugene Pickering!</p> +<p>Though I lingered on for some time longer he failed to recognise +me. Recognition, I think, had kindled a smile in my own face; +but, less fortunate than he, I suppose my smile had ceased to be boyish. +Now that luck had faced about again, his companion played for herself—played +and won, hand over hand. At last she seemed disposed to rest on +her gains, and proceeded to bury them in the folds of her muslin. +Pickering had staked nothing for himself, but as he saw her prepare +to withdraw he offered her a double napoleon and begged her to place +it. She shook her head with great decision, and seemed to bid +him put it up again; but he, still blushing a good deal, pressed her +with awkward ardour, and she at last took it from him, looked at him +a moment fixedly, and laid it on a number. A moment later the +croupier was raking it in. She gave the young man a little nod +which seemed to say, “I told you so;” he glanced round the +table again and laughed; she left her chair, and he made a way for her +through the crowd. Before going home I took a turn on the terrace +and looked down on the esplanade. The lamps were out, but the +warm starlight vaguely illumined a dozen figures scattered in couples. +One of these figures, I thought, was a lady in a white dress.</p> +<p>I had no intention of letting Pickering go without reminding him +of our old acquaintance. He had been a very singular boy, and +I was curious to see what had become of his singularity. I looked +for him the next morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last +I discovered his whereabouts. But he was out, the waiter said; +he had gone to walk an hour before. I went my way, confident that +I should meet him in the evening. It was the rule with the Homburg +world to spend its evenings at the Kursaal, and Pickering, apparently, +had already discovered a good reason for not being an exception. +One of the charms of Homburg is the fact that of a hot day you may walk +about for a whole afternoon in unbroken shade. The umbrageous +gardens of the Kursaal mingle with the charming Hardtwald, which in +turn melts away into the wooded slopes of the Taunus Mountains. +To the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for an hour through mossy +glades and the still, perpendicular gloom of the fir-woods. Suddenly, +on the grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a young man stretched +at his length in the sun-checkered shade, and kicking his heels towards +a patch of blue sky. My step was so noiseless on the turf that, +before he saw me, I had time to recognise Pickering again. He +looked as if he had been lounging there for some time; his hair was +tossed about as if he had been sleeping; on the grass near him, beside +his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived me he +jerked himself forward, and I stood looking at him without introducing +myself—purposely, to give him a chance to recognise me. +He put on his glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up at +me with an air of general trustfulness, but without a sign of knowing +me. So at last I introduced myself. Then he jumped up and +grasped my hands, and stared and blushed and laughed, and began a dozen +random questions, ending with a demand as to how in the world I had +known him.</p> +<p>“Why, you are not changed so utterly,” I said; “and +after all, it’s but fifteen years since you used to do my Latin +exercises for me.”</p> +<p>“Not changed, eh?” he answered, still smiling, and yet +speaking with a sort of ingenuous dismay.</p> +<p>Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, +a victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine +to school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every +day at two o’clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, +an old nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. +His extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, +which suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, +caused him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo’s sweetheart +hardly suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. +Remembering these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped +he was still the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. +“We were capital friends, you know,” I went on, “then +and afterwards.”</p> +<p>“Yes, we were very good friends,” he said, “and +that makes it the stranger I shouldn’t have known you. For +you know, as a boy, I never had many friends, nor as a man either. +You see,” he added, passing his hand over his eyes, “I am +rather dazed, rather bewildered at finding myself for the first time—alone.” +And he jerked back his shoulders nervously, and threw up his head, as +if to settle himself in an unwonted position. I wondered whether +the old nurse with the bushy eyebrows had remained attached to his person +up to a recent period, and discovered presently that, virtually at least, +she had. We had the whole summer day before us, and we sat down +on the grass together and overhauled our old memories. It was +as if we had stumbled upon an ancient cupboard in some dusky corner, +and rummaged out a heap of childish playthings—tin soldiers and +torn story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is what +we remembered between us.</p> +<p>He had made but a short stay at school—not because he was tormented, +for he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his tongue +at home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine-bottle, but +because his father thought he was learning bad manners. This he +imparted to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased +my oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to me in glimpses +as a sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was +a widower—a fact which seemed to produce in him a sort of preternatural +concentration of parental dignity. He was a majestic man, with +a hooked nose, a keen dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions of +his own as to how a boy—or his boy, at any rate—should be +brought up. First and foremost, he was to be a “gentleman”; +which seemed to mean, chiefly, that he was always to wear a muffler +and gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread and milk, at +eight o’clock. School-life, on experiment, seemed hostile +to these observances, and Eugene was taken home again, to be moulded +into urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was provided for +him, and a single select companion was prescribed. The choice, +mysteriously, fell on me, born as I was under quite another star; my +parents were appealed to, and I was allowed for a few months to have +my lessons with Eugene. The tutor, I think, must have been rather +a snob, for Eugene was treated like a prince, while I got all the questions +and the raps with the ruler. And yet I remember never being jealous +of my happier comrade, and striking up, for the time, one of those friendships +of childhood. He had a watch and a pony and a great store of picture-books, +but my envy of these luxuries was tempered by a vague compassion which +left me free to be generous. I could go out to play alone, I could +button my jacket myself, and sit up till I was sleepy. Poor Pickering +could never take a step without asking leave, or spend half an hour +in the garden without a formal report of it when he came in. My +parents, who had no desire to see me inoculated with importunate virtues, +sent me back to school at the end of six months. After that I +never saw Eugene. His father went to live in the country, to protect +the lad’s morals, and Eugene faded, in reminiscence, into a pale +image of the depressing effects of education. I think I vaguely +supposed that he would melt into thin air, and indeed began gradually +to doubt of his existence, and to regard him as one of the foolish things +one ceased to believe in as one grew older. It seemed natural +that I should have no more news of him. Our present meeting was +my first assurance that he had really survived all that muffling and +coddling.</p> +<p>I observed him now with a good deal of interest, for he was a rare +phenomenon—the fruit of a system persistently and uninterruptedly +applied. He struck me, in a fashion, as certain young monks I +had seen in Italy; he had the same candid, unsophisticated cloister +face. His education had been really almost monastic. It +had found him evidently a very compliant, yielding subject; his gentle +affectionate spirit was not one of those that need to be broken. +It had bequeathed him, now that he stood on the threshold of the great +world, an extraordinary freshness of impression and alertness of desire, +and I confess that, as I looked at him and met his transparent blue +eye, I trembled for the unwarned innocence of such a soul. I became +aware, gradually, that the world had already wrought a certain work +upon him and roused him to a restless, troubled self-consciousness. +Everything about him pointed to an experience from which he had been +debarred; his whole organism trembled with a dawning sense of unsuspected +possibilities of feeling. This appealing tremor was indeed outwardly +visible. He kept shifting himself about on the grass, thrusting +his hands through his hair, wiping a light perspiration from his forehead, +breaking out to say something and rushing off to something else. +Our sudden meeting had greatly excited him, and I saw that I was likely +to profit by a certain overflow of sentimental fermentation. I +could do so with a good conscience, for all this trepidation filled +me with a great friendliness.</p> +<p>“It’s nearly fifteen years, as you say,” he began, +“since you used to call me ‘butter-fingers’ for always +missing the ball. That’s a long time to give an account +of, and yet they have been, for me, such eventless, monotonous years, +that I could almost tell their history in ten words. You, I suppose, +have had all kinds of adventures and travelled over half the world. +I remember you had a turn for deeds of daring; I used to think you a +little Captain Cook in roundabouts, for climbing the garden fence to +get the ball when I had let it fly over. I climbed no fences then +or since. You remember my father, I suppose, and the great care +he took of me? I lost him some five months ago. From those +boyish days up to his death we were always together. I don’t +think that in fifteen years we spent half a dozen hours apart. +We lived in the country, winter and summer, seeing but three or four +people. I had a succession of tutors, and a library to browse +about in; I assure you I am a tremendous scholar. It was a dull +life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a young man grown, but +I never knew it. I was perfectly happy.” He spoke +of his father at some length, and with a respect which I privately declined +to emulate. Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a frigid egotist, +unable to conceive of any larger vocation for his son than to strive +to reproduce so irreproachable a model. “I know I have been +strangely brought up,” said my friend, “and that the result +is something grotesque; but my education, piece by piece, in detail, +became one of my father’s personal habits, as it were. He +took a fancy to it at first through his intense affection for my mother +and the sort of worship he paid her memory. She died at my birth, +and as I grew up, it seems that I bore an extraordinary likeness to +her. Besides, my father had a great many theories; he prided himself +on his conservative opinions; he thought the usual American <i>laisser-aller</i> +in education was a very vulgar practice, and that children were not +to grow up like dusty thorns by the wayside.” “So +you see,” Pickering went on, smiling and blushing, and yet with +something of the irony of vain regret, “I am a regular garden +plant. I have been watched and watered and pruned, and if there +is any virtue in tending I ought to take the prize at a flower show. +Some three years ago my father’s health broke down, and he was +kept very much within doors. So, although I was a man grown, I +lived altogether at home. If I was out of his sight for a quarter +of an hour he sent some one after me. He had severe attacks of +neuralgia, and he used to sit at his window, basking in the sun. +He kept an opera-glass at hand, and when I was out in the garden he +used to watch me with it. A few days before his death I was twenty-seven +years old, and the most innocent youth, I suppose, on the continent. +After he died I missed him greatly,” Pickering continued, evidently +with no intention of making an epigram. “I stayed at home, +in a sort of dull stupor. It seemed as if life offered itself +to me for the first time, and yet as if I didn’t know how to take +hold of it.”</p> +<p>He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which increased as he +talked, and there was a singular contrast between the meagre experience +he described and a certain radiant intelligence which I seemed to perceive +in his glance and tone. Evidently he was a clever fellow, and +his natural faculties were excellent. I imagined he had read a +great deal, and recovered, in some degree, in restless intellectual +conjecture, the freedom he was condemned to ignore in practice. +Opportunity was now offering a meaning to the empty forms with which +his imagination was stored, but it appeared to him dimly, through the +veil of his personal diffidence.</p> +<p>“I have not sailed round the world, as you suppose,” +I said, “but I confess I envy you the novelties you are going +to behold. Coming to Homburg you have plunged <i>in medias res</i>.”</p> +<p>He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an allusion, and hesitated +a moment. “Yes, I know it. I came to Bremen in the +steamer with a very friendly German, who undertook to initiate me into +the glories and mysteries of the Fatherland. At this season, he +said, I must begin with Homburg. I landed but a fortnight ago, +and here I am.” Again he hesitated, as if he were going +to add something about the scene at the Kursaal but suddenly, nervously, +he took up the letter which was lying beside him, looked hard at the +seal with a troubled frown, and then flung it back on the grass with +a sigh.</p> +<p>“How long do you expect to be in Europe?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Six months I supposed when I came. But not so long—now!” +And he let his eyes wander to the letter again.</p> +<p>“And where shall you go—what shall you do?”</p> +<p>“Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday. +But now it is different.”</p> +<p>I glanced at the letter—interrogatively, and he gravely picked +it up and put it into his pocket. We talked for a while longer, +but I saw that he had suddenly become preoccupied; that he was apparently +weighing an impulse to break some last barrier of reserve. At +last he suddenly laid his hand on my arm, looked at me a moment appealingly, +and cried, “Upon my word, I should like to tell you everything!”</p> +<p>“Tell me everything, by all means,” I answered, smiling. +“I desire nothing better than to lie here in the shade and hear +everything.”</p> +<p>“Ah, but the question is, will you understand it? No +matter; you think me a queer fellow already. It’s not easy, +either, to tell you what I feel—not easy for so queer a fellow +as I to tell you in how many ways he is queer!” He got up +and walked away a moment, passing his hand over his eyes, then came +back rapidly and flung himself on the grass again. “I said +just now I always supposed I was happy; it’s true; but now that +my eyes are open, I see I was only stultified. I was like a poodle-dog +that is led about by a blue ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on +slops. It was not life; life is learning to know one’s self, +and in that sense I have lived more in the past six weeks than in all +the years that preceded them. I am filled with this feverish sense +of liberation; it keeps rising to my head like the fumes of strong wine. +I find I am an active, sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, +with passions, with possible convictions—even with what I never +dreamed of, a possible will of my own! I find there is a world +to know, a life to lead, men and women to form a thousand relations +with. It all lies there like a great surging sea, where we must +plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves. I stand +shivering here on the brink, staring, longing, wondering, charmed by +the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water. The world +beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, +that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold me back. +I am full of impulses, but, somehow, I am not full of strength. +Life seems inspiring at certain moments, but it seems terrible and unsafe; +and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself with merciless +forces, when I have learned so well how to stand aside and let them +pass. Why shouldn’t I turn my back upon it all and go home +to—what awaits me?—to that sightless, soundless country +life, and long days spent among old books? But if a man <i>is</i> +weak, he doesn’t want to assent beforehand to his weakness; he +wants to taste whatever sweetness there may be in paying for the knowledge. +So it is that it comes back—this irresistible impulse to take +my plunge—to let myself swing, to go where liberty leads me.” +He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes, and perhaps perceived +in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity. “‘Swing +ahead, in Heaven’s name,’ you want to say, ‘and much +good may it do you.’ I don’t know whether you are +laughing at my scruples or at what possibly strikes you as my depravity. +I doubt,” he went on gravely, “whether I have an inclination +toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I shall not prosper in it. +I honestly believe I may safely take out a license to amuse myself. +But it isn’t that I think of, any more than I dream of, playing +with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to me; what +I long for is knowledge—some other knowledge than comes to us +in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand +all this better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere +in which I have always lived. To break a window and let in light +and air—I feel as if at last I must <i>act</i>!”</p> +<p>“Act, by all means, now and always, when you have a chance,” +I answered. “But don’t take things too hard, now or +ever. Your long confinement makes you think the world better worth +knowing than you are likely to find it. A man with as good a head +and heart as yours has a very ample world within himself, and I am no +believer in art for art, nor in what’s called ‘life’ +for life’s sake. Nevertheless, take your plunge, and come +and tell me whether you have found the pearl of wisdom.” +He frowned a little, as if he thought my sympathy a trifle meagre. +I shook him by the hand and laughed. “The pearl of wisdom,” +I cried, “is love; honest love in the most convenient concentration +of experience! I advise you to fall in love.” He gave +me no smile in response, but drew from his pocket the letter of which +I have spoken, held it up, and shook it solemnly. “What +is it?” I asked.</p> +<p>“It is my sentence!”</p> +<p>“Not of death, I hope!”</p> +<p>“Of marriage.”</p> +<p>“With whom?”</p> +<p>“With a person I don’t love.”</p> +<p>This was serious. I stopped smiling, and begged him to explain.</p> +<p>“It is the singular part of my story,” he said at last. +“It will remind you of an old-fashioned romance. Such as +I sit here, talking in this wild way, and tossing off provocations to +destiny, my destiny is settled and sealed. I am engaged, I am +given in marriage. It’s a bequest of the past—the +past I had no hand in! The marriage was arranged by my father, +years ago, when I was a boy. The young girl’s father was +his particular friend; he was also a widower, and was bringing up his +daughter, on his side, in the same severe seclusion in which I was spending +my days. To this day I am unacquainted with the origin of the +bond of union between our respective progenitors. Mr. Vernor was +largely engaged in business, and I imagine that once upon a time he +found himself in a financial strait and was helped through it by my +father’s coming forward with a heavy loan, on which, in his situation, +he could offer no security but his word. Of this my father was +quite capable. He was a man of dogmas, and he was sure to have +a rule of life—as clear as if it had been written out in his beautiful +copper-plate hand—adapted to the conduct of a gentleman toward +a friend in pecuniary embarrassment. What is more, he was sure +to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor, I believe, got on his feet, paid +his debt, and vowed my father an eternal gratitude. His little +daughter was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to bring her +up to be the wife of his benefactor’s son. So our fate was +fixed, parentally, and we have been educated for each other. I +have not seen my betrothed since she was a very plain-faced little girl +in a sticky pinafore, hugging a one-armed doll—of the male sex, +I believe—as big as herself. Mr. Vernor is in what is called +the Eastern trade, and has been living these many years at Smyrna. +Isabel has grown up there in a white-walled garden, in an orange grove, +between her father and her governess. She is a good deal my junior; +six months ago she was seventeen; when she is eighteen we are to marry.”</p> +<p>He related all this calmly enough, without the accent of complaint, +drily rather and doggedly, as if he were weary of thinking of it. +“It’s a romance, indeed, for these dull days,” I said, +“and I heartily congratulate you. It’s not every young +man who finds, on reaching the marrying age, a wife kept in a box of +rose-leaves for him. A thousand to one Miss Vernor is charming; +I wonder you don’t post off to Smyrna.”</p> +<p>“You are joking,” he answered, with a wounded air, “and +I am terribly serious. Let me tell you the rest. I never +suspected this superior conspiracy till something less than a year ago. +My father, wishing to provide against his death, informed me of it very +solemnly. I was neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as +I remember, with a sort of emotion which varied only in degree from +that with which I could have hailed the announcement that he had ordered +me a set of new shirts. I supposed that was the way that all marriages +were made; I had heard of their being made in heaven, and what was my +father but a divinity? Novels and poems, indeed, talked about +falling in love; but novels and poems were one thing and life was another. +A short time afterwards he introduced me to a photograph of my predestined, +who has a pretty, but an extremely inanimate, face. After this +his health failed rapidly. One night I was sitting, as I habitually +sat for hours, in his dimly-lighted room, near his bed, to which he +had been confined for a week. He had not spoken for some time, +and I supposed he was asleep; but happening to look at him I saw his +eyes wide open, and fixed on me strangely. He was smiling benignantly, +intensely, and in a moment he beckoned to me. Then, on my going +to him—‘I feel that I shall not last long,’ he said; +‘but I am willing to die when I think how comfortably I have arranged +your future.’ He was talking of death, and anything but +grief at that moment was doubtless impious and monstrous; but there +came into my heart for the first time a throbbing sense of being over-governed. +I said nothing, and he thought my silence was all sorrow. ‘I +shall not live to see you married,’ he went on, ‘but since +the foundation is laid, that little signifies; it would be a selfish +pleasure, and I have never thought of myself but in you. To foresee +your future, in its main outline, to know to a certainty that you will +be safely domiciled here, with a wife approved by my judgment, cultivating +the moral fruit of which I have sown the seed—this will content +me. But, my son, I wish to clear this bright vision from the shadow +of a doubt. I believe in your docility; I believe I may trust +the salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I must remember +that when I am removed you will stand here alone, face to face with +a hundred nameless temptations to perversity. The fumes of unrighteous +pride may rise into your brain and tempt you, in the interest of a vulgar +theory which it will call your independence, to shatter the edifice +I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask you for a promise—the +solemn promise you owe my condition.’ And he grasped my +hand. ‘You will follow the path I have marked; you will +be faithful to the young girl whom an influence as devoted as that which +has governed your own young life has moulded into everything amiable; +you will marry Isabel Vernor.’ This was pretty ‘steep,’ +as we used to say at school. I was frightened; I drew away my +hand and asked to be trusted without any such terrible vow. My +reluctance startled my father into a suspicion that the vulgar theory +of independence had already been whispering to me. He sat up in +his bed and looked at me with eyes which seemed to foresee a lifetime +of odious ingratitude. I felt the reproach; I feel it now. +I promised! And even now I don’t regret my promise nor complain +of my father’s tenacity. I feel, somehow, as if the seeds +of ultimate repose had been sown in those unsuspecting years—as +if after many days I might gather the mellow fruit. But after +many days! I will keep my promise, I will obey; but I want to +<i>live</i> first!”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, you are living now. All this passionate +consciousness of your situation is a very ardent life. I wish +I could say as much for my own.”</p> +<p>“I want to forget my situation. I want to spend three +months without thinking of the past or the future, grasping whatever +the present offers me. Yesterday I thought I was in a fair way +to sail with the tide. But this morning comes this memento!” +And he held up his letter again.</p> +<p>“What is it?”</p> +<p>“A letter from Smyrna.”</p> +<p>“I see you have not yet broken the seal.”</p> +<p>“No; nor do I mean to, for the present. It contains bad +news.”</p> +<p>“What do you call bad news?”</p> +<p>“News that I am expected in Smyrna in three weeks. News +that Mr. Vernor disapproves of my roving about the world. News +that his daughter is standing expectant at the altar.”</p> +<p>“Is not this pure conjecture?”</p> +<p>“Conjecture, possibly, but safe conjecture. As soon as +I looked at the letter something smote me at the heart. Look at +the device on the seal, and I am sure you will find it’s <i>Tarry +not</i>!” And he flung the letter on the grass.</p> +<p>“Upon my word, you had better open it,” I said.</p> +<p>“If I were to open it and read my summons, do you know what +I should do? I should march home and ask the Oberkellner how one +gets to Smyrna, pack my trunk, take my ticket, and not stop till I arrived. +I know I should; it would be the fascination of habit. The only +way, therefore, to wander to my rope’s end is to leave the letter +unread.”</p> +<p>“In your place,” I said, “curiosity would make +me open it.”</p> +<p>He shook his head. “I have no curiosity! For a +long time now the idea of my marriage has ceased to be a novelty, and +I have contemplated it mentally in every possible light. I fear +nothing from that side, but I do fear something from conscience. +I want my hands tied. Will you do me a favour? Pick up the +letter, put it into your pocket, and keep it till I ask you for it. +When I do, you may know that I am at my rope’s end.”</p> +<p>I took the letter, smiling. “And how long is your rope +to be? The Homburg season doesn’t last for ever.”</p> +<p>“Does it last a month? Let that be my season! A +month hence you will give it back to me.”</p> +<p>“To-morrow if you say so. Meanwhile, let it rest in peace!” +And I consigned it to the most sacred interstice of my pocket-book. +To say that I was disposed to humour the poor fellow would seem to be +saying that I thought his request fantastic. It was his situation, +by no fault of his own, that was fantastic, and he was only trying to +be natural. He watched me put away the letter, and when it had +disappeared gave a soft sigh of relief. The sigh was natural, +and yet it set me thinking. His general recoil from an immediate +responsibility imposed by others might be wholesome enough; but if there +was an old grievance on one side, was there not possibly a new-born +delusion on the other? It would be unkind to withhold a reflection +that might serve as a warning; so I told him, abruptly, that I had been +an undiscovered spectator, the night before, of his exploits at roulette.</p> +<p>He blushed deeply, but he met my eyes with the same clear good-humour.</p> +<p>“Ah, then, you saw that wonderful lady?”</p> +<p>“Wonderful she was indeed. I saw her afterwards, too, +sitting on the terrace in the starlight. I imagine she was not +alone.”</p> +<p>“No, indeed, I was with her—for nearly an hour. +Then I walked home with her.”</p> +<p>“Ah! And did you go in?”</p> +<p>“No, she said it was too late to ask me; though she remarked +that in a general way she did not stand upon ceremony.”</p> +<p>“She did herself injustice. When it came to losing your +money for you, she made you insist.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you noticed that too?” cried Pickering, still quite +unconfused. “I felt as if the whole table were staring at +me; but her manner was so gracious and reassuring that I supposed she +was doing nothing unusual. She confessed, however, afterwards, +that she is very eccentric. The world began to call her so, she +said, before she ever dreamed of it, and at last finding that she had +the reputation, in spite of herself, she resolved to enjoy its privileges. +Now, she does what she chooses.”</p> +<p>“In other words, she is a lady with no reputation to lose!”</p> +<p>Pickering seemed puzzled; he smiled a little. “Is not that +what you say of bad women?”</p> +<p>“Of some—of those who are found out.”</p> +<p>“Well,” he said, still smiling, “I have not yet +found out Madame Blumenthal.”</p> +<p>“If that’s her name, I suppose she’s German.”</p> +<p>“Yes; but she speaks English so well that you wouldn’t +know it. She is very clever. Her husband is dead.”</p> +<p>I laughed involuntarily at the conjunction of these facts, and Pickering’s +clear glance seemed to question my mirth. “You have been +so bluntly frank with me,” I said, “that I too must be frank. +Tell me, if you can, whether this clever Madame Blumenthal, whose husband +is dead, has given a point to your desire for a suspension of communication +with Smyrna.”</p> +<p>He seemed to ponder my question, unshrinkingly. “I think +not,” he said, at last. “I have had the desire for +three months; I have known Madame Blumenthal for less than twenty-four +hours.”</p> +<p>“Very true. But when you found this letter of yours on +your place at breakfast, did you seem for a moment to see Madame Blumenthal +sitting opposite?”</p> +<p>“Opposite?”</p> +<p>“Opposite, my dear fellow, or anywhere in the neighbourhood. +In a word, does she interest you?”</p> +<p>“Very much!” he cried, joyously.</p> +<p>“Amen!” I answered, jumping up with a laugh. “And +now, if we are to see the world in a month, there is no time to lose. +Let us begin with the Hardtwald.”</p> +<p>Pickering rose, and we strolled away into the forest, talking of +lighter things. At last we reached the edge of the wood, sat down +on a fallen log, and looked out across an interval of meadow at the +long wooded waves of the Taunus. What my friend was thinking of +I can’t say; I was meditating on his queer biography, and letting +my wonderment wander away to Smyrna. Suddenly I remembered that +he possessed a portrait of the young girl who was waiting for him there +in a white-walled garden. I asked him if he had it with him. +He said nothing, but gravely took out his pocket-book and drew forth +a small photograph. It represented, as the poet says, a simple +maiden in her flower—a slight young girl, with a certain childish +roundness of contour. There was no ease in her posture; she was +standing, stiffly and shyly, for her likeness; she wore a short-waisted +white dress; her arms hung at her sides and her hands were clasped in +front; her head was bent downward a little, and her dark eyes fixed. +But her awkwardness was as pretty as that of some angular seraph in +a mediæval carving, and in her timid gaze there seemed to lurk +the questioning gleam of childhood. “What is this for?” +her charming eyes appeared to ask; “why have I been dressed up +for this ceremony in a white frock and amber beads?”</p> +<p>“Gracious powers!” I said to myself; “what an enchanting +thing is innocence!”</p> +<p>“That portrait was taken a year and a half ago,” said +Pickering, as if with an effort to be perfectly just. “By +this time, I suppose, she looks a little wiser.”</p> +<p>“Not much, I hope,” I said, as I gave it back. +“She is very sweet!”</p> +<p>“Yes, poor girl, she is very sweet—no doubt!” +And he put the thing away without looking at it.</p> +<p>We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly—“My +dear fellow,” I said, “I should take some satisfaction in +seeing you immediately leave Homburg.”</p> +<p>“Immediately?”</p> +<p>“To-day—as soon as you can get ready.”</p> +<p>He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he blushed. +“There is something I have not told you,” he said; “something +that your saying that Madame Blumenthal has no reputation to lose has +made me half afraid to tell you.”</p> +<p>“I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has asked +you to come and play her game for her again.”</p> +<p>“Not at all!” cried Pickering, with a smile of triumph. +“She says that she means to play no more for the present. +She has asked me to come and take tea with her this evening.”</p> +<p>“Ah, then,” I said, very gravely, “of course you +can’t leave Homburg.”</p> +<p>He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as if he were expecting +me to laugh. “Urge it strongly,” he said in a moment. +“Say it’s my duty—that I <i>must</i>.”</p> +<p>I didn’t quite understand him, but, feathering the shaft with +a harmless expletive, I told him that unless he followed my advice I +would never speak to him again.</p> +<p>He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground with his stick. +“Good!” he cried; “I wanted an occasion to break a +rule—to leap a barrier. Here it is. I stay!”</p> +<p>I made him a mock bow for his energy. “That’s very +fine,” I said; “but now, to put you in a proper mood for +Madame Blumenthal’s tea, we will go and listen to the band play +Schubert under the lindens.” And we walked back through +the woods.</p> +<p>I went to see Pickering the next day, at his inn, and on knocking, +as directed, at his door, was surprised to hear the sound of a loud +voice within. My knock remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced +myself. I found no company, but I discovered my friend walking +up and down the room and apparently declaiming to himself from a little +volume bound in white vellum. He greeted me heartily, threw his +book on the table, and said that he was taking a German lesson.</p> +<p>“And who is your teacher?” I asked, glancing at the book.</p> +<p>He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered, after an instant’s +delay, “Madame Blumenthal.”</p> +<p>“Indeed! Has she written a grammar?”</p> +<p>“It’s not a grammar; it’s a tragedy.” +And he handed me the book.</p> +<p>I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, with a very large margin, +an <i>Historisches Trauerspiel</i> in five acts, entitled “Cleopatra.” +There were a great many marginal corrections and annotations, apparently +from the author’s hand; the speeches were very long, and there +was an inordinate number of soliloquies by the heroine. One of +them, I remember, towards the end of the play, began in this fashion—</p> +<p>“What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation but +deception?—reality that pales before the light of one’s +dreams as Octavia’s dull beauty fades beside mine? But let +me believe in some intenser bliss, and seek it in the arms of death!”</p> +<p>“It seems decidedly passionate,” I said. “Has +the tragedy ever been acted?”</p> +<p>“Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells me that she had +it played at her own house in Berlin, and that she herself undertook +the part of the heroine.”</p> +<p>Pickering’s unworldly life had not been of a sort to sharpen +his perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable +sign of his being under the charm, that this information was very soberly +offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive to my experimental +observations on vulgar topics—the hot weather, the inn, the advent +of Adelina Patti. At last, uttering his thoughts, he announced +that Madame Blumenthal had proved to be an extraordinarily interesting +woman. He seemed to have quite forgotten our long talk in the +Hartwaldt, and betrayed no sense of this being a confession that he +had taken his plunge and was floating with the current. He only +remembered that I had spoken slightingly of the lady, and he now hinted +that it behoved me to amend my opinion. I had received the day +before so strong an impression of a sort of spiritual fastidiousness +in my friend’s nature, that on hearing now the striking of a new +hour, as it were, in his consciousness, and observing how the echoes +of the past were immediately quenched in its music, I said to myself +that it had certainly taken a delicate hand to wind up that fine machine. +No doubt Madame Blumenthal was a clever woman. It is a good German +custom at Homburg to spend the hour preceding dinner in listening to +the orchestra in the Kurgarten; Mozart and Beethoven, for organisms +in which the interfusion of soul and sense is peculiarly mysterious, +are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite. Pickering and I conformed, +as we had done the day before, to the fashion, and when we were seated +under the trees, he began to expatiate on his friend’s merits.</p> +<p>“I don’t know whether she is eccentric or not,” +he said; “to me every one seems eccentric, and it’s not +for me, yet a while, to measure people by my narrow precedents. +I never saw a gaming table in my life before, and supposed that a gambler +was of necessity some dusky villain with an evil eye. In Germany, +says Madame Blumenthal, people play at roulette as they play at billiards, +and her own venerable mother originally taught her the rules of the +game. It is a recognised source of subsistence for decent people +with small means. But I confess Madame Blumenthal might do worse +things than play at roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful. +I have never been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most +excellent thing in a woman. I have always said to myself that +if my heart were ever to be captured it would be by a sort of general +grace—a sweetness of motion and tone—on which one could +count for soothing impressions, as one counts on a musical instrument +that is perfectly in tune. Madame Blumenthal has it—this +grace that soothes and satisfies; and it seems the more perfect that +it keeps order and harmony in a character really passionately ardent +and active. With her eager nature and her innumerable accomplishments +nothing would be easier than that she should seem restless and aggressive. +You will know her, and I leave you to judge whether she does seem so! +She has every gift, and culture has done everything for each. +What goes on in her mind I of course can’t say; what reaches the +observer—the admirer—is simply a sort of fragrant emanation +of intelligence and sympathy.”</p> +<p>“Madame Blumenthal,” I said, smiling, “might be +the loveliest woman in the world, and you the object of her choicest +favours, and yet what I should most envy you would be, not your peerless +friend, but your beautiful imagination.”</p> +<p>“That’s a polite way of calling me a fool,” said +Pickering. “You are a sceptic, a cynic, a satirist! +I hope I shall be a long time coming to that.”</p> +<p>“You will make the journey fast if you travel by express trains. +But pray tell me, have you ventured to intimate to Madame Blumenthal +your high opinion of her?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what I may have said. She listens +even better than she talks, and I think it possible I may have made +her listen to a great deal of nonsense. For after the first few +words I exchanged with her I was conscious of an extraordinary evaporation +of all my old diffidence. I have, in truth, I suppose,” +he added in a moment, “owing to my peculiar circumstances, a great +accumulated fund of unuttered things of all sorts to get rid of. +Last evening, sitting there before that charming woman, they came swarming +to my lips. Very likely I poured them all out. I have a +sense of having enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and of +seeing her lovely eyes shining through it opposite to me, like fog-lamps +at sea.” And here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke +off into an ardent parenthesis, and declared that Madame Blumenthal’s +eyes had something in them that he had never seen in any others. +“It was a jumble of crudities and inanities,” he went on; +“they must have seemed to her great rubbish; but I felt the wiser +and the stronger, somehow, for having fired off all my guns—they +could hurt nobody now if they hit—and I imagine I might have gone +far without finding another woman in whom such an exhibition would have +provoked so little of mere cold amusement.”</p> +<p>“Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary,” I surmised, “entered +into your situation with warmth.”</p> +<p>“Exactly so—the greatest! She has felt and suffered, +and now she understands!”</p> +<p>“She told you, I imagine, that she understood you as if she +had made you, and she offered to be your guide, philosopher, and friend.”</p> +<p>“She spoke to me,” Pickering answered, after a pause, +“as I had never been spoken to before, and she offered me, formally, +all the offices of a woman’s friendship.”</p> +<p>“Which you as formally accepted?”</p> +<p>“To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but allow me to +say I don’t care!” Pickering spoke with an air of +genial defiance which was the most inoffensive thing in the world. +“I was very much moved; I was, in fact, very much excited. +I tried to say something, but I couldn’t; I had had plenty to +say before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last I bolted out +of the room.”</p> +<p>“Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your pocket!”</p> +<p>“Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she came +in. Afterwards she kindly offered to read German aloud with me, +for the accent, two or three times a week. ‘What shall we +begin with?’ she asked. ‘With this!’ I said, +and held up the book. And she let me take it to look it over.”</p> +<p>I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I had been, I might +have been disarmed by Pickering’s assurance, before we parted, +that Madame Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to introduce +me. Among the foolish things which, according to his own account, +he had uttered, were some generous words in my praise, to which she +had civilly replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I +begged that the introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to +let Pickering work out his destiny alone. For some days I saw +little of him, though we met at the Kursaal and strolled occasionally +in the park. I watched, in spite of my desire to let him alone, +for the signs and portents of the world’s action upon him—of +that portion of the world, in especial, of which Madame Blumenthal had +constituted herself the agent. He seemed very happy, and gave +me in a dozen ways an impression of increased self-confidence and maturity. +His mind was admirably active, and always, after a quarter of an hour’s +talk with him, I asked myself what experience could really do, that +innocence had not done, to make it bright and fine. I was struck +with his deep enjoyment of the whole spectacle of foreign life—its +novelty, its picturesqueness, its light and shade—and with the +infinite freedom with which he felt he could go and come and rove and +linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an awakening, +a coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a little +less of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he saw +her often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit +to myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she were really the ruling +star of this happy season, she must be a very superior woman. +Pickering had the air of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the +feet of an austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift dangling +about some supreme incarnation of levity.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> +<p>Madame Blumenthal seemed, for the time, to have abjured the Kursaal, +and I never caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently, +was an interesting study, and the studious mind prefers seclusion.</p> +<p>She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the opera, where +from my chair I perceived her in a box, looking extremely pretty. +Adelina Patti was singing, and after the rising of the curtain I was +occupied with the stage; but on looking round when it fell for the <i>entr’acte</i>, +I saw that the authoress of “Cleopatra” had been joined +by her young admirer. He was sitting a little behind her, leaning +forward, looking over her shoulder and listening, while she, slowly +moving her fan to and fro and letting her eye wander over the house, +was apparently talking of this person and that. No doubt she was +saying sharp things; but Pickering was not laughing; his eyes were following +her covert indications; his mouth was half open, as it always was when +he was interested; he looked intensely serious. I was glad that, +having her back to him, she was unable to see how he looked. It +seemed the proper moment to present myself and make her my bow; but +just as I was about to leave my place a gentleman, whom in a moment +I perceived to be an old acquaintance, came to occupy the next chair. +Recognition and mutual greetings followed, and I was forced to postpone +my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not sorry, for it very soon +occurred to me that Niedermeyer would be just the man to give me a fair +prose version of Pickering’s lyric tributes to his friend. +He was an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about Europe a great +deal in a series of small diplomatic posts. England especially +he had often visited, and he spoke the language almost without accent. +I had once spent three rainy days with him in the house of an English +friend in the country. He was a sharp observer, and a good deal +of a gossip; he knew a little something about every one, and about some +people everything. His knowledge on social matters generally had +the quality of all German science; it was copious, minute, exhaustive.</p> +<p>“Do tell me,” I said, as we stood looking round the house, +“who and what is the lady in white, with the young man sitting +behind her.”</p> +<p>“Who?” he answered, dropping his glass. “Madame +Blumenthal! What! It would take long to say. Be introduced; +it’s easily done; you will find her charming. Then, after +a week, you will tell me what she is.”</p> +<p>“Perhaps I should not. My friend there has known her +a week, and I don’t think he is yet able to give a coherent account +of her.”</p> +<p>He raised his glass again, and after looking a while, “I am +afraid your friend is a little—what do you call it?—a little +‘soft.’ Poor fellow! he’s not the first. +I have never known this lady that she has not had some eligible youth +hovering about in some such attitude as that, undergoing the softening +process. She looks wonderfully well, from here. It’s +extraordinary how those women last!”</p> +<p>“You don’t mean, I take it, when you talk about ‘those +women,’ that Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed, for duration, +in a certain infusion of respectability?”</p> +<p>“Yes and no. The atmosphere that surrounds her is entirely +of her own making. There is no reason in her antecedents that +people should drop their voice when they speak of her. But some +women are never at their ease till they have given some damnable twist +or other to their position before the world. The attitude of upright +virtue is unbecoming, like sitting too straight in a fauteuil. +Don’t ask me for opinions, however; content yourself with a few +facts and with an anecdote. Madame Blumenthal is Prussian, and +very well born. I remember her mother, an old Westphalian Gräfin, +with principles marshalled out like Frederick the Great’s grenadiers. +She was poor, however, and her principles were an insufficient dowry +for Anastasia, who was married very young to a vicious Jew, twice her +own age. He was supposed to have money, but I am afraid he had +less than was nominated in the bond, or else that his pretty young wife +spent it very fast. She has been a widow these six or eight years, +and has lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion. I +suppose she is some six or eight and thirty years of age. In winter +one hears of her in Berlin, giving little suppers to the artistic rabble +there; in summer one often sees her across the green table at Ems and +Wiesbaden. She’s very clever, and her cleverness has spoiled +her. A year after her marriage she published a novel, with her +views on matrimony, in the George Sand manner—beating the drum +to Madame Sand’s trumpet. No doubt she was very unhappy; +Blumenthal was an old beast. Since then she has published a lot +of literature—novels and poems and pamphlets on every conceivable +theme, from the conversion of Lola Montez to the Hegelian philosophy. +Her talk is much better than her writing. Her <i>conjugophobia</i>—I +can’t call it by any other name—made people think lightly +of her at a time when her rebellion against marriage was probably only +theoretic. She had a taste for spinning fine phrases, she drove +her shuttle, and when she came to the end of her yarn she found that +society had turned its back. She tossed her head, declared that +at last she could breathe the sacred air of freedom, and formally announced +that she had embraced an ‘intellectual’ life. This +meant unlimited <i>camaraderie</i> with scribblers and daubers, Hegelian +philosophers and Hungarian pianists. But she has been admired +also by a great many really clever men; there was a time, in fact, when +she turned a head as well set on its shoulders as this one!” +And Niedermeyer tapped his forehead. “She has a great charm, +and, literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for all that, I am +not going to speak to her; I am not going near her box. I am going +to leave her to say, if she does me the honour to observe the omission, +that I too have gone over to the Philistines. It’s not that; +it is that there is something sinister about the woman. I am too +old for it to frighten me, but I am good-natured enough for it to pain +me. Her quarrel with society has brought her no happiness, and +her outward charm is only the mask of a dangerous discontent. +Her imagination is lodged where her heart should be! So long as +you amuse it, well and good; she’s radiant. But the moment +you let it flag, she is capable of dropping you without a pang. +If you land on your feet you are so much the wiser, simply; but there +have been two or three, I believe, who have almost broken their necks +in the fall.”</p> +<p>“You are reversing your promise,” I said, “and +giving me an opinion, but not an anecdote.”</p> +<p>“This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine made +her acquaintance in Berlin, and though he was no longer a young man, +and had never been what is called a susceptible one, he took a great +fancy to Madame Blumenthal. He’s a major in the Prussian +artillery—grizzled, grave, a trifle severe, a man every way firm +in the faith of his fathers. It’s a proof of Anastasia’s +charm that such a man should have got into the habit of going to see +her every day of his life. But the major was in love, or next +door to it! Every day that he called he found her scribbling away +at a little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper. +She used to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for a quarter of an +hour, till she had finished her chapter; she was writing a novel, and +it was promised to a publisher. Clorinda, she confided to him, +was the name of the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had +never read a work of fiction in his life, but he knew by hearsay that +Madame Blumenthal’s literature, when put forth in pink covers, +was subversive of several respectable institutions. Besides, he +didn’t believe in women knowing how to write at all, and it irritated +him to see this inky goddess correcting proof-sheets under his nose—irritated +him the more that, as I say, he was in love with her and that he ventured +to believe she had a kindness for his years and his honours. And +yet she was not such a woman as he could easily ask to marry him. +The result of all this was that he fell into the way of railing at her +intellectual pursuits and saying he should like to run his sword through +her pile of papers. A woman was clever enough when she could guess +her husband’s wishes, and learned enough when she could read him +the newspapers. At last, one day, Madame Blumenthal flung down +her pen and announced in triumph that she had finished her novel. +Clorinda had expired in the arms of—some one else than her husband. +The major, by way of congratulating her, declared that her novel was +immoral rubbish, and that her love of vicious paradoxes was only a peculiarly +depraved form of coquetry. He added, however, that he loved her +in spite of her follies, and that if she would formally abjure them +he would as formally offer her his hand. They say that women like +to be snubbed by military men. I don’t know, I’m sure; +I don’t know how much pleasure, on this occasion, was mingled +with Anastasia’s wrath. But her wrath was very quiet, and +the major assured me it made her look uncommonly pretty. ‘I +have told you before,’ she says, ‘that I write from an inner +need. I write to unburden my heart, to satisfy my conscience. +You call my poor efforts coquetry, vanity, the desire to produce a sensation. +I can prove to you that it is the quiet labour itself I care for, and +not the world’s more or less flattering attention to it!’ +And seizing the history of Clorinda she thrust it into the fire. +The major stands staring, and the first thing he knows she is sweeping +him a great curtsey and bidding him farewell for ever. Left alone +and recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the embers, and +then proceeds to thump vigorously at the lady’s door. But +it never opened, and from that day to the day three months ago when +he told me the tale, he had not beheld her again.”</p> +<p>“By Jove, it’s a striking story,” I said. +“But the question is, what does it prove?”</p> +<p>“Several things. First (what I was careful not to tell +my friend), that Madame Blumenthal cared for him a trifle more than +he supposed; second, that he cares for her more than ever; third, that +the performance was a master-stroke, and that her allowing him to force +an interview upon her again is only a question of time.”</p> +<p>“And last?” I asked.</p> +<p>“This is another anecdote. The other day, Unter den Linden, +I saw on a bookseller’s counter a little pink-covered romance—‘Sophronia,’ +by Madame Blumenthal. Glancing through it, I observed an extraordinary +abuse of asterisks; every two or three pages the narrative was adorned +with a portentous blank, crossed with a row of stars.”</p> +<p>“Well, but poor Clorinda?” I objected, as Niedermeyer +paused.</p> +<p>“Sophronia, my dear fellow, is simply Clorinda renamed by the +baptism of fire. The fair author came back, of course, and found +Clorinda tumbled upon the floor, a good deal scorched, but, on the whole, +more frightened than hurt. She picks her up, brushes her off, +and sends her to the printer. Wherever the flames had burnt a +hole she swings a constellation! But if the major is prepared +to drop a penitent tear over the ashes of Clorinda, I shall not whisper +to him that the urn is empty.”</p> +<p>Even Adelina Patti’s singing, for the next half-hour, but half +availed to divert me from my quickened curiosity to behold Madame Blumenthal +face to face. As soon as the curtain had fallen again I repaired +to her box and was ushered in by Pickering with zealous hospitality. +His glowing smile seemed to say to me, “Ay, look for yourself, +and adore!” Nothing could have been more gracious than the +lady’s greeting, and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that her +prettiness lost nothing on a nearer view. Her eyes indeed were +the finest I have ever seen—the softest, the deepest, the most +intensely responsive. In spite of something faded and jaded in +her physiognomy, her movements, her smile, and the tone of her voice, +especially when she laughed, had an almost girlish frankness and spontaneity. +She looked at you very hard with her radiant gray eyes, and she indulged +while she talked in a superabundance of restless, rather affected little +gestures, as if to make you take her meaning in a certain very particular +and superfine sense. I wondered whether after a while this might +not fatigue one’s attention; then meeting her charming eyes, I +said, Not for a long time. She was very clever, and, as Pickering +had said, she spoke English admirably. I told her, as I took my +seat beside her, of the fine things I had heard about her from my friend, +and she listened, letting me go on some time, and exaggerate a little, +with her fine eyes fixed full upon me. “Really?” she +suddenly said, turning short round upon Pickering, who stood behind +us, and looking at him in the same way. “Is that the way +you talk about me?”</p> +<p>He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly began +to laugh; it was then I observed how sweet her voice was in laughter. +We talked after this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented +her on her excellent English, and asked if she had learnt it in England.</p> +<p>“Heaven forbid!” she cried. “I have never +been there and wish never to go. I should never get on with the—” +I wondered what she was going to say; the fogs, the smoke, or whist +with sixpenny stakes?—“I should never get on,” she +said, “with the aristocracy! I am a fierce democrat—I +am not ashamed of it. I hold opinions which would make my ancestors +turn in their graves. I was born in the lap of feudalism. +I am a daughter of the crusaders. But I am a revolutionist! +I have a passion for freedom—my idea of happiness is to die on +a great barricade! It’s to your great country I should like +to go. I should like to see the wonderful spectacle of a great +people free to do everything it chooses, and yet never doing anything +wrong!”</p> +<p>I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom and our good +conduct had their limits, and she turned quickly about and shook her +fan with a dramatic gesture at Pickering. “No matter, no +matter!” she cried; “I should like to see the country which +produced that wonderful young man. I think of it as a sort of +Arcadia—a land of the golden age. He’s so delightfully +innocent! In this stupid old Germany, if a young man is innocent +he’s a fool; he has no brains; he’s not a bit interesting. +But Mr. Pickering says the freshest things, and after I have laughed +five minutes at their freshness it suddenly occurs to me that they are +very wise, and I think them over for a week.” “True!” +she went on, nodding at him. “I call them inspired solecisms, +and I treasure them up. Remember that when I next laugh at you!”</p> +<p>Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe that he was in a +state of beatific exaltation which weighed Madame Blumenthal’s +smiles and frowns in an equal balance. They were equally hers; +they were links alike in the golden chain. He looked at me with +eyes that seemed to say, “Did you ever hear such wit? Did +you ever see such grace?” It seemed to me that he was but +vaguely conscious of the meaning of her words; her gestures, her voice +and glance, made an absorbing harmony. There is something painful +in the spectacle of absolute enthralment, even to an excellent cause. +I gave no response to Pickering’s challenge, but made some remark +upon the charm of Adelina Patti’s singing. Madame Blumenthal, +as became a “revolutionist,” was obliged to confess that +she could see no charm in it; it was meagre, it was trivial, it lacked +soul. “You must know that in music, too,” she said, +“I think for myself!” And she began with a great many +flourishes of her fan to explain what it was she thought. Remarkable +things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, for in the midst of the +explanation the curtain rose again. “You can’t be +a great artist without a great passion!” Madame Blumenthal +was affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti’s +voice rose wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. +“Ah, give me that art,” I whispered, “and I will leave +you your passion!” And I departed for my own place in the +orchestra. I wondered afterwards whether the speech had seemed +rude, and inferred that it had not on receiving a friendly nod from +the lady, in the lobby, as the theatre was emptying itself. She +was on Pickering’s arm, and he was taking her to her carriage. +Distances are short in Homburg, but the night was rainy, and Madame +Blumenthal exhibited a very pretty satin-shod foot as a reason why, +though but a penniless widow, she should not walk home. Pickering +left us together a moment while he went to hail the vehicle, and my +companion seized the opportunity, as she said, to beg me to be so very +kind as to come and see her. It was for a particular reason! +It was reason enough for me, of course, I answered, that she had given +me leave. She looked at me a moment with that extraordinary gaze +of hers which seemed so absolutely audacious in its candour, and rejoined +that I paid more compliments than our young friend there, but that she +was sure I was not half so sincere. “But it’s about +him I want to talk,” she said. “I want to ask you +many things; I want you to tell me all about him. He interests +me; but you see my sympathies are so intense, my imagination is so lively, +that I don’t trust my own impressions. They have misled +me more than once!” And she gave a little tragic shudder.</p> +<p>I promised to come and compare notes with her, and we bade her farewell +at her carriage door. Pickering and I remained a while, walking +up and down the long glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had not +taken many steps before I became aware that I was beside a man in the +very extremity of love. “Isn’t she wonderful?” +he asked, with an implicit confidence in my sympathy which it cost me +some ingenuity to elude. If he were really in love, well and good! +For although, now that I had seen her, I stood ready to confess to large +possibilities of fascination on Madame Blumenthal’s part, and +even to certain possibilities of sincerity of which my appreciation +was vague, yet it seemed to me less ominous that he should be simply +smitten than that his admiration should pique itself on being discriminating. +It was on his fundamental simplicity that I counted for a happy termination +of his experiment, and the former of these alternatives seemed to me +the simpler. I resolved to hold my tongue and let him run his +course. He had a great deal to say about his happiness, about +the days passing like hours, the hours like minutes, and about Madame +Blumenthal being a “revelation.” “She was nothing +to-night,” he said; “nothing to what she sometimes is in +the way of brilliancy—in the way of repartee. If you could +only hear her when she tells her adventures!”</p> +<p>“Adventures?” I inquired. “Has she had adventures?”</p> +<p>“Of the most wonderful sort!” cried Pickering, with rapture. +“She hasn’t vegetated, like me! She has lived in the +tumult of life. When I listen to her reminiscences, it’s +like hearing the opening tumult of one of Beethoven’s symphonies +as it loses itself in a triumphant harmony of beauty and faith!”</p> +<p>I could only lift my eyebrows, but I desired to know before we separated +what he had done with that troublesome conscience of his. “I +suppose you know, my dear fellow,” I said, “that you are +simply in love. That’s what they happen to call your state +of mind.”</p> +<p>He replied with a brightening eye, as if he were delighted to hear +it—“So Madame Blumenthal told me only this morning!” +And seeing, I suppose, that I was slightly puzzled, “I went to +drive with her,” he continued; “we drove to Königstein, +to see the old castle. We scrambled up into the heart of the ruin +and sat for an hour in one of the crumbling old courts. Something +in the solemn stillness of the place unloosed my tongue; and while she +sat on an ivied stone, on the edge of the plunging wall, I stood there +and made a speech. She listened to me, looking at me, breaking +off little bits of stone and letting them drop down into the valley. +At last she got up and nodded at me two or three times silently, with +a smile, as if she were applauding me for a solo on the violin. +‘You are in love,’ she said. ‘It’s a perfect +case!’ And for some time she said nothing more. But +before we left the place she told me that she owed me an answer to my +speech. She thanked me heartily, but she was afraid that if she +took me at my word she would be taking advantage of my inexperience. +I had known few women; I was too easily pleased; I thought her better +than she really was. She had great faults; I must know her longer +and find them out; I must compare her with other women—women younger, +simpler, more innocent, more ignorant; and then if I still did her the +honour to think well of her, she would listen to me again. I told +her that I was not afraid of preferring any woman in the world to her, +and then she repeated, ‘Happy man, happy man! you are in love, +you are in love!’”</p> +<p>I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of days later, in some agitation +of thought. It has been proved that there are, here and there, +in the world, such people as sincere impostors; certain characters who +cultivate fictitious emotions in perfect good faith. Even if this +clever lady enjoyed poor Pickering’s bedazzlement, it was conceivable +that, taking vanity and charity together, she should care more for his +welfare than for her own entertainment; and her offer to abide by the +result of hazardous comparison with other women was a finer stroke than +her reputation had led me to expect. She received me in a shabby +little sitting-room littered with uncut books and newspapers, many of +which I saw at a glance were French. One side of it was occupied +by an open piano, surmounted by a jar full of white roses. They +perfumed the air; they seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering’s +devotion. Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this devotion +was reading the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>. The purpose of my +visit was not to admire Madame Blumenthal on my own account, but to +ascertain how far I might safely leave her to work her will upon my +friend. She had impugned my sincerity the evening of the opera, +and I was careful on this occasion to abstain from compliments, and +not to place her on her guard against my penetration. It is needless +to narrate our interview in detail; indeed, to tell the perfect truth, +I was punished for my rash attempt to surprise her by a temporary eclipse +of my own perspicacity. She sat there so questioning, so perceptive, +so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal, that I was quite ready +at the end of half an hour to subscribe to the most comprehensive of +Pickering’s rhapsodies. She was certainly a wonderful woman. +I have never liked to linger, in memory, on that half-hour. The +result of it was to prove that there were many more things in the composition +of a woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her imagination in the +place of her heart than were dreamt of in my philosophy. Yet, +as I sat there stroking my hat and balancing the account between nature +and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very competent philosopher. +She had said she wished me to tell her everything about our friend, +and she questioned me as to his family, his fortune, his antecedents, +and his character. All this was natural in a woman who had received +a passionate declaration of love, and it was expressed with an air of +charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there was really no mistake +about his being a most distinguished young man, and that if I chose +to be explicit, I might deepen her conviction to disinterested ecstasy, +which might have almost provoked me to invent a good opinion, if I had +not had one ready made. I told her that she really knew Pickering +better than I did, and that until we met at Homburg I had not seen him +since he was a boy.</p> +<p>“But he talks to you freely,” she answered; “I +know you are his confidant. He has told me certainly a great many +things, but I always feel as if he were keeping something back; as if +he were holding something behind him, and showing me only one hand at +once. He seems often to be hovering on the edge of a secret. +I have had several friendships in my life—thank Heaven! but I +have had none more dear to me than this one. Yet in the midst +of it I have the painful sense of my friend being half afraid of me; +of his thinking me terrible, strange, perhaps a trifle out of my wits. +Poor me! If he only knew what a plain good soul I am, and how +I only want to know him and befriend him!”</p> +<p>These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity which made mistrust +seem cruel. How much better I might play providence over Pickering’s +experiments with life if I could engage the fine instincts of this charming +woman on the providential side! Pickering’s secret was, +of course, his engagement to Miss Vernor; it was natural enough that +he should have been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame +Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl’s face +had not faded from my memory; I could not rid myself of the suspicion +that in going further Pickering might fare much worse. Madame +Blumenthal’s professions seemed a virtual promise to agree with +me, and, after some hesitation, I said that my friend had, in fact, +a substantial secret, and that perhaps I might do him a good turn by +putting her in possession of it. In as few words as possible I +told her that Pickering stood pledged by filial piety to marry a young +lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my story; when I had +finished it there was a faint flush of excitement in each of her cheeks. +She broke out into a dozen exclamations of admiration and compassion. +“What a wonderful tale—what a romantic situation! +No wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless and unsatisfied; no wonder +he wished to put off the day of submission. And the poor little +girl at Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like the +heroine of an Eastern tale! She would give the world to see her +photograph; did I think Mr. Pickering would show it to her? But +never fear; she would ask nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous +story, and if she had invented it herself, people would have said it +was absurdly improbable.” She left her seat and took several +turns about the room, smiling to herself, and uttering little German +cries of wonderment. Suddenly she stopped before the piano and +broke into a little laugh; the next moment she buried her face in the +great bouquet of roses. It was time I should go, but I was indisposed +to leave her without obtaining some definite assurance that, as far +as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl at Smyrna more than +the young man at Homburg.</p> +<p>“Of course you know what I wished in telling you this,” +I said, rising. “She is evidently a charming creature, and +the best thing he can do is to marry her. I wished to interest +you in that view of it.”</p> +<p>She had taken one of the roses from the vase and was arranging it +in the front of her dress. Suddenly, looking up, “Leave +it to me, leave it to me!” she cried. “I am interested!” +And with her little blue-gemmed hand she tapped her forehead. +“I am deeply interested!”</p> +<p>And with this I had to content myself. But more than once the +next day I repented of my zeal, and wondered whether a providence with +a white rose in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too human. +In the evening, at the Kursaal, I looked for Pickering, but he was not +visible, and I reflected that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate, +seemed to Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing a cooling-term +to his passion. Very late, as I was turning away, I saw him arrive—with +no small satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know immediately +in what way I had attempted to serve him. But he straightway passed +his arm through my own and led me off towards the gardens. I saw +that he was too excited to allow me to speak first.</p> +<p>“I have burnt my ships!” he cried, when we were out of +earshot of the crowd. “I have told her everything. +I have insisted that it’s simple torture for me to wait with this +idle view of loving her less. It’s well enough for her to +ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her reluctance. +I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care for nothing, +I know nothing, but that I love her with every pulse of my being—and +that everything else has been a hideous dream, from which she may wake +me into blissful morning with a single word!”</p> +<p>I held him off at arm’s-length and looked at him gravely. +“You have told her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?”</p> +<p>“The whole story! I have given it up—I have thrown +it to the winds. I have broken utterly with the past. It +may rise in its grave and give me its curse, but it can’t frighten +me now. I have a right to be happy, I have a right to be free, +I have a right not to bury myself alive. It was not <i>I</i> who +promised—I was not born then. I myself, my soul, my mind, +my option—all this is but a month old! Ah,” he went +on, “if you knew the difference it makes—this having chosen +and broken and spoken! I am twice the man I was yesterday! +Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was a kind of mocking mystery of +knowledge and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the midst +of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but of being too happy!”</p> +<p>I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused +a moment, and took off his hat and fanned himself. “Let +me perfectly understand,” I said at last. “You have +asked Madame Blumenthal to be your wife?”</p> +<p>“The wife of my intelligent choice!”</p> +<p>“And does she consent?”</p> +<p>“She asks three days to decide.”</p> +<p>“Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. +I am bound to let you know I told her.”</p> +<p>“So much the better!” cried Pickering, without apparent +resentment or surprise. “It’s not a brilliant offer +for such a woman, and in spite of what I have at stake, I feel that +it would be brutal to press her.”</p> +<p>“What does she say to your breaking your promise?” I +asked in a moment.</p> +<p>Pickering was too much in love for false shame. “She +tells me that she loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. +She agrees with me that I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption +from the common law. What I claim is simply freedom to try to +be!”</p> +<p>Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had expected +Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information. But the matter +now was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid my companion +not work himself into a fever over either fortune.</p> +<p>The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk +at the opera, I had left a card. We gossiped a while, and at last +he said suddenly, “By the way, I have a sequel to the history +of Clorinda. The major is at Homburg!”</p> +<p>“Indeed!” said I. “Since when?”</p> +<p>“These three days.”</p> +<p>“And what is he doing?”</p> +<p>“He seems,” said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, “to +be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That +is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, +and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses. +I hope it was received.”</p> +<p>“I can assure you it was,” I cried. “I saw +the lady fairly nestling her head in it. But I advise the major +not to build upon that. He has a rival.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?”</p> +<p>“Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to +have served him. He has offered her everything, and she has not +yet refused it.” I had handed my visitor a cigar, and he +was puffing it in silence. At last he abruptly asked if I had +been introduced to Madame Blumenthal, and, on my affirmative, inquired +what I thought of her. “I will not tell you,” I said, +“or you’ll call <i>me</i> soft.”</p> +<p>He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance. “I have +noticed your friend about,” he said, “and even if you had +not told me, I should have known he was in love. After he has +left his adored, his face wears for the rest of the day the expression +with which he has risen from her feet, and more than once I have felt +like touching his elbow, as you would that of a man who has inadvertently +come into a drawing-room in his overshoes. You say he has offered +our friend everything; but, my dear fellow, he has not everything to +offer her. He evidently is as amiable as the morning, but the +lady has no taste for daylight.”</p> +<p>“I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow,” +I said.</p> +<p>“Ah, there it is! Has he not some story or other? +Isn’t he an orphan, or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent +heir to great estates? She will read his little story to the end, +and close the book very tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, +when he least expects it, she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her +other romances. She will let him dangle, but she will let him +drop!”</p> +<p>“Upon my word,” I cried, with heat, “if she does, +she will be a very unprincipled little creature!”</p> +<p>Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never said she +was a saint!”</p> +<p>Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his +simple word for this event, and in the evening I received a communication +which fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and it +ran as follows:—</p> +<blockquote><p>“My Dear Friend—I have every hope of being +happy, but I am to go to Wiesbaden to learn my fate. Madame Blumenthal +goes thither this afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to +accompany her. Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the +result.<br /> +E. P.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in rotation +at the different tables d’hôte. It so happened that, +a couple of days later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and secured +a seat beside my own. As we took our places I found a letter on +my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in opening +it. It contained but three lines—</p> +<blockquote><p>“I am happy—I am accepted—an hour ago. +I can hardly believe it’s your poor friend<br /> +E. P.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but +with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at +it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard +gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school +of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, +“Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal’s errand at +Wiesbaden?” he asked.</p> +<p>“You look very wise. I give it up!” said I.</p> +<p>“She is gone there to make the major follow her. He went +by the next train.”</p> +<p>“And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?”</p> +<p>“He is not a letter-writer.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said I, pocketing my letter, “with this +document in my hand I am bound to reserve my judgment. We will +have a bottle of Johannisberg, and drink to the triumph of virtue.”</p> +<p>For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering—somewhat +to my surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure. +I had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief bulletins, +and his silence was possibly an indication that it had been clouded. +At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received no answer; whereupon, +as my next resource, I repaired to his former lodging at Homburg, where +I thought it possible he had left property which he would sooner or +later send for. There I learned that he had indeed just telegraphed +from Cologne for his luggage. To Cologne I immediately despatched +a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause of his silence. +The next day I received three words in answer—a simple uncommented +request that I would come to him. I lost no time, and reached +him in the course of a few hours. It was dark when I arrived, +and the city was sheeted in a cold autumnal rain. Pickering had +stumbled, with an indifference which was itself a symptom of distress, +on a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him sitting over a smouldering +fire in a vast dingy chamber which looked as if it had grown gray with +watching the <i>ennui</i> of ten generations of travellers. Looking +at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he was in extreme tribulation. +He was pale and haggard; his face was five years older. Now, at +least, in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life! I +was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly to bitterness; but +I spared him all importunate curiosity, and let him take his time. +I accepted tacitly his tacit confession of distress, and we made for +a while a feeble effort to discuss the picturesqueness of Cologne. +At last he rose and stood a long time looking into the fire, while I +slowly paced the length of the dusky room.</p> +<p>“Well!” he said, as I came back; “I wanted knowledge, +and I certainly know something I didn’t a month ago.” +And herewith, calmly and succinctly enough, as if dismay had worn itself +out, he related the history of the foregoing days. He touched +lightly on details; he evidently never was to gush as freely again as +he had done during the prosperity of his suit. He had been accepted +one evening, as explicitly as his imagination could desire, and had +gone forth in his rapture and roamed about till nearly morning in the +gardens of the Conversation-house, taking the stars and the perfumes +of the summer night into his confidence. “It is worth it +all, almost,” he said, “to have been wound up for an hour +to that celestial pitch. No man, I am sure, can ever know it but +once.” The next morning he had repaired to Madame Blumenthal’s +lodging and had been met, to his amazement, by a naked refusal to see +him. He had strode about for a couple of hours—in another +mood—and then had returned to the charge. The servant handed +him a three-cornered note; it contained these words: “Leave me +alone to-day; I will give you ten minutes to-morrow evening.” +Of the next thirty-six hours he could give no coherent account, but +at the appointed time Madame Blumenthal had received him. Almost +before she spoke there had come to him a sense of the depth of his folly +in supposing he knew her. “One has heard all one’s +days,” he said, “of people removing the mask; it’s +one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with +her mask in her hand. Her face,” he went on gravely, after +a pause—“her face was horrible!” . . . “I give +you ten minutes,” she had said, pointing to the clock. “Make +your scene, tear your hair, brandish your dagger!” And she +had sat down and folded her arms. “It’s not a joke,” +she cried, “it’s dead earnest; let us have it over. +You are dismissed—have you nothing to say?” He had +stammered some frantic demand for an explanation; and she had risen +and come near him, looking at him from head to feet, very pale, and +evidently more excited than she wished him to see. “I have +done with you!” she said, with a smile; “you ought to have +done with me! It has all been delightful, but there are excellent +reasons why it should come to an end.” “You have been playing +a part, then,” he had gasped out; “you never cared for me?” +“Yes; till I knew you; till I saw how far you would go. +But now the story’s finished; we have reached the <i>dénoûment</i>. +We will close the book and be good friends.” “To see +how far I would go?” he had repeated. “You led me +on, meaning all the while to do <i>this</i>!” “I led +you on, if you will. I received your visits, in season and out! +Sometimes they were very entertaining; sometimes they bored me fearfully. +But you were such a very curious case of—what shall I call it?—of +sincerity, that I determined to take good and bad together. I +wanted to make you commit yourself unmistakably. I should have +preferred not to bring you to this place; but that too was necessary. +Of course I can’t marry you; I can do better. So can you, +for that matter; thank your fate for it. You have thought wonders +of me for a month, but your good-humour wouldn’t last. I +am too old and too wise; you are too young and too foolish. It +seems to me that I have been very good to you; I have entertained you +to the top of your bent, and, except perhaps that I am a little brusque +just now, you have nothing to complain of. I would have let you +down more gently if I could have taken another month to it; but circumstances +have forced my hand. Abuse me, curse me, if you like. I +will make every allowance!” Pickering listened to all this +intently enough to perceive that, as if by some sudden natural cataclysm, +the ground had broken away at his feet, and that he must recoil. +He turned away in dumb amazement. “I don’t know how +I seemed to be taking it,” he said, “but she seemed really +to desire—I don’t know why—something in the way of +reproach and vituperation. But I couldn’t, in that way, +have uttered a syllable. I was sickened; I wanted to get away +into the air—to shake her off and come to my senses. ‘Have +you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?’ she cried, as if she were +disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the door. ‘Haven’t +I treated you to talk enough?’ I believed I answered. ‘You +will write to me then, when you get home?’ ‘I think +not,’ said I. ‘Six months hence, I fancy, you will +come and see me!’ ‘Never!’ said I. ‘That’s +a confession of stupidity,’ she answered. ‘It means +that, even on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of +my conduct.’ The word ‘philosophy’ seemed so +strange that I verily believe I smiled. ‘I have given you +all that you gave me,’ she went on. ‘Your passion +was an affair of the head.’ ‘I only wish you had told +me sooner that you considered it so!’ I exclaimed. And I +went my way. The next day I came down the Rhine. I sat all +day on the boat, not knowing where I was going, where to get off. +I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed to me I had seen something +infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers here looming over +the city. They seemed to say something to me, and when the boat +stopped, I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have +not slept at night—and yet it has been a week of rest!”</p> +<p>It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to recover, and that his +own philosophy, if left to take its time, was adequate to the occasion. +After his story was once told I referred to his grievance but once—that +evening, later, as we were about to separate for the night. “Suffer +me to say that there was some truth in <i>her</i> account of your relations,” +I said. “You were using her intellectually, and all the +while, without your knowing it, she was using you. It was diamond +cut diamond. Her needs were the more superficial, and she got +tired of the game first.” He frowned and turned uneasily +away, but without contradicting me. I waited a few moments, to +see if he would remember, before we parted, that he had a claim to make +upon me. But he seemed to have forgotten it.</p> +<p>The next day we strolled about the picturesque old city, and of course, +before long, went into the cathedral. Pickering said little; he +seemed intent upon his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar +near a chapel, in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving him to his +meditations, I wandered through the church. When I came back I +saw he had something to say. But before he had spoken I laid my +hand on his shoulder and looked at him with a significant smile. +He slowly bent his head and dropped his eyes, with a mixture of assent +and humility. I drew forth from where it had lain untouched for +a month the letter he had given me to keep, placed it silently on his +knee, and left him to deal with it alone.</p> +<p>Half an hour later I returned to the same place, but he had gone, +and one of the sacristans, hovering about and seeing me looking for +Pickering, said he thought he had left the church. I found him +in his gloomy chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and down. I +should doubtless have been at a loss to say just what effect I expected +the letter from Smyrna to produce; but his actual aspect surprised me. +He was flushed, excited, a trifle irritated.</p> +<p>“Evidently,” I said, “you have read your letter.”</p> +<p>“It is proper I should tell you what is in it,” he answered. +“When I gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice.”</p> +<p>“You called it a ‘summons,’ I remember.”</p> +<p>“I was a great fool! It’s a release!”</p> +<p>“From your engagement?”</p> +<p>“From everything! The letter, of course, is from Mr. +Vernor. He desires to let me know at the earliest moment that +his daughter, informed for the first time a week before of what had +been expected of her, positively refuses to be bound by the contract +or to assent to my being bound. She had been given a week to reflect, +and had spent it in inconsolable tears. She had resisted every +form of persuasion! from compulsion, writes Mr. Vernor, he naturally +shrinks. The young lady considers the arrangement ‘horrible.’ +After accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she pretends +at last to have a taste of her own. I confess I am surprised; +I had been given to believe that she was stupidly submissive, and would +remain so to the end of the chapter. Not a bit of it. She +has insisted on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates +that in case of non-compliance she threatens him with an attack of brain +fever. Mr. Vernor condoles with me handsomely, and lets me know +that the young lady’s attitude has been a great shock to his nerves. +He adds that he will not aggravate such regret as I may do him the honour +to entertain, by any allusions to his daughter’s charms and to +the magnitude of my loss, and he concludes with the hope that, for the +comfort of all concerned, I may already have amused my fancy with other +‘views.’ He reminds me in a postscript that, in spite +of this painful occurrence, the son of his most valued friend will always +be a welcome visitor at his house. I am free, he observes; I have +my life before me; he recommends an extensive course of travel. +Should my wanderings lead me to the East, he hopes that no false embarrassment +will deter me from presenting myself at Smyrna. He can promise +me at least a friendly reception. It’s a very polite letter.”</p> +<p>Polite as the letter was, Pickering seemed to find no great exhilaration +in having this famous burden so handsomely lifted from his spirit. +He began to brood over his liberation in a manner which you might have +deemed proper to a renewed sense of bondage. “Bad news,” +he had called his letter originally; and yet, now that its contents +proved to be in flat contradiction to his foreboding, there was no impulsive +voice to reverse the formula and declare the news was good. The +wings of impulse in the poor fellow had of late been terribly clipped. +It was an obvious reflection, of course, that if he had not been so +stiffly certain of the matter a month before, and had gone through the +form of breaking Mr. Vernor’s seal, he might have escaped the +purgatory of Madame Blumenthal’s sub-acid blandishments. +But I left him to moralise in private; I had no desire, as the phrase +is, to rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were following another +train; I was saying to myself that if to those gentle graces of which +her young visage had offered to my fancy the blooming promise, Miss +Vernor added in this striking measure the capacity for magnanimous action, +the amendment to my friend’s career had been less happy than the +rough draught. Presently, turning about, I saw him looking at +the young lady’s photograph. “Of course, now,” +he said, “I have no right to keep it!” And before +I could ask for another glimpse of it, he had thrust it into the fire.</p> +<p>“I am sorry to be saying it just now,” I observed after +a while, “but I shouldn’t wonder if Miss Vernor were a charming +creature.”</p> +<p>“Go and find out,” he answered, gloomily. “The +coast is clear. My part is to forget her,” he presently +added. “It ought not to be hard. But don’t you +think,” he went on suddenly, “that for a poor fellow who +asked nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in a quiet corner, it +has been rather a cruel pushing about?”</p> +<p>Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the right to demand +a clean page on the book of fate and a fresh start. Mr. Vernor’s +advice was sound; he should amuse himself with a long journey. +If it would be any comfort to him, I would go with him on his way. +Pickering assented without enthusiasm; he had the embarrassed look of +a man who, having gone to some cost to make a good appearance in a drawing-room, +should find the door suddenly slammed in his face. We started +on our journey, however, and little by little his enthusiasm returned. +He was too capable of enjoying fine things to remain permanently irresponsive, +and after a fortnight spent among pictures and monuments and antiquities, +I felt that I was seeing him for the first time in his best and healthiest +mood. He had had a fever, and then he had had a chill; the pendulum +had swung right and left in a manner rather trying to the machine; but +now, at last, it was working back to an even, natural beat. He +recovered in a measure the generous eloquence with which he had fanned +his flame at Homburg, and talked about things with something of the +same passionate freshness. One day when I was laid up at the inn +at Bruges with a lame foot, he came home and treated me to a rhapsody +about a certain meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me +sounder sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had +his dull days and his sombre moods—hours of irresistible retrospect; +but I let them come and go without remonstrance, because I fancied they +always left him a trifle more alert and resolute. One evening, +however, he sat hanging his head in so doleful a fashion that I took +the bull by the horns and told him he had by this time surely paid his +debt to penitence, and that he owed it to himself to banish that woman +for ever from his thoughts.</p> +<p>He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush—“That +woman?” he said. “I was not thinking of Madame Blumenthal!”</p> +<p>After this I gave another construction to his melancholy. Taking +him with his hopes and fears, at the end of six weeks of active observation +and keen sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be. +We made our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight at Venice. +There something happened which I had been confidently expecting; I had +said to myself that it was merely a question of time. We had passed +the day at Torcello, and came floating back in the glow of the sunset, +with measured oar-strokes. “I am well on the way,” +Pickering said; “I think I will go!”</p> +<p>We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally asked him, Where? +His answer was delayed by our getting into the Piazzetta. I stepped +ashore first and then turned to help him. As he took my hand he +met my eyes, consciously, and it came. “To Smyrna!”</p> +<p>A couple of days later he started. I had risked the conjecture +that Miss Vernor was a charming creature, and six months afterwards +he wrote me that I was right.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE PICKERING***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2534-h.htm or 2534-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/3/2534 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Eugene Pickering + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2534] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE PICKERING*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1887 Macmillan and Co. edition of "The Madonna of +the Future et al." by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. Proofed +by Vanessa M. Mosher, Faith Matievich and Jonesey. + + + + + +EUGENE PICKERING +by Henry James + + +CHAPTER I. + + +It was at Homburg, several years ago, before the gaming had been +suppressed. The evening was very warm, and all the world was gathered on +the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to listen to the +excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the crowd was equally +dense in the gaming-rooms around the tables. Everywhere the crowd was +great. The night was perfect, the season was at its height, the open +windows of the Kursaal sent long shafts of unnatural light into the dusky +woods, and now and then, in the intervals of the music, one might almost +hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic call of the croupiers +rise above the watching silence of the saloons. I had been strolling +with a friend, and we at last prepared to sit down. Chairs, however, +were scarce. I had captured one, but it seemed no easy matter to find a +mate for it. I was on the point of giving up in despair, and proposing +an adjournment to the silken ottomans of the Kursaal, when I observed a +young man lounging back on one of the objects of my quest, with his feet +supported on the rounds of another. This was more than his share of +luxury, and I promptly approached him. He evidently belonged to the race +which has the credit of knowing best, at home and abroad, how to make +itself comfortable; but something in his appearance suggested that his +present attitude was the result of inadvertence rather than of egotism. +He was staring at the conductor of the orchestra and listening intently +to the music. His hands were locked round his long legs, and his mouth +was half open, with rather a foolish air. "There are so few chairs," I +said, "that I must beg you to surrender this second one." He started, +stared, blushed, pushed the chair away with awkward alacrity, and +murmured something about not having noticed that he had it. + +"What an odd-looking youth!" said my companion, who had watched me, as I +seated myself beside her. + +"Yes, he is odd-looking; but what is odder still is that I have seen him +before, that his face is familiar to me, and yet that I can't place him." +The orchestra was playing the Prayer from Der Freischutz, but Weber's +lovely music only deepened the blank of memory. Who the deuce was he? +where, when, how, had I known him? It seemed extraordinary that a face +should be at once so familiar and so strange. We had our backs turned to +him, so that I could not look at him again. When the music ceased we +left our places, and I went to consign my friend to her mamma on the +terrace. In passing, I saw that my young man had departed; I concluded +that he only strikingly resembled some one I knew. But who in the world +was it he resembled? The ladies went off to their lodgings, which were +near by, and I turned into the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle +at roulette. Gradually I filtered through to the inner edge, near the +table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite to +me. He was watching the game, with his hands in his pockets; but +singularly enough, now that I observed him at my leisure, the look of +familiarity quite faded from his face. What had made us call his +appearance odd was his great length and leanness of limb, his long, white +neck, his blue, prominent eyes, and his ingenuous, unconscious absorption +in the scene before him. He was not handsome, certainly, but he looked +peculiarly amiable and if his overt wonderment savoured a trifle of +rurality, it was an agreeable contrast to the hard, inexpressive masks +about him. He was the verdant offshoot, I said to myself, of some +ancient, rigid stem; he had been brought up in the quietest of homes, and +he was having his first glimpse of life. I was curious to see whether he +would put anything on the table; he evidently felt the temptation, but he +seemed paralysed by chronic embarrassment. He stood gazing at the +chinking complexity of losses and gains, shaking his loose gold in his +pocket, and every now and then passing his hand nervously over his eyes. + +Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play to have many +thoughts for each other; but before long I noticed a lady who evidently +had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table. She was seated +about half-way between my friend and me, and I presently observed that +she was trying to catch his eye. Though at Homburg, as people said, "one +could never be sure," I yet doubted whether this lady were one of those +whose especial vocation it was to catch a gentleman's eye. She was +youthful rather than elderly, and pretty rather than plain; indeed, a few +minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought her wonderfully pretty. +She had a charming gray eye and a good deal of yellow hair disposed in +picturesque disorder; and though her features were meagre and her +complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental, artificial +gracefulness. She was dressed in white muslin very much puffed and +filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, relieved here and there by a +pale blue ribbon. I used to flatter myself on guessing at people's +nationality by their faces, and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This +faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a German--such a +German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature. Was she not a +friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of +aesthetics--something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, +however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident +friend was making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an +ungloved hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed rings--turquoises, +sapphires, and lapis--she beckoned him to come to her. The gesture was +executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with an +appealing smile. He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to suppose +that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was immediately +repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the roots of his +hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the lady's chair. By +the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping his forehead with his +pocket-handkerchief. She tilted back, looked up at him with the same +smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said something, +interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head. She was +asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying no. Old +players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back on them they can +put her into good-humour again by having their stakes placed by a novice. +Our young man's physiognomy had seemed to his new acquaintance to express +the perfection of inexperience, and, like a practical woman, she had +determined to make him serve her turn. Unlike most of her neighbours, +she had no little pile of gold before her, but she drew from her pocket a +double napoleon, put it into his hand, and bade him place it on a number +of his own choosing. He was evidently filled with a sort of delightful +trouble; he enjoyed the adventure, but he shrank from the hazard. I +would have staked the coin on its being his companion's last; for +although she still smiled intently as she watched his hesitation, there +was anything but indifference in her pale, pretty face. Suddenly, in +desperation, he reached over and laid the piece on the table. My +attention was diverted at this moment by my having to make way for a lady +with a great many flounces, before me, to give up her chair to a rustling +friend to whom she had promised it; when I again looked across at the +lady in white muslin, she was drawing in a very goodly pile of gold with +her little blue-gemmed claw. Good luck and bad, at the Homburg tables, +were equally undemonstrative, and this happy adventuress rewarded her +young friend for the sacrifice of his innocence with a single, rapid, +upward smile. He had innocence enough left, however, to look round the +table with a gleeful, conscious laugh, in the midst of which his eyes +encountered my own. Then suddenly the familiar look which had vanished +from his face flickered up unmistakably; it was the boyish laugh of a +boyhood's friend. Stupid fellow that I was, I had been looking at Eugene +Pickering! + +Though I lingered on for some time longer he failed to recognise me. +Recognition, I think, had kindled a smile in my own face; but, less +fortunate than he, I suppose my smile had ceased to be boyish. Now that +luck had faced about again, his companion played for herself--played and +won, hand over hand. At last she seemed disposed to rest on her gains, +and proceeded to bury them in the folds of her muslin. Pickering had +staked nothing for himself, but as he saw her prepare to withdraw he +offered her a double napoleon and begged her to place it. She shook her +head with great decision, and seemed to bid him put it up again; but he, +still blushing a good deal, pressed her with awkward ardour, and she at +last took it from him, looked at him a moment fixedly, and laid it on a +number. A moment later the croupier was raking it in. She gave the +young man a little nod which seemed to say, "I told you so;" he glanced +round the table again and laughed; she left her chair, and he made a way +for her through the crowd. Before going home I took a turn on the +terrace and looked down on the esplanade. The lamps were out, but the +warm starlight vaguely illumined a dozen figures scattered in couples. +One of these figures, I thought, was a lady in a white dress. + +I had no intention of letting Pickering go without reminding him of our +old acquaintance. He had been a very singular boy, and I was curious to +see what had become of his singularity. I looked for him the next +morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last I discovered his +whereabouts. But he was out, the waiter said; he had gone to walk an +hour before. I went my way, confident that I should meet him in the +evening. It was the rule with the Homburg world to spend its evenings at +the Kursaal, and Pickering, apparently, had already discovered a good +reason for not being an exception. One of the charms of Homburg is the +fact that of a hot day you may walk about for a whole afternoon in +unbroken shade. The umbrageous gardens of the Kursaal mingle with the +charming Hardtwald, which in turn melts away into the wooded slopes of +the Taunus Mountains. To the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for +an hour through mossy glades and the still, perpendicular gloom of the +fir-woods. Suddenly, on the grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a +young man stretched at his length in the sun-checkered shade, and kicking +his heels towards a patch of blue sky. My step was so noiseless on the +turf that, before he saw me, I had time to recognise Pickering again. He +looked as if he had been lounging there for some time; his hair was +tossed about as if he had been sleeping; on the grass near him, beside +his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived me he jerked +himself forward, and I stood looking at him without introducing +myself--purposely, to give him a chance to recognise me. He put on his +glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up at me with an air of +general trustfulness, but without a sign of knowing me. So at last I +introduced myself. Then he jumped up and grasped my hands, and stared +and blushed and laughed, and began a dozen random questions, ending with +a demand as to how in the world I had known him. + +"Why, you are not changed so utterly," I said; "and after all, it's but +fifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me." + +"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with a +sort of ingenuous dismay. + +Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, a +victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to +school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every day at +two o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, an old +nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His +extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which +suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused +him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered +more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering +these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still +the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital +friends, you know," I went on, "then and afterwards." + +"Yes, we were very good friends," he said, "and that makes it the +stranger I shouldn't have known you. For you know, as a boy, I never had +many friends, nor as a man either. You see," he added, passing his hand +over his eyes, "I am rather dazed, rather bewildered at finding myself +for the first time--alone." And he jerked back his shoulders nervously, +and threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted position. I +wondered whether the old nurse with the bushy eyebrows had remained +attached to his person up to a recent period, and discovered presently +that, virtually at least, she had. We had the whole summer day before +us, and we sat down on the grass together and overhauled our old +memories. It was as if we had stumbled upon an ancient cupboard in some +dusky corner, and rummaged out a heap of childish playthings--tin +soldiers and torn story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is +what we remembered between us. + +He had made but a short stay at school--not because he was tormented, for +he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his tongue at +home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine-bottle, but +because his father thought he was learning bad manners. This he imparted +to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased my +oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to me in glimpses as a +sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower--a +fact which seemed to produce in him a sort of preternatural concentration +of parental dignity. He was a majestic man, with a hooked nose, a keen +dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions of his own as to how a boy--or +his boy, at any rate--should be brought up. First and foremost, he was +to be a "gentleman"; which seemed to mean, chiefly, that he was always to +wear a muffler and gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread +and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment, seemed hostile +to these observances, and Eugene was taken home again, to be moulded into +urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was provided for him, and a +single select companion was prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell +on me, born as I was under quite another star; my parents were appealed +to, and I was allowed for a few months to have my lessons with Eugene. +The tutor, I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene was treated +like a prince, while I got all the questions and the raps with the ruler. +And yet I remember never being jealous of my happier comrade, and +striking up, for the time, one of those friendships of childhood. He had +a watch and a pony and a great store of picture-books, but my envy of +these luxuries was tempered by a vague compassion which left me free to +be generous. I could go out to play alone, I could button my jacket +myself, and sit up till I was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a +step without asking leave, or spend half an hour in the garden without a +formal report of it when he came in. My parents, who had no desire to +see me inoculated with importunate virtues, sent me back to school at the +end of six months. After that I never saw Eugene. His father went to +live in the country, to protect the lad's morals, and Eugene faded, in +reminiscence, into a pale image of the depressing effects of education. I +think I vaguely supposed that he would melt into thin air, and indeed +began gradually to doubt of his existence, and to regard him as one of +the foolish things one ceased to believe in as one grew older. It seemed +natural that I should have no more news of him. Our present meeting was +my first assurance that he had really survived all that muffling and +coddling. + +I observed him now with a good deal of interest, for he was a rare +phenomenon--the fruit of a system persistently and uninterruptedly +applied. He struck me, in a fashion, as certain young monks I had seen +in Italy; he had the same candid, unsophisticated cloister face. His +education had been really almost monastic. It had found him evidently a +very compliant, yielding subject; his gentle affectionate spirit was not +one of those that need to be broken. It had bequeathed him, now that he +stood on the threshold of the great world, an extraordinary freshness of +impression and alertness of desire, and I confess that, as I looked at +him and met his transparent blue eye, I trembled for the unwarned +innocence of such a soul. I became aware, gradually, that the world had +already wrought a certain work upon him and roused him to a restless, +troubled self-consciousness. Everything about him pointed to an +experience from which he had been debarred; his whole organism trembled +with a dawning sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This +appealing tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept shifting himself +about on the grass, thrusting his hands through his hair, wiping a light +perspiration from his forehead, breaking out to say something and rushing +off to something else. Our sudden meeting had greatly excited him, and I +saw that I was likely to profit by a certain overflow of sentimental +fermentation. I could do so with a good conscience, for all this +trepidation filled me with a great friendliness. + +"It's nearly fifteen years, as you say," he began, "since you used to +call me 'butter-fingers' for always missing the ball. That's a long time +to give an account of, and yet they have been, for me, such eventless, +monotonous years, that I could almost tell their history in ten words. +You, I suppose, have had all kinds of adventures and travelled over half +the world. I remember you had a turn for deeds of daring; I used to +think you a little Captain Cook in roundabouts, for climbing the garden +fence to get the ball when I had let it fly over. I climbed no fences +then or since. You remember my father, I suppose, and the great care he +took of me? I lost him some five months ago. From those boyish days up +to his death we were always together. I don't think that in fifteen +years we spent half a dozen hours apart. We lived in the country, winter +and summer, seeing but three or four people. I had a succession of +tutors, and a library to browse about in; I assure you I am a tremendous +scholar. It was a dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a +young man grown, but I never knew it. I was perfectly happy." He spoke +of his father at some length, and with a respect which I privately +declined to emulate. Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a frigid +egotist, unable to conceive of any larger vocation for his son than to +strive to reproduce so irreproachable a model. "I know I have been +strangely brought up," said my friend, "and that the result is something +grotesque; but my education, piece by piece, in detail, became one of my +father's personal habits, as it were. He took a fancy to it at first +through his intense affection for my mother and the sort of worship he +paid her memory. She died at my birth, and as I grew up, it seems that I +bore an extraordinary likeness to her. Besides, my father had a great +many theories; he prided himself on his conservative opinions; he thought +the usual American _laisser-aller_ in education was a very vulgar +practice, and that children were not to grow up like dusty thorns by the +wayside." "So you see," Pickering went on, smiling and blushing, and yet +with something of the irony of vain regret, "I am a regular garden plant. +I have been watched and watered and pruned, and if there is any virtue in +tending I ought to take the prize at a flower show. Some three years ago +my father's health broke down, and he was kept very much within doors. +So, although I was a man grown, I lived altogether at home. If I was out +of his sight for a quarter of an hour he sent some one after me. He had +severe attacks of neuralgia, and he used to sit at his window, basking in +the sun. He kept an opera-glass at hand, and when I was out in the +garden he used to watch me with it. A few days before his death I was +twenty-seven years old, and the most innocent youth, I suppose, on the +continent. After he died I missed him greatly," Pickering continued, +evidently with no intention of making an epigram. "I stayed at home, in +a sort of dull stupor. It seemed as if life offered itself to me for the +first time, and yet as if I didn't know how to take hold of it." + +He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which increased as he talked, +and there was a singular contrast between the meagre experience he +described and a certain radiant intelligence which I seemed to perceive +in his glance and tone. Evidently he was a clever fellow, and his +natural faculties were excellent. I imagined he had read a great deal, +and recovered, in some degree, in restless intellectual conjecture, the +freedom he was condemned to ignore in practice. Opportunity was now +offering a meaning to the empty forms with which his imagination was +stored, but it appeared to him dimly, through the veil of his personal +diffidence. + +"I have not sailed round the world, as you suppose," I said, "but I +confess I envy you the novelties you are going to behold. Coming to +Homburg you have plunged _in medias res_." + +He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an allusion, and hesitated +a moment. "Yes, I know it. I came to Bremen in the steamer with a very +friendly German, who undertook to initiate me into the glories and +mysteries of the Fatherland. At this season, he said, I must begin with +Homburg. I landed but a fortnight ago, and here I am." Again he +hesitated, as if he were going to add something about the scene at the +Kursaal but suddenly, nervously, he took up the letter which was lying +beside him, looked hard at the seal with a troubled frown, and then flung +it back on the grass with a sigh. + +"How long do you expect to be in Europe?" I asked. + +"Six months I supposed when I came. But not so long--now!" And he let +his eyes wander to the letter again. + +"And where shall you go--what shall you do?" + +"Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday. But now it is +different." + +I glanced at the letter--interrogatively, and he gravely picked it up and +put it into his pocket. We talked for a while longer, but I saw that he +had suddenly become preoccupied; that he was apparently weighing an +impulse to break some last barrier of reserve. At last he suddenly laid +his hand on my arm, looked at me a moment appealingly, and cried, "Upon +my word, I should like to tell you everything!" + +"Tell me everything, by all means," I answered, smiling. "I desire +nothing better than to lie here in the shade and hear everything." + +"Ah, but the question is, will you understand it? No matter; you think +me a queer fellow already. It's not easy, either, to tell you what I +feel--not easy for so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how many ways he +is queer!" He got up and walked away a moment, passing his hand over his +eyes, then came back rapidly and flung himself on the grass again. "I +said just now I always supposed I was happy; it's true; but now that my +eyes are open, I see I was only stultified. I was like a poodle-dog that +is led about by a blue ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on slops. +It was not life; life is learning to know one's self, and in that sense I +have lived more in the past six weeks than in all the years that preceded +them. I am filled with this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps +rising to my head like the fumes of strong wine. I find I am an active, +sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with passions, with +possible convictions--even with what I never dreamed of, a possible will +of my own! I find there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and +women to form a thousand relations with. It all lies there like a great +surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast +the waves. I stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing, +wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water. +The world beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the +past, that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold me +back. I am full of impulses, but, somehow, I am not full of strength. +Life seems inspiring at certain moments, but it seems terrible and +unsafe; and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself with +merciless forces, when I have learned so well how to stand aside and let +them pass. Why shouldn't I turn my back upon it all and go home to--what +awaits me?--to that sightless, soundless country life, and long days +spent among old books? But if a man _is_ weak, he doesn't want to assent +beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there +may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is that it comes back--this +irresistible impulse to take my plunge--to let myself swing, to go where +liberty leads me." He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes, +and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity. +"'Swing ahead, in Heaven's name,' you want to say, 'and much good may it +do you.' I don't know whether you are laughing at my scruples or at what +possibly strikes you as my depravity. I doubt," he went on gravely, +"whether I have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I +shall not prosper in it. I honestly believe I may safely take out a +license to amuse myself. But it isn't that I think of, any more than I +dream of, playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to +me; what I long for is knowledge--some other knowledge than comes to us +in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand all this +better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere in +which I have always lived. To break a window and let in light and air--I +feel as if at last I must _act_!" + +"Act, by all means, now and always, when you have a chance," I answered. +"But don't take things too hard, now or ever. Your long confinement +makes you think the world better worth knowing than you are likely to +find it. A man with as good a head and heart as yours has a very ample +world within himself, and I am no believer in art for art, nor in what's +called 'life' for life's sake. Nevertheless, take your plunge, and come +and tell me whether you have found the pearl of wisdom." He frowned a +little, as if he thought my sympathy a trifle meagre. I shook him by the +hand and laughed. "The pearl of wisdom," I cried, "is love; honest love +in the most convenient concentration of experience! I advise you to fall +in love." He gave me no smile in response, but drew from his pocket the +letter of which I have spoken, held it up, and shook it solemnly. "What +is it?" I asked. + +"It is my sentence!" + +"Not of death, I hope!" + +"Of marriage." + +"With whom?" + +"With a person I don't love." + +This was serious. I stopped smiling, and begged him to explain. + +"It is the singular part of my story," he said at last. "It will remind +you of an old-fashioned romance. Such as I sit here, talking in this +wild way, and tossing off provocations to destiny, my destiny is settled +and sealed. I am engaged, I am given in marriage. It's a bequest of the +past--the past I had no hand in! The marriage was arranged by my father, +years ago, when I was a boy. The young girl's father was his particular +friend; he was also a widower, and was bringing up his daughter, on his +side, in the same severe seclusion in which I was spending my days. To +this day I am unacquainted with the origin of the bond of union between +our respective progenitors. Mr. Vernor was largely engaged in business, +and I imagine that once upon a time he found himself in a financial +strait and was helped through it by my father's coming forward with a +heavy loan, on which, in his situation, he could offer no security but +his word. Of this my father was quite capable. He was a man of dogmas, +and he was sure to have a rule of life--as clear as if it had been +written out in his beautiful copper-plate hand--adapted to the conduct of +a gentleman toward a friend in pecuniary embarrassment. What is more, he +was sure to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor, I believe, got on his feet, paid +his debt, and vowed my father an eternal gratitude. His little daughter +was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to bring her up to be +the wife of his benefactor's son. So our fate was fixed, parentally, and +we have been educated for each other. I have not seen my betrothed since +she was a very plain-faced little girl in a sticky pinafore, hugging a +one-armed doll--of the male sex, I believe--as big as herself. Mr. +Vernor is in what is called the Eastern trade, and has been living these +many years at Smyrna. Isabel has grown up there in a white-walled +garden, in an orange grove, between her father and her governess. She is +a good deal my junior; six months ago she was seventeen; when she is +eighteen we are to marry." + +He related all this calmly enough, without the accent of complaint, drily +rather and doggedly, as if he were weary of thinking of it. "It's a +romance, indeed, for these dull days," I said, "and I heartily +congratulate you. It's not every young man who finds, on reaching the +marrying age, a wife kept in a box of rose-leaves for him. A thousand to +one Miss Vernor is charming; I wonder you don't post off to Smyrna." + +"You are joking," he answered, with a wounded air, "and I am terribly +serious. Let me tell you the rest. I never suspected this superior +conspiracy till something less than a year ago. My father, wishing to +provide against his death, informed me of it very solemnly. I was +neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as I remember, with a sort +of emotion which varied only in degree from that with which I could have +hailed the announcement that he had ordered me a set of new shirts. I +supposed that was the way that all marriages were made; I had heard of +their being made in heaven, and what was my father but a divinity? Novels +and poems, indeed, talked about falling in love; but novels and poems +were one thing and life was another. A short time afterwards he +introduced me to a photograph of my predestined, who has a pretty, but an +extremely inanimate, face. After this his health failed rapidly. One +night I was sitting, as I habitually sat for hours, in his dimly-lighted +room, near his bed, to which he had been confined for a week. He had not +spoken for some time, and I supposed he was asleep; but happening to look +at him I saw his eyes wide open, and fixed on me strangely. He was +smiling benignantly, intensely, and in a moment he beckoned to me. Then, +on my going to him--'I feel that I shall not last long,' he said; 'but I +am willing to die when I think how comfortably I have arranged your +future.' He was talking of death, and anything but grief at that moment +was doubtless impious and monstrous; but there came into my heart for the +first time a throbbing sense of being over-governed. I said nothing, and +he thought my silence was all sorrow. 'I shall not live to see you +married,' he went on, 'but since the foundation is laid, that little +signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I have never thought of +myself but in you. To foresee your future, in its main outline, to know +to a certainty that you will be safely domiciled here, with a wife +approved by my judgment, cultivating the moral fruit of which I have sown +the seed--this will content me. But, my son, I wish to clear this bright +vision from the shadow of a doubt. I believe in your docility; I believe +I may trust the salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I must +remember that when I am removed you will stand here alone, face to face +with a hundred nameless temptations to perversity. The fumes of +unrighteous pride may rise into your brain and tempt you, in the interest +of a vulgar theory which it will call your independence, to shatter the +edifice I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask you for a +promise--the solemn promise you owe my condition.' And he grasped my +hand. 'You will follow the path I have marked; you will be faithful to +the young girl whom an influence as devoted as that which has governed +your own young life has moulded into everything amiable; you will marry +Isabel Vernor.' This was pretty 'steep,' as we used to say at school. I +was frightened; I drew away my hand and asked to be trusted without any +such terrible vow. My reluctance startled my father into a suspicion +that the vulgar theory of independence had already been whispering to me. +He sat up in his bed and looked at me with eyes which seemed to foresee a +lifetime of odious ingratitude. I felt the reproach; I feel it now. I +promised! And even now I don't regret my promise nor complain of my +father's tenacity. I feel, somehow, as if the seeds of ultimate repose +had been sown in those unsuspecting years--as if after many days I might +gather the mellow fruit. But after many days! I will keep my promise, I +will obey; but I want to _live_ first!" + +"My dear fellow, you are living now. All this passionate consciousness +of your situation is a very ardent life. I wish I could say as much for +my own." + +"I want to forget my situation. I want to spend three months without +thinking of the past or the future, grasping whatever the present offers +me. Yesterday I thought I was in a fair way to sail with the tide. But +this morning comes this memento!" And he held up his letter again. + +"What is it?" + +"A letter from Smyrna." + +"I see you have not yet broken the seal." + +"No; nor do I mean to, for the present. It contains bad news." + +"What do you call bad news?" + +"News that I am expected in Smyrna in three weeks. News that Mr. Vernor +disapproves of my roving about the world. News that his daughter is +standing expectant at the altar." + +"Is not this pure conjecture?" + +"Conjecture, possibly, but safe conjecture. As soon as I looked at the +letter something smote me at the heart. Look at the device on the seal, +and I am sure you will find it's _Tarry not_!" And he flung the letter +on the grass. + +"Upon my word, you had better open it," I said. + +"If I were to open it and read my summons, do you know what I should do? +I should march home and ask the Oberkellner how one gets to Smyrna, pack +my trunk, take my ticket, and not stop till I arrived. I know I should; +it would be the fascination of habit. The only way, therefore, to wander +to my rope's end is to leave the letter unread." + +"In your place," I said, "curiosity would make me open it." + +He shook his head. "I have no curiosity! For a long time now the idea +of my marriage has ceased to be a novelty, and I have contemplated it +mentally in every possible light. I fear nothing from that side, but I +do fear something from conscience. I want my hands tied. Will you do me +a favour? Pick up the letter, put it into your pocket, and keep it till +I ask you for it. When I do, you may know that I am at my rope's end." + +I took the letter, smiling. "And how long is your rope to be? The +Homburg season doesn't last for ever." + +"Does it last a month? Let that be my season! A month hence you will +give it back to me." + +"To-morrow if you say so. Meanwhile, let it rest in peace!" And I +consigned it to the most sacred interstice of my pocket-book. To say +that I was disposed to humour the poor fellow would seem to be saying +that I thought his request fantastic. It was his situation, by no fault +of his own, that was fantastic, and he was only trying to be natural. He +watched me put away the letter, and when it had disappeared gave a soft +sigh of relief. The sigh was natural, and yet it set me thinking. His +general recoil from an immediate responsibility imposed by others might +be wholesome enough; but if there was an old grievance on one side, was +there not possibly a new-born delusion on the other? It would be unkind +to withhold a reflection that might serve as a warning; so I told him, +abruptly, that I had been an undiscovered spectator, the night before, of +his exploits at roulette. + +He blushed deeply, but he met my eyes with the same clear good-humour. + +"Ah, then, you saw that wonderful lady?" + +"Wonderful she was indeed. I saw her afterwards, too, sitting on the +terrace in the starlight. I imagine she was not alone." + +"No, indeed, I was with her--for nearly an hour. Then I walked home with +her." + +"Ah! And did you go in?" + +"No, she said it was too late to ask me; though she remarked that in a +general way she did not stand upon ceremony." + +"She did herself injustice. When it came to losing your money for you, +she made you insist." + +"Ah, you noticed that too?" cried Pickering, still quite unconfused. "I +felt as if the whole table were staring at me; but her manner was so +gracious and reassuring that I supposed she was doing nothing unusual. +She confessed, however, afterwards, that she is very eccentric. The +world began to call her so, she said, before she ever dreamed of it, and +at last finding that she had the reputation, in spite of herself, she +resolved to enjoy its privileges. Now, she does what she chooses." + +"In other words, she is a lady with no reputation to lose!" + +Pickering seemed puzzled; he smiled a little. "Is not that what you say +of bad women?" + +"Of some--of those who are found out." + +"Well," he said, still smiling, "I have not yet found out Madame +Blumenthal." + +"If that's her name, I suppose she's German." + +"Yes; but she speaks English so well that you wouldn't know it. She is +very clever. Her husband is dead." + +I laughed involuntarily at the conjunction of these facts, and +Pickering's clear glance seemed to question my mirth. "You have been so +bluntly frank with me," I said, "that I too must be frank. Tell me, if +you can, whether this clever Madame Blumenthal, whose husband is dead, +has given a point to your desire for a suspension of communication with +Smyrna." + +He seemed to ponder my question, unshrinkingly. "I think not," he said, +at last. "I have had the desire for three months; I have known Madame +Blumenthal for less than twenty-four hours." + +"Very true. But when you found this letter of yours on your place at +breakfast, did you seem for a moment to see Madame Blumenthal sitting +opposite?" + +"Opposite?" + +"Opposite, my dear fellow, or anywhere in the neighbourhood. In a word, +does she interest you?" + +"Very much!" he cried, joyously. + +"Amen!" I answered, jumping up with a laugh. "And now, if we are to see +the world in a month, there is no time to lose. Let us begin with the +Hardtwald." + +Pickering rose, and we strolled away into the forest, talking of lighter +things. At last we reached the edge of the wood, sat down on a fallen +log, and looked out across an interval of meadow at the long wooded waves +of the Taunus. What my friend was thinking of I can't say; I was +meditating on his queer biography, and letting my wonderment wander away +to Smyrna. Suddenly I remembered that he possessed a portrait of the +young girl who was waiting for him there in a white-walled garden. I +asked him if he had it with him. He said nothing, but gravely took out +his pocket-book and drew forth a small photograph. It represented, as +the poet says, a simple maiden in her flower--a slight young girl, with a +certain childish roundness of contour. There was no ease in her posture; +she was standing, stiffly and shyly, for her likeness; she wore a short- +waisted white dress; her arms hung at her sides and her hands were +clasped in front; her head was bent downward a little, and her dark eyes +fixed. But her awkwardness was as pretty as that of some angular seraph +in a mediaeval carving, and in her timid gaze there seemed to lurk the +questioning gleam of childhood. "What is this for?" her charming eyes +appeared to ask; "why have I been dressed up for this ceremony in a white +frock and amber beads?" + +"Gracious powers!" I said to myself; "what an enchanting thing is +innocence!" + +"That portrait was taken a year and a half ago," said Pickering, as if +with an effort to be perfectly just. "By this time, I suppose, she looks +a little wiser." + +"Not much, I hope," I said, as I gave it back. "She is very sweet!" + +"Yes, poor girl, she is very sweet--no doubt!" And he put the thing away +without looking at it. + +We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly--"My dear fellow," I +said, "I should take some satisfaction in seeing you immediately leave +Homburg." + +"Immediately?" + +"To-day--as soon as you can get ready." + +He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he blushed. "There is +something I have not told you," he said; "something that your saying that +Madame Blumenthal has no reputation to lose has made me half afraid to +tell you." + +"I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has asked you to come and +play her game for her again." + +"Not at all!" cried Pickering, with a smile of triumph. "She says that +she means to play no more for the present. She has asked me to come and +take tea with her this evening." + +"Ah, then," I said, very gravely, "of course you can't leave Homburg." + +He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as if he were expecting me +to laugh. "Urge it strongly," he said in a moment. "Say it's my +duty--that I _must_." + +I didn't quite understand him, but, feathering the shaft with a harmless +expletive, I told him that unless he followed my advice I would never +speak to him again. + +He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground with his stick. "Good!" +he cried; "I wanted an occasion to break a rule--to leap a barrier. Here +it is. I stay!" + +I made him a mock bow for his energy. "That's very fine," I said; "but +now, to put you in a proper mood for Madame Blumenthal's tea, we will go +and listen to the band play Schubert under the lindens." And we walked +back through the woods. + +I went to see Pickering the next day, at his inn, and on knocking, as +directed, at his door, was surprised to hear the sound of a loud voice +within. My knock remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced myself. I +found no company, but I discovered my friend walking up and down the room +and apparently declaiming to himself from a little volume bound in white +vellum. He greeted me heartily, threw his book on the table, and said +that he was taking a German lesson. + +"And who is your teacher?" I asked, glancing at the book. + +He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered, after an instant's +delay, "Madame Blumenthal." + +"Indeed! Has she written a grammar?" + +"It's not a grammar; it's a tragedy." And he handed me the book. + +I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, with a very large margin, an +_Historisches Trauerspiel_ in five acts, entitled "Cleopatra." There +were a great many marginal corrections and annotations, apparently from +the author's hand; the speeches were very long, and there was an +inordinate number of soliloquies by the heroine. One of them, I +remember, towards the end of the play, began in this fashion-- + +"What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation but +deception?--reality that pales before the light of one's dreams as +Octavia's dull beauty fades beside mine? But let me believe in some +intenser bliss, and seek it in the arms of death!" + +"It seems decidedly passionate," I said. "Has the tragedy ever been +acted?" + +"Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells me that she had it played +at her own house in Berlin, and that she herself undertook the part of +the heroine." + +Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort to sharpen his +perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable sign of +his being under the charm, that this information was very soberly +offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive to my experimental +observations on vulgar topics--the hot weather, the inn, the advent of +Adelina Patti. At last, uttering his thoughts, he announced that Madame +Blumenthal had proved to be an extraordinarily interesting woman. He +seemed to have quite forgotten our long talk in the Hartwaldt, and +betrayed no sense of this being a confession that he had taken his plunge +and was floating with the current. He only remembered that I had spoken +slightingly of the lady, and he now hinted that it behoved me to amend my +opinion. I had received the day before so strong an impression of a sort +of spiritual fastidiousness in my friend's nature, that on hearing now +the striking of a new hour, as it were, in his consciousness, and +observing how the echoes of the past were immediately quenched in its +music, I said to myself that it had certainly taken a delicate hand to +wind up that fine machine. No doubt Madame Blumenthal was a clever +woman. It is a good German custom at Homburg to spend the hour preceding +dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten; Mozart and +Beethoven, for organisms in which the interfusion of soul and sense is +peculiarly mysterious, are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite. Pickering +and I conformed, as we had done the day before, to the fashion, and when +we were seated under the trees, he began to expatiate on his friend's +merits. + +"I don't know whether she is eccentric or not," he said; "to me every one +seems eccentric, and it's not for me, yet a while, to measure people by +my narrow precedents. I never saw a gaming table in my life before, and +supposed that a gambler was of necessity some dusky villain with an evil +eye. In Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people play at roulette as they +play at billiards, and her own venerable mother originally taught her the +rules of the game. It is a recognised source of subsistence for decent +people with small means. But I confess Madame Blumenthal might do worse +things than play at roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful. +I have never been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most +excellent thing in a woman. I have always said to myself that if my +heart were ever to be captured it would be by a sort of general grace--a +sweetness of motion and tone--on which one could count for soothing +impressions, as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly in +tune. Madame Blumenthal has it--this grace that soothes and satisfies; +and it seems the more perfect that it keeps order and harmony in a +character really passionately ardent and active. With her eager nature +and her innumerable accomplishments nothing would be easier than that she +should seem restless and aggressive. You will know her, and I leave you +to judge whether she does seem so! She has every gift, and culture has +done everything for each. What goes on in her mind I of course can't +say; what reaches the observer--the admirer--is simply a sort of fragrant +emanation of intelligence and sympathy." + +"Madame Blumenthal," I said, smiling, "might be the loveliest woman in +the world, and you the object of her choicest favours, and yet what I +should most envy you would be, not your peerless friend, but your +beautiful imagination." + +"That's a polite way of calling me a fool," said Pickering. "You are a +sceptic, a cynic, a satirist! I hope I shall be a long time coming to +that." + +"You will make the journey fast if you travel by express trains. But +pray tell me, have you ventured to intimate to Madame Blumenthal your +high opinion of her?" + +"I don't know what I may have said. She listens even better than she +talks, and I think it possible I may have made her listen to a great deal +of nonsense. For after the first few words I exchanged with her I was +conscious of an extraordinary evaporation of all my old diffidence. I +have, in truth, I suppose," he added in a moment, "owing to my peculiar +circumstances, a great accumulated fund of unuttered things of all sorts +to get rid of. Last evening, sitting there before that charming woman, +they came swarming to my lips. Very likely I poured them all out. I +have a sense of having enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and +of seeing her lovely eyes shining through it opposite to me, like fog- +lamps at sea." And here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke off into +an ardent parenthesis, and declared that Madame Blumenthal's eyes had +something in them that he had never seen in any others. "It was a jumble +of crudities and inanities," he went on; "they must have seemed to her +great rubbish; but I felt the wiser and the stronger, somehow, for having +fired off all my guns--they could hurt nobody now if they hit--and I +imagine I might have gone far without finding another woman in whom such +an exhibition would have provoked so little of mere cold amusement." + +"Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary," I surmised, "entered into your +situation with warmth." + +"Exactly so--the greatest! She has felt and suffered, and now she +understands!" + +"She told you, I imagine, that she understood you as if she had made you, +and she offered to be your guide, philosopher, and friend." + +"She spoke to me," Pickering answered, after a pause, "as I had never +been spoken to before, and she offered me, formally, all the offices of a +woman's friendship." + +"Which you as formally accepted?" + +"To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but allow me to say I don't +care!" Pickering spoke with an air of genial defiance which was the most +inoffensive thing in the world. "I was very much moved; I was, in fact, +very much excited. I tried to say something, but I couldn't; I had had +plenty to say before, but now I stammered and bungled, and at last I +bolted out of the room." + +"Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your pocket!" + +"Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she came in. Afterwards +she kindly offered to read German aloud with me, for the accent, two or +three times a week. 'What shall we begin with?' she asked. 'With this!' +I said, and held up the book. And she let me take it to look it over." + +I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I had been, I might +have been disarmed by Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that +Madame Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to introduce me. +Among the foolish things which, according to his own account, he had +uttered, were some generous words in my praise, to which she had civilly +replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I begged that the +introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to let Pickering work +out his destiny alone. For some days I saw little of him, though we met +at the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the park. I watched, in +spite of my desire to let him alone, for the signs and portents of the +world's action upon him--of that portion of the world, in especial, of +which Madame Blumenthal had constituted herself the agent. He seemed +very happy, and gave me in a dozen ways an impression of increased self- +confidence and maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always, +after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I asked myself what +experience could really do, that innocence had not done, to make it +bright and fine. I was struck with his deep enjoyment of the whole +spectacle of foreign life--its novelty, its picturesqueness, its light +and shade--and with the infinite freedom with which he felt he could go +and come and rove and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an +awakening, a coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a +little less of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he +saw her often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit to +myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she were really the ruling +star of this happy season, she must be a very superior woman. Pickering +had the air of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the feet of an +austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift dangling about some +supreme incarnation of levity. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +Madame Blumenthal seemed, for the time, to have abjured the Kursaal, and +I never caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently, was an +interesting study, and the studious mind prefers seclusion. + +She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the opera, where from my +chair I perceived her in a box, looking extremely pretty. Adelina Patti +was singing, and after the rising of the curtain I was occupied with the +stage; but on looking round when it fell for the _entr'acte_, I saw that +the authoress of "Cleopatra" had been joined by her young admirer. He +was sitting a little behind her, leaning forward, looking over her +shoulder and listening, while she, slowly moving her fan to and fro and +letting her eye wander over the house, was apparently talking of this +person and that. No doubt she was saying sharp things; but Pickering was +not laughing; his eyes were following her covert indications; his mouth +was half open, as it always was when he was interested; he looked +intensely serious. I was glad that, having her back to him, she was +unable to see how he looked. It seemed the proper moment to present +myself and make her my bow; but just as I was about to leave my place a +gentleman, whom in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance, came +to occupy the next chair. Recognition and mutual greetings followed, and +I was forced to postpone my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not sorry, +for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer would be just the man to +give me a fair prose version of Pickering's lyric tributes to his friend. +He was an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived about Europe a great +deal in a series of small diplomatic posts. England especially he had +often visited, and he spoke the language almost without accent. I had +once spent three rainy days with him in the house of an English friend in +the country. He was a sharp observer, and a good deal of a gossip; he +knew a little something about every one, and about some people +everything. His knowledge on social matters generally had the quality of +all German science; it was copious, minute, exhaustive. + +"Do tell me," I said, as we stood looking round the house, "who and what +is the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind her." + +"Who?" he answered, dropping his glass. "Madame Blumenthal! What! It +would take long to say. Be introduced; it's easily done; you will find +her charming. Then, after a week, you will tell me what she is." + +"Perhaps I should not. My friend there has known her a week, and I don't +think he is yet able to give a coherent account of her." + +He raised his glass again, and after looking a while, "I am afraid your +friend is a little--what do you call it?--a little 'soft.' Poor fellow! +he's not the first. I have never known this lady that she has not had +some eligible youth hovering about in some such attitude as that, +undergoing the softening process. She looks wonderfully well, from here. +It's extraordinary how those women last!" + +"You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about 'those women,' that +Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed, for duration, in a certain infusion of +respectability?" + +"Yes and no. The atmosphere that surrounds her is entirely of her own +making. There is no reason in her antecedents that people should drop +their voice when they speak of her. But some women are never at their +ease till they have given some damnable twist or other to their position +before the world. The attitude of upright virtue is unbecoming, like +sitting too straight in a fauteuil. Don't ask me for opinions, however; +content yourself with a few facts and with an anecdote. Madame +Blumenthal is Prussian, and very well born. I remember her mother, an +old Westphalian Grafin, with principles marshalled out like Frederick the +Great's grenadiers. She was poor, however, and her principles were an +insufficient dowry for Anastasia, who was married very young to a vicious +Jew, twice her own age. He was supposed to have money, but I am afraid +he had less than was nominated in the bond, or else that his pretty young +wife spent it very fast. She has been a widow these six or eight years, +and has lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion. I suppose +she is some six or eight and thirty years of age. In winter one hears of +her in Berlin, giving little suppers to the artistic rabble there; in +summer one often sees her across the green table at Ems and Wiesbaden. +She's very clever, and her cleverness has spoiled her. A year after her +marriage she published a novel, with her views on matrimony, in the +George Sand manner--beating the drum to Madame Sand's trumpet. No doubt +she was very unhappy; Blumenthal was an old beast. Since then she has +published a lot of literature--novels and poems and pamphlets on every +conceivable theme, from the conversion of Lola Montez to the Hegelian +philosophy. Her talk is much better than her writing. Her +_conjugophobia_--I can't call it by any other name--made people think +lightly of her at a time when her rebellion against marriage was probably +only theoretic. She had a taste for spinning fine phrases, she drove her +shuttle, and when she came to the end of her yarn she found that society +had turned its back. She tossed her head, declared that at last she +could breathe the sacred air of freedom, and formally announced that she +had embraced an 'intellectual' life. This meant unlimited _camaraderie_ +with scribblers and daubers, Hegelian philosophers and Hungarian +pianists. But she has been admired also by a great many really clever +men; there was a time, in fact, when she turned a head as well set on its +shoulders as this one!" And Niedermeyer tapped his forehead. "She has a +great charm, and, literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for all that, I +am not going to speak to her; I am not going near her box. I am going to +leave her to say, if she does me the honour to observe the omission, that +I too have gone over to the Philistines. It's not that; it is that there +is something sinister about the woman. I am too old for it to frighten +me, but I am good-natured enough for it to pain me. Her quarrel with +society has brought her no happiness, and her outward charm is only the +mask of a dangerous discontent. Her imagination is lodged where her +heart should be! So long as you amuse it, well and good; she's radiant. +But the moment you let it flag, she is capable of dropping you without a +pang. If you land on your feet you are so much the wiser, simply; but +there have been two or three, I believe, who have almost broken their +necks in the fall." + +"You are reversing your promise," I said, "and giving me an opinion, but +not an anecdote." + +"This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine made her acquaintance +in Berlin, and though he was no longer a young man, and had never been +what is called a susceptible one, he took a great fancy to Madame +Blumenthal. He's a major in the Prussian artillery--grizzled, grave, a +trifle severe, a man every way firm in the faith of his fathers. It's a +proof of Anastasia's charm that such a man should have got into the habit +of going to see her every day of his life. But the major was in love, or +next door to it! Every day that he called he found her scribbling away +at a little ormolu table on a lot of half-sheets of note-paper. She used +to bid him sit down and hold his tongue for a quarter of an hour, till +she had finished her chapter; she was writing a novel, and it was +promised to a publisher. Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name of +the injured heroine. The major, I imagine, had never read a work of +fiction in his life, but he knew by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's +literature, when put forth in pink covers, was subversive of several +respectable institutions. Besides, he didn't believe in women knowing +how to write at all, and it irritated him to see this inky goddess +correcting proof-sheets under his nose--irritated him the more that, as I +say, he was in love with her and that he ventured to believe she had a +kindness for his years and his honours. And yet she was not such a woman +as he could easily ask to marry him. The result of all this was that he +fell into the way of railing at her intellectual pursuits and saying he +should like to run his sword through her pile of papers. A woman was +clever enough when she could guess her husband's wishes, and learned +enough when she could read him the newspapers. At last, one day, Madame +Blumenthal flung down her pen and announced in triumph that she had +finished her novel. Clorinda had expired in the arms of--some one else +than her husband. The major, by way of congratulating her, declared that +her novel was immoral rubbish, and that her love of vicious paradoxes was +only a peculiarly depraved form of coquetry. He added, however, that he +loved her in spite of her follies, and that if she would formally abjure +them he would as formally offer her his hand. They say that women like +to be snubbed by military men. I don't know, I'm sure; I don't know how +much pleasure, on this occasion, was mingled with Anastasia's wrath. But +her wrath was very quiet, and the major assured me it made her look +uncommonly pretty. 'I have told you before,' she says, 'that I write +from an inner need. I write to unburden my heart, to satisfy my +conscience. You call my poor efforts coquetry, vanity, the desire to +produce a sensation. I can prove to you that it is the quiet labour +itself I care for, and not the world's more or less flattering attention +to it!' And seizing the history of Clorinda she thrust it into the fire. +The major stands staring, and the first thing he knows she is sweeping +him a great curtsey and bidding him farewell for ever. Left alone and +recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the embers, and then +proceeds to thump vigorously at the lady's door. But it never opened, +and from that day to the day three months ago when he told me the tale, +he had not beheld her again." + +"By Jove, it's a striking story," I said. "But the question is, what +does it prove?" + +"Several things. First (what I was careful not to tell my friend), that +Madame Blumenthal cared for him a trifle more than he supposed; second, +that he cares for her more than ever; third, that the performance was a +master-stroke, and that her allowing him to force an interview upon her +again is only a question of time." + +"And last?" I asked. + +"This is another anecdote. The other day, Unter den Linden, I saw on a +bookseller's counter a little pink-covered romance--'Sophronia,' by +Madame Blumenthal. Glancing through it, I observed an extraordinary +abuse of asterisks; every two or three pages the narrative was adorned +with a portentous blank, crossed with a row of stars." + +"Well, but poor Clorinda?" I objected, as Niedermeyer paused. + +"Sophronia, my dear fellow, is simply Clorinda renamed by the baptism of +fire. The fair author came back, of course, and found Clorinda tumbled +upon the floor, a good deal scorched, but, on the whole, more frightened +than hurt. She picks her up, brushes her off, and sends her to the +printer. Wherever the flames had burnt a hole she swings a +constellation! But if the major is prepared to drop a penitent tear over +the ashes of Clorinda, I shall not whisper to him that the urn is empty." + +Even Adelina Patti's singing, for the next half-hour, but half availed to +divert me from my quickened curiosity to behold Madame Blumenthal face to +face. As soon as the curtain had fallen again I repaired to her box and +was ushered in by Pickering with zealous hospitality. His glowing smile +seemed to say to me, "Ay, look for yourself, and adore!" Nothing could +have been more gracious than the lady's greeting, and I found, somewhat +to my surprise, that her prettiness lost nothing on a nearer view. Her +eyes indeed were the finest I have ever seen--the softest, the deepest, +the most intensely responsive. In spite of something faded and jaded in +her physiognomy, her movements, her smile, and the tone of her voice, +especially when she laughed, had an almost girlish frankness and +spontaneity. She looked at you very hard with her radiant gray eyes, and +she indulged while she talked in a superabundance of restless, rather +affected little gestures, as if to make you take her meaning in a certain +very particular and superfine sense. I wondered whether after a while +this might not fatigue one's attention; then meeting her charming eyes, I +said, Not for a long time. She was very clever, and, as Pickering had +said, she spoke English admirably. I told her, as I took my seat beside +her, of the fine things I had heard about her from my friend, and she +listened, letting me go on some time, and exaggerate a little, with her +fine eyes fixed full upon me. "Really?" she suddenly said, turning short +round upon Pickering, who stood behind us, and looking at him in the same +way. "Is that the way you talk about me?" + +He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly began to laugh; it +was then I observed how sweet her voice was in laughter. We talked after +this of various matters, and in a little while I complimented her on her +excellent English, and asked if she had learnt it in England. + +"Heaven forbid!" she cried. "I have never been there and wish never to +go. I should never get on with the--" I wondered what she was going to +say; the fogs, the smoke, or whist with sixpenny stakes?--"I should never +get on," she said, "with the aristocracy! I am a fierce democrat--I am +not ashamed of it. I hold opinions which would make my ancestors turn in +their graves. I was born in the lap of feudalism. I am a daughter of +the crusaders. But I am a revolutionist! I have a passion for +freedom--my idea of happiness is to die on a great barricade! It's to +your great country I should like to go. I should like to see the +wonderful spectacle of a great people free to do everything it chooses, +and yet never doing anything wrong!" + +I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom and our good +conduct had their limits, and she turned quickly about and shook her fan +with a dramatic gesture at Pickering. "No matter, no matter!" she cried; +"I should like to see the country which produced that wonderful young +man. I think of it as a sort of Arcadia--a land of the golden age. He's +so delightfully innocent! In this stupid old Germany, if a young man is +innocent he's a fool; he has no brains; he's not a bit interesting. But +Mr. Pickering says the freshest things, and after I have laughed five +minutes at their freshness it suddenly occurs to me that they are very +wise, and I think them over for a week." "True!" she went on, nodding at +him. "I call them inspired solecisms, and I treasure them up. Remember +that when I next laugh at you!" + +Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe that he was in a state +of beatific exaltation which weighed Madame Blumenthal's smiles and +frowns in an equal balance. They were equally hers; they were links +alike in the golden chain. He looked at me with eyes that seemed to say, +"Did you ever hear such wit? Did you ever see such grace?" It seemed to +me that he was but vaguely conscious of the meaning of her words; her +gestures, her voice and glance, made an absorbing harmony. There is +something painful in the spectacle of absolute enthralment, even to an +excellent cause. I gave no response to Pickering's challenge, but made +some remark upon the charm of Adelina Patti's singing. Madame +Blumenthal, as became a "revolutionist," was obliged to confess that she +could see no charm in it; it was meagre, it was trivial, it lacked soul. +"You must know that in music, too," she said, "I think for myself!" And +she began with a great many flourishes of her fan to explain what it was +she thought. Remarkable things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, +for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again. "You can't +be a great artist without a great passion!" Madame Blumenthal was +affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti's voice rose +wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. "Ah, give me +that art," I whispered, "and I will leave you your passion!" And I +departed for my own place in the orchestra. I wondered afterwards +whether the speech had seemed rude, and inferred that it had not on +receiving a friendly nod from the lady, in the lobby, as the theatre was +emptying itself. She was on Pickering's arm, and he was taking her to +her carriage. Distances are short in Homburg, but the night was rainy, +and Madame Blumenthal exhibited a very pretty satin-shod foot as a reason +why, though but a penniless widow, she should not walk home. Pickering +left us together a moment while he went to hail the vehicle, and my +companion seized the opportunity, as she said, to beg me to be so very +kind as to come and see her. It was for a particular reason! It was +reason enough for me, of course, I answered, that she had given me leave. +She looked at me a moment with that extraordinary gaze of hers which +seemed so absolutely audacious in its candour, and rejoined that I paid +more compliments than our young friend there, but that she was sure I was +not half so sincere. "But it's about him I want to talk," she said. "I +want to ask you many things; I want you to tell me all about him. He +interests me; but you see my sympathies are so intense, my imagination is +so lively, that I don't trust my own impressions. They have misled me +more than once!" And she gave a little tragic shudder. + +I promised to come and compare notes with her, and we bade her farewell +at her carriage door. Pickering and I remained a while, walking up and +down the long glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had not taken many steps +before I became aware that I was beside a man in the very extremity of +love. "Isn't she wonderful?" he asked, with an implicit confidence in my +sympathy which it cost me some ingenuity to elude. If he were really in +love, well and good! For although, now that I had seen her, I stood +ready to confess to large possibilities of fascination on Madame +Blumenthal's part, and even to certain possibilities of sincerity of +which my appreciation was vague, yet it seemed to me less ominous that he +should be simply smitten than that his admiration should pique itself on +being discriminating. It was on his fundamental simplicity that I +counted for a happy termination of his experiment, and the former of +these alternatives seemed to me the simpler. I resolved to hold my +tongue and let him run his course. He had a great deal to say about his +happiness, about the days passing like hours, the hours like minutes, and +about Madame Blumenthal being a "revelation." "She was nothing +to-night," he said; "nothing to what she sometimes is in the way of +brilliancy--in the way of repartee. If you could only hear her when she +tells her adventures!" + +"Adventures?" I inquired. "Has she had adventures?" + +"Of the most wonderful sort!" cried Pickering, with rapture. "She hasn't +vegetated, like me! She has lived in the tumult of life. When I listen +to her reminiscences, it's like hearing the opening tumult of one of +Beethoven's symphonies as it loses itself in a triumphant harmony of +beauty and faith!" + +I could only lift my eyebrows, but I desired to know before we separated +what he had done with that troublesome conscience of his. "I suppose you +know, my dear fellow," I said, "that you are simply in love. That's what +they happen to call your state of mind." + +He replied with a brightening eye, as if he were delighted to hear it--"So +Madame Blumenthal told me only this morning!" And seeing, I suppose, +that I was slightly puzzled, "I went to drive with her," he continued; +"we drove to Konigstein, to see the old castle. We scrambled up into the +heart of the ruin and sat for an hour in one of the crumbling old courts. +Something in the solemn stillness of the place unloosed my tongue; and +while she sat on an ivied stone, on the edge of the plunging wall, I +stood there and made a speech. She listened to me, looking at me, +breaking off little bits of stone and letting them drop down into the +valley. At last she got up and nodded at me two or three times silently, +with a smile, as if she were applauding me for a solo on the violin. 'You +are in love,' she said. 'It's a perfect case!' And for some time she +said nothing more. But before we left the place she told me that she +owed me an answer to my speech. She thanked me heartily, but she was +afraid that if she took me at my word she would be taking advantage of my +inexperience. I had known few women; I was too easily pleased; I thought +her better than she really was. She had great faults; I must know her +longer and find them out; I must compare her with other women--women +younger, simpler, more innocent, more ignorant; and then if I still did +her the honour to think well of her, she would listen to me again. I +told her that I was not afraid of preferring any woman in the world to +her, and then she repeated, 'Happy man, happy man! you are in love, you +are in love!'" + +I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of days later, in some agitation +of thought. It has been proved that there are, here and there, in the +world, such people as sincere impostors; certain characters who cultivate +fictitious emotions in perfect good faith. Even if this clever lady +enjoyed poor Pickering's bedazzlement, it was conceivable that, taking +vanity and charity together, she should care more for his welfare than +for her own entertainment; and her offer to abide by the result of +hazardous comparison with other women was a finer stroke than her +reputation had led me to expect. She received me in a shabby little +sitting-room littered with uncut books and newspapers, many of which I +saw at a glance were French. One side of it was occupied by an open +piano, surmounted by a jar full of white roses. They perfumed the air; +they seemed to me to exhale the pure aroma of Pickering's devotion. +Buried in an arm-chair, the object of this devotion was reading the +_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The purpose of my visit was not to admire +Madame Blumenthal on my own account, but to ascertain how far I might +safely leave her to work her will upon my friend. She had impugned my +sincerity the evening of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to +abstain from compliments, and not to place her on her guard against my +penetration. It is needless to narrate our interview in detail; indeed, +to tell the perfect truth, I was punished for my rash attempt to surprise +her by a temporary eclipse of my own perspicacity. She sat there so +questioning, so perceptive, so genial, so generous, and so pretty withal, +that I was quite ready at the end of half an hour to subscribe to the +most comprehensive of Pickering's rhapsodies. She was certainly a +wonderful woman. I have never liked to linger, in memory, on that half- +hour. The result of it was to prove that there were many more things in +the composition of a woman who, as Niedermeyer said, had lodged her +imagination in the place of her heart than were dreamt of in my +philosophy. Yet, as I sat there stroking my hat and balancing the +account between nature and art in my affable hostess, I felt like a very +competent philosopher. She had said she wished me to tell her everything +about our friend, and she questioned me as to his family, his fortune, +his antecedents, and his character. All this was natural in a woman who +had received a passionate declaration of love, and it was expressed with +an air of charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there was really +no mistake about his being a most distinguished young man, and that if I +chose to be explicit, I might deepen her conviction to disinterested +ecstasy, which might have almost provoked me to invent a good opinion, if +I had not had one ready made. I told her that she really knew Pickering +better than I did, and that until we met at Homburg I had not seen him +since he was a boy. + +"But he talks to you freely," she answered; "I know you are his +confidant. He has told me certainly a great many things, but I always +feel as if he were keeping something back; as if he were holding +something behind him, and showing me only one hand at once. He seems +often to be hovering on the edge of a secret. I have had several +friendships in my life--thank Heaven! but I have had none more dear to me +than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the painful sense of my +friend being half afraid of me; of his thinking me terrible, strange, +perhaps a trifle out of my wits. Poor me! If he only knew what a plain +good soul I am, and how I only want to know him and befriend him!" + +These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity which made mistrust seem +cruel. How much better I might play providence over Pickering's +experiments with life if I could engage the fine instincts of this +charming woman on the providential side! Pickering's secret was, of +course, his engagement to Miss Vernor; it was natural enough that he +should have been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame +Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl's face had not faded +from my memory; I could not rid myself of the suspicion that in going +further Pickering might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal's professions +seemed a virtual promise to agree with me, and, after some hesitation, I +said that my friend had, in fact, a substantial secret, and that perhaps +I might do him a good turn by putting her in possession of it. In as few +words as possible I told her that Pickering stood pledged by filial piety +to marry a young lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my story; when +I had finished it there was a faint flush of excitement in each of her +cheeks. She broke out into a dozen exclamations of admiration and +compassion. "What a wonderful tale--what a romantic situation! No +wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless and unsatisfied; no wonder he +wished to put off the day of submission. And the poor little girl at +Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like the heroine of an +Eastern tale! She would give the world to see her photograph; did I +think Mr. Pickering would show it to her? But never fear; she would ask +nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous story, and if she had +invented it herself, people would have said it was absurdly improbable." +She left her seat and took several turns about the room, smiling to +herself, and uttering little German cries of wonderment. Suddenly she +stopped before the piano and broke into a little laugh; the next moment +she buried her face in the great bouquet of roses. It was time I should +go, but I was indisposed to leave her without obtaining some definite +assurance that, as far as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl +at Smyrna more than the young man at Homburg. + +"Of course you know what I wished in telling you this," I said, rising. +"She is evidently a charming creature, and the best thing he can do is to +marry her. I wished to interest you in that view of it." + +She had taken one of the roses from the vase and was arranging it in the +front of her dress. Suddenly, looking up, "Leave it to me, leave it to +me!" she cried. "I am interested!" And with her little blue-gemmed hand +she tapped her forehead. "I am deeply interested!" + +And with this I had to content myself. But more than once the next day I +repented of my zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a white rose +in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too human. In the evening, at +the Kursaal, I looked for Pickering, but he was not visible, and I +reflected that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate, seemed to +Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing a cooling-term to his passion. +Very late, as I was turning away, I saw him arrive--with no small +satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know immediately in what +way I had attempted to serve him. But he straightway passed his arm +through my own and led me off towards the gardens. I saw that he was too +excited to allow me to speak first. + +"I have burnt my ships!" he cried, when we were out of earshot of the +crowd. "I have told her everything. I have insisted that it's simple +torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. It's well +enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her +reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care +for nothing, I know nothing, but that I love her with every pulse of my +being--and that everything else has been a hideous dream, from which she +may wake me into blissful morning with a single word!" + +I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him gravely. "You have told +her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?" + +"The whole story! I have given it up--I have thrown it to the winds. I +have broken utterly with the past. It may rise in its grave and give me +its curse, but it can't frighten me now. I have a right to be happy, I +have a right to be free, I have a right not to bury myself alive. It was +not _I_ who promised--I was not born then. I myself, my soul, my mind, +my option--all this is but a month old! Ah," he went on, "if you knew +the difference it makes--this having chosen and broken and spoken! I am +twice the man I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was +a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge and cleverness about her, which +oppressed me in the midst of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but +of being too happy!" + +I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused a moment, +and took off his hat and fanned himself. "Let me perfectly understand," +I said at last. "You have asked Madame Blumenthal to be your wife?" + +"The wife of my intelligent choice!" + +"And does she consent?" + +"She asks three days to decide." + +"Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. I am bound +to let you know I told her." + +"So much the better!" cried Pickering, without apparent resentment or +surprise. "It's not a brilliant offer for such a woman, and in spite of +what I have at stake, I feel that it would be brutal to press her." + +"What does she say to your breaking your promise?" I asked in a moment. + +Pickering was too much in love for false shame. "She tells me that she +loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. She agrees with me that +I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption from the common law. What +I claim is simply freedom to try to be!" + +Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had expected +Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information. But the matter now was +quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid my companion not +work himself into a fever over either fortune. + +The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk at +the opera, I had left a card. We gossiped a while, and at last he said +suddenly, "By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda. The +major is at Homburg!" + +"Indeed!" said I. "Since when?" + +"These three days." + +"And what is he doing?" + +"He seems," said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied in +sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the +morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him +but a small haystack of white roses. I hope it was received." + +"I can assure you it was," I cried. "I saw the lady fairly nestling her +head in it. But I advise the major not to build upon that. He has a +rival." + +"Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?" + +"Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to have served +him. He has offered her everything, and she has not yet refused it." I +had handed my visitor a cigar, and he was puffing it in silence. At last +he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to Madame Blumenthal, and, on +my affirmative, inquired what I thought of her. "I will not tell you," I +said, "or you'll call _me_ soft." + +He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance. "I have noticed your +friend about," he said, "and even if you had not told me, I should have +known he was in love. After he has left his adored, his face wears for +the rest of the day the expression with which he has risen from her feet, +and more than once I have felt like touching his elbow, as you would that +of a man who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his overshoes. +You say he has offered our friend everything; but, my dear fellow, he has +not everything to offer her. He evidently is as amiable as the morning, +but the lady has no taste for daylight." + +"I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow," I said. + +"Ah, there it is! Has he not some story or other? Isn't he an orphan, +or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent heir to great estates? +She will read his little story to the end, and close the book very +tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, when he least expects it, +she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her other romances. She will +let him dangle, but she will let him drop!" + +"Upon my word," I cried, with heat, "if she does, she will be a very +unprincipled little creature!" + +Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. "I never said she was a saint!" + +Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his simple +word for this event, and in the evening I received a communication which +fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and it ran as +follows:-- + + "My Dear Friend--I have every hope of being happy, but I am to go to + Wiesbaden to learn my fate. Madame Blumenthal goes thither this + afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany her. + Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the result. + E. P." + +One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in rotation at +the different tables d'hote. It so happened that, a couple of days +later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and secured a seat beside +my own. As we took our places I found a letter on my plate, and, as it +was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in opening it. It contained but +three lines-- + + "I am happy--I am accepted--an hour ago. I can hardly believe it's + your poor friend + E. P." + +I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with +the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer +than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt +it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At +last, folding the note and handing it back, "Has your friend mentioned +Madame Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?" he asked. + +"You look very wise. I give it up!" said I. + +"She is gone there to make the major follow her. He went by the next +train." + +"And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?" + +"He is not a letter-writer." + +"Well," said I, pocketing my letter, "with this document in my hand I am +bound to reserve my judgment. We will have a bottle of Johannisberg, and +drink to the triumph of virtue." + +For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering--somewhat to my +surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure. I +had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief +bulletins, and his silence was possibly an indication that it had been +clouded. At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received no +answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired to his former lodging +at Homburg, where I thought it possible he had left property which he +would sooner or later send for. There I learned that he had indeed just +telegraphed from Cologne for his luggage. To Cologne I immediately +despatched a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause of his +silence. The next day I received three words in answer--a simple +uncommented request that I would come to him. I lost no time, and +reached him in the course of a few hours. It was dark when I arrived, +and the city was sheeted in a cold autumnal rain. Pickering had +stumbled, with an indifference which was itself a symptom of distress, on +a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him sitting over a +smouldering fire in a vast dingy chamber which looked as if it had grown +gray with watching the _ennui_ of ten generations of travellers. Looking +at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he was in extreme +tribulation. He was pale and haggard; his face was five years older. +Now, at least, in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life! I +was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly to bitterness; but I +spared him all importunate curiosity, and let him take his time. I +accepted tacitly his tacit confession of distress, and we made for a +while a feeble effort to discuss the picturesqueness of Cologne. At last +he rose and stood a long time looking into the fire, while I slowly paced +the length of the dusky room. + +"Well!" he said, as I came back; "I wanted knowledge, and I certainly +know something I didn't a month ago." And herewith, calmly and +succinctly enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related the +history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly on details; he +evidently never was to gush as freely again as he had done during the +prosperity of his suit. He had been accepted one evening, as explicitly +as his imagination could desire, and had gone forth in his rapture and +roamed about till nearly morning in the gardens of the +Conversation-house, taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer night +into his confidence. "It is worth it all, almost," he said, "to have +been wound up for an hour to that celestial pitch. No man, I am sure, +can ever know it but once." The next morning he had repaired to Madame +Blumenthal's lodging and had been met, to his amazement, by a naked +refusal to see him. He had strode about for a couple of hours--in +another mood--and then had returned to the charge. The servant handed +him a three-cornered note; it contained these words: "Leave me alone to- +day; I will give you ten minutes to-morrow evening." Of the next thirty- +six hours he could give no coherent account, but at the appointed time +Madame Blumenthal had received him. Almost before she spoke there had +come to him a sense of the depth of his folly in supposing he knew her. +"One has heard all one's days," he said, "of people removing the mask; +it's one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with her +mask in her hand. Her face," he went on gravely, after a pause--"her +face was horrible!" . . . "I give you ten minutes," she had said, +pointing to the clock. "Make your scene, tear your hair, brandish your +dagger!" And she had sat down and folded her arms. "It's not a joke," +she cried, "it's dead earnest; let us have it over. You are +dismissed--have you nothing to say?" He had stammered some frantic +demand for an explanation; and she had risen and come near him, looking +at him from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more excited than she +wished him to see. "I have done with you!" she said, with a smile; "you +ought to have done with me! It has all been delightful, but there are +excellent reasons why it should come to an end." "You have been playing a +part, then," he had gasped out; "you never cared for me?" "Yes; till I +knew you; till I saw how far you would go. But now the story's finished; +we have reached the _denoument_. We will close the book and be good +friends." "To see how far I would go?" he had repeated. "You led me on, +meaning all the while to do _this_!" "I led you on, if you will. I +received your visits, in season and out! Sometimes they were very +entertaining; sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you were such a +very curious case of--what shall I call it?--of sincerity, that I +determined to take good and bad together. I wanted to make you commit +yourself unmistakably. I should have preferred not to bring you to this +place; but that too was necessary. Of course I can't marry you; I can do +better. So can you, for that matter; thank your fate for it. You have +thought wonders of me for a month, but your good-humour wouldn't last. I +am too old and too wise; you are too young and too foolish. It seems to +me that I have been very good to you; I have entertained you to the top +of your bent, and, except perhaps that I am a little brusque just now, +you have nothing to complain of. I would have let you down more gently +if I could have taken another month to it; but circumstances have forced +my hand. Abuse me, curse me, if you like. I will make every allowance!" +Pickering listened to all this intently enough to perceive that, as if by +some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground had broken away at his feet, +and that he must recoil. He turned away in dumb amazement. "I don't +know how I seemed to be taking it," he said, "but she seemed really to +desire--I don't know why--something in the way of reproach and +vituperation. But I couldn't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I +was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air--to shake her off and +come to my senses. 'Have you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she +cried, as if she were disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the +door. 'Haven't I treated you to talk enough?' I believed I answered. +'You will write to me then, when you get home?' 'I think not,' said I. +'Six months hence, I fancy, you will come and see me!' 'Never!' said I. +'That's a confession of stupidity,' she answered. 'It means that, even +on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of my conduct.' +The word 'philosophy' seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled. +'I have given you all that you gave me,' she went on. 'Your passion was +an affair of the head.' 'I only wish you had told me sooner that you +considered it so!' I exclaimed. And I went my way. The next day I came +down the Rhine. I sat all day on the boat, not knowing where I was +going, where to get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed to +me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers +here looming over the city. They seemed to say something to me, and when +the boat stopped, I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have not +slept at night--and yet it has been a week of rest!" + +It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to recover, and that his own +philosophy, if left to take its time, was adequate to the occasion. After +his story was once told I referred to his grievance but once--that +evening, later, as we were about to separate for the night. "Suffer me +to say that there was some truth in _her_ account of your relations," I +said. "You were using her intellectually, and all the while, without +your knowing it, she was using you. It was diamond cut diamond. Her +needs were the more superficial, and she got tired of the game first." He +frowned and turned uneasily away, but without contradicting me. I waited +a few moments, to see if he would remember, before we parted, that he had +a claim to make upon me. But he seemed to have forgotten it. + +The next day we strolled about the picturesque old city, and of course, +before long, went into the cathedral. Pickering said little; he seemed +intent upon his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar near a chapel, +in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving him to his meditations, I +wandered through the church. When I came back I saw he had something to +say. But before he had spoken I laid my hand on his shoulder and looked +at him with a significant smile. He slowly bent his head and dropped his +eyes, with a mixture of assent and humility. I drew forth from where it +had lain untouched for a month the letter he had given me to keep, placed +it silently on his knee, and left him to deal with it alone. + +Half an hour later I returned to the same place, but he had gone, and one +of the sacristans, hovering about and seeing me looking for Pickering, +said he thought he had left the church. I found him in his gloomy +chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and down. I should doubtless have +been at a loss to say just what effect I expected the letter from Smyrna +to produce; but his actual aspect surprised me. He was flushed, excited, +a trifle irritated. + +"Evidently," I said, "you have read your letter." + +"It is proper I should tell you what is in it," he answered. "When I +gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice." + +"You called it a 'summons,' I remember." + +"I was a great fool! It's a release!" + +"From your engagement?" + +"From everything! The letter, of course, is from Mr. Vernor. He desires +to let me know at the earliest moment that his daughter, informed for the +first time a week before of what had been expected of her, positively +refuses to be bound by the contract or to assent to my being bound. She +had been given a week to reflect, and had spent it in inconsolable tears. +She had resisted every form of persuasion! from compulsion, writes Mr. +Vernor, he naturally shrinks. The young lady considers the arrangement +'horrible.' After accepting her duties cut and dried all her life, she +pretends at last to have a taste of her own. I confess I am surprised; I +had been given to believe that she was stupidly submissive, and would +remain so to the end of the chapter. Not a bit of it. She has insisted +on my being formally dismissed, and her father intimates that in case of +non-compliance she threatens him with an attack of brain fever. Mr. +Vernor condoles with me handsomely, and lets me know that the young +lady's attitude has been a great shock to his nerves. He adds that he +will not aggravate such regret as I may do him the honour to entertain, +by any allusions to his daughter's charms and to the magnitude of my +loss, and he concludes with the hope that, for the comfort of all +concerned, I may already have amused my fancy with other 'views.' He +reminds me in a postscript that, in spite of this painful occurrence, the +son of his most valued friend will always be a welcome visitor at his +house. I am free, he observes; I have my life before me; he recommends +an extensive course of travel. Should my wanderings lead me to the East, +he hopes that no false embarrassment will deter me from presenting myself +at Smyrna. He can promise me at least a friendly reception. It's a very +polite letter." + +Polite as the letter was, Pickering seemed to find no great exhilaration +in having this famous burden so handsomely lifted from his spirit. He +began to brood over his liberation in a manner which you might have +deemed proper to a renewed sense of bondage. "Bad news," he had called +his letter originally; and yet, now that its contents proved to be in +flat contradiction to his foreboding, there was no impulsive voice to +reverse the formula and declare the news was good. The wings of impulse +in the poor fellow had of late been terribly clipped. It was an obvious +reflection, of course, that if he had not been so stiffly certain of the +matter a month before, and had gone through the form of breaking Mr. +Vernor's seal, he might have escaped the purgatory of Madame Blumenthal's +sub-acid blandishments. But I left him to moralise in private; I had no +desire, as the phrase is, to rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were +following another train; I was saying to myself that if to those gentle +graces of which her young visage had offered to my fancy the blooming +promise, Miss Vernor added in this striking measure the capacity for +magnanimous action, the amendment to my friend's career had been less +happy than the rough draught. Presently, turning about, I saw him +looking at the young lady's photograph. "Of course, now," he said, "I +have no right to keep it!" And before I could ask for another glimpse of +it, he had thrust it into the fire. + +"I am sorry to be saying it just now," I observed after a while, "but I +shouldn't wonder if Miss Vernor were a charming creature." + +"Go and find out," he answered, gloomily. "The coast is clear. My part +is to forget her," he presently added. "It ought not to be hard. But +don't you think," he went on suddenly, "that for a poor fellow who asked +nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in a quiet corner, it has been +rather a cruel pushing about?" + +Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the right to demand a +clean page on the book of fate and a fresh start. Mr. Vernor's advice +was sound; he should amuse himself with a long journey. If it would be +any comfort to him, I would go with him on his way. Pickering assented +without enthusiasm; he had the embarrassed look of a man who, having gone +to some cost to make a good appearance in a drawing-room, should find the +door suddenly slammed in his face. We started on our journey, however, +and little by little his enthusiasm returned. He was too capable of +enjoying fine things to remain permanently irresponsive, and after a +fortnight spent among pictures and monuments and antiquities, I felt that +I was seeing him for the first time in his best and healthiest mood. He +had had a fever, and then he had had a chill; the pendulum had swung +right and left in a manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at +last, it was working back to an even, natural beat. He recovered in a +measure the generous eloquence with which he had fanned his flame at +Homburg, and talked about things with something of the same passionate +freshness. One day when I was laid up at the inn at Bruges with a lame +foot, he came home and treated me to a rhapsody about a certain +meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than +his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his +sombre moods--hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come and +go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a trifle +more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging his head +in so doleful a fashion that I took the bull by the horns and told him he +had by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, and that he owed it +to himself to banish that woman for ever from his thoughts. + +He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush--"That woman?" he said. +"I was not thinking of Madame Blumenthal!" + +After this I gave another construction to his melancholy. Taking him +with his hopes and fears, at the end of six weeks of active observation +and keen sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as need be. We made +our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight at Venice. There something +happened which I had been confidently expecting; I had said to myself +that it was merely a question of time. We had passed the day at +Torcello, and came floating back in the glow of the sunset, with measured +oar-strokes. "I am well on the way," Pickering said; "I think I will +go!" + +We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally asked him, Where? His +answer was delayed by our getting into the Piazzetta. I stepped ashore +first and then turned to help him. As he took my hand he met my eyes, +consciously, and it came. "To Smyrna!" + +A couple of days later he started. I had risked the conjecture that Miss +Vernor was a charming creature, and six months afterwards he wrote me +that I was right. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE PICKERING*** + + +******* This file should be named 2534.txt or 2534.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/3/2534 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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The evening was very warm, and all the world was +gathered on the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to +listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the +crowd was equally dense in the gaming-rooms around the tables. +Everywhere the crowd was great. The night was perfect, the season +was at its height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long shafts +of unnatural light into the dusky woods, and now and then, in the +intervals of the music, one might almost hear the clink of the +napoleons and the metallic call of the croupiers rise above the +watching silence of the saloons. I had been strolling with a friend, +and we at last prepared to sit down. Chairs, however, were scarce. +I had captured one, but it seemed no easy matter to find a mate for +it. I was on the point of giving up in despair, and proposing an +adjournment to the silken ottomans of the Kursaal, when I observed a +young man lounging back on one of the objects of my quest, with his +feet supported on the rounds of another. This was more than his +share of luxury, and I promptly approached him. He evidently +belonged to the race which has the credit of knowing best, at home +and abroad, how to make itself comfortable; but something in his +appearance suggested that his present attitude was the result of +inadvertence rather than of egotism. He was staring at the conductor +of the orchestra and listening intently to the music. His hands were +locked round his long legs, and his mouth was half open, with rather +a foolish air. "There are so few chairs," I said, "that I must beg +you to surrender this second one." He started, stared, blushed, +pushed the chair away with awkward alacrity, and murmured something +about not having noticed that he had it. + +"What an odd-looking youth!" said my companion, who had watched me, +as I seated myself beside her. + +"Yes, he is odd-looking; but what is odder still is that I have seen +him before, that his face is familiar to me, and yet that I can't +place him." The orchestra was playing the Prayer from Der +Freischutz, but Weber's lovely music only deepened the blank of +memory. Who the deuce was he? where, when, how, had I known him? It +seemed extraordinary that a face should be at once so familiar and so +strange. We had our backs turned to him, so that I could not look at +him again. When the music ceased we left our places, and I went to +consign my friend to her mamma on the terrace. In passing, I saw +that my young man had departed; I concluded that he only strikingly +resembled some one I knew. But who in the world was it he resembled? +The ladies went off to their lodgings, which were near by, and I +turned into the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at +roulette. Gradually I filtered through to the inner edge, near the +table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite +to me. He was watching the game, with his hands in his pockets; but +singularly enough, now that I observed him at my leisure, the look of +familiarity quite faded from his face. What had made us call his +appearance odd was his great length and leanness of limb, his long, +white neck, his blue, prominent eyes, and his ingenuous, unconscious +absorption in the scene before him. He was not handsome, certainly, +but he looked peculiarly amiable and if his overt wonderment savoured +a trifle of rurality, it was an agreeable contrast to the hard, +inexpressive masks about him. He was the verdant offshoot, I said to +myself, of some ancient, rigid stem; he had been brought up in the +quietest of homes, and he was having his first glimpse of life. I +was curious to see whether he would put anything on the table; he +evidently felt the temptation, but he seemed paralysed by chronic +embarrassment. He stood gazing at the chinking complexity of losses +and gains, shaking his loose gold in his pocket, and every now and +then passing his hand nervously over his eyes. + +Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play to have many +thoughts for each other; but before long I noticed a lady who +evidently had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table. +She was seated about half-way between my friend and me, and I +presently observed that she was trying to catch his eye. Though at +Homburg, as people said, "one could never be sure," I yet doubted +whether this lady were one of those whose especial vocation it was to +catch a gentleman's eye. She was youthful rather than elderly, and +pretty rather than plain; indeed, a few minutes later, when I saw her +smile, I thought her wonderfully pretty. She had a charming gray eye +and a good deal of yellow hair disposed in picturesque disorder; and +though her features were meagre and her complexion faded, she gave +one a sense of sentimental, artificial gracefulness. She was dressed +in white muslin very much puffed and filled, but a trifle the worse +for wear, relieved here and there by a pale blue ribbon. I used to +flatter myself on guessing at people's nationality by their faces, +and, as a rule, I guessed aright. This faded, crumpled, vaporous +beauty, I conceived, was a German--such a German, somehow, as I had +seen imagined in literature. Was she not a friend of poets, a +correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of aesthetics-- +something in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel? My conjectures, however, +were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident friend was +making of her. She caught his eye at last, and raising an ungloved +hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed rings--turquoises, +sapphires, and lapis--she beckoned him to come to her. The gesture +was executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with +an appealing smile. He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to +suppose that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was +immediately repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the +roots of his hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the +lady's chair. By the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping +his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief. She tilted back, looked +up at him with the same smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and +said something, interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of +the head. She was asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and +he was saying no. Old players have a fancy that when luck has turned +her back on them they can put her into good-humour again by having +their stakes placed by a novice. Our young man's physiognomy had +seemed to his new acquaintance to express the perfection of +inexperience, and, like a practical woman, she had determined to make +him serve her turn. Unlike most of her neighbours, she had no little +pile of gold before her, but she drew from her pocket a double +napoleon, put it into his hand, and bade him place it on a number of +his own choosing. He was evidently filled with a sort of delightful +trouble; he enjoyed the adventure, but he shrank from the hazard. I +would have staked the coin on its being his companion's last; for +although she still smiled intently as she watched his hesitation, +there was anything but indifference in her pale, pretty face. +Suddenly, in desperation, he reached over and laid the piece on the +table. My attention was diverted at this moment by my having to make +way for a lady with a great many flounces, before me, to give up her +chair to a rustling friend to whom she had promised it; when I again +looked across at the lady in white muslin, she was drawing in a very +goodly pile of gold with her little blue-gemmed claw. Good luck and +bad, at the Homburg tables, were equally undemonstrative, and this +happy adventuress rewarded her young friend for the sacrifice of his +innocence with a single, rapid, upward smile. He had innocence +enough left, however, to look round the table with a gleeful, +conscious laugh, in the midst of which his eyes encountered my own. +Then suddenly the familiar look which had vanished from his face +flickered up unmistakably; it was the boyish laugh of a boyhood's +friend. Stupid fellow that I was, I had been looking at Eugene +Pickering! + +Though I lingered on for some time longer he failed to recognise me. +Recognition, I think, had kindled a smile in my own face; but, less +fortunate than he, I suppose my smile had ceased to be boyish. Now +that luck had faced about again, his companion played for herself-- +played and won, hand over hand. At last she seemed disposed to rest +on her gains, and proceeded to bury them in the folds of her muslin. +Pickering had staked nothing for himself, but as he saw her prepare +to withdraw he offered her a double napoleon and begged her to place +it. She shook her head with great decision, and seemed to bid him +put it up again; but he, still blushing a good deal, pressed her with +awkward ardour, and she at last took it from him, looked at him a +moment fixedly, and laid it on a number. A moment later the croupier +was raking it in. She gave the young man a little nod which seemed +to say, "I told you so;" he glanced round the table again and +laughed; she left her chair, and he made a way for her through the +crowd. Before going home I took a turn on the terrace and looked +down on the esplanade. The lamps were out, but the warm starlight +vaguely illumined a dozen figures scattered in couples. One of these +figures, I thought, was a lady in a white dress. + +I had no intention of letting Pickering go without reminding him of +our old acquaintance. He had been a very singular boy, and I was +curious to see what had become of his singularity. I looked for him +the next morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last I +discovered his whereabouts. But he was out, the waiter said; he had +gone to walk an hour before. I went my way, confident that I should +meet him in the evening. It was the rule with the Homburg world to +spend its evenings at the Kursaal, and Pickering, apparently, had +already discovered a good reason for not being an exception. One of +the charms of Homburg is the fact that of a hot day you may walk +about for a whole afternoon in unbroken shade. The umbrageous +gardens of the Kursaal mingle with the charming Hardtwald, which in +turn melts away into the wooded slopes of the Taunus Mountains. To +the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for an hour through mossy +glades and the still, perpendicular gloom of the fir-woods. +Suddenly, on the grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a young man +stretched at his length in the sun-checkered shade, and kicking his +heels towards a patch of blue sky. My step was so noiseless on the +turf that, before he saw me, I had time to recognise Pickering again. +He looked as if he had been lounging there for some time; his hair +was tossed about as if he had been sleeping; on the grass near him, +beside his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived me +he jerked himself forward, and I stood looking at him without +introducing myself--purposely, to give him a chance to recognise me. +He put on his glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up at +me with an air of general trustfulness, but without a sign of knowing +me. So at last I introduced myself. Then he jumped up and grasped +my hands, and stared and blushed and laughed, and began a dozen +random questions, ending with a demand as to how in the world I had +known him. + +"Why, you are not changed so utterly," I said; "and after all, it's +but fifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me." + +"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with +a sort of ingenuous dismay. + +Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, +a victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to +school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every +day at two o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were +liberated, an old nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away +in a carriage. His extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his +bottle of medicine, which suggested a vague analogy with the +sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused him to be called Juliet. +Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered more; she was not, at +least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering these things, I +hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still the same good +fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital friends, you +know," I went on, "then and afterwards." + +"Yes, we were very good friends," he said, "and that makes it the +stranger I shouldn't have known you. For you know, as a boy, I never +had many friends, nor as a man either. You see," he added, passing +his hand over his eyes, "I am rather dazed, rather bewildered at +finding myself for the first time--alone." And he jerked back his +shoulders nervously, and threw up his head, as if to settle himself +in an unwonted position. I wondered whether the old nurse with the +bushy eyebrows had remained attached to his person up to a recent +period, and discovered presently that, virtually at least, she had. +We had the whole summer day before us, and we sat down on the grass +together and overhauled our old memories. It was as if we had +stumbled upon an ancient cupboard in some dusky corner, and rummaged +out a heap of childish playthings--tin soldiers and torn story-books, +jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is what we remembered between +us. + +He had made but a short stay at school--not because he was tormented, +for he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his +tongue at home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine- +bottle, but because his father thought he was learning bad manners. +This he imparted to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how +it increased my oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to +me in glimpses as a sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. +Pickering was a widower--a fact which seemed to produce in him a sort +of preternatural concentration of parental dignity. He was a +majestic man, with a hooked nose, a keen dark eye, very large +whiskers, and notions of his own as to how a boy--or his boy, at any +rate--should be brought up. First and foremost, he was to be a +"gentleman"; which seemed to mean, chiefly, that he was always to +wear a muffler and gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of +bread and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment, seemed +hostile to these observances, and Eugene was taken home again, to be +moulded into urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was provided +for him, and a single select companion was prescribed. The choice, +mysteriously, fell on me, born as I was under quite another star; my +parents were appealed to, and I was allowed for a few months to have +my lessons with Eugene. The tutor, I think, must have been rather a +snob, for Eugene was treated like a prince, while I got all the +questions and the raps with the ruler. And yet I remember never +being jealous of my happier comrade, and striking up, for the time, +one of those friendships of childhood. He had a watch and a pony and +a great store of picture-books, but my envy of these luxuries was +tempered by a vague compassion which left me free to be generous. I +could go out to play alone, I could button my jacket myself, and sit +up till I was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a step without +asking leave, or spend half an hour in the garden without a formal +report of it when he came in. My parents, who had no desire to see +me inoculated with importunate virtues, sent me back to school at the +end of six months. After that I never saw Eugene. His father went +to live in the country, to protect the lad's morals, and Eugene +faded, in reminiscence, into a pale image of the depressing effects +of education. I think I vaguely supposed that he would melt into +thin air, and indeed began gradually to doubt of his existence, and +to regard him as one of the foolish things one ceased to believe in +as one grew older. It seemed natural that I should have no more news +of him. Our present meeting was my first assurance that he had +really survived all that muffling and coddling. + +I observed him now with a good deal of interest, for he was a rare +phenomenon--the fruit of a system persistently and uninterruptedly +applied. He struck me, in a fashion, as certain young monks I had +seen in Italy; he had the same candid, unsophisticated cloister face. +His education had been really almost monastic. It had found him +evidently a very compliant, yielding subject; his gentle affectionate +spirit was not one of those that need to be broken. It had +bequeathed him, now that he stood on the threshold of the great +world, an extraordinary freshness of impression and alertness of +desire, and I confess that, as I looked at him and met his +transparent blue eye, I trembled for the unwarned innocence of such a +soul. I became aware, gradually, that the world had already wrought +a certain work upon him and roused him to a restless, troubled self- +consciousness. Everything about him pointed to an experience from +which he had been debarred; his whole organism trembled with a +dawning sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This +appealing tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept shifting +himself about on the grass, thrusting his hands through his hair, +wiping a light perspiration from his forehead, breaking out to say +something and rushing off to something else. Our sudden meeting had +greatly excited him, and I saw that I was likely to profit by a +certain overflow of sentimental fermentation. I could do so with a +good conscience, for all this trepidation filled me with a great +friendliness. + +"It's nearly fifteen years, as you say," he began, "since you used to +call me 'butter-fingers' for always missing the ball. That's a long +time to give an account of, and yet they have been, for me, such +eventless, monotonous years, that I could almost tell their history +in ten words. You, I suppose, have had all kinds of adventures and +travelled over half the world. I remember you had a turn for deeds +of daring; I used to think you a little Captain Cook in roundabouts, +for climbing the garden fence to get the ball when I had let it fly +over. I climbed no fences then or since. You remember my father, I +suppose, and the great care he took of me? I lost him some five +months ago. From those boyish days up to his death we were always +together. I don't think that in fifteen years we spent half a dozen +hours apart. We lived in the country, winter and summer, seeing but +three or four people. I had a succession of tutors, and a library to +browse about in; I assure you I am a tremendous scholar. It was a +dull life for a growing boy, and a duller life for a young man grown, +but I never knew it. I was perfectly happy." He spoke of his father +at some length, and with a respect which I privately declined to +emulate. Mr. Pickering had been, to my sense, a frigid egotist, +unable to conceive of any larger vocation for his son than to strive +to reproduce so irreproachable a model. "I know I have been +strangely brought up," said my friend, "and that the result is +something grotesque; but my education, piece by piece, in detail, +became one of my father's personal habits, as it were. He took a +fancy to it at first through his intense affection for my mother and +the sort of worship he paid her memory. She died at my birth, and as +I grew up, it seems that I bore an extraordinary likeness to her. +Besides, my father had a great many theories; he prided himself on +his conservative opinions; he thought the usual American laisser- +aller in education was a very vulgar practice, and that children were +not to grow up like dusty thorns by the wayside. "So you see," +Pickering went on, smiling and blushing, and yet with something of +the irony of vain regret, "I am a regular garden plant. I have been +watched and watered and pruned, and if there is any virtue in tending +I ought to take the prize at a flower show. Some three years ago my +father's health broke down, and he was kept very much within doors. +So, although I was a man grown, I lived altogether at home. If I was +out of his sight for a quarter of an hour he sent some one after me. +He had severe attacks of neuralgia, and he used to sit at his window, +basking in the sun. He kept an opera-glass at hand, and when I was +out in the garden he used to watch me with it. A few days before his +death I was twenty-seven years old, and the most innocent youth, I +suppose, on the continent. After he died I missed him greatly," +Pickering continued, evidently with no intention of making an +epigram. "I stayed at home, in a sort of dull stupor. It seemed as +if life offered itself to me for the first time, and yet as if I +didn't know how to take hold of it." + +He uttered all this with a frank eagerness which increased as he +talked, and there was a singular contrast between the meagre +experience he described and a certain radiant intelligence which I +seemed to perceive in his glance and tone. Evidently he was a clever +fellow, and his natural faculties were excellent. I imagined he had +read a great deal, and recovered, in some degree, in restless +intellectual conjecture, the freedom he was condemned to ignore in +practice. Opportunity was now offering a meaning to the empty forms +with which his imagination was stored, but it appeared to him dimly, +through the veil of his personal diffidence. + +"I have not sailed round the world, as you suppose," I said, "but I +confess I envy you the novelties you are going to behold. Coming to +Homburg you have plunged in medias res." + +He glanced at me to see if my remark contained an allusion, and +hesitated a moment. "Yes, I know it. I came to Bremen in the +steamer with a very friendly German, who undertook to initiate me +into the glories and mysteries of the Fatherland. At this season, he +said, I must begin with Homburg. I landed but a fortnight ago, and +here I am." Again he hesitated, as if he were going to add something +about the scene at the Kursaal but suddenly, nervously, he took up +the letter which was lying beside him, looked hard at the seal with a +troubled frown, and then flung it back on the grass with a sigh. + +"How long do you expect to be in Europe?" I asked. + +"Six months I supposed when I came. But not so long--now!" And he +let his eyes wander to the letter again. + +"And where shall you go--what shall you do?" + +"Everywhere, everything, I should have said yesterday. But now it is +different." + +I glanced at the letter--interrogatively, and he gravely picked it up +and put it into his pocket. We talked for a while longer, but I saw +that he had suddenly become preoccupied; that he was apparently +weighing an impulse to break some last barrier of reserve. At last +he suddenly laid his hand on my arm, looked at me a moment +appealingly, and cried, "Upon my word, I should like to tell you +everything!" + +"Tell me everything, by all means," I answered, smiling. "I desire +nothing better than to lie here in the shade and hear everything." + +"Ah, but the question is, will you understand it? No matter; you +think me a queer fellow already. It's not easy, either, to tell you +what I feel--not easy for so queer a fellow as I to tell you in how +many ways he is queer!" He got up and walked away a moment, passing +his hand over his eyes, then came back rapidly and flung himself on +the grass again. "I said just now I always supposed I was happy; +it's true; but now that my eyes are open, I see I was only +stultified. I was like a poodle-dog that is led about by a blue +ribbon, and scoured and combed and fed on slops. It was not life; +life is learning to know one's self, and in that sense I have lived +more in the past six weeks than in all the years that preceded them. +I am filled with this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps rising +to my head like the fumes of strong wine. I find I am an active, +sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with passions, with +possible convictions--even with what I never dreamed of, a possible +will of my own! I find there is a world to know, a life to lead, men +and women to form a thousand relations with. It all lies there like +a great surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the +breeze and breast the waves. I stand shivering here on the brink, +staring, longing, wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and +yet afraid of the water. The world beckons and smiles and calls, but +a nameless influence from the past, that I can neither wholly obey +nor wholly resist, seems to hold me back. I am full of impulses, +but, somehow, I am not full of strength. Life seems inspiring at +certain moments, but it seems terrible and unsafe; and I ask myself +why I should wantonly measure myself with merciless forces, when I +have learned so well how to stand aside and let them pass. Why +shouldn't I turn my back upon it all and go home to--what awaits me?- +-to that sightless, soundless country life, and long days spent among +old books? But if a man IS weak, he doesn't want to assent +beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness +there may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is that it comes +back--this irresistible impulse to take my plunge--to let myself +swing, to go where liberty leads me." He paused a moment, fixing me +with his excited eyes, and perhaps perceived in my own an +irrepressible smile at his perplexity. "'Swing ahead, in Heaven's +name,' you want to say, 'and much good may it do you.' I don't know +whether you are laughing at my scruples or at what possibly strikes +you as my depravity. I doubt," he went on gravely, "whether I have +an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I shall not +prosper in it. I honestly believe I may safely take out a license to +amuse myself. But it isn't that I think of, any more than I dream +of, playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to me; +what I long for is knowledge--some other knowledge than comes to us +in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand all +this better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door +atmosphere in which I have always lived. To break a window and let +in light and air--I feel as if at last I must ACT!" + +"Act, by all means, now and always, when you have a chance," I +answered. "But don't take things too hard, now or ever. Your long +confinement makes you think the world better worth knowing than you +are likely to find it. A man with as good a head and heart as yours +has a very ample world within himself, and I am no believer in art +for art, nor in what's called 'life' for life's sake. Nevertheless, +take your plunge, and come and tell me whether you have found the +pearl of wisdom." He frowned a little, as if he thought my sympathy +a trifle meagre. I shook him by the hand and laughed. "The pearl of +wisdom," I cried, "is love; honest love in the most convenient +concentration of experience! I advise you to fall in love." He gave +me no smile in response, but drew from his pocket the letter of which +I have spoken, held it up, and shook it solemnly. "What is it?" I +asked. + +"It is my sentence!" + +"Not of death, I hope!" + +"Of marriage." + +"With whom?" + +"With a person I don't love." + +This was serious. I stopped smiling, and begged him to explain. + +"It is the singular part of my story," he said at last. "It will +remind you of an old-fashioned romance. Such as I sit here, talking +in this wild way, and tossing off provocations to destiny, my destiny +is settled and sealed. I am engaged, I am given in marriage. It's a +bequest of the past--the past I had no hand in! The marriage was +arranged by my father, years ago, when I was a boy. The young girl's +father was his particular friend; he was also a widower, and was +bringing up his daughter, on his side, in the same severe seclusion +in which I was spending my days. To this day I am unacquainted with +the origin of the bond of union between our respective progenitors. +Mr. Vernor was largely engaged in business, and I imagine that once +upon a time he found himself in a financial strait and was helped +through it by my father's coming forward with a heavy loan, on which, +in his situation, he could offer no security but his word. Of this +my father was quite capable. He was a man of dogmas, and he was sure +to have a rule of life--as clear as if it had been written out in his +beautiful copper-plate hand--adapted to the conduct of a gentleman +toward a friend in pecuniary embarrassment. What is more, he was +sure to adhere to it. Mr. Vernor, I believe, got on his feet, paid +his debt, and vowed my father an eternal gratitude. His little +daughter was the apple of his eye, and he pledged himself to bring +her up to be the wife of his benefactor's son. So our fate was +fixed, parentally, and we have been educated for each other. I have +not seen my betrothed since she was a very plain-faced little girl in +a sticky pinafore, hugging a one-armed doll--of the male sex, I +believe--as big as herself. Mr. Vernor is in what is called the +Eastern trade, and has been living these many years at Smyrna. +Isabel has grown up there in a white-walled garden, in an orange +grove, between her father and her governess. She is a good deal my +junior; six months ago she was seventeen; when she is eighteen we are +to marry." + +He related all this calmly enough, without the accent of complaint, +drily rather and doggedly, as if he were weary of thinking of it. +"It's a romance, indeed, for these dull days," I said, "and I +heartily congratulate you. It's not every young man who finds, on +reaching the marrying age, a wife kept in a box of rose-leaves for +him. A thousand to one Miss Vernor is charming; I wonder you don't +post off to Smyrna." + +"You are joking," he answered, with a wounded air, "and I am terribly +serious. Let me tell you the rest. I never suspected this superior +conspiracy till something less than a year ago. My father, wishing +to provide against his death, informed me of it very solemnly. I was +neither elated nor depressed; I received it, as I remember, with a +sort of emotion which varied only in degree from that with which I +could have hailed the announcement that he had ordered me a set of +new shirts. I supposed that was the way that all marriages were +made; I had heard of their being made in heaven, and what was my +father but a divinity? Novels and poems, indeed, talked about +falling in love; but novels and poems were one thing and life was +another. A short time afterwards he introduced me to a photograph of +my predestined, who has a pretty, but an extremely inanimate, face. +After this his health failed rapidly. One night I was sitting, as I +habitually sat for hours, in his dimly-lighted room, near his bed, to +which he had been confined for a week. He had not spoken for some +time, and I supposed he was asleep; but happening to look at him I +saw his eyes wide open, and fixed on me strangely. He was smiling +benignantly, intensely, and in a moment he beckoned to me. Then, on +my going to him--'I feel that I shall not last long,' he said; 'but I +am willing to die when I think how comfortably I have arranged your +future.' He was talking of death, and anything but grief at that +moment was doubtless impious and monstrous; but there came into my +heart for the first time a throbbing sense of being over-governed. I +said nothing, and he thought my silence was all sorrow. 'I shall not +live to see you married,' he went on, 'but since the foundation is +laid, that little signifies; it would be a selfish pleasure, and I +have never thought of myself but in you. To foresee your future, in +its main outline, to know to a certainty that you will be safely +domiciled here, with a wife approved by my judgment, cultivating the +moral fruit of which I have sown the seed--this will content me. +But, my son, I wish to clear this bright vision from the shadow of a +doubt. I believe in your docility; I believe I may trust the +salutary force of your respect for my memory. But I must remember +that when I am removed you will stand here alone, face to face with a +hundred nameless temptations to perversity. The fumes of unrighteous +pride may rise into your brain and tempt you, in the interest of a +vulgar theory which it will call your independence, to shatter the +edifice I have so laboriously constructed. So I must ask you for a +promise--the solemn promise you owe my condition.' And he grasped my +hand. 'You will follow the path I have marked; you will be faithful +to the young girl whom an influence as devoted as that which has +governed your own young life has moulded into everything amiable; you +will marry Isabel Vernor.' This was pretty 'steep,' as we used to +say at school. I was frightened; I drew away my hand and asked to be +trusted without any such terrible vow. My reluctance startled my +father into a suspicion that the vulgar theory of independence had +already been whispering to me. He sat up in his bed and looked at me +with eyes which seemed to foresee a lifetime of odious ingratitude. +I felt the reproach; I feel it now. I promised! And even now I +don't regret my promise nor complain of my father's tenacity. I +feel, somehow, as if the seeds of ultimate repose had been sown in +those unsuspecting years--as if after many days I might gather the +mellow fruit. But after many days! I will keep my promise, I will +obey; but I want to LIVE first!" + +"My dear fellow, you are living now. All this passionate +consciousness of your situation is a very ardent life. I wish I +could say as much for my own." + +"I want to forget my situation. I want to spend three months without +thinking of the past or the future, grasping whatever the present +offers me. Yesterday I thought I was in a fair way to sail with the +tide. But this morning comes this memento!" And he held up his +letter again. + +"What is it?" + +"A letter from Smyrna." + +"I see you have not yet broken the seal." + +"No; nor do I mean to, for the present. It contains bad news." + +"What do you call bad news?" + +"News that I am expected in Smyrna in three weeks. News that Mr. +Vernor disapproves of my roving about the world. News that his +daughter is standing expectant at the altar." + +"Is not this pure conjecture?" + +"Conjecture, possibly, but safe conjecture. As soon as I looked at +the letter something smote me at the heart. Look at the device on +the seal, and I am sure you will find it's TARRY NOT!" And he flung +the letter on the grass. + +"Upon my word, you had better open it," I said. + +"If I were to open it and read my summons, do you know what I should +do? I should march home and ask the Oberkellner how one gets to +Smyrna, pack my trunk, take my ticket, and not stop till I arrived. +I know I should; it would be the fascination of habit. The only way, +therefore, to wander to my rope's end is to leave the letter unread." + +"In your place," I said, "curiosity would make me open it." + +He shook his head. "I have no curiosity! For a long time now the +idea of my marriage has ceased to be a novelty, and I have +contemplated it mentally in every possible light. I fear nothing +from that side, but I do fear something from conscience. I want my +hands tied. Will you do me a favour? Pick up the letter, put it +into your pocket, and keep it till I ask you for it. When I do, you +may know that I am at my rope's end." + +I took the letter, smiling. "And how long is your rope to be? The +Homburg season doesn't last for ever." + +"Does it last a month? Let that be my season! A month hence you +will give it back to me." + +"To-morrow if you say so. Meanwhile, let it rest in peace!" And I +consigned it to the most sacred interstice of my pocket-book. To say +that I was disposed to humour the poor fellow would seem to be saying +that I thought his request fantastic. It was his situation, by no +fault of his own, that was fantastic, and he was only trying to be +natural. He watched me put away the letter, and when it had +disappeared gave a soft sigh of relief. The sigh was natural, and +yet it set me thinking. His general recoil from an immediate +responsibility imposed by others might be wholesome enough; but if +there was an old grievance on one side, was there not possibly a new- +born delusion on the other? It would be unkind to withhold a +reflection that might serve as a warning; so I told him, abruptly, +that I had been an undiscovered spectator, the night before, of his +exploits at roulette. + +He blushed deeply, but he met my eyes with the same clear good- +humour. + +"Ah, then, you saw that wonderful lady?" + +"Wonderful she was indeed. I saw her afterwards, too, sitting on the +terrace in the starlight. I imagine she was not alone." + +"No, indeed, I was with her--for nearly an hour. Then I walked home +with her." + +"Ah! And did you go in?" + +"No, she said it was too late to ask me; though she remarked that in +a general way she did not stand upon ceremony." + +"She did herself injustice. When it came to losing your money for +you, she made you insist." + +"Ah, you noticed that too?" cried Pickering, still quite unconfused. +"I felt as if the whole table were staring at me; but her manner was +so gracious and reassuring that I supposed she was doing nothing +unusual. She confessed, however, afterwards, that she is very +eccentric. The world began to call her so, she said, before she ever +dreamed of it, and at last finding that she had the reputation, in +spite of herself, she resolved to enjoy its privileges. Now, she +does what she chooses." + +"In other words, she is a lady with no reputation to lose!" + +Pickering seemed puzzled; he smiled a little. "Is not that what you +say of bad women?" + +"Of some--of those who are found out." + +"Well," he said, still smiling, "I have not yet found out Madame +Blumenthal." + +"If that's her name, I suppose she's German." + +"Yes; but she speaks English so well that you wouldn't know it. She +is very clever. Her husband is dead." + +I laughed involuntarily at the conjunction of these facts, and +Pickering's clear glance seemed to question my mirth. "You have been +so bluntly frank with me," I said, "that I too must be frank. Tell +me, if you can, whether this clever Madame Blumenthal, whose husband +is dead, has given a point to your desire for a suspension of +communication with Smyrna." + +He seemed to ponder my question, unshrinkingly. "I think not," he +said, at last. "I have had the desire for three months; I have known +Madame Blumenthal for less than twenty-four hours." + +"Very true. But when you found this letter of yours on your place at +breakfast, did you seem for a moment to see Madame Blumenthal sitting +opposite?" + +"Opposite?" + +"Opposite, my dear fellow, or anywhere in the neighbourhood. In a +word, does she interest you?" + +"Very much!" he cried, joyously. + +"Amen!" I answered, jumping up with a laugh. "And now, if we are to +see the world in a month, there is no time to lose. Let us begin +with the Hardtwald." + +Pickering rose, and we strolled away into the forest, talking of +lighter things. At last we reached the edge of the wood, sat down on +a fallen log, and looked out across an interval of meadow at the long +wooded waves of the Taunus. What my friend was thinking of I can't +say; I was meditating on his queer biography, and letting my +wonderment wander away to Smyrna. Suddenly I remembered that he +possessed a portrait of the young girl who was waiting for him there +in a white-walled garden. I asked him if he had it with him. He +said nothing, but gravely took out his pocket-book and drew forth a +small photograph. It represented, as the poet says, a simple maiden +in her flower--a slight young girl, with a certain childish roundness +of contour. There was no ease in her posture; she was standing, +stiffly and shyly, for her likeness; she wore a short-waisted white +dress; her arms hung at her sides and her hands were clasped in +front; her head was bent downward a little, and her dark eyes fixed. +But her awkwardness was as pretty as that of some angular seraph in a +mediaeval carving, and in her timid gaze there seemed to lurk the +questioning gleam of childhood. "What is this for?" her charming +eyes appeared to ask; "why have I been dressed up for this ceremony +in a white frock and amber beads?" + +"Gracious powers!" I said to myself; "what an enchanting thing is +innocence!" + +"That portrait was taken a year and a half ago," said Pickering, as +if with an effort to be perfectly just. "By this time, I suppose, +she looks a little wiser." + +"Not much, I hope," I said, as I gave it back. "She is very sweet!" + +"Yes, poor girl, she is very sweet--no doubt!" And he put the thing +away without looking at it. + +We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly--"My dear +fellow," I said, "I should take some satisfaction in seeing you +immediately leave Homburg." + +"Immediately?" + +"To-day--as soon as you can get ready." + +He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he blushed. "There +is something I have not told you," he said; "something that your +saying that Madame Blumenthal has no reputation to lose has made me +half afraid to tell you." + +"I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has asked you to come and +play her game for her again." + +"Not at all!" cried Pickering, with a smile of triumph. "She says +that she means to play no more for the present. She has asked me to +come and take tea with her this evening." + +"Ah, then," I said, very gravely, "of course you can't leave +Homburg." + +He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as if he were +expecting me to laugh. "Urge it strongly," he said in a moment. +"Say it's my duty--that I MUST." + +I didn't quite understand him, but, feathering the shaft with a +harmless expletive, I told him that unless he followed my advice I +would never speak to him again. + +He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground with his stick. +"Good!" he cried; "I wanted an occasion to break a rule--to leap a +barrier. Here it is. I stay!" + +I made him a mock bow for his energy. "That's very fine," I said; +"but now, to put you in a proper mood for Madame Blumenthal's tea, we +will go and listen to the band play Schubert under the lindens." And +we walked back through the woods. + +I went to see Pickering the next day, at his inn, and on knocking, as +directed, at his door, was surprised to hear the sound of a loud +voice within. My knock remained unnoticed, so I presently introduced +myself. I found no company, but I discovered my friend walking up +and down the room and apparently declaiming to himself from a little +volume bound in white vellum. He greeted me heartily, threw his book +on the table, and said that he was taking a German lesson. + +"And who is your teacher?" I asked, glancing at the book. + +He rather avoided meeting my eye, as he answered, after an instant's +delay, "Madame Blumenthal." + +"Indeed! Has she written a grammar?" + +"It's not a grammar; it's a tragedy." And he handed me the book. + +I opened it, and beheld, in delicate type, with a very large margin, +an Historisches Trauerspiel in five acts, entitled "Cleopatra." +There were a great many marginal corrections and annotations, +apparently from the author's hand; the speeches were very long, and +there was an inordinate number of soliloquies by the heroine. One of +them, I remember, towards the end of the play, began in this fashion +- + +"What, after all, is life but sensation, and sensation but +deception?--reality that pales before the light of one's dreams as +Octavia's dull beauty fades beside mine? But let me believe in some +intenser bliss, and seek it in the arms of death!" + +"It seems decidedly passionate," I said. "Has the tragedy ever been +acted?" + +"Never in public; but Madame Blumenthal tells me that she had it +played at her own house in Berlin, and that she herself undertook the +part of the heroine." + +Pickering's unworldly life had not been of a sort to sharpen his +perception of the ridiculous, but it seemed to me an unmistakable +sign of his being under the charm, that this information was very +soberly offered. He was preoccupied, he was irresponsive to my +experimental observations on vulgar topics--the hot weather, the inn, +the advent of Adelina Patti. At last, uttering his thoughts, he +announced that Madame Blumenthal had proved to be an extraordinarily +interesting woman. He seemed to have quite forgotten our long talk +in the Hartwaldt, and betrayed no sense of this being a confession +that he had taken his plunge and was floating with the current. He +only remembered that I had spoken slightingly of the lady, and he now +hinted that it behoved me to amend my opinion. I had received the +day before so strong an impression of a sort of spiritual +fastidiousness in my friend's nature, that on hearing now the +striking of a new hour, as it were, in his consciousness, and +observing how the echoes of the past were immediately quenched in its +music, I said to myself that it had certainly taken a delicate hand +to wind up that fine machine. No doubt Madame Blumenthal was a +clever woman. It is a good German custom at Homburg to spend the +hour preceding dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten; +Mozart and Beethoven, for organisms in which the interfusion of soul +and sense is peculiarly mysterious, are a vigorous stimulus to the +appetite. Pickering and I conformed, as we had done the day before, +to the fashion, and when we were seated under the trees, he began to +expatiate on his friend's merits. + +"I don't know whether she is eccentric or not," he said; "to me every +one seems eccentric, and it's not for me, yet a while, to measure +people by my narrow precedents. I never saw a gaming table in my +life before, and supposed that a gambler was of necessity some dusky +villain with an evil eye. In Germany, says Madame Blumenthal, people +play at roulette as they play at billiards, and her own venerable +mother originally taught her the rules of the game. It is a +recognised source of subsistence for decent people with small means. +But I confess Madame Blumenthal might do worse things than play at +roulette, and yet make them harmonious and beautiful. I have never +been in the habit of thinking positive beauty the most excellent +thing in a woman. I have always said to myself that if my heart were +ever to be captured it would be by a sort of general grace--a +sweetness of motion and tone--on which one could count for soothing +impressions, as one counts on a musical instrument that is perfectly +in tune. Madame Blumenthal has it--this grace that soothes and +satisfies; and it seems the more perfect that it keeps order and +harmony in a character really passionately ardent and active. With +her eager nature and her innumerable accomplishments nothing would be +easier than that she should seem restless and aggressive. You will +know her, and I leave you to judge whether she does seem so! She has +every gift, and culture has done everything for each. What goes on +in her mind I of course can't say; what reaches the observer--the +admirer--is simply a sort of fragrant emanation of intelligence and +sympathy." + +"Madame Blumenthal," I said, smiling, "might be the loveliest woman +in the world, and you the object of her choicest favours, and yet +what I should most envy you would be, not your peerless friend, but +your beautiful imagination." + +"That's a polite way of calling me a fool," said Pickering. "You are +a sceptic, a cynic, a satirist! I hope I shall be a long time coming +to that." + +"You will make the journey fast if you travel by express trains. But +pray tell me, have you ventured to intimate to Madame Blumenthal your +high opinion of her?" + +"I don't know what I may have said. She listens even better than she +talks, and I think it possible I may have made her listen to a great +deal of nonsense. For after the first few words I exchanged with her +I was conscious of an extraordinary evaporation of all my old +diffidence. I have, in truth, I suppose," he added in a moment, +"owing to my peculiar circumstances, a great accumulated fund of +unuttered things of all sorts to get rid of. Last evening, sitting +there before that charming woman, they came swarming to my lips. +Very likely I poured them all out. I have a sense of having +enshrouded myself in a sort of mist of talk, and of seeing her lovely +eyes shining through it opposite to me, like fog-lamps at sea." And +here, if I remember rightly, Pickering broke off into an ardent +parenthesis, and declared that Madame Blumenthal's eyes had something +in them that he had never seen in any others. "It was a jumble of +crudities and inanities," he went on; "they must have seemed to her +great rubbish; but I felt the wiser and the stronger, somehow, for +having fired off all my guns--they could hurt nobody now if they hit- +-and I imagine I might have gone far without finding another woman in +whom such an exhibition would have provoked so little of mere cold +amusement." + +"Madame Blumenthal, on the contrary," I surmised, "entered into your +situation with warmth." + +"Exactly so--the greatest! She has felt and suffered, and now she +understands!" + +"She told you, I imagine, that she understood you as if she had made +you, and she offered to be your guide, philosopher, and friend." + +"She spoke to me," Pickering answered, after a pause, "as I had never +been spoken to before, and she offered me, formally, all the offices +of a woman's friendship." + +"Which you as formally accepted?" + +"To you the scene sounds absurd, I suppose, but allow me to say I +don't care!" Pickering spoke with an air of genial defiance which +was the most inoffensive thing in the world. "I was very much moved; +I was, in fact, very much excited. I tried to say something, but I +couldn't; I had had plenty to say before, but now I stammered and +bungled, and at last I bolted out of the room." + +"Meanwhile she had dropped her tragedy into your pocket!" + +"Not at all. I had seen it on the table before she came in. +Afterwards she kindly offered to read German aloud with me, for the +accent, two or three times a week. 'What shall we begin with?' she +asked. 'With this!' I said, and held up the book. And she let me +take it to look it over." + +I was neither a cynic nor a satirist, but even if I had been, I might +have been disarmed by Pickering's assurance, before we parted, that +Madame Blumenthal wished to know me and expected him to introduce me. +Among the foolish things which, according to his own account, he had +uttered, were some generous words in my praise, to which she had +civilly replied. I confess I was curious to see her, but I begged +that the introduction should not be immediate, for I wished to let +Pickering work out his destiny alone. For some days I saw little of +him, though we met at the Kursaal and strolled occasionally in the +park. I watched, in spite of my desire to let him alone, for the +signs and portents of the world's action upon him--of that portion of +the world, in especial, of which Madame Blumenthal had constituted +herself the agent. He seemed very happy, and gave me in a dozen ways +an impression of increased self-confidence and maturity. His mind +was admirably active, and always, after a quarter of an hour's talk +with him, I asked myself what experience could really do, that +innocence had not done, to make it bright and fine. I was struck +with his deep enjoyment of the whole spectacle of foreign life--its +novelty, its picturesqueness, its light and shade--and with the +infinite freedom with which he felt he could go and come and rove and +linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an awakening, a +coming to moral manhood. Each time I met him he spoke a little less +of Madame Blumenthal; but he let me know generally that he saw her +often, and continued to admire her. I was forced to admit to myself, +in spite of preconceptions, that if she were really the ruling star +of this happy season, she must be a very superior woman. Pickering +had the air of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the feet of +an austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift dangling about +some supreme incarnation of levity. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +Madame Blumenthal seemed, for the time, to have abjured the Kursaal, +and I never caught a glimpse of her. Her young friend, apparently, +was an interesting study, and the studious mind prefers seclusion. + +She reappeared, however, at last, one evening at the opera, where +from my chair I perceived her in a box, looking extremely pretty. +Adelina Patti was singing, and after the rising of the curtain I was +occupied with the stage; but on looking round when it fell for the +entr'acte, I saw that the authoress of "Cleopatra" had been joined by +her young admirer. He was sitting a little behind her, leaning +forward, looking over her shoulder and listening, while she, slowly +moving her fan to and fro and letting her eye wander over the house, +was apparently talking of this person and that. No doubt she was +saying sharp things; but Pickering was not laughing; his eyes were +following her covert indications; his mouth was half open, as it +always was when he was interested; he looked intensely serious. I +was glad that, having her back to him, she was unable to see how he +looked. It seemed the proper moment to present myself and make her +my bow; but just as I was about to leave my place a gentleman, whom +in a moment I perceived to be an old acquaintance, came to occupy the +next chair. Recognition and mutual greetings followed, and I was +forced to postpone my visit to Madame Blumenthal. I was not sorry, +for it very soon occurred to me that Niedermeyer would be just the +man to give me a fair prose version of Pickering's lyric tributes to +his friend. He was an Austrian by birth, and had formerly lived +about Europe a great deal in a series of small diplomatic posts. +England especially he had often visited, and he spoke the language +almost without accent. I had once spent three rainy days with him in +the house of an English friend in the country. He was a sharp +observer, and a good deal of a gossip; he knew a little something +about every one, and about some people everything. His knowledge on +social matters generally had the quality of all German science; it +was copious, minute, exhaustive. + +"Do tell me," I said, as we stood looking round the house, "who and +what is the lady in white, with the young man sitting behind her." + +"Who?" he answered, dropping his glass. "Madame Blumenthal! What! +It would take long to say. Be introduced; it's easily done; you will +find her charming. Then, after a week, you will tell me what she +is." + +"Perhaps I should not. My friend there has known her a week, and I +don't think he is yet able to give a coherent account of her." + +He raised his glass again, and after looking a while, "I am afraid +your friend is a little--what do you call it?--a little 'soft.' Poor +fellow! he's not the first. I have never known this lady that she +has not had some eligible youth hovering about in some such attitude +as that, undergoing the softening process. She looks wonderfully +well, from here. It's extraordinary how those women last!" + +"You don't mean, I take it, when you talk about 'those women,' that +Madame Blumenthal is not embalmed, for duration, in a certain +infusion of respectability?" + +"Yes and no. The atmosphere that surrounds her is entirely of her +own making. There is no reason in her antecedents that people should +drop their voice when they speak of her. But some women are never at +their ease till they have given some damnable twist or other to their +position before the world. The attitude of upright virtue is +unbecoming, like sitting too straight in a fauteuil. Don't ask me +for opinions, however; content yourself with a few facts and with an +anecdote. Madame Blumenthal is Prussian, and very well born. I +remember her mother, an old Westphalian Grafin, with principles +marshalled out like Frederick the Great's grenadiers. She was poor, +however, and her principles were an insufficient dowry for Anastasia, +who was married very young to a vicious Jew, twice her own age. He +was supposed to have money, but I am afraid he had less than was +nominated in the bond, or else that his pretty young wife spent it +very fast. She has been a widow these six or eight years, and has +lived, I imagine, in rather a hand-to-mouth fashion. I suppose she +is some six or eight and thirty years of age. In winter one hears of +her in Berlin, giving little suppers to the artistic rabble there; in +summer one often sees her across the green table at Ems and +Wiesbaden. She's very clever, and her cleverness has spoiled her. A +year after her marriage she published a novel, with her views on +matrimony, in the George Sand manner--beating the drum to Madame +Sand's trumpet. No doubt she was very unhappy; Blumenthal was an old +beast. Since then she has published a lot of literature--novels and +poems and pamphlets on every conceivable theme, from the conversion +of Lola Montez to the Hegelian philosophy. Her talk is much better +than her writing. Her conjugophobia--I can't call it by any other +name--made people think lightly of her at a time when her rebellion +against marriage was probably only theoretic. She had a taste for +spinning fine phrases, she drove her shuttle, and when she came to +the end of her yarn she found that society had turned its back. She +tossed her head, declared that at last she could breathe the sacred +air of freedom, and formally announced that she had embraced an +'intellectual' life. This meant unlimited camaraderie with +scribblers and daubers, Hegelian philosophers and Hungarian pianists. +But she has been admired also by a great many really clever men; +there was a time, in fact, when she turned a head as well set on its +shoulders as this one!" And Niedermeyer tapped his forehead. "She +has a great charm, and, literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for +all that, I am not going to speak to her; I am not going near her +box. I am going to leave her to say, if she does me the honour to +observe the omission, that I too have gone over to the Philistines. +It's not that; it is that there is something sinister about the +woman. I am too old for it to frighten me, but I am good-natured +enough for it to pain me. Her quarrel with society has brought her +no happiness, and her outward charm is only the mask of a dangerous +discontent. Her imagination is lodged where her heart should be! So +long as you amuse it, well and good; she's radiant. But the moment +you let it flag, she is capable of dropping you without a pang. If +you land on your feet you are so much the wiser, simply; but there +have been two or three, I believe, who have almost broken their necks +in the fall." + +"You are reversing your promise," I said, "and giving me an opinion, +but not an anecdote." + +"This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine made her +acquaintance in Berlin, and though he was no longer a young man, and +had never been what is called a susceptible one, he took a great +fancy to Madame Blumenthal. He's a major in the Prussian artillery-- +grizzled, grave, a trifle severe, a man every way firm in the faith +of his fathers. It's a proof of Anastasia's charm that such a man +should have got into the habit of going to see her every day of his +life. But the major was in love, or next door to it! Every day that +he called he found her scribbling away at a little ormolu table on a +lot of half-sheets of note-paper. She used to bid him sit down and +hold his tongue for a quarter of an hour, till she had finished her +chapter; she was writing a novel, and it was promised to a publisher. +Clorinda, she confided to him, was the name of the injured heroine. +The major, I imagine, had never read a work of fiction in his life, +but he knew by hearsay that Madame Blumenthal's literature, when put +forth in pink covers, was subversive of several respectable +institutions. Besides, he didn't believe in women knowing how to +write at all, and it irritated him to see this inky goddess +correcting proof-sheets under his nose--irritated him the more that, +as I say, he was in love with her and that he ventured to believe she +had a kindness for his years and his honours. And yet she was not +such a woman as he could easily ask to marry him. The result of all +this was that he fell into the way of railing at her intellectual +pursuits and saying he should like to run his sword through her pile +of papers. A woman was clever enough when she could guess her +husband's wishes, and learned enough when she could read him the +newspapers. At last, one day, Madame Blumenthal flung down her pen +and announced in triumph that she had finished her novel. Clorinda +had expired in the arms of--some one else than her husband. The +major, by way of congratulating her, declared that her novel was +immoral rubbish, and that her love of vicious paradoxes was only a +peculiarly depraved form of coquetry. He added, however, that he +loved her in spite of her follies, and that if she would formally +abjure them he would as formally offer her his hand. They say that +women like to be snubbed by military men. I don't know, I'm sure; I +don't know how much pleasure, on this occasion, was mingled with +Anastasia's wrath. But her wrath was very quiet, and the major +assured me it made her look uncommonly pretty. 'I have told you +before,' she says, 'that I write from an inner need. I write to +unburden my heart, to satisfy my conscience. You call my poor +efforts coquetry, vanity, the desire to produce a sensation. I can +prove to you that it is the quiet labour itself I care for, and not +the world's more or less flattering attention to it!' And seizing +the history of Clorinda she thrust it into the fire. The major +stands staring, and the first thing he knows she is sweeping him a +great curtsey and bidding him farewell for ever. Left alone and +recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the embers, and then +proceeds to thump vigorously at the lady's door. But it never +opened, and from that day to the day three months ago when he told me +the tale, he had not beheld her again." + +"By Jove, it's a striking story," I said. "But the question is, what +does it prove?" + +"Several things. First (what I was careful not to tell my friend), +that Madame Blumenthal cared for him a trifle more than he supposed; +second, that he cares for her more than ever; third, that the +performance was a master-stroke, and that her allowing him to force +an interview upon her again is only a question of time." + +"And last?" I asked. + +"This is another anecdote. The other day, Unter den Linden, I saw on +a bookseller's counter a little pink-covered romance--'Sophronia,' by +Madame Blumenthal. Glancing through it, I observed an extraordinary +abuse of asterisks; every two or three pages the narrative was +adorned with a portentous blank, crossed with a row of stars." + +"Well, but poor Clorinda?" I objected, as Niedermeyer paused. + +"Sophronia, my dear fellow, is simply Clorinda renamed by the baptism +of fire. The fair author came back, of course, and found Clorinda +tumbled upon the floor, a good deal scorched, but, on the whole, more +frightened than hurt. She picks her up, brushes her off, and sends +her to the printer. Wherever the flames had burnt a hole she swings +a constellation! But if the major is prepared to drop a penitent +tear over the ashes of Clorinda, I shall not whisper to him that the +urn is empty." + +Even Adelina Patti's singing, for the next half-hour, but half +availed to divert me from my quickened curiosity to behold Madame +Blumenthal face to face. As soon as the curtain had fallen again I +repaired to her box and was ushered in by Pickering with zealous +hospitality. His glowing smile seemed to say to me, "Ay, look for +yourself, and adore!" Nothing could have been more gracious than the +lady's greeting, and I found, somewhat to my surprise, that her +prettiness lost nothing on a nearer view. Her eyes indeed were the +finest I have ever seen--the softest, the deepest, the most intensely +responsive. In spite of something faded and jaded in her +physiognomy, her movements, her smile, and the tone of her voice, +especially when she laughed, had an almost girlish frankness and +spontaneity. She looked at you very hard with her radiant gray eyes, +and she indulged while she talked in a superabundance of restless, +rather affected little gestures, as if to make you take her meaning +in a certain very particular and superfine sense. I wondered whether +after a while this might not fatigue one's attention; then meeting +her charming eyes, I said, Not for a long time. She was very clever, +and, as Pickering had said, she spoke English admirably. I told her, +as I took my seat beside her, of the fine things I had heard about +her from my friend, and she listened, letting me go on some time, and +exaggerate a little, with her fine eyes fixed full upon me. +"Really?" she suddenly said, turning short round upon Pickering, who +stood behind us, and looking at him in the same way. "Is that the +way you talk about me?" + +He blushed to his eyes, and I repented. She suddenly began to laugh; +it was then I observed how sweet her voice was in laughter. We +talked after this of various matters, and in a little while I +complimented her on her excellent English, and asked if she had +learnt it in England. + +"Heaven forbid!" she cried. "I have never been there and wish never +to go. I should never get on with the--" I wondered what she was +going to say; the fogs, the smoke, or whist with sixpenny stakes?--"I +should never get on," she said, "with the aristocracy! I am a fierce +democrat--I am not ashamed of it. I hold opinions which would make +my ancestors turn in their graves. I was born in the lap of +feudalism. I am a daughter of the crusaders. But I am a +revolutionist! I have a passion for freedom--my idea of happiness is +to die on a great barricade! It's to your great country I should +like to go. I should like to see the wonderful spectacle of a great +people free to do everything it chooses, and yet never doing anything +wrong!" + +I replied, modestly, that, after all, both our freedom and our good +conduct had their limits, and she turned quickly about and shook her +fan with a dramatic gesture at Pickering. "No matter, no matter!" +she cried; "I should like to see the country which produced that +wonderful young man. I think of it as a sort of Arcadia--a land of +the golden age. He's so delightfully innocent! In this stupid old +Germany, if a young man is innocent he's a fool; he has no brains; +he's not a bit interesting. But Mr. Pickering says the freshest +things, and after I have laughed five minutes at their freshness it +suddenly occurs to me that they are very wise, and I think them over +for a week. "True!" she went on, nodding at him. "I call them +inspired solecisms, and I treasure them up. Remember that when I +next laugh at you!" + +Glancing at Pickering, I was prompted to believe that he was in a +state of beatific exaltation which weighed Madame Blumenthal's smiles +and frowns in an equal balance. They were equally hers; they were +links alike in the golden chain. He looked at me with eyes that +seemed to say, "Did you ever hear such wit? Did you ever see such +grace?" It seemed to me that he was but vaguely conscious of the +meaning of her words; her gestures, her voice and glance, made an +absorbing harmony. There is something painful in the spectacle of +absolute enthralment, even to an excellent cause. I gave no response +to Pickering's challenge, but made some remark upon the charm of +Adelina Patti's singing. Madame Blumenthal, as became a +"revolutionist," was obliged to confess that she could see no charm +in it; it was meagre, it was trivial, it lacked soul. "You must know +that in music, too," she said, "I think for myself!" And she began +with a great many flourishes of her fan to explain what it was she +thought. Remarkable things, doubtless; but I cannot answer for it, +for in the midst of the explanation the curtain rose again. "You +can't be a great artist without a great passion!" Madame Blumenthal +was affirming. Before I had time to assent Madame Patti's voice rose +wheeling like a skylark, and rained down its silver notes. "Ah, give +me that art," I whispered, "and I will leave you your passion!" And +I departed for my own place in the orchestra. I wondered afterwards +whether the speech had seemed rude, and inferred that it had not on +receiving a friendly nod from the lady, in the lobby, as the theatre +was emptying itself. She was on Pickering's arm, and he was taking +her to her carriage. Distances are short in Homburg, but the night +was rainy, and Madame Blumenthal exhibited a very pretty satin-shod +foot as a reason why, though but a penniless widow, she should not +walk home. Pickering left us together a moment while he went to hail +the vehicle, and my companion seized the opportunity, as she said, to +beg me to be so very kind as to come and see her. It was for a +particular reason! It was reason enough for me, of course, I +answered, that she had given me leave. She looked at me a moment +with that extraordinary gaze of hers which seemed so absolutely +audacious in its candour, and rejoined that I paid more compliments +than our young friend there, but that she was sure I was not half so +sincere. "But it's about him I want to talk," she said. "I want to +ask you many things; I want you to tell me all about him. He +interests me; but you see my sympathies are so intense, my +imagination is so lively, that I don't trust my own impressions. +They have misled me more than once!" And she gave a little tragic +shudder. + +I promised to come and compare notes with her, and we bade her +farewell at her carriage door. Pickering and I remained a while, +walking up and down the long glazed gallery of the Kursaal. I had +not taken many steps before I became aware that I was beside a man in +the very extremity of love. "Isn't she wonderful?" he asked, with an +implicit confidence in my sympathy which it cost me some ingenuity to +elude. If he were really in love, well and good! For although, now +that I had seen her, I stood ready to confess to large possibilities +of fascination on Madame Blumenthal's part, and even to certain +possibilities of sincerity of which my appreciation was vague, yet it +seemed to me less ominous that he should be simply smitten than that +his admiration should pique itself on being discriminating. It was +on his fundamental simplicity that I counted for a happy termination +of his experiment, and the former of these alternatives seemed to me +the simpler. I resolved to hold my tongue and let him run his +course. He had a great deal to say about his happiness, about the +days passing like hours, the hours like minutes, and about Madame +Blumenthal being a "revelation." "She was nothing to-night," he +said; "nothing to what she sometimes is in the way of brilliancy--in +the way of repartee. If you could only hear her when she tells her +adventures!" + +"Adventures?" I inquired. "Has she had adventures?" + +"Of the most wonderful sort!" cried Pickering, with rapture. "She +hasn't vegetated, like me! She has lived in the tumult of life. +When I listen to her reminiscences, it's like hearing the opening +tumult of one of Beethoven's symphonies as it loses itself in a +triumphant harmony of beauty and faith!" + +I could only lift my eyebrows, but I desired to know before we +separated what he had done with that troublesome conscience of his. +"I suppose you know, my dear fellow," I said, "that you are simply in +love. That's what they happen to call your state of mind." + +He replied with a brightening eye, as if he were delighted to hear +it--"So Madame Blumenthal told me only this morning!" And seeing, I +suppose, that I was slightly puzzled, " I went to drive with her," he +continued; "we drove to Konigstein, to see the old castle. We +scrambled up into the heart of the ruin and sat for an hour in one of +the crumbling old courts. Something in the solemn stillness of the +place unloosed my tongue; and while she sat on an ivied stone, on the +edge of the plunging wall, I stood there and made a speech. She +listened to me, looking at me, breaking off little bits of stone and +letting them drop down into the valley. At last she got up and +nodded at me two or three times silently, with a smile, as if she +were applauding me for a solo on the violin. 'You are in love,' she +said. 'It's a perfect case!' And for some time she said nothing +more. But before we left the place she told me that she owed me an +answer to my speech. She thanked me heartily, but she was afraid +that if she took me at my word she would be taking advantage of my +inexperience. I had known few women; I was too easily pleased; I +thought her better than she really was. She had great faults; I must +know her longer and find them out; I must compare her with other +women--women younger, simpler, more innocent, more ignorant; and then +if I still did her the honour to think well of her, she would listen +to me again. I told her that I was not afraid of preferring any +woman in the world to her, and then she repeated, 'Happy man, happy +man! you are in love, you are in love!'" + +I called upon Madame Blumenthal a couple of days later, in some +agitation of thought. It has been proved that there are, here and +there, in the world, such people as sincere impostors; certain +characters who cultivate fictitious emotions in perfect good faith. +Even if this clever lady enjoyed poor Pickering's bedazzlement, it +was conceivable that, taking vanity and charity together, she should +care more for his welfare than for her own entertainment; and her +offer to abide by the result of hazardous comparison with other women +was a finer stroke than her reputation had led me to expect. She +received me in a shabby little sitting-room littered with uncut books +and newspapers, many of which I saw at a glance were French. One +side of it was occupied by an open piano, surmounted by a jar full of +white roses. They perfumed the air; they seemed to me to exhale the +pure aroma of Pickering's devotion. Buried in an arm-chair, the +object of this devotion was reading the Revue des Deux Mondes. The +purpose of my visit was not to admire Madame Blumenthal on my own +account, but to ascertain how far I might safely leave her to work +her will upon my friend. She had impugned my sincerity the evening +of the opera, and I was careful on this occasion to abstain from +compliments, and not to place her on her guard against my +penetration. It is needless to narrate our interview in detail; +indeed, to tell the perfect truth, I was punished for my rash attempt +to surprise her by a temporary eclipse of my own perspicacity. She +sat there so questioning, so perceptive, so genial, so generous, and +so pretty withal, that I was quite ready at the end of half an hour +to subscribe to the most comprehensive of Pickering's rhapsodies. +She was certainly a wonderful woman. I have never liked to linger, +in memory, on that half-hour. The result of it was to prove that +there were many more things in the composition of a woman who, as +Niedermeyer said, had lodged her imagination in the place of her +heart than were dreamt of in my philosophy. Yet, as I sat there +stroking my hat and balancing the account between nature and art in +my affable hostess, I felt like a very competent philosopher. She +had said she wished me to tell her everything about our friend, and +she questioned me as to his family, his fortune, his antecedents, and +his character. All this was natural in a woman who had received a +passionate declaration of love, and it was expressed with an air of +charmed solicitude, a radiant confidence that there was really no +mistake about his being a most distinguished young man, and that if I +chose to be explicit, I might deepen her conviction to disinterested +ecstasy, which might have almost provoked me to invent a good +opinion, if I had not had one ready made. I told her that she really +knew Pickering better than I did, and that until we met at Homburg I +had not seen him since he was a boy. + +"But he talks to you freely," she answered; "I know you are his +confidant. He has told me certainly a great many things, but I +always feel as if he were keeping something back; as if he were +holding something behind him, and showing me only one hand at once. +He seems often to be hovering on the edge of a secret. I have had +several friendships in my life--thank Heaven! but I have had none +more dear to me than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the +painful sense of my friend being half afraid of me; of his thinking +me terrible, strange, perhaps a trifle out of my wits. Poor me! If +he only knew what a plain good soul I am, and how I only want to know +him and befriend him!" + +These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity which made mistrust +seem cruel. How much better I might play providence over Pickering's +experiments with life if I could engage the fine instincts of this +charming woman on the providential side! Pickering's secret was, of +course, his engagement to Miss Vernor; it was natural enough that he +should have been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame +Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl's face had not +faded from my memory; I could not rid myself of the suspicion that in +going further Pickering might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal's +professions seemed a virtual promise to agree with me, and, after +some hesitation, I said that my friend had, in fact, a substantial +secret, and that perhaps I might do him a good turn by putting her in +possession of it. In as few words as possible I told her that +Pickering stood pledged by filial piety to marry a young lady at +Smyrna. She listened intently to my story; when I had finished it +there was a faint flush of excitement in each of her cheeks. She +broke out into a dozen exclamations of admiration and compassion. +"What a wonderful tale--what a romantic situation! No wonder poor +Mr. Pickering seemed restless and unsatisfied; no wonder he wished to +put off the day of submission. And the poor little girl at Smyrna, +waiting there for the young Western prince like the heroine of an +Eastern tale! She would give the world to see her photograph; did I +think Mr. Pickering would show it to her? But never fear; she would +ask nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous story, and if she +had invented it herself, people would have said it was absurdly +improbable." She left her seat and took several turns about the +room, smiling to herself, and uttering little German cries of +wonderment. Suddenly she stopped before the piano and broke into a +little laugh; the next moment she buried her face in the great +bouquet of roses. It was time I should go, but I was indisposed to +leave her without obtaining some definite assurance that, as far as +pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl at Smyrna more than the +young man at Homburg. + +"Of course you know what I wished in telling you this," I said, +rising. "She is evidently a charming creature, and the best thing he +can do is to marry her. I wished to interest you in that view of +it." + +She had taken one of the roses from the vase and was arranging it in +the front of her dress. Suddenly, looking up, "Leave it to me, leave +it to me!" she cried. "I am interested!" And with her little blue- +gemmed hand she tapped her forehead. "I am deeply interested!" + +And with this I had to content myself. But more than once the next +day I repented of my zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a +white rose in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too human. In +the evening, at the Kursaal, I looked for Pickering, but he was not +visible, and I reflected that my revelation had not as yet, at any +rate, seemed to Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing a cooling- +term to his passion. Very late, as I was turning away, I saw him +arrive--with no small satisfaction, for I had determined to let him +know immediately in what way I had attempted to serve him. But he +straightway passed his arm through my own and led me off towards the +gardens. I saw that he was too excited to allow me to speak first. + +"I have burnt my ships!" he cried, when we were out of earshot of the +crowd. "I have told her everything. I have insisted that it's +simple torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. +It's well enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to +override her reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my +neck. I care for nothing, I know nothing, but that I love her with +every pulse of my being--and that everything else has been a hideous +dream, from which she may wake me into blissful morning with a single +word!" + +I held him off at arm's-length and looked at him gravely. "You have +told her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?" + +"The whole story! I have given it up--I have thrown it to the winds. +I have broken utterly with the past. It may rise in its grave and +give me its curse, but it can't frighten me now. I have a right to +be happy, I have a right to be free, I have a right not to bury +myself alive. It was not _I_ who promised--I was not born then. I +myself, my soul, my mind, my option--all this is but a month old! +Ah," he went on, "if you knew the difference it makes--this having +chosen and broken and spoken! I am twice the man I was yesterday! +Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was a kind of mocking mystery of +knowledge and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the midst +of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but of being too happy!" + +I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused a +moment, and took off his hat and fanned himself. "Let me perfectly +understand," I said at last. "You have asked Madame Blumenthal to be +your wife?" + +"The wife of my intelligent choice!" + +"And does she consent?" + +"She asks three days to decide." + +"Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. I am +bound to let you know I told her." + +"So much the better!" cried Pickering, without apparent resentment or +surprise. "It's not a brilliant offer for such a woman, and in spite +of what I have at stake, I feel that it would be brutal to press +her." + +"What does she say to your breaking your promise?" I asked in a +moment. + +Pickering was too much in love for false shame. "She tells me that +she loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. She agrees with +me that I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption from the +common law. What I claim is simply freedom to try to be!" + +Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had +expected Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information. But the +matter now was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid +my companion not work himself into a fever over either fortune. + +The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk +at the opera, I had left a card. We gossiped a while, and at last he +said suddenly, "By the way, I have a sequel to the history of +Clorinda. The major is at Homburg!" + +"Indeed!" said I. "Since when?" + +"These three days." + +"And what is he doing?" + +"He seems," said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, "to be chiefly occupied +in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him +the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would +suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I hope it was +received." + +"I can assure you it was," I cried. "I saw the lady fairly nestling +her head in it. But I advise the major not to build upon that. He +has a rival." + +"Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?" + +"Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to have +served him. He has offered her everything, and she has not yet +refused it." I had handed my visitor a cigar, and he was puffing it +in silence. At last he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to +Madame Blumenthal, and, on my affirmative, inquired what I thought of +her. "I will not tell you," I said, "or you'll call ME soft." + +He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance. "I have noticed your +friend about," he said, "and even if you had not told me, I should +have known he was in love. After he has left his adored, his face +wears for the rest of the day the expression with which he has risen +from her feet, and more than once I have felt like touching his +elbow, as you would that of a man who has inadvertently come into a +drawing-room in his overshoes. You say he has offered our friend +everything; but, my dear fellow, he has not everything to offer her. +He evidently is as amiable as the morning, but the lady has no taste +for daylight." + +"I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow," I said. + +"Ah, there it is! Has he not some story or other? Isn't he an +orphan, or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent heir to +great estates? She will read his little story to the end, and close +the book very tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, when he +least expects it, she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her other +romances. She will let him dangle, but she will let him drop!" + +"Upon my word," I cried, with heat, "if she does, she will be a very +unprincipled little creature!" + +Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. "I never said she was a saint!" + +Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his +simple word for this event, and in the evening I received a +communication which fortified my doubts. It was a note from +Pickering, and it ran as follows:- + + +"My Dear Friend--I have every hope of being happy, but I am to go to +Wiesbaden to learn my fate. Madame Blumenthal goes thither this +afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany her. +Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the result. E. P." + + +One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in +rotation at the different tables d'hote. It so happened that, a +couple of days later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and +secured a seat beside my own. As we took our places I found a letter +on my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in +opening it. It contained but three lines--"I am happy--I am +accepted--an hour ago. I can hardly believe it's your poor friend + +E. P." + + +I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but +with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it +much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard +gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the +school of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, +"Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal's errand at Wiesbaden?" +he asked. + +"You look very wise. I give it up!" said I. + +"She is gone there to make the major follow her. He went by the next +train." + +"And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?" + +"He is not a letter-writer." + +"Well," said I, pocketing my letter, "with this document in my hand I +am bound to reserve my judgment. We will have a bottle of +Johannisberg, and drink to the triumph of virtue." + +For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering--somewhat to my +surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure. +I had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief +bulletins, and his silence was possibly an indication that it had +been clouded. At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but +received no answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired to his +former lodging at Homburg, where I thought it possible he had left +property which he would sooner or later send for. There I learned +that he had indeed just telegraphed from Cologne for his luggage. To +Cologne I immediately despatched a line of inquiry as to his +prosperity and the cause of his silence. The next day I received +three words in answer--a simple uncommented request that I would come +to him. I lost no time, and reached him in the course of a few +hours. It was dark when I arrived, and the city was sheeted in a +cold autumnal rain. Pickering had stumbled, with an indifference +which was itself a symptom of distress, on a certain musty old +Mainzerhof, and I found him sitting over a smouldering fire in a vast +dingy chamber which looked as if it had grown gray with watching the +ennui of ten generations of travellers. Looking at him, as he rose +on my entrance, I saw that he was in extreme tribulation. He was +pale and haggard; his face was five years older. Now, at least, in +all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life! I was anxious to +know what had turned it so suddenly to bitterness; but I spared him +all importunate curiosity, and let him take his time. I accepted +tacitly his tacit confession of distress, and we made for a while a +feeble effort to discuss the picturesqueness of Cologne. At last he +rose and stood a long time looking into the fire, while I slowly +paced the length of the dusky room. + +"Well!" he said, as I came back; "I wanted knowledge, and I certainly +know something I didn't a month ago." And herewith, calmly and +succinctly enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related the +history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly on details; he +evidently never was to gush as freely again as he had done during the +prosperity of his suit. He had been accepted one evening, as +explicitly as his imagination could desire, and had gone forth in his +rapture and roamed about till nearly morning in the gardens of the +Conversation-house, taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer +night into his confidence. "It is worth it all, almost," he said, +"to have been wound up for an hour to that celestial pitch. No man, +I am sure, can ever know it but once." The next morning he had +repaired to Madame Blumenthal's lodging and had been met, to his +amazement, by a naked refusal to see him. He had strode about for a +couple of hours--in another mood--and then had returned to the +charge. The servant handed him a three-cornered note; it contained +these words: "Leave me alone to-day; I will give you ten minutes to- +morrow evening." Of the next thirty-six hours he could give no +coherent account, but at the appointed time Madame Blumenthal had +received him. Almost before she spoke there had come to him a sense +of the depth of his folly in supposing he knew her. "One has heard +all one's days," he said, "of people removing the mask; it's one of +the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with her mask in +her hand. Her face," he went on gravely, after a pause--"her face +was horrible!" . . . "I give you ten minutes," she had said, pointing +to the clock. "Make your scene, tear your hair, brandish your +dagger!" And she had sat down and folded her arms. "It's not a +joke," she cried, "it's dead earnest; let us have it over. You are +dismissed--have you nothing to say?" He had stammered some frantic +demand for an explanation; and she had risen and come near him, +looking at him from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more +excited than she wished him to see. "I have done with you!" she +said, with a smile; "you ought to have done with me! It has all been +delightful, but there are excellent reasons why it should come to an +end." "You have been playing a part, then," he had gasped out; "you +never cared for me?" "Yes; till I knew you; till I saw how far you +would go. But now the story's finished; we have reached the +denoument. We will close the book and be good friends." "To see how +far I would go?" he had repeated. "You led me on, meaning all the +while to do THIS!" "I led you on, if you will. I received your +visits, in season and out! Sometimes they were very entertaining; +sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you were such a very curious +case of--what shall I call it?--of sincerity, that I determined to +take good and bad together. I wanted to make you commit yourself +unmistakably. I should have preferred not to bring you to this +place; but that too was necessary. Of course I can't marry you; I +can do better. So can you, for that matter; thank your fate for it. +You have thought wonders of me for a month, but your good-humour +wouldn't last. I am too old and too wise; you are too young and too +foolish. It seems to me that I have been very good to you; I have +entertained you to the top of your bent, and, except perhaps that I +am a little brusque just now, you have nothing to complain of. I +would have let you down more gently if I could have taken another +month to it; but circumstances have forced my hand. Abuse me, curse +me, if you like. I will make every allowance!" Pickering listened +to all this intently enough to perceive that, as if by some sudden +natural cataclysm, the ground had broken away at his feet, and that +he must recoil. He turned away in dumb amazement. "I don't know how +I seemed to be taking it," he said, "but she seemed really to desire- +-I don't know why--something in the way of reproach and vituperation. +But I couldn't, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I was +sickened; I wanted to get away into the air--to shake her off and +come to my senses. 'Have you nothing, nothing, nothing to say?' she +cried, as if she were disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the +door. 'Haven't I treated you to talk enough?' I believed I answered. +'You will write to me then, when you get home?' 'I think not,' said +I. 'Six months hence, I fancy, you will come and see me!' 'Never!' +said I. 'That's a confession of stupidity,' she answered. 'It means +that, even on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of +my conduct.' The word 'philosophy' seemed so strange that I verily +believe I smiled. 'I have given you all that you gave me,' she went +on. 'Your passion was an affair of the head.' 'I only wish you had +told me sooner that you considered it so!' I exclaimed. And I went +my way. The next day I came down the Rhine. I sat all day on the +boat, not knowing where I was going, where to get off. I was in a +kind of ague of terror; it seemed to me I had seen something +infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers here looming over the +city. They seemed to say something to me, and when the boat stopped, +I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have not slept at night-- +and yet it has been a week of rest!" + +It seemed to me that he was in a fair way to recover, and that his +own philosophy, if left to take its time, was adequate to the +occasion. After his story was once told I referred to his grievance +but once--that evening, later, as we were about to separate for the +night. "Suffer me to say that there was some truth in HER account of +your relations," I said. "You were using her intellectually, and all +the while, without your knowing it, she was using you. It was +diamond cut diamond. Her needs were the more superficial, and she +got tired of the game first." He frowned and turned uneasily away, +but without contradicting me. I waited a few moments, to see if he +would remember, before we parted, that he had a claim to make upon +me. But he seemed to have forgotten it. + +The next day we strolled about the picturesque old city, and of +course, before long, went into the cathedral. Pickering said little; +he seemed intent upon his own thoughts. He sat down beside a pillar +near a chapel, in front of a gorgeous window, and, leaving him to his +meditations, I wandered through the church. When I came back I saw +he had something to say. But before he had spoken I laid my hand on +his shoulder and looked at him with a significant smile. He slowly +bent his head and dropped his eyes, with a mixture of assent and +humility. I drew forth from where it had lain untouched for a month +the letter he had given me to keep, placed it silently on his knee, +and left him to deal with it alone. + +Half an hour later I returned to the same place, but he had gone, and +one of the sacristans, hovering about and seeing me looking for +Pickering, said he thought he had left the church. I found him in +his gloomy chamber at the inn, pacing slowly up and down. I should +doubtless have been at a loss to say just what effect I expected the +letter from Smyrna to produce; but his actual aspect surprised me. +He was flushed, excited, a trifle irritated. + +"Evidently," I said, "you have read your letter." + +"It is proper I should tell you what is in it," he answered. "When I +gave it to you a month ago, I did my friends injustice." + +"You called it a 'summons,' I remember." + +"I was a great fool! It's a release!" + +"From your engagement?" + +"From everything! The letter, of course, is from Mr. Vernor. He +desires to let me know at the earliest moment that his daughter, +informed for the first time a week before of what had been expected +of her, positively refuses to be bound by the contract or to assent +to my being bound. She had been given a week to reflect, and had +spent it in inconsolable tears. She had resisted every form of +persuasion! from compulsion, writes Mr. Vernor, he naturally shrinks. +The young lady considers the arrangement 'horrible.' After accepting +her duties cut and dried all her life, she pretends at last to have a +taste of her own. I confess I am surprised; I had been given to +believe that she was stupidly submissive, and would remain so to the +end of the chapter. Not a bit of it. She has insisted on my being +formally dismissed, and her father intimates that in case of non- +compliance she threatens him with an attack of brain fever. Mr. +Vernor condoles with me handsomely, and lets me know that the young +lady's attitude has been a great shock to his nerves. He adds that +he will not aggravate such regret as I may do him the honour to +entertain, by any allusions to his daughter's charms and to the +magnitude of my loss, and he concludes with the hope that, for the +comfort of all concerned, I may already have amused my fancy with +other 'views.' He reminds me in a postscript that, in spite of this +painful occurrence, the son of his most valued friend will always be +a welcome visitor at his house. I am free, he observes; I have my +life before me; he recommends an extensive course of travel. Should +my wanderings lead me to the East, he hopes that no false +embarrassment will deter me from presenting myself at Smyrna. He can +promise me at least a friendly reception. It's a very polite +letter." + +Polite as the letter was, Pickering seemed to find no great +exhilaration in having this famous burden so handsomely lifted from +his spirit. He began to brood over his liberation in a manner which +you might have deemed proper to a renewed sense of bondage. "Bad +news," he had called his letter originally; and yet, now that its +contents proved to be in flat contradiction to his foreboding, there +was no impulsive voice to reverse the formula and declare the news +was good. The wings of impulse in the poor fellow had of late been +terribly clipped. It was an obvious reflection, of course, that if +he had not been so stiffly certain of the matter a month before, and +had gone through the form of breaking Mr. Vernor's seal, he might +have escaped the purgatory of Madame Blumenthal's sub-acid +blandishments. But I left him to moralise in private; I had no +desire, as the phrase is, to rub it in. My thoughts, moreover, were +following another train; I was saying to myself that if to those +gentle graces of which her young visage had offered to my fancy the +blooming promise, Miss Vernor added in this striking measure the +capacity for magnanimous action, the amendment to my friend's career +had been less happy than the rough draught. Presently, turning +about, I saw him looking at the young lady's photograph. "Of course, +now," he said, "I have no right to keep it!" And before I could ask +for another glimpse of it, he had thrust it into the fire. + +"I am sorry to be saying it just now," I observed after a while, "but +I shouldn't wonder if Miss Vernor were a charming creature." + +"Go and find out," he answered, gloomily. "The coast is clear. My +part is to forget her," he presently added. "It ought not to be +hard. But don't you think," he went on suddenly, "that for a poor +fellow who asked nothing of fortune but leave to sit down in a quiet +corner, it has been rather a cruel pushing about?" + +Cruel indeed, I declared, and he certainly had the right to demand a +clean page on the book of fate and a fresh start. Mr. Vernor's +advice was sound; he should amuse himself with a long journey. If it +would be any comfort to him, I would go with him on his way. +Pickering assented without enthusiasm; he had the embarrassed look of +a man who, having gone to some cost to make a good appearance in a +drawing-room, should find the door suddenly slammed in his face. We +started on our journey, however, and little by little his enthusiasm +returned. He was too capable of enjoying fine things to remain +permanently irresponsive, and after a fortnight spent among pictures +and monuments and antiquities, I felt that I was seeing him for the +first time in his best and healthiest mood. He had had a fever, and +then he had had a chill; the pendulum had swung right and left in a +manner rather trying to the machine; but now, at last, it was working +back to an even, natural beat. He recovered in a measure the +generous eloquence with which he had fanned his flame at Homburg, and +talked about things with something of the same passionate freshness. +One day when I was laid up at the inn at Bruges with a lame foot, he +came home and treated me to a rhapsody about a certain meek-faced +virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than his +compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his +sombre moods--hours of irresistible retrospect; but I let them come +and go without remonstrance, because I fancied they always left him a +trifle more alert and resolute. One evening, however, he sat hanging +his head in so doleful a fashion that I took the bull by the horns +and told him he had by this time surely paid his debt to penitence, +and that he owed it to himself to banish that woman for ever from his +thoughts. + +He looked up, staring; and then with a deep blush--"That woman?" he +said. "I was not thinking of Madame Blumenthal!" + +After this I gave another construction to his melancholy. Taking him +with his hopes and fears, at the end of six weeks of active +observation and keen sensation, Pickering was as fine a fellow as +need be. We made our way down to Italy and spent a fortnight at +Venice. There something happened which I had been confidently +expecting; I had said to myself that it was merely a question of +time. We had passed the day at Torcello, and came floating back in +the glow of the sunset, with measured oar-strokes. "I am well on the +way," Pickering said; "I think I will go!" + +We had not spoken for an hour, and I naturally asked him, Where? His +answer was delayed by our getting into the Piazzetta. I stepped +ashore first and then turned to help him. As he took my hand he met +my eyes, consciously, and it came. "To Smyrna!" + +A couple of days later he started. I had risked the conjecture that +Miss Vernor was a charming creature, and six months afterwards he +wrote me that I was right. + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg eText Eugene Pickering diff --git a/old/eugpk10.zip b/old/eugpk10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ee51311 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/eugpk10.zip |