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diff --git a/2720-h/2720-h.htm b/2720-h/2720-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..47f36b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/2720-h/2720-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2798 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Pension Beaurepas, by Henry James</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .5em; + text-decoration: none;} + span.red { color: red; } + body {background-color: #ffffc0; } + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pension Beaurepas, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Pension Beaurepas + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: July 29, 2019 [eBook #2720] +[This file was first posted July 3, 2000] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PENSION BEAUREPAS*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1886 Macmillan and Co. edition. +Scanned by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofing by +Emma Hair, Francine Smith and Matthew Garrish.</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/cover.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Public domain cover" +title= +"Public domain cover" + src="images/cover.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>THE PENSION BEAUREPAS</h1> +<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> +<p>I was not rich—on the contrary; and I had been told the +Pension Beaurepas was cheap. I had, moreover, been told +that a boarding-house is a capital place for the study of human +nature. I had a fancy for a literary career, and a friend +of mine had said to me, “If you mean to write you ought to +go and live in a boarding-house; there is no other such place to +pick up material.” I had read something of this kind +in a letter addressed by Stendhal to his sister: “I have a +passionate desire to know human nature, and have a great mind to +live in a boarding-house, where people cannot conceal their real +characters.” I was an admirer of <i>La Chartreuse de +Parme</i>, and it appeared to me that one could not do better +than follow in the footsteps of its author. I remembered, +too, the magnificent boarding-house in Balzac’s Père +Goriot,—the “<i>pension bourgeoise des deux sexes et +autres</i>,” kept by Madame Vauquer, <i>née</i> De +Conflans. Magnificent, I mean, as a piece of portraiture; +the establishment, as an establishment, was certainly sordid +enough, and I hoped for better things from the Pension +Beaurepas. This institution was one of the most esteemed in +Geneva, and, standing in a little garden of its own, not far from +the lake, had a very homely, comfortable, sociable aspect. +The regular entrance was, as one might say, at the back, which +looked upon the street, or rather upon a little <i>place</i>, +adorned like every place in Geneva, great or small, with a +fountain. This fact was not prepossessing, for on crossing +the threshold you found yourself more or less in the kitchen, +encompassed with culinary odours. This, however, was no +great matter, for at the Pension Beaurepas there was no attempt +at gentility or at concealment of the domestic machinery. +The latter was of a very simple sort. Madame Beaurepas was +an excellent little old woman—she was very far advanced in +life, and had been keeping a pension for forty years—whose +only faults were that she was slightly deaf, that she was fond of +a surreptitious pinch of snuff, and that, at the age of +seventy-three, she wore flowers in her cap. There was a +tradition in the house that she was not so deaf as she pretended; +that she feigned this infirmity in order to possess herself of +the secrets of her lodgers. But I never subscribed to this +theory; I am convinced that Madame Beaurepas had outlived the +period of indiscreet curiosity. She was a philosopher, on a +matter-of-fact basis; she had been having lodgers for forty +years, and all that she asked of them was that they should pay +their bills, make use of the door-mat, and fold their +napkins. She cared very little for their secrets. +“J’en ai vus de toutes les couleurs,” she said +to me. She had quite ceased to care for individuals; she +cared only for types, for categories. Her large observation +had made her acquainted with a great number, and her mind was a +complete collection of “heads.” She flattered +herself that she knew at a glance where to pigeon-hole a +new-comer, and if she made any mistakes her deportment never +betrayed them. I think that, as regards individuals, she +had neither likes nor dislikes; but she was capable of expressing +esteem or contempt for a species. She had her own ways, I +suppose, of manifesting her approval, but her manner of +indicating the reverse was simple and unvarying. “Je +trouve que c’est déplacé”—this +exhausted her view of the matter. If one of her inmates had +put arsenic into the <i>pot-au-feu</i>, I believe Madame +Beaurepas would have contented herself with remarking that the +proceeding was out of place. The line of misconduct to +which she most objected was an undue assumption of gentility; she +had no patience with boarders who gave themselves airs. +“When people come <i>chez moi</i>, it is not to cut a +figure in the world; I have never had that illusion,” I +remember hearing her say; “and when you pay seven francs a +day, <i>tout compris</i>, it comprises everything but the right +to look down upon the others. But there are people who, the +less they pay, the more they take themselves <i>au +sérieux</i>. My most difficult boarders have always +been those who have had the little rooms.”</p> +<p>Madame Beaurepas had a niece, a young woman of some forty odd +years; and the two ladies, with the assistance of a couple of +thick-waisted, red-armed peasant women, kept the house +going. If on your exits and entrances you peeped into the +kitchen, it made very little difference; for Célestine, +the cook, had no pretension to be an invisible functionary or to +deal in occult methods. She was always at your service, +with a grateful grin she blacked your boots; she trudged off to +fetch a cab; she would have carried your baggage, if you had +allowed her, on her broad little back. She was always +tramping in and out, between her kitchen and the fountain in the +place, where it often seemed to me that a large part of the +preparation for our dinner went forward—the wringing out of +towels and table-cloths, the washing of potatoes and cabbages, +the scouring of saucepans and cleansing of water-bottles. +You enjoyed, from the doorstep, a perpetual back-view of +Célestine and of her large, loose, woollen ankles, as she +craned, from the waist, over into the fountain and dabbled in her +various utensils. This sounds as if life went on in a very +make-shift fashion at the Pension Beaurepas—as if the tone +of the establishment were sordid. But such was not at all +the case. We were simply very <i>bourgeois</i>; we +practised the good old Genevese principle of not sacrificing to +appearances. This is an excellent principle—when you +have the reality. We had the reality at the Pension +Beaurepas: we had it in the shape of soft short beds, equipped +with fluffy <i>duvets</i>; of admirable coffee, served to us in +the morning by Célestine in person, as we lay recumbent on +these downy couches; of copious, wholesome, succulent dinners, +conformable to the best provincial traditions. For myself, +I thought the Pension Beaurepas picturesque, and this, with me, +at that time was a great word. I was young and ingenuous: I +had just come from America. I wished to perfect myself in +the French tongue, and I innocently believed that it flourished +by Lake Leman. I used to go to lectures at the Academy, and +come home with a violent appetite. I always enjoyed my +morning walk across the long bridge (there was only one, just +there, in those days) which spans the deep blue out-gush of the +lake, and up the dark steep streets of the old Calvinistic +city. The garden faced this way, toward the lake and the +old town; and this was the pleasantest approach to the +house. There was a high wall, with a double gate in the +middle, flanked by a couple of ancient massive posts; the big +rusty <i>grille</i> contained some old-fashioned iron-work. +The garden was rather mouldy and weedy, tangled and untended; but +it contained a little thin-flowing fountain, several green +benches, a rickety little table of the same complexion, and three +orange-trees, in tubs, which were deposited as effectively as +possible in front of the windows of the <i>salon</i>.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> +<p>As commonly happens in boarding-houses, the rustle of +petticoats was, at the Pension Beaurepas, the most familiar form +of the human tread. There was the usual allotment of +economical widows and old maids, and to maintain the balance of +the sexes there were only an old Frenchman and a young +American. It hardly made the matter easier that the old +Frenchman came from Lausanne. He was a native of that +estimable town, but he had once spent six months in Paris, he had +tasted of the tree of knowledge; he had got beyond Lausanne, +whose resources he pronounced inadequate. Lausanne, as he +said, “<i>manquait +d’agréments</i>.” When obliged, for +reasons which he never specified, to bring his residence in Paris +to a close, he had fallen back on Geneva; he had broken his fall +at the Pension Beaurepas. Geneva was, after all, more like +Paris, and at a Genevese boarding-house there was sure to be +plenty of Americans with whom one could talk about the French +metropolis. M. Pigeonneau was a little lean man, with a +large narrow nose, who sat a great deal in the garden, reading +with the aid of a large magnifying glass a volume from the +<i>cabinet de lecture</i>.</p> +<p>One day, a fortnight after my arrival at the Pension +Beaurepas, I came back, rather earlier than usual from my +academic session; it wanted half an hour of the midday +breakfast. I went into the salon with the design of +possessing myself of the day’s <i>Galignani</i> before one +of the little English old maids should have removed it to her +virginal bower—a privilege to which Madame Beaurepas +frequently alluded as one of the attractions of the +establishment. In the salon I found a new-comer, a tall +gentleman in a high black hat, whom I immediately recognised as a +compatriot. I had often seen him, or his equivalent, in the +hotel parlours of my native land. He apparently supposed +himself to be at the present moment in a hotel parlour; his hat +was on his head, or, rather, half off it—pushed back from +his forehead, and rather suspended than poised. He stood +before a table on which old newspapers were scattered, one of +which he had taken up and, with his eye-glass on his nose, was +holding out at arm’s-length. It was that honourable +but extremely diminutive sheet, the <i>Journal de +Genève</i>, a newspaper of about the size of a +pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my +<i>Galignani</i>, the tall gentleman gave me, over the top of his +eye-glass, a somewhat solemn stare. Presently, however, +before I had time to lay my hand on the object of my search, he +silently offered me the <i>Journal de Genève</i>.</p> +<p>“It appears,” he said, “to be the paper of +the country.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I answered, “I believe it’s the +best.”</p> +<p>He gazed at it again, still holding it at arm’s-length, +as if it had been a looking-glass. “Well,” he +said, “I suppose it’s natural a small country should +have small papers. You could wrap it up, mountains and all, +in one of our dailies!”</p> +<p>I found my <i>Galignani</i>, and went off with it into the +garden, where I seated myself on a bench in the shade. +Presently I saw the tall gentleman in the hat appear in one of +the open windows of the salon, and stand there with his hands in +his pockets and his legs a little apart. He looked very +much bored, and—I don’t know why—I immediately +began to feel sorry for him. He was not at all a +picturesque personage; he looked like a jaded, faded man of +business. But after a little he came into the garden and +began to stroll about; and then his restless, unoccupied +carriage, and the vague, unacquainted manner in which his eyes +wandered over the place, seemed to make it proper that, as an +older resident, I should exercise a certain hospitality. I +said something to him, and he came and sat down beside me on my +bench, clasping one of his long knees in his hands.</p> +<p>“When is it this big breakfast of theirs comes +off?” he inquired. “That’s what I call +it—the little breakfast and the big breakfast. I +never thought I should live to see the time when I should care to +eat two breakfasts. But a man’s glad to do anything +over here.”</p> +<p>“For myself,” I observed, “I find plenty to +do.”</p> +<p>He turned his head and glanced at me with a dry, deliberate, +kind-looking eye. “You’re getting used to the +life, are you?”</p> +<p>“I like the life very much,” I answered, +laughing.</p> +<p>“How long have you tried it?”</p> +<p>“Do you mean in this place?”</p> +<p>“Well, I mean anywhere. It seems to me pretty much +the same all over.”</p> +<p>“I have been in this house only a fortnight,” I +said.</p> +<p>“Well, what should you say, from what you have +seen?” my companion asked.</p> +<p>“Oh,” said I, “you can see all there is +immediately. It’s very simple.”</p> +<p>“Sweet simplicity, eh? I’m afraid my two +ladies will find it too simple.”</p> +<p>“Everything is very good,” I went on. +“And Madame Beaurepas is a charming old woman. And +then it’s very cheap.”</p> +<p>“Cheap, is it?” my friend repeated +meditatively.</p> +<p>“Doesn’t it strike you so?” I asked. I +thought it very possible he had not inquired the terms. But +he appeared not to have heard me; he sat there, clasping his knee +and blinking, in a contemplative manner, at the sunshine.</p> +<p>“Are you from the United States, sir?” he +presently demanded, turning his head again.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” I replied; and I mentioned the place +of my nativity.</p> +<p>“I presumed,” he said, “that you were +American or English. I’m from the United States +myself; from New York city. Many of our people +here?”</p> +<p>“Not so many as, I believe, there have sometimes +been. There are two or three ladies.”</p> +<p>“Well,” my interlocutor declared, “I am very +fond of ladies’ society. I think when it’s +superior there’s nothing comes up to it. I’ve +got two ladies here myself; I must make you acquainted with +them.”</p> +<p>I rejoined that I should be delighted, and I inquired of my +friend whether he had been long in Europe.</p> +<p>“Well, it seems precious long,” he said, +“but my time’s not up yet. We have been here +fourteen weeks and a half.”</p> +<p>“Are you travelling for pleasure?” I asked.</p> +<p>My companion turned his head again and looked at +me—looked at me so long in silence that I at last also +turned and met his eyes.</p> +<p>“No, sir,” he said presently. “No, +sir,” he repeated, after a considerable interval.</p> +<p>“Excuse me,” said I, for there was something so +solemn in his tone that I feared I had been indiscreet.</p> +<p>He took no notice of my ejaculation; he simply continued to +look at me. “I’m travelling,” he said, at +last, “to please the doctors. They seemed to think +they would like it.”</p> +<p>“Ah, they sent you abroad for your health?”</p> +<p>“They sent me abroad because they were so confoundedly +muddled they didn’t know what else to do.”</p> +<p>“That’s often the best thing,” I ventured to +remark.</p> +<p>“It was a confession of weakness; they wanted me to stop +plaguing them. They didn’t know enough to cure me, +and that’s the way they thought they would get round +it. I wanted to be cured—I didn’t want to be +transported. I hadn’t done any harm.”</p> +<p>I assented to the general proposition of the inefficiency of +doctors, and asked my companion if he had been seriously ill.</p> +<p>“I didn’t sleep,” he said, after some +delay.</p> +<p>“Ah, that’s very annoying. I suppose you +were overworked.”</p> +<p>“I didn’t eat; I took no interest in my +food.”</p> +<p>“Well, I hope you both eat and sleep now,” I +said.</p> +<p>“I couldn’t hold a pen,” my neighbour went +on. “I couldn’t sit still. I +couldn’t walk from my house to the cars—and +it’s only a little way. I lost my interest in +business.”</p> +<p>“You needed a holiday,” I observed.</p> +<p>“That’s what the doctors said. It +wasn’t so very smart of them. I had been paying +strict attention to business for twenty-three years.”</p> +<p>“In all that time you have never had a holiday?” I +exclaimed with horror.</p> +<p>My companion waited a little. “Sundays,” he +said at last.</p> +<p>“No wonder, then, you were out of sorts.”</p> +<p>“Well, sir,” said my friend, “I +shouldn’t have been where I was three years ago if I had +spent my time travelling round Europe. I was in a very +advantageous position. I did a very large business. I +was considerably interested in lumber.” He paused, +turned his head, and looked at me a moment. “Have you +any business interests yourself?” I answered that I +had none, and he went on again, slowly, softly, +deliberately. “Well, sir, perhaps you are not aware +that business in the United States is not what it was a short +time since. Business interests are very insecure. +There seems to be a general falling-off. Different parties +offer different explanations of the fact, but so far as I am +aware none of their observations have set things going +again.” I ingeniously intimated that if business was +dull, the time was good for coming away; whereupon my neighbour +threw back his head and stretched his legs a while. +“Well, sir, that’s one view of the matter +certainly. There’s something to be said for +that. These things should be looked at all round. +That’s the ground my wife took. That’s the +ground,” he added in a moment, “that a lady would +naturally take;” and he gave a little dry laugh.</p> +<p>“You think it’s slightly illogical,” I +remarked.</p> +<p>“Well, sir, the ground I took was, that the worse a +man’s business is, the more it requires looking +after. I shouldn’t want to go out to take a +walk—not even to go to church—if my house was on +fire. My firm is not doing the business it was; it’s +like a sick child, it requires nursing. What I wanted the +doctors to do was to fix me up, so that I could go on at +home. I’d have taken anything they’d have given +me, and as many times a day. I wanted to be right there; I +had my reasons; I have them still. But I came off all the +same,” said my friend, with a melancholy smile.</p> +<p>I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so +simple and communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire +to fraternise, and so exempt from any theory of human +differences, that I quite forgot his seniority, and found myself +offering him paternal I advice. “Don’t think +about all that,” said I. “Simply enjoy +yourself, amuse yourself, get well. Travel about and see +Europe. At the end of a year, by the time you are ready to +go home, things will have improved over there, and you will be +quite well and happy.”</p> +<p>My friend laid his hand on my knee; he looked at me for some +moments, and I thought he was going to say, “You are very +young!” But he said presently, “<i>You</i> have +got used to Europe any way!”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2> +<p>At breakfast I encountered his ladies—his wife and +daughter. They were placed, however, at a distance from me, +and it was not until the <i>pensionnaires</i> had dispersed, and +some of them, according to custom, had come out into the garden, +that he had an opportunity of making me acquainted with them.</p> +<p>“Will you allow me to introduce you to my +daughter?” he said, moved apparently by a paternal +inclination to provide this young lady with social +diversion. She was standing with her mother, in one of the +paths, looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at +the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau +was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be +urbane and the absence of a pretext. “Mrs. +Ruck—Miss Sophy Ruck,” said my friend, leading me +up.</p> +<p>Mrs. Ruck was a large, plump, light-coloured person, with a +smooth fair face, a somnolent eye, and an elaborate +coiffure. Miss Sophy was a girl of one-and-twenty, very +small and very pretty—what I suppose would have been called +a lively brunette. Both of these ladies were attired in +black silk dresses, very much trimmed; they had an air of the +highest elegance.</p> +<p>“Do you think highly of this pension?” inquired +Mrs. Ruck, after a few preliminaries.</p> +<p>“It’s a little rough, but it seems to me +comfortable,” I answered.</p> +<p>“Does it take a high rank in Geneva?” Mrs. Ruck +pursued.</p> +<p>“I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame,” I said, +smiling.</p> +<p>“I should never dream of comparing it to a New York +boarding-house,” said Mrs. Ruck.</p> +<p>“It’s quite a different style,” her daughter +observed.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she was holding her elbows with +a pair of white little hands, and she was tapping the ground with +a pretty little foot.</p> +<p>“We hardly expected to come to a pension,” said +Mrs. Ruck. “But we thought we would try; we had heard +so much about Swiss pensions. I was saying to Mr. Ruck that +I wondered whether this was a favourable specimen. I was +afraid we might have made a mistake.”</p> +<p>“We knew some people who had been here; they thought +everything of Madame Beaurepas,” said Miss Sophy. +“They said she was a real friend.”</p> +<p>“Mr. and Mrs. Parker—perhaps you have heard her +speak of them,” Mrs. Ruck pursued.</p> +<p>“Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she is +very fond of Americans,” I replied.</p> +<p>“Well, I must say I should think she would be, if she +compares them with some others.”</p> +<p>“Mother is always comparing,” observed Miss +Ruck.</p> +<p>“Of course I am always comparing,” rejoined the +elder lady. “I never had a chance till now; I never +knew my privileges. Give me an American!” And +Mrs. Ruck indulged in a little laugh.</p> +<p>“Well, I must say there are some things I like over +here,” said Miss Sophy, with courage. And indeed I +could see that she was a young woman of great decision.</p> +<p>“You like the shops—that’s what you +like,” her father affirmed.</p> +<p>The young lady addressed herself to me, without heeding this +remark. “I suppose you feel quite at home +here.”</p> +<p>“Oh, he likes it; he has got used to the life!” +exclaimed Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>“I wish you’d teach Mr. Ruck,” said his +wife. “It seems as if he couldn’t get used to +anything.”</p> +<p>“I’m used to you, my dear,” the husband +retorted, giving me a humorous look.</p> +<p>“He’s intensely restless,” continued Mrs. +Ruck.</p> +<p>“That’s what made me want to come to a +pension. I thought he would settle down more.”</p> +<p>“I don’t think I <i>am</i> used to you, after +all,” said her husband.</p> +<p>In view of a possible exchange of conjugal repartee I took +refuge in conversation with Miss Ruck, who seemed perfectly able +to play her part in any colloquy. I learned from this young +lady that, with her parents, after visiting the British Islands, +she had been spending a month in Paris, and that she thought she +should have died when she left that city. “I hung out +of the carriage, when we left the hotel,” said Miss Ruck, +“I assure you I did. And mother did, too.”</p> +<p>“Out of the other window, I hope,” said I.</p> +<p>“Yes, one out of each window,” she replied +promptly. “Father had hard work, I can tell +you. We hadn’t half finished; there were ever so many +places we wanted to go to.”</p> +<p>“Your father insisted on coming away?”</p> +<p>“Yes; after we had been there about a month he said he +had enough. He’s fearfully restless; he’s very +much out of health. Mother and I said to him that if he was +restless in Paris he needn’t hope for peace anywhere. +We don’t mean to leave him alone till he takes us +back.” There was an air of keen resolution in Miss +Ruck’s pretty face, of lucid apprehension of desirable +ends, which made me, as she pronounced these words, direct a +glance of covert compassion toward her poor recalcitrant +father. He had walked away a little with his wife, and I +saw only his back and his stooping, patient-looking shoulders, +whose air of acute resignation was thrown into relief by the +voluminous tranquillity of Mrs. Ruck. “He will have +to take us back in September, any way,” the young girl +pursued; “he will have to take us back to get some things +we have ordered.”</p> +<p>“Have you ordered a great many things?” I asked +jocosely.</p> +<p>“Well, I guess we have ordered <i>some</i>. Of +course we wanted to take advantage of being in Paris—ladies +always do. We have left the principal things till we go +back. Of course that is the principal interest, for +ladies. Mother said she should feel so shabby if she just +passed through. We have promised all the people to be back +in September, and I never broke a promise yet. So Mr. Ruck +has got to make his plans accordingly.”</p> +<p>“And what are his plans?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know; he doesn’t seem able to make +any. His great idea was to get to Geneva; but now that he +has got here he doesn’t seem to care. It’s the +effect of ill health. He used to be so bright; but now he +is quite subdued. It’s about time he should improve, +any way. We went out last night to look at the +jewellers’ windows—in that street behind the +hotel. I had always heard of those jewellers’ +windows. We saw some lovely things, but it didn’t +seem to rouse father. He’ll get tired of Geneva +sooner than he did of Paris.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “there are finer things here +than the jewellers’ windows. We are very near some of +the most beautiful scenery in Europe.”</p> +<p>“I suppose you mean the mountains. Well, we have +seen plenty of mountains at home. We used to go to the +mountains every summer. We are familiar enough with the +mountains. Aren’t we, mother?” the young lady +demanded, appealing to Mrs. Ruck, who, with her husband, had +drawn near again.</p> +<p>“Aren’t we what?” inquired the elder +lady.</p> +<p>“Aren’t we familiar with the mountains?”</p> +<p>“Well, I hope so,” said Mrs. Ruck.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable +wink.—“There’s nothing much you can tell +them!” he said.</p> +<p>The two ladies stood face to face a few moments, surveying +each other’s garments. “Don’t you want to +go out?” the young girl at last inquired of her mother.</p> +<p>“Well, I think we had better; we have got to go up to +that place.”</p> +<p>“To what place?” asked Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>“To that jeweller’s—to that big +one.”</p> +<p>“They all seemed big enough; they were too +big!” And Mr. Ruck gave me another wink.</p> +<p>“That one where we saw the blue cross,” said his +daughter.</p> +<p>“Oh, come, what do you want of that blue cross?” +poor Mr. Ruck demanded.</p> +<p>“She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie +it round her neck,” said his wife.</p> +<p>“A black velvet ribbon? No, I thank you!” +cried the young lady. “Do you suppose I would wear +that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a nice little gold +chain, if you please—a little narrow gold chain, like an +old-fashioned watch-chain. That’s the proper thing +for that blue cross. I know the sort of chain I mean; +I’m going to look for one. When I want a +thing,” said Miss Ruck, with decision, “I can +generally find it.”</p> +<p>“Look here, Sophy,” her father urged, “you +don’t want that blue cross.”</p> +<p>“I do want it—I happen to want it.” +And Sophy glanced at me with a little laugh.</p> +<p>Her laugh, which in itself was pretty, suggested that there +were various relations in which one might stand to Miss Ruck; but +I think I was conscious of a certain satisfaction in not +occupying the paternal one. “Don’t worry the +poor child,” said her mother.</p> +<p>“Come on, mother,” said Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“We are going to look about a little,” explained +the elder lady to me, by way of taking leave.</p> +<p>“I know what that means,” remarked Mr. Ruck, as +his companions moved away. He stood looking at them a +moment, while he raised his hand to his head, behind, and stood +rubbing it a little, with a movement that displaced his +hat. (I may remark in parenthesis that I never saw a hat +more easily displaced than Mr. Ruck’s.) I supposed he +was going to say something querulous, but I was mistaken. +Mr. Ruck was unhappy, but he was very good-natured. +“Well, they want to pick up something,” he +said. “That’s the principal interest, for +ladies.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2> +<p>Mr. Ruck distinguished me, as the French say. He +honoured me with his esteem, and, as the days elapsed, with a +large portion of his confidence. Sometimes he bored me a +little, for the tone of his conversation was not cheerful, +tending as it did almost exclusively to a melancholy dirge over +the financial prostration of our common country. “No, +sir, business in the United States is not what it once +was,” he found occasion to remark several times a +day. “There’s not the same +spring—there’s not the same hopeful feeling. +You can see it in all departments.” He used to sit by +the hour in the little garden of the pension, with a roll of +American newspapers in his lap and his high hat pushed back, +swinging one of his long legs and reading the <i>New York +Herald</i>. He paid a daily visit to the American +banker’s, on the other side of the Rhône, and +remained there a long time, turning over the old papers on the +green velvet table in the middle of the Salon des +Étrangers, and fraternising with chance compatriots. +But in spite of these diversions his time hung heavily upon his +hands. I used sometimes to propose to him to take a walk; +but he had a mortal horror of pedestrianism, and regarded my own +taste for it as’ a morbid form of activity. +“You’ll kill yourself, if you don’t look +out,” he said, “walking all over the country. I +don’t want to walk round that way; I ain’t a +postman!” Briefly speaking, Mr. Ruck had few +resources. His wife and daughter, on the other hand, it was +to be supposed, were possessed of a good many that could not be +apparent to an unobtrusive young man. They also sat a great +deal in the garden or in the salon, side by side, with folded +hands, contemplating material objects, and were remarkably +independent of most of the usual feminine aids to +idleness—light literature, tapestry, the use of the +piano. They were, however, much fonder of locomotion than +their companion, and I often met them in the Rue du Rhône +and on the quays, loitering in front of the jewellers’ +windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person of +old M. Pigeonneau, who possessed a high appreciation of their +charms, but who, owing to the absence of a common idiom, was +deprived of the pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, +and Mrs. Ruck and her daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable +mistrust of the beautiful tongue which, as the old man +endeavoured to impress upon them, was pre-eminently the language +of conversation.</p> +<p>“They have a <i>tournure de princesse</i>—a +<i>distinction supreme</i>,” he said to me. +“One is surprised to find them in a little pension, at +seven francs a day.”</p> +<p>“Oh, they don’t come for economy,” I +answered. “They must be rich.”</p> +<p>“They don’t come for my <i>beaux +yeux</i>—for mine,” said M. Pigeonneau, sadly. +“Perhaps it’s for yours, young man. Je vous +recommande la mère.”</p> +<p>I reflected a moment. “They came on account of Mr. +Ruck—because at hotels he’s so restless.”</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau gave me a knowing nod. “Of course he +is, with such a wife as that—a <i>femme superbe</i>. +Madame Ruck is preserved in perfection—a miraculous +<i>fraïcheur</i>. I like those large, fair, quiet +women; they are often, <i>dans l’intimité</i>, the +most agreeable. I’ll warrant you that at heart Madame +Ruck is a finished coquette.”</p> +<p>“I rather doubt it,” I said.</p> +<p>“You suppose her cold? Ne vous y fiez +pas!”</p> +<p>“It is a matter in which I have nothing at +stake.”</p> +<p>“You young Americans are droll,” said M. +Pigeonneau; “you never have anything at stake! But the +little one, for example; I’ll warrant you she’s not +cold. She is admirably made.”</p> +<p>“She is very pretty.”</p> +<p>“‘She is very pretty!’ Vous dites cela +d’un ton! When you pay compliments to Mademoiselle +Ruck, I hope that’s not the way you do it.”</p> +<p>“I don’t pay compliments to Mademoiselle +Ruck.”</p> +<p>“Ah, decidedly,” said M. Pigeonneau, “you +young Americans are droll!”</p> +<p>I should have suspected that these two ladies would not +especially commend themselves to Madame Beaurepas; that as a +<i>maîtresse de salon</i>, which she in some degree aspired +to be, she would have found them wanting in a certain flexibility +of deportment. But I should have gone quite wrong; Madame +Beaurepas had no fault at all to find with her new +pensionnaires. “I have no observation whatever to +make about them,” she said to me one evening. +“I see nothing in those ladies which is at all +<i>déplacé</i>. They don’t complain of +anything; they don’t meddle; they take what’s given +them; they leave me tranquil. The Americans are often like +that. Often, but not always,” Madame Beaurepas +pursued. “We are to have a specimen to-morrow of a +very different sort.”</p> +<p>“An American?” I inquired.</p> +<p>“Two <i>Américaines</i>—a mother and a +daughter. There are Americans and Americans: when you are +<i>difficiles</i>, you are more so than any one, and when you +have pretensions—ah, <i>per exemple</i>, it’s +serious. I foresee that with this little lady everything +will be serious, beginning with her <i>café au +lait</i>. She has been staying at the Pension +Chamousset—my <i>concurrent</i>, you know, farther up the +street; but she is coming away because the coffee is bad. +She holds to her coffee, it appears. I don’t know +what liquid Madame Chamousset may have invented, but we will do +the best we can for her. Only, I know she will make me +<i>des histoires</i> about something else. She will demand +a new lamp for the salon; <i>vous alles voir cela</i>. She +wishes to pay but eleven francs a day for herself and her +daughter, <i>tout compris</i>; and for their eleven francs they +expect to be lodged like princesses. But she is very +‘ladylike’—isn’t that what you call it in +English? Oh, <i>pour cela</i>, she is ladylike!”</p> +<p>I caught a glimpse on the morrow of this ladylike person, who +was arriving at her new residence as I came in from a walk. +She had come in a cab, with her daughter and her luggage; and, +with an air of perfect softness and serenity, she was disputing +the fare as she stood among her boxes, on the steps. She +addressed her cabman in a very English accent, but with extreme +precision and correctness. “I wish to be perfectly +reasonable, but I don’t wish to encourage you in exorbitant +demands. With a franc and a half you are sufficiently +paid. It is not the custom at Geneva to give a +<i>pour-boire</i> for so short a drive. I have made +inquiries, and I find it is not the custom, even in the best +families. I am a stranger, yes, but I always adopt the +custom of the native families. I think it my duty toward +the natives.”</p> +<p>“But I am a native, too, <i>moi</i>!” said the +cabman, with an angry laugh.</p> +<p>“You seem to me to speak with a German accent,” +continued the lady. “You are probably from +Basel. A franc and a half is sufficient. I see you +have left behind the little red bag which I asked you to hold +between your knees; you will please to go back to the other house +and get it. Very well, if you are impolite I will make a +complaint of you to-morrow at the administration. Aurora, +you will find a pencil in the outer pocket of my embroidered +satchel; please to write down his number,—87; do you see it +distinctly?—in case we should forget it.”</p> +<p>The young lady addressed as “Aurora”—a +slight, fair girl, holding a large parcel of +umbrellas—stood at hand while this allocution went forward, +but she apparently gave no heed to it. She stood looking +about her, in a listless manner, at the front of the house, at +the corridor, at Célestine tucking up her apron in the +doorway, at me as I passed in amid the disseminated luggage; her +mother’s parsimonious attitude seeming to produce in Miss +Aurora neither sympathy nor embarrassment. At dinner the +two ladies were placed on the same side of the table as myself, +below Mrs. Ruck and her daughter, my own position being on the +right of Mr. Ruck. I had therefore little observation of +Mrs. Church—such I learned to be her name—but I +occasionally heard her soft, distinct voice.</p> +<p>“White wine, if you please; we prefer white wine. +There is none on the table? Then you will please to get +some, and to remember to place a bottle of it always here, +between my daughter and myself.”</p> +<p>“That lady seems to know what she wants,” said Mr. +Ruck, “and she speaks so I can understand her. I +can’t understand every one, over here. I should like +to make that lady’s acquaintance. Perhaps she knows +what <i>I</i> want, too; it seems hard to find out. But I +don’t want any of their sour white wine; that’s one +of the things I don’t want. I expect she’ll be +an addition to the pension.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck made the acquaintance of Mrs. Church that evening in +the parlour, being presented to her by his wife, who presumed on +the rights conferred upon herself by the mutual proximity, at +table, of the two ladies. I suspected that in Mrs. +Church’s view Mrs. Ruck presumed too far. The +fugitive from the Pension Chamousset, as M. Pigeonneau called +her, was a little fresh, plump, comely woman, looking less than +her age, with a round, bright, serious face. She was very +simply and frugally dressed, not at all in the manner of Mr. +Ruck’s companions, and she had an air of quiet distinction +which was an excellent defensive weapon. She exhibited a +polite disposition to listen to what Mr. Ruck might have to say, +but her manner was equivalent to an intimation that what she +valued least in boarding-house life was its social +opportunities. She had placed herself near a lamp, after +carefully screwing it and turning it up, and she had opened in +her lap, with the assistance of a large embroidered marker, an +octavo volume, which I perceived to be in German. To Mrs. +Ruck and her daughter she was evidently a puzzle, with her +economical attire and her expensive culture. The two +younger ladies, however, had begun to fraternise very freely, and +Miss Ruck presently went wandering out of the room with her arm +round the waist of Miss Church. It was a very warm evening; +the long windows of the salon stood wide open into the garden, +and, inspired by the balmy darkness, M. Pigeonneau and +Mademoiselle Beaurepas, a most obliging little woman, who lisped +and always wore a huge cravat, declared they would organise a +<i>fête de nuit</i>. They engaged in this +undertaking, and the fête developed itself, consisting of +half-a-dozen red paper lanterns, hung about on the trees, and of +several glasses of <i>sirop</i>, carried on a tray by the +stout-armed Célestine. As the festival deepened to +its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau was +master of ceremonies.</p> +<p>“But where are those charming young ladies,” he +cried, “Miss Ruck and the new-comer, <i>l’aimable +transfuge</i>? Their absence has been remarked, and they +are wanting to the brilliancy of the occasion. <i>Voyez</i> +I have selected a glass of syrup—a generous glass—for +Mademoiselle Ruck, and I advise you, my young friend, if you wish +to make a good impression, to put aside one which you may offer +to the other young lady. What is her name? Miss +Church. I see; it’s a singular name. There is a +church in which I would willingly worship!”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck presently came out of the salon, having concluded his +interview with Mrs. Church. Through the open window I saw +the latter lady sitting under the lamp with her German octavo, +while Mrs. Ruck, established, empty-handed, in an arm-chair near +her, gazed at her with an air of fascination.</p> +<p>“Well, I told you she would know what I want,” +said Mr. Ruck. “She says I want to go up to +Appenzell, wherever that is; that I want to drink whey and live +in a high latitude—what did she call it?—a high +altitude. She seemed to think we ought to leave for +Appenzell to-morrow; she’d got it all fixed. She says +this ain’t a high enough lat—a high enough +altitude. And she says I mustn’t go too high either; +that would be just as bad; she seems to know just the right +figure. She says she’ll give me a list of the hotels +where we must stop, on the way to Appenzell. I asked her if +she didn’t want to go with as, but she says she’d +rather sit still and read. I expect she’s a big +reader.”</p> +<p>The daughter of this accomplished woman now reappeared, in +company with Miss Ruck, with whom she had been strolling through +the outlying parts of the garden.</p> +<p>“Well,” said Miss Ruck, glancing at the red paper +lanterns, “are they trying to stick the flower-pots into +the trees?”</p> +<p>“It’s an illumination in honour of our +arrival,” the other young girl rejoined. +“It’s a triumph over Madame Chamousset.”</p> +<p>“Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset,” I ventured +to suggest, “they have put out their lights; they are +sitting in darkness, lamenting your departure.”</p> +<p>She looked at me, smiling; she was standing in the light that +came from the house. M. Pigeonneau, meanwhile, who had been +awaiting his chance, advanced to Miss Ruck with his glass of +syrup. “I have kept it for you, Mademoiselle,” +he said; “I have jealously guarded it. It is very +delicious!”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck looked at him and his syrup, without any motion to +take the glass. “Well, I guess it’s +sour,” she said in a moment; and she gave a little shake of +her head.</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau stood staring with his syrup in his hand; then +he slowly turned away. He looked about at the rest of us, +as if to appeal from Miss Ruck’s insensibility, and went to +deposit his rejected tribute on a bench.</p> +<p>“Won’t you give it to me?” asked Miss +Church, in faultless French. “J’adore le sirop, +moi.”</p> +<p>M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity, and presented the glass +with a very low bow. “I adore good manners,” +murmured the old man.</p> +<p>This incident caused me to look at Miss Church with quickened +interest. She was not strikingly pretty, but in her +charming irregular face there was something brilliant and +ardent. Like her mother, she was very simply dressed.</p> +<p>“She wants to go to America, and her mother won’t +let her,” said Miss Sophy to me, explaining her +companion’s situation.</p> +<p>“I am very sorry—for America,” I answered, +laughing.</p> +<p>“Well, I don’t want to say anything against your +mother, but I think it’s shameful,” Miss Ruck +pursued.</p> +<p>“Mamma has very good reasons; she will tell you them +all.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m sure I don’t want to hear +them,” said Miss Ruck. “You have got a right to +go to your own country; every one has a right to go to their own +country.”</p> +<p>“Mamma is not very patriotic,” said Aurora Church, +smiling.</p> +<p>“Well, I call that dreadful,” her companion +declared. “I have heard that there are some Americans +like that, but I never believed it.”</p> +<p>“There are all sorts of Americans,” I said, +laughing.</p> +<p>“Aurora’s one of the right sort,” rejoined +Miss Ruck, who had apparently become very intimate with her new +friend.</p> +<p>“Are you very patriotic?” I asked of the young +girl.</p> +<p>“She’s right down homesick,” said Miss +Sophy; “she’s dying to go. If I were you my +mother would have to take me.”</p> +<p>“Mamma is going to take me to Dresden.”</p> +<p>“Well, I declare I never heard of anything so +dreadful!” cried Miss Ruck. “It’s like +something in a story.”</p> +<p>“I never heard there was anything very dreadful in +Dresden,” I interposed.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck looked at me a moment. “Well, I +don’t believe <i>you</i> are a good American,” she +replied, “and I never supposed you were. You had +better go in there and talk to Mrs. Church.”</p> +<p>“Dresden is really very nice, isn’t it?” I +asked of her companion.</p> +<p>“It isn’t nice if you happen to prefer New +York,” said Miss Sophy. “Miss Church prefers +New York. Tell him you are dying to see New York; it will +make him angry,” she went on.</p> +<p>“I have no desire to make him angry,” said Aurora, +smiling.</p> +<p>“It is only Miss Ruck who can do that,” I +rejoined. “Have you been a long time in +Europe?”</p> +<p>“Always.”</p> +<p>“I call that wicked!” Miss Sophy declared.</p> +<p>“You might be in a worse place,” I +continued. “I find Europe very +interesting.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck gave a little laugh. “I was saying that +you wanted to pass for a European.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I want to pass for a Dalmatian.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck looked at me a moment. “Well, you had +better not come home,” she said. “No one will +speak to you.”</p> +<p>“Were you born in these countries?” I asked of her +companion.</p> +<p>“Oh, no; I came to Europe when I was a small +child. But I remember America a little, and it seems +delightful.”</p> +<p>“Wait till you see it again. It’s just too +lovely,” said Miss Sophy.</p> +<p>“It’s the grandest country in the world,” I +added.</p> +<p>Miss Ruck began to toss her head. “Come away, my +dear,” she said. “If there’s a creature I +despise it’s a man that tries to say funny things about his +own country.”</p> +<p>“Don’t you think one can be tired of +Europe?” Aurora asked, lingering.</p> +<p>“Possibly—after many years.”</p> +<p>“Father was tired of it after three weeks,” said +Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“I have been here sixteen years,” her friend went +on, looking at me with a charming intentness, as if she had a +purpose in speaking. “It used to be for my +education. I don’t know what it’s for +now.”</p> +<p>“She’s beautifully educated,” said Miss +Ruck. “She knows four languages.”</p> +<p>“I am not very sure that I know English.”</p> +<p>“You should go to Boston!” cried Miss Sophy. +“They speak splendidly in Boston.”</p> +<p>“C’est mon rêve,” said Aurora, still +looking at me.</p> +<p>“Have you been all over Europe,” I +asked—“in all the different countries?”</p> +<p>She hesitated a moment. “Everywhere that +there’s a <i>pension</i>. Mamma is devoted to +<i>pensions</i>. We have lived, at one time or another, in +every <i>pension</i> in Europe.”</p> +<p>“Well, I should think you had seen about enough,” +said Miss Ruck.</p> +<p>“It’s a delightful way of seeing Europe,” +Aurora rejoined, with her brilliant smile. “You may +imagine how it has attached me to the different countries. +I have such charming souvenirs! There is a <i>pension</i> +awaiting us now at Dresden,—eight francs a day, without +wine. That’s rather dear. Mamma means to make +them give us wine. Mamma is a great authority on +<i>pensions</i>; she is known, that way, all over Europe. +Last winter we were in Italy, and she discovered one at +Piacenza,—four francs a day. We made +economies.”</p> +<p>“Your mother doesn’t seem to mingle much,” +observed Miss Ruck, glancing through the window at the scholastic +attitude of Mrs. Church.</p> +<p>“No, she doesn’t mingle, except in the native +society. Though she lives in <i>pensions</i>, she detests +them.”</p> +<p>“Why does she live in them, then?” asked Miss +Sophy, rather resentfully.</p> +<p>“Oh, because we are so poor; it’s the cheapest way +to live. We have tried having a cook, but the cook always +steals. Mamma used to set me to watch her; that’s the +way I passed my <i>jeunesse</i>—my <i>belle +jeunesse</i>. We are frightfully poor,” the young +girl went on, with the same strange frankness—a curious +mixture of girlish grace and conscious cynicism. +“Nous n’avons pas le sou. That’s one of +the reasons we don’t go back to America; mamma says we +can’t afford to live there.”</p> +<p>“Well, any one can see that you’re an American +girl,” Miss Ruck remarked, in a consolatory manner. +“I can tell an American girl a mile off. You’ve +got the American style.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid I haven’t the American +<i>toilette</i>,” said Aurora, looking at the other’s +superior splendour.</p> +<p>“Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see +that.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Aurora, with a laugh, “my dress +was cut in France—at Avranches.”</p> +<p>“Well, you’ve got a lovely figure, any way,” +pursued her companion.</p> +<p>“Ah,” said the young girl, “at Avranches, +too, my figure was admired.” And she looked at me +askance, with a certain coquetry. But I was an innocent +youth, and I only looked back at her, wondering. She was a +great deal nicer than Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck would not have +said that. “I try to be like an American girl,” +she continued; “I do my best, though mamma doesn’t at +all encourage it. I am very patriotic. I try to copy +them, though mamma has brought me up <i>à la +française</i>; that is, as much as one can in +<i>pensions</i>. For instance, I have never been out of the +house without mamma; oh, never, never. But sometimes I +despair; American girls are so wonderfully frank. I +can’t be frank, like that. I am always afraid. +But I do what I can, as you see. Excusez du peu!”</p> +<p>I thought this young lady at least as outspoken as most of her +unexpatriated sisters; there was something almost comical in her +despondency. But she had by no means caught, as it seemed +to me, the American tone. Whatever her tone was, however, +it had a fascination; there was something dainty about it, and +yet it was decidedly audacious.</p> +<p>The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I +enjoyed their society until M. Pigeonneau’s festival came +to an end.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> +<p>Mr. Ruck did not take his departure for Appenzell on the +morrow, in spite of the eagerness to witness such an event which +he had attributed to Mrs. Church. He continued, on the +contrary, for many days after, to hang about the garden, to +wander up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in +desultory conversation with his fellow-boarders, and to endeavour +to assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the +American journals. But on the morrow I had the honour of +making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance. She came into the +salon, after the midday breakfast, with her German octavo under +her arm, and she appealed to me for assistance in selecting a +quiet corner.</p> +<p>“Would you very kindly,” she said, “move +that large fauteuil a little more this way? Not the +largest; the one with the little cushion. The fauteuils +here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for +another. Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that +will do. Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired, +after she had seated herself. “If not, I should like +to have some conversation with you. It is some time since I +have met a young American of your—what shall I call +it?—your affiliations. I have learned your name from +Madame Beaurepas; I think I used to know some of your +people. I don’t know what has become of all my +friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, +but now I meet no one I know. Don’t you think there +is a great difference between the people one meets and the people +one would like to meet? Fortunately, sometimes,” +added my interlocutress graciously, “it’s quite the +same. I suppose you are a specimen, a favourable +specimen,” she went on, “of young America. Tell +me, now, what is young America thinking of in these days of +ours? What are its feelings, its opinions, its +aspirations? What is its <i>ideal</i>?” I had +seated myself near Mrs. Church, and she had pointed this +interrogation with the gaze of her bright little eyes. I +felt it embarrassing to be treated as a favourable specimen of +young America, and to be expected to answer for the great +republic. Observing my hesitation, Mrs. Church clasped her +hands on the open page of her book and gave an intense, +melancholy smile. “<i>Has</i> it an ideal?” she +softly asked. “Well, we must talk of this,” she +went on, without insisting. “Speak, for the present, +for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe with any +special design?”</p> +<p>“Nothing to boast of,” I said. “I am +studying a little.”</p> +<p>“Ah, I am glad to hear that. You are gathering up +a little European culture; that’s what we lack, you know, +at home. No individual can do much, of coarse. But +you must not be discouraged; every little counts.”</p> +<p>“I see that you, at least, are doing your part,” I +rejoined gallantly, dropping my eyes on my companion’s +learned volume.</p> +<p>“Yes, I frankly admit that I am fond of study. +There is no one, after all, like the Germans. That is, for +facts. For opinions I by no means always go with +them. I form my opinions myself. I am sorry to say, +however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I can hardly +pretend to diffuse my acquisitions. I am afraid I am sadly +selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I +frankly confess it—to the class of absentees.”</p> +<p>“I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, +“of making the acquaintance of your daughter. She +told me you had been a long time in Europe.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church smiled benignantly. “Can one ever be +too long? We shall never leave it.”</p> +<p>“Your daughter won’t like that,” I said, +smiling too.</p> +<p>“Has she been taking you into her confidence? She +is a more sensible young lady than she sometimes appears. I +have taken great pains with her; she is really—I may be +permitted to say it—superbly educated.”</p> +<p>“She seemed to me a very charming girl,” I +rejoined. “And I learned that she speaks four +languages.”</p> +<p>“It is not only that,” said Mrs. Church, in a tone +which suggested that this might be a very superficial species of +culture. “She has made what we call <i>de fortes +études</i>—such as I suppose you are making +now. She is familiar with the results of modern science; +she keeps pace with the new historical school.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “she has gone much farther +than I!”</p> +<p>“You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you force me, +therefore, to mention the fact that I am able to speak of such +matters with a certain intelligence.”</p> +<p>“That is very evident,” I said. “But +your daughter thinks you ought to take her home.” I +began to fear, as soon as I had uttered these words, that they +savoured of treachery to the young lady, but I was reassured by +seeing that they produced on her mother’s placid +countenance no symptom whatever of irritation.</p> +<p>“My daughter has her little theories,” Mrs. Church +observed; “she has, I may say, her illusions. And +what wonder! What would youth be without its illusions? +Aurora has a theory that she would be happier in New York, in +Boston, in Philadelphia, than in one of the charming old cities +in which our lot is cast. But she is mistaken, that is +all. We must allow our children their illusions, must we +not? But we must watch over them.”</p> +<p>Although she herself seemed proof against discomposure, I +found something vaguely irritating in her soft, sweet +positiveness.</p> +<p>“American cities,” I said, “are the paradise +of young girls.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean,” asked Mrs. Church, “that the +young girls who come from those places are angels?”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I said, resolutely.</p> +<p>“This young lady—what is her odd name?—with +whom my daughter has formed a somewhat precipitate acquaintance: +is Miss Ruck an angel? But I won’t force you to say +anything uncivil. It would be too cruel to make a single +exception.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said I, “at any rate, in America +young girls have an easier lot. They have much more +liberty.”</p> +<p>My companion laid her hand for an instant on my arm. +“My dear young friend, I know America, I know the +conditions of life there, so well. There is perhaps no +subject on which I have reflected more than on our national +idiosyncrasies.”</p> +<p>“I am afraid you don’t approve of them,” +said I, a little brutally.</p> +<p>Brutal indeed my proposition was, and Mrs. Church was not +prepared to assent to it in this rough shape. She dropped +her eyes on her book, with an air of acute meditation. +Then, raising them, “We are very crude,” she softly +observed—“we are very crude.” Lest even +this delicately-uttered statement should seem to savour of the +vice that she deprecated, she went on to explain. +“There are two classes of minds, you know—those that +hold back, and those that push forward. My daughter and I +are not pushers; we move with little steps. We like the +old, trodden paths; we like the old, old world.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like; there +is a great virtue in that.”</p> +<p>“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the +opportunities of Europe; we like the <i>rest</i>. There is +so much in that, you know. The world seems to me to be +hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing where it +is going. ‘Whither?’ I often ask, in my little +quiet way. But I have yet to learn that any one can tell +me.”</p> +<p>“You’re a great conservative,” I observed, +while I wondered whether I myself could answer this inquiry.</p> +<p>Mrs. Church gave me a smile which was equivalent to a +confession. “I wish to retain a +<i>little</i>—just a little. Surely, we have done so +much, we might rest a while; we might pause. That is all my +feeling—just to stop a little, to wait! I have seen so many +changes. I wish to draw in, to draw in—to hold back, +to hold back.”</p> +<p>“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I +answered, laughing and getting up. I got up, not by way of +terminating our interview, for I perceived Mrs. Church’s +exposition of her views to be by no means complete, but in order +to offer a chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew +near. She thanked me and remained standing, but without at +first, as I noticed, meeting her mother’s eye.</p> +<p>“You have been engaged with your new acquaintance, my +dear?” this lady inquired.</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma, dear,” said the young girl, +gently.</p> +<p>“Do you find her very edifying?”</p> +<p>Aurora was silent a moment; then she looked at her +mother. “I don’t know, mamma; she is very +fresh.”</p> +<p>I ventured to indulge in a respectful laugh. “Your +mother has another word for that. But I must not,” I +added, “be crude.”</p> +<p>“Ah, vous m’en voulez?” inquired Mrs. +Church. “And yet I can’t pretend I said it in +jest. I feel it too much. We have been having a +little social discussion,” she said to her daughter. +“There is still so much to be said.” “And +I wish,” she continued, turning to me, “that I could +give you our point of view. Don’t you wish, Aurora, +that we could give him our point of view?”</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma,” said Aurora.</p> +<p>“We consider ourselves very fortunate in our point of +view, don’t we, dearest?” mamma demanded.</p> +<p>“Very fortunate, indeed, mamma.”</p> +<p>“You see we have acquired an insight into European +life,” the elder lady pursued. “We have our +place at many a European fireside. We find so much to +esteem—so much to enjoy. Do we not, my +daughter?”</p> +<p>“So very much, mamma,” the young girl went on, +with a sort of inscrutable submissiveness. I wondered at +it; it offered so strange a contrast to the mocking freedom of +her tone the night before; but while I wondered I was careful not +to let my perplexity take precedence of my good manners.</p> +<p>“I don’t know what you ladies may have found at +European firesides,” I said, “but there can be very +little doubt what you have left there.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church got up, to acknowledge my compliment. +“We have spent some charming hours. And that reminds +me that we have just now such an occasion in prospect. We +are to call upon some Genevese friends—the family of the +Pasteur Galopin. They are to go with us to the old library +at the Hôtel de Ville, where there are some very +interesting documents of the period of the Reformation; we are +promised a glimpse of some manuscripts of poor Servetus, the +antagonist and victim, you know, of Calvin. Here, of +course, one can only speak of Calvin under one’s breath, +but some day, when we are more private,” and Mrs. Church +looked round the room, “I will give you my view of +him. I think it has a touch of originality. Aurora is +familiar with, are you not, my daughter, familiar with my view of +Calvin?”</p> +<p>“Yes, mamma,” said Aurora, with docility, while +the two ladies went to prepare for their visit to the Pasteur +Galopin.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2> +<p>“She has demanded a new lamp; I told you she +would!” This communication was made me by Madame +Beaurepas a couple of days later. “And she has asked +for a new <i>tapis de lit</i>, and she has requested me to +provide Célestine with a pair of light shoes. I told +her that, as a general thing, cooks are not shod with +satin. That poor Célestine!”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Church may be exacting,” I said, “but +she is a clever little woman.”</p> +<p>“A lady who pays but five francs and a half +shouldn’t be too clever. C’est +déplacé. I don’t like the +type.”</p> +<p>“What type do you call Mrs. Church’s?”</p> +<p>“Mon Dieu,” said Madame Beaurepas, +“c’est une de ces mamans comme vous en avez, qui +promènent leur fille.”</p> +<p>“She is trying to marry her daughter? I +don’t think she’s of that sort.”</p> +<p>But Madame Beaurepas shrewdly held to her idea. +“She is trying it in her own way; she does it very +quietly. She doesn’t want an American; she wants a +foreigner. And she wants a <i>mari +sérieux</i>. But she is travelling over Europe in +search of one. She would like a magistrate.”</p> +<p>“A magistrate?”</p> +<p>“A <i>gros bonnet</i> of some kind; a professor or a +deputy.”</p> +<p>“I am very sorry for the poor girl,” I said, +laughing.</p> +<p>“You needn’t pity her too much; she’s a sly +thing.”</p> +<p>“Ah, for that, no!” I exclaimed. +“She’s a charming girl.”</p> +<p>Madame Beaurepas gave an elderly grin. “She has +hooked you, eh? But the mother won’t have +you.”</p> +<p>I developed my idea, without heeding this insinuation. +“She’s a charming girl, but she is a little +odd. It’s a necessity of her position. She is +less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend to +be. That’s in self-defence; it’s to make her +life possible.”</p> +<p>“She wishes to get away from her mother,” +continued Madame Beaurepas. “She wishes to <i>courir +les champs</i>.”</p> +<p>“She wishes to go to America, her native +country.”</p> +<p>“Precisely. And she will certainly go.”</p> +<p>“I hope so!” I rejoined.</p> +<p>“Some fine morning—or evening—she will go +off with a young man; probably with a young American.”</p> +<p>“Allons donc!” said I, with disgust.</p> +<p>“That will be quite America enough,” pursued my +cynical hostess. “I have kept a boarding-house for +forty years. I have seen that type.”</p> +<p>“Have such things as that happened <i>chez +vous</i>?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Everything has happened <i>chez moi</i>. But +nothing has happened more than once. Therefore this +won’t happen here. It will be at the next place they +go to, or the next. Besides, here there is no young +American <i>pour la partie</i>—none except you, +Monsieur. You are susceptible, but you are too +reasonable.”</p> +<p>“It’s lucky for you I am reasonable,” I +answered. “It’s thanks to that fact that you +escape a scolding!”</p> +<p>One morning, about this time, instead of coming back to +breakfast at the <i>pension</i>, after my lectures at the +Academy, I went to partake of this meal with a fellow-student, at +an ancient eating-house in the collegiate quarter. On +separating from my friend, I took my way along that charming +public walk known in Geneva as the Treille, a shady terrace, of +immense elevation, overhanging a portion of the lower town. +There are spreading trees and well-worn benches, and over the +tiles and chimneys of the <i>ville basse</i> there is a view of +the snow-crested Alps. On the other side, as you turn your +back to the view, the promenade is overlooked by a row of tall, +sober-faced <i>hôtels</i>, the dwellings of the local +aristocracy. I was very fond of the place, and often +resorted to it to stimulate my sense of the picturesque. +Presently, as I lingered there on this occasion, I became aware +that a gentleman was seated not far from where I stood, with his +back to the Alpine chain, which this morning was brilliant and +distinct, and a newspaper, unfolded, in his lap. He was not +reading, however; he was staring before him in gloomy +contemplation. I don’t know whether I recognised +first the newspaper or its proprietor; one, in either case, would +have helped me to identify the other. One was the New +<i>York Herald</i>; the other, of course, was Mr. Ruck. As +I drew nearer, he transferred his eyes from the stony, +high-featured masks of the gray old houses on the other side of +the terrace, and I knew by the expression of his face just how he +had been feeling about these distinguished abodes. He had +made up his mind that their proprietors were a dusky, +narrow-minded, unsociable company; plunging their roots into a +superfluous past. I endeavoured, therefore, as I sat down +beside him, to suggest something more impersonal.</p> +<p>“That’s a beautiful view of the Alps,” I +observed.</p> +<p>“Yes,” said Mr. Ruck, without moving, +“I’ve examined it. Fine thing, in its +way—fine thing. Beauties of nature—that sort of +thing. We came up on purpose to look at it.”</p> +<p>“Your ladies, then, have been with you?”</p> +<p>“Yes; they are just walking round. They’re +awfully restless. They keep saying I’m restless, but +I’m as quiet as a sleeping child to them. It +takes,” he added in a moment, drily, “the form of +shopping.”</p> +<p>“Are they shopping now?”</p> +<p>“Well, if they ain’t, they’re trying +to. They told me to sit here a while, and they’d just +walk round. I generally know what that means. But +that’s the principal interest for ladies,” he added, +retracting his irony. “We thought we’d come up +here and see the cathedral; Mrs. Church seemed to think it a dead +loss that we shouldn’t see the cathedral, especially as we +hadn’t seen many yet. And I had to come up to the +banker’s any way. Well, we certainly saw the +cathedral. I don’t know as we are any the better for +it, and I don’t know as I should know it again. But +we saw it, any way. I don’t know as I should want to +go there regularly; but I suppose it will give us, in +conversation, a kind of hold on Mrs. Church, eh? I guess we +want something of that kind. Well,” Mr. Ruck +continued, “I stepped in at the banker’s to see if +there wasn’t something, and they handed me out a +Herald.”</p> +<p>“I hope the Herald is full of good news,” I +said.</p> +<p>“Can’t say it is. D—d bad +news.”</p> +<p>“Political,” I inquired, “or +commercial?”</p> +<p>“Oh, hang politics! It’s business, +sir. There ain’t any business. It’s all +gone to,”—and Mr. Ruck became profane. +“Nine failures in one day. What do you say-to +that?”</p> +<p>“I hope they haven’t injured you,” I +said.</p> +<p>“Well, they haven’t helped me much. So many +houses on fire, that’s all. If they happen to take +place in your own street, they don’t increase the value of +your property. When mine catches, I suppose they’ll +write and tell me—one of these days, when they’ve got +nothing else to do. I didn’t get a blessed letter +this morning; I suppose they think I’m having such a good +time over here it’s a pity to disturb me. If I could +attend to business for about half an hour, I’d find out +something. But I can’t, and it’s no use +talking. The state of my health was never so unsatisfactory +as it was about five o’clock this morning.”</p> +<p>“I am very sorry to hear that,” I said, “and +I recommend you strongly not to think of business.”</p> +<p>“I don’t,” Mr. Ruck replied. +“I’m thinking of cathedrals; I’m thinking of +the beauties of nature. Come,” he went on, turning +round on the bench and leaning his elbow on the parapet, +“I’ll think of those mountains over there; they +<i>are</i> pretty, certainly. Can’t you get over +there?”</p> +<p>“Over where?”</p> +<p>“Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train +right up?”</p> +<p>“You can go to Chamouni,” I said. “You +can go to Grindelwald and Zermatt and fifty other places. +You can’t go by rail, but you can drive.”</p> +<p>“All right, we’ll drive—and not in a +one-horse concern, either. Yes, Chamouni is one of the +places we put down. I hope there are a few nice shops in +Chamouni.” Mr. Ruck spoke with a certain quickened +emphasis, and in a tone more explicitly humorous than he commonly +employed. I thought he was excited, and yet he had not the +appearance of excitement. He looked like a man who has +simply taken, in the face of disaster, a sudden, somewhat +imaginative, resolution not to “worry.” He +presently twisted himself about on his bench again and began to +watch for his companions. “Well, they <i>are</i> +walking round,” he resumed; “I guess they’ve +hit on something, somewhere. And they’ve got a +carriage waiting outside of that archway too. They seem to +do a big business in archways here, don’t they. They +like to have a carriage to carry home the things—those +ladies of mine. Then they’re sure they’ve got +them.” The ladies, after this, to do them justice, +were not very long in appearing. They came toward us, from +under the archway to which Mr. Ruck had somewhat invidiously +alluded, slowly and with a rather exhausted step and +expression. My companion looked at them a moment, as they +advanced. “They’re tired,” he said +softly. “When they’re tired, like that, +it’s very expensive.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Mrs. Ruck, “I’m glad +you’ve had some company.” Her husband looked at +her, in silence, through narrowed eyelids, and I suspected that +this gracious observation on the lady’s part was prompted +by a restless conscience.</p> +<p>Miss Sophy glanced at me with her little straightforward air +of defiance. “It would have been more proper if +<i>we</i> had had the company. Why didn’t you come +after us, instead of sitting there?” she asked of Mr. +Ruck’s companion.</p> +<p>“I was told by your father,” I explained, +“that you were engaged in sacred rites.” Miss +Ruck was not gracious, though I doubt whether it was because her +conscience was better than her mother’s.</p> +<p>“Well, for a gentleman there is nothing so sacred as +ladies’ society,” replied Miss Ruck, in the manner of +a person accustomed to giving neat retorts.</p> +<p>“I suppose you refer to the Cathedral,” said her +mother. “Well, I must say, we didn’t go back +there. I don’t know what it may be of a Sunday, but +it gave me a chill.”</p> +<p>“We discovered the loveliest little lace-shop,” +observed the young girl, with a serenity that was superior to +bravado.</p> +<p>Her father looked at her a while; then turned about again, +leaning on the parapet, and gazed away at the +“hills.”</p> +<p>“Well, it was certainly cheap,” said Mrs. Ruck, +also contemplating the Alps.</p> +<p>“We are going to Chamouni,” said her +husband. “You haven’t any occasion for lace at +Chamouni.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m glad to hear you have decided to go +somewhere,” rejoined his wife. “I don’t +want to be a fixture at a boarding-house.”</p> +<p>“You can wear lace anywhere,” said Miss Ruck, +“if you pat it on right. That’s the great +thing, with lace. I don’t think they know how to wear +lace in Europe. I know how I mean to wear mine; but I mean +to keep it till I get home.”</p> +<p>Her father transferred his melancholy gaze to her +elaborately-appointed little person; there was a great deal of +very new-looking detail in Miss Ruck’s appearance. +Then, in a tone of voice quite out of consonance with his facial +despondency, “Have you purchased a great deal?” he +inquired.</p> +<p>“I have purchased enough for you to make a fuss +about.”</p> +<p>“He can’t make a fuss about that,” said Mrs. +Ruck.</p> +<p>“Well, you’ll see!” declared the young girl +with a little sharp laugh.</p> +<p>But her father went on, in the same tone: “Have you got +it in your pocket? Why don’t you put it on—why +don’t you hang it round you?”</p> +<p>“I’ll hang it round <i>you</i>, if you don’t +look out!” cried Miss Sophy.</p> +<p>“Don’t you want to show it to this +gentleman?” Mr. Ruck continued.</p> +<p>“Mercy, how you do talk about that lace!” said his +wife.</p> +<p>“Well, I want to be lively. There’s every +reason for it; we’re going to Chamouni.”</p> +<p>“You’re restless; that’s what’s the +matter with you.” And Mrs. Ruck got up.</p> +<p>“No, I ain’t,” said her husband. +“I never felt so quiet; I feel as peaceful as a little +child.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Ruck, who had no sense whatever of humour, looked at her +daughter and at me. “Well, I hope you’ll +improve,” she said.</p> +<p>“Send in the bills,” Mr. Ruck went on, rising to +his feet. “Don’t hesitate, Sophy. I +don’t care what you do now. In for a penny, in for a +pound.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck joined her mother, with a little toss of her head, +and we followed the ladies to the carriage. “In your +place,” said Miss Sophy to her father, “I +wouldn’t talk so much about pennies and pounds before +strangers.”</p> +<p>Poor Mr. Ruck appeared to feel the force of this observation, +which, in the consciousness of a man who had never been +“mean,” could hardly fail to strike a responsive +chord. He coloured a little, and he was silent; his +companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of which was +adorned with a large parcel. Mr. Ruck gave the parcel a +little poke with his umbrella, and then, turning to me with a +rather grimly penitential smile, “After all,” he +said, “for the ladies that’s the principal +interest.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> +<p>Old M. Pigeonneau had more than once proposed to me to take a +walk, but I had hitherto been unable to respond to so alluring an +invitation. It befell, however, one afternoon, that I +perceived him going forth upon a desultory stroll, with a certain +lonesomeness of demeanour that attracted my sympathy. I +hastily overtook him, and passed my hand into his venerable arm, +a proceeding which produced in the good old man so jovial a sense +of comradeship that he ardently proposed we should bend our steps +to the English Garden; no locality less festive was worthy of the +occasion. To the English Garden, accordingly, we went; it +lay beyond the bridge, beside the lake. It was very pretty +and very animated; there was a band playing in the middle, and a +considerable number of persons sitting under the small trees, on +benches and little chairs, or strolling beside the blue +water. We joined the strollers, we observed our companions, +and conversed on obvious topics. Some of these last, of +course, were the pretty women who embellished the scene, and who, +in the light of M. Pigeonneau’s comprehensive criticism, +appeared surprisingly numerous. He seemed bent upon our +making up our minds as to which was the prettiest, and as this +was an innocent game I consented to play at it.</p> +<p>Suddenly M. Pigeonneau stopped, pressing my arm with the +liveliest emotion. “La voilà, la voilà, +the prettiest!” he quickly murmured, “coming toward +us, in a blue dress, with the other.” It was at the +other I was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our +interesting fellow-pensioner, the daughter of a vigilant +mother. M. Pigeonneau, meanwhile, had redoubled his +exclamations; he had recognised Miss Sophy Ruck. “Oh, +la belle rencontre, nos aimables convives; the prettiest girl in +the world, in effect!”</p> +<p>We immediately greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like +ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene.</p> +<p>“I was citing you with admiration to my friend even +before I had recognised you,” said M. Pigeonneau to Miss +Ruck.</p> +<p>“I don’t believe in French compliments,” +remarked this young lady, presenting her back to the smiling old +man.</p> +<p>“Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?” I asked of +her companion. “You had better accept of M. +Pigeonneau’s gallant protection, and of mine.”</p> +<p>Aurora Church had taken her hand out of Miss Ruck’s arm; +she looked at me, smiling, with her head a little inclined, +while, upon her shoulder, she made her open parasol +revolve. “Which is most improper—to walk alone +or to walk with gentlemen? I wish to do what is most +improper.”</p> +<p>“What mysterious logic governs your conduct?” I +inquired.</p> +<p>“He thinks you can’t understand him when he talks +like that,” said Miss Ruck. “But I do +understand you, always!”</p> +<p>“So I have always ventured to hope, my dear Miss +Ruck.”</p> +<p>“Well, if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be much +loss,” rejoined this young lady.</p> +<p>“Allons, en marche!” cried M. Pigeonneau, smiling +still, and undiscouraged by her inhumanity. “Let as +make together the tour of the garden.” And he imposed +his society upon Miss Ruck with a respectful, elderly grace which +was evidently unable to see anything in her reluctance but +modesty, and was sublimely conscious of a mission to place +modesty at its ease. This ill-assorted couple walked in +front, while Aurora Church and I strolled along together.</p> +<p>“I am sure this is more improper,” said my +companion; “this is delightfully improper. I +don’t say that as a compliment to you,” she +added. “I would say it to any man, no matter how +stupid.”</p> +<p>“Oh, I am very stupid,” I answered, “but +this doesn’t seem to me wrong.”</p> +<p>“Not for you, no; only for me. There is nothing +that a man can do that is wrong, is there? <i>En +morale</i>, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can steal; but I +think there is nothing else, is there?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know. One doesn’t know those +things until after one has done them. Then one is +enlightened.”</p> +<p>“And you mean that you have never been +enlightened? You make yourself out very good.”</p> +<p>“That is better than making one’s self out bad, as +you do.”</p> +<p>The young girl glanced at me a moment, and then, with her +charming smile, “That’s one of the consequences of a +false position.”</p> +<p>“Is your position false?” I inquired, smiling too +at this large formula.</p> +<p>“Distinctly so.”</p> +<p>“In what way?”</p> +<p>“Oh, in every way. For instance, I have to pretend +to be a <i>jeune fille</i>. I am not a jeune fille; no +American girl is a jeune fille; an American girl is an +intelligent, responsible creature. I have to pretend to be +very innocent, but I am not very innocent.”</p> +<p>“You don’t pretend to be very innocent; you +pretend to be—what shall I call it?—very +wise.”</p> +<p>“That’s no pretence. I am wise.”</p> +<p>“You are not an American girl,” I ventured to +observe.</p> +<p>My companion almost stopped, looking at me; there was a little +flush in her cheek. “Voilà!” she +said. “There’s my false position. I want +to be an American girl, and I’m not.”</p> +<p>“Do you want me to tell you?” I went on. +“An American girl wouldn’t talk as you are talking +now.”</p> +<p>“Please tell me,” said Aurora Church, with +expressive eagerness. “How would she talk?”</p> +<p>“I can’t tell you all the things an American girl +would say, but I think I can tell you the things she +wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t reason out her +conduct, as you seem to me to do.”</p> +<p>Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. “I +see. She would be simpler. To do very simple things +that are not at all simple—that is the American +girl!”</p> +<p>I permitted myself a small explosion of hilarity. +“I don’t know whether you are a French girl, or what +you are,” I said, “but you are very witty.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you mean that I strike false notes!” cried +Aurora Church, sadly. “That’s just what I want +to avoid. I wish you would always tell me.”</p> +<p>The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, +in front of us, had evidently not become a close one. The +young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question: +“Don’t you want some ice-cream?”</p> +<p>“<i>She</i> doesn’t strike false notes,” I +murmured.</p> +<p>There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a +café, and at which the delicacies procurable at such an +establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the +little green tables and chairs which were set out on the gravel; +M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded +the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a +nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next to +Aurora Church; our companions were on the other side of the +table.</p> +<p>My neighbour was delighted with our situation. +“This is best of all,” she said. “I never +believed I should come to a café with two strange men! +Now, you can’t persuade me this isn’t +wrong.”</p> +<p>“To make it wrong we ought to see your mother coming +down that path.”</p> +<p>“Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” said the +young girl, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade +the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea +of a moment before: “You must promise to tell me—to +warn me in some way—whenever I strike a false note. +You must give a little cough, like that—ahem!”</p> +<p>“You will keep me very busy, and people will think I am +in a consumption.”</p> +<p>“<i>Voyons</i>,” she continued, “why have +you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? +Why haven’t you been ‘attentive?’ +That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss +Ruck calls it.”</p> +<p>I assured myself that our companions were out of earshot, and +that Miss Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla +cream. “Because you are always entwined with that +young lady. There is no getting near you.”</p> +<p>Aurora looked at her friend while the latter devoted herself +to her ice. “You wonder why I like her so much, I +suppose. So does mamma; elle s’y perd. I +don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas +folle. But she gives me information; she tells me about +America. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing +anything about it, and I am all the more curious. And then +Miss Ruck is very fresh.”</p> +<p>“I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,” I said, +“but in future, when you want information, I recommend you +to come to me for it.”</p> +<p>“Our friend offers to take me to America; she invites me +to go back with her, to stay with her. You couldn’t +do that, could you?” And the young girl looked at me a +moment. “<i>Bon</i>, a false note I can see it by +your face; you remind me of a <i>maître de +piano</i>.”</p> +<p>“You overdo the character—the poor American +girl,” I said. “Are you going to stay with that +delightful family?”</p> +<p>“I will go and stay with any one that will take me or +ask me. It’s a real <i>nostalgie</i>. She says +that in New York—in Thirty-Seventh Street—I should +have the most lovely time.”</p> +<p>“I have no doubt you would enjoy it.”</p> +<p>“Absolute liberty to begin with.”</p> +<p>“It seems to me you have a certain liberty here,” +I rejoined.</p> +<p>“Ah, <i>this</i>? Oh, I shall pay for this. +I shall be punished by mamma, and I shall be lectured by Madame +Galopin.”</p> +<p>“The wife of the pasteur?”</p> +<p>“His <i>digne épouse</i>. Madame Galopin, +for mamma, is the incarnation of European opinion. +That’s what vexes me with mamma, her thinking so much of +people like Madame Galopin. Going to see Madame +Galopin—mamma calls that being in European society. +European society! I’m so sick of that expression; I +have heard it since I was six years old. Who is Madame +Galopin—who thinks anything of her here? She is +nobody; she is perfectly third-rate. If I like America +better than mamma, I also know Europe better.”</p> +<p>“But your mother, certainly,” I objected, a trifle +timidly, for my young lady was excited, and had a charming little +passion in her eye—“your mother has a great many +social relations all over the Continent.”</p> +<p>“She thinks so, but half the people don’t care for +us. They are not so good as we, and they know +it—I’ll do them that justice—and they wonder +why we should care for them. When we are polite to them, +they think the less of us; there are plenty of people like +that. Mamma thinks so much of them simply because they are +foreigners. If I could tell you all the dull, stupid, +second-rate people I have had to talk to, for no better reason +than that they were <i>de leur pays</i>!—Germans, French, +Italians, Turks, everything. When I complain, mamma always +says that at any rate it’s practice in the language. +And she makes so much of the English, too; I don’t know +what that’s practice in.”</p> +<p>Before I had time to suggest an hypothesis, as regards this +latter point, I saw something that made me rise, with a certain +solemnity, from my chair. This was nothing less than the +neat little figure of Mrs. Church—a perfect model of the +<i>femme comme il faut</i>—approaching our table with an +impatient step, and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by +the pre-eminent form of Mr. Ruck. She had evidently come in +quest of her daughter, and if she had commanded this +gentleman’s attendance, it had been on no softer ground +than that of his unenvied paternity to her guilty child’s +accomplice. My movement had given the alarm, and Aurora +Church and M. Pigeonneau got up; Miss Ruck alone did not, in the +local phrase, derange herself. Mrs. Church, beneath her +modest little bonnet, looked very serious, but not at all +fluttered; she came straight to her daughter, who received her +with a smile, and then she looked all round at the rest of us, +very fixedly and tranquilly, without bowing. I must do both +these ladies the justice to mention that neither of them made the +least little “scene.”</p> +<p>“I have come for you, dearest,” said the +mother.</p> +<p>“Yes, dear mamma.”</p> +<p>“Come for you—come for you,” Mrs. Church +repeated, looking down at the relics of our little feast. +“I was obliged to ask Mr. Ruck’s assistance. I +was puzzled; I thought a long time.”</p> +<p>“Well, Mrs. Church, I was glad to see you puzzled once +in your life!” said Mr. Ruck, with friendly jocosity. +“But you came pretty straight for all that. I had +hard work to keep up with you.”</p> +<p>“We will take a cab, Aurora,” Mrs. Church went on, +without heeding this pleasantry—“a closed one. +Come, my daughter.”</p> +<p>“Yes, dear mamma.” The young girl was +blushing, yet she was still smiling; she looked round at us all, +and, as her eyes met mine, I thought she was beautiful. +“Good-bye,” she said to us. “I have had a +<i>lovely time</i>.”</p> +<p>“We must not linger,” said her mother; “it +is five o’clock. We are to dine, you know, with +Madame Galopin.”</p> +<p>“I had quite forgotten,” Aurora declared. +“That will be charming.”</p> +<p>“Do you want me to assist you to carry her back, ma +am?” asked Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>Mrs. Church hesitated a moment, with her serene little +gaze. “Do you prefer, then, to leave your daughter to +finish the evening with these gentlemen?”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck pushed back his hat and scratched the top of his +head. “Well, I don’t know. How would you +like that, Sophy?”</p> +<p>“Well, I never!” exclaimed Sophy, as Mrs. Church +marched off with her daughter.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> +<p>I had half expected that Mrs. Church would make me feel the +weight of her disapproval of my own share in that little act of +revelry in the English Garden. But she maintained her claim +to being a highly reasonable woman—I could not but admire +the justice of this pretension—by recognising my +irresponsibility. I had taken her daughter as I found her, +which was, according to Mrs. Church’s view, in a very +equivocal position. The natural instinct of a young man, in +such a situation, is not to protest but to profit; and it was +clear to Mrs. Church that I had had nothing to do with Miss +Aurora’s appearing in public under the insufficient +chaperonage of Miss Ruck. Besides, she liked to converse, +and she apparently did me the honour to believe that of all the +members of the Pension Beaurepas I had the most cultivated +understanding. I found her in the salon a couple of +evenings after the incident I have just narrated, and I +approached her with a view of making my peace with her, if this +should prove necessary. But Mrs. Church was as gracious as +I could have desired; she put her marker into her book, and +folded her plump little hands on the cover. She made no +specific allusion to the English Garden; she embarked, rather, +upon those general considerations in which her refined intellect +was so much at home.</p> +<p>“Always at your studies, Mrs. Church,” I ventured +to observe.</p> +<p>“Que voulez-vous? To say studies is to say too +much; one doesn’t study in the parlour of a +boarding-house. But I do what I can; I have always done +what I can. That is all I have ever claimed.”</p> +<p>“No one can do more, and you seem to have done a great +deal.”</p> +<p>“Do you know my secret?” she asked, with an air of +brightening confidence. And she paused a moment before she +imparted her secret—“To care only for the +<i>best</i>! To do the best, to know the best—to +have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s +what I have always done, in my quiet little way. I have +gone through Europe on my devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, +heeding, only the best. And it has not been for myself +alone; it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the +best. We are not rich, but I can say that.”</p> +<p>“She has had you, madam,” I rejoined finely.</p> +<p>“Certainly, such as I am, I have been devoted. We +have got something everywhere; a little here, a little +there. That’s the real secret—to get something +everywhere; you always can if you are devoted. Sometimes it +has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper insight into +the history of art; every little counts you know. Sometimes +it has been just a glimpse, a view, a lovely landscape, an +impression. We have always been on the look-out. +Sometimes it has been a valued friendship, a delightful social +tie.”</p> +<p>“Here comes the ‘European society,’ the poor +daughter’s bugbear,” I said to myself. +“Certainly,” I remarked aloud—I admit, rather +perversely—“if you have lived a great deal in +pensions, you must have got acquainted with lots of +people.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church dropped her eyes a moment; and then, with +considerable gravity, “I think the European pension system +in many respects remarkable, and in some satisfactory. But +of the friendships that we have formed, few have been contracted +in establishments of this kind.”</p> +<p>“I am sorry to hear that!” I said, laughing.</p> +<p>“I don’t say it for you, though I might say it for +some others. We have been interested in European +homes.”</p> +<p>“Oh, I see!”</p> +<p>“We have the <i>éntree</i> of the old Genevese +society I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr. +Ruck,” added Mrs. Church, calmly; “to that of Mrs. +Ruck and Miss Ruck—of Miss Ruck especially.”</p> +<p>“Ah, the poor Rucks haven’t any tone at +all,” I said “Don’t take them more seriously +than they take themselves.”</p> +<p>“Tell me this,” my companion rejoined, “are +they fair examples?”</p> +<p>“Examples of what?”</p> +<p>“Of our American tendencies.”</p> +<p>“‘Tendencies’ is a big word, dear lady; +tendencies are difficult to calculate. And you +shouldn’t abuse those good Rucks, who have been very kind +to your daughter. They have invited her to go and stay with +them in Thirty-Seventh Street.”</p> +<p>“Aurora has told me. It might be very +serious.”</p> +<p>“It might be very droll,” I said.</p> +<p>“To me,” declared Mrs. Church, “it is simply +terrible. I think we shall have to leave the Pension +Beaurepas. I shall go back to Madame Chamousset.”</p> +<p>“On account of the Rucks?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Pray, why don’t they go themselves? I have +given them some excellent addresses—written down the very +hours of the trains. They were going to Appenzell; I +thought it was arranged.”</p> +<p>“They talk of Chamouni now,” I said; “but +they are very helpless and undecided.”</p> +<p>“I will give them some Chamouni addresses. Mrs. +Ruck will send a <i>chaise à porteurs</i>; I will give her +the name of a man who lets them lower than you get them at the +hotels. After that they <i>must</i> go.”</p> +<p>“Well, I doubt,” I observed, “whether Mr. +Ruck will ever really be seen on the Mer de Glace—in a high +hat. He’s not like you; he doesn’t value his +European privileges. He takes no interest. He regrets +Wall Street, acutely. As his wife says, he is very +restless, but he has no curiosity about Chamouni. So you +must not depend too much on the effect of your +addresses.”</p> +<p>“Is it a frequent type?” asked Mrs. Church, with +an air of self-control.</p> +<p>“I am afraid so. Mr. Ruck is a broken-down man of +business. He is broken down in health, and I suspect he is +broken down in fortune. He has spent his whole life in +buying and selling; he knows how to do nothing else. His +wife and daughter have spent their lives, not in selling, but in +buying; and they, on their side, know how to do nothing +else. To get something in a shop that they can put on their +backs—that is their one idea; they haven’t another in +their heads. Of course they spend no end of money, and they +do it with an implacable persistence, with a mixture of audacity +and of cunning. They do it in his teeth and they do it +behind his back; the mother protects the daughter, and the +daughter eggs on the mother. Between them they are bleeding +him to death.”</p> +<p>“Ah, what a picture!” murmured Mrs. Church. +“I am afraid they are very-uncultivated.”</p> +<p>“I share your fears. They are perfectly ignorant; +they have no resources. The vision of fine clothes occupies +their whole imagination. They have not an idea—even a +worse one—to compete with it. Poor Mr. Ruck, who is +extremely good-natured and soft, seems to me a really tragic +figure. He is getting bad news every day from home; his +business is going to the dogs. He is unable to stop it; he +has to stand and watch his fortunes ebb. He has been used +to doing things in a big way, and he feels mean, if he makes a +fuss about bills. So the ladies keep sending them +in.”</p> +<p>“But haven’t they common sense? Don’t +they know they are ruining themselves?”</p> +<p>“They don’t believe it. The duty of an +American husband and father is to keep them going. If he +asks them how, that’s his own affair. So, by way of +not being mean, of being a good American husband and father, poor +Ruck stands staring at bankruptcy.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church looked at me a moment, in quickened +meditation. “Why, if Aurora were to go to stay with +them, she might not even be properly fed!”</p> +<p>“I don’t, on the whole, recommend,” I said, +laughing, “that your daughter should pay a visit to +Thirty-Seventh Street.”</p> +<p>“Why should I be subjected to such trials—so sadly +<i>éprouvée</i>? Why should a daughter of +mine like that dreadful girl?”</p> +<p>“<i>Does</i> she like her?”</p> +<p>“Pray, do you mean,” asked my companion, softly, +“that Aurora is a hypocrite?”</p> +<p>I hesitated a moment. “A little, since you ask +me. I think you have forced her to be.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church answered this possibly presumptuous charge with a +tranquil, candid exultation. “I never force my +daughter!”</p> +<p>“She is nevertheless in a false position,” I +rejoined. “She hungers and thirsts to go back to her +own country; she wants ‘to come’ out in New York, +which is certainly, socially speaking, the El Dorado of young +ladies. She likes any one, for the moment, who will talk to +her of that, and serve as a connecting-link with her native +shores. Miss Ruck performs this agreeable +office.”</p> +<p>“Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with Miss +Ruck to America she would drop her afterwards.”</p> +<p>I complimented Mrs. Church upon her logical mind, but I +repudiated this cynical supposition. “I can’t +imagine her—when it should come to the +point—embarking with the famille Ruck. But I wish she +might go, nevertheless.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church shook her head serenely, and smiled at my +inappropriate zeal. “I trust my poor child may never +be guilty of so fatal a mistake. She is completely in +error; she is wholly unadapted to the peculiar conditions of +American life. It would not please her. She would not +sympathise. My daughter’s ideal is not the ideal of +the class of young women to which Miss Ruck belongs. I fear +they are very numerous; they give the tone—they give the +tone.”</p> +<p>“It is you that are mistaken,” I said; “go +home for six months and see.”</p> +<p>“I have not, unfortunately, the means to make costly +experiments. My daughter has had great +advantages—rare advantages—and I should be very sorry +to believe that <i>au fond</i> she does not appreciate +them. One thing is certain: I must remove her from this +pernicious influence. We must part company with this +deplorable family. If Mr. Ruck and his ladies cannot be +induced to go to Chamouni—a journey that no traveller with +the smallest self-respect would omit—my daughter and I +shall be obliged to retire. We shall go to +Dresden.”</p> +<p>“To Dresden?”</p> +<p>“The capital of Saxony. I had arranged to go there +for the autumn, but it will be simpler to go immediately. +There are several works in the gallery with which my daughter has +not, I think, sufficiently familiarised herself; it is especially +strong in the seventeenth century schools.”</p> +<p>As my companion offered me this information I perceived Mr. +Ruck come lounging in, with his hands in his pockets, and his +elbows making acute angles. He had his usual anomalous +appearance of both seeking and avoiding society, and he wandered +obliquely toward Mrs. Church, whose last words he had +overheard. “The seventeenth century schools,” +he said, slowly, as if he were weighing some very small object in +a very large-pair of scales. “Now, do you suppose +they <i>had</i> schools at that period?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church rose with a good deal of precision, making no +answer to this incongruous jest. She clasped her large +volume to her neat little bosom, and she fixed a gentle, serious +eye upon Mr. Ruck.</p> +<p>“I had a letter this morning from Chamouni,” she +said.</p> +<p>“Well,” replied Mr. Ruck, “I suppose +you’ve got friends all over.”</p> +<p>“I have friends at Chamouni, but they are leaving. +To their great regret.” I had got up, too; I listened +to this statement, and I wondered. I am almost ashamed to +mention the subject of my agitation. I asked myself whether +this was a sudden improvisation, consecrated by maternal +devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. +“They are giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would +like them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The +weather is glorious,” continued Mrs. Church, “and the +highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary +distinctness.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. +“Well,” he said, “I don’t know as I want +to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal +attraction, isn’t it?”</p> +<p>“There are many others. I thought I would offer +you an—an exceptional opportunity.”</p> +<p>“Well,” said Mr. Ruck, “you’re right +down friendly. But I seem to have more opportunities than I +know what to do with. I don’t seem able to take +hold.”</p> +<p>“It only needs a little decision,” remarked Mrs. +Church, with an air which was an admirable example of this +virtue. “I wish you good-night, sir.” And +she moved noiselessly away.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; +then he transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. +“Does she own a hotel over there?” he asked. +“Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2> +<p>The next day Madame Beaurepas handed me, with her own elderly +fingers, a missive, which proved to be a telegram. After +glancing at it, I informed her that it was apparently a signal +for my departure; my brother had arrived in England, and proposed +to me to meet him there; he had come on business, and was to +spend but three weeks in Europe. “But my house +empties itself!” cried the old woman. “The +famille Ruck talks of leaving me, and Madame Church <i>nous fait +la révérence</i>.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. Church is going away?”</p> +<p>“She is packing her trunk; she is a very extraordinary +person. Do you know what she asked me this morning? +To invent some combination by which the famille Ruck should move +away. I informed her that I was not an inventor. That +poor famille Ruck! ‘Oblige me by getting rid of +them,’ said Madame Church, as she would have asked +Célestine to remove a dish of cabbage. She speaks as +if the world were made for Madame Church. I intimated to +her that if she objected to the company there was a very simple +remedy; and at present <i>elle fait ses paquets</i>.”</p> +<p>“She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the +house?”</p> +<p>“She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been +let, three months ago, to another family. She has an +<i>aplomb</i>!”</p> +<p>Mrs. Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I +am not sure that it was not, in some degree, to laugh over it at +my leisure that I went out into the garden that evening to smoke +a cigar. The night was dark and not particularly balmy, and +most of my fellow-pensioners, after dinner, had remained +in-doors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of +the house to the ancient grille that I have described, and I +stood here for some time, looking through the iron bars at the +silent empty street. The prospect was not entertaining, and +I presently turned away. At this moment I saw, in the +distance, the door of the house open and throw a shaft of +lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight there +stepped the figure of a female, who presently closed the door +behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden, and +I had seen her but for an instant, but I remained under the +impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of her departure, had +come out for a meditative stroll.</p> +<p>I lingered near the gate, keeping the red tip of my cigar +turned toward the house, and before long a young lady emerged +from among the shadows of the trees and encountered the light of +a lamp that stood just outside the gate. It was in fact +Aurora Church, but she seemed more bent upon conversation than +upon meditation. She stood a moment looking at me, and then +she said,—</p> +<p>“Ought I to retire—to return to the +house?”</p> +<p>“If you ought, I should be very sorry to tell you +so,” I answered.</p> +<p>“But we are all alone; there is no one else in the +garden.”</p> +<p>“It is not the first time that I have been alone with a +young lady. I am not at all terrified.”</p> +<p>“Ah, but I?” said the young girl. “I +have never been alone—” then, quickly, she +interrupted herself. “Good, there’s another +false note!”</p> +<p>“Yes, I am obliged to admit that one is very +false.”</p> +<p>She stood looking at me. “I am going away +to-morrow; after that there will be no one to tell me.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2> +<p>“That will matter little,” I presently +replied. “Telling you will do no good.”</p> +<p>“Ah, why do you say that?” murmured Aurora +Church.</p> +<p>I said it partly because it was true; but I said it for other +reasons as well, which it was hard to define. Standing +there bare-headed, in the night air, in the vague light, this +young lady looked extremely interesting; and the interest of her +appearance was not diminished by a suspicion on my own part that +she had come into the garden knowing me to be there. I +thought her a charming girl, and I felt very sorry for her; but, +as I looked at her, the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had +ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain +force. I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but +it now came into my head that perhaps this unfortunately +situated, this insidiously mutinous young creature, was looking +out for a preserver. She was certainly not a girl to throw +herself at a man’s head, but it was possible that in her +intense—her almost morbid-desire to put into effect an +ideal which was perhaps after all charged with as many fallacies +as her mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and +irregular—something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as +yet unknown, would find his profit. The image, unshaped +though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot, filled me with a +sort of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious of +these things, and then I answered her question. +“Because some things—some differences are felt, not +learned. To you liberty is not natural; you are like a +person who has bought a repeater, and, in his satisfaction, is +constantly making it sound. To a real American girl her +liberty is a very vulgarly-ticking old clock.”</p> +<p>“Ah, you mean, then,” said the poor girl, +“that my mother has ruined me?”</p> +<p>“Ruined you?”</p> +<p>“She has so perverted my mind, that when I try to be +natural I am necessarily immodest.”</p> +<p>“That again is a false note,” I said, +laughing.</p> +<p>She turned away. “I think you are +cruel.”</p> +<p>“By no means,” I declared; “because, for my +own taste, I prefer you as—as—”</p> +<p>I hesitated, and she turned back. “As +what?”</p> +<p>“As you are.”</p> +<p>She looked at me a while again, and then she said, in a little +reasoning voice that reminded me of her mother’s, only that +it was conscious and studied, “I was not aware that I am +under any particular obligation to please you!” And +then she gave a clear laugh, quite at variance with her +voice.</p> +<p>“Oh, there is no obligation,” I said, “but +one has preferences. I am very sorry you are going +away.”</p> +<p>“What does it matter to you? You are going +yourself.”</p> +<p>“As I am going in a different direction that makes all +the greater separation.”</p> +<p>She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of +the tall gate at the empty, dusky street. “This +grille is like a cage,” she said, at last.</p> +<p>“Fortunately, it is a cage that will open.” +And I laid my hand on the lock.</p> +<p>“Don’t open it,” and she pressed the gate +back. “If you should open it I would go out—and +never return.”</p> +<p>“Where should you go?”</p> +<p>“To America.”</p> +<p>“Straight away?”</p> +<p>“Somehow or other. I would go to the American +consul. I would beg him to give me money—to help +me.”</p> +<p>I received this assertion without a smile; I was not in a +smiling humour. On the contrary, I felt singularly excited, +and I kept my hand on the lock of the gate. I believed (or +I thought I believed) what my companion said, and I +had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of +her throwing herself upon consular sympathy. It seemed to +me, for a moment, that to pass out of that gate with this +yearning, straining, young creature, would be to pass into some +mysterious felicity. If I were only a hero of romance, I +would offer, myself, to take her to America.</p> +<p>In a moment more, perhaps, I should have persuaded myself that +I was one, but at this juncture I heard a sound that was not +romantic. It proved to be the very realistic tread of +Célestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as we turned +about from our colloquy.</p> +<p>“I ask <i>bien pardon</i>,” said +Célestine. “The mother of Mademoiselle desires +that Mademoiselle should come in immediately. M. le Pasteur +Galopin has come to make his adieux to <i>ces +dames</i>.”</p> +<p>Aurora gave me only one glance, but it was a touching +one. Then she slowly departed with Célestine.</p> +<p>The next morning, on coming into the garden, I found that Mrs. +Church and her daughter had departed. I was informed of +this fact by old M. Pigeonneau, who sat there under a tree, +having his coffee at a little green table.</p> +<p>“I have nothing to envy you,” he said; “I +had the last glimpse of that charming Miss Aurora.”</p> +<p>“I had a very late glimpse,” I answered, +“and it was all I could possibly desire.”</p> +<p>“I have always noticed,” rejoined M. Pigeonneau, +“That your desires are more moderate than mine. Que +voulez-vous? I am of the old school. Je crois que la +race se perd. I regret the departure of that young girl: +she had an enchanting smile. Ce sera une femme +d’esprit. For the mother, I can console myself. +I am not sure that <i>she</i> was a femme d’esprit, though +she wished to pass for one. Round, rosy, +<i>potelée</i>, she yet had not the temperament of her +appearance; she was a <i>femme austère</i>. I have +often noticed that contradiction in American ladies. You +see a plump little woman, with a speaking eye, and the contour +and complexion of a ripe peach, and if you venture to conduct +yourself in the smallest degree in accordance with these +<i>indices</i>, you discover a species of Methodist—of what +do you call it?—of Quakeress. On the other hand, you +encounter a tall, lean, angular person, without colour, without +grace, all elbows and knees, and you find it’s a nature of +the tropics! The women of duty look like coquettes, and the +others look like alpenstocks! However, we have still the handsome +Madame Ruck—a real <i>femme de Rubens</i>, +<i>celle-là</i>. It is very true that to talk to her +one must know the Flemish tongue!”</p> +<p>I had determined, in accordance with my brother’s +telegram, to go away in the afternoon; so that, having various +duties to perform, I left M. Pigeonneau to his international +comparisons. Among other things, I went in the course of +the morning to the banker’s, to draw money for my journey, +and there I found Mr. Ruck, with a pile of crumpled letters in +his lap, his chair tipped back, and his eyes gloomily fixed on +the fringe of the green plush table-cloth. I timidly +expressed the hope that he had got better news from home; +whereupon he gave me a look in which, considering his +provocation, the absence of irritation was conspicuous.</p> +<p>He took up his letters in his large hand, and crushing them +together, held it out to me. “That epistolary +matter,” he said, “is worth about five cents. +But I guess,” he added, rising, “I have taken it in +by this time.” When I had drawn my money I asked him +to come and breakfast with me at the little <i>brasserie</i>, +much favoured by students, to which I used to resort in the old +town. “I couldn’t eat, sir,” he said, +“I—couldn’t eat. Bad news takes away the +appetite. But I guess I’ll go with you, so that I +needn’t go to table down there at the pension. The +old woman down there is always accusing me of turning up my nose +at her food. Well, I guess I shan’t turn up my nose +at anything now.”</p> +<p>We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Ruck made the +lightest possible breakfast. But if he ate very little, he +talked a great deal; he talked about business, going into a +hundred details in which I was quite unable to follow him. +His talk was not angry nor bitter; it was a long, meditative, +melancholy monologue; if it had been a trifle less incoherent I +should almost have called it philosophic. I was very sorry +for him; I wanted to do something for him, but the only thing I +could do was, when we had breakfasted, to see him safely back to +the Pension Beaurepas. We went across the Treille and down +the Corraterie, out of which we turned into the Rue du +Rhône. In this latter street, as all the world knows, +are many of those brilliant jewellers’ shops for which +Geneva is famous. I always admired their glittering +windows, and never passed them without a lingering glance. +Even on this occasion, pre-occupied as I was with my impending +departure, and with my companion’s troubles, I suffered my +eyes to wander along the precious tiers that flashed and twinkled +behind the huge clear plates of glass. Thanks to this +inveterate habit, I made a discovery. In the largest and +most brilliant of these establishments I perceived two ladies, +seated before the counter with an air of absorption, which +sufficiently proclaimed their identity. I hoped my +companion would not see them, but as we came abreast of the door, +a little beyond, we found it open to the warm summer air. +Mr. Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately recognised his +wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, looking at them; I +wondered what he would do. The salesman was holding up a +bracelet before them, on its velvet cushion, and flashing it +about in an irresistible manner.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck said nothing, but he presently went in, and I did the +same.</p> +<p>“It will be an opportunity,” I remarked, as +cheerfully as possible, “for me to bid good-bye to the +ladies.”</p> +<p>They turned round when Mr. Ruck came in, and looked at him +without confusion. “Well, you had better go home to +breakfast,” remarked his wife. Miss Sophy made no +remark, but she took the bracelet from the attendant and gazed at +it very fixedly. Mr. Ruck seated himself on an empty stool +and looked round the shop.</p> +<p>“Well, you have been here before,” said his wife; +“you were here the first day we came.”</p> +<p>Miss Ruck extended the precious object in her hands towards +me. “Don’t you think that sweet?” she +inquired.</p> +<p>I looked at it a moment. “No, I think it’s +ugly.”</p> +<p>She glanced at me a moment, incredulous. “Well, I +don’t believe you have any taste.”</p> +<p>“Why, sir, it’s just lovely,” said Mrs. +Ruck.</p> +<p>“You’ll see it some day on me, any way,” her +daughter declared.</p> +<p>“No, he won’t,” said Mr. Ruck, quietly.</p> +<p>“It will be his own fault, then,” Miss Sophy +observed.</p> +<p>“Well, if we are going to Chamouni we want to get +something here,” said Mrs. Ruck. “We may not +have another chance.”</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck was still looking round the shop, whistling in a very +low tone. “We ain’t going to Chamouni. We +are going to New York city, straight.”</p> +<p>“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” said Mrs. +Ruck. “Don’t you suppose we want to take +something home?”</p> +<p>“If we are going straight back I must have that +bracelet,” her daughter declared, “Only I don’t +want a velvet case; I want a satin case.”</p> +<p>“I must bid you good-bye,” I said to the +ladies. “I am leaving Geneva in an hour or +two.”</p> +<p>“Take a good look at that bracelet, so you’ll know +it when you see it,” said Miss Sophy.</p> +<p>“She’s bound to have something,” remarked +her mother, almost proudly.</p> +<p>Mr. Ruck was still vaguely inspecting the shop; he was still +whistling a little. “I am afraid he is not at all +well,” I said, softly, to his wife.</p> +<p>She twisted her head a little, and glanced at him.</p> +<p>“Well, I wish he’d improve!” she +exclaimed.</p> +<p>“A satin case, and a nice one!” said Miss Ruck to +the shopman.</p> +<p>I bade Mr. Ruck good-bye. “Don’t wait for +me,” he said, sitting there on his stool, and not meeting +my eye. “I’ve got to see this thing +through.”</p> +<p>I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when, an hour later, +I left it with my luggage, the family had not returned.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PENSION BEAUREPAS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2720-h.htm or 2720-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/2/2720 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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. 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