A? ib 9 5 Z Pfl PS2I/C, WASHINGTON SQUARE. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. WASHINGTON SQUARE THE PENSION BEAUREPAS A BUNDLE OF LETTERS BY HENKY JAMES, JUN. VOL. II. LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1881 WASHINGTON SQUARE. XXVIII. THE letter was a word of warning ; it informed him that the Doctor had come home more impracticable than ever. She might have reflected that Catherine would supply him with all the information he needed on this point; but we know that Mrs. Penniman's reflections were rarely just ; and, moreover, she felt that it was not for her to depend on what Catherine might do. She was to do her duty, quite irrespec- tive of Catherine. I have said that her young friend took his ease with her, and it is an illustra- tion of the fact that he made no answer to her letter. He took note of it, amply ; but he lighted his cigar with it, and he waited, in tranquil con- fidence that he should receive another. " His state of mind really freezes my blood," Mrs. Penniman VOL. II. B 2 WASHINGTON SQUARE. had written, alluding to her brother ; and it would have seemed that upon this statement she could hardly improve. Nevertheless, she wrote again, expressing herself with the aid of a different figure. " His hatred of you burns with a lurid flame the flame that never dies," she wrote. " But it doesn't light up the darkness of your future. If my affec- tion could do so, all the years of your life would be an eternal sunshine. I can extract nothing from C. ; she is so terribly secretive, like her father. She seems to expect to be married very soon, and has evidently made preparations in Europe quantities of clothing, ten pairs of shoes, etc. My dear friend, you cannot set up in married life simply with a few pairs of shoes, can you ? Tell me what you think of this. I am intensely anxious to see you ; I have so much to say. I miss you dreadfully ; the house seems so empty without you. What is the news down town ? Is the business extending ? That dear little business I think it's so brave of you ! Couldn't I come to your office? just for three minutes ? I might pass for a customer is that what you call them. I might come in to buy some- thing some shares or some railroad things. Tell WASHINGTON SQUARE. 3 me what you think of this plan. I would carry a little reticule, like a woman of the people." In spite of the suggestion about the reticule, Morris appeared to think poorly of the plan, for he gave Mrs. Penniman no encouragement whatever to visit his office, which he had already represented to her as a place peculiarly and unnaturally difficult to find. But as she persisted in desiring an inter- view up to the last, after months of intimate colloquy, she called these meetings " interviews " he agreed that they should take a walk together, and was even kind enough to leave his office for this purpose, during the hours at which business might have been supposed to be liveliest. It was no surprise to him, when they met at a street-corner, in a region of empty lots and undeveloped pave- ments (Mrs. Penniman being attired as much as possible like a " woman of the people "), to find that, in spite of her urgency, what she chiefly had to convey to him was the assurance of her sympathy. Of such assurances, however, he had already a voluminous collection, and it would not have been worth his while to forsake a fruitful avocation merely to hear Mrs. Penniman say, for the thousandth 4 WASHINGTON SQUAEE. time, that she had made his cause her own. Morris had something of his own to say. It was an easy thing to bring out, and while he turned it over the difficulty made him acrimonious. " Oh yes, I know perfectly that he combines the properties of a lump of ice and a red-hot coal," he observed. " Catherine has made it thoroughly clear, and you have told me so till I am sick of it. You needn't tell me again ; I am perfectly satisfied. He will never give us a penny ; I regard that as mathe- matically proved." Mrs. Penniman at this point had an inspiration. " Couldn't you bring a lawsuit against him ? " She wondered that this simple expedient had never occurred to her before. " I will bring a lawsuit against you" said Morris, " if you ask me any more such aggravating questions. A man should know when he is beaten," he added, in a moment. " I must give her up !" Mrs. Penniman received this declaration in silence, though it made her heart beat a little. It found her by no means unprepared, for she had accustomed herself to the thought that, if Morris should decidedly not be able to get her brother's money, it would not WASHINGTON SQUARE. 5 do for him to marry Catherine without it. "It would not do" was a vague way of putting the thing; but Mrs. Penniman's natural affection com- pleted the idea, which, though it had not as yet been so crudely expressed between them as in the form that Morris had just given it, had nevertheless been implied so often, in certain easy intervals of talk, as he sat stretching his legs in the Doctor's well-stuffed arm-chairs, that she had grown first to regard it with an emotion which she flattered herself was philoso- phic, and then to have a secret tenderness for it. The fact that she kept her tenderness secret proves, of course, that she was ashamed of it ; but she man- aged to blink her shame by reminding herself that she was, after all, the official protector of her niece's marriage. Her logic would scarcely have passed muster with the Doctor. In the first place, Morris must get the money, and she would help him to it. In the second, it was plain it would never come to him, and it would be a grievous pity he should marry without it a young man who might so easily find something better. After her brother had delivered himself, on his return from Europe, of that incisive little address that has been quoted, Morris's cause 6 WASHINGTON SQUARE. seemed so hopeless that Mrs. Penniman fixed her attention exclusively upon the latter branch of her argument. If Morris had been her son, she would certainly have sacrificed Catherine to a superior con- ception of his future; and to be ready to do so as the case stood was therefore even a finer degree of devotion. Nevertheless, it checked her breath a little to have the sacrificial knife, as it were, suddenly thrust into her hand. Morris walked along a moment, and then he re- peated, harshly " I must give her up !" " I think I understand you," said Mrs. Penniman, gently. " I certainly say it distinctly enough brutally and vulgarly enough." He was ashamed of himself, and his shame was uncomfortable ; and as he was extremely intolerant of discomfort, he felt vicious and cruel. He wanted to abuse somebody, and he began, cautiously for he was always cautious with himself. " Couldn't you take her down a little ?" he asked. "Take her down?" " Prepare her try and ease me off." WASHINGTON SQUARE. 7 Mrs. Penniman stopped, looking at him very so- lemnly. " My poor Morris, do you know how much she loves you." "No, I don't. I don't want to know. I have always tried to keep from knowing. It would be too painful." " She will suffer much," said Mrs. Penniman. " You must console her. If you are as good a friend to me as you pretend to be, you will manage it." Mrs. Penniman shook her head, sadly. " You talk of my ' pretending J to like you ; but I can't pretend to hate you. I can only tell her I think very highly of you; and how will that console her for losing you ?" " The Doctor will help you. He will be delighted at the thing being broken off, and, as he is a know- ing fellow, he will invent something to comfort her." " He will invent a new torture I" cried Mrs. Penniman. " Heaven deliver her from her father's comfort. It will consist of his crowing over her and saying, ' I always told you so ! '" Morris coloured a most uncomfortable red. 8 WASHINGTON SQUARE. " If you don't console her any better than you console me, you certainly won't be of much use ! It's a damned disagreeable necessity ; I feel it ex- tremely, and you ought to make it easy for me." " I will be your friend for life !" Mrs. Penniman declared. " Be my friend now /" And Morris walked on. She went with him ; she was almost trembling. " Should you like me to tell her ?" she asked. " You mustn't tell her, but you can you can ." And he hesitated, trying to think what Mrs. Penniman could do. " You can explain to her why it is. It's because I can't bring myself to step in between her and her father to give him the pretext he grasps at so eagerly (it's a hideous sight) for depriving her of her rights." Mrs. Penniman felt with remarkable promptitude the charm of this formula. "That's so like you," she said; "it's so finely felt." Morris gave his stick an angry swing. " Oh botheration !" he exclaimed perversely. Mrs. Penniman, however, was not discouraged. " It may turn out better than you think. Cath- WASHINGTON SQUARE. 9 erine is, after all, so very peculiar." And she thought she might take it upon herself to assure him that, whatever happened, the girl would be very quiet- she wouldn't make a noise. They extended their walk, and, while they proceeded, Mrs. Penniman took upon herself other things besides, and ended by having assumed a considerable burden ; Morris being ready enough, as may be imagined, to put everything off upon her. But he was not for a single instant the dupe of her blundering alacrity ; he knew that of what she promised she was compe- tent to perform but an insignificant fraction, and the more she professed her willingness to serve him, the greater fool he thought her. " What will you do if you don't marry her ?" she ventured to inquire in the course of this con- versation. " Something brilliant," said Morris. " Shouldn't you like me to do something brilliant ?" The idea gave Mrs. Penniman exceeding pleasure. " I shall feel sadly taken in if you don't." " I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn't at all brilliant, you know." Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might 10 WASHINGTON SQUARE. be some way of making out that it was ; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to carry off the awkwardness of failure, she risked a new inquiry. "Do you mean do you mean another mar- riage?" Morris greeted this question with a reflection which was hardly the less impudent from being in- audible. " Surely, women are more crude than men!" And then he answered audibly "Never in the world!" Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved herself in a little vaguely sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse. " I give her up not for another woman, but for a wider career ! " Morris announced. This was very grand ; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she had exposed herself, was faintly rancorous. "Do you mean never to come to see her again ?" she asked, with some sharpness. " Oh no, I shall come again ; but what is the use of dragging it out ? I have been four times since she came back, and it's terribly awkward work. I can't keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn't to expect that, WASHINGTON SQUARE. 11 you know. A woman should never keep a man dangling !" he added, finely. "Ah, but you must have your last parting!" urged his companion, in whose imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place inferior in dignity only to that of first meetings. UNJVEKSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY XXIX. HE came again, without managing the last part- ing ; and again and again, without finding that Mrs. Penniman had as yet done much to pave the path of retreat with flowers. It was devilish awkward, as he said, and he felt a lively animosity for Catherine's aunt, who, as he had now quite formed the habit of saying to himself, had dragged him into the mess and was bound in common charity to get him out of it. Mrs. Penniman, to tell the truth, had, in the seclusion of her own apartment and, I may add, amid the suggestiveness of Catherine's, which wore in those days the appearance of that of a young lady lay- ing out her trousseau Mrs. Penniman had measured her responsibilities, and taken fright at their magni- tude. The task of preparing Catherine and easing off Morris presented difficulties which increased in the execution, and even led the impulsive Lavinia to ask herself whether the modification of the young WASHINGTON SQUARE. 13 man's original project had been conceived in a happy spirit. A brilliant future, a wider career, a conscience exempt from the reproach of interference between a young lady and her natural rights these excellent things might be too troublesomely purchased. From Catherine herself Mrs. Penniman received no assist- ance whatever ; the poor girl was apparently without suspicion of her danger. She looked at her lover with eyes of undiminished trust, and though she had less confidence in her aunt than in a young man with whom she had exchanged so many tender vows, she gave her no handle for explaining or confessing. Mrs. Penniman, faltering and wavering, declared Catherine was very stupid, put off the great scene, as she would have called it, from day to day, and wandered about very uncomfortably, primed, to repletion, with her apology, but unable to bring it to the light. Morris's own scenes were very small ones just now ; but even these were beyond his strength. He made his visits as brief as possible, and, while he sat with his mistress, found terribly little to talk about. She was waiting for him, in vulgar parlance, to name the day ; and so long as he was unprepared to be explicit on this point, it seemed 14 WASHINGTON SQUARE. a mockery to pretend to talk about matters more abstract. She had no airs and no arts; she never attempted to disguise her expectancy. She was waiting on his good pleasure, and would wait modestly and patiently; his hanging back at this supreme time might appear strange, but of course he must have a good reason for it. Catherine would have made a wife of the gentle old-fashioned pattern regarding reasons as favours and windfalls, but no more expecting one every day than she would have expected a bouquet of camellias. During the period of her engagement, however, a young lady even of the most slender pretensions counts upon more bouquets than at other times ; and there was a want of perfume in the air at this moment which at last excited the girl's alarm. "Are you sick?" she asked of Morris. "You seem so restless, and you look pale." " I am not at all well," said Morris ; and it occurred to him that, if he could only make her pity him enough, he might get off. "I am afraid you are overworked; you oughtn't to work so much." "I must do that." And then he added, with a WASHINGTON SQUARE. 15 sort of calculated brutality, "I don't want to owe you everything ! " " Ah, how can you say that ? " " I am too proud," said Morris. " Yes you are too proud ! " " Well, you must take me as I am," he went on. " you can never change me." " I don't want to change you," she said, gently. " I will take you as you are ! " And she stood looking at him. "You know people talk tremendously about a man's marrying a rich girl," Morris remarked. " It's excessively disagreeable." " But I am not rich ? " said Catherine. " You are rich enough to make me talked about ! " " Of course you are talked about. It's an honour ! " " It's an honour I could easily dispense with." She was on the point of asking him whether it were not a compensation for this annoyance that the poor girl who had the misfortune to bring it upon him, loved him so dearly and believed in him so truly; but she hesitated, thinking that this would perhaps seem an exacting speech, and while she hesitated, he suddenly left her. 16 WASHINGTON SQUARE. The next time he came, however, she brought it out, and she told him again that he was too proud. He repeated that he couldn't change, and this time she felt the impulse to say that with a little effort he might change. Sometimes he thought that if he could only make a quarrel with her it might help him ; but the question was how to quarrel with a young woman who had such treasures of concession. " I suppose you think the effort is all on your side ! " he was reduced to exclaiming. "Don't you believe that I have my own effort to make ?" " It's all yours now," she said, " My effort is finished and done with !" " Well, mine is not." " We must bear things together," said Catherine. " That's what we ought to do." Morris attempted a natural smile. " There are some things which we can't very well bear together for instance, separation." " Why do you speak of separation ?" " Ah ! you don't like it ; I knew you wouldn't !" "Where are you going, Morris?" she suddenly asked. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 17 He fixed his eye on her a moment, and for a part of that moment she was afraid of it. " Will you promise not to make a scene ?" " A scene ! do I make scenes ?" " All women do !" said Morris, with the tone of large experience. " I don't. Where are you going ?" " If I should say I was going away on business, should you think it very strange ?" She wondered a moment, gazing at him. " Yes no. Not if you will take me with you." " Take you with me on business ?" " What is your business ? Your business is to be with me." " I don't earn my living with you," said Morris, "Or rather," he cried with a sudden inspiration, "that's just what I do or what the world says I do?" This ought perhaps to have been a great stroke, but it miscarried. "Where are you going?" Catherine simply repeated. " To New Orleans. About buying some cotton." " I am perfectly willing to go to New Orleans," Catherine said. " Do you suppose I would take you to a nest of VOL. II. ^ C 18 WASHINGTON SQUARE. yellow fever ?" cried Morris. " Do you suppose I would expose you at such a time as this ?" " If there is yellow fever, why should you go ? Morris, you must not go ?" " It is to make six thousand dollars," said Morris. "Do you grudge me that satisfaction ?" " We have no need of six thousand dollars. You think too much about money !" " You can afford to say that ? This is a great chance ; we heard of it last night." And he ex- plained to her in what the chance consisted ; and told her a long story, going over more than once several of the details, about the remarkable stroke of business which he and his partner had planned between them. But Catherine's imagination, for reasons best known to herself, absolutely refused to be fired. " If you can go to New Orleans, I can go," she said. "Why shouldn't you catch yellow fever quite as easily as I ? I am every bit as strong as you, and* not in the least afraid of any fever. When we were in Europe, we were in very unhealthy places ; my father used to make me take some pills. I never caught anything, and I never was nervous. What WASHINGTON SQUARE. 19 will be the use of six thousand dollars if you die of a fever ? When persons are going to be married, they oughtn't to think so much about business. You shouldn't think about cotton, you should think about me. You can go to New Orleans some other time there will always be plenty of cotton. It isn't the moment to choose we have waited too long already." She spoke more forcibly and volubly than he had ever heard her, and she held his arm in her two hands. " You said you wouldn't make a scene !" cried Morris. " I call this a scene." " It's you that are making it ! I have never asked you anything before. We have waited too long already." And it was a comfort to her to think that she had hitherto asked so little; it seemed to make her right to insist the greater now. Morris bethought himself a little. " Very well, then; we won't talk about it any more. I will transact my business by letter." And he began to smooth his hat, as if to take leave. " You won't go ?" And she stood looking up at him. He could not give up his idea of provoking a 20 WASHINGTON SQUARE. quarrel ; it was so much the simplest way ! He bent his eyes on her upturned face, with the darkest frown he could achieve. "You are not discreet. You mustn't bully me !" But, as usual, she conceded everything. " No, I am not discreet ; I know I am too pressing. But isn't it natural ? It is only for a moment." " In a moment you may do a great deal of harm. Try and be calmer the next time I come." "When will you come ?" " Do you want to make conditions ?" Morris asked. " I will come next Saturday." " Come to-morrow," Catherine begged ; " I want you to come to-morrow. I will be very quiet," she added ; and her agitation had by this time become so great that the assurance was not unbecoming. A sudden fear had come over her ; it was like the solid conjunction of a dozen disembodied doubts, and her imagination, at a single bound, had traversed an enormous distance. All her being, for the moment, centred in the wish to keep him in the room. Morris bent his head and kissed her forehead. " When you are quiet, you are perfection," he said ; " but when you are violent, you are not in character." WASHINGTON SQUARE. 21 It was Catherine's wish that there should be no violence about her save the beating of her heart, which she could not help ; and she went on, as gently as possible, " Will you promise to come to- morrow?" "I said Saturday!" Morris answered smiling. He tried a frown at one moment, a smile at another ; he was at his wit's end. "Yes, Saturday too," she answered, trying to smile. " But to-morrow first." He was going to the door, and she went with him, quickly. She leaned her shoulder against it; it seemed to her that she would do anything to keep him. " If I am prevented from coming to-morrow, you will say I have deceived you !" he said. " How can you be prevented ? You can come if you will." " I am a busy man I am not a dangler !" cried Morris, sternly. His voice was so hard and unnatural that, with a helpless look at him, she turned away ; and then he quickly laid his hand on the door-knob. He felt as if he were absolutely running away from her. But in an instant she was close to him again, and 22 WASHINGTON SQUARE. murmuring in a tone none the less penetrating for being low, " Morris, you are going to leave me." " Yes, for a little while." "For -how long?" " Till you are reasonable again." " I shall never be reasonable in that way ! " And she tried to keep him longer ; it was almost a struggle. " Think of what I have done !" she broke out. " Morris, I have given up everything !" " You shall have everything back !" "You wouldn't say that if you didn't mean something. What is it ? what has happened ? what have I done ? what has changed you ?" "I will write to you that is better," Morris stammered. " Ah, you won't come back !" she cried, bursting into tears. " Dear Catherine," he said, " don't believe that ! I promise you that you shall see me again !" And he managed to get away and to close the door be- hind him. XXX. IT was almost her last outbreak of passive grief; at least, she never indulged in another that the world knew anything about. But this one was long and terrible ; she flung herself on the sofa and gave herself up to her misery. She hardly knew what had happened ; ostensibly she had only had a dif- ference with her lover, as other girls had had before, and the thing was not only not a rupture, but she was under no obligation to regard it even as a menace. Nevertheless, she felt a wound, even if he had not dealt it ; it seemed to her that a mask had suddenly fallen from his face. He had wished to get away from her; he had been angry and cruel, and said strange things, with strange looks. She was smothered and stunned ; she buried her head in the cushions, sobbing and talking to herself. But at last she raised herself, with the fear that either her father or Mrs. Penniman would come in ; 24 WASHINGTON SQUARE. and then she sat there, staring before her, while the room grew darker. She said to herself that perhaps he would come back to tell her he had not meant what he said ; and she listened for his ring at the door, trying to believe that this was probable. A long time passed, but Morris remained absent ; the shadows gathered ; the evening settled down on the meagre elegance of the light, clear-coloured room ; the fire went out. When it had grown dark, Catherine went to the window and looked out ; she stood there for half an hour, on the mere chance that he would come up the steps. At last she turned away, for she saw her father come in. He had seen her at the window looking out, and he stopped a moment at the bottom of the white steps, and gravely, with an air of exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat to her. The gesture was so incongru- ous to the condition she was in, this stately tribute of respect to a poor girl despised and forsaken was so out of place, that the thing gave her a kind of horror, and she hurried away to her room. It seemed to her that she had given Morris up. She had to show herself half an hour later, and she was sustained at table by the immensity of her WASHINGTON SQUARE. 25 desire that her father should not perceive that any- thing had happened. This was a great help to her afterwards, and it served her (though never as much as she supposed) from the first. On this occasion Dr. Sloper was rather talkative. He told a great many stories about a wonderful poodle that he had seen at the house of an old lady whom he visited professionally. Catherine not only tried to appear to listen to the anecdotes of the poodle, but she endeavoured to interest herself in them, so as not to think of her scene with Morris. That perhaps was an hallucination ; he was mistaken, she was jealous ; people didn't change like that from one day to another. Then she knew that she had had doubts before strange suspicions, that were at once vague and acute and that he had been different ever since her return from Europe : whereupon she tried again to listen to her father, who told a story so remarkably well. Afterwards she went straight to her own room ; it was beyond her strength to undertake to spend the evening with her aunt. All the evening, alone, she questioned herself. Her trouble was terrible ; but was it a thing of her imagination, engendered by an extravagant 26 WASHINGTON SQUARE. sensibility, or did it represent a clear-cut reality, and had the worst that was possible actually come to pass ? Mrs. Penniman, with a degree of tact that was as unusual as it was commendable, took the line of leaving her alone. The truth is, that her suspicions having been aroused, she indulged a desire, natural to a timid person, that the explosion should be localised. So long as the air still vibrated she kept out of the way. She passed and repassed Catherine's door several times in the course of the evening, as if she expected to hear a plaintive moan behind it. But the room remained perfectly still; and accordingly, the last thing before retiring to her own couch, she applied for admittance. Catherine was sitting up, and had a book that she pretended to be reading. She had no wish to go to bed, for she had no expectation of sleeping. After Mrs. Penniman had left her she sat up half the night, and she offered her visitor no inducement to remain. Her aunt came stealing in very gently, and approached her with great solemnity. " I am afraid you are in trouble, my dear. Can I do anything to help you ?" WASHINGTON SQUARE. 27 " I am not in any trouble whatever, and do not need any help," said Catherine, fibbing roundly, and proving thereby that not only our faults, but our most involuntary misfortunes, tend to corrupt our morals. " Has nothing happened to you?" " Nothing whatever." " Are you very sure, dear ?" " Perfectly sure." " And can I really do nothing for you ?" " Nothing, aunt, but kindly leave me alone," said Catherine. Mrs. Penniman, though she had been afraid of too warm a welcome before, was now disappointed at so cold a one ; and in relating afterwards, as she did to many persons, and with considerable varia- tions of detail, the history of the termination of her niece's engagement, she was usually careful to mention that the young lady, on a certain occasion, had " hustled " her out of the room. It was char- acteristic of Mrs. Penniman that she related this fact, not in the least out of malignity to Catherine, whom she very sufficiently pitied, but simply from a natural disposition to embellish any subject that she touched. 28 WASHINGTON SQUARE. Catherine, as I have said, sat up half the night, as if she still expected to hear Morris Townsend ring at the door. On the morrow this expectation was less unreasonable ; but it was not gratified by the reappearance of the young man. Neither had he written ; there was not a word of explanation or reassurance. Fortunately for Catherine she could take refuge from her excitement, which had now become intense, in her determination that her father should see nothing of it. How well she deceived her father we shall have occasion to learn ; but her innocent arts were of little avail before a person of the rare perspicacity of Mrs. Penniman. This lady easily saw that she was agitated, and if there was any agitation going forward, Mrs. Penniman was not a person to forfeit her natural share in it. She returned to the charge the next evening, and requested her niece to lean upon her to unburden her heart. Perhaps she should be able to explain certain things that now seemed dark, and that she knew more about than Catherine supposed. If Catherine had been frigid the night before, to-day she was haughty. " You are completely mistaken, and I have not WASHINGTON SQUARE. 29 the least idea what you mean. I don't know what you are trying to fasten on me, and I have never had less need of any one's explanations in my life." In this way the girl delivered herself, and from hour to hour kept her aunt at bay. From hour to hour Mrs. Penniman's curiosity grew. She would have given her little finger to know what Morris had said and done, what tone he had taken, what pretext he had found. She wrote to him, naturally, to request an interview ; but she received, as naturally, no answer to her petition. Morris was not in a writing mood ; for Catherine had addressed him two short notes which met with no acknowledgment. These notes were so brief that I may give them entire. " Won't you give me some sign that you didn't mean to be so cruel as you seemed on Tuesday?" that was the first; the other was a little longer. " If I was unreasonable or suspicious, on Tuesday if I annoyed you or troubled you in any way I beg your forgiveness, and I promise never again to be so foolish. I am punished enough, and I don't understand. Dear Morris, you are killing me ! " These notes were 30 WASHINGTON SQUARE. despatched on the Friday and Saturday ; but Satur- day and Sunday passed without bringing the poor girl the satisfaction she desired. Her punishment accumulated ; she continued to bear it, however, with a good deal of superficial fortitude. On Saturday morning, the Doctor, who had been watch- ing in silence, spoke to his sister Lavinia. " The thing has happened the scoundrel has backed out !" "Never!" cried Mrs. Penniman, who had be- thought herself what she should say to Catherine, but was not provided with a line of defence against her brother, so that indignant negation was the only weapon in her hands. " He has begged for a reprieve, then, if you like that better !" " It seems to make you very happy that your daughter's affections have been trifled with." " It does," said the Doctor ; " for I had foretold it ! It's a great pleasure to be in the right." " Your pleasures make one shudder !" his sister exclaimed. Catherine went rigidly through her usual occupations ; that is, up to the point of going with WASHINGTON SQUARE. 31 her aunt to church on Sunday morning. She generally went to afternoon service as well ; but on this occasion her courage faltered, and she begged of Mrs. Penniman to go without her. "I am sure you have a secret," said Mrs. Penniman, with great significance, looking at her rather grimly. " If I have, I shall keep it !" Catherine answered, turning away. Mrs. Penniman started for church; but before she had arrived, she stopped and turned back, and before twenty minutes had elapsed she re-entered the house, looked into the empty parlours, and then went upstairs and knocked at Catherine's door. She got no answer ; Catherine was not in her room, and Mrs. Penniman presently ascertained that she was not in the house. " She has gone to him, she has fled ! " Lavinia cried, clasping her hands with admiration and envy. But she soon perceived that Catherine had taken nothing with her all her personal property in her room was intact and then she jumped at the hypothesis that the girl had gone forth, not in tenderness, but in resentment. " She has followed him to his own 32 WASHINGTON SQUARE. door she has burst upon him in his own apart- ment ! " It was in these terms that Mrs. Penniman depicted to herself her niece's errand, which, viewed in this light, gratified her sense of the picturesque only a shade less strongly than the idea of a clandestine marriage. To visit one's lover, with tears and reproaches, at his own residence, was an image so agreeable to Mrs. Penniman's mind that she felt a sort of aesthetic disappointment at its lacking, in this case, the harmonious accompani- ments of darkness and storm. A quiet Sunday afternoon appeared an inadequate setting for it ; and, indeed, Mrs. Penniman was quite out of humour with the conditions of the time, which passed very slowly as she sat in the front-parlour, in her bonnet and her cashmere shawl, awaiting Catherine's return. This event at last took place. She saw her at the window mount the steps, and she went to await her in the hall, where she pounced upon her as soon as she had entered the house, and drew her into the parlour, closing the door with solemnity. Catherine was flushed, and her eye was bright. Mrs. Penniman hardly knew what to think. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 33 " May I venture to ask where you have been ? " she demanded. " I have been to take a walk," said Catherine. " I thought you had gone to church." " I did go to church ; but the service was shorter than usual. And pray where did you walk ?" " I don't know ! " said Catherine. " Your ignorance is most extraordinary ! Dear Catherine, you can trust me." " What am I to trust you with ?" " "With your secret your sorrow." " I have no sorrow !" said Catherine fiercely. " My poor child," Mrs. Penniman insisted, " you can't deceive me. I know everything. I have been requested to a to converse with you." " I don't want to converse !" " It will relieve you. Don't you know Shake- speare's lines? 'the grief that does not speak!' My dear girl, it is better as it is." " What is better ? " Catherine asked. She was really too perverse. A certain amount of perversity was to be allowed for in a young lady whose lover had thrown her over ; but not such an VOL. II. D 34 WASHINGTON SQUARE. amount as would prove inconvenient to his apolo- gists. " That you should be reasonable/' said Mrs. Penniman, with some sternness. " That you should take counsel of worldly prudence, and submit to practical considerations. That you should agree to a separate." Catherine had been ice up to this moment, but at this word she flamed up. " Separate ? What do you know about our separating ? " Mrs. Penniman shook her head with a sadness in which there was almost a sense of injury. " Your pride is my pride, and your susceptibilities are mine. I see your side perfectly, but I also " and she smiled with melancholy suggestiveness " I also see the situation as a whole !" This suggestiveness was lost upon Catherine, who repeated her violent inquiry. "Why do you talk about separation ; what do you know about it ?" " We must study resignation," said Mrs. Penni- man, hesitating, but sententious at a venture. " Eesignation to what ?" " To a change of of our plans." " My plans have not changed !" said Catherine, with a little laugh. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 35 "Ah, but Mr. Townsend's have," her aunt answered very gently. "What do you mean?" There was an imperious brevity in the tone of this inquiry, against which Mrs. Penniman felt bound to protest ; the information with which she had undertaken to supply her niece was after all a favour. She had tried sharpness, and she had tried sternness ; but neither would do ; she was shocked at the girl's obstinacy. "Ah, well," she said, " if he hasn't told you ! . . ." and she turned away. Catherine watched her a moment in silence ; then she hurried after her, stopping her before she reached the door. " Told me what ? What do you mean ? What are you hinting at and threatening me with?" " Isn't it broken off ?" asked Mrs. Penniman. " My engagement ? Not in the least !" " I beg your pardon in that case. I have spoken too soon ! " " Too soon ! Soon or late," Catherine broke out, " you speak foolishly and cruelly !" " What has happened between you then ?" asked 36 WASHINGTON SQUARE. her aunt struck by the sincerity of this cry. " For something certainly has happened." " Nothing has happened but that I love him more and more ! " Mrs. Penniman was silent an instant. " I sup- pose that's the reason you went to see him this afternoon." Catherine flushed as if she had been struck. "Yes, I did go to see him ! But that's my own business." " Very well, then ; we won't talk about it." And Mrs. Penniman moved towards the door again. But she was stopped by a sudden imploring cry from the girl. " Aunt Lavinia, where has he gone ? " " Ah, you admit then that he has gone away ? Didn't they know at his house ? " "They said he had left town. I asked no more questions ; I was ashamed," said Catherine simply enough. " You needn't have taken so compromising a step if you had had a little more confidence in me," Mrs. Penniman observed, with a good deal of grandeur. " Is it to New Orleans ! " Catherine went on, irrelevantly. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 37 It was the first time Mrs. Penniman had heard of New Orleans in this connection ; but she was averse to letting Catherine know that she was in the dark. She attempted to strike an illumination from the instructions she had received from Morris. . " My dear Catherine," she said, " when a separation has been agreed upon, the farther he goes away the better." " Agreed upon ? Has he agreed upon it with you ?" A consummate sense of her aunt's meddle- some folly had come over her during the last five minutes, and she was sickened at the thought that Mrs. Penniman had been let loose, as it were, upon her happiness. " He certainly has sometimes advised with me," said Mrs. Penniman. " Is it you then that have changed him and made him so unnatural ? " Catherine cried. " Is it you that have worked on him and taken him from me ! He doesn't belong to you, and I don't see how you have anything to do with what is between us ! Is it you that have made this plot and told him to leave me ? How could you be so wicked, so cruel ? What have I ever done to you ; why can't you 38 WASHINGTON SQUARE. leave me alone ? I was afraid you would spoil everything ; for you do spoil everything you touch ! I was afraid of you all the time we were abroad ; I had no rest when I thought that you were always talking to him." Catherine went on with growing vehemence, pouring out in her bitterness and in the clairvoyance of her passion (which suddenly, jumping all processes, made her judge her aunt finally and without appeal), the uneasiness which had lain for so many months upon her heart. Mrs. Penniman was scared and bewildered ; she saw no prospect of introducing her little account of the purity of Morris's motives. " You are a most ungrateful girl !" she cried. " Do you scold me for talking with him ! I am sure we never talked of anything but you !" ' Yes ; and that was the way you worried him ; you made him tired of my very name ! I wish you had never spoken of me to him ; I never asked your help!" " I am sure if it hadn't been for me he would never have come to the house, and you would never have known what he thought of you," Mrs. Penni- man rejoined with a good deal of justice. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 39 " I wish he never had come to the house, and that I never had known it ! That's better than this/' said poor Catherine. " You are a very ungrateful girl," Aunt Lavinia repeated. Catherine's outbreak of anger and the sense of wrong gave her, while they lasted, the satisfaction that comes from all assertion of force ; they hurried her along, and there is always a sort of pleasure in cleaving the air. But at the bottom she hated to be violent, and she was conscious of no aptitude for organised resentment. She calmed herself with a great effort, but with great rapidity, and walked about the room a few moments, trying to say to herself that her aunt had meant everything for the best. She did not succeed in saying it with much conviction, but after a little she was aT)le to speak quietly enough. " I am not ungrateful, but I am very unhappy. It's hard to be grateful for that," she said. " Will you please tell me where he is ?" " I haven't the least idea ; I am not in secret correspondence with him!" And Mrs. Penniman wished indeed that she were, so that she might 40 WASHINGTON SQUAKE. let him know how Catherine abused her, after all she had done. "Was it a plan of his, then, to break off ?" By this time Catherine had become completely quiet. Mrs. Penniman began again to have a glimpse of her chance for explaining. "He shrank he shrank," she said. " He lacked courage, but it was the cour- age to injure you ! He couldn't bear to bring down on you your father's curse." Catherine listened to this with her eyes fixed upon her aunt, and continued to gaze at her for some time afterwards "Did he tell you to say that?" " He told me to say many things all so delicate, so discriminating. And he told me to tell you he hoped you wouldn't despise him." "I don't," said Catherine. And then she added: " And will he stay away for ever ? " " Oh, for ever is a long time. Your father, perhaps, won't live for ever." " Perhaps not." " I am sure you appreciate you understand even though your heart bleeds," said Mrs. Penniman. " You doubtless think him too scrupulous. So do WASHINGTON SQUARE. 41 I, but I respect his scruples. What he asks of you is that you should do the same." Catherine was still gazing at her aunt, but she spoke, at last, as if she had not heard or not under- stood her. " It has been a regular plan, then. He has broken it off deliberately; he has given me up." " For the present, dear Catherine. He has put it off, only." " He has left me alone," Catherine went on. " Haven't you me ?" asked Mrs. Penniman, with much expression. Catherine shook her head slowly. " I don't believe it !" and she left the room. XXXI. THOUGH she had forced herself to be calm, she pre- ferred practising this virtue in private, and she forbore to show herself at tea a repast which, on Sundays, at six o'clock, took the place of dinner. Dr. Sloper and his sister sat face to face, but Mrs. Penniman never met her brother's eye. Late in the evening she went with him, but without Catherine, to their sister Almond's, where, between the two ladies, Catherine's unhappy situation was discussed with a frankness that was conditioned by a good deal of mysterious reticence on Mrs. Penniman's part. " I am delighted he is not to marry her," said Mrs. Almond, "but he ought to be horsewhipped all the same." Mrs. Penniman, who was shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he had been actuated by the noblest of motives the desire not to impoverish Catherine. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 43 " I am very happy that Catherine is not to be impoverished but I hope he may never have a penny too much! And what does the poor girl say to you ?" Mrs. Almond asked. " She says I have a genuis for consolation," said Mrs. Penniman. This was the account of the matter that she gave to her sister, and it was perhaps with the consciousness of genius that, on her return that evening to Washington Square, she again presented herself for admittance at Catherine's door. Catherine came and opened it ; she was apparently very quiet. "I only want to give you a little word of advice," she said. "If your father asks you, say that everything is going on." Catherine stood there, with her hand on the knob, looking at her aunt, but not asking her to come in. " Do you think he will ask me ? " " I am sure he will. He asked me just now, on our way home from your Aunt Elizabeth's. I explained the whole thing to your Aunt Elizabeth. I said to your father I know nothing about it." "Do you think he will ask me, when he sees when he sees ?" But here Catherine stopped. 44 WASHINGTON SQUARE. "The more he sees, the more disagreeable he will be," said her aunt. "He shall see as little as possible!" Catherine declared. " Tell him you are to be married." "So I am," said Catherine, softly; and she closed the door upon her aunt. She could not have said this two days later for instance, on Tuesday, when she at last received a letter from Morris Townsend. It was an epistle of considerable length, measuring five large square pages, and written at Philadelphia. It was an explanatory document, and it explained a great many things, chief among which were the con- siderations that had led the writer to take advan- tage of an urgent " professional " absence to try and banish from his mind the image of one whose path he had crossed only to scatter it with ruins. He ventured to expect but partial success in this attempt, but he could promise her that, whatever his failure, he would never again interpose between her generous heart and her brilliant prospects and filial duties. He closed with an intimation that his professional pursuits might compel him to travel WASHINGTON SQUARE. 45 for some months, and with the hope that when they should each have accommodated themselves to what was sternly involved in their respective positions even should this result not be reached for years they should meet as friends, as fellow-sufferers, as innocent but philosophic victims of a great social law. That her life should be peaceful and happy was the dearest wish of him who ventured still to subscribe himself her most obedient servant. The letter was beautifully written, and Catherine who kept it for many years after this, was able, when her sense of the bitterness of its meaning and the hollowness of its tone had grown less acute, to admire its grace of expression. At present, for a long time after she received it, all she had to help her was the determination, daily more rigid, to make no appeal to the compassion of her father. He suffered a week to elapse, and then one day, in the morning, at an hour at which she rarely saw him, he strolled into the back-parlour. He had watched his time, and he found her alone. She was sitting with some work, and he came and stood in front of her. He was going out, he had on his hat and was drawing on his gloves. 46 WASHINGTON SQUARE. " It doesn't seem to me that you are treating me just now with all the consideration I deserve/' he said in a moment. " I don't know what I have done," Catherine answered, with her eyes on her work. " You have apparently quite banished from your mind the request I made you at Liverpool, before we sailed; the request that you would notify me in advance before leaving my house." "I have not left your house !" said Catherine. " But you intend to leave it, and by what you gave me to understand, your departure must be impending. In fact, though you are still here in body, you are already absent in spirit. Your mind has taken up its residence with your prospective husband, and you might quite as well be lodged under the conjugal roof, for all the benefit we get from your society." " I will try and be more cheerful!" said Catherine. "-You certainly ought to be cheerful, you ask a great deal if you are not. To the pleasure of marrying a brilliant young man, you add that of having your own way; you strike me as a very lucky young lady ! " WASHINGTON SQUARE. 47 Catherine got up ; she was suffocating. But she folded her work, deliberately and correctly, bending her burning face upon it. Her father stood where he had planted himself; she hoped he would go, but he smoothed and buttoned his gloves, and then he rested his hands upon his hips. " It would be a convenience to me to know when I may expect to have an empty house/' he went on. " When you go, your aunt marches." She looked at him at last, with a long silent gaze, which, in spite of her pride and her resolution, uttered part of the appeal she had tried not to make. Her father's cold gray eye sounded her own, and he insisted on his point. "Is it to-morrow? Is it next week, or the week after?" " I shall not go away !" said Catherine. The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Has he backed out ?" " I have broken off my engagement." "Broken it off?" " I have asked him to leave New York, and he has gone away for a long time." The Doctor was both puzzled and disappointed, 48 WASHINGTON SQUAKE. but he solved Ms perplexity by saying to himself that his daughter simply misrepresented justifiably, if one would, but nevertheless, misrepresented the facts ; and he eased off his disappointment, which was that of a man losing a chance for a little triumph that he had rather counted on, by a few words that he uttered aloud. " How does he take his dismissal ? " " I don't know ! " said Catherine, less ingeniously than she had hitherto spoken. " You mean you don't care ? You are rather cruel, after encouraging him and playing with him for so long ! " The Doctor had his revenge after all. XXXII. OUR story has hitherto moved with very short steps, but as it approaches its termination it must take a long stride. As time went on, it might have appeared to the Doctor that his daughter's account of her rupture with Morris Townsend, mere bravado as he had deemed it, was in some degree justified by the sequel. Morris remained as rigidly and unremittingly absent as if he had died of a broken heart, and Catherine had apparently buried the memory of this fruitless episode as deep as if it had terminated by her own choice. We know that she had been deeply and incurably wounded, but the Doctor had no means of knowing it. He was certainly curious about it, and would have given a good deal to discover the exact truth ; but it was his punishment that he never knew his punish- ment, I mean, for the abuse of sarcasm in his re- lations with his daughter. There was a good deal VOL. II. E 50 WASHINGTON SQUARE. of effective sarcasm in her keeping him in the dark, and the rest of the world conspired with her, in this sense, to be sarcastic. Mrs. Penniman told him nothing, partly because he never questioned her he made too light of Mrs. Penniman for that and partly because she flattered herself that a tormenting reserve, and a serene profession of igno- rance, would avenge her for his theory that she had meddled in the matter. He went two or three times to see Mrs. Montgomery, but Mrs. Montgomery had nothing to impart. She simply knew that her brother's engagement was broken off, and now that Miss Sloper was out of danger, she preferred not to bear witness in any way against Morris. She had done so before however unwillingly because she was sorry for Miss Sloper ; but she was not sorry for Miss Sloper now not at all sorry. Morris had told her nothing about his relations with Miss Sloper at the time, and he had told her nothing since. He was always away, and he very seldom wrote to her ; she believed he had gone to California. Mrs. Almond had, in her sister's phrase, " taken up " Catherine violently since the recent catastrophe; but though the girl was very grateful to her for her WASHINGTON SQUARE. 51 kindness, she revealed no secrets, and the good lady could give the Doctor no satisfaction. Even, how- ever, had she been able to narrate to him the private history of his daughter's unhappy love-affair, it would have given her a certain comfort to leave him in ignorance; for Mrs. Almond was at this time not altogether in sympathy with her brother. She had guessed for herself that Catherine had been cruelly jilted she knew nothing from Mrs. Penniman, for Mrs. Penniman had not ventured to lay the famous explanation of Morris's motives before Mrs. Almond, though she had thought it good enough for Catherine and she pronounced her brother too consistently indifferent to what the poor creature must have suffered and must still be suffering. Dr. Sloper had his theory, and he rarely altered his theories. The marriage would have been an abominable one, and the girl had had a blessed escape. She was not to be pitied for that, and to pretend to condole with her would have been to make concessions to the idea that she had ever had a right to think of Morris. , " I put my foot on this idea from the first, and I keep it there now," said the Doctor. " I don't see 52 WASHINGTON SQUARE. anything cruel in that ; one can't keep it there too long." To this Mrs. Almond more than once replied that if Catherine had got rid of her incongruous lover, she deserved the credit of it, and that to bring herself to her father's enlightened view of the matter must have cost her an effort that he was bound to appreciate. " I am by no means sure she has got rid of him/' the Doctor said. " There is not the smallest proba- bility that, after having been as obstinate as a mule for two years, she suddenly became amenable to reason. It is infinitely more probable that he got rid of her." " All the more reason you should be gentle with her." "I am gentle with her. But I can't do the pathetic ; I can't pump up tears, to look graceful, over the most fortunate thing that ever happened to her." " You have no sympathy," said Mrs. .Almond ; " that was never your strong point. You have only to look at her to see that, right or wrong, and whether the rupture came from herself or from him, her poor little heart is grievously bruised." " Handling bruises and even dropping tears on them doesn't make them any better ! My business WASHINGTON SQUARE. 53 is to see she gets no more knocks, and that I shall carefully attend to. But I don't at all recognise your description of Catherine. She doesn't strike me in the least as a young woman going about in search of a moral poultice. In fact, she seems to me much better than while the fellow was hanging about. She is perfectly comfortable and blooming; she eats and sleeps, takes her usual exercise, and overloads herself, as usual, with finery. She is always knitting some purse or embroidering some handkerchief, and it seems to me she turns these articles out about as fast as ever. She hasn't much to say ; but when had she anything to say ? She had her little dance, and now she is sitting down to rest. I suspect that, on the whole, she enjoys it." " She enjoys it as people enjoy getting rid of a leg that has been crushed. The state of mind after amputation is doubtless one of comparative repose." " If your leg is a metaphor for young Townsend, I can assure you he has never been crushed. Crushed ? Not he ! He is alive and perfectly intact, and that's why I am not satisfied." "Should you have liked to kill him?" asked Mrs. Almond. 54 WASHINGTON SQUARE. "Yes, very much. I think it is quite possible that it is all a blind." "A blind?" " An arrangement between them. H fait le mort, as they say in France ; but he is looking out of the corner of his eye. You can depend upon it he has not burned his ships ; he has kept one to come back in. When I am dead, he will set sail again, and then she will marry him." " It is interesting to know that you accuse your only daughter of being the vilest of hypocrites," said Mrs. Almond. "I don't see what difference her being my only daughter makes. It is better to accuse one than a dozen. But I don't accuse any one. There is not the smallest hypocrisy about Catherine, and I deny that she even pretends to be miserable." The Doctor's idea that the thing was a "blind" had its intermissions and revivals ; but it may be said on the whole to have increased as he grew older; together with his impression of Catherine's blooming and comfortable condition. Naturally, if he had not found grounds for viewing her as a lovelorn maiden during the year or two that followed her great trouble, WASHINGTON SQUARE. 55 he found none at a time when she had completely recovered her self-possession. He was obliged to recognise the fact that if the two young people were waiting for him to get out of the way, they were at least waiting very patiently. He had heard from time to time that Morris was in New York; but he never remained there long, and, to the best of the Doctor's belief, had no communication with Catherine. He was sure they never met, and he had reason to suspect that Morris never wrote to her. After the letter that has been mentioned, she heard from him twice again, at considerable intervals ; but on none of these occasions did she write herself. On the other hand, as the Doctor observed, she averted herself rigidly from the idea of marrying other people. Her opportunities for doing so were not numerous, but they occurred often enough to test her disposition. She refused a widower, a man with a genial temperament, a handsome fortune, and three little girls (he had heard that she was very fond of children, and he pointed to his own with some confidence) ; and she turned a deaf ear to the solicita- tions of a clever young lawyer, who, with the prospect of a great practice, and the reputation of a most 56 WASHINGTON SQUARE. agreeable man, had had the shrewdness, when he came to look about him for a wife, to believe that she would suit him better than several younger and prettier girls. Mr. Macalister, the widower, had desired to make a marriage of reason, and had chosen Catherine for what he supposed to be her latent matronly qualities; but John Ludlow, who was a year the girl's junior, and spoken of always as a young man who might have his " pick," was seriously in love with her. Catherine, however, would never look at him; she made it plain to him that she thought he came to see her too often. He after- wards consoled himself, and married a very different person, little Miss Sturtevant, whose attractions were obvious to the dullest comprehension. Catherine, at the time of these events, had left her thirtieth year well behind her, and had quite taken her place as an old maid. Her father would have preferred she should marry, and he once told her that he hoped she would not be too fastidious. " I should like to see you an honest man's wife before I die," he said. This was after John Ludlow had been compelled to give it up, though the Doctor had advised him to persevere. The Doctor exercised no further pressure, and had WASHINGTON SQUARE. 57 the credit of not " worrying" at all over his daughter's singleness. In fact he worried rather more than appeared, and there were considerable periods during which he felt sure that Morris Townsend was hidden behind some door. " If he is not, why doesn't she marry ? " he asked himself. " Limited as her in- telligence may be, she must understand perfectly well that she is made to do the usual thing." Catherine, however, became an admirable old maid. She formed habits, regulated her days upon a system of her own, interested herself in charitable institutions, asylums, hospitals, and aid - societies ; and went generally, with an even and noiseless step, about the rigid business of her life. This life had, how- ever, a secret history as well as a public one if I may talk of the public history of a mature and diffident spinster for whom publicity had always a combination of terrors. From her own point of view the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring. Nothing could ever alter these facts ; they were always there, like her name, her age, her plain face. Nothing could ever undo the wrong or cure the pain that Morris had 58 WASHINGTON SQUARE. inflicted on her, and nothing could ever make her feel towards her father as she felt in her younger years. There was something dead in her life, and her duty was to try and fill the void. Catherine recognised this duty to the utmost; she had a great disapproval of brooding and moping. She had of course no faculty for quenching memory in dissip- ation ; but she mingled freely in the usual gaieties of the town, and she became at last an inevitable figure at all respectable entertainments. She was greatly liked, and as time went on she grew to be a sort of kindly maiden -aunt to the younger portion of society. Young girls were apt to confide to her their love-affairs (which they never did to Mrs. Penniman), and young men to be fond of her with- out knowing why. She developed a few harmless eccentricities ; her habits, once formed, were rather stiffly maintained; her opinions, on all moral and social matters, were extremely conservative ; and before she was forty she was regarded as an old- fashioned person, and an authority on customs that had passed away. Mrs. Penniman, in comparison, was quite a girlish figure ; she grew younger as she advanced in life. She lost none of her relish for WASHINGTON SQUARE. 59 beauty and mystery, but she had little opportunity to exercise it. With Catherine's later wooers she failed to establish relations as intimate as those which had given her so many interesting hours in the society of Morris Townsend. These gentlemen had an indefinable mistrust of her good offices, and they never talked to her about Catherine's charms. Her ringlets, her buckles and bangles glistened more brightly with each succeeding year, and she remained quite the same officious and imaginative Mrs. Penniman, and the odd mixture of impetuosity and circumspection, that we have hitherto known. As regards one point, however, her circumspection prevailed, and she must be given due credit for it. Tor upwards of seventeen years she never mentioned Morris Townsend's name to her niece. Catherine was grateful to her, but this consistent silence, so little in accord with her aunt's character, gave her a certain alarm, and she could never wholly rid herself of a suspicion that Mrs. Penniman sometimes had news of him. XXXIII. LITTLE by little Dr. Sloper had retired from his profession ; he visited only those patients in whose symptoms he recognised a certain originality. He went again to Europe, and remained two years ; Catherine went with him, and on this occasion Mrs. Penniman was of the party. Europe apparently had few surprises for Mrs. Penniman, who frequently re- marked, in the most romantic sites " You know I am very familiar with all this." It should be added that such remarks were usually not addressed to her brother, or yet to her niece, but to fellow- tourists who happened to be at hand, or even to the cicerone or the goat-herd in the foreground. One day, after his return from Europe, the Doctor said something to his daughter that made her start it seemed to come from so far out of the past. " I should like you to promise me something before I die." WASHINGTON SQUARE. 61 " Why do you talk about your dying ?" she asked. " Because I am sixty-eight years old." " I hope you will live a long tune," said Catherine. " I hope I shall ! But some day I shall take a bad cold, and then it will not matter much what any one hopes. That will be the manner of my exit, and when it takes place, remember I told you so. Promise me not to marry Morris Townsend after I am gone." This was what made Catherine start, as I have said ; but her start was a silent one, and for some moments she said nothing. " Why do you speak of him ? " she asked at last. "You challenge everything I say. I speak of him because he's a topic, like any other. He's to be seen, like any one else, and he is still looking for a w if e having had one and got rid of her, I don't know by what means. He has lately been in New York, and at your cousin Marian's house; your Aunt Elizabeth saw him there." " They neither of them told me," said Catherine. "That's their merit; it's not yours. He has grown fat and bald, and he has not made his 62 WASHINGTON SQUARE. fortune. But I can't trust those facts alone to steel your heart against him, and that's why I ask you to promise." " Fat and bald :" these words presented a strange image to Catherine's mind, out of which the memory of the most beautiful young man in the world had never faded. " I don't think you understand," she said. " I very seldom think of Mr. Townsend." " It will be very easy for you to go on, then. Promise me, after my death, to do the same." Again, for some moments, Catherine was silent ; her father's request deeply amazed her ; it opened an old wound and made it ache afresh. " I don't think I can promise that," she answered. " It would be a great satisfaction," said her father. " You don't understand. T can't promise that." The Doctor was silent a minute. " I ask you for a particular reason. I am altering my will." This reason failed to strike Catherine ; and indeed she scarcely understood it. All her feelings were merged in the sense that he was trying to treat her as he had treated her years before. She had suffered from it then; and now all her experience, all her WASHINGTON SQUARE. 63 acquired tranquillity and rigidity, protested. She had been so humble in her youth that she could now afford to have a little pride, and there was something in this request, and in her father's think- ing himself so free to make it, that seemed an injury to her dignity. Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive ; it never sat in state ; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far. " I can't promise," she simply repeated. " You are very obstinate," said the Doctor. " I don't think you understand." " Please explain, then." " I can't explain," said Catherine. " And I can't promise." " Upon my word," her father exclaimed, " I had no idea how obstinate you are ! " She knew herself that she was obstinate, and it gave her a certain joy. She was now a middle-aged woman. About a year after this, the accident that the Doctor had spoken of occurred ; he took a violent cold. Driving out to Bloomingdale one April day to see a patient of unsound mind, who was confined 64 . WASHINGTON SQUARE. in a private asylum for the insane, and whose family greatly desired a medical opinion from an eminent source, he was caught in a spring shower, and being in a buggy, without a hood, he found himself soaked to the skin. He came home with an ominous chill, and on the morrow he was seriously ill. " It is congestion of the lungs," he said to Catherine ; " I shall need very good nursing. It will make no difference, for I shall not recover ; but I wish every- thing to be done, to the smallest detail, as if I should. I hate an ill-conducted sick-room ; and you will be so good as to nurse me on the hypothesis that I shall get well." He told her which of his fellow- physicians to send for, and gave her a multitude of minute directions; it was quite on the optimistic hypothesis that she nursed him. But he had never been wrong in his life, and he was not wrong now. He was touching his seventieth year, and though he had a very well-tempered constitution, his hold upon life had lost its firmness. He died after three weeks' illness, during which Mrs. Penniman, as well as his daughter, had been assiduous at his bedside. On his will being opened after a decent interval, WASHINGTON SQUARE. 65 it was found to consist of two portions. The first of these dated from ten years back, and consisted of a series of dispositions by which he left the great mass of property to his daughter, with becoming legacies to his two sisters. The second was a codicil, of recent origin, maintaining the annuities to Mrs. Penniman and Mrs. Almond, but reducing Catherine's share to a fifth of what he had first bequeathed her. " She is amply provided for from her mother's side," the document ran, " never having spent more than a fraction of her income from this source ; so that her fortune is already more than sufficient to attract those unscrupulous adventurers whom she has given me reason to believe that she persists in regarding as an interesting class." The large remainder of his property, therefore, Dr. Sloper had divided into seven unequal parts, which he left, as endowments, to as many different hospi- tals and shools of medicine, in various cities of the Union. To Mrs. Penniman it seemed monstrous that a man should play such tricks with other people's money; for after his death, of course, as she said, it was other people's. " Of course you will VOL. n. F 66 WASHINGTON SQUARE. dispute the will," she remarked, fatuously, to Catherine. " Oh no," Catherine answered, " I like it very much. Only I wish it had been expressed a little differently ! " XXXIV. IT was her habit to remain in town very late in the summer ; she preferred the house in Washington Square to any other habitation whatever, and it was under protest that she used to go to the seaside for the month of August. At the sea she spent her month at an hotel. The year that her father died she intermitted this custom altogether, not thinking it consistent with deep mourning ; and the year after that she put off her departure till so late that the middle of August found her still in the heated soli- tude of Washington Square. Mrs. Penniman, who was fond of a change, was usually eager for a visit to the country; but this year she appeared quite content with such rural impressions as she could gather, at the parlour window, from the ailantus- trees behind the wooden paling. The peculiar fra- grance of this ^vegetation used to diffuse itself in the evening air, and Mrs. Penniman, on the warm nights 68 WASHINGTON SQUARE. of July, often sat at the open window and inhaled it. This was a happy moment for Mrs. Penniman ; after the death of her brother she felt more free to obey her impulses. A vague oppression had dis- appeared from her life, and she enjoyed a sense of freedom of which she had not been conscious since the memorable time, so long ago, when the Doctor went abroad with Catherine and left her at home to entertain Morris Townsend. The year that had elapsed since her brother's death reminded her of that happy time, because, although Catherine, in growing older, had become a person to be reckoned with, yet her society was a very different thing, as Mrs. Penniman said, from that of a tank of cold water. The elder lady hardly knew what use to make of this larger margin of her life ; she sat and looked at it very much as she had often sat, with her poised needle in her hand, before her tapestry-frame. She had a con- fident hope, however, that her rich impulses, her talent for embroidery, would still find their application, and this confidence was justified before many months had elapsed. Catherine continued to live in her father's house in spite of its being represented to her that a maiden- WASHINGTON SQUARE. 69 lady of quiet habits might find a more convenient abode in one of the smaller dwellings, with brown stone fronts, which had at this time begun to adorn the transverse thoroughfares in the upper part of the town. She liked the earlier structure it had begun by this time to be called an "old" house and proposed to herself to end her days in it. If it was too large for a pair of unpretending gentlewomen, this was better than the opposite fault ; for Catherine had no desire to find herself in closer quarters with her aunt. She expected to spend the rest of her life in Washington Square, and to enjoy Mrs. Penniman's society for the whole of this period ; as she had a conviction that, long as she might live, her aunt would live at least as long, and always retain her brilliancy and activity. Mrs. Penniman suggested to her the idea of a rich vitality. On one of those warm evenings in July of which mention has been made, the two ladies sat together at an open window, looking out on the quiet Square. It was too hot for lighted lamps, for reading, or for work ; it might have appeared too hot even for con- versation, Mrs. Penniman having long been speech- less. She sat forward in the window, half on the 70 WASHINGTON SQUARE. balcony, humming a little song. Catherine was within the room, in a low rocking-chair, dressed in white, and slowly using a large palmetto fan. It was in this way, at this season, that the aunt and niece, after they had had tea, habitually spent their evenings. " Catherine," said Mrs. Penniman at last, " I am going to say something that will surprise you." " Pray do," Catherine answered ; " I like sur- prises. And it is so quiet now." " Well, then, I have seen Morris Townsend." If Catherine was surprised, she checked the expression of it ; she gave neither a start nor an exclamation. She remained, indeed, for some moments intensely still, and this may very well have been a symptom of emotion. " I hope he was well," she said at last. " I don't know ; he is a great deal changed. He would like very much to see you." " I would rather not see him," said Catherine, quickly. "I was afraid you would say that. But you don't seem surprised ! " " I am very much." WASHINGTON SQUARE. 71 " I met him at Marian's," said Mrs. Penniman. " He goes to Marian's, and they are so afraid you will meet him there. It's my belief that that's why he goes. He wants so much to see you." Catherine made no response to this, and Mrs. Penniman went on. " I didn't know him at first ; he is so remark- ably changed. But he knew me in a minute. He says I am not in the least changed. You know how polite he always was. He was coming away when I came, and we walked a little distance together. He is still very handsome, only, of course, he looks older, and he is not so so animated as he used to be. There was a touch of sadness about him ; but there was a touch of sadness about him, before especially when he went away. I am afraid he has not been very successful that he has never got thoroughly established. I don't suppose he is sufficiently plodding, and that, after all, is what succeeds in this world." Mrs. Penniman had not mentioned Moras Townsend's name to her niece for upwards of the fifth of a century ; but now that she had broken the spell, she seemed to wish to make up for lost time, as if there had been a sort of exhilaration in hearing herself talk of him. She 72 WASHINGTON SQUARE. proceeded, however, with considerable caution, paus- ing occasionally to let Catherine give some sign. Catherine gave no other sign than to stop the rocking of her chair and the swaying of her fan ; she sat motionless and silent. " It was on Tuesday last," said Mrs. Penniman, " and I have been hesi- tating ever since about telling you. I didn't know how you might like it. At last I thought that it was so long ago that you would probably not have any particular feeling. I saw him again, after meeting him at Marian's. I met him in the street, and he went a few steps with me. The first thing he said was about you; he asked ever so many questions. Marian didn't want me to speak to you; she didn't want you to know that they receive him. I told him I was sure that after all these years you couldn't have any feeling about that ; you couldn't grudge him the hospitality of his own cousin's house. I said you would be bitter indeed if you did that. Marian has the most extraordinary ideas about what happened between you; she seems to think he behaved in some very unusual manner. I took the liberty of reminding her of the real facts, and plac- ing the story in its true light. He has no bitterness, WASHINGTON SQUARE. 73 Catherine, I can assure you; and he might be excused for it, for things have not gone well with him. He has been all over the world, and tried to establish himself everywhere ; but his evil star was against him. It is most interesting to hear him talk of his evil star. Everything failed ; everything but his you know, you remember his proud, high spirit. I believe he married some lady somewhere in Europe. You know they marry in such a peculiar matter-of-course way in Europe; a marriage of reason they call it. She died soon afterwards ; as he said to me, she only flitted across his life. He has not been in New York for ten years ; he came back a few days ago. The first thing he did was to ask me about you. He had heard you had never married; he seemed very much interested about that. He said you had been the real romance of his life." Catherine had suffered her companion to proceed from point to point, and pause to pause, without interrupting her ; she fixed her eyes on the ground and listened. But the last phrase I have quoted was followed by a pause of peculiar significance, and then, at last, Catherine spoke. It will be 74 WASHINGTON SQUARE. observed that before doing so she had received a good deal of information about Morris Townsend. " Please say no more ; please don't follow up that subject." " Doesn't it interest you ? " asked Mrs. Penni- man, with a certain timorous archness. "It pains me," said Catherine. " I was afraid you would say that. But don't you think you could get used to it ? He wants so much to see you." " Please don't, Aunt Lavinia," said Catherine, getting up from her seat. She moved quickly away, and went to the other window, which stood open to the balcony ; and here, in the embrasure, concealed from her aunt by the white curtains, she remained a long time, looking out into the warm darkness. She had had a great shock ; it was as if the gulf of the past had suddenly opened, and a spectral figure had risen out of it. There were some things she believed she had got over, some feelings that she had thought of as dead ; but apparently there was a certain vitality in them still. Mrs. Penniman had made them stir themselves. It was but a momentary agitation, Catherine said WASHINGTON SQUARE. 75 to herself; it would presently pass away. She was trembling, and her heart was beating so that she could feel it; but this also would subside. Then, suddenly, while she waited for a return of her calmness, she burst into tears. But her tears flowed very silently, so that Mrs. Penniman had no observation of them. It was perhaps, however, be- cause Mrs. Penniman suspected them that she said no more that evening about Morris Townsend. XXXV. HER refreshed attention to this gentleman had not those limits of which Catherine desired, for herself, to be conscious ; it lasted long enough to enable her to wait another week before speaking of him again. It was under the same circumstances that she once more attacked the subject. She had been sitting with her niece in the evening ; only on this occasion, as the night was not so warm, the lamp had been lighted, and Catherine had placed herself near it with a morsel of fancy-work. Mrs. Pen- niman went and sat alone for half an hour on the balcony ; then she came in, moving vaguely about the room. At last she sank into a seat near Catherine, with clasped hands, and a little look of excitement. " Shall you be angry if I speak to you again about him ? " she asked. Catherine looked up at her quietly. " Who is he ?" WASHINGTON SQUARE. 77 " He whom you once loved." . " I shall not be angry, but I shall not like it." " He sent you a message," said Mrs. Penniman. " I promised him to deliver it, and I must keep my promise." In all these years Catherine had had time to forget how little she had to thank her aunt for in the season of her misery ; she had long ago for- given Mrs. Penniman for taking too much upon herself. But for a moment this attitude of in- terposition and disinterestedness, this carrying of messages and redeeming of promises, brought back the sense that her companion was a dangerous woman. She had said she would not be angry ; but for an instant she felt sore. "I don't care what you do with your promise ! " she answered. Mrs. Penniman, however, with her high con- ception of the sanctity of pledges, carried her point. " I have gone too far to retreat," she said, though precisely what this meant she was not at pains to explain. " Mr. Townsend wishes most particularly to see you, Catherine ; he believes that if you knew how much, and why, he wishes it, you would consent to do so." 78 WASHINGTON SQUARE. " There can be no reason," said Catherine ; " no good reason." " His happiness depends upon it. Is not that a good reason?" asked Mrs. Penniman, impressively. " Not for me. My happiness does not." " I think you will be happier after you have seen him. He is going away again going to resume his wanderings. It is a very lonely, rest- less, joyless life. Before he goes, he wishes to speak to you ; it is a fixed idea with him he is always thinking of it. He has something very important to say to you. He believes that you never understood him that you never judged him rightly, and the belief has always weighed upon him terribly. He wishes to justify himself; he believes that in a very few words he could do so. He wishes to meet you as a friend." Catherine listened to this wonderful speech, without pausing in her work ; she had now had several days to accustom herself to think of Morris Townsend again as an actuality. When it was over she said simply, " Please say to Mr. Townsend that I wish he would leave me alone." She had hardly spoken when a sharp, firm ring WASHINGTON SQUARE. 79 at the door vibrated through the summer night. Catherine looked up at the clock; it marked a quarter-past nine a very late hour for visitors, especially in the empty condition of the town. Mrs. Penniman at the same moment gave a little start, and then Catherine's eyes turned quickly to her aunt. They met Mrs. Penniman's and sounded them for a moment, sharply. Mrs. Penniman was blushing ; her look was a conscious one ; it seemed to confess something. Catherine guessed its mean- ing, and rose quickly from her chair. " Aunt Penniman," she said, in a tone that scared her companion, "have you taken the liberty . . . ?" " My dearest Catherine," stammered Mrs. Pen- niman, " just wait till you see him ! " Catherine had frightened her aunt, but she was also frightened herself; she was on the point of rushing to give orders to the servant, who was passing to the door, to admit no one ; but the fear of meeting her visitor checked her. " Mr. Morris Townsend." This was what she heard, vaguely but recognis- ably articulated by the domestic, while she hesitated. She had her back turned to the door of the parlour, 80 -WASHINGTON SQUARE. and for some moments she kept it turned, feeling that he had come in. He had not spoken, however, and at last she faced about. Then she saw a gentleman standing in the middle of the room, from which her aunt had discreetly retired. She would never have known him. He was forty-five years old, and his figure was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered. But it was a very fine person, and a fair and lustrous beard, spreading itself upon a well-presented chest, contributed to its effect. After a moment Catherine recognised the upper half of the face, which, though her visitor's clustering locks had grown thin, was still remarkably handsome. He stood in a deeply deferential attitude, with his eyes on her face. " I have ventured I have ventured," he said ; and then he paused, looking about him, as if he expected her to ask him to sit down. It was the old voice ; but it had not the old charm. Catherine, for a minute, was conscious of a distinct determination not to invite him to take a seat. Why had he come? It was wrong for him to come. Morris was embarrassed, but Catherine gave him no help. It was not that she was glad of his embarrassment ; WASHINGTON SQUARE. 81 on the contrary, it excited all her own liabilities of this kind, and gave her great pain. But how could she welcome him when she felt so vividly that he ought not to have come ? "I wanted so much I was determined," Morris went on. But he stopped again; it was not easy. Catherine still said nothing, and he may well have recalled with apprehension her ancient faculty of silence. She continued to look at him, however, and as she did so she made the strangest observation. It seemed to be he, and yet not he ; it was the man who had been everything, and yet this person was nothing. How long ago it was how old she had grown how much she had lived ! She had lived on something that was connected with him, and she had consumed it in doing so. This person did not look unhappy. He was fair and well-preserved, perfectly dressed, mature and complete. As Cathe- rine looked at him, the story of his life defined itself in his eyes : he had made himself comfortable, and he had never been caught. But even while her perception opened itself to this, she had no desire to catch him; his presence was painful to her, and she only wished he would go. VOL. II. G 82 WASHINGTON SQUARE. "Will you not sit down?" he asked. " I think we had better not," said Catherine. " I offend you by coming ? " He was very grave ; he spoke in a tone of the richest respect. " I don't think you ought to have come." " Did not Mrs. Penniman tell you did she not give you my message ?" " She told me something, but I did not under- stand." "I wish you would let me tell you let me speak for myself." " I don't think it is necessary," said Catherine. " Not for you, perhaps, but for me. It would be a great satisfaction and I have not many." He seemed to be coming nearer ; Catherine turned away. " Can we not be friends again ?" he asked. " We are not enemies," said Catherine. " I have none but friendly feelings to you." " Ah, I wonder whether you know the happiness it gives me to hear you say that ! " Catherine uttered no intimation that she measured the influence of her words ; and he presently went on, " You have not changed the years have passed happily for you." WASHINGTON SQUARE. 83 " They have passed very quietly," said Catherine. " They have left no marks ; you are admirably young." This time he succeeded in coming nearer he was close to her ; she saw his glossy perfumed beard, and his eyes above it looking strange and hard. It was very different from his old from his young face. If she had first seen him this way she would not have liked him. It seemed to her that he was smiling, or trying to smile. "Catherine," he said, lowering his voice, " I have never ceased to think of you." " Please don't say those things," she answered. "Do you hate me?" " Oh no," said Catherine. Something in her tone discouraged him, but in a moment he recovered himself. " Have you still some kindness for me, then?" " I don't know why you have come here to ask me such things ! " Catherine exclaimed. " Because for many years it has been the desire of my life that we should be friends again." " That is impossible." " Why so ? Not if you will allow it." " I will not allow it ! " said Catherine. 84 WASHINGTON SQUARE. He looked at her again in silence. " I see ; my presence troubles you and pains you. I will go away ; but you must give me leave to come again." " Please don't come again," she said. "Never? never?" She made a great effort; she wished to say something that would make it impossible he should ever again cross her threshold. " It is wrong of you. There is no propriety in it no reason for it." " Ah, dearest lady, you do me injustice ! " cried Morris Townsend. "We have only waited, and now we are free." " You treated me badly," said Catherine. " Not if you think of it rightly. You had your quiet life with your father which was just what I could not make up my mind to rob you of." " Yes ; I had that." Morris felt it to be a considerable damage to his cause that he could not add that she had had some- thing more besides ; for it is needless to say that he had learnt the contents of Doctor Sloper's will. He was nevertheless not at a loss. " There are worse fates than that !" he exclaimed with expres- WASHINGTON SQUARE. 85 sion ; and he might have been supposed to refer to Ms own unprotected situation. Then he added, with a deeper tenderness, " Catherine, have you never forgiven me ?" " I forgave you years ago, but it is useless for us to attempt to be friends." "Not if we forget the past. We have still a future, thank God !" " I can't forget I don't forget," said Catherine. " You treated me too badly. I felt it very much ; I felt it for years." And then she went on, with her wish to show him that he must not come to her this way, " I can't begin again I can't take it up. Everything is dead and buried. It was too serious ; it made a great change in my life. I never expected to see you here." " Ah, you are angry !" cried Morris, who wished immensely that he could extort some flash of passion from her mildness. In that case he might hope. "No, I am not angry. Anger does not last, that way, for years. But there are other things. Impressions last, when they have been strong. But I can't talk." Morris stood stroking his beard, with a clouded 86 WASHINGTON SQUARE. eye. "Why have you never married?" he asked abruptly. " You have had opportunities." "I didn't wish to marry." " Y"es, you are rich, you are free ; you had nothing to gain." " I had nothing to gain/' said Catherine. Morris looked vaguely round him, and gave a deep sigh. " Well, I was in hopes that we might still have been friends." " I meant to tell you, by my aunt, in answer to your message if you had waited for an answer that it was unnecessary for you to come in that hope." "Good-bye, then," said Morris. "Excuse my indiscretion." He bowed, and she turned away standing there, averted, with her eyes on the ground, for some moments after she had heard him close the door of the room. In the hall he found Mrs. Penniman, fluttered and eager; she appeared to have been hovering there under the irreconcilable promptings of her curiosity and her dignity. "That was a precious plan of yours!" said Morris, clapping on his hat. WASHINGTON SQUARE. 87 "Is she so hard!" asked Mrs. Penniman. "She doesn't care a button for me with her confounded little dry manner." "Was it very dry?" pursued Mrs. Penniman, with solicitude. Morris took no notice of her question ; he stood musing an instant, with his hat on. " But why the deuce, then, would she never marry?" "Yes why indeed?" sighed Mrs. Penniman. And then, as if from a sense of the inadequacy of this explanation, " But you will not despair you will come back ?" "Comeback? Damnation!" And Morris Town- send strode out of the house, leaving Mrs. Penniman staring. Catherine, meanwhile, in the parlour, picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again for life, as it were. THE PENSION BEAUEEPAS. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. I. I WAS not rich on the contrary ; and I had been told the Pension Beaurepas was cheap. I had, more- over, 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 some- thing 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 La Char- treuse de Parme, and it appeared to me that one could not do better than follow in the footsteps of its author. I remembered, too, the magnificent 92 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. boarding-house in Balzac's Pere Goriot, the "pen- sion lourgeoise des deux sexes et autres" kept by Madame Vauquer, nee De Confians. Magnificent, I mean, as a piece of portraiture; the establish- ment, 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 place, 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, encom- passed 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 93 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 pre- tended ; 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 94 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 de'place' !" this exhausted her view of the matter. If one of her inmates had put arsenic into the pot-au-feu, I be- lieve 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 chez moi, 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, tout compris, 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 them- selves au strieux. My most difficult boarders have always been those who have had the little rooms." 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 95 exits and entrances you peeped into the kitchen, it made very little difference; for Celestine, 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 door-step, a perpetual back view of Celestine 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 bourgeois ; we practised the good old Genevese principle of not sacrificing to appearances. This is an excellent principle when you have the reality. 96 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. We had the reality at the Pension Beaurepas : we had it in the shape of soft, short beds, equipped with fluffy duvets ; of admirable coffee, served to us in the morning by Celestine in person, as we lay recum- bent on these downy couches ; of copious, wholesome, succulent dinners, conformable to the best provincial traditions. Tor 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 be- lieved 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 grille contained some old-fashioned iron -work. The garden was rather mouldy and THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 97 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 effect- ively as possible in front of the windows of the salon. VOL. II. II. 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 French- man came from Lausanne. He was a native of that estimable town, but lie had once spent six months in Paris, he had tasted of the tree of knowledge ; he had got beyond Lausanne, whose resources he pro- nounced inadequate. Lausanne, as he said " manquait d'agrdments" 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 99 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 cabinet de lecture. 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 G-alignani 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 establish- ment. 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 100 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. his eye -glass on his nose, was holding out at arm's-length. It was that honourable but extremely diminutive sheet, the Journal de Geneve, a news- paper of about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. As I drew near, looking for my Galignani, 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 Journal de Geneve. "It appears," he said, "to be the paper of the country." " Yes," I answered, " I believe it's the best," 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 ! " I found my Galignani 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 101 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. "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." "For myself," I observed, "I find plenty to do." He turned his head and glanced at me with a dry, deliberate, kind-looking eye. " You're getting used to the life, are you ?" " I like the life very much," I answered, laughing. " How long have you tried it ? " "Do you mean in this place ?" 102 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " Well, I mean anywhere. It seems to me pretty much the same all over." "I have been in this house only a fortnight," I said. "Well, what should you say, from what you have seen?" my companion asked. " Oh," said I, " you can, see all there is immediately. It's very simple." " Sweet simplicity, eh ? I'm afraid my two ladies will find it too simple." rt Everything is very good," I went on. " And Madame Beaurepas is a charming old woman. And then it's veiy cheap." " Cheap, is it ?" my friend repeated meditatively. "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. "Are you from the United States, sir?" he presently demanded, turning his head again. " Yes, sir," I replied ; and I mentioned the place of my nativity. " I presumed," he said, " that you were American THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 10S or English. I'm from the United States myself ; from New York city. Many of our people here ? " " Not so many as, I believe, there have sometimes been. There are two or three ladies." "Well," my interlocutor declared, "I am very fond of ladies' society. I think when its superior there's nothing comes up to it. I've got two ladies here myself; I must make you acquainted with them." I rejoined that I should be delighted, and I inquired of my friend whether he had been long in Europe. " Well, it seems precious long," he said, " but my time's not up yet. We have been here fourteen weeks and a half." " Are you travelling for pleasure ?" I asked. 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. "No, sir," he said presently. "No, sir," he re- peated, after a considerable interval. "Excuse me," said I, for there was something so solemn in his tone that I feared I had been indiscreet. 104 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. He took no notice of my ejaculation ; lie simply continued to look at me. " I'm travelling," lie said, at last, "to please the doctors. They seemed to think they would like it." "Ah, they sent you abroad for your health?" " They sent me abroad because they were so con- foundedly muddled they didn't know what else to do." "That's often the best thing," I ventured to remark. " 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." I assented to the general proposition of the in- efficiency of doctors, and asked my companion if he had been seriously ill. " I didn't sleep," he said, after some delay. " Ah, that's very annoying. I suppose you were overworked." " I didn't eat ; I took no interest in my food." "Well, I hope you both eat and sleep now," I said. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 105 " 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." " You needed a holiday," I observed. " 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." " In all that time you have never had a holiday ?" I exclaimed, with horror. My companion waited a little. " Sundays," he said at last. " No wonder, then, you were out of sorts." " 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 106 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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. " You think it's slightly illogical," I remarked. " 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 THE TENSION BEAUREPAS. 107 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. 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 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." 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, " You have got used to Europe any way!" III. AT breakfast I encountered his ladies Ms wife and daughter. They were placed, however, at a distance from me, and it was not until the pensionnaires had dispersed, and some of them, according to custom, had come out into the garden, that he had an oppor- tunity of making me acquainted with them. "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 com- placency, 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. Euck Miss Sophy Euck," said my friend, leading me up. Mrs. Euck was a large, plump, light coloured person, with a smooth fair face, a somnolent eye, THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 109 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. " Do you think highly of this pension ?" inquired Mrs. Euck, after a few preliminaries. " It's a little rough, but it seems to me comfort- able," I answered. "Does it take a high rank in Geneva?" Mrs. Euck pursued. " I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame," I said, smiling. " I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house," said Mrs. Euck. "It's quite a different style," her daughter ob- served. Miss Euck 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.' "We hardly expected to come to a pension," said Mrs. Euck. " But we thought we would try ; we had heard so much about Swiss pensions. I 110 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. was saying to Mr. Buck that I wondered whether this was a favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake." " We knew some people who had been here ; they thought everything of Madame Beaurepas," said Miss Sophy. " They said she was a real friend." " Mr. and Mrs. Parker perhaps you have heard her speak of them," Mrs. Kuck pursued. " Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Ameri- cans ; she is very fond of Americans," I replied. " Well, I must say I should think she would be, if she compares them with some others." "Mother is always comparing," observed Miss Euck. " 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. Euck indulged in a little laugh. " 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. " You like the shops that's what you like," her father affirmed. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. Ill The young lady addressed herself to me, without heeding this remark. " I suppose you feel quite at home here." " Oh, he likes it ; he has got used to the life !" exclaimed Mr. Euck. " I wish you'd teach Mr. Euck," said his wife. " It seems as if he couldn't get used to anything." " I'm used to you, my dear," the husband retorted, giving me a humorous look. " He's intensely restless," continued Mrs. Euck. " That's what made me want to come to a pension. I thought he would settle down more." " I don't think I am used to you, after all," said her husband. In view of a possible exchange of conjugal repartee I took refuge in conversation with Miss Euck, 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 Euck, " I assure you I did. And mother did, too." 112 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " Out of the other window, I hope," said I. "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." " Your father insisted on coming away ? " " 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 Euck'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 resig- nation was thrown into relief by the voluminous tranquillity of Mrs. Euck. " 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." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 113 "Have you ordered a great, many things?" I asked, jocosely. "Well, I guess we have ordered some. Of course we wanted to take advantage of being in Paris ladies always do. "We have left the prin- cipal 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. Euck has got to make his plans accordingly." " And what are his plans ?" " 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." "Ah," said I, "there are finer things here than VOL. II. I 114 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. the jewellers' windows. We are very near some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe." " 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. Euck, who, with her husband, had drawn near again. "Aren't we what ?" inquired the elder lady. " Aren't we familiar with the mountains ? " " WeU, I hope so," said Mrs. Euck. Mr. Euck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable wink. " There's nothing much you can tell them !" he said. 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. " Well, I think we had better ; we have got to go up to that place." " To what place ?" asked Mr. Euck. " To that jeweller's to that big one." " They all seemed big enough ; they were too big ! " And Mr. Euck gave me another wink. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 115 " That one where we saw the blue cross," said his daughter. " Oh, come, what do you want of t that blue cross ? " poor Mr. Ruck demanded. " She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie it round her neck," said his wife. " 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 Euck, with decision, "I can generally find it." " Look here, Sophy," her father urged, " you don't want that blue cross." "I do want it I happen to want it." And Sophy glanced at me with a little laugh. Her laugh, which in itself was pretty, suggested that there were various relations in which one might stand to Miss Euck ; 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. 116 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " Come on, mother," said Miss Kuck. " We are going to look about a little," explained the elder lady to me, by way of taking leave. " I know what that means," remarked Mr. Buck, 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. Euck's.) I supposed he was going to say something querulous, but I was mistaken. Mr. Euck was unhappy, but he was very good-natured. " Well, they want to pick up something," he said. " That's the principal interest, for ladies." IV. MR. EUCK 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 New York Herald. He paid a daily visit to the American banker's, on the other side of the Ehone, and remained there a long time, turning 118 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. over the old papers on the green velvet table in the middle of the Salon des Strangers 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. Euck 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 un- obtrusive 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 Eue du Ehone and on the quays, loitering in front of the jewellers' windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person of THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 119 old M. Pigeonneau, who possessed a high apprecia- tion 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. Buck 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. " They have a tournure de princesse a dis- tinction supreme" he said to me. " One is sur- prised to find them in a little pension, at seven francs a day." " Oh, they don't come for economy," I answered. " They must be rich." " They don't come for my beaux yeux for mine," said M. Pigeonneau, sadly. " Perhaps it's for yours, young man. Je vous recommande la mere." I reflected a moment. " They came on account of Mr. Buck because at hotels he's so restless." M. Pigeonneau gave me a knowing nod. " Of course he is, with such a wife as that ! a femme superbe. Madame Ruck is preserved in perfection a miraculous fraicheur. I like those large, fair, quiet women; they are often, dans. I'intimite', the 120 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. most agreeable. I'll warrant you that at heart Madame Buck is a finished coquette." " I rather doubt it," I said. " You suppose her cold ? !N"e vous y fiez pas !" " It is a matter in which I have nothing at stake." "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." " She is very pretty." " ' She is very pretty ! ' Vous dites cela d'un ton ! When you pay compliments to Mademoiselle Kuck, I hope that's not the way you do it." " I don't pay compliments to Mademoiselle Kuck." "Ah, decidedly," said M. Pigeonneau, "you young Americans are droll ! " I should have suspected that these two ladies would not especially commend themselves to Madame Beaurepas; that as a maitresse de salon, 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 121 whatever to make about them," she said to me one evening. " I see nothing in those ladies which is at all cUplact. 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 Beau- repas pursued. "We are to have a specimen to- morrow of a very different sort." "An American ?" I inquired. "Two Amtricaines a mother and a daughter. There are Americans and Americans : when you are difficiles, you are more so than any one, and when you have pretensions ah, par exemple, it's serious. I foresee that with this little lady everything will be serious, beginning with her cafe au lait. She has been staying at the Pension Chamousset my concurrent, 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 des histoires about something else. She will demand a new lamp for the salon ; voiw allez wir cela. She wishes to pay but eleven francs 122 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. a day for herself and her daughter, tout compris ; 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, pour cela, she is ladylike ! " I caught a glimpse on the morrow of this lady- like 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 dis- puting 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 pour-boire 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." " But I am a native, too, moi ! " said the cabman, with an angry laugh. "You seem to me to speak with a German THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 123 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 com- plaint 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, 8 7 ; do you see it distinctly ? in case we should forget it." 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 Celestine tucking up her apron in the door-way, 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. Euck and her daughter, my own position being on the right of Mr. Buck. I had 124 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. therefore little observation of Mrs. Church such I learned to be her name but I occasionally heard her soft, distinct voice. " 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." "That lady seems to know what she wants," said Mr. Kuck, " 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. Per- haps she knows what / 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 ex- pect she'll be an addition to the pension." Mr. Kuck 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. Euck 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, THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 125 serious face. She was very simply and frugally dressed, not at all in the manner of Mr. Buck'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. Buck might have to say, but her manner was equivalent to an intimation that what she valued least in boarding-house life was its social opportun- ities. 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 per- ceived to be in German. To Mrs. Buck 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 Buck presently went wander- ing 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 ftte de 126 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. nuit. They engaged in this undertaking, and the fete developed itself, consisting of half a dozen red paper lanterns, hung about on the trees, and of several glasses of sir op, carried on a tray by the stout-armed Celestine. As the festival deepened to its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau was master of ceremonies. . " But where are those charming young ladies," he cried, "Miss Euck and the new-comer, Vaimable transfuge ? Their absence has been remarked, and they are wanting to the brilliancy of the occasion. Voyez I have selected a glass of syrup a " generous glass for Mademoiselle Euck, 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 !" Mr. Euck 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. Euck, established, empty-handed, in an arm-chair near her, gazed at her with an air of fascination. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 127 " Well, I told you she would know what I want/' said Mr. Euck. " 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 us, but she says she'd rather sit still and read. I expect she's a big reader." The daughter of this accomplished woman now reappeared, in company with Miss Euck, with whom she had been strolling through the outlying parts of the garden. "Well," said Miss Euck, glancing at the red paper lanterns, " are they trying to stick the flower- pots into the trees ?" " It's an illumination in honour of our arrival," the other young girl rejoined. " It's a triumph over Madame Chamousset." 128 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset," I vent- ured to suggest, " they have put out their lights ; they are sitting in darkness, lamenting your depart- ure." 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, ad- vanced to Miss Euck with his glass of syrup. " I have kept it for you, mademoiselle," he said ; " I have jealously guarded it. It is very delicious !" Miss Kuck looked at him and his syrup, without making 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. 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 Buck's insensibility, and went to deposit his rejected tribute on a bench. " Won't you give it to me ?" asked Miss Church, in faultless French. " J'adore le sirop, moi." M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity, and pre- sented the glass with a very low bow. " I adore good manners," murmured the old man. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 129 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. " She wants to go to America, and her mother won't let her," said Miss Sophy to me, explaining her companion's situation. " I am very sorry for America," I answered, laughing. " Well, I don't want to say anything against your mother, but I think it's shameful," Miss Kuck pursued. "Mamma has very good reasons; she will tell you them all." " 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." "Mamma is not very patriotic," said Aurora Church, smiling. " Well, I call that dreadful," her companion de- clared. " I have heard that there are some Ameri- cans like that, but I never believed it." VOL. n. K 130 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. "There are all sorts of Americans," I said, laughing. "Aurora's one of the right sort," rejoined Miss Euck, who had apparently become very intimate with her new friend. " Are you very patriotic ?" I asked of the young girl. " She's right down homesick," said Miss Sophy ; " she's dying to go. If I were you my mother would have to take me." " Mamma is going to take me to Dresden." " Well, I declare I never heard of anything so dreadful ! " cried Miss Euck. " It's like something in a story." " I never heard there was anything very dreadful in Dresden," I interposed. Miss Euck looked at me a moment. "Well, I don't believe you are a good American," she replied, " and I never supposed you were. You had better go in there and talk to Mrs. Church." " Dresden is really very nice, isn't it ?" I asked of her companion. "It isn't nice if you happen to prefer New York," said Miss Sophy. "Miss Church prefers THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 131 New York. Tell him you are dying to see New York ; it will make him angry," she went on. "I have no desire to make him angry," said Aurora, smiling. " It is only Miss Euck who can do that," I re- joined. " Have you been a long time in Europe ? " " Always." " I call that wicked ! " Miss Sophy declared, " You might be in a worse place," I continued. " I find Europe very interesting." Miss Euck gave a little laugh. " I was saying that you wanted to pass for a European." " Yes, I want to pass for a Dalmatian." Miss Euck looked at me a moment. "Well, you had better not come home," she said. "No one will speak to you." "Were you born in these countries ?" I asked of her companion. " Oh, no ; I came to Europe when I was a small child. But I remember America a little, and it seems delightful." " Wait till you see it again. It's just too lovely," said Miss Sophy. " It's the grandest country in the world," I added. 132 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. Miss Buck 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." " Don't you think one can be tired of Europe ?" Aurora asked, lingering. " Possibly after many years." "Father was tired of it after three weeks," said Miss Euck. "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." " She's beautifully educated," said Miss Euck. " She knows four languages." " I am not very sure that I know English." "You should go to Boston!" cried Miss Sophy. " They speak splendidly in Boston." " C'est mon re>e," said Aurora, still looking at me. " Have you been all over Europe," I asked " in all the different countries ?" She hesitated a moment, "Everywhere that THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 133 there's a pension. Mamma is devoted to pensions. We have lived, at one time or another, in every pension in Europe." "Well, I should think you had seen about enough/' said Miss Euck. " 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 pension 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 pensions ; 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." "Your mother doesn't seem to mingle much," observed Miss Euck, glancing through the window at the scholastic attitude of Mrs. Church. "No, she doesn't mingle, except in the native society. Though she lives in pensions, she detests them." " Why does she live in them, then ?" asked Miss Sophy, rather resentfully. 134 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " 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 myjeunesse my belle jeunesse. 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." " Well, any one can see that you're an American girl," Miss Buck remarked, in a consolatory manner. " I can tell an American girl a mile off. You've got the American style." " I'm afraid I haven't the American toilette" said Aurora, looking at the other's superior splendour. " Well, your dress was cut in France ; any one can see that." "Yes," said Aurora, with a laugh, "my dress was cut in France at Avranches." "Well, you've got a lovely figure, any way," pursued her companion. "Ah," said the young girl, "at Avranches, too, my figure was admired." And she looked at me THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 135 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 Euck, and yet Miss Kuck 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 en- courage it. I am very patriotic. I try to copy them, though mamma has brought me up & la fran- gaise ; that is, as much as one can in pensions. For instance, I have never been out of the house with- out 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 S" 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, how- ever, it had a fascination ; there was something dainty about it, and yet it was decidedly audacious The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I enjoyed their society until M. Pigeon- neau's festival came to an end. V. MR. KUCK 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 en- deavour 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. " 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 137 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 charm- ing 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 aspira- tions ? What is its ideal ?" I had seated myself near Mrs. Church, and she had pointed this inter- rogation 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 138 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. answer for the great republic. Observing my hesita- tion, Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and gave an intense, melancholy smile. " Has it an ideal ?" she softly asked. " Well, we must talk of this," she went on, without insist- ing. "Speak, for the present, for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe with any special design ?" " Nothing to boast of," I said. " I am studying a little." " 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 course. But you must not be discouraged ; every little counts." " I see that you, at least, are doing your part," I rejoined gallantly, dropping my eyes on my com- panion's learned volume. " Yes, I frankly admit that I am fond of study. There is no one, after all, like the Germans. That is, for facts. Eor 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 acquisi- tions. I am afraid I am sadly selfish ; I do little THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 139 to irrigate the soil. I belong I frankly confess it to the class of absentees." " 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." Mrs. Church smiled benignantly. " Can one ever be too long ? We shall never leave it." " Your daughter won't like that," I said, smiling too. " Has she been taking you into her confidence ? She is a more sensible young lady than she some- times appears. I have taken great pains with her ; she is really I may be permitted to say it superbly educated." " She seemed to me a very charming girl," I rejoined. "And I learned that she speaks four languages." " 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 de fortes Etudes such as I suppose you are making now. She is familiar with the results of modern science ; she keeps pace with the new his- torical school" 140 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " Ah," said I, " she has gone much farther than I !" " You douhtless 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." " 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. " 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." Although she herself seemed proof against dis- composure, I found something vaguely irritating in her soft, sweet positiveness. THE TENSION BEAUREPAS. 141 " American cities," I said, " are the paradise of young girls." " Do you mean," asked Mrs. Church, " that the young girls who come from those places are angels?" " Yes," I said, resolutely. " This young lady what is her odd name ? with whom my daughter has formed a somewhat precipitate acquaintance : is Miss Euck an angel ? But I won't force you to say anything uncivil. It would be too cruel to make a single exception." " Well," said I, " at any rate, in America young girls have an easier lot. They have much more liberty." My companion laid her hand for an instant on my arm. " My dear young friend, Pknow 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." " I am afraid you don't approve of them," said I, a little brutally. 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 142 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " 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." " Ah," said I, " you know what you like ; there is a great virtue in that." " Yes, we like Europe ; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe ; we like the rest. 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. c Whither ? ' I often ask, in my little quiet way. But I have yet to learn that any one can tell me." " You're a great conservative," I observed, while I wondered whether I myself could answer this inquiry. Mrs. Church gave me a smile which was equiva- lent to a confession. " I wish to retain a little just a little. Surely, we have done so much, we THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 143 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." " 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. " You have been engaged with your new acquaint- ance, my dear?" this lady inquired. " Yes, mamma dear," said the young girl, gently. " Do you find her very edifying?" Aurora was silent a moment ; then she looked at her mother. " I don't know, mamma ; she is very fresh." I ventured to indulge in a respectful laugh. " Your mother has another word for that. But I must not," I added, " be crude." " Ah, vous m'en voulez ?" inquired Mrs. Church. And yet I can't pretend I said it in jest. I feel 144 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 con- tinued, 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 ? " " Yes, mamma," said Aurora. "We consider ourselves very fortunate in our point of view, don't we dearest ?" mamma demanded. " Very fortunate, indeed, mamma." " 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 ? " " 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. " 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." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 145 Mrs. Church got up, to acknowledge my compli- ment. "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 Hotel de Ville, where there are some very interest- ing documents of the period of the Eeformation ; 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 fam- iliar with, are you not, my daughter, familiar with my view of Calvin ?" " Yes, mamma," said Aurora, with docility, while the two ladies went to prepare for their visit to the Pasteur Galopin. VOL. II. VI. " 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 tapis de lit, and she has requested me to provide Celestine with a pair of light shoes. I told her that, as a general thing, cooks are not shod with satin. That poor Celestine ! " " Mrs. Church may be exacting," I said, " but she is a clever little woman." " A lady who pays but five francs and a half shouldn't be too clever. C'est de'place'. I don't like the type." " What type do you call Mrs. Church's ?" " Mon Dieu," said Madame Beaurepas, " c'est une de ces mamans comme vous en avez, qui promenent leur fille." " She is trying to marry her daughter ? I don't think she's of that sort." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 147 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 mari strieiwc. But she is travelling over Europe in search of one. She would like a magistrate." "A magistrate?" " A gros bonnet of some kind ; a professor or a deputy." " I am very sorry for the poor girl," I said, laughing. "You needn't pity her too much; she's a sly thing." " Ah, for that, no ! " I exclaimed. " She's a charming girl." Madame Beaurepas gave an elderly grin. " She has hooked you, eh? But the mother won't have you." 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." 148 THE PENSION BEAUEEPAS. " She wishes to get away from her mother," con- tinued Madame Beaurepas. " She wishes to courir les champs" " She wishes to go to America, her native country." " Precisely. And she will certainly go." " I hope so !" I rejoined. " Some fine morning or evening she will go off with a young man; probably with a young American." " Allons done !" said I, with disgust. " That will be quite America enough," pursued my cynical hostess. " I have kept a boarding- house for forty years. I have seen that type." " Have such things as that happened chez vous ? " I asked. "Everything has happened chez moi. 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 pour la partie none except you, mon- sieur. You are susceptible, but you are too reason- able." " It's lucky for you I am reasonable," I answered. " It's thanks to that fact that you escape a scolding ! " THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 149 One morning, about this time, instead of coming back to breakfast at the pension, 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 mile lasse 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 hotels, 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 150 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. its proprietor; one, in either case, would have helped me to identify the other. One was the New York Herald ; 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 hy 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 ; plung- ing their roots into a superfluous past. I endeavoured, therefore, as I sat down beside him, to suggest something more impersonal. " That's a beautiful view of the Alps," I observed. " 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." " Your ladies, then, have been with you ?" " 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." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 151 " Are they shopping now ? " "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 corA e 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. Kuck continued, " I stepped in at the banker's to see if there wasn't something, and they handed me out a Herald." " I hope the Herald is full of good news," I said. " Can't say it is. D d bad news." " Political," I inquired, " or commercial ? " " Oh, hang politics ! It's business, sir. There 152 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 ?" " I hope they haven't injured you," I said. " "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." " I am very sorry to hear that," I said, " and I recommend you strongly not to think of busi- ness." " 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 153 those mountains over there ; they are pretty, certainly Can't you get over there ? " " Over where ? " " Over to those hills. Don't they run a train right up ?" " 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." " 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. Euck 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 are walking round," he resumed; "I guess they've hit on something, somewhere. And they've got a carriage waiting outside of that arch- way, too. They seem to do a big business in 154 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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. Euck had some- what 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." " Well," said Mrs. Euck, " 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. Miss Sophy glanced at me with her little straight- forward air of defiance. " It would have been more proper if we had had the company. Why didn't you come after us, instead of sitting there ?" she asked of Mr. Euck's companion. " I was told by your father," I explained, " that you were engaged in sacred rites." Miss Euck was THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 155 not gracious, though I doubt whether it was because her conscience was better than her mother's. "Well, for a gentleman there is nothing so sacred as ladies' society," replied Miss Kuck, in the manner of a person accustomed to giving neat retorts. " 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." "We discovered the loveliest little lace-shop," observed the young girl, with a serenity that was superior to bravado. Her father looked at her a while ; then turned about again, leaning on the parapet, and gazed away at the " hills." " Well, it was certainly cheap," said Mrs. Kuck, also contemplating the Alps. "We are going to Chamouni," said her husband. " You haven't any occasion for lace at Chamouni." " 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." 156 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. "You can wear lace anywhere," said Miss Buck, "if you put 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." Her father transferred his melancholy gaze to her elaborately-appointed little person ; there was a great deal of very new-looking detail in Miss Buck's appearance. Then, in a tone of voice quite out of consonance with his facial despondency, " Have you purchased a great deal?" he inquired. " I have purchased enough for you to make a fuss about." "He can't make a fuss about that," said Mrs. Euck. " Well, you'll see !" declared the young girl with a little sharp laugh. 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?" " I'll hang it round you, if you don't look out !" cried Miss Sophy. "Don't you want to show it to this gentleman ?" Mr. Euck continued. THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 157 "Mercy, how you do talk about that lace?" said his wife. "Well, I want to be lively. There's every reason for it; we're going to Chamouni." " You're restless ; that's what's the matter with you." And Mrs. Euck got up. " No, I ain't," said her husband. " I never felt so quiet; I feel as peaceful as a little child." Mrs. Euck, who had no sense whatever of humour, looked at her daughter and at me. " Well, I hope you'll improve," she said. . " Send in the bills," Mr. Euck 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." Miss Euck 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." Poor Mr. Euck 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, 158 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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." VII. OLD M. Pigeonneau had more thdn 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 sym- pathy. 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 be- yond the bridge, beside the lake. It was very pretty and very animated; there was a band play- ing 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. 160 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. We joined the strollers, we observed our com- panions, 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 sur- prisingly 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. Suddenly M. Pigeonneau stopped, pressing my arm with the liveliest emotion. " La voila, la voila, 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 Euck. " Oh, la belle rencontre, nos aimables convives ; the prettiest girl in the world, in effect !" We immediately greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene. " I was citing you with admiration to my friend, THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 161 even before I had recognised you/' said M. Pigeon- neau to Miss Buck. "I don't believe in French compliments," re- marked this young lady, presenting her back to the smiling old man. "Are you and Miss Euck walking alone?" I asked of her companion. " You had better accept of M. Pigeonneau's gallant protection, and of mine." Aurora Church had taken her hand out of Miss Buck'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 gentle- men ? I wish to do what is most improper." " What mysterious logic governs your conduct ? " I inquired. " He thinks you can't understand him when he talks like that," said Miss Buck. "But I do understand you, always !" " So I have always ventured to hope, my dear Miss Buck." " Well, if I didn't, it wouldn't be much loss," rejoined this young lady. VOL. II. M 162 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " AHons, en marche !" cried M. Pigeonneau, smiling still, and undiscouraged by her inhumanity. " Let us make together the tour of the garden." And he imposed his society upon Miss Euck 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. " 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." " Oh, I am very stupid," I answered, " but this doesn't seem to me wrong." "Not for you, no; only for me. There is nothing that a man can do that is wrong, is there ? En morale, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can steal; but I think there is nothing else, is there ?" " I don't know. One doesn't know those things until after one has done them. Then one is enlightened." "And you mean that you have never been THE PENSION BEAUKEPAS. 163 enlightened ? You make yourself out very good." " That is better than making one's self out bad, as you do." The young girl glanced at me a moment, and then, with her charming smile, " That's one of the consequences of a false position." " Is your position false ? " I inquired, smiling too at this large formula. " Distinctly so." "In what way?" " Oh, in every way. For instance, I have to pretend to be a jeune fille. 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." " You don't pretend to be very innocent ; you pretend to be what shall I call it ? very wise." " That's no pretence. I am wise." " You are not an American girl," I ventured to observe. My companion almost stopped, looking at me ; there was a little flush in her cheek. "Voila!" she 164 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. said. " There's my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I'm not." "Do you want me to tell you?" I went on. "An American girl wouldn't talk as you are talking now." "Please tell me," said Aurora Church, with expressive eagerness. "How would she talk ?" " 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." 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 !" 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." "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." The conversational union between Miss Buck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 165 become a close one. The young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question : " Don't you want some ice cream ?" "She doesn't strike false notes," I murmured. There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a cafe, and at which the delicacies pro- curable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Buck 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. My neighbour was delighted with our situation. " This is best of all," she said. " I never believed I should come to a cafe* with two strange men ! Now, you can't persuade me this isn't, wrong." " To make it wrong we ought to see your mother coming down that path." " 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 : 166 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " 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 !" " You will keep me very busy, and people will think I am in a consumption." " Voyons" 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 Euck calls it." I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot, 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." 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 Euck is very fresh." " I may not be so fresh as Miss Euck," I said, THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 167 "but in future, when you want information, I recommend you to come to me for it." " 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. "Bon, a false note ! I can see it by your face; you remind me of a maitre de piano." " You overdo the character the poor American girl," I said. "Are you going to stay with that delightful family?" "I will go and stay with any one that will take me or ask me. It's a real nostalgic. She says that in New York in Thirty-Seventh Street I should have the most lovely time." , "I have no doubt you would enjoy it." " Absolute liberty to begin with." "It seems to me you have a certain liberty here," I rejoined. " Ah, this? Oh, I shall pay for this. I shall be punished by mamma, and I shall be lectured by Madame Galopin." "The wife of the pasteur?" " His digne Spouse. Madame Galopin, for mamma, 168 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 any- thing of her here ? She is nobody ; she is perfectly third-rate. If I like America better than mamma, I also know Europe better." "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." "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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 169 than that they were de leur pays! Germans, French, Italians, Turks, everything. When I com- plain, 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." 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 femme comme il faut approaching our table with an impatient step, and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by the pre-eminent form of Mr. Euck. 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 Euck 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 170 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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." " I have come for you, dearest," said the mother. " Yes, dear mamma." " Come for you come for you," Mrs. Church repeated, looking down at the relics of our little feast. " I was obliged to ask Mr. Euck's assistance. I was puzzled ; I thought a long time." "Well, Mrs. Church, I was glad to see you puzzled once in your life !" said Mr. Euck, with friendly jocosity. " But you came pretty straight for all that. I had hard work to keep up with you." " We will take a cab, Aurora," Mrs. Church went on, without heeding this pleasantry " a closed one. Come, my daughter." " Yes, dear mamma." The young girl was blush- ing, 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 lovely time" " We must not linger," said her mother ; " it is THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 171 five o'clock. We are to dine, you know, with Ma- dame Galopin." " I had quite forgotten," Aurora declared. " That will be charming." " Do you want me to assist you to carry her back, ma'am ?" asked Mr. Euck. Mrs. Church hesitated a moment, with her serene little gaze. "Do you prefer, then, to leave your daughter to finish the evening with these gentle- men ?" Mr. Kuck pushed back his hat and scratched the top of his head. " Well, I don't know. How would you like that, Sophy ?" "Well, I never!" exclaimed Sophy, as Mrs. Church marched off with her daughter. VIII. I HAD half expected that Mrs. Church would make ine 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 Euck. 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 PENSION BEAUREPAS. 173 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. " Always at your studies, Mrs. Church," I ven- tured to observe. " Que voulez-vous ? To say studies is to say too much ; one doesn't study in the parlour of a board- ing-house. But I do what I can ; I have always done what I can. That is all I have ever claimed." " No one can do more, and you seem to have done a great deal." "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 lest ! 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 174 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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." " She has had you, madam," I rejoined finely. " 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 some- thing 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." " 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." Mrs. Church dropped her eyes a moment ; and then, with considerable gravity, " I think the Euro- pean pension system in many respects remarkable, and in some satisfactory. But of the friendships THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 175 that we have formed, few have been contracted in establishments of this kind." " I am sorry to hear that !" I said, laughing. " I don't say it for you, though I might say it for some others. We have been interested in Euro- pean homes" "Oh, I see!" " We have the tntree of the old Genevese society. I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr. Kuck," added Mrs. Church, calmly ; " to that of Mrs. Kuck and Miss Euck of Miss Euck, especially." " Ah, the poor Eucks haven't any tone at all," I said. " Don : t take them more seriously than they take themselves." " Tell me this," my companion rejoined, " are they fair examples ?" "Examples of what?" " Of our American tendencies." " ' Tendencies ' is a big word, dear lady ; tenden- cies are difficult to calculate. And you shouldn't abuse those good Eucks, who have been very kind to your daughter. They have invited her to go and stay with them in Thirty-Seventh Street." " Aurora has told me. It might be very serious." 176 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. " It might be very droll/' I said. "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." " On account of the Eucks ?" I asked. " 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." "They talk of Chamouni now," I said; "but they are very helpless and undecided." "I will give them some Chamouni addresses. Mrs. Euck will send a chaise a porteurs; I will give her the name of a man who lets them lower than you get them at the hotels. After that they must go." "Well, I doubt," I observed, "whether Mr. Euck 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 in- terest. 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." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 177 " Is it a frequent "type ?" asked Mrs. Church, with an air of self-control. " I am afraid so. Mr. Kuck 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." "Ah, what a picture!" murmured Mrs. Church. " I ain afraid they are very uncultivated." " I share your fears. They are perfectly ignor- ant; they have no resources. The vision of fine clothes occupies their whole imagination. They have not an idea even a worse one to compete VOL. n. N 178 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. with it. Poor Mr. Buck, 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." " But haven't they common sense ? Don't they know they are ruining themselves ? " " They don't believe it. The duty of an Ameri- can 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 Euck stands, staring at bankruptcy." 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 !" "I don't, on the whole, recommend," I said, laughing, " that your daughter should pay a visit to Thirty-Seventh Street." "Why should I be subjected to such trials so THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 179 sadly tprouvee ? Why should a daughter of mine like that dreadful girl ?" " Does she like her?" " Pray, do you mean," asked my companion, softly, " that Aurora is a hypocrite 1" I hesitated a moment. " A little, since you ask me. I think you have forced her to be." Mrs. Church answered this possibly presumptu- ous charge with a tranquil, candid exultation. " I never force my daughter !" " 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 Euck performs this agreeable office." " Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with Miss Buck to America she would drop her after- wards." 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 180 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. point embarking with the famille Buck. But I wish she might go, nevertheless:" 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 Buck belongs. I fear they are very numerous ; they give the tone they give the tone." " It is you that are mistaken," I said ; " go home for six months and see." " 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 au fond she does not appreci- ate them. One thing is certain : I must remove her from this pernicious influence. We must part company with this deplorable family. If Mr. Buck and his ladies cannot be induced to go to Chamouni journey that no traveller with the smallest self- THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 181 respect would omit my daughter and I shall be obliged to retire. We shall go to Dresden." "To Dresden?" " 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 fflmi1ifl.risp.fi herself; it is especially strong in the seventeenth century schools." As my companion offered me this information I perceived Mr. Euck 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 Jiad schools at that period ?" 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. Euck. 182 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. "I had a letter this morning from Chamouni," she said. " Well," replied Mr. Buck, " I suppose you've got friends all over/' "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 sud- den 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 telegraph- ing. The weather is glorious," continued Mrs. Church, " and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary distinctness." Mr. Euck listened, as he always listened, respect- fully. "Well," he said, "I don't know as I want to go up Mount Blank. That's the principal attrac- tion, isn't it ?" "There are many others. I thought I would offer you an an exceptional opportunity." " Well," said Mr. Euck, " you're right down friendly. But I seem to have more opportunities THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 183 than I know what to do with. I don't seem able to take hold." " It only needs a little decision," remarked Mrs. Church, with an air which was an admirable ex- ample of this virtue. " I wish you good-night, sir." And she moved noiselessly away. Mr. Euck, 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 ?" IX. 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 Euck talks of leaving me, and Madame Church nous fait la rv6rence" " Mrs. Church is going away ? " " She is packing her trunk ; she is a very extra- ordinary person. Do you know what she asked me this morning ? To invent some combination by which the famille Euck should move away. I informed her that I was not an inventor. That poor famille Euck! ' Oblige me by getting rid of them,' said Madame Church, as she would have asked Celestine to THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 185 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 die fait ses paquets." "She really asked you to get the Kucks out of the house ? " " She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let, three months ago, to another family. She has an aplomb !" 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 186 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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. 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, " Ought I to retire to return to the house ?" " If you ought, I should be very sorry to tell you so," I answered. " But we are all alone ; there is no one else in the garden." " It is not the first time that I have been alone with a young lady. I am not at all terrified." "Ah, but I?" said the young girl. "I have never been alone" then, quickly, she interrupted herself. " Good, there's another false note !" "Yes, I am obliged to admit that one is very false." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 187 She stood looking at me. " I am going away to- morrow ; after that there will be no one to tell me." "That will matter little," I presently replied. " Telling you will do no good." "Ah, why do you say that?" murmured Aurora Church. 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 ap- pearance 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 188 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 differ- ences 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." " Ah, you mean, then," said the poor girl, " that my mother has ruined me ?" "Kuinedyou?" " She has so perverted my mind that when I try to be natural I am necessarily immodest." " That again is a false note," I said, laughing. She turned away. " I think you are cruel." " By no means," I declared ; " because, for my own taste, I prefer you as as " I hesitated, and she turned back. "As what?" THE PENSION BEAUKEPAS. 189 "As you are." 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. " Oh, there is no obligation," I said, " but one has preferences. I am very sorry you are going away." " What does it matter to you ? You are going yourself." " As I am going in a different direction, that makes all the greater separation." 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. " Fortunately, it is a cage that will open." And I laid my hand on the lock. " Don't open it," and she pressed the gate back. " If you should open it I would go out and never return." " Where should you go ?" " To America." 190 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. "Straight away?" " Somehow or other. I would go to the American consul. I would beg him to give me money to help me." 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. In a moment more, perhaps, I should have per- suaded 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 Celestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as we turned about from our colloquy. " I ask lien pardon" said Celestine. " The mother of mademoiselle desires that mademoiselle should THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 191 come in immediately. M. le Pasteur Galopin has come to make his adieux to ces dames" Aurora gave me only one glance, but it was a touching one. Then she slowly departed with Celestine. 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. " I have nothing to envy you," he said ; " I had the last glimpse of that charming Miss Aurora." " I had a very late glimpse," I answered, " and it was all I could possibly desire." " 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 she was a femme d'esprit, though she wished to pass for one. Kound, rosy, poteUe, she yet had not the tempera- ment of her appearance ; she was a femme aust&re. 192 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 indices, 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 Euck a real femme de Rubens, celle-l&. It is very true that to talk to her one must know the Flemish tongue !" 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. Euck, with a pile of crumpled letters in his lap, his chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe of the green THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 19S 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. 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 brasserie, 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." We went to the little brasserie, where poor Mr. Euck 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 VOL. n. o 194 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 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 some- thing 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 Hue du Khone. 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, preoccupied as I was with my im- pending 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 ab- sorption 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 THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 195 found it open to the warm summer air. Mr. Kuck happened to glance in, and he immediately recog- nised 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. Mr. Euck said nothing, but he presently went in, and I did the same. " It will be an opportunity," I remarked, as cheerfully as possible, " for me to bid good-bye to the ladies." They turned round when Mr. Euck 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 brace- let from the attendant and gazed at it very fixedly. Mr. Euck seated himself on an empty stool and looked round the shop. " Well, you have been here before," said his wife ; " you were here the first day we came." Miss Euck extended the precious object in her hands towards me. " Don't you think that sweet ?" she inquired. 196 THE PENSION BEATJREPAS. I looked at it a moment. " No, I think it's ugly." She glanced at me a moment, incredulous. " Well, I don't believe you have any taste." " Why, sir,. it's just lovely," said Mrs. Euck. " You'll see it some day on me, any way," her daughter declared. " No, he won't," said Mr. Euck quietly. "It will be his own fault, then," Miss Sophy observed. " Well, if we are going to Chamouni we want to get something here," said Mrs. Euck. " We may not have another chance." Mr. Euck 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." " WeU, I'm glad to hear that," said Mrs. Euck. " Don't you suppose we want to take something home ?" " 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." " I must bid you good-bye," I said to the ladies. " I am leaving Geneva in an hour or two." THE PENSION BEAUREPAS. 197 " Take a good look at that bracelet, so you'll know it when you see it," said Miss Sophy. " She's bound to have something," remarked her mother, almost proudly. Mr. Euck 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. She twisted her head a little, and glanced at him. " Well, I wish he'd improve !" she exclaimed. "A satin case, and a nice one !" said Miss Euck to the shopman. I bade Mr. Euck 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." I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when, an hour later, I left it with my luggage, the family had not returned. A BUNDLE OF LETTEES. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. From Miss MIRANDA HOPE, in Paris, to Mrs. ABRAHAM C. HOPE, at Bangor, Maine. SEPTEMBER 5th, 1879. MY DEAR MOTHER I HAVE kept you posted as far as Tuesday week last, and, although my letter will not have reached you yet, I will begin another, before my news accumu- lates too much. I am glad you show my letters round in the family, for I like them all to know what I am doing, and I can't write to every one, though I try to answer all reasonable expectations. But there are a great many unreasonable ones, as I suppose you know not yours, dear mother, for I am bound to say that you never required of me more than was natural. You see you are reaping 202 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. your reward : I write to you before I write to any one else. There is one thing, I hope that you don't show any of my letters to William Platt. If he wants to see any of my letters, he knows the right way to go to work. I wouldn't have him see one of these letters, written for circulation in the family, for anything in the world. If he wants one for himself, he has got to write to me first. Let him write to me first, and then I will see about answer- ing him. You can show him this if you like ; but if you show him anything more, I will never write to you again. I told you in my last about my farewell to England, my crossing the channel, and my first impressions of Paris. I have thought a great deal about that lovely England since I left it, and all the famous historic scenes I visited ; but I have come to the conclusion that it is not a country in which I should care to reside. The position of woman does not seem to me at all satisfactory, and that is a point, you know, on which I feel very strongly. It seems to me that in England they play a very faded-out part, and those with whom I conversed had a kind A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 203 of depressed and humiliated tone; a little dull, tame look, as if they were used to being snubbed and bullied, which made me want to give them a good shaking. There are a great many people and a great many things, too over here that I should like to perform that operation upon. I should like to shake the starch out of some of them, and the dust out of the others. I know fifty girls in Bangor that come much more up to my notion of the stand a truly noble woman should take, than those young ladies in England. But they had a most lovely way of speaking (in England), and the men are remark- ably handsome. (You can show this to William Platt, if you like.) I gave you my first impressions of Paris, which quite came up to my expectations, much as I had heard and read about it. The objects of interest are extremely numerous, and the climate is remarkably cheerful and sunny. I should say the position of woman here was considerably higher, though by no means coming up to the American standard. The manners of the people are in some respects ex- tremely peculiar, and I feel at last that I am indeed in foreign parts. It is, however, a truly elegant city 204 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. (very superior to New York), and I have spent a great deal of time in visiting the various monuments and palaces. I won't give you an account of all my wanderings, though I have been most indefatigable ; for I am keeping, as I told you before, a most ex- haustive journal, which I will allow you the privilege of reading on my return to Bangor. I am getting on remarkably well, and I must say I am sometimes surprised at my universal good fortune. It only shows what a little energy and common-sense will accomplish. I have discovered none of these objec- tions to a young lady travelling in Europe by her- self, of which we heard so much before I left, and I don't expect I ever shall, for I certainly don't mean to look for them. I know what I want and I always manage to get it. I have received a great deal of politeness some of it really most pressing, and I have experienced no drawbacks whatever. I have made a great many pleasant acquaintances in travelling round (both ladies and gentlemen), and had a great many most interesting talks. I have collected a great deal of information, for which I refer you to my journal. I assure you my journal is going to be a splendid A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 205 thing. I do just exactly as I do in Bangor, and I find I do perfectly right ; and at any rate, I don't care if I don't. I didn't come to Europe to lead a merely conventional life ; I could do that at Bangor. You know I never would do it at Bangor, so it isn't likely I am going to make myself miserable over here. So long as I accomplish what I desire, and make my money hold out, I shall regard the thing as a suc- cess. Sometimes I feel rather lonely, especially in the evening ; but I generally manage to interest my- self in something or in some one. In the evening I usually read up about the objects of interest I have visited during the day, or I post up my journal. Sometimes I go to the theatre ; or else I play the piano in the public parlour. The public parlour at the hotel isn't much ; but the piano is better than that fearful old thing at the Sebago House. Some- times I go downstairs and talk to the lady who keeps the books a French lady, who is remarkably polite. She is very pretty, and always wears a black dress, with the most beautiful fit; she speaks a little English ; she tells me she had to learn it in order to converse with the Americans who come in such numbers to this hotel. She has given me a great 206 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. deal of information about the position of woman in France, and much of it is very encouraging. But she has told me at the same time some things that I should not like to write to you (I am hesitating even about putting them into my journal), especially if my letters are to be handed round in the family. I assure you they appear to talk about things here that we never think of mentioning at Bangor, or even of thinking about. She seems to think she can tell me everything, because I told her I was travelling for general culture. Well, I do want to know so much that it seems sometimes as if I wanted to know everything ; and yet there are some things that I think I don't want to know. But, as a general thing, everything is intensely interesting ; I don't mean only everything that this French lady tells me, but everything I see and hear for myself. I feel really as if I should gain all I desire. I meet a great many Americans, who, as a general thing, I must say, are not as polite to me as the people over here. The people over here especially the gentlemen -are much more what I should call attentive. I don't know whether Americans are more sincere ; I haven't yet made up my mind about that. A BUNDLE OF LETTEKS. 207 The only drawback I experience is when Americans sometimes express surprise that I should be travel- ling round alone ; so you see it doesn't come from Europeans. I always have my answer ready : " For general culture, to acquire the languages, and to see Europe for myself;" and that generally seems to satisfy them. Dear mother, my money holds out very well, and it is real interesting. II. From the Same to the Same. SEPTEMBER 16th. SINCE I last wrote to you I have left that hotel, and come to live in a French family. It's a kind of boarding-house combined with a kind of school ; only it's not like an American boarding-house, nor like an American school either. There are four or five people here that have come to learn the language not to take lessons, but to have an opportunity for conversation. I was very glad to come to such a place, for I had begun to realise that I was not making much progress with the French, It seemed to me that I should feel ashamed to have spent two months in Paris, and not to have acquired more insight into the language. I had always heard so much of French conversation, and I found I was having no more opportunity to practise it than if I A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 209 had remained at Bangor. In fact, I used to hear a great deal more at Bangor, from those French Cana- dians that came down to cut the ice, than I saw I should ever hear at that hotel. The lady that kept the books seemed to want so much to talk to me in English (for the sake of practice, too, I suppose), that I couldn't bear to let her know I didn't like it. The chambermaid was Irish, and all the waiters were German, so that I never heard a word of French spoken. I suppose you might hear a great deal in the shops ; only, as I don't buy anything I prefer to spend my money for purposes of culture I don't have that advantage. I have been thinking some of taking a teacher, but I am well acquainted with the grammar already, and teachers always keep you bothering over the verbs. I was a good deal troubled, for I felt as if I didn't want to go away without having, at least, got a general idea of French conversation. The theatre gives you a good deal of insight, and, as I told you in my last, I go a good deal to places of amusement. I find no difficulty whatever in going to such places alone, and am always treated with the politeness which, as I told you before, I encounter everywhere. VOL. II. P 210 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. I see plenty of other ladies alone (mostly French), and they generally seem to be enjoying themselves as much as I. But, at the theatre, every one talks so fast that I can scarcely make out what they say; and, besides, there are a great many vulgar expres- sions which it is unnecessary to learn. But it was the theatre, nevertheless, that put me on the track. The very next day after I wrote to you last, I went to the Palais Eoyal, which is one of the principal theatres in Paris. It is very small, but it is very celebrated, and in my guide-book it is marked with two stars, which is a sign of importance attached only to first-class objects of interest. But after I had been there half an hour I found I couldn't understand a single word of the play, they gabbled it off so fast, and they made use of such peculiar expressions. I felt a good deal disappointed and troubled I was afraid I shouldn't gain all I had come for. But while I was thinking it over thinking what I should do I heard two gentle- men talking behind me. It was between the acts, and I couldn't help listening to what they said. They were talking English, but I guess they were Americans. A BUNDLE OF LETTEKS. 211 "Well," said one of them, "it all depends on what you are after. I'm after French ; that's what I'm after." " Well," said the other, " I'm after Art." " Well," said the first, " I'm after Art too ; but I'm after French most." Then, dear mother, I am sorry to say the second one swore a little! He said, " Oh, damn French ! " "No, I won't damn French," said his friend. " I'll acquire it that's what I'll do with it. I'll go right into a family." " What farnily'll you go into? " " Into some French family. That's the only way to do to go to some place where you can talk. If you're after Art, you want to stick to the galleries ; you want to go right through the Louvre, room by room ; you want to take a room a day, or something of that sort. But, if you want to acquire French, the thing is to look out for a family. There are lots of French families here that take you to board and teach you. My second cousin that young lady I told you about she got in with a crowd like that, and they booked her right up in three months. They just took her right in and they talked to her. That's what 212 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. they do to you ; they set you right down and they talk at you. You've got to understand them ; you can't help yourself. That family my cousin was with has moved away somewhere, or I should try and get in with them. They were very smart people, that family ; after she left, my cousin corres- ponded with them in Trench. But I mean to find some other crowd, if it takes a lot of trouble ! " I listened to all this with great interest, and when he spoke about his cousin I was on the point of turning around to ask him the address of the family that she was with ; but the next moment he said they had moved away; so I sat still. The other gentleman, however, didn't seem to be affected in the same way as I was. " Well," he said, " you may follow up that if you like ; I mean to follow up the pictures. I don't believe there is ever going to be any considerable demand in the United States for French ; but I can promise you that in about ten years there'll be a big demand for Art ! And it won't be temporary either." That remark may be very true, but I don't care anything about the demand ; I want to know French for its own sake. I don't want to think I have A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 213 been all this while without having gained an insight .... The very next day, I asked the lady who kept the books at the hotel whether she knew of any family that could take me to board and give me the benefit of their conversation. She instantly threw up her hands, with several little shrill cries (in their French way, you know), and told me that her dearest friend kept a regular place of that kind. If she had known I was looking out for such a place she would have told me before ; she had not spoken of it her- self, because she didn't wish to injure the hotel by being the cause of my going way. She told me this was a charming family, who had often received American ladies (and others as well) who wished to follow up the language, and she was sure I should be delighted with them. So she gave me their address, and offered to go with me to introduce me. But I was in such a hurry that I went off by my- self, and I had no trouble in finding these good people. They were delighted to receive me, and I was very much pleased with what I saw of them. They seemed to have plenty of conversation, and there will be no trouble about that. I came here to stay about three days ago, and 214 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS by this time I have seen a great deal of them. The price of board struck me as rather high ; but I must remember that a quantity of conversation is thrown in. I have a very pretty little room without any carpet, but with seven mirrors, two clocks, and five curtains. I was rather disappointed after I arrived to find that there are several other Americans here for the same purpose as myself. At least there are three Americans and two English people ; and also a German gentleman. I am afraid, therefore, our conversation will be rather mixed, but I have not yet time to judge. I try to talk with Madame de Maisonrouge all I can (she is the lady of the house, and the real family consists only of herself and her two daughters). They are all most elegant, interest- ing women, and I am sure we shall become intimate friends. I will write you more about them in my next. Tell William Platt I don't care what he does. III. From Miss VIOLET KAY, in Paris, to Miss AGNES KICH, in New York. September 2Ist. WE had hardly got here when father received a telegram saying he would have to come right back to New York. It was for something about his business I don't know exactly what ; you know I never understand those things, never want to. We had just got settled at the hotel, in some charming rooms, and mother and I, as you may imagine, were greatly annoyed. Father is extremely fussy, as you know, and his first idea, as soon as he found he should have to go back, was that we should go back with him. He declared he would never leave us in Paris alone, and that we must return and come out again. I don't know what he thought would happen to us ; I suppose he thought we should be too 216 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. extravagant. It's father's theory that we are always running up bills, whereas a little observation would show him that we wear the same old rags FOR MONTHS. But father has no observation; he has nothing but theories. Mother and I, however, have, fortunately, a great deal of practice, and we succeeded in making him understand that we wouldn't budge from Paris, and that we would rather be chopped into small pieces than cross that dreadful ocean again. So, at last, he decided to go back alone, and to leave us here for three months. But, to show you how fussy he is, he refused to let us stay at the hotel, and insisted that we should go into a family. I don't know what put such an idea into his head, unless it was some advertisement that he saw in one of the American papers that are published here. There are families here who receive American and English people to live with them, under the pretence of teaching them French. You may imagine what people they are I mean the families them- selves. But the Americans who choose this peculiar manner of seeing Paris must be actually just as bad. Mother and I were horrified, and declared that main A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 217 force should not remove us from the hotel. But father has a way of arriving at his ends which is more efficient than violence. He worries and fusses ; he " nags," as we used to say at school ; and, when mother and I are quite worn out, his triumph is assured. Mother is usually worn out more easily than I, and she ends by siding with father ; so that, at last, when they combine their forces against poor little me, I have to succumb. You should have heard the way father went on about this " family " plan ; he talked to every one he saw about it ; he used to go round to the banker's and talk to the people there the people in the post-office ; he used to try and exchange ideas about it with the waiters . at the hotel. He said it would be more safe, more respectable, more economical ; that I should perfect my French ; that mother would learn how a French household is conducted ; that he should feel more easy, and five hundred reasons more. They were none of them good, but that made no difference. It's all humbug, his talking about economy, when every one knows that business in America has com- pletely recovered, that the prostration is all over, and that immense fortunes are being made. We 218 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. have been economising for the last five years, and I supposed we came abroad to reap the benefits of it. As for my French, it is quite as perfect as I want it to be. (I assure you I am often surprised at my own fluency, and, when I get a little more practice in the genders and the idioms, I shall do very well in this respect.) To make a long story short, however, father carried his point, as usual; mother basely deserted me at the last moment, and, after holding out alone for three days, I told them to do with me what they pleased ! Father lost three steamers in succession by remaining in Paris to argue with me. You know he is like the school- master in Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" "e'en though vanquished, he would argue still." He and mother went to look at some seventeen families (they had got the addresses somewhere), while I retired to my sofa, and would have nothing to do with it. At last they made arrangements, and I was transported to the establishment from which I now write you. I write you from the bosom of a Parisian manage from the depths of a second-rate boarding-house. Father only left Paris after he had seen us what A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 219 he calls comfortably settled here, and had informed Madame de Maisonrouge (the mistress of the estab- lishment the head of the " family ") that he wished my French pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as it happens, is just what I am most at home in ; if he had said my genders or my idioms there would have been some sense. But poor father has no tact, and this defect is especially marked since he has been in Europe. He will be absent, however, for three months, and mother and I shall breathe more freely ; the situation will be less intense. I must confess that we breathe more freely than I expected, in this place, where we have him for about a week. I was sure, before we came, that it would prove to be an establishment of the lowest description ; but I must say that, in this re- spect, I am agreeably disappointed. The French are so clever that they know even how to manage a place of this kind. Of course it is very disagreeable to live with strangers, but as, after all, if I were not staying with Madame de Maisonrouge I should not be living in the Faubourg Si-Germain, I don't know that from the point of view of exclusiveness it is any great loss to be here. 220 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. Our rooms are very prettily arranged, and the table is remarkably good. Mamma thinks the whole thing the place and the people, the manners and customs very amusing ; but mamma is very easily amused. As for me, you know, all that I ask is to be let alone, and not to have people's society forced upon me, I have never wanted for society of my own choosing, and, so long as I retain possession of my faculties, I don't suppose I ever shall. As I said, however, the place is very well managed, and I suc- ceed in doing as I please, which, you know, is my most cherished pursuit. Madame de Maisonrouge has a great deal of tact much more than poor father. She is what they call here a "belle femme, which means that she is a tall, ugly woman, with style. She dresses very well, and has a great deal of talk ; but, though she is a very good imitation of a lady, I never see her behind the dinner-table, in the evening, smiling and bowing, as the people come in, and looking all the while at the dishes and the servants, without thinking of a dame de comptoir blooming in a corner of a shop or a restaurant. I am sure that, in spite of her fine name, she was once a dame de comptoir. I am also sure that, in spite A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 221 of her smiles and the pretty things she says to every one, she hates us all, and would like to murder us. She is a hard, clever Frenchwoman, who would like to amuse herself and enjoy her Paris, and she must be bored to death at passing all her time in the midst of stupid English people who mumble broken French at her. Some day she will poison the soup or the vin rouge ; but I hope that will not be until after mother and I shall have left her. She has two daughters, who, except that one is decidedly pretty, are meagre imitations of herself. The " family," for the rest, consists altogether of our beloved compatriots, and of still more beloved Englanders. There is an Englishman here, with his sister, and they seem to be rather nice people. He is remarkably handsome, but excessively affected and patronising, especially to us Americans ; and I hope to have a chance of biting his head off before long. The sister is very pretty, and, apparently, very nice; but, in costume, she is Britannia incarnate. There is a very pleasant little Frenchman when they are nice they are charming and a German doctor, a big, blond man, who looks like a great white bull ; and two Americans, besides mother and 222 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. me. One of them is a young man from Boston, an sesthetic young man, who talks about its being " a real Corot day," etc., and a young woman a girl, a female, I don't know what to call her from Ver- mont, or Minnesota, or some such place. This young woman is the most extraordinary specimen of artless Yankeeism that I ever encountered ; she is really too horrible. I have been three times to Clementine about your underskirt, etc. IV. From Louis LEVERETT, in Paris, to HARVARD TREMONT, in Boston. SEPTEMBER 25th. MY DEAR HARVARD I HAVE carried out my plan, of which I gave you a hint in my last, and I only regret that I should not have done it before. It is human nature, after all, that is the most interesting thing in the world, and it only reveals itself to the truly earnest seeker. There is a want of earnestness in that life of hotels and railroad trains, which so many of our country- men are content to lead in this strange Old World, and I was distressed to find how far I, myself, had been led along the dusty, beaten track. I had, how- ever, constantly wanted to turn aside into more unfre- quented ways ; to plunge beneath the surface and see what I should discover. But the opportunity had always been missing ; somehow, I never meet those 224 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. opportunities that we hear about and read about the things that happen to people in novels and bio- graphies. And yet I am always on the watch to take advantage of any opening that may present itself ; I am always looking out for experiences, for sensations I might almost say for adventures. The great thing is to live, you know to feel, to be conscious of one's possibilities ; not to pass through life mechanically and insensibly, like a letter through the post-office. There are times, my dear Harvard, when I feel as if I were really capable of everything capable de tout, as they say here of the greatest excesses as well as the greatest heroism. Oh, to be able to say that one has lived qu'on a vtcu, as they say here that idea exercises an indefinable attraction for me. You will, perhaps, reply, it is easy to say it ; but the thing is to make people believe you ! And, then, I don't want any second-hand, spurious sensations ; I want the knowledge that leaves a trace that leaves strange scars and stains and reveries behind it! But I am afraid I shock you, perhaps even frighten you. If you repeat my remarks to any of the West A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 225 Cedar Street circle, be sure you tone them down as your discretion will suggest. For yourself, you will know that I have always had an intense desire to see something of real French life. You are acquainted with my great sympathy with the French; with my natural tendency to enter into the French way of looking at life. I sympathise with the artistic temperament ; I remember you used sometimes to hint to me that you thought my own temperament too artistic. I don't think that in Boston there is any real sympathy with the artistic temperament ; we tend to make everything a matter of right and wrong. And in Boston one can't live on ne pent pas vivre, as they say here. I don't mean one can't reside for a great many people manage that; but one can't live, aesthetically I may almost venture to say, sensuously. This is why I have always been so much drawn to the French, who are so aesthetic, so sensuous. I am so sorry that Theophile Gautier has passed away ; I should have liked so much to go and see him, and tell him all that I owe him. He was living when I was here before ; but, you know, at that time I was travelling with the Johnsons, who are not aesthetic, VOL. II. Q <226 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. and who used to make me feel rather ashamed of my artistic temperament. If I had gone to see the great apostle of beauty, I should have had to go clan- destinely en cachette, as they say here ; and that is not my nature; I like to do everything frankly, freely, nawement, au grand jour. That is the great thing to be free, to be frank, to be naif. Doesn't Matthew Arnold say that somewhere or is it Swinburne, or Pater ? When I was with the Johnsons everything was superficial; and, as regards life, everything was brought down to the question of right and wrong. They were too didactic; art should never be didactic; and what is life but an art ? Pater has said that so well, somewhere. "With the Johnsons I am afraid I lost many opportunities ; the tone was gray and cottony, I might almost say woolly. But now, as I tell you, I have determined to take right hold for myself; to look right into European life, and judge it without Johnsonian prejudices. I have taken up, my residence in a French family, in a real Parisian house. You see I have the courage of my opinions ; I don't shrink from carrying out my theory that the great thing is to live. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 227 You know I have always been intensely inter- ested in Balzac, who never shrank from the reality, and whose almost lurid pictures of Parisian life have often haunted me in my wanderings through the old wicked-looking streets on the other side of the river. I am only sorry that my new friends my French family do not live in the old city au cceur du meux Paris, as they say here. They live only in the Boulevard Haussman, which is less picturesque ; but in spite of this they have a great deal of the Balzac tone. Madame de Mai- sonrouge belongs to one of the oldest and proudest families in France ; but she has had reverses which have compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited number of travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who have the sense of local colour she explains it herself, she expresses it so well in short, to open a sort of boarding-house. I don't see why I should not, after all, use that -ex- pression, for it is the correlative of the term pension bourgeoise, employed by Balzac in the Pere Goriot. Do you remember the pension bourgeoise of Madame Vauquer ne'e de Conflans? But this establishment is not at all like that : and indeed it is not at all bourgeois; 228 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. there is something distinguished, something aristo- cratic, about it. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, sordid, graisseuse ; but this is in quite a dif- ferent tone, with high, clear, lightly-draped windows, tender, subtle, almost morbid, colours, and furniture in elegant, studied, reed-like lines. Madame de Maisonrouge reminds me of Madame Hulot da you remember "la belle Madame Hulot?" in Les Parents Pauvres. She has a great charm; a little artificial, a little fatigued, with a little sug- gestion of hidden things in her life ; but I have always been sensitive to the charm of fatigue, of duplicity. I am rather disappointed, I confess, in the society I find here ; it is not so local, so characteristic, as I could have desired. Indeed, to tell the truth, it is not local at all ; but, on the other hand, it is cos- mopolitan, and there is a great advantage in that. We are French, we are English, we are American, we are German; and, I believe, there are some Eussians and Hungarians expected. I am much interested in the study of national types ; in com- paring, contrasting, seizing the strong points, the weak points, the point of view of each. It is inte- A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 229 resting to shift one's point of view to enter into strange, exotic ways of looking at life. The American types here are not, I am sorry to say, so interesting as they might be, and, excepting myself, are exclusively feminine. We are thin, my dear Harvard ; we are pale, we are sharp. There is something meagre about us ; our line is wanting in roundness, our composition in richness. We lack temperament ; we don't know how to live ; nous ne savons pas vivre, as they say here. The American temperament is represented (putting myself aside, and I often think that my temperament is not at all American) by a young girl and her mother, and another young girl without her mother without her mother or any attendant or appendage what- ever. These young girls are rather curious types ; they have a certain interest, they have a certain grace, but they are disappointing too ; they don't go far ; they don't keep all they promise ; they don't satisfy the imagination. They are cold, slim, sex- less ; the physique is not generous, not abundant ; it is only the drapery, the skirts and furbelows (that is, I mean in the young lady who has her mother) that are abundant. They are very different : 230 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. one of them all elegance, all expensiveness, with an air of high fashion, from New York; the other a plain, pure, clear -eyed, straight -waisted, straight- stepping maiden from the heart of New England. And yet they are very much alike too more alike than they would care to think themselves ; for they eye each other with cold, mistrustful, deprecating looks. They are both specimens of the emancipated young American girl practical, positive, passionless, subtle, and knowing, as you please, either too much or too little. And yet, as I say, they have a certain stamp, a certain grace ; I like to talk with them, to study them. The fair New Yorker is, sometimes, very amusing ; she asks me if every one in Boston talks like me if every one is as " intellectual " as your poor cor- respondent. She is for ever throwing Boston up at me ; I can't get rid of Boston. The other one rubs it into me too ; but in a different way ; she seems to feel about it as a good Mahommedan feels toward Mecca, and regards it as a kind of focus of light for the whole human race. Poor little Boston, what nonsense is talked in thy name ! But this New England maiden is, in her way, a strange type : she A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 231 is travelling all over Europe alone " to see it," she says, "for herself." For herself! What can that stiff, slim self of hers do with such sights, such visions ! She looks at everything, goes everywhere, passes her way, with her clear, quiet eyes wide open ; skirting the edge of obscene abysses without sus- pecting them; pushing through brambles without tearing her robe ; exciting, without knowing it, the most injurious suspicions ; and always holding her course, passionless, stainless, fearless, charmless ! It is a little figure in which, after all, if you can get the right point of view, there is something rather striking. By way of contrast, there is a lovely English girl, with eyes as shy as violets, and a voice as sweet ! She has a sweet Gainsborough head, and a great Gainsborough hat, with a mighty plume in front of it, which makes a shadow over her quiet English eyes. Then she has a sage-green robe, " mystic, wonderful," all embroidered with subtle devices and flowers, and birds of tender tint ; very straight and tight in front, and adorned behind, along the spine, with large, strange, iridescent buttons. The revival of taste, of the sense of beauty, in 232 A BUNDLE OF LETTEES. England, interests me deeply ; what is there in a simple row of spinal buttons to make one dream to donnor h rfoer, as they say here ? I think that a great aesthetic renascence is at hand, and that a great light will be kindled in England, for all the world to see. There are spirits there that I should like to com- mune with ; I think they would understand me. This gracious English maiden, with her clinging robes, her amulets and girdles, with something quaint and angular in her step, her carriage some- thing mediaeval and Gothic, in the details of her person and dress, this lovely Evelyn Vane (isn't it a beautiful name ?) is deeply, delightfully pictur- esque. She is much a woman elk est lien femme, as they say here; simpler, softer, rounder, richer than the young girls I spoke of just now. Not much talk a great, sweet silence. Then the violet eye the very eye itself seems to blush ; the great shadowy hat, making the brow so quiet ; the strange, clinging, clutching, pictured raiment ! As I say, it is a very gracious, tender type. She has her brother with her, who is a beautiful, fair-haired, gray-eyed young Englishman. He is purely object- ive ; and he, too, is very plastic. V. From MIRANDA HOPE to her MOTHER. September 26th. You must not be frightened at not hearing from me oftener ; it is not because I am in any trouble, but because I am getting on so well. If I were in any trouble I don't think I should write to you ; I should just keep quiet and see it through myself. But that is not the case at present ; and, if I don't write to you, it is because I am so deeply interested over here that I don't seem to find time. It was a real providence that brought me to this house, where, in spite of all obstacles, I am able to do much good work. I wonder how I find the time for all I do ; but when I think that I have only got a year in Europe, I feel as if I wouldn't sacrifice a single hour. The obstacles I refer to are the disadvantages I 234 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. have in learning French, there being so many per- sons around me speaking English, and that, as you may say, in the very bosom of a French family. It seems as if you heard English everywhere ; but I certainly didn't expect to find it in a place like this. I am not discouraged, however, and I talk French all I can, even with the other English boarders. Then I have a lesson every day from Miss Maisonrouge (the elder daughter of the lady of the house), and French conversation every evening in the salon, from eight to eleven, with Madame herself, and some friends of hers that often come in. Her cousin, Mr. Verdier, a young French gentle- man, is fortunately staying with her, and I make a point of talking with him as much as possible. I have extra private lessons from him, and I often go out to walk with him. Some night, soon, he is to accompany me to the opera. We have also a most interesting plan of visiting all the galleries in Paris together. Like most of the French, he converses with great fluency, and I feel as if I should really gain from him. He is remarkably handsome, and extremely polite paying a great many compli- ments, which, I am afraid, are not always sincere. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 235 When I return to Bangor I will tell you some of the things he has said to me. I think you will consider them extremely curious, and very beautiful in their way. The conversation in the parlour (from eight to eleven) is often remarkably brilliant, and I often wish that you, or some of the Bangor folks, could be there to enjoy it. Even though you couldn't understand it I think you would like to hear the way they go on ; they seem to express so much. I sometimes think that at Bangor they don't express enough (but it seems as if over there, there was less to express). It seems as if, at Bangor, there were things that folks never tried to say; but here, I have learned from studying French that you have no idea what you can say, before you try. At Bangor they seem to give it up beforehand ; they don't make any effort. (I don't say this in the least for William Platt, in particular) I am sure I don't know what they will think of me when I get back. It seems as if, over here, I had learned to come out with everything. I sup- pose they will think I am not sincere ; but isn't it more sincere to come out with things than to con- 236 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. ceal them ? I have become very good friends with every one in the house that is (you see, I am sincere), with almost every one. It is the most interesting circle I ever was in. There's a girl here, an American, that I don't like so much as the rest ; but that is only because she won't let me. I should like to like her, ever so much, because she is most lovely and most attractive ; but she doesn't seem to want to know me or to like me. She comes from New York, and she is remarkably pretty, with beautiful eyes and the most delicate features ; she is also remarkably elegant in this respect would bear comparison with any one I have seen over here. But it seems as if she didn't want to recognise me, or associate with me; as if she wanted to make a difference between us. It is like people they call "haughty" in books. I have never seen any one like that before any one that wanted to make a difference ; and at first I was right down interested, she seemed to me so like a proud young lady in a novel. I kept saying to myself all day, " haughty, haughty," and I wished she would keep on so. But she did keep on; she kept on too long; and then I began to feel hurt. I couldn't think A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 237 what I have done, and I can't think yet. It's as if she had got some idea about me, or had heard some one say something. If some girls should behave like that I shouldn't make any account of it; but this one is so refined, and looks as if she might be so interesting if I once got to know her, that I think about it a good deal. I am bound to find out what her reason is for of course she has got some reason; I am right down curious to know. I went up to her to ask her the day before yes- day ; I thought that was the best way. I told her I wanted to know her better, and would like to come and see her in her room they tell me she has got a lovely room and that if she had heard anything against me, perhaps she would tell me when I came. But she was more distant than ever, and she just turned it off; said that she had never heard me mentioned, and that her room was too small to receive visitors. I suppose she spoke the truth, but I am sure she has got some reason, alt the same. She has got some idea, and I am bound to find out before I go, if I have to ask everybody in the house. I am right down curious. I wonder if she doesn't think me refined or if she 238 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. had ever heard anything against Bangor ? I can't think it is that. Don't you remember when Clara Barnard went to visit in New York, three years ago, how much attention she received ? And you know Clara is Bangor, to the soles of her shoes. Ask William Platt so long as he isn't a native if he doesn't consider Clara Barnard refined. Apropos, as they say here, of refinement, there is another American in the house a gentleman from Boston who is just crowded with it. His name is Mr. Louis Leverett (such a beautiful name, I think), and he is about thirty years old. He is rather small, and he looks pretty sick; he suffers from some affection of the liver. But his conversation is remarkably interesting, and I delight to listen to him he has such beautiful ideas. I feel as if it were hardly right, not being in French ; but, fortu- nately, he uses a great many French expressions. It's in a different style from the conversation of Mr. Verdier not so complimentary, but more intel- lectual. He is intensely fond of pictures, and has given me a great many ideas about them which I should never have gained without him ; I shouldn't have known where to look for such ideas. He A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 239 thinks everything of pictures ; he thinks we don't make near enough of them. They seem to make a good deal of them here ; but I couldn't help telling him the other day that in Bangor I really don't think we do. If I had any money to spend I would buy some and take them back, to hang up. Mr. Leverett says it would do them good not the pictures, but the Bangor folks. He thinks everything of the French, too, and says we don't make nearly enough of them. I couldn't help telling him the other day that at any rate they make enough of themselves. But it is very interesting to hear him go on about the French, and it is so much gain to me, so long as that is what I came for. I talk to him as much as I dare about Boston, but I do feel as if this were right down wrong a stolen pleasure. I can get all the Boston culture I want when I go back, if I carry out my plan, my happy vision, of going there to reside. I ought to direct all my efforts to European culture now, and keep Boston to finish off. But it seems as if I couldn't help taking a peep now and then, in advance with a Bos- tonian. I don't know when I may meet one again; 240 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. but if there are many others like Mr. Leverett there, I shall be certain not to want when I carry out my dream. He is just as full of culture as he can live. But it seems strange how many different sorts there are. There are two of the English who I suppose are very cultivated too; but it doesn't seem as if I could enter into theirs so easily, though I try all I can. I do love their way of speaking, and some- times I feel almost as if it would be right to give up trying to learn French, and just try to learn to speak our own tongue as these English speak it. It isn't the things they say so much, though these are often rather curious, but it is in the way they pro- nounce, and the sweetness of their voice. It seems as if they must try a good deal to talk like that ; but these English that are here don't seem to try at all, either to speak or do anything else. They are a young lady and her brother. I believe they belong to some noble family. I have had a good deal of intercourse with them, because I have felt more free to talk to them than to the Americans on account of the language. It seems as if in talking with them I was almost learning a new one. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 241 I never supposed, when I left Bangor, that I was coming to Europe to learn English ! If I do learn it, I don't think you will understand me when I get back, and I don't think you'll like it much. I should he a good deal criticised if I spoke like that at Bangor. However, I verily believe Bangor is the most critical place on earth; I have seen nothing like it over here. Tell them all I have come to the conclusion that they are a great deal too fastidious. But I was speaking about this English young lady and her brother. I wish I could put them before you. She is lovely to look at; she seems so modest and retiring. In spite of this, however, she dresses in a way that attracts great attention, as I couldn't help noticing when one day I went out to walk with her. She was ever so mucn looked at; but she didn't seem to notice it, until at last I couldn't help calling attention to it. Mr. Leverett thinks every- thing of it ; he calls it the " costume of the future." I should call it rather the costume of the past you know the English have such an attachment to the past. I said this the other day to Madame de Maisonrouge that Miss Yane dressed in the cos- tume of the past. De Van passe*, vous voulez dire ? VOL. n. B 242 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. said Madame, with her little French laugh (you can get William Platt to translate this, he used to tell me he knew so much French). You know I told you, in writing some time ago, that I had tried to get some insight into the position of woman in England, and, being here with Miss Vane, it has seemed to me to be a good opportunity to get a little more. I have asked her a great deal about it ; but she doesn't seem able to give me much information. The first time I asked her she told me the position of a lady depended upon the rank of her father, her eldest brother, her husband, etc. She told me her own position was very good, be- cause her father was some relation I forget what to a lord. She thinks everything of this; and that proves to me that the position of woman in her country cannot be satisfactory; because, if it were, it wouldn't depend upon that of your relations, even your nearest. I don't know much about lords, and it does try my patience (though she is just as sweet as she can live) to hear her talk as if it were a matter of course that I should. I feel as if it were right to ask her as often as I can if she doesn't consider every one equal ; but she A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 243 always says she doesn't, and she -confesses that she doesn't think she is equal to "Lady Something-or- other," who is the wile of that relation of her father. I try and persuade her all I can that she is ; but it seems as if she didn't want to be persuaded; and when I ask her if Lady So-and-so is of the same opinion (that Miss Vane isn't her equal), she looks so soft and pretty with her eyes, and says, "Of course she is ! " When I tell her that this is right down bad for Lady So-and-so, it seems as if she wouldn't believe me, and the only answer she will make is that Lady So-and-so is "extremely nice." I don't believe she is nice at all ; if she were nice, she wouldn't have such ideas as that. I tell Miss Vane that at Bangor we think such ideas vulgar ; but then she looks as though she had never heard of Bangor. I often want to shake her, though she is so sweet. If she isn't angry with the people who make her feel that way, I am angry for her. I am angry with her brother, too, for she is evidently very much afraid of him, and this gives me some further insight into the subject. She thinks everything of her brother, and thinks it natural that she should be afraid of him, not only physically (for this is natural 244 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. as he is enormously tall and strong, and has very big fists), but morally and intellectually. She seems unable, however, to take in any argument, and she makes me realise what I have often heard that if you are timid nothing will reason you out of it. Mr. Vane, also (the brother), seems to have the same prejudices, and when I tell him, as I often think it right to do, that his sister is not his sub- ordinate, even if she does think so, but his equal, and, perhaps in some respects his superior, and that if my brother, in Bangor, were to treat me as he treats this poor young girl, who has not spirit enough to see the question in its true light, there would be an indignation-meeting of the citizens, to protest against such an outrage to the sanctity of womanhood when I tell him all this, at breakfast or dinner, he bursts out laughing so loud that all the plates clatter on the table. But at such a time as this there is always one person who seems interested in what I say a German gentleman, a professor, who sits next to me at dinner, and whom I must tell you more about another time. He is very learned, and has a great desire for information ; he appreciates a great many A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 245 of my remarks, and, after dinner, in the salon, he often comes to me to ask me questions about them. I have to think a little, sometimes, to know what I did say, or what I do think. He takes you right up where you left off, and he is almost as fond of discussing things as William Platt is. He is splendidly educated, in the German style, and he told me the other day that he was an " intellectual broom." Well, if he is, he sweeps clean; I told him that. After he has been talking to me I feel as if I hadn't got a speck of dust left in my mind anywhere. It's a most delightful feeling. He says he's an observer; and I am sure there is plenty over here to observe. But I have told you enough for to-day. I don't know how much longer I shall stay here ; I am getting on so fast that it sometimes seems as if I shouldn't need all the time I have laid out. I suppose your cold weather has promptly begun, as usual ; it sometimes makes me envy you. The fall weather here is very dull and damp, and I feel very much as if I should like to be braced up. VI. From Miss EVELYN VANE, in Paris, to the Lady AUGUSTA FLEMING, at Brighton. PARIS, September 30th. DEAR LADY AUGUSTA I AM afraid I shall not be able to come to you on January 7th, as you kindly proposed at Homburg. I am so very, very sorry ; it is a great disappoint- ment to me. But I have just heard that it has been settled that mamma and the children are coming abroad for a part of the winter, and mamma wishes me to go with them to Hyeres, where Georgina has been ordered for her lungs. She has not been at all well these three months, and now that the damp weather has begun she is very poorly indeed ; so that last week papa decided to have a consultation, and he and mamma went with her up to town and saw some three or four doctors. They A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 247 all of them ordered the south of France, but they didn't agree about the place ; so that mamma her- self decided for Hyeres, because it is the most economical. I believe it is very dull, but I hope it will do Georgina good. I am afraid, however, that nothing will do her good until she consents to take more care of herself ; I am afraid she is very wild and wilful, and mamma tells me that all this month it has taken papa's positive orders to make her stop in -doors. She is very cross (mamma writes me) about coming abroad, and doesn't seem at all to mind the expense that papa has been put to, talks very ill-naturedly about losing the hunt- ing, etc. She expected to begin to hunt in December, and wants to know whether anybody keeps hounds at Hyeres. Fancy a girl wanting to follow the hounds when her lungs are so bad ! But I dare say that when she gets there she will be glad enough to keep quiet, as they say that the heat is intense. It may cure Georgina, but I am sure it will make the rest of us very ill. Mamma, however, is only going to bring Mary and Gus and Fred and Adelaide abroad with her; the others will remain at Kingscote until February 248 A BUNDLE OF [LETTERS. (about the 3d), when they will go to Eastbourne for a month with Miss Turnover, the new governess, who has turned out such a very nice person. She is going to take Miss Travers, who has been with us so long, but who is only qualified for the younger children, to Hyeres, and I believe some of the Kingscote servants. She has perfect confidence in Miss T. ; it is only a pity she has such an odd name. Mamma thought of asking her if she would mind taking another when she came; but papa thought she might object. Lady Battledown makes all her governesses take the same name ; she gives 5 more a year for the purpose. I forget what it is she calls them ; I think it's Johnson (which to me always suggests a lady's maid). Governesses shouldn't have too pretty a name ; they shouldn't have a nicer name than the family. I suppose you heard from the Desmonds that I did not go back to England with them. When it began to be talked about that Georgina should be taken abroad, mamma wrote to me that I had better stop in Paris for a month with Harold, so that she could pick me up on their way to Hyeres. It saves the expense of my journey to Kingscote and back, A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 249 and gives me the opportunity to " finish " a little, in French. You know Harold came here six weeks ago, to get up his Trench for those dreadful examinations that he has to pass so soon. He came to live with some French people that take in young men (and others) for this purpose; it's a kind of coaching place, only kept by women. Mamma had heard it was very nice; so she wrote to me that I was to come and stop here with Harold. The Desmonds brought me and made the arrangement, or the bargain, or whatever you call it. Poor Harold was naturally not at all pleased; but he has been very kind, and has treated me like an angel. He is getting on beautifully with his French ; for though I don't think the place is so good as papa supposed, yet Harold is so immensely clever that he can scarcely help learning. I am afraid I learn much less, but, fortunately, I have not to pass an ex- amination except if mamma takes it into her head to examine me. But she will have so much to think of with Georgina that I hope this won't occur to her. If it does, I shall be, as Harold says, in a dreadful funk. 250 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. This is not such a nice place for a girl as for a young man, and the Desmonds thought it exceedingly odd that mamma should wish me to come here. As Mrs. Desmond said, it is because she is so very unconventional. But you know Paris is so very amusing, and if only Harold remains good-natured about it, I shall be content to wait for the caravan (that's what he calls mamma and the children). The person who keeps the establishment, or what- ever they call it, is rather odd, and exceedingly foreign; but she is wonderfully civil, and is per- petually sending to my door to see if I want anything. The servants are not at all like English servants, and come bursting in, the footman (they have only one) and the maids alike, at all sorts of hours, in the most sudden way. Then when one rings, it is half an hour before they come. All this is very uncomfortable, and I daresay it will be worse at Hyeres. There, however, fortunately, we shall have our own people. There are some very odd Americans here, who keep throwing Harold into fits of laughter. One is a dreadful little man who is always sitting over the fire, and talking about the colour of the sky. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 251 I don't believe he ever saw the sky except through the window-pane. The other day he took hold of my frock (that green one you thought so nice at Homburg) and told me that it reminded him of the texture of the Devonshire) turf. And then he talked for half an hour about the Devonshire turf, which I thought such a very extraordinary subject. Harold says he is mad. It is very strange to be living in this way, with people one doesn't know. I mean that one doesn't know as one knows them in England. The other Americans (beside the madman) are two girls, about my own age, one of whom is rather nice. She has a mother ; but the mother is always sitting in her bed-room, which seems so very odd. I should like mamma to ask them to Kingscote, but I am afraid mamma wouldn't like the mother, who is rather vulgar. The other girl is rather vulgar too, and is travelling about quite alone. I think she is a kind of schoolmistress ; but the other girl (I mean the nicer one, with the mother) tells me she is more respectable than she seems. She has, however, the most extraordinary opinions wishes to do away with the aristocracy, thinks it wrong 252 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. that Arthur should have Kingscote when papa dies, etc. I don't see what it signifies to her that poor Arthur should come into the property, which will be so delightful except for papa dying. But Harold says she is mad. He chaffs her tremendously about her radicalism, and he is so immensely clever that she can't answer him, though she is rather clever, too. There is also a Frenchman, a nephew, or cousin, or something, of the person of the house, who is extremely nasty ; and a German professor, or doc- tor, who eats with his knife and is a great bore. I am so very sorry about giving up my visit. I am afraid you will never ask me again. VII. From LrioN VERDIER in Paris, to PROSPER GOBAIN, at Lille. September 28th. MY DEAR PROSPER IT is a long time since I have given you of my news, and I don't know what puts it into my head to-night to recall myself to your affectionate memory. I suppose it is that when we are happy the mind reverts instinctively to those with whom formerly we shared our exaltations and depressions, and je fen ai trop dit, dans le Ion temps, mon gros Prosper, and you always listened to me too imper- turbably, with your pipe in your mouth, your waist- coat unbuttoned, for me not to feel that I can count upon your sympathy to-day. Nous en sommes nous flanqu6es, des confidences in those happy days when my first thought in seeing an adventure poindre a I'horizon was of the pleasure I should have in re- 254 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. lating it to the great Prosper. As I tell thee, I am happy ; decidedly, I am happy, and from this affirm- ation I fancy you can construct the rest. Shall I help thee a little ? Take three adorable girls . . . three, my good Prosper the mystic number neither more nor less. Take them and place thy insatiable little Le"on in the midst of them ! Is the situation sufficiently indicated, and do you appre- hend the motives of my felicity ? You expected, perhaps, I was going to tell you that I had made my fortune, or that the Uncle Blondeau had at last decided to return into the breast of nature, after having constituted me his universal legatee. But I needn't remind you that women are always for something in the happiness of him who writes to thee for something in his hap- piness, and for a good deal more in his misery. But don't let me talk of misery now ; time enough when it comes ; ces demoiselles have gone to join the serried ranks of their amiable predecessors. Excuse me I comprehend your impatience. I will tell you of whom ces demoiselles consist. You have heard me speak of my cousine de Mai- sonrouge, that grande belle femme, who, after having A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 255 married, en secondes noces there had been, to tell the truth, some irregularity about her first union a venerable relic of the old noblesse of Poitou, was left, by the death of her husband, complicated by the indulgence of expensive tastes on an income of 17,000 francs, on the pavement of Paris, with two little demons of daughters to bring up in the path of virtue. She managed to bring them up ; my little cousins are rigidly virtuous. If you ask me how she managed it, I can't tell you; it's no busi- ness of mine, and, & fortiori, none of yours. She is now fifty years old (she confesses to thirty-seven), and her daughters, whom she has never been able to marry, are respectively twenty-seven and twenty- three (they confess to twenty and to seventeen). Three years ago she had the thrice-blessed idea of open- ing a sort of pension for the entertainment and instruc- tion of the blundering barbarians who come to Paris in the hope of picking up a few stray particles of the language of Voltaire or of Zola. The idea lui a, porte loriheur ; the shop does a very good busi- ness. Until within a few months ago it was carried on by my cousins alone ; but lately the need of a few extensions and embellishments has caused itself 256 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. to be felt. My cousin has undertaken them, regard- less of expense ; she has asked me to come and stay with her board and lodging gratis and keep an eye on the grammatical eccentricities of her pension- naires. I am the extension, my good Prosper ; I am the embellishment ! I live for nothing, and I straighten up the accent of the prettiest English lips. The English lips are not all pretty, heaven knows, but enough of them are so to make it a gain- ing bargain for me. Just now, as I told you, I am in daily conversa- tion with three separate pairs. The owner of one of them has private lessons ; she pays extra. My cousin doesn't give me a sou of the money ; but I make bold, nevertheless, to say that my trouble is remunerated. But I am well, very well, with the proprietors of the two other pairs. One of them is a little Anglaise, of about twenty a little figure de keepsake ; the most adorable miss that you ever, or at least that I ever, beheld. She is decorated all over with beads and bracelets and embroidered dandelions ; but her principal decoration consists of the softest little gray eyes in the world, which rest upon you with a profundity of confidence a con- A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 257 fidence that I really feel some compunction in betraying. She has a tint as white as this sheet of paper, except just in the middle of each cheek, where it passes into the purest and most transparent, most liquid, carmine. Occasionally this rosy fluid overflows into the rest of her face by which I mean that she blushes as softly as the mark of your breath on the window-pane. Like every Anglaise, she is rather pinched and prim in public ; but it is very easy to see that when no one is looking elle ne demande qu'd, se laisser oiler ! Whenever she wants it I am always there, and I have given her to understand that she can count upon me. I have every reason to believe that she appreciates the assurance, though I am bound in honesty to confess that with her the situation is a little less advanced than with the others. Que voulez- vom ? The English are heavy, and the Anglaises move slowly, that's all. The movement, however, is perceptible, and once this fact is established I can let the pottage simmer. I can give her time to arrive, for I am over-well occupied with her con- current es. Celles-ci don't keep me waiting, par cxemple ! VOL. n. s 258 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. These young ladies are Americans, and you know that it is the national character to move fast. " All right go ahead !" (I am learning a great deal of English, or, rather, a great deal of American.) They go ahead at a rate that sometimes makes it difficult for me to keep up. One of them is prettier than the other ; but this latter (the one that takes the private lessons) is really une file prodigieuse. Ah, par exemple, die Grille ses vaisseux celle-la ! She threw herself into my arms the very first day, and I almost owed her a grudge for having deprived me of that pleasure of gradation, of carrying the defences, one by one, which is almost as great as that of entering the place. Would you believe that at the end of exactly twelve minutes she gave me a rendezvous ? It is true it was in the Galerie d'Apollon, at the Louvre ; but that was respectable for a beginning, and since then we have had them by the dozen ; I have ceased to keep the account. Non, c'est une fille qui me ddpasse. The little one (she has a mother somewhere, out of sight, shut up in a closet or a trunk) is a good deal prettier, and, perhaps, on that account die y met A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 259 plus de famous. She doesn't knock about Paris with me by the hour ; she contents herself with long interviews in the petit salon, with the curtains half- drawn, beginning at about three o'clock, when every one is in la promenade. She is admirable, this little one ; a little too thin, the bones rather accentuated, but the detail, on the whole, most satisfactory. And you can say anything to her. She takes the trouble to appear not to understand, but her conduct, half an hour afterwards, reassures you completely oh, completely ! However, it is the tall one, the one of the private lessons, that is the most remarkable. These private lessons, my good Prosper, are the most brilliant invention of the age, and a real stroke of genius on the part of Miss Miranda ! They also take place in the petit salon, but with the doors tightly closed, and with explicit directions to every one in the house that we are not to be disturbed. And we are not, my good Prosper ; we are not ! Not a sound, not a shadow, interrupts our felicity. My cousine is really admirable; the shop deserves to succeed. Miss Miranda is tall and rather flat ; she is too pale ; she hasn't the adorable rougeurs of the little 260 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. Anglaise. , But she has bright, keen, inquisitive eyes, superb teeth, a nose modelled by a sculptor, and a way of holding up her head and looking every one in the face, which is the most finished piece of impertinence I ever beheld. She is making the tour du monde, entirely alone, without even a soubre'tte to carry the ensign, for the purpose* of seeing for herself h guoi s'en tenir sur les hommes et les choses on les hommes particularly. Dis done, Prosper, it must be a drdle de pays over there, where young persons animated by this ardent curi- osity are manufactured! If we should turn the tables, some day, thou and I, and go over and see it for ourselves. It is as well that we should go and find them chez elles, as that they should come out here after us. Dis done, mon gros Prosper. . . . VIII. From Dr. KUDOLF STAUB, in Paris, to Dr. JULIUS HIRSCH, at Gottingen. MY DEAR BROTHER IN SCIENCE 1 RESUME my hasty notes, of which I sent you the first instalment some weeks ago. I mentioned then that I intended to leave my hotel, not finding it sufficiently local and national. It was kept by a Pomeranian, and the waiters, without exception, were from the Fatherland. I fancied myself at Berlin, Unter den Linden, and I reflected that, having taken the serious step of visiting the head- quarters of the Gallic genius, I should try and pro- ject myself, as much as possible, into the circum- stances which are in part the consequence and in part the cause of its irrepressible activity. It seemed to me that there could be no well-grounded knowledge without this preliminary operation of placing myself in relations, as slightly as possible 262 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. modified by elements proceeding from a different combination of causes, with the spontaneous home- life of the country. I accordingly engaged a room in the house of a lady of pure French extraction and education, who supplements the shortcomings of an income insuffi- cient to the ever-growing demands of the Parisian system of sense-gratification, by providing food and lodging for a limited number of distinguished stran- gers. I should have preferred to have my room alone in the house, and to take my meals in a brewery, of very good appearance, which I speedily discovered in the same street ; but this arrangement, though very lucidly proposed by myself, was not acceptable to the mistress of the establishment (a woman with a mathematical head), and I have con- soled myself for the extra expense by fixing my thoughts upon the opportunity that conformity to the customs of the house gives me of studying the table-manners of my companions, and of observing the French nature at a peculiarly physiological moment, the moment when the satisfaction of the taste, which is the governing quality in its composition, produces a kind of exhalation, an intellectual tran- A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 263 spiration, which, though light and perhaps invisible to a superficial spectator, is nevertheless appreciable by a properly adjusted instrument. I have adjusted my instrument very satisfactorily (I mean the one I carry in my good, square German head), and I am not afraid of losing a single drop of this valuable fluid, as it condenses itself upon the plate of my observation. A prepared surface is what I need, and I have prepared my surface. Unfortunately here, also, I find the individual native in the minority. There are only four French persons in the house the individuals concerned in its management, three of whom are women, and one a man. This preponderance of the feminine element is, however, in itself characteristic, as I need not remind you what an abnormally-developed part this sex has played in French history. The remaining figure is apparently that of a man, but I hesitate to classify him so superficially. He appears to me less human than simian, and whenever I hear him talk I seem to myself to have paused in the street to listen to the shrill clatter of a hand-organ, to which the gambols of a hairy homunculus form an accompaniment. 264 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. I mentioned to you before that my expectation of rough usage, in consequence of my German nationality, had proved completely unfounded. No one seems to know or to care what my nationality is, and I am treated, on the contrary, with the civil- ity which is the portion of every traveller who pays the bill without scanning the items too narrowly. This, I confess, has been something of a surprise to me, and I have not yet made up my mind as to the fundamental cause of the anomaly. My deter- mination to take up my abode in a French interior was largely dictated by the supposition that I should be substantially disagreeable to its inmates. I wished to observe the different forms taken by the irritation that I should naturally produce ; for it is under the influence of irritation that the French character most completely expresses itself. My presence, however, does not appear to operate as a stimulus, and in this respect I am materially disap- pointed. They treat me as they treat every one else ; whereas, in order to be treated differently, I was resigned in advance to be treated worse. I have not, as I say, fully explained to myself this logical contradiction ; but this is the explanation to A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 265 which I tend. The Trench are so exclusively occu- pied with the idea of themselves, that in spite of the very definite image the German personality pre- sented to them by the war of 18*70, they have at present no distinct apprehension of its existence. They are not very sure that there are any Germans ; they have already forgotten the convincing proofs of the fact that were presented to them nine years ago. A German was something disagreeable, which they determined to keep out of their conception of things. I therefore think that we are wrong to govern ourselves upon the hypothesis of the revanche; the French nature is too shallow for that large and powerful plant to bloom in it. The English-speaking specimens, too, I have not been willing to neglect the opportunity to examine ; and among these I have paid special attention to the American varieties, of which I find here several singular examples. The two most remarkable are a young man who presents all the characteristics of a period of national decadence ; reminding me strongly of some diminutive Hellenised Eoman of the third century. He is an illustration of the period of culture in which the faculty of apprecia- 266 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. tion has obtained such a preponderance over that of production that the latter sinks into a kind of rank sterility, and the mental condition becomes analogous to that of a malarious bog. I learn from him that there is an immense number of Americans exactly resembling him, and that the city of Boston, indeed, is almost exclusively composed of them. (He com- municated this fact very proudly, as if it were greatly to the credit of his native country; little perceiving the truly sinister impression it made upon me.) What strikes one in it is that it is a phenomenon to the best of my knowledge and you know what my knowledge is unprecedented and unique in the history of mankind ; the arrival of a nation at an ultimate stage of evolution without having passed through the mediate one ; the passage of the fruit, in other words, from crudity to rottenness, without the interposition of a period of useful (and ornamental) ripeness. With the Americans, indeed, the crudity and the rottenness are identical and simultaneous ; it is impossible to say, as in the conversation of this deplorable young man, which is one and which is the other ; they are inextricably mingled. I prefer A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 267 the talk of the French homunculus ; it is at least more amusing. It is interesting in this manner to perceive, so largely developed, the germs of extinction in the so- called powerful Anglo-Saxon family. I find them in almost as recognisable a form in a young woman from the State of Maine, in the province of New England, with whom I have had a good deal of conversation. She differs somewhat from the young man I just mentioned, in that the faculty of produc- tion, of action, is, in her, less inanimate ; she has more of the freshness and vigour that we suppose to belong to a young civilisation. But unfortu- nately she produces nothing but evil, and her tastes and habits are similarly those of a Koman lady of the lower Empire. She makes no secret of them, * and has, in fact, elaborated a complete system of licentious behaviour. As the opportunities she finds in her own country do not satisfy her, she has come to Europe " to try " as she says, " for herself." It is the doctrine of universal experience professed with a cynicism that is really most extraordinary, and which, presenting itself in a young woman of con- 368 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. siderable education, appears to me to be the judg- ment of a society. Another observation which pushes me to the same induction that of the premature vitiation of the American population is the attitude of the Americans whom I have before me with regard to each other. There is another young lady here, who is less abnormally developed than the , one I have just described, but who yet bears the stamp of this peculiar combination of incompleteness and effete- ness. These three persons look with the greatest mistrust and aversion upon each other ; and each has repeatedly taken me apart and assured me, secretly, that he or she only is the real, the genuine, the typical American. A type that has lost itself before it has been fixed what can you look for from this ? Add to this that there are two young Englanders in the house, who hate all the Americans in a lump, making between them none of the distinctions and favourable comparisons which they insist upon, and you will, I think, hold me warranted in believing that, between precipitate decay and internecine enmities, the English-speaking family is destined to A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 369 consume itself, and that with its. decline the pros- pect of general pervasiveness, to which I alluded above, will brighten for the deep-lunged children of the Fatherland ! IX. MIRANDA HOPE to her MOTHER. October ' DEAR MOTHER I AM off in a day or two to visit some new country; I haven't yet decided which. I have satisfied my- self with regard to France, and obtained a good knowledge of the language. I have enjoyed my visit to Madame de Maisonrouge deeply, and feel as if I were leaving a circle of real friends. Every- thing has gone on beautifully up to the end, and every one has been as kind and attentive as if I were their own sister, especially Mr. Verdier, the French gentleman, from whom I have gained more than I ever expected (in six weeks), and with whom I have promised to correspond. So you can imagine me dashing off the most correct French letters; and, if you don't believe it, I will keep the rough draft to show you when I go back. A BUNDLE OF LETTERS. 371 The German gentleman is also more interesting, the more you know him ; it seems sometimes as if I could fairly drink in his ideas. I have found out why the young lady from New York doesn't like me ! It is because I said one day at dinner that I admired to go to the Louvre. "Well, when I first came, it seemed as if I did admire everything ! Tell William Platt his letter has come. I knew he would have to write, and I was bound I would make him ! I haven't decided what country I will visit yet; it seems as if there were so many to choose from. But I shall take care to pick out a good one, and to meet plenty of fresh experiences. Dearest mother, my money holds out, and it is most interesting ! THE END. Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh. W32. I&81 v/.t &fiBft ftfV n 'i/\t *$t ms mii #*-/: ''