‘Well, Mrs Church, I was glad to see you puzzled once in your life!’ said Mr Ruck, with friendly jocosity. ‘But you came pretty straight for all that. I had hard work to keep up with you.’
‘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 blushing, yet she was still smiling; she looked round at us all, and, as her eyes met mine, I thought she was beautiful. ‘Good-bye,’ she said to us. ‘I have had a lovely time.’
‘We must not linger,’ said her mother; ‘it is five o’clock. We are to dine, you know, with Madame 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 Ruck.
Mrs Church hesitated a moment, with her serene little gaze. ‘Do you prefer, then, to leave your daughter to finish the evening with these gentlemen?’
Mr Ruck 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 me feel the weight of her disapproval of my own share in that little act of revelry in the English Garden. But she maintained her claim to being a highly reasonable woman – I could not but admire the justice of this pretension – by recognising my irresponsibility. I had taken her daughter as I found her, which was, according to Mrs Church’s view, in a very equivocal position. The natural instinct of a young man, in such a situation, is not to protest but to profit; and it was clear to Mrs Church that I had had nothing to do with Miss Aurora’s appearing in public under the insufficient chaperonage of Miss Ruck. Besides, she liked to converse, and she apparently did me the honour to believe that of all the members of the Pension Beaurepas I had the most cultivated understanding. I found her in the salon a couple of evenings after the incident I have just narrated, and I approached her with a view of making my peace with her, if this should prove necessary. But Mrs Church was as gracious as I could have desired; she put her marker into her book, and folded her plump little hands on the cover. She made no specific allusion to the English Garden; she embarked, rather, upon those general considerations in which her refined intellect was so much at home.
‘Always at your studies, Mrs Church,’ I ventured to observe.
‘Que voulez-vous? To say studies is to say too much; one doesn’t study in the parlour of a boarding-house. But I do what I can; I have always done what I can. That is all I have ever claimed.’
‘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 best! To do the best, to know the best – to have, to desire, to recognise, only the best. That’s what I have always done, in my quiet little way. I have gone through Europe on my devoted little errand, seeking, seeing, heeding, only the best. And it has not been for myself alone; it has been for my daughter. My daughter has had the best. We are not rich, but I can say that.’
‘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 something everywhere; you always can if you are devoted. Sometimes it has been a little music, sometimes a little deeper insight into the history of art; every little counts you know. Sometimes it has been just a glimpse, a view, of 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 European pension system in many respects remarkable, and in some satisfactory. But of the friendships that we have formed, few have been contracted in establishments of this kind.’
‘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 European homes.’
‘Oh, I see!’
‘We have the entrée of the old Genevese society. I like its tone. I prefer it to that of Mr Ruck,’ added Mrs Church, calmly; ‘to that of Mrs Ruck and Miss Ruck – of Miss Ruck, especially.’
‘Ah, the poor Rucks 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; tendencies are difficult to calculate. And you shouldn’t abuse those good Rucks, who have been very kind to your daughter. They have invited her to go and stay with them in Thirty-Seventh Street.’
‘Aurora has told me. It might be very serious.’
‘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 Rucks?’ 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 Ruck will send for a chaise à 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 Ruck will ever really be seen on the Mer de Glace – in a high hat. He’s not like you; he doesn’t value his European privileges. He takes no interest. He regrets Wall Street, acutely. As his wife says, he is very restless, but he has no curiosity about Chamouni. So you must not depend too much on the effect of your addresses.’
‘Is it a frequent type?’ asked Mrs Church, with an air of self-control.
‘I am afraid so. Mr Ruck is a broken-down man of business. He is broken-down in health, and I suspect he is broken-down in fortune. He has spent his whole life in buying and selling; he knows how to do nothing else. His wife and daughter have spent their lives, not in selling, but in buying; and they, on their side, know how to do nothing else. To get something in a shop that they can put on their backs – that is their one idea; they haven’t another in their heads. Of course they spend no end of money, and they do it with an implacable persistence, with a mixture of audacity and of cunning. They do it in his teeth and they do it behind his back; the mother protects the daughter, and the daughter eggs on the mother. Between them they are bleeding him to death.’
‘Ah, what a picture!’ murmured Mrs Church. ‘I am afraid they are very – uncultivated.’
‘I share your fears. They are perfectly ignorant; they have no resources. The vision of fine clothes occupies their whole imagination. They have not an idea – even a worse one – to compete with it. Poor Mr Ruck, who is extremely good-natured and soft, seems to me a really tragic figure. He is getting bad news every day from home; his business is going to the dogs. He is unable to stop it; he has to stand and watch his fortunes ebb. He has been used to doing things in a big way, and he feels “mean” if he makes a fuss about bills. So the ladies keep sending them in.’
‘But haven’t they common sense? Don’t they know they are ruining themselves?’
‘They don’t believe it. The duty of an
American husband and father is to keep them going. If he asks them how, that’s his own affair. So, by way of not being mean, of being a good American husband and father, poor Ruck stands staring at bankruptcy.’
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 sadly éprouvée? 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?’
I hesitated a moment. ‘A little, since you ask me. I think you have forced her to be.’
Mrs Church answered this possibly presumptuous 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 Ruck performs this agreeable office.’
‘Your idea is, then, that if she were to go with Miss Ruck to America she would drop her afterwards.’
I complimented Mrs Church upon her logical mind, but I repudiated this cynical supposition. ‘I can’t imagine her – when it should come to the point – embarking with the famille Ruck. But I wish she might go, nevertheless.’
Mrs Church shook her head serenely, and smiled at my inappropriate zeal. ‘I trust my poor child may never be guilty of so fatal a mistake. She is completely in error; she is wholly unadapted to the peculiar conditions of American life. It would not please her. She would not sympathise. My daughter’s ideal is not the ideal of the class of young women to which Miss Ruck belongs. I fear they are very numerous; they give the tone – they give the tone.’
‘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 appreciate them. One thing is certain: I must remove her from this pernicious influence. We must part company with this deplorable family. If Mr Ruck and his ladies cannot be induced to go to Chamouni – a journey that no traveller with the smallest self-respect would omit – my daughter and I shall be obliged to retire. We shall go to Dresden.’
‘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 familiarised herself; it is especially strong in the seventeenth-century schools.’
As my companion offered me this information I perceived Mr Ruck come lounging in, with his hands in his pockets, and his elbows making acute angles. He had his usual anomalous appearance of both seeking and avoiding society, and he wandered obliquely toward Mrs Church, whose last words he had overheard. ‘The seventeenth-century schools,’ he said, slowly, as if he were weighing some very small object in a very large pair of scales. ‘Now, do you suppose they had 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 Ruck.
‘I had a letter this morning from Chamouni,’ she said.
‘Well,’ replied Mr Ruck, ‘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 sudden improvisation, consecrated by maternal devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. ‘They are giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would like them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The weather is glorious,’ continued Mrs Church, ‘and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary distinctness.’
Mr Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know as I want to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal attraction, isn’t it?’
‘There are many others. I thought I would offer you an – an exceptional opportunity.’
‘Well,’ said Mr Ruck, ‘you’re right down friendly. But I seem to have more opportunities than I know what to do with. I don’t seem able to take hold.’
‘It only needs a little decision,’ remarked Mrs Church, with an air which was an admirable example of this virtue. ‘I wish you good-night, sir.’ And she moved noiselessly away.
Mr Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; then he transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. ‘Does she own a hotel over there?’ he asked. ‘Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?’
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 Ruck talks of leaving me, and Madame Church nous fait la révérence.’
‘Mrs Church is going away?’
‘She is packing her trunk; she is a very extraordinary person. Do you know what she asked me this morning? To invent some combination by which the famille Ruck should move away. I informed her that I was not an inventor. That poor famille Ruck! “Oblige me by getting rid of them,” said Madame Church, as she would have asked Célestine to remove a dish of cabbage. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame Church. I intimated to her that if she objected to the company there was a very simple remedy; and at present elle fait ses paquets.’
‘She really asked you to get the Rucks 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 indoors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of the house to the ancient grille that I have described, and I stood here for some time, looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The prospect was not entertaining, and I presently turned away. At this moment I saw, in the distance, the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight there stepped the figure of a female, who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden, and I had seen her but for an instant, but I remained under the impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of her departure, had come out for a meditative stroll.
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.’
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 appearance was not diminished by a suspicion on my own part that she had come into the garden knowing me to be there. I thought her a charming girl, and I felt very sorry for her; but as I looked at her, the terms in which Madame Beaurepas had ventured to characterise her recurred to me with a certain force. I had professed a contempt for them at the time, but it now came into my head that perhaps this unfortunately situated, this insidiously mutinous, young creature was looking out for a preserver. She was certainly not a girl to throw herself at a man’s head, but it was possible that in her intense – her almost morbid – desire to put into effect an ideal which was perhaps after all charged with as many fallacies as her mother affirmed, she might do something reckless and irregular – something in which a sympathetic compatriot, as yet unknown, would find his profit. The image, unshaped though it was, of this sympathetic compatriot filled me with a sort of envy. For some moments I was silent, conscious of these things, and then I answered her question. ‘Because some things – some differences – are felt, not learned. To you liberty is not natural; you are like a person who has bought a repeater, and, in his satisfaction, is constantly making it sound. To a real American girl her liberty is a very vulgarlyticking old clock.’
‘Ah, you mean, then,’ said the poor girl, ‘that my mother has ruined me?’