‘Ruined you?’
‘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?’
‘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.’
‘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 persuaded myself that I was one, but at this juncture I heard a sound that was not romantic. It proved to be the very realistic tread of Célestine, the cook, who stood grinning at us as we turned about from our colloquy.
‘I ask bien pardon,’ said Célestine. ‘The mother of mademoiselle desires that mademoiselle should 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 Célestine.
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. Round, rosy potelée, she yet had not the temperament of her appearance; she was a femme austere. 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 Ruck – a real femme de Rubens, celle-là. 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 Ruck, with a pile of crumpled letters in his lap, his chair tipped back and his eyes gloomily fixed on the fringe of the green plush table-cloth. I timidly expressed the hope that he had got better news from home; whereupon he gave me a look in which, considering his provocation, the absence of irritation was conspicuous.
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 Ruck made the lightest possible breakfast. But if he ate very little, he talked a great deal; he talked about business, going into a hundred details in which I was quite unable to follow him. His talk was not angry nor bitter; it was a long, meditative, melancholy monologue; if it had been a trifle less incoherent I should almost have called it philosophic. I was very sorry for him; I wanted to do something for him, but the only thing I could do was, when we had breakfasted, to see him safely back to the Pension Beaurepas. We went across the Treille and down the Corraterie, out of which we turned into the Rue du Rhone. 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 impending departure and with my companion’s troubles, I suffered my eyes to wander along the precious tiers that flashed and twinkled behind the huge, clear plates of glass. Thanks to this inveterate habit, I made a discovery. In the largest and most brilliant of these establishments I perceived two ladies, seated before the counter with an air of absorption which sufficiently proclaimed their identity. I hoped my companion would not see them, but as we came abreast of the door, a little beyond, we found it open to the warm summer air. Mr Ruck happened to glance in, and he immediately recognised his wife and daughter. He slowly stopped, looking at them; I wondered what he would do. The salesman was holding up a bracelet before them, on its velvet cushion, and flashing it about in an irresistible manner.
Mr Ruck 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 Ruck came in, and looked at him without confusion. ‘Well, you had better go home to breakfast,’ remarked his wife. Miss Sophy made no remark, but she took the bracelet from the attendant and gazed at it very fixedly. Mr Ruck seated himself on an empty stool and looked round the shop.
‘Well, you have been here before,’ said his wife; ‘you were here the first day we came.’
Miss Ruck extended the precious object in her hands towards me. ‘Don’t you think that sweet?’ she inquired.
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 Ruck.
‘You’ll see it some day on me, any way,’ her daughter
declared.
‘No, he won’t,’ said Mr Ruck 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 Ruck. ‘We may not have another chance.’
Mr Ruck was still looking round the shop, whistling in a very low tone. ‘We ain’t going to Chamouni. We are going to New York city, straight.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that,’ said Mrs Ruck. ‘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.’
‘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 Ruck was still vaguely inspecting the shop; he was still whistling a little. ‘I am afraid he is not at all well,’ I said, softly, to his wife.
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 Ruck to the shopman.
I bade Mr Ruck good-bye. ‘Don’t wait for me,’ he said, sitting there on his stool, and not meeting my eye. ‘I’ve got to see this thing through.’
I went back to the Pension Beaurepas, and when, an hour later, I left it with my luggage, the family had not returned.
THE POINT OF VIEW
I
From Miss AURORA CHURCH, at sea, to Miss WHITESIDE, in Paris
… My dear child, the bromide of sodium (if that’s what you call it) proved perfectly useless. I don’t mean that it did me no good, but that I never had occasion to take the bottle out of my bag. It might have done wonders for me if I had needed it; but I didn’t, simply because I have been a wonder myself. Will you believe that I have spent the whole voyage on deck, in the most animated conversation and exercise? Twelve times round the deck makes a mile, I believe; and by this measurement I have been walking twenty miles a day. And down to every meal, if you please, where I have displayed the appetite of a fish-wife. Of course the weather has been lovely; so there’s no great merit. The wicked old Atlantic has been as blue as the sapphire in my only ring (a rather good one), and as smooth as the slippery floor of Madame Galopin’s dining-room. We have been for the last three hours in sight of land, and we are soon to enter the Bay of New York, which is said to be exquisitely beautiful. But of course you recall it, though they say that everything changes so fast over here. I find I don’t remember anything, for my recollections of our voyage to Europe, so many years ago, are exceedingly dim; I only have a painful impression that mamma shut me up for an hour every day in the state-room, and made me learn by heart some religious poem. I was only five years old, and I believe that as a child I was extremely timid; on the other hand, mamma, as you know, was dreadfully severe. She is severe to this day; only I have become indifferent; I have been so pinched and pushed – morally speaking, bien entendu. It is true, however, that there are children of five on the vessel to-day who have been extremely conspicuous, – ranging all over the ship, and always under one’s feet. Of course they are little compatriots, which means that they are little barbarians. I don’t mean that all our compatriots are barbarous; they seem to improve, somehow, after their first communion. I don’t know whether it’s that ceremony that improves them, – especially as so few of them go in for it; but the women are certainly nicer than the little girls; I mean, of course, in proportion, you know. You warned me not to generalise, and you see I have already begun, before we have arrived. But I suppose there is no harm in it so long as it is favourable. Isn’t it favourable when I say that I have had the most lovely time? I have never had so much liberty in my life, and I have been out alone, as you may say, every day of the voyage. If it is a foretaste of what is to come, I shall take to that very kindly. When I say that I have been out alone, I mean that we have always been two. But we two were alone, so to speak, and it was not like always having mamma, or Madame Galopin, or some lady in the pension, or the temporary cook. Mamma has been very poorly; she is so very well on land, it’s a wonder to see her at all taken down. She says, however, that it isn’t the being at sea; it’s, on the contrary, approaching the land. She is not in a hurry to arrive; she says that great disillusions await us. I didn’t know that she had any illusions – she’s so stern, so philosophic. She is very serious; she sits for hours in perfect silence, with her eyes fixed on the horizon. I heard her say yesterday to an English gentleman – a very odd Mr Antrobus, the only person with whom she converses – that she was afraid she shouldn’t like her native land, and that she shouldn’t like not liking it. But this is a mistake – she will like that immensely (I mean not liking it). If it should prove at all agreeable, mamma will be furious, for that will go against her system. You know all about mamma’s system; I have explained that so often. It goes against her system that we should come back at all; that was my system – I have had at last to invent one! She consented to come only because she saw that, having no dot, I should never marry in Europe; and I pretended to be immensely preoccupied with this idea, in order to make her start. In reality cela m’est parfaitement égal. I am only afraid I shall like it too much (I don’t mean marriage, of course, but one’s native land). Say what you will, it’s a charming thing to go out alone, and I have given notice to mamma that I mean to be always en course. When I tell her that, she looks at me in the same silence; her eye dilates, and then she slowly closes it. It’s as if the sea were affecting her a little, though it’s so beautifully calm. I ask her if she will try my bromide, which is there in my bag; but she motions me off, and I begin to walk again, tapping my little boot-soles upon the smooth, clean deck. This allusion to my boot-soles, by the way, is not prompted by vanity; but it’s a fact that at sea one’s feet and one’s shoes assume the most extraordinary importance, so that we should take the precaution to have nice ones. They are all you seem to see, as the people walk about the deck; you get to know them intimately and to dislike some of them so much. I am afraid you will think that I have already broken loose; and for aught I know, I am writing as a demoiselle bien-élevée should not write. I don’t know whether it’s the American air; if it is, all I can say is that the American air is very charming. It makes me impatient and restless, and I sit scribbling here because I am so eager to arrive, and the time passes better if I occupy myself. I am in the saloon, where we have our meals, and opposite to me is a big round port-hole, wide open, to let in the smell of the land. Every now and then I rise a little and look through it, to see whether we are arriving. I mean in the Bay, you know, for we shall not come up to the city till dark. I don’t want to lose the Bay; it appears that it’s so wonderful. I don’t exactly understand what it contains, except some beautiful islands; but I suppose you will know all about that. It is easy to see that these are the last hours, for all the people about me are writing letters to put into the post as soon as we come up to the dock. I believe they are dreadful at the custom-house, and you will remember how many new things you persuaded mamma that (with my preoccupation of marriage) I should take to this country, where even the prettiest girls are expected not to go unadorned. We ruined ourselves in Paris (that is part of mamma’s solemnity); mais au moins je serai belle! Moreover, I believe that mamma is prepared to say or to do anything that may be necessary for escaping from their odious duties; as she very justly remarks, she can’t afford to be ruined twice. I don’t know how one approaches these terrible douaniers, but I mean to invent something very charming. I mean to say, ‘Voyons, Messieurs, a young girl like me, brought up in the strictest foreign traditions, kept always in the background by a very superior mother – la voilà; you can see for yourself! – what is it possible that she should attempt to smuggle i
n? Nothing but a few simple relics of her convent!’ I won’t tell them that my convent was called the Magasin du Bon Marché. Mamma began to scold me three days ago for insisting on so many trunks, and the truth is that, between us, we have not fewer than seven. For relics, that’s a good many! We are all writing very long letters – or at least we are writing a great number. There is no news of the Bay as yet. Mr Antrobus, mamma’s friend, opposite to me, is beginning on his ninth. He is an Honourable, and a Member of Parliament; he has written, during the voyage, about a hundred letters, and he seems greatly alarmed at the number of stamps he will have to buy when he arrives. He is full of information; but he has not enough, for he asks as many questions as mamma when she goes to hire apartments. He is going to ‘look into’ various things; he speaks as if they had a little hole for the purpose. He walks almost as much as I, and he has very big shoes. He asks questions even of me, and I tell him again and again that I know nothing about America. But it makes no difference; he always begins again, and, indeed, it is not strange that he should find my ignorance incredible. ‘Now, how would it be in one of your Southwestern States?’ – that’s his favourite way of opening conversation. Fancy me giving an account of the Southwestern States! I tell him he had better ask mamma – a little to tease that lady, who knows no more about such places than I. Mr Antrobus is very big and black; he speaks with a sort of brogue; he has a wife and ten children; he is not very romantic. But he has lots of letters to people là-bas (I forget that we are just arriving), and mamma, who takes an interest in him in spite of his views (which are dreadfully advanced, and not at all like mamma’s own), has promised to give him the éntrée to the best society. I don’t know what she knows about the best society over here to-day, for we have not kept up our connections at all, and no one will know (or, I am afraid, care) anything about us. She has an idea that we shall be immensely recognised; but really, except the poor little Rucks, who are bankrupt, and, I am told, in no society at all, I don’t know on whom we can count. C’est égal. Mamma has an idea that, whether or not we appreciate America ourselves, we shall at least be universally appreciated. It’s true that we have begun to be, a little; you would see that by the way that Mr Cockerel and Mr Louis Leverett are always inviting me to walk. Both of these gentlemen, who are Americans, have asked leave to call upon me in New York, and I have said, Mon Dieu, oui, if it’s the custom of the country. Of course I have not dared to tell this to mamma, who flatters herself that we have brought with us in our trunks a complete set of customs of our own, and that we shall only have to shake them out a little and put them on when we arrive. If only the two gentlemen I just spoke of don’t call at the same time, I don’t think I shall be too much frightened. If they do, on the other hand, I won’t answer for it. They have a particular aversion to each other, and they are ready to fight about poor little me. I am only the pretext, however; for, as Mr Leverett says, it’s really the opposition of temperaments. I hope they won’t cut each other’s throats, for I am not crazy about either of them. They are very well for the deck of a ship, but I shouldn’t care about them in a salon; they are not at all distinguished. They think they are, but they are not; at least, Mr Louis Leverett does; Mr Cockerel doesn’t appear to care so much. They are extremely different (with their opposed temperaments), and each very amusing for a while; but I should get dreadfully tired of passing my life with either. Neither has proposed that, as yet; but it is evidently what they are coming to. It will be in a great measure to spite each other, for I think that au fond they don’t quite believe in me. If they don’t, it’s the only point on which they agree. They hate each other awfully; they take such different views. That is, Mr Cockerel hates Mr Leverett – he calls him a sickly little ass; he says that his opinions are half affectation, and the other half dyspepsia. Mr Leverett speaks of Mr Cockerel as a ‘strident savage’, but he declares he finds him most diverting. He says there is nothing in which we can’t find a certain entertainment, if we only look at it in the right way, and that we have no business with either hating or loving; we ought only to strive to understand. To understand is to forgive, he says. That is very pretty, but I don’t like the suppression of our affections, though I have no desire to fix mine upon Mr Leverett. He is very artistic, and talks like an article in some review. He has lived a great deal in Paris, and Mr Cockerel says that is what has made him such an idiot. That is not complimentary to you, dear Louisa, and still less to your brilliant brother; for Mr Cockerel explains that he means it (the bad effect of Paris) chiefly of the men. In fact, he means the bad effect of Europe altogether. This, however, is compromising to mamma; and I am afraid there is no doubt that (from what I have told him) he thinks mamma also an idiot. (I am not responsible, you know, – I have always wanted to go home.) If mamma knew him, which she doesn’t, for she always closes her eyes when I pass on his arm, she would think him disgusting. Mr Leverett, however, tells me he is nothing to what we shall see yet. He is from Philadelphia (Mr Cockerel); he insists that we shall go and see Philadelphia, but mamma says she saw it in 1855, and it was then affreux. Mr Cockerel says that mamma is evidently not familiar with the march of improvement in this country; he speaks of 1855 as if it were a hundred years ago. Mamma says she knows it goes only too fast – it goes so fast that it has time to do nothing well; and then Mr Cockerel, who, to do him justice, is perfectly good-natured, remarks that she had better wait till she has been ashore and seen the improvements. Mamma rejoins that she sees them from here, the improvements, and that they give her a sinking of the heart. (This little exchange of ideas is carried on through me; they have never spoken to each other.) Mr Cockerel, as I say, is extremely good-natured, and he carries out what I have heard said about the men in America being very considerate of the women. They evidently listen to them a great deal; they don’t contradict them, but it seems to me that this is rather negative. There is very little gallantry in not contradicting one; and it strikes me that there are some things the men don’t express. There are others on the ship whom I’ve noticed. It’s as if they were all one’s brothers or one’s cousins. But I promised you not to generalise, and perhaps there will be more expression when we arrive. Mr Cockerel returns to America, after a general tour, with a renewed conviction that this is the only country. I left him on deck an hour ago, looking at the coast-line with an opera-glass, and saying it was the prettiest thing he had seen in all his tour. When I remarked that the coast seemed rather low, he said it would be all the easier to get ashore. Mr Leverett doesn’t seem in a hurry to get ashore; he is sitting within sight of me in a corner of the saloon – writing letters, I suppose, but looking, from the way he bites his pen and rolls his eyes about, as if he were composing a sonnet and waiting for a rhyme. Perhaps the sonnet is addressed to me; but I forget that he suppresses the affections! The only person in whom mamma takes much interest is the great French critic, M. Lejaune, whom we have the honour to carry with us. We have read a few of his works, though mamma disapproves of his tendencies and thinks him a dreadful materialist. We have read them for the style; you know he is one of the new Academicians. He is a Frenchman like any other, except that he is rather more quiet; and he has a grey moustache and the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He is the first French writer of distinction who has been to America since De Tocqueville; the French, in such matters, are not very enterprising. Also, he has the air of wondering what he is doing dans cette galère. He has come with his beau-frère, who is an engineer, and is looking after some mines, and he talks with scarcely any one else, as he speaks no English and appears to take for granted that no one speaks French. Mamma would be delighted to assure him of the contrary; she has never conversed with an Academician. She always makes a little vague inclination, with a smile, when he passes her, and he answers with a most respectful bow; but it goes no further, to mamma’s disappointment. He is always with the beau-frère, a rather untidy, fat, bearded man, – decorated, too, always smoking and looking at the feet of the ladies, whom mamma (though she has
very good feet) has not the courage to aborder. I believe M. Lejaune is going to write a book about America, and Mr Leverett says it will be terrible. Mr Leverett has made his acquaintance, and says M. Lejaune will put him into his book; he says the movement of the French intellect is superb. As a general thing he doesn’t care for Academicians, but he thinks M. Lejaune is an exception, he is so living, so personal. I asked Mr Cockerel what he thought of M. Lejaune’s plan of writing a book, and he answered that he didn’t see what it mattered to him that a Frenchman the more should make a monkey of himself. I asked him why he hadn’t written a book about Europe, and he said that, in the first place, Europe isn’t worth writing about, and, in the second, if he said what he thought, people would think it was a joke. He said they are very superstitious about Europe over here; he wants people in America to behave as if Europe didn’t exist. I told this to Mr Leverett, and he answered that if Europe didn’t exist America wouldn’t, for Europe keeps us alive by buying our corn. He said, also, that the trouble with America in the future will be that she will produce things in such enormous quantities that there won’t be enough people in the rest of the world to buy them, and that we shall be left with our productions – most of them very hideous – on our hands. I asked him if he thought corn a hideous production, and he replied that there is nothing more unbeautiful than too much food. I think that to feed the world too well, however, that will be, after all, a beau rôle. Of course I don’t understand these things, and I don’t believe Mr Leverett does; but Mr Cockerel seems to know what he is talking about, and he says that America is complete in herself. I don’t know exactly what he means, but he speaks as if human affairs had somehow moved over to this side of the world. It may be a very good place for them, and Heaven knows I am extremely tired of Europe, which mamma has always insisted so on my appreciating; but I don’t think I like the idea of our being so completely cut off. Mr Cockerel says it is not we that are cut off, but Europe, and he seems to think that Europe has deserved it somehow. That may be; our life over there was sometimes extremely tiresome, though mamma says it is now that our real fatigues will begin. I like to abuse those dreadful old countries myself, but I am not sure that I am pleased when others do the same. We had some rather pretty moments there, after all; and at Piacenza we certainly lived on four francs a day. Mamma is already in a terrible state of mind about the expenses here; she is frightened by what people on the ship (the few that she has spoken to) have told her. There is one comfort, at any rate – we have spent so much money in coming here that we shall have none left to get away. I am scribbling along, as you see, to occupy me till we get news of the islands. Here comes Mr Cockerel to bring it. Yes, they are in sight; he tells me that they are lovelier than ever, and that I must come right up right away. I suppose you will think that I am already beginning to use the language of the country. It is certain that at the end of a month I shall speak nothing else. I have picked up every dialect, wherever we have travelled; you have heard my Platt-Deutsch and my Neapolitan. But, voyons un peu the Bay! I have just called to Mr Leverett to remind him of the islands. ‘The islands – the islands? Ah, my dear young lady, I have seen Capri, I have seen Ischia!’ Well, so have I, but that doesn’t prevent … (A little later.) – I have seen the islands; they are rather queer.