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The Europeans

Late that night Gertrude, silent and serious, came to him in the garden; it was a kind of appointment. Gertrude seemed to like appointments. She plucked a handful of heliotrope and stuck it into the front of her dress, but she said nothing. They walked together along one of the paths, and Felix looked at the great, square, hospitable house, massing itself vaguely in the starlight, with all its windows darkened.

“I have a little of a bad conscience,” he said. “I oughtn’t to meet you this way till I have got your father’s consent.”

Gertrude looked at him for some time. “I don’t understand you.”

“You very often say that,” he said. “Considering how little we understand each other, it is a wonder how well we get on!”

“We have done nothing but meet since you came here—but meet alone. The first time I ever saw you we were alone,” Gertrude went on. “What is the difference now? Is it because it is at night?”

“The difference, Gertrude,” said Felix, stopping in the path, “the difference is that I love you more—more than before!” And then they stood there, talking, in the warm stillness and in front of the closed dark house. “I have been talking to Charlotte—been trying to bespeak her interest with your father. She has a kind of sublime perversity; was ever a woman so bent upon cutting off her own head?”

“You are too careful,” said Gertrude; “you are too diplomatic.”

“Well,” cried the young man, “I didn’t come here to make anyone unhappy!”

Gertrude looked round her awhile in the odorous darkness. “I will do anything you please,” she said.

“For instance?” asked Felix, smiling.

“I will go away. I will do anything you please.”

Felix looked at her in solemn admiration. “Yes, we will go away,” he said. “But we will make peace first.”

Gertrude looked about her again, and then she broke out, passionately, “Why do they try to make one feel guilty? Why do they make it so difficult? Why can’t they understand?”

“I will make them understand!” said Felix. He drew her hand into his arm, and they wandered about in the garden, talking, for an hour.

CHAPTER XII

Felix allowed Charlotte time to plead his cause; and then, on the third day, he sought an interview with his uncle. It was in the morning; Mr. Wentworth was in his office; and, on going in, Felix found that Charlotte was at that moment in conference with her father. She had, in fact, been constantly near him since her interview with Felix; she had made up her mind that it was her duty to repeat very literally her cousin’s passionate plea. She had accordingly followed Mr. Wentworth about like a shadow, in order to find him at hand when she should have mustered sufficient composure to speak. For poor Charlotte, in this matter, naturally lacked composure; especially when she meditated upon some of Felix’s intimations. It was not cheerful work, at the best, to keep giving small hammer-taps to the coffin in which one had laid away, for burial, the poor little unacknowledged offspring of one’s own misbehaving heart; and the occupation was not rendered more agreeable by the fact that the ghost of one’s stifled dream had been summoned from the shades by the strange, bold words of a talkative young foreigner. What had Felix meant by saying that Mr. Brand was not so keen? To herself her sister’s justly depressed suitor had shown no sign of faltering. Charlotte trembled all over when she allowed herself to believe for an instant now and then that, privately, Mr. Brand might have faltered; and as it seemed to give more force to Felix’s words to repeat them to her father, she was waiting until she should have taught herself to be very calm. But she had now begun to tell Mr. Wentworth that she was extremely anxious. She was proceeding to develop this idea, to enumerate the objects of her anxiety, when Felix came in.

Mr. Wentworth sat there, with his legs crossed, lifting his dry, pure countenance from the Boston Advertiser. Felix entered smiling, as if he had something particular to say, and his uncle looked at him as if he both expected and deprecated this event. Felix vividly expressing himself had come to be a formidable figure to his uncle, who had not yet arrived at definite views as to a proper tone. For the first time in his life, as I have said, Mr. Wentworth shirked a responsibility; he earnestly desired that it might not be laid upon him to determine how his nephew’s lighter propositions should be treated. He lived under an apprehension that Felix might yet beguile him into assent to doubtful inductions, and his conscience instructed him that the best form of vigilance was the avoidance of discussion. He hoped that the pleasant episode of his nephew’s visit would pass away without a further lapse of consistency.

Felix looked at Charlotte with an air of understanding, and then at Mr. Wentworth, and then at Charlotte again. Mr. Wentworth bent his refined eyebrows upon his nephew and stroked down the first page of the Advertiser. “I ought to have brought a bouquet,” said Felix, laughing. “In France they always do.”

“We are not in France,” observed Mr. Wentworth, gravely, while Charlotte earnestly gazed at him.

“No, luckily, we are not in France, where I am afraid I should have a harder time of it. My dear Charlotte, have you rendered me that delightful service?” And Felix bent toward her as if someone had been presenting him.

Charlotte looked at him with almost frightened eyes; and Mr. Wentworth thought this might be the beginning of a discussion. “What is the bouquet for?” he inquired, by way of turning it off.

Felix gazed at him, smiling. “Pour la demande!” And then, drawing up a chair, he seated himself, hat in hand, with a kind of conscious solemnity.

Presently he turned to Charlotte again. “My good Charlotte, my admirable Charlotte,” he murmured, “you have not played me false—you have not sided against me?”

Charlotte got up, trembling extremely, though imperceptibly. “You must speak to my father yourself,” she said. “I think you are clever enough.”

But Felix, rising too, begged her to remain. “I can speak better to an audience!” he declared.

“I hope it is nothing disagreeable,” said Mr. Wentworth.

“It’s something delightful, for me!” And Felix, laying down his hat, clasped his hands a little between his knees. “My dear uncle,” he said, “I desire, very earnestly, to marry your daughter Gertrude.” Charlotte sank slowly into her chair again, and Mr. Wentworth sat staring, with a light in his face that might have been flashed back from an iceberg. He stared and stared; he said nothing. Felix fell back, with his hands still clasped. “Ah—you don’t like it. I was afraid!” He blushed deeply, and Charlotte noticed it—remarking to herself that it was the first time she had ever seen him blush. She began to blush herself and to reflect that he might be much in love.

“This is very abrupt,” said Mr. Wentworth, at last.

“Have you never suspected it, dear uncle?” Felix inquired. “Well, that proves how discreet I have been. Yes, I thought you wouldn’t like it.”

“It is very serious, Felix,” said Mr. Wentworth.

“You think it’s an abuse of hospitality!” exclaimed Felix, smiling again.

“Of hospitality?—an abuse?” his uncle repeated very slowly.

“That is what Felix said to me,” said Charlotte, conscientiously.

“Of course you think so; don’t defend yourself!” Felix pursued. “It is an abuse, obviously; the most I can claim is that it is perhaps a pardonable one. I simply fell head over heels in love; one can hardly help that. Though you are Gertrude’s progenitor I don’t believe you know how attractive she is. Dear uncle, she contains the elements of a singularly—I may say a strangely—charming woman!”

“She has always been to me an object of extreme concern,” said Mr. Wentworth. “We have always desired her happiness.”

“Well, here it is!” Felix declared. “I will make her happy. She believes it, too. Now hadn’t you noticed that?”

“I had noticed that she was much changed,” Mr. Wentworth declared, in a tone whose unexpressive, unimpassioned quality appeared to Felix to reveal a profundity of opposition. “It may be that she is only becoming what you call a charming woman.”

“Gertrude, at heart, is so earnest, so true,” said Charlotte, very softly, fastening her eyes upon her father.

“I delight to hear you praise her!” cried Felix.

“She has a very peculiar temperament,” said Mr. Wentworth.

“Eh, even that is praise!” Felix rejoined. “I know I am not the man you might have looked for. I have no position and no fortune; I can give Gertrude no place in the world. A place in the world—that’s what she ought to have; that would bring her out.”

“A place to do her duty!” remarked Mr. Wentworth.

“Ah, how charmingly she does it—her duty!” Felix exclaimed, with a radiant face. “What an exquisite conception she has of it! But she comes honestly by that, dear uncle.” Mr. Wentworth and Charlotte both looked at him as if they were watching a greyhound doubling. “Of course with me she will hide her light under a bushel,” he continued; “I being the bushel! Now I know you like me—you have certainly proved it. But you think I am frivolous and penniless and shabby! Granted—granted—a thousand times granted. I have been a loose fish—a fiddler, a painter, an actor. But there is this to be said: In the first place, I fancy you exaggerate; you lend me qualities I haven’t had. I have been a Bohemian—yes; but in Bohemia I always passed for a gentleman. I wish you could see some of my old camarades—they would tell you! It was the liberty I liked, but not the opportunities! My sins were all peccadilloes; I always respected my neighbor’s property—my neighbor’s wife. Do you see, dear uncle?” Mr. Wentworth ought to have seen; his cold blue eyes were intently fixed. “And then, c’est fini! It’s all over. Je me range. I have settled down to a jog-trot. I find I can earn my living—a very fair one—by going about the world and painting bad portraits. It’s not a glorious profession, but it is a perfectly respectable one. You won’t deny that, eh? Going about the world, I say? I must not deny that, for that I am afraid I shall always do—in quest of agreeable sitters. When I say agreeable, I mean susceptible of delicate flattery and prompt of payment. Gertrude declares she is willing to share my wanderings and help to pose my models. She even thinks it will be charming; and that brings me to my third point. Gertrude likes me. Encourage her a little and she will tell you so.”

Felix’s tongue obviously moved much faster than the imagination of his auditors; his eloquence, like the rocking of a boat in a deep, smooth lake, made long eddies of silence. And he seemed to be pleading and chattering still, with his brightly eager smile, his uplifted eyebrows, his expressive mouth, after he had ceased speaking, and while, with his glance quickly turning from the father to the daughter, he sat waiting for the effect of his appeal. “It is not your want of means,” said Mr. Wentworth, after a period of severe reticence.

“Now it’s delightful of you to say that! Only don’t say it’s my want of character. Because I have a character—I assure you I have; a small one, a little slip of a thing, but still something tangible.”

“Ought you not to tell Felix that it is Mr. Brand, father?” Charlotte asked, with infinite mildness.

“It is not only Mr. Brand,” Mr. Wentworth solemnly declared. And he looked at his knee for a long time. “It is difficult to explain,” he said. He wished, evidently, to be very just. “It rests on moral grounds, as Mr. Brand says. It is the question whether it is the best thing for Gertrude.”

“What is better—what is better, dear uncle?” Felix rejoined urgently, rising in his urgency and standing before Mr. Wentworth. His uncle had been looking at his knee; but when Felix moved he transferred his gaze to the handle of the door which faced him. “It is usually a fairly good thing for a girl to marry the man she loves!” cried Felix.

While he spoke, Mr. Wentworth saw the handle of the door begin to turn; the door opened and remained slightly ajar, until Felix had delivered himself of the cheerful axiom just quoted. Then it opened altogether and Gertrude stood there. She looked excited; there was a spark in her sweet, dull eyes. She came in slowly, but with an air of resolution, and, closing the door softly, looked round at the three persons present. Felix went to her with tender gallantry, holding out his hand, and Charlotte made a place for her on the sofa. But Gertrude put her hands behind her and made no motion to sit down.

“We are talking of you!” said Felix.

“I know it,” she answered. “That’s why I came.” And she fastened her eyes on her father, who returned her gaze very fixedly. In his own cold blue eyes there was a kind of pleading, reasoning light.

“It is better you should be present,” said Mr. Wentworth. “We are discussing your future.”

“Why discuss it?” asked Gertrude. “Leave it to me.”

“That is, to me!” cried Felix.

“I leave it, in the last resort, to a greater wisdom than ours,” said the old man.

Felix rubbed his forehead gently. “But en attendant the last resort, your father lacks confidence,” he said to Gertrude.

“Haven’t you confidence in Felix?” Gertrude was frowning; there was something about her that her father and Charlotte had never seen. Charlotte got up and came to her, as if to put her arm round her; but suddenly, she seemed afraid to touch her.

Mr. Wentworth, however, was not afraid. “I have had more confidence in Felix than in you,” he said.

“Yes, you have never had confidence in me—never, never! I don’t know why.”

“Oh sister, sister!” murmured Charlotte.

“You have always needed advice,” Mr. Wentworth declared. “You have had a difficult temperament.”

“Why do you call it difficult? It might have been easy, if you had allowed it. You wouldn’t let me be natural. I don’t know what you wanted to make of me. Mr. Brand was the worst.”

Charlotte at last took hold of her sister. She laid her two hands upon Gertrude’s arm. “He cares so much for you,” she almost whispered.

Gertrude looked at her intently an instant; then kissed her. “No, he does not,” she said.

“I have never seen you so passionate,” observed Mr. Wentworth, with an air of indignation mitigated by high principles.

“I am sorry if I offend you,” said Gertrude.

“You offend me, but I don’t think you are sorry.”

“Yes, father, she is sorry,” said Charlotte.

“I would even go further, dear uncle,” Felix interposed. “I would question whether she really offends you. How can she offend you?”

To this Mr. Wentworth made no immediate answer. Then, in a moment, “She has not profited as we hoped.”

“Profited? Ah voilà!” Felix exclaimed.

Gertrude was very pale; she stood looking down. “I have told Felix I would go away with him,” she presently said.

“Ah, you have said some admirable things!” cried the young man.

“Go away, sister?” asked Charlotte.

“Away—away; to some strange country.”

“That is to frighten you,” said Felix, smiling at Charlotte.

“To—what do you call it?” asked Gertrude, turning an instant to Felix. “To Bohemia.”

“Do you propose to dispense with preliminaries?” asked Mr. Wentworth, getting up.

“Dear uncle, vous plaisantez!” cried Felix. “It seems to me that these are preliminaries.”

Gertrude turned to her father. “I have profited,” she said. “You wanted to form my character. Well, my character is formed—for my age. I know what I want; I have chosen. I am determined to marry this gentleman.”

“You had better consent, sir,” said Felix very gently.

“Yes, sir, you had better consent,” added a very different voice.

Charlotte gave a little jump, and the others turned to the direction from which it had come. It was the voice of Mr. Brand, who had stepped through the long window which stood open to the piazza. He stood patting his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief; he was very much flushed; his face wore a singular expression.

“Yes, sir, you had better consent,” Mr. Brand repeated, coming forward. “I know what Miss Gertrude means.”

“My dear friend!” murmured Felix, laying his hand caressingly on the young minister’s arm.

Mr. Brand looked at him; then at Mr. Wentworth; lastly at Gertrude. He did not look at Charlotte. But Charlotte’s earnest eyes were fastened to his own countenance; they were asking an immense question of it. The answer to this question could not come all at once; but some of the elements of it were there. It was one of the elements of it that Mr. Brand was very red, that he held his head very high, that he had a bright, excited eye and an air of embarrassed boldness—the air of a man who has taken a resolve, in the execution of which he apprehends the failure, not of his moral, but of his personal, resources. Charlotte thought he looked very grand; and it is incontestable that Mr. Brand felt very grand. This, in fact, was the grandest moment of his life; and it was natural that such a moment should contain opportunities of awkwardness for a large, stout, modest young man.

“Come in, sir,” said Mr. Wentworth, with an angular wave of his hand. “It is very proper that you should be present.”

“I know what you are talking about,” Mr. Brand rejoined. “I heard what your nephew said.”

“And he heard what you said!” exclaimed Felix, patting him again on the arm.

“I am not sure that I understood,” said Mr. Wentworth, who had angularity in his voice as well as in his gestures.

Gertrude had been looking hard at her former suitor. She had been puzzled, like her sister; but her imagination moved more quickly than Charlotte’s. “Mr. Brand asked you to let Felix take me away,” she said to her father.

The young minister gave her a strange look. “It is not because I don’t want to see you any more,” he declared, in a tone intended as it were for publicity.

“I shouldn’t think you would want to see me any more,” Gertrude answered, gently.

Mr. Wentworth stood staring. “Isn’t this rather a change, sir?” he inquired.

“Yes, sir.” And Mr. Brand looked anywhere; only still not at Charlotte. “Yes, sir,” he repeated. And he held his handkerchief a few moments to his lips.

“Where are our moral grounds?” demanded Mr. Wentworth, who had always thought Mr. Brand would be just the thing for a younger daughter with a peculiar temperament.

“It is sometimes very moral to change, you know,” suggested Felix.

Charlotte had softly left her sister’s side. She had edged gently toward her father, and now her hand found its way into his arm. Mr. Wentworth had folded up the Advertiser into a surprisingly small compass, and, holding the roll with one hand, he earnestly clasped it with the other. Mr. Brand was looking at him; and yet, though Charlotte was so near, his eyes failed to meet her own. Gertrude watched her sister.

“It is better not to speak of change,” said Mr. Brand. “In one sense there is no change. There was something I desired—something I asked of you; I desire something still—I ask it of you.” And he paused a moment; Mr. Wentworth looked bewildered. “I should like, in my ministerial capacity, to unite this young couple.”

Gertrude, watching her sister, saw Charlotte flushing intensely, and Mr. Wentworth felt her pressing upon his arm. “Heavenly Powers!” murmured Mr. Wentworth. And it was the nearest approach to profanity he had ever made.

“That is very nice; that is very handsome!” Felix exclaimed.

“I don’t understand,” said Mr. Wentworth; though it was plain that everyone else did.

“That is very beautiful, Mr. Brand,” said Gertrude, emulating Felix.

“I should like to marry you. It will give me great pleasure.”

“As Gertrude says, it’s a beautiful idea,” said Felix.

Felix was smiling, but Mr. Brand was not even trying to. He himself treated his proposition very seriously. “I have thought of it, and I should like to do it,” he affirmed.

Charlotte, meanwhile, was staring with expanded eyes. Her imagination, as I have said, was not so rapid as her sister’s, but now it had taken several little jumps. “Father,” she murmured, “consent!”

Mr. Brand heard her; he looked away. Mr. Wentworth, evidently, had no imagination at all. “I have always thought,” he began, slowly, “that Gertrude’s character required a special line of development.”

“Father,” repeated Charlotte, “consent.”

Then, at last, Mr. Brand looked at her. Her father felt her leaning more heavily upon his folded arm than she had ever done before; and this, with a certain sweet faintness in her voice, made him wonder what was the matter. He looked down at her and saw the encounter of her gaze with the young theologian’s; but even this told him nothing, and he continued to be bewildered. Nevertheless, “I consent,” he said at last, “since Mr. Brand recommends it.”

“I should like to perform the ceremony very soon,” observed Mr. Brand, with a sort of solemn simplicity.

“Come, come, that’s charming!” cried Felix, profanely.

Mr. Wentworth sank into his chair. “Doubtless, when you understand it,” he said, with a certain judicial asperity.

Gertrude went to her sister and led her away, and Felix having passed his arm into Mr. Brand’s and stepped out of the long window with him, the old man was left sitting there in unillumined perplexity.

Felix did no work that day. In the afternoon, with Gertrude, he got into one of the boats and floated about with idly-dipping oars. They talked a good deal of Mr. Brand—though not exclusively.

“That was a fine stroke,” said Felix. “It was really heroic.”

Gertrude sat musing, with her eyes upon the ripples. “That was what he wanted to be; he wanted to do something fine.”

“He won’t be comfortable till he has married us,” said Felix. “So much the better.”

“He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral pleasure. I know him so well,” Gertrude went on. Felix looked at her; she spoke slowly, gazing at the clear water. “He thought of it a great deal, night and day. He thought it would be beautiful. At last he made up his mind that it was his duty, his duty to do just that—nothing less than that. He felt exalted; he felt sublime. That’s how he likes to feel. It is better for him than if I had listened to him.”

“It’s better for me,” smiled Felix. “But do you know, as regards the sacrifice, that I don’t believe he admired you when this decision was taken quite so much as he had done a fortnight before?”

“He never admired me. He admires Charlotte; he pitied me. I know him so well.”

“Well, then, he didn’t pity you so much.”

Gertrude looked at Felix a little, smiling. “You shouldn’t permit yourself,” she said, “to diminish the splendor of his action. He admires Charlotte,” she repeated.

“That’s capital!” said Felix laughingly, and dipping his oars. I cannot say exactly to which member of Gertrude’s phrase he alluded; but he dipped his oars again, and they kept floating about.

Neither Felix nor his sister, on that day, was present at Mr. Wentworth’s at the evening repast. The two occupants of the chalet dined together, and the young man informed his companion that his marriage was now an assured fact. Eugenia congratulated him, and replied that if he were as reasonable a husband as he had been, on the whole, a brother, his wife would have nothing to complain of.

Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. “I hope,” he said, “not to be thrown back on my reason.”

“It is very true,” Eugenia rejoined, “that one’s reason is dismally flat. It’s a bed with the mattress removed.”

But the brother and sister, later in the evening, crossed over to the larger house, the Baroness desiring to compliment her prospective sister-in-law. They found the usual circle upon the piazza, with the exception of Clifford Wentworth and Lizzie Acton; and as everyone stood up as usual to welcome the Baroness, Eugenia had an admiring audience for her compliment to Gertrude.

Robert Acton stood on the edge of the piazza, leaning against one of the white columns, so that he found himself next to Eugenia while she acquitted herself of a neat little discourse of congratulation.

“I shall be so glad to know you better,” she said; “I have seen so much less of you than I should have liked. Naturally; now I see the reason why! You will love me a little, won’t you? I think I may say I gain on being known.” And terminating these observations with the softest cadence of her voice, the Baroness imprinted a sort of grand official kiss upon Gertrude’s forehead.

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