Miss Ruck pounced straight. "Then you had better not come home. We know how to treat your sort."
"Were you born in these countries?" I asked of Aurora Church.
"Oh no-I came to Europe 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 Ruck.
"The grandest country in all the world," I added.
Miss Ruck began to toss her head. "Come away, my dear. If there"s a creature I despise it"s a man who tries to say funny things about his own country."
But Aurora lingered while she all appealingly put it to me. "Don"t you think one can be tired of Europe?"
"Well-as one may be tired of life."
"Tired of the life?" cried Miss Ruck. "Father was tired of it after three weeks."
"I"ve been here sixteen years," her friend went on, looking at me as for some charming intelligence. "It used to be for my education. I don"t know what it"s for now."
"She"s beautifully educated," Miss Ruck guaranteed. "She knows four languages."
"I"m not very sure I know English!"
"You should go to Boston!" said our companion. "They speak splendidly in Boston."
"C"est mon reve," said Aurora, still looking at me. "Have you been all over Europe," I asked-"in all the different countries?"
She consulted her reminiscences. "Everywhere you can find a pension.
Mamma"s devoted to pensions. We"ve lived at one time or another in every pension in Europe-say at some five or six hundred."
"Well, I should think you had seen about enough!" Miss Ruck exhaled.
"It"s a delightful way of seeing Europe"-our friend rose to a bright high irony. "You may imagine how it has attached me to the different countries. I have such charming souvenirs! There"s a pension awaiting us now at Dresden-eight francs a day, without wine. That"s so much beyond our mark that mamma means to make them give us wine. Mamma"s a great authority on pensions; she"s 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 Ruck, who had glanced through the window at Mrs. Church"s concentration.
"No, she doesn"t mingle, except in the native society. Though she lives in pensions she detests our vulgar life."
""Vulgar"?" cried Miss Ruck. "Why then does she skimp so?" This young woman had clearly no other notion of vulgarity.
"Oh because we"re so poor; it"s the cheapest way to live. We"ve tried having a cook, but the cook always steals. Mamma used to set me to watch her; that"s the way I pa.s.sed my jeunesse-my belle jeunesse. We"re frightfully poor," she 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 could never afford to live there."
"Well, any one can see that you"re an American girl," Miss Ruck remarked in a consolatory manner. "I can tell an American girl a mile off.
You"ve got the natural American style."
"I"m afraid I haven"t the natural American clothes," said Aurora in tribute to the other"s splendour.
"Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see that."
"Yes," our young lady laughed, "my dress was cut in France-at Avranches."
"Well, you"ve got a lovely figure anyway," pursued her companion.
"Ah," she said for the pleasantry of it, "at Avranches, too, my figure was admired." And she looked at me askance and with no clear poverty of intention. But I was an innocent youth and I only looked back at her and wondered. She was a great deal nicer than Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck wouldn"t have said that in that way. "I try to be the American girl,"
she continued; "I do my best, though mamma doesn"t at all encourage it.
I"m very patriotic. I try to strike for freedom, though mamma has brought me up a la francaise; that is as much as one can in pensions.
For instance I"ve never been out of the house without mamma-oh never never! But sometimes I despair; American girls do come out so with things. I can"t come out, I can"t rush in, like that. I"m awfully pinched, I"m always afraid. But I do what I can, as you see. Excusez du peu!"
I thought this young lady of an inspiration at least as untrammelled as her unexpatriated sisters, and her despondency in the true note of much of their predominant prattle. At the same time she had by no means caught, as it seemed to me, what Miss Ruck called the natural American style. Whatever her style was, however, it had a fascination-I knew not what (as I called it) distinction, and yet I knew not what odd freedom.
The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I enjoyed their society until M. Pigeonneau"s conception of a "high time" began to languish.
V
Mr. Ruck failed to take his departure for Appenzell on the morrow, in spite of the eagerness to see him off quaintly attributed by him to Mrs.
Church. He continued on the contrary for many days after to hang about the garden, to wander up to the banker"s and back again, to engage in desultory conversation with his fellow boarders, and to endeavour to a.s.suage his const.i.tutional restlessness by perusal of the American journals. But it was at least on the morrow that I had the honour of making Mrs. Church"s acquaintance. She came into the salon after the midday breakfast, her German octavo under her arm, and appealed to me for a.s.sistance 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 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 briefly to converse with you. It"s some time since I"ve met a young American of your-what shall I call it?-affiliations.
I"ve learned your name from Madame Beaurepas; I must have known in other days some of your people. I ask myself what has become of all my friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, but now I meet no one I either know or desire to know. Don"t you think there"s a great difference between the people one meets and the people one would like to meet? Fortunately, sometimes," my patroness graciously added, "there"s no great difference. I suppose you"re a specimen-and I take you for a good one," she imperturbably went on-"of modern young America. Tell me, then, what modern young America is thinking of in these strange days of ours. What are its feelings, its opinions, its aspirations? What is its _ideal_?" I had seated myself and she had pointed this interrogation with the gaze of her curiously bright and impersonal little eyes. I felt it embarra.s.sing to be taken for a superior specimen of modern young America and to be expected to answer for looming millions. Observing my hesitation Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and gave a dismal, a desperate smile. "_Has_ it an ideal?" she softly asked.
"Well, we must talk of this," she proceeded without insisting. "Speak just now for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe to any intelligent conscious end?"
"No great end to boast of," I said. "But I seem to feel myself study a little."
"Ah, I"m glad to hear that. You"re gathering up a little European culture; that"s what we lack, you know, at home. No individual can do much, of course; but one mustn"t be discouraged-every little so counts."
"I see that you at least are doing your part," I bravely answered, dropping my eyes on my companion"s learned volume.
"Ah yes, I go as straight as possible to the sources. There"s no one after all like the Germans. That is for digging up the facts and the evidence. For conclusions I frequently diverge. I form my opinions myself. I"m sorry to say, however," Mrs. Church continued, "that I don"t do much to spread the light. I"m afraid I"m sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong-I frankly confess it-to the cla.s.s of impenitent absentees."
"I had the pleasure, last evening," I said, "of making the acquaintance of your daughter. She tells me you"ve been a long time in Europe."
She took it blandly. "Can one ever be _too_ long? You see it"s _our_ world, that of us few real fugitives from the rule of the mob. We shall never go back to that."
"Your daughter nevertheless fancies she yearns!" I replied.
"Has she been taking you into her confidence? She"s a more sensible young lady than she sometimes appears. I"ve taken great pains with her; she"s really-I may be permitted to say it-superbly educated."
"She seemed to me to do you honour," I made answer. "And I hear she speaks fluently four languages."
"It"s not only that," said Mrs. Church in the tone of one sated with fluencies and disillusioned of diplomas. "She has made what we call _de fortes etudes_-such as I suppose you"re making now. She"s familiar with the results of modern science; she keeps pace with the new historical school."
"Ah," said I, "she has gone much further than I!"