"You might tell me a great many things, if you only would. You have seen people like yourself--people who are bright and gay and fond of amus.e.m.e.nt. We are not fond of amus.e.m.e.nt."
"Yes," said Felix, "I confess that rather strikes me. You don"t seem to me to get all the pleasure out of life that you might. You don"t seem to me to enjoy..... Do you mind my saying this?" he asked, pausing.
"Please go on," said the girl, earnestly.
"You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and liberty and what is called in Europe a "position." But you take a painful view of life, as one may say."
"One ought to think it bright and charming and delightful, eh?" asked Gertrude.
"I should say so--if one can. It is true it all depends upon that,"
Felix added.
"You know there is a great deal of misery in the world," said his model.
"I have seen a little of it," the young man rejoined. "But it was all over there--beyond the sea. I don"t see any here. This is a paradise."
Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work. "To "enjoy,"" she began at last, "to take life--not painfully, must one do something wrong?"
Felix gave his long, light laugh again. "Seriously, I think not. And for this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time as incapable of wrong-doing."
"I am sure," said Gertrude, "that you are very wrong in telling a person that she is incapable of that. We are never nearer to evil than when we believe that."
"You are handsomer than ever," observed Felix, irrelevantly.
Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this. There was not so much excitement in it as at first. "What ought one to do?" she continued. "To give parties, to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?"
"I don"t think it "s what one does or one does n"t do that promotes enjoyment," her companion answered. "It is the general way of looking at life."
"They look at it as a discipline--that "s what they do here. I have often been told that."
"Well, that "s very good. But there is another way," added Felix, smiling: "to look at it as an opportunity."
"An opportunity--yes," said Gertrude. "One would get more pleasure that way."
"I don"t attempt to say anything better for it than that it has been my own way--and that is not saying much!" Felix had laid down his palette and brushes; he was leaning back, with his arms folded, to judge the effect of his work. "And you know," he said, "I am a very petty personage."
"You have a great deal of talent," said Gertrude.
"No--no," the young man rejoined, in a tone of cheerful impartiality, "I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable.
I a.s.sure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure. The world will never hear of me." Gertrude looked at him with a strange feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew and which she did not, and how full of brilliant talents it must be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities. "You need n"t in general attach much importance to anything I tell you," he pursued; "but you may believe me when I say this,--that I am little better than a good-natured feather-head."
"A feather-head?" she repeated.
"I am a species of Bohemian."
"A Bohemian?" Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as a geographical denomination; and she quite failed to understand the figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it. But it gave her pleasure.
Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet; he slowly came toward her, smiling. "I am a sort of adventurer," he said, looking down at her.
She got up, meeting his smile. "An adventurer?" she repeated. "I should like to hear your adventures."
For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand; but he dropped his own hands suddenly into the pockets of his painting-jacket.
"There is no reason why you should n"t," he said. "I have been an adventurer, but my adventures have been very innocent. They have all been happy ones; I don"t think there are any I should n"t tell. They were very pleasant and very pretty; I should like to go over them in memory. Sit down again, and I will begin," he added in a moment, with his naturally persuasive smile.
Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man"s brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter"s knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played the violin in a little band of musicians--not of high celebrity--who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial concerts. He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a troupe of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences.
While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived in a fantastic world; she seemed to herself to be reading a romance that came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing so delightful since the perusal of "Nicholas Nickleby." One afternoon she went to see her cousin, Mrs. Acton, Robert"s mother, who was a great invalid, never leaving the house. She came back alone, on foot, across the fields--this being a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston with her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon some of his friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother--remembered her, but said nothing about her--and several of whom, with the gentle ladies their wives, had driven out from town to pay their respects at the little house among the apple-trees, in vehicles which reminded the Baroness, who received her visitors with discriminating civility, of the large, light, rattling barouche in which she herself had made her journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning; in the western sky the great picture of a New England sunset, painted in crimson and silver, was suspended from the zenith; and the stony pastures, as Gertrude traversed them, thinking intently to herself, were covered with a light, clear glow. At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from the distance a man"s figure; he stood there as if he were waiting for her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand. She had a feeling as of not having seen him for some time; she could not have said for how long, for it yet seemed to her that he had been very lately at the house.
"May I walk back with you?" he asked. And when she had said that he might if he wanted, he observed that he had seen her and recognized her half a mile away.
"You must have very good eyes," said Gertrude.
"Yes, I have very good eyes, Miss Gertrude," said Mr. Brand. She perceived that he meant something; but for a long time past Mr. Brand had constantly meant something, and she had almost got used to it. She felt, however, that what he meant had now a renewed power to disturb her, to perplex and agitate her. He walked beside her in silence for a moment, and then he added, "I have had no trouble in seeing that you are beginning to avoid me. But perhaps," he went on, "one need n"t have had very good eyes to see that."
"I have not avoided you," said Gertrude, without looking at him.
"I think you have been unconscious that you were avoiding me," Mr. Brand replied. "You have not even known that I was there."
"Well, you are here now, Mr. Brand!" said Gertrude, with a little laugh.
"I know that very well."
He made no rejoinder. He simply walked beside her slowly, as they were obliged to walk over the soft gra.s.s. Presently they came to another gate, which was closed. Mr. Brand laid his hand upon it, but he made no movement to open it; he stood and looked at his companion. "You are very much interested--very much absorbed," he said.
Gertrude glanced at him; she saw that he was pale and that he looked excited. She had never seen Mr. Brand excited before, and she felt that the spectacle, if fully carried out, would be impressive, almost painful. "Absorbed in what?" she asked. Then she looked away at the illuminated sky. She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was vexed with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood there looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes, represented an immense body of half-obliterated obligations, that were rising again into a certain distinctness.
"You have new interests, new occupations," he went on. "I don"t know that I can say that you have new duties. We have always old ones, Gertrude," he added.
"Please open the gate, Mr. Brand," she said; and she felt as if, in saying so, she were cowardly and petulant. But he opened the gate, and allowed her to pa.s.s; then he closed it behind himself. Before she had time to turn away he put out his hand and held her an instant by the wrist.
"I want to say something to you," he said.
"I know what you want to say," she answered. And she was on the point of adding, "And I know just how you will say it;" but these words she kept back.
"I love you, Gertrude," he said. "I love you very much; I love you more than ever."
He said the words just as she had known he would; she had heard them before. They had no charm for her; she had said to herself before that it was very strange. It was supposed to be delightful for a woman to listen to such words; but these seemed to her flat and mechanical. "I wish you would forget that," she declared.
"How can I--why should I?" he asked.
"I have made you no promise--given you no pledge," she said, looking at him, with her voice trembling a little.
"You have let me feel that I have an influence over you. You have opened your mind to me."
"I never opened my mind to you, Mr. Brand!" Gertrude cried, with some vehemence.
"Then you were not so frank as I thought--as we all thought."
"I don"t see what any one else had to do with it!" cried the girl.