Frederic Jesup Stimson

“ Somebody says life is made up of labor, art, love, and worship. New York had given him labor, which he had performed. And of the others? Had it given him love, even? Was he a barbarian, better fitted for a struggle with crude nature than New York, not up to the refinements of modern civilization? Should he leave these places? Now, that day Miss Thomas was to come, and he must decide. He thirsted for happiness; how was he best to find it? These thoughts, perhaps, seemed selfish, cold-blooded, practical, but there was a sadness in them for Vane. ”

“ There is something half shameful, half sad, in seeing one’s own older folly, one’s boyish vanity and egotism. He had the necessary money now, but there was no longer anything attractive to him in the life of Paris; even dreams of adventure in the Soudan did not now fire his imagination. Vane had learned that no American could do without America, least of all an American with nothing but his country left. ”

“ Vane was rather ashamed to own to himself that he was displeased at the acquaintance that seemed to have existed between Miss Thomas and his late companions. Little as he cared for Miss Thomas, there was certainly a world-wide difference between her and Miss Morse, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Dibble; and yet he could not bring himself to admit that he was snobbish or prejudiced. It was simply that the wealth and education of these young ladies had outstripped their breeding, while the young men were still seeking for the first. ”

“ XVI. THIS was still the most marked flavor in his self-consciousness the next morning, and when he rode to the wharf, when he entered the cabin decked with flowers as if for a funeral, even when they steamed out to sea, the bitter aftertaste of folly did not leave him. He was in the mid-Atlantic before his self-communings began to be mitigated by his sense of humor. Truly there had been no need to consider quite so nicely his duties to Miss Thomas. He had thought himself too far involved to retreat gracefully without a proposal. ”

“ At this time Vane was a handsome, erect fellow, with a large aquiline nose, and heavy eyebrows shading quiet eyes. Most of the people knew him well as the doctor’s protégé. One day the good old doctor came to him with an air of much mysterious importance. He passed Vane’s arm through his, and led him to his favorite walk up and down the garden. “My son,” he began, tapping him on the shoulder, and beginning in a way he evidently thought to be diplomatic, “you are growing older, and it is not good for you to be alone. Listen! it is time you should marry.” ”

“ A cynic is commonly a snubbed sentimentalist, who takes it out in growling. Vane had sought the world because he was lonely; but it seemed to him more than ever that he was much less lonely when alone. It is isolation, not loneliness, that saddens a man of sense; for his sense tells him that it is the world which is likely to be right, and proves him a solitary fool.
This evening Vane did devote himself to Miss Thomas; and a charming conversation they had. ”

“ As far as Vane could judge, it seemed to be considered the proper thing for every young man to simulate the deepest love for his companion of the hour. It was a sort of private theatrical, with the out-door night for a stage; a midsummer night’s dream, of which the theme was let’s pretend we’re lovers. He was here alone with Miss Gibbs under circumstances which in France would have compelled him to marry her; and it was doubtful whether she would even remember him as an acquaintance, in the city, a few weeks later. ”

“ If a French girl had so calmly borne his glance, there would have been a little of the coquette in hers. But, after all, thought Vane,—this was charming; more ideal, more intelligent, sweeter than Paris—but it was not unlike Paris. The dress was certainly Parisian. She was better dressed than young ladies are in Paris. Her people must be very rich. Yet, he was disappointed. She was not American enough. She would have been quite in his mood of five years gone by. She was not like English girls; and he had hoped American girls were like them. ”

“ Who is Ten Eyck? Oh! I remember. Well, and what of it?” Vane added, after a pause.
“Oh! nothing, nothing at all. He is the son of one of our New York Senators, you know; and has a brilliant future before him.”
“Bah! The most brilliant future a woman can have is a future with a man who loves her.”
“And where did you pick up that aphorism? Not from your French education, surely? I believe Miss Thomas loves him.”
“I may not be up in American ideas, John, owing to the French education you sneer at; but I certainly was brought up to resent a remark like that, made of a young girl I like.” ”

“ Four years ago, in Brittany, Vane had felt himself an old man; but now it seemed that he was “ower young to marry yet.” These thoughts gave him much trouble; and in the meantime he abstained from further complication by not calling on Miss Thomas, and, at the same time, subjected himself to much self-analysis. Could he honestly be content to go through life with this girl by his side? He knew enough of life to know that it mattered very little how often a man made a fool of himself, if he did not do so on the day when he got married. ”

“ This young lady reminded him of a glass of champagne. When you first pour it out, there is a froth and sparkle; then a stillness comes; if you wish a fresh volume of sparkles, you must drop something into it. A piece of sugar is best. Vane’s French breeding stood him in good stead: he began with a compliment.
After the dinner, the nine ladies disappeared from the room; and the nine men grouped themselves at one end of the table and smoked cigars over the sweetmeats. ”

“ Vane fancied that there might be follies that had something in them of divine and much good sense that smacked only of the world and the flesh. One got plenty of good sense in New York.
When he left Lourdes he went eastward, through Gascony and Languedoc. The sweet contentment of the harvest was over the country, the healthy happiness of nature’s reproduction, of fruitage and of growing seed. All earth and nature is happy where it is not conscious. ”

“ And the young man was anxious, above all things, to live, to find in life what was earnest and genuine: not the mere means, like money, nor the makeshifts, like fashion. Vane wanted happiness, not pleasure; like most young men, he felt injured if he did not get it. ”

“ He knew to a unit how many poor people had consumed the society’s soup, for each of the past forty years, in Rennes, and seemed to derive much satisfaction from these figures and their annual increase. He never spoke again to Vane of the young lady with the dot, and it turned out that she had married M. le Vicomte’s son.
Meantime Vane wandered through the rosy lanes, and the country came to him with a sense of rest. Life’s silent woods are so near its highways, after all! And Vane had been a boy in this country, and it had a glamour for him; and, truly, it is a sweet corner in the world. ”

“ Vane was evidently off on a thesis, and Haviland settled himself on the sofa with a pipe. “I have seen many women whom the world calls fascinating, and they never attracted me at all. We look, admire and pass on. Now, Miss Thomas has all the brightness of a woman of the world, with the simplicity of a country maiden. If she has any charm, it is because she is just herself, as Nature made her.” Vane spoke with the air of a knight defending abandoned beauty. ”

“ In the south of France there are wide plains and cornfields, and in them is more than one great dead city, sleeping like some old warrior in the peaceful afternoon of his days. The huge armor of cyclopean walls has served its time, but still stands out, frowning, from the sea of yellow grain; the city inside has shrunk within the walls, and no longer fills them. Such a place is Aigues Mortes or Carcassonne ”

“ And Vane thought to himself of Bellefontaine, Ohio, and the great future of the West, and eager Wall Street. The phrases rolled off glibly, like a well-taught lesson. Still, their being trite did not prevent their being true. Surely there was something real, something actual, progressive in America, to make one’s life worth living there. His own country aroused his interest, was worth his study. As for the trivial girl with whom he had flirted—by whom he had been corrupted—he had wasted his time over her. ”

“ Work gives its own companionship, but idleness is gregarious. The place was full of girls of all styles of behavior and prettiness. Some were playing tennis, others making up companies for drives, others starting off for long walks. Vane had pictured the type of American girlhood as something fragile and delicate, but these had healthy faces and lithe young figures robed in flannel and untrammelled by the dressmakers’ art. ”

“ The old man sighed deeply. He knew Vane too well to press the matter. “Ah!” said he, “you say you will never marry. I know better. You have seen some American—quelque petite Américaine rusée. Hélas! and we might all have been so happy.” The doctor said no more on the subject, but was sad and quiet during the rest of Vane’s visit.
He said nothing afterwards, except on Vane’s departure. Then he pressed his hand: “Ah, consider, my child. A young girl of the most charming—of the most charming—and two hundred thousand livres of dot!” Vane could only press his hand in return. ”

“ There ought to be some method of social transplanting; some way of grafting new blossoms on an old stock. But all American stock was good; American society was like a world of rounded pebbles grating on a beach; the buried pebbles were quite as fine as those on top; only these were more stirred and polished, so their colors came out best. And yet what common, poor stuff most of them were, after all! A pleasant trade, that of social lapidary! And Vane, perhaps for the first time, took note of the women around him. There was a Philadelphia girl, pretty and voluble ”

“ Miss Morse brought her volume of Mérimée along and read it to her young man in the woods. Her young man for the afternoon, that is; she had no special young man. The chaperone was the beautiful Mrs. Miles Breeze, of Baltimore; she arrived suddenly, in the nick of time to go; and Vane could see that Miss Morse was much elated at being under the wing of so real a social personage. Ned Eddy was with her. When the company paired off and scattered in the woods, Vane fell to the lot of a Miss Gibbs, of Philadelphia, a still newer acquaintance to whom Miss Storrs had introduced him. ”