Frederic Jesup Stimson

“ Eastman was still standing at the door, the incarnation of the custodian, in iron-gray rigidity of dress, and equilateral triangularity of white fichu.
“Everything seems to be all right, Mrs. Eastman,” said he, graciously. (Behold how simple are the needs of man—give them but fresh water, space, and peace, and their desires are filled; while womankind—are otherwise.)
“Everything is all right,” broke in Mrs. Eastman, like the offended Vestal deity, at a statement implying contrary possibilities. Then again she congealed.
May looked at her more closely, with a slight shade of annoyance. ”

“ Dehon herself treated May with perfect simplicity, but with an infinite gentleness, as the moon-goddess might have looked upon Endymion.
This state of things got to be perfectly well known to the world. Such things always are well known to the world; nothing is more striking than the perfect openness with which our heart-histories are revealed in modern life, except perhaps the ease with which those most intimately concerned maintain a polite and unembarrassed appearance of utter ignorance upon the subject. All the world loves a lover, particularly a hopeless one ”

“ When May emerged in the little grass island, screened safely by the play of falling waters, he was breathless with the run; and his heart pounded against his ribs with the violence of his emotions. The countess it unquestionably was. None but she would arrive in open carriage and pair and splendid livery. And May reckoned he would have to stay there, in the shelter of the fountain, until the light made his escape safe and possible. ”

“ Terwilliger Dehon! And May laughed to himself as he pictured their meeting, and the Eastmans taking him for a burglar. What could she have done to drive Dehon in such terror from the house? May wondered what had become of him, and looked with some apprehension lest he should have rushed into the lily-pond. [130] But that was impossible in so light a night. Moreover, he could have waded out. Well, well! he never should have known how to get rid of him. Peace to his widower’s weeds.
The harvest moon had risen, and shone brightly on the familiar fields. Beauty is only relished by the free. ”

“ She turned, as if in sudden decision, and sped like an arrow over the high moor. May’s eyes followed her; and his soul was in his eyes, and his body went after the soul. One dig of the spurs nigh unseated him, as if his spirited horse scorned such an incitement to chivalric duty; and so, for some twenty minutes on end they rode, May neither gaining nor losing, and both out of sight of the rest of the hunt. Now and then the cry of hounds came up from the forest-valley on the right, and May fancied he heard below a crashing as of bushes ”

“ May knocked the ashes from his cigar as who should say, “I, too, am a Parisian of the nineteenth century;” quaffed a few sparkles from the iced carafe and bottle, and pretended to be interested in the latest Faits-Paris of Figaro. He was beginning to realize the delights of youth and riches and free travel; he had been nothing but a school-boy in America, and a sort of wild man since. ”

“ Italia irredenta! Poland! Nihilism! For May was not quite clear which one or more of these was chief in her mind; and nihilism was a new word then, but it sounded dangerous and attractive. Could he not be her chevalier, her lieutenant, her esquire? It was no more than Byron had done for Greece, after all. He was free, independent (for the next eight years) —broken-hearted, he was going to add, but stopped. After all, May Austin had not refused to marry him; and three of the eleven years were gone. At all events, there was nothing to prevent his attaching himself to a forlorn hope, if he chose. ”

“ Then the young man had to seek, not to console her, but to calm her, to lift her from the floor, to bring her ice-water, a fan, a feather, pour oil and salt upon the wound, [55] toilet-vinegar, or other salads. May never knew exactly what he did; but it was like consoling an equinoctial gale. Hardly had she got fairly calm, and sobbing comfortably, and sitting in a chair, and he beside her—and he remembered patting her clasped hands, as one does a spoiled child’s—when she would dash upright, upsetting the chair, and swear her vengeance on the cruel Czar.... ”

“ May waited until the carryall had quite disappeared in the elm-trees, and then rang the bell. Apparently, he expected no prompt answer; for he sat down upon one of the old china garden-seats, which flanked the door, and rolled and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes he rang again, louder; the unwonted tinkle reverberated through the closed house, and an imaginative man, putting his ear to the key-hole, might have heard the scuffle of the family ghosts as they scurried back to their hiding-places. ”

“ And they used to sit there, he and his uncle, in this same pavilion, smoking, close hedged in from womankind. And when the old man had fallen asleep, Austin would creep out into the park, and walk there with his lovely cousin May. And on one summer day, for all the world like this, he won her heart, this gay young Harvard senior, all among the rushes by the lily-pool. And Austin had gone back into the pavilion, quaking, to tell his uncle, and found the latter very dignified and dead, a bottle of the famous Eclipse Lafite close by his elbow. ”

“ These things he felt for some weeks before he proposed to Miss Rutherford, and she was precisely the sort of girl he saw was best. If old Uncle Austin had selected her himself, he could not have made a better choice. And well, thought May, he saw the motives of his kind old uncle’s will, and the wisdom born of much experience, and long consideration and a knowledge of Eclipse claret that had prompted it. A young man, if left to himself, would choose him a different wife for each three years of his life. ”

“ May was conscious of a certain Capuan comfort, of an unmanly, hot-house luxury, as he sat before the little table with his carafe of ice, brandy, and seltzer, felt the cool stiffness of his linen shirt, smoked his pressed regalia, and watched the ladies with their crisp and colored dresses and their neat and silken ankles as they mounted in their landaus for their evening drive. ”

“ Poor Austin! A boy’s love feeds on the romance of hopelessness, flourishes apace in the shadow of despair; it delights in patient waiting, in faithful fidelity, in lapses of years; but a man’s is peremptory, immediate, uncompromising. ”

“ PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA.
Austin May fell devoutly in love with Mrs. Dehon. This was without doubt the grande passion of his life. And it was hopeless.
He was just at the age when such affairs are sternest realities to modern men. He was beyond the uncertainty of youth, and before the compromises and practicalities of middle life. And there was something about Gladys Dehon to make a man who cared for her ride rough-shod, neck or nothing, over all things else. All the world admired her; would have loved her had it dared. There was no daring about it in Austin’s case ”

“ This stall-fed citizen was horse-back on another square-built brute, and it was very Psychecide to call the wretch her husband. A Diana, by heaven! thought he; and, indeed, she sat her horse as any goddess might, and clothed her own riding-habit as the moon her covering of cloud.
“Who’s that?” said he to Tom Leigh. ”

“ May used to dream and ponder about her, long hours of nights and days; and he fancied that something about her life, her lonely bringing-up, her father’s precepts, had made her scornfully incredulous of there being such a thing as the novelist’s love in life. She had been a greater nature than her father, and all mankind had been nothing to her as compared with even him. Too early scorn of this [84] world’s life prepares the soul for evil compromises. ”

“ Holland will always find a congenial audience in the homes of culture and refinement. He does not affect the play of the darker and fiercer passions, but delights in the sweet images that cluster around the domestic hearth. He cherishes a strong fellow-feeling with the pure and tranquil life in the modest social circles of the American people, and has thus won his way to the companionship of many friendly hearts.”—The New York Tribune. ”

“ Terwilliger Dehon. Youth has a long future ahead of it, and a young man of twenty-seven easily discounts obligations maturing only in six years. But when May was thirty, and well launched in London society—whether it was the charms of Mrs. Dehon aforesaid, or the vanishing of youthful heroism and that increase of comfort which attends middle life—a political heroine like the Countess Polacca de Valska no longer seemed to him the ideal consort for a man of his temperament. ”

“ He patted Fides on his massive head, as the dog walked along beside him. He went back into the house. It was all his own now; all his own, and untrammelled. He called his valet to him.
“Schmidt,” said he, “I am not going to sit up any longer. If anyone comes, I have been here and gone—you understand? I have gone—to Arizona.” Schmidt bowed. He had regained his imperturbability, and was fearful of being discharged. An American servant would have left, and brought an action for his ducking; not so the obsequious Oriental. And Austin May took his candle and went quietly to bed. ”

“ When a middle-aged man can’t get the woman he wants, there are three recognized and respectable courses open to him. He works a little harder, plays a good deal [94] harder, or he marries someone else. The last was out of the question for a man so consumed by the fires of passion as Austin May, but the fuel of his heart was transformed into nervous energy of the entire system. ”

“ There, if your heart do trouble you, you can look at pretty women; and, if the eternal verities beset your spirit, gamble for napoleons.
The countess drove two little cream-colored ponies, and encouraged May to smoke his cigarette most charmingly.... Bah! why go on with it? Even now, over the Eclipse claret, May could not but admit [49] that he had spent in Baden-Baden three of the most charming weeks of his life. He would not mind passing three such weeks again, could he be sure they would be just three such weeks, and that they would end at the same time. ”

“ Austin May might have been an entering circus procession, and no one would have found it out. Even the boys at the station were sluggish, and indisposed to “catch on” behind every train, much less to give their particular attention to one undistinguished stranger, with or without a dog.
May lit a cigar, and the carryall and its occupants lumbered along unheeded. The road was walled in and roofed over by a dense canopy of foliage borne by arching American elms ”

“ It is only after he has run the gamut of all impossibilities that he settles down upon the proper thing. And this, at last, May felt assured that he had done.
May did not pretend to himself that he loved Georgiana Rutherford as he had loved Gladys Dehon. Even now, he was not blind to that. But he thought that she was pretty, [98] and well-placed, and good style; and she had a large fortune, and a still larger family connection, all of the very best securities.
In fact, May, at least so far as he admitted to himself, did not do justice to the qualities of Miss Rutherford. ”

“ How she wished Serge could have met him, and could know of this! And she wiped away another tear for Serge. But no, my noble American—noble citizen of a free country! It could never be. Poland and she must bear their woes alone. They could never consent to drag down a brave young Bostonian in their wreck. And then, how could she ever reward him? With her friendship, said Austin. But the Comtesse seemed to think her friendship would be inadequate.
The scene was becoming somewhat oppressive; and May, at least, was conscious of a certain difficulty in providing for it a proper termination. ”

“ May could not see her face; but it was just the figure, he fancied, of the Countess de Valska. The carriage drove away, the front door closed, and all again was silent, save the thumping of poor Austin’s strained and shaken heart. Great [122] heavens! he complained to the harmless Venus of Milo. The worst had been realized indeed.
This time there was no indecision. The only safety lay in flight. When it came to the point of marrying the de Valska, he would be damned if he would. ”

“ He got himself once more désorienté in American society. He observed what respect was everywhere shown to the VanDees, and how little, comparatively, one thought of the McDums. He found that civilization was pitched on a higher scale, financially, than he had supposed. Thirty thousand a year was none too much for a man to marry on. Now, Austin had not over twenty thousand, even if he fulfilled the hard conditions of his uncle’s will. ”

“ She never flirted; she never looked at one man long enough for that. Her one occupation was hunting, and she rode to hounds in a way to jar the nerves of every M. F. H. in England.
Tom Leigh was afraid of her; and when they were asked for a week’s visit that autumn, in their box in Leicestershire, refused to go. May went. And if there was a man of whom she was not utterly unconscious, he surely was the one. ”

“ May followed; and hardly had they left the Lynn and gone a furlong up the Chalk-water Combe, when she struck sharp to the right, breasting the very steepest part of Oare Oak Hill. If she knew that he was behind her, she did not look around; and May again had all that he could do to keep his guide in sight.
And now the event proved her skilful venery. For as they crested Oare Oak [78] Hill, and the long bare swell of the moor rolled away before them, the sharp cry of the hounds came up like sounds of victory in the valley just below. ”