Henry Vane

“ 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. ”

“ It seemed to Vane that the occasion was only saved from insignificance by the presence of Miss Thomas.
When they touched shore at the grove appointed for the picnic, most of the ladies and gentlemen, eager to land as if it had been an ocean voyage, crowded to the gangway. Mrs. Gower felt it her duty to show the way, and skilfully forced a passage through her guests, Vane, who was at that moment busied with the duty of protecting her, following in her wake. Her rapid motion caused a sort of eddy in which Vane moved behind her without much effort ”

“ When he asked for counsel, the solicitor said:
"Who will dare speak for you, unless you can call down from the gibbet the heads of your fellow-traitors?"
"I stand single," Vane defiantly answered. "Yet, being thus left alone, I am not afraid, in this great presence, to bear my witness to the glorious cause, nor to seal it with my blood."
Stimulated by the magnanimity of this noble spirit, his enemies clamored for his life. The king wrote:
"Certainly Sir Henry Vane is too dangerous a man to let live, if we can honestly put him out of the way." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The earliest life of Vane is the Life and Death of Sir Henry Vane, or a Short Narrative of the Main Passages of his Earthly Pilgrimage, 4to, 1662, by George Sikes. It contains very few facts. ‘I have writ his life after another fashion than mens lives use to be written,’ says the author, ‘treating mostly of the principles and course of his hidden life’ (p. 92) . ”

“ Nor, perhaps, did he yet know Miss Thomas—the unit whom he had known best.
XVIII. IN his life, Henry Vane had hitherto been prospecting. He had sunk several shafts deep into it, and had worked them honestly, but he had not had very much success. He had struck gold; but he had not struck much of anything else; and gold had now ceased to be of the first importance. The prime solution of the difficulty had only been postponed, in Brittany, that day five years before; it had not been met. The demands of a human life had never been liquidated ”

“ The other steerage passengers looked upon him as an intellectual young gentleman; probably a scholar in reduced circumstances.
Eighteen thousand francs a year, Vane was thinking; this, at least, he must have, for his mother could not be sent elsewhere. Gold was then at a premium, and this sum meant four thousand a year in America. Just the insignificant fortune he had lost; but could his labor be worth so much? This problem had filled his mind, and kept his temper sane. One who has to earn his bread has little time to sigh for things less possible of attainment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kérouec saw Vane safely on board the St. Malo packet. “I will care for her, my son,” he said, with a parting pressure of the hand. “Ce brave jeune homme,” he muttered, as he walked ashore and up the little Norman street, mopping his bald head (for it was a hot June evening) with a large red silk handkerchief.
III. VANE had six hundred francs left; and, taking the Holyhead mail, the next evening he was on board the City of Richmond at Queenstown as a steerage passenger. He had been troubled with no further thoughts of adventure in the Soudan; and was quite indifferent as to his own dénouement. ”

“ Vane was troubled, excited, disgusted, confused. Miss Morse noticed all this, but thought he was in love with her.
The only green spots in the man’s memory were Rennes, and Monserrat, and Carcassonne; yes, and the littered desk in the down-town office in New York—the scene of his only labors and his one success. And that success was no longer necessary; it no longer profited any one but himself. Vane had never formulated his position with such precision before. The last person of his own family was dead; he had claims upon no one, no one had any claim upon him ”

“ She opened the door and went into the house, leaving Vane on the threshold with a distinct impression that she was going to cry.
He walked along, mechanically, in the direction of his rooms, feeling his cheeks burn. That he had bungled—that he had committed a social gaucherie, he knew well enough; but what troubled him more than this was that he had given her real cause for offence, he had hurt her. If she could only know what pain this thought brought to him! Fool that he was, he had worn his clumsy, jejune mask of cynicism, and had not once shown to her his truer self. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vane (Henry) , a man who begins life as a flippant young fellow with a French education; settles down into an astute money-maker; falls in love seriously when he meant to flirt, and, finding that the girl with whom he is enamored has played a sharper game than he, and is engaged to another man, blows out his own brains.--Frederic Jesup Stimson, The Crime of Henry Vane. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Vane’s first act was to send to Doctor Kérouec a sum sufficient to endow liberally and for all time all the sociétés de consommation that there were in Rennes. It did not cost much; and the money was thriftily invested by the doctor, with a most gratifying increase in the annual statistics of soup. This he quarterly reported to his young friend with as much satisfaction as if the statistics were of souls saved for heaven; but there was a note of sadness now in the old doctor’s letters which had not been noticeable before.
The city was a mass of undistinguished humanity. Vane rather liked this ”

“ He must do something; he must go somewhere. It is the nature of man to go somewhere.
So Vane went to many places that summer. It is customary in romances for men thus wandering to be haunted by the thought of something. Vane was haunted by the thought of nothing. He did not even think of Miss Thomas, or, if he thought of her, it was to think that he thought nothing of her; it is nearly the same thing. He began by going to Biarritz and Lourdes, in the path of the pilgrims. At Lourdes there is a modern, ugly church upon a hill, with modern, manufactured glass within ”

“ Vane was silently wondering what Miss Thomas could mean. He became strangely self-possessed and cautious, and it occurred to him that this was the sort of clear-sightedness a man would have who was gambling and playing for a very large amount. He thought to himself that this was just the way fellows usually got married. Vane had been brought up to suppose that the proper way to reach a young lady’s heart, or at least her hand, was through the judgment of her parents; but, somehow, this did not seem to be necessary in New York, certainly not with Miss Thomas ”

“ He had called her a woman from the beginning. It was the fashion to decry American girls. She was different from a girl. She was a true woman—a woman like Cleopatra or like Helen. Had he first won her, she would have been true to him. He argued savagely with himself, defending her.
He worked rapidly, and by noon the accounts were done. It was Christmas Eve. Toward evening the sky became gray, with flakes of snow in the air. Vane walked up to Central Park, and returned to dress for dinner. Where was he to dine? The club was the best place to meet people. ”

“ Vane made himself doubly attentive to Miss Gibbs; and as each man walked back with his lady, and said to her a long good night on the hotel piazza, implying all the sorrow of a Romeo in parting from a Juliet, Vane was secretly wondering what the deuce he was to do. “What the deuce!” was again the phrase he mentally used. He did not wish to see the girl again—that was certain enough; but it was decidedly undignified to run away. There was really a sort of fatality in their meeting.
But the best way to treat a fatality is to make nothing of it. ”

“ Vane went back to Brittany in the June of the summer following. One of his last calls was upon Miss Thomas, and she chided him with not making it the very last. However, the call lasted three hours. Twenty times Vane rose to go, and each time was detained by some pretext or another of Miss Thomas. There is a sweet pleading manner of urging a wish, even a selfish one, that makes you feel as if you were doing yourself a favor in gratifying it. Miss Thomas had this manner, which few men, particularly strong men, can resist. Vane always yielded. ”