Hilary Vane

“ 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. ”

“ One night in late August her child was born, and the west wind that brought a new soul to the Sterling door, pausing an instant in its passing, gathered up, and in its kind arms bore away, on its pathless flight into the Great Unknown, the tired spirit of Helen Vane. ”

“ Somewhat fatuously, perhaps, he fancied no woman under thirty could either understand him, or arouse his own interest. And most of the women over thirty were married. He understood that in America any intimacy with married women was out of the question; married women were quite given up to domestic duties, and kept out of society.
But Vane had certain theories of his own as to social observances, and he thought it his duty, after taking Miss Thomas in to dinner, to call upon her. He performed this duty (which afterwards became a pleasure) upon the following afternoon. ”

“ She hesitated, and her glance, too, wandered from the window and came back disappointed.
"St. Leon, what do you think of Beatrix Gordon?" she asked, wistfully.
The dark eyes flashed.
"For shame, mother! Would I steal another man's betrothed?" he said.
Meanwhile, Laurel Vane had strayed carelessly on to the gates of Eden, the light song still lingering on her lips, the light of the day reflected in her eyes and on her face. She was learning to be happy, this beautiful girl over whose unconscious head hung the shadow of long years of sorrow. ”

“ You first associate my name with several most unpleasant terms of reproach, and then proceed to drag the combination before the public, and say, ‘Here is the intimate companion of the man I love!’ What does that mean? The man you love — you! What a happy revelation for the friends and family of Andrew Vane, who has been dawdling in your arms, while another woman as much as held his plighted word! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wait a moment!” — as Andrew was about to speak — “let me explain. I’m not the sort that cuts into other people’s affairs as a rule. I detest meddling, and ordinarily I don’t want to be bothered with what doesn’t concern me. But I like you, Vane — I do, heartily. I’d be more sorry than a little to see you in trouble. What’s more, I feel to a certain extent responsible, as I was the one to introduce you. Well, then — suppose you leave the whole affair to me. I know the world, and especially Paris, and more especially Mirabelle Tremonceau. ”

“ It is easier to judge woman in general than a New York girl in particular.”
“At all events,” said Vane, “I give her full leave to try her skill on me, skilful as you say she is. Indeed, if you think she is fair game for what you call a flirtation, you have removed my only scruples.”
“Very well, old boy—go in. But Miss Thomas once told another girl that she could understand any man in two days’ acquaintance. Don’t go in too deep.”
“Nonsense!” thought Vane when John had left. “I flatter myself I am beyond her hurting. It is pleasant enough to have her as a friend. ”

“ American women rarely do, I can assure you. Their natures are like a New England spring—the sun must do a devilish deal of wooing before even so much as a green tendril is visible.” And Haviland, who was just then devoted to the young lady of Puritan descent whom he has since married, fetched a deep sigh.
Vane began to laugh again.
“Well, well. In time, I, too, shall become a New Yorker. And by the way, John, speaking of that—is it customary here to invite a young lady to go to walk with you?”
“Why, certainly, if you like. Miss Thomas has gone many a time, I fancy.” ”

“ She realized that emotion would be as fatal to her purpose as would sheer frivolity.
“Under your words,” continued Andrew, “I can see that there must lie a more or less intimate knowledge of many things which we have never mentioned— many things which I did not suppose you would ever—”
“Find out? You really are young, aren’t you? Why, my dear Mr. Vane, any given woman of average intelligence can find out whatever she chooses about any given man, provided always she hasn’t the fatal handicap of being in love with him. ”

“ Paris does such a deal for the raw American, in the way of opening his eyes. Vane is just beginning to ‘learn how.’ I’ve no doubt that in Boston he ate his lettuce with sugar and vinegar, and thought it effeminate to have his nails manicured. Now that he’s acquiring the art of living, pray make some allowance for the crude colouring of his exquisses. The finished picture will be a creation of marked merit, I warrant you. I’ve seen a good bit of Vane, and he can be trusted to take care of himself.”
“The question is whether he can be trusted to have other people take care of him,” said Mrs. ”

“ As the thought came of the motherhood thus denied her, she wondered why she had been faithful to John Vane. Once she had believed in him, and so strong had been this faith that some shreds of it yet remained, to bind her to him through all the unspeakably humiliating days of his gradual but inevitable degradation. Nor was her fidelity of the negative, meaningless kind which is strong simply because unassailed. As a woman of the world, she had, more than once, been brought into contact with men lax in their scrupulosity, but scrupulous in their laxity. ”

“ He will recognize me as Laurel Vane, the girl he refused to forgive and pity that fatal night. He will know that the scorn of proud, rich people did not quite crush me, that I survived it all," she said to herself with the pride that had become a part of her nature.
But she did not mean that he should recognize her if she could help it. Certainly she would never own the truth even if he taxed her with it: so she answered with a careless smile:
"The world is full of chance resemblances that puzzle and amaze us, Mr. Gordon. You see that little girl playing with my son there? ”

“ It came into being, my dear Vane, in a stuffy, overfurnished little apartment in one of the suburbs, as a patron of questionable merit by a charming creature with more ideas than reputation, and was first worn at the little Mathurins — or here — by Ninon Gyrianne: at a theatre where my lady would not be seen, by a woman whom she would not receive! ”

“ Just to remain at Eden as long as she could was all that she asked. It always seemed to her quite impossible that she should ever become St. Leon Le Roy's wife. The blow would fall before then. She felt that she was only taking her pleasure like a butterfly in the sun, and that the nipping blasts of winter would soon lop off her gilded wings and leave her, crushed and trampled, beneath the scorner's heel.
Those joys that we hold by a frail, slight tenure we always prize the most. This love that she was fated one day to lose had become a part of Laurel Vane's life. ”

“ 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 ”

“ What a—qualified—fool he was, and yet how he did love that girl! He got up and read Heine by way of disillusion, and opened the book at the quatrain,
“Wer zum ersten Male liebt
Sei’s auch glücklos, ist ein Gott;
Aber wer zum zweiten Male
Glücklos liebt, Der ist ein Narr.”
How good! How very good! And Vane laid the book down with much applause.
Decidedly the best way to win Miss Thomas was to give her her own way. He could leave her to her own devices for a time. If she loved Ten Eyck, there was nothing to be done by seeing her; if she did not, a little delay would do no harm. ”

“ My dear Andrew Vane, not only do you leave your character at the tea-table you are quitting, but you’ll meet it, more or less torn to shreds, at that to which you are going: and, if you were at the pains, you might find it, in a like state of demoralization, at a dozen others in the same arrondissement! I wish I could make you understand that. It seems to me to be so important to the conduct of life to know not only how we stand, but in what manner we fall. ”

“ They did not know that he was looking on; and the girl went on with her dance, which no one else seemed to notice but the lover, who struck his hands together, now and then, in applause or to mark the rhythm. Vane watched with interest. It was curious to think that she was really dancing, dancing and singing, and neither of them was paid for it.
Vane landed in New York about the first of September.
XIX. HE went to the bank, and found that nothing more had been heard from Welsh. There was nothing doing; even his partner was out of town. The city was empty. ”

“ Carnby frankly. “The women one speaks of as being in cases are always more or less disreputable. Well, there is a woman in the case of our young friend — and a very engaging woman at that.”
“Engaging appears to be a habit with Mr. Vane’s flames,” said Mrs. Ratchett. “It’s a little hard on the one in America. And pray where did you see her? — the other, I mean.”
“Oh, here, there, and everywhere. Vane made the mistake, at first, of trying to carry on his little affair sub rosa. People are always seen when they try not to be, you know. ”

“ Radwalader sank back easily into his chair.
“My good Mirabelle,” he said, “all this is very admirable as sentiment and, I must say, extraordinarily well done. It’s a pity that it should be wasted upon an impossible situation. Be patient with me for a moment, and I’ll show you precisely why you’ll neither edify the capitals of Europe with an account of my private affairs nor compel me to do anything but what I choose to do in the case of Mr. Andrew Vane. We are three in number: I, a gentleman who chooses, for reasons of his own, to keep one side of his life from the view of the general public ”

“ The leaves are turning red, and brown, and yellow, the petals are falling from the flowers. Not that Vane takes note of this. One flower that faded in the summer gone, is worth all the world to him. For a time ambition, energy, hope, seem to forsake him. Always before his eyes floats a vision of a fair, dead face with waving tresses, tangled with seaweed; always against his breast he feels the pressure of small hands pressing against him, pushing him from her in the mad resolve to die in his stead. For in his heart Vane feels that it was not alone for Maud's sake she died. ”

“ The two men were eating at the leisurely rate which is the most invaluable lesson Paris teaches the American. Andrew’s lips curled in a little sneer.
“It’s all a farce,” he said, “and, God knows, I’m the biggest mountebank of them all. When I look back six weeks, it’s another Andrew Vane I see — a better one.”
“But not a happier one, I fancy,” suggested Radwalader.
“Why not? Do you think, after all your experience, that Paris brings happiness? Distraction, perhaps — amusement — knowledge — but happiness? Oh no!” ”

“ It was all very sane and healthy, all in wonderful contrast to her morbid life in the shadow of John Vane’s personality.
There had been no children — a fact which, in happier hours, she had deplored, but for which she was now profoundly grateful. There are things which it is easier to bear alone. To share with another — and that other her child — the humiliation of her ill-starred association with her husband, would but have been to double the burden’s weight. In her own case the period of martyrdom was well-nigh done. ”

“ Don’t call the servants for a half-hour, at least: it irritates them immeasurably to have their eating confused with other people’s drinking.”
“I really don’t mean it as gossip,” said Mrs. Ratchett, as the men vanished into the house. “I’m interested in Mr. Vane. He seems more rational and cleaner-cut than the American cubs one sees over here as a rule; and if he’s only going to go the way of the rest of them — if there’s a woman in the case—”
Mrs. Carnby shrugged her shoulders. “Andrew Vane has been in Paris for ten weeks,” she said. ”

“ It’s never too late to mend. Cut loose, my dear Vane — cut loose from Mirabelle, and go back to the girl you really care for. You’ll have to deny a few things, of course, and swallow some humiliation; but don’t get tragic over it. In affairs like this, the first course is humble-pie, but the pièce de résistance is invariably fatted calf!”
“Cut loose from Mirabelle,” repeated Andrew. ”