It was not till our hero reached Paris, on his return from the distant East, that the rumor I have just mentioned acquired an appreciable consistency. Here, indeed, it took the shape of authentic information. Among a number of delayed letters which had been awaiting him at his banker's he found a communication from Gordon Wright. During the previous year or two his correspondence with this trusted--and trusting--friend had not been frequent, and Bernard had received little direct news of him. Three or four short letters had overtaken him in his wanderings--letters as cordial, to all appearance, if not as voluminous, as the punctual missives of an earlier time.
Bernard made a point of satisfying himself that they were as cordial; he weighed them in the scales of impartial suspicion. It seemed to him on the whole that there was no relaxation of Gordon's epistolary tone. If he wrote less often than he used to do, that was a thing that very commonly happened as men grew older.
The closest intimacies, moreover, had phases and seasons, intermissions and revivals, and even if his friend had, in fact, averted his countenance from him, this was simply the accomplishment of a periodical revolution which would bring them in due order face to face again. Bernard made a point, himself, of writing tolerably often and writing always in the friendliest tone.
He made it a matter of conscience--he liked to feel that he was treating Gordon generously, and not demanding an eye for an eye.
The letter he found in Paris was so short that I may give it entire.
"My dear Bernard (it ran), I must write to you before I write to any one else, though unfortunately you are so far away that you can't be the first to congratulate me.
Try and not be the last, however. I am going to be married--as soon as possible. You know the young lady, so you can appreciate the situation. Do you remember little Blanche Evers, whom we used to see three years ago at Baden-Baden? Of course you remember her, for I know you used often to talk with her.
You will be rather surprised, perhaps, at my having selected her as the partner of a life-time; but we manage these matters according to our lights. I am very much in love with her, and I hold that an excellent reason. I have been ready any time this year or two to fall in love with some simple, trusting, child-like nature. I find this in perfection in this charming young girl. I find her so natural and fresh.
I remember telling you once that I did n't wish to be fascinated--that I wanted to estimate scientifically the woman I should marry.
I have altogether got over that, and I don't know how I ever came to talk such nonsense. I am fascinated now, and I assure you I like it! The best of it is that I find it does n't in the least prevent my estimating Blanche.
I judge her very fairly--I see just what she is. She 's simple--that 's what I want; she 's tender--that 's what I long for.
You will remember how pretty she is; I need n't remind you of that.
She was much younger then, and she has greatly developed and improved in these two or three years. But she will always be young and innocent--I don't want her to improve too much.
She came back to America with her mother the winter after we met her at Baden, but I never saw her again till three months ago.
Then I saw her with new eyes, and I wondered I could have been so blind. But I was n't ready for her till then, and what makes me so happy now is to know that I have come to my present way of feeling by experience. That gives me confidence--you see I am a reasoner still. But I am under the charm, for all my reason. We are to be married in a month--try and come back to the wedding. Blanche sends you a message, which I will give you verbatim. 'Tell him I am not such a silly little chatterbox as I used to be at Baden.
I am a great deal wiser; I am almost as clever as Angela Vivian.'
She has an idea you thought Miss Vivian very clever--but it is not true that she is equally so. I am very happy; come home and see."
Bernard went home, but he was not able to reach the United States in time for Gordon's wedding, which took place at midsummer.
Bernard, arriving late in the autumn, found his friend a married man of some months' standing, and was able to judge, according to his invitation, whether he appeared happy.
The first effect of the letter I have just quoted had been an immense surprise; the second had been a series of reflections which were quite the negative of surprise; and these operations of Bernard's mind had finally merged themselves in a simple sentiment of jollity. He was delighted that Gordon should be married; he felt jovial about it; he was almost indifferent to the question of whom he had chosen. Certainly, at first, the choice of Blanche Evers seemed highly incongruous; it was difficult to imagine a young woman less shaped to minister to Gordon's strenuous needs than the light-hearted and empty-headed little flirt whose inconsequent prattle had remained for Bernard one of the least importunate memories of a charming time.
Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose--the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view of human responsibilities.
What a singular selection--what a queer infatuation!
Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error carried almost to the point of naivetae.
He exclaimed that Blanche Evers was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright's stamp always ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian.
This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse.
