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CHAPTER VI
Going of an afternoon to call upon his niece, Mr. Wentworth more than once found Robert Acton sitting in her little drawing-room. This was in no degree, to Mr. Wentworth, a perturbing fact, for he had no sense of competing with his young kinsman for Eugenia’s good graces. Madame Münster’s uncle had the highest opinion of Robert Acton, who, indeed, in the family at large, was the object of a great deal of undemonstrative appreciation. They were all proud of him, in so far as the charge of being proud may be brought against people who were, habitually, distinctly guiltless of the misdemeanor known as “taking credit.” They never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vainglorious reference to him; they never quoted the clever things he had said, nor mentioned the generous things he had done. But a sort of frigidly-tender faith in his unlimited goodness was a part of their personal sense of right; and there can, perhaps, be no better proof of the high esteem in which he was held than the fact that no explicit judgment was ever passed upon his actions. He was no more praised than he was blamed; but he was tacitly felt to be an ornament to his circle. He was the man of the world of the family. He had been to China and brought home a collection of curiosities; he had made a fortune–or rather he had quintupled a fortune already considerable; he was distinguished by that combination of celibacy, “property,” and good humor which appeals to even the most subdued imaginations; and it was taken for granted that he would presently place these advantages at the disposal of some well-regulated young woman of his own “set.” Mr. Wentworth was not a man to admit to himself that–his paternal duties apart–he liked any individual much better than all other individuals; but he thought Robert Acton extremely judicious; and this was perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of to the eagerness of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it would have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste. Acton was, in fact, very judicious–and something more beside; and indeed it must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that his cousin’s final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment–for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great discretion in all things–beginning with his estimate of himself. He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world as he was supposed to be in local circles; but it must be added that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach of which he had never quite given local circles the measure. He was addicted to taking the humorous view of things, and he had discovered that even in the narrowest circles such a disposition may find frequent opportunities. Such opportunities had formed for some time–that is, since his return from China, a year and a half before–the most active element in this gentleman’s life, which had just now a rather indolent air. He was perfectly willing to get married. He was very fond of books, and he had a handsome library; that is, his books were much more numerous than Mr. Wentworth’s. He was also very fond of pictures; but it must be confessed, in the fierce light of contemporary criticism, that his walls were adorned with several rather abortive masterpieces. He had got his learning–and there was more of it than commonly appeared–at Harvard College; and he took a pleasure in old associations, which made it a part of his daily contentment to live so near this institution that he often passed it in driving to Boston. He was extremely interested in the Baroness Münster.
She was very frank with him; or at least she intended to be. “I am sure you find it very strange that I should have settled down in this out-of-the-way part of the world!” she said to him three or four weeks after she had installed herself. “I am certain you are wondering about my motives. They are very pure.” The Baroness by this time was an old inhabitant; the best society in Boston had called upon her, and Clifford Wentworth had taken her several times to drive in his buggy.
Robert Acton was seated near her, playing with a fan; there were always several fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of different colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one. “No, I don’t find it at all strange,” he said slowly, smiling. “That a clever woman should turn up in Boston, or its suburbs–that does not require so much explanation. Boston is a very nice place.”
“If you wish to make me contradict you,” said the Baroness, “vous vous y prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable of agreeing to. Boston is a paradise, and we are in the suburbs of Paradise.”
“Just now I am not at all in the suburbs; I am in the place itself,” rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair. He was, however, not always lounging; and when he was he was not quite so relaxed as he pretended. To a certain extent, he sought refuge from shyness in this appearance of relaxation; and like many persons in the same circumstances he somewhat exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this, the air of being much at his ease was a cover for vigilant observation. He was more than interested in this clever woman, who, whatever he might say, was clever not at all after the Boston fashion; she plunged him into a kind of excitement, held him in vague suspense. He was obliged to admit to himself that he had never yet seen a woman just like this–not even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity of his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking, still superficially, the humorous view of Madame Münster. It was not at all true that he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might have been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of even the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis. This was an impulse for which, surely, no apology was needed; and Madame Münster was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Münster struck him as out of keeping with her little circle; she was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections too crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked to the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And indeed he had no great desire to share his vague mistrust with anyone. There was a personal pleasure in it; the greatest pleasure he had known at least since he had come from China. He would keep the Baroness, for better or worse, to himself; he had a feeling that he deserved to enjoy a monopoly of her, for he was certainly the person who had most adequately gauged her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax upon such a monopoly.
One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan) she asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself, to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls. “There are half a dozen places,” she said; “a formidable list. Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They must think me horribly vicious.”
“You ask me to apologize,” said Acton, “but you don’t tell me what excuse I can offer.”
“That is more,” the Baroness declared, “than I am held to. It would be like my asking you to buy me a bouquet and giving you the money. I have no reason except that–somehow–it’s too violent an effort. It is not inspiring. Wouldn’t that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they are very sincere; they don’t tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I don’t see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting someone’s portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth.”
“I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people,” said Acton. “You are having a very quiet time of it here. It’s a dull life for you.”
“Ah, the quiet,–the quiet!” the Baroness exclaimed. “That’s what I like. It’s rest. That’s what I came here for. Amusement? I have had amusement. And as for seeing people–I have already seen a great many in my life. If it didn’t sound ungracious I should say that I wish very humbly your people here would leave me alone!”
Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who took being looked at remarkably well. “So you have come here for rest?” he asked.
“So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are no reasons–don’t you know?–and yet that are really the best: to come away, to change, to break with everything. When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I asked myself why I shouldn’t arrive here.”
“You certainly had time on the way!” said Acton, laughing.
Madame Münster looked at him again; and then, smiling: “And I have certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never ask myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank me.”
“When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path.”
“You mean to put difficulties in my path?” she asked, rearranging the rosebud in her corsage.
“The greatest of all–that of having been so agreeable—-”
“That I shall be unable to depart? Don’t be too sure. I have left some very agreeable people over there.”
“Ah,” said Acton, “but it was to come here, where I am!”
“I didn’t know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No,” the Baroness pursued, “it was precisely not to see you–such people as you–that I came.”
“Such people as me?” cried Acton.
“I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations. Don’t you see the difference?”
“The difference tells against me,” said Acton. “I suppose I am an artificial relation.”
“Conventional,” declared the Baroness; “very conventional.”
“Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman may always become natural,” said Acton.
“You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at any rate,” rejoined Eugenia, “nous n’en sommes pas là!”
They were not, as yet; but a little later, when she began to go with him to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were. He came for her several times, alone, in his high “wagon,” drawn by a pair of charming light-limbed horses. It was different, her having gone with Clifford Wentworth, who was her cousin, and so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be “engaged” to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived that the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whatever; for she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known that her matrimonial condition was of the “morganatic” order; but in its natural aversion to suppose that this meant anything less than absolute wedlock, the conscience of the community took refuge in the belief that it implied something even more.
Acton wished her to think highly of American scenery, and he drove her to great distances, picking out the prettiest roads and the largest points of view. If we are good when we are contented, Eugenia’s virtues should now certainly have been uppermost; for she found a charm in the rapid movement through a wild country, and in a companion who from time to time made the vehicle dip, with a motion like a swallow’s flight, over roads of primitive construction, and who, as she felt, would do a great many things that she might ask him. Sometimes, for a couple of hours together, there were almost no houses; there were nothing but woods and rivers and lakes and horizons adorned with bright-looking mountains. It seemed to the Baroness very wild, as I have said, and lovely; but the impression added something to that sense of the enlargement of opportunity which had been born of her arrival in the New World.
One day–it was late in the afternoon–Acton pulled up his horses on the crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect. He let them stand a long time to rest, while he sat there and talked with Madame Münster. The prospect was beautiful in spite of there being nothing human within sight. There was a wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a distant river, and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Massachusetts. The road had a wide, grassy margin, on the further side of which there flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in the grass, and beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton waited a while; at last a rustic wayfarer came trudging along the road. Acton asked him to hold the horses–a service he consented to render, as a friendly turn to a fellow-citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend, and the two wandered away, across the grass, and sat down on the log beside the brook.
“I imagine it doesn’t remind you of Silberstadt,” said Acton. It was the first time that he had mentioned Silberstadt to her, for particular reasons. He knew she had a husband there, and this was disagreeable to him; and, furthermore, it had been repeated to him that this husband wished to put her away–a state of affairs to which even indirect reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the Baroness herself had often alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious position for a lady–this being known as a repudiated wife; and it is worthy of observation that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding grace and dignity. She had made it felt, from the first, that there were two sides to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose to present it, would be replete with touching interest.
“It does not remind me of the town, of course,” she said, “of the sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful Schloss, with its moat and its clustering towers. But it has a little look of some other parts of the principality. One might fancy one’s self among those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains; the sort of country one sees from the windows at Schreckenstein.”
“What is Schreckenstein?” asked Acton.
“It is a great castle,–the summer residence of the Reigning Prince.”
“Have you ever lived there?”
“I have stayed there,” said the Baroness. Acton was silent; he looked a while at the uncastled landscape before him. “It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silberstadt,” she said. “I should think you would want to know about my marriage; it must seem to you very strange.”
Acton looked at her a moment. “Now you wouldn’t like me to say that!”
“You Americans have such odd ways!” the Baroness declared. “You never ask anything outright; there seem to be so many things you can’t talk about.”
“We Americans are very polite,” said Acton, whose national consciousness had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands, and who yet disliked to hear Americans abused. “We don’t like to tread upon people’s toes,” he said. “But I should like very much to hear about your marriage. Now tell me how it came about.”
“The Prince fell in love with me,” replied the Baroness simply. “He pressed his suit very hard. At first he didn’t wish me to marry him; on the contrary. But on that basis I refused to listen to him. So he offered me marriage–in so far as he might. I was young, and I confess I was rather flattered. But if it were to be done again now, I certainly should not accept him.”
“How long ago was this?” asked Acton.
“Oh–several years,” said Eugenia. “You should never ask a woman for dates.”
“Why, I should think that when a woman was relating history “ Acton answered. “And now he wants to break it off?”
“They want him to make a political marriage. It is his brother’s idea. His brother is very clever.”
“They must be a precious pair!” cried Robert Acton.
The Baroness gave a little philosophic shrug. “Que voulez-vous? They are princes. They think they are treating me very well. Silberstadt is a perfectly despotic little state, and the Reigning Prince may annul the marriage by a stroke of his pen. But he has promised me, nevertheless, not to do so without my formal consent.”
“And this you have refused?”
“Hitherto. It is an indignity, and I have wished at least to make it difficult for them. But I have a little document in my writing-desk which I have only to sign and send back to the Prince.”
“Then it will be all over?”
The Baroness lifted her hand, and dropped it again. “Of course I shall keep my title; at least, I shall be at liberty to keep it if I choose. And I suppose I shall keep it. One must have a name. And I shall keep my pension. It is very small–it is wretchedly small; but it is what I live on.”
“And you have only to sign that paper?” Acton asked.
The Baroness looked at him a moment. “Do you urge it?”
He got up slowly, and stood with his hands in his pockets. “What do you gain by not doing it?”
“I am supposed to gain this advantage–that if I delay, or temporize, the Prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother. He is very fond of me, and his brother has pushed him only little by little.”
“If he were to come back to you,” said Acton, “would you–would you take him back?”
The Baroness met his eyes; she colored just a little. Then she rose. “I should have the satisfaction of saying, ‘Now it is my turn. I break with your Serene Highness!’”
They began to walk toward the carriage. “Well,” said Robert Acton, “it’s a curious story! How did you make his acquaintance?”
“I was staying with an old lady–an old Countess–in Dresden. She had been a friend of my father’s. My father was dead; I was very much alone. My brother was wandering about the world in a theatrical troupe.”
“Your brother ought to have stayed with you,” Acton observed, “and kept you from putting your trust in princes.”
The Baroness was silent a moment, and then, “He did what he could,” she said. “He sent me money. The old Countess encouraged the Prince; she was even pressing. It seems to me,” Madame Münster added, gently, “that–under the circumstances–I behaved very well.”
Acton glanced at her, and made the observation–he had made it before–that a woman looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or her sufferings. “Well,” he reflected, audibly, “I should like to see you send his Serene Highness–somewhere!”
Madame Münster stooped and plucked a daisy from the grass. “And not sign my renunciation?”
“Well, I don’t know–I don’t know,” said Acton.
“In one case I should have my revenge; in another case I should have my liberty.”
Acton gave a little laugh as he helped her into the carriage. “At any rate,” he said, “take good care of that paper.”
A couple of days afterward he asked her to come and see his house. The visit had already been proposed, but it had been put off in consequence of his mother’s illness. She was a constant invalid, and she had passed these recent years, very patiently, in a great flowered arm-chair at her bedroom window. Lately, for some days, she had been unable to see anyone; but now she was better, and she sent the Baroness a very civil message. Acton had wished their visitor to come to dinner; but Madame Münster preferred to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that if she should go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also be asked, and it had seemed to her that the peculiar character of the occasion would be best preserved in a tête-à-tête with her host. Why the occasion should have a peculiar character she explained to no one. As far as anyone could see, it was simply very pleasant. Acton came for her and drove her to his door, an operation which was rapidly performed. His house the Baroness mentally pronounced a very good one; more articulately, she declared that it was enchanting. It was large and square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept shrubbery, and was approached, from the gate, by a short drive. It was, moreover, a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth’s, and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented. The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point. And then he possessed the most delightful chinoiseries–trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire: pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters, grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners, covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands; and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy. Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things; she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares. She came to meet Madame Münster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected–she had had occasion to do so before–that American girls had no manners. She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton. Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost to pertness; and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy. It was a source of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it should seem to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a trifle more of a nonentity; for Eugenia had hitherto been conscious of no moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins. It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie’s pertness that she very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother’s hands. Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-à-brac. The Baroness, in her progress through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention. If there had been anyone to say it to she would have declared that she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make this declaration–even in the strictest confidence–to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of unwontedness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges; that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point. One’s impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an inconvenience. One could trust him, at any rate, round all the corners of the world; and, withal, he was not absolutely simple, which would have been excess; he was only relatively simple, which was quite enough for the Baroness.
Lizzie reappeared to say that her mother would now be happy to receive Madame Münster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton’s apartment. Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an aspiration on the girl’s part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty, sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill; she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that–neither so ill, nor, possibly, so modest. On a chair, beside her, lay a volume of Emerson’s Essays. It was a great occasion for poor Mrs. Acton, in her helpless condition, to be confronted with a clever foreign lady, who had more manner than any lady–any dozen ladies–that she had ever seen.
“I have heard a great deal about you,” she said, softly, to the Baroness.
“From your son, eh?” Eugenia asked. “He has talked to me immensely of you. Oh, he talks of you as you would like,” the Baroness declared; “as such a son must talk of such a mother!”
Mrs. Acton sat gazing; this was part of Madame Münster’s “manner.” But Robert Acton was gazing too, in vivid consciousness that he had barely mentioned his mother to their brilliant guest. He never talked of this still maternal presence,–a presence refined to such delicacy that it had almost resolved itself, with him, simply into the subjective emotion of gratitude. And Acton rarely talked of his emotions. The Baroness turned her smile toward him, and she instantly felt that she had been observed to be fibbing. She had struck a false note. But who were these people to whom such fibbing was not pleasing? If they were annoyed, the Baroness was equally so; and after the exchange of a few civil inquiries and low-voiced responses she took leave of Mrs. Acton. She begged Robert not to come home with her; she would get into the carriage alone; she preferred that. This was imperious, and she thought he looked disappointed. While she stood before the door with him–the carriage was turning in the gravel-walk–this thought restored her serenity.
When she had given him her hand in farewell she looked at him a moment. “I have almost decided to dispatch that paper,” she said.
He knew that she alluded to the document that she had called her renunciation; and he assisted her into the carriage without saying anything. But just before the vehicle began to move he said, “Well, when you have in fact dispatched it, I hope you will let me know!”
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