The Europeans

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"So it appears."

"And against her will?"

"Against her right."

"She must be very unhappy!" said Gertrude.

Her visitor looked at her, smiling; he raised his hand to the back of
his head and held it there a moment. "So she says," he answered. "That
's her story. She told me to tell it you."

"Tell me more," said Gertrude.

"No, I will leave that to her; she does it better."

Gertrude gave her little excited sigh again. "Well, if she is unhappy,"
she said, "I am glad she has come to us."

She had been so interested that she failed to notice the sound of a
footstep in the portico; and yet it was a footstep that she always
recognized. She heard it in the hall, and then she looked out of the
window. They were all coming back from church--her father, her sister
and brother, and their cousins, who always came to dinner on Sunday.
Mr. Brand had come in first; he was in advance of the others, because,
apparently, he was still disposed to say what she had not wished him to
say an hour before. He came into the parlor, looking for Gertrude. He
had two little books in his hand. On seeing Gertrude's companion he
slowly stopped, looking at him.

"Is this a cousin?" asked Felix.

Then Gertrude saw that she must introduce him; but her ears, and, by
sympathy, her lips, were full of all that he had been telling her. "This
is the Prince," she said, "the Prince of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein!"

Felix burst out laughing, and Mr. Brand stood staring, while the others,
who had passed into the house, appeared behind him in the open door-way.






CHAPTER III

That evening at dinner Felix Young gave his sister, the Baroness
Munster, an account of his impressions. She saw that he had come back in
the highest possible spirits; but this fact, to her own mind, was not a
reason for rejoicing. She had but a limited confidence in her brother's
judgment; his capacity for taking rose-colored views was such as to
vulgarize one of the prettiest of tints. Still, she supposed he could
be trusted to give her the mere facts; and she invited him with some
eagerness to communicate them. "I suppose, at least, they did n't turn
you out from the door;" she said. "You have been away some ten hours."

"Turn me from the door!" Felix exclaimed. "They took me to their hearts;
they killed the fatted calf."

"I know what you want to say: they are a collection of angels."

"Exactly," said Felix. "They are a collection of angels--simply."

"C'est bien vague," remarked the Baroness. "What are they like?"

"Like nothing you ever saw."

"I am sure I am much obliged; but that is hardly more definite.
Seriously, they were glad to see you?"

"Enchanted. It has been the proudest day of my life. Never, never have I
been so lionized! I assure you, I was cock of the walk. My dear sister,"
said the young man, "nous n'avons qu'a nous tenir; we shall be great
swells!"

Madame Munster looked at him, and her eye exhibited a slight responsive
spark. She touched her lips to a glass of wine, and then she said,
"Describe them. Give me a picture."

Felix drained his own glass. "Well, it 's in the country, among the
meadows and woods; a wild sort of place, and yet not far from here.
Only, such a road, my dear! Imagine one of the Alpine glaciers
reproduced in mud. But you will not spend much time on it, for they want
you to come and stay, once for all."

"Ah," said the Baroness, "they want me to come and stay, once for all?
Bon."

"It 's intensely rural, tremendously natural; and all overhung with
this strange white light, this far-away blue sky. There 's a big wooden
house--a kind of three-story bungalow; it looks like a magnified
Nuremberg toy. There was a gentleman there that made a speech to me
about it and called it a 'venerable mansion;' but it looks as if it had
been built last night."

"Is it handsome--is it elegant?" asked the Baroness.

Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. "It 's very clean! No splendors,
no gilding, no troops of servants; rather straight-backed chairs. But
you might eat off the floors, and you can sit down on the stairs."

"That must be a privilege. And the inhabitants are straight-backed too,
of course."

"My dear sister," said Felix, "the inhabitants are charming."

"In what style?"

"In a style of their own. How shall I describe it? It 's primitive; it
's patriarchal; it 's the ton of the golden age."

"And have they nothing golden but their ton? Are there no symptoms of
wealth?"

"I should say there was wealth without symptoms. A plain, homely way of
life: nothing for show, and very little for--what shall I call it?--for
the senses: but a great faisance, and a lot of money, out of sight,
that comes forward very quietly for subscriptions to institutions,
for repairing tenements, for paying doctor's bills; perhaps even for
portioning daughters."

"And the daughters?" Madame Munster demanded. "How many are there?"

"There are two, Charlotte and Gertrude."

"Are they pretty?"

"One of them," said Felix.

"Which is that?"

The young man was silent, looking at his sister. "Charlotte," he said at
last.

She looked at him in return. "I see. You are in love with Gertrude. They
must be Puritans to their finger-tips; anything but gay!"

"No, they are not gay," Felix admitted. "They are sober; they are even
severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there
is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or
some depressing expectation. It 's not the epicurean temperament. My
uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a tremendously high-toned old fellow; he looks
as if he were undergoing martyrdom, not by fire, but by freezing. But we
shall cheer them up; we shall do them good. They will take a good deal
of stirring up; but they are wonderfully kind and gentle. And they are
appreciative. They think one clever; they think one remarkable!"

"That is very fine, so far as it goes," said the Baroness. "But are we
to be shut up to these three people, Mr. Wentworth and the two young
women--what did you say their names were--Deborah and Hephzibah?"

"Oh, no; there is another little girl, a cousin of theirs, a very pretty
creature; a thorough little American. And then there is the son of the
house."

"Good!" said the Baroness. "We are coming to the gentlemen. What of the
son of the house?"

"I am afraid he gets tipsy."

"He, then, has the epicurean temperament! How old is he?"

"He is a boy of twenty; a pretty young fellow, but I am afraid he has
vulgar tastes. And then there is Mr. Brand--a very tall young man, a
sort of lay-priest. They seem to think a good deal of him, but I don't
exactly make him out."

"And is there nothing," asked the Baroness, "between these
extremes--this mysterious ecclesiastic and that intemperate youth?"

"Oh, yes, there is Mr. Acton. I think," said the young man, with a nod
at his sister, "that you will like Mr. Acton."

"Remember that I am very fastidious," said the Baroness. "Has he very
good manners?"

"He will have them with you. He is a man of the world; he has been to
China."

Madame Munster gave a little laugh. "A man of the Chinese world! He must
be very interesting."

"I have an idea that he brought home a fortune," said Felix.

"That is always interesting. Is he young, good-looking, clever?"

"He is less than forty; he has a baldish head; he says witty things. I
rather think," added the young man, "that he will admire the Baroness
Munster."

"It is very possible," said this lady. Her brother never knew how she
would take things; but shortly afterwards she declared that he had made
a very pretty description and that on the morrow she would go and see
for herself.

They mounted, accordingly, into a great barouche--a vehicle as to which
the Baroness found nothing to criticise but the price that was asked
for it and the fact that the coachman wore a straw hat. (At Silberstadt
Madame Munster had had liveries of yellow and crimson.) They drove
into the country, and the Baroness, leaning far back and swaying her
lace-fringed parasol, looked to right and to left and surveyed the
way-side objects. After a while she pronounced them "affreux."
Her brother remarked that it was apparently a country in which the
foreground was inferior to the plans recules: and the Baroness rejoined
that the landscape seemed to be all foreground. Felix had fixed with his
new friends the hour at which he should bring his sister; it was four
o'clock in the afternoon. The large, clean-faced house wore, to his
eyes, as the barouche drove up to it, a very friendly aspect; the high,
slender elms made lengthening shadows in front of it. The Baroness
descended; her American kinsfolk were stationed in the portico. Felix
waved his hat to them, and a tall, lean gentleman, with a high forehead
and a clean shaven face, came forward toward the garden gate. Charlotte
Wentworth walked at his side. Gertrude came behind, more slowly. Both of
these young ladies wore rustling silk dresses. Felix ushered his sister
into the gate. "Be very gracious," he said to her. But he saw the
admonition was superfluous. Eugenia was prepared to be gracious as
only Eugenia could be. Felix knew no keener pleasure than to be able to
admire his sister unrestrictedly; for if the opportunity was frequent,
it was not inveterate. When she desired to please she was to him, as
to every one else, the most charming woman in the world. Then he
forgot that she was ever anything else; that she was sometimes hard and
perverse; that he was occasionally afraid of her. Now, as she took
his arm to pass into the garden, he felt that she desired, that she
proposed, to please, and this situation made him very happy. Eugenia
would please.

The tall gentleman came to meet her, looking very rigid and grave. But
it was a rigidity that had no illiberal meaning. Mr. Wentworth's manner
was pregnant, on the contrary, with a sense of grand responsibility, of
the solemnity of the occasion, of its being difficult to show sufficient
deference to a lady at once so distinguished and so unhappy. Felix
had observed on the day before his characteristic pallor; and now he
perceived that there was something almost cadaverous in his uncle's
high-featured white face. But so clever were this young man's quick
sympathies and perceptions that he already learned that in these
semi-mortuary manifestations there was no cause for alarm. His light
imagination had gained a glimpse of Mr. Wentworth's spiritual mechanism,
and taught him that, the old man being infinitely conscientious, the
special operation of conscience within him announced itself by several
of the indications of physical faintness.

The Baroness took her uncle's hand, and stood looking at him with her
ugly face and her beautiful smile. "Have I done right to come?" she
asked.

"Very right, very right," said Mr. Wentworth, solemnly. He had arranged
in his mind a little speech; but now it quite faded away. He felt almost
frightened. He had never been looked at in just that way--with just that
fixed, intense smile--by any woman; and it perplexed and weighed upon
him, now, that the woman who was smiling so and who had instantly given
him a vivid sense of her possessing other unprecedented attributes, was
his own niece, the child of his own father's daughter. The idea that his
niece should be a German Baroness, married "morganatically" to a Prince,
had already given him much to think about. Was it right, was it just,
was it acceptable? He always slept badly, and the night before he had
lain awake much more even than usual, asking himself these questions.
The strange word "morganatic" was constantly in his ears; it reminded
him of a certain Mrs. Morgan whom he had once known and who had been a
bold, unpleasant woman. He had a feeling that it was his duty, so long
as the Baroness looked at him, smiling in that way, to meet her glance
with his own scrupulously adjusted, consciously frigid organs of vision;
but on this occasion he failed to perform his duty to the last. He
looked away toward his daughters. "We are very glad to see you," he had
said. "Allow me to introduce my daughters--Miss Charlotte Wentworth,
Miss Gertrude Wentworth."

The Baroness thought she had never seen people less demonstrative.
But Charlotte kissed her and took her hand, looking at her sweetly and
solemnly. Gertrude seemed to her almost funereal, though Gertrude
might have found a source of gayety in the fact that Felix, with his
magnificent smile, had been talking to her; he had greeted her as a
very old friend. When she kissed the Baroness she had tears in her eyes.
Madame Munster took each of these young women by the hand, and looked at
them all over. Charlotte thought her very strange-looking and singularly
dressed; she could not have said whether it was well or ill. She was
glad, at any rate, that they had put on their silk gowns--especially
Gertrude. "My cousins are very pretty," said the Baroness, turning her
eyes from one to the other. "Your daughters are very handsome, sir."

Charlotte blushed quickly; she had never yet heard her personal
appearance alluded to in a loud, expressive voice. Gertrude looked
away--not at Felix; she was extremely pleased. It was not the compliment
that pleased her; she did not believe it; she thought herself very
plain. She could hardly have told you the source of her satisfaction;
it came from something in the way the Baroness spoke, and it was not
diminished--it was rather deepened, oddly enough--by the young girl's
disbelief. Mr. Wentworth was silent; and then he asked, formally, "Won't
you come into the house?"

"These are not all; you have some other children," said the Baroness.

"I have a son," Mr. Wentworth answered.

"And why does n't he come to meet me?" Eugenia cried. "I am afraid he is
not so charming as his sisters."

"I don't know; I will see about it," the old man declared.

"He is rather afraid of ladies," Charlotte said, softly.

"He is very handsome," said Gertrude, as loud as she could.

"We will go in and find him. We will draw him out of his cachette." And
the Baroness took Mr. Wentworth's arm, who was not aware that he had
offered it to her, and who, as they walked toward the house, wondered
whether he ought to have offered it and whether it was proper for her to
take it if it had not been offered. "I want to know you well," said the
Baroness, interrupting these meditations, "and I want you to know me."

"It seems natural that we should know each other," Mr. Wentworth
rejoined. "We are near relatives."

"Ah, there comes a moment in life when one reverts, irresistibly, to
one's natural ties--to one's natural affections. You must have found
that!" said Eugenia.

Mr. Wentworth had been told the day before by Felix that Eugenia was
very clever, very brilliant, and the information had held him in some
suspense. This was the cleverness, he supposed; the brilliancy was
beginning. "Yes, the natural affections are very strong," he murmured.

"In some people," the Baroness declared. "Not in all." Charlotte was
walking beside her; she took hold of her hand again, smiling always.
"And you, cousine, where did you get that enchanting complexion?"
she went on; "such lilies and roses?" The roses in poor Charlotte's
countenance began speedily to predominate over the lilies, and she
quickened her step and reached the portico. "This is the country
of complexions," the Baroness continued, addressing herself to Mr.
Wentworth. "I am convinced they are more delicate. There are very good
ones in England--in Holland; but they are very apt to be coarse. There
is too much red."

"I think you will find," said Mr. Wentworth, "that this country is
superior in many respects to those you mention. I have been to England
and Holland."

"Ah, you have been to Europe?" cried the Baroness. "Why did n't you come
and see me? But it 's better, after all, this way," she said. They were
entering the house; she paused and looked round her. "I see you have
arranged your house--your beautiful house--in the--in the Dutch taste!"

"The house is very old," remarked Mr. Wentworth. "General Washington
once spent a week here."

"Oh, I have heard of Washington," cried the Baroness. "My father used to
tell me of him."

Mr. Wentworth was silent a moment, and then, "I found he was very well
known in Europe," he said.

Felix had lingered in the garden with Gertrude; he was standing before
her and smiling, as he had done the day before. What had happened the
day before seemed to her a kind of dream. He had been there and he had
changed everything; the others had seen him, they had talked with him;
but that he should come again, that he should be part of the future,
part of her small, familiar, much-meditating life--this needed, afresh,
the evidence of her senses. The evidence had come to her senses now;
and her senses seemed to rejoice in it. "What do you think of Eugenia?"
Felix asked. "Is n't she charming?"

"She is very brilliant," said Gertrude. "But I can't tell yet. She seems
to me like a singer singing an air. You can't tell till the song is
done."

"Ah, the song will never be done!" exclaimed the young man, laughing.
"Don't you think her handsome?"

Gertrude had been disappointed in the beauty of the Baroness Munster;
she had expected her, for mysterious reasons, to resemble a very pretty
portrait of the Empress Josephine, of which there hung an engraving
in one of the parlors, and which the younger Miss Wentworth had always
greatly admired. But the Baroness was not at all like that--not at all.
Though different, however, she was very wonderful, and Gertrude felt
herself most suggestively corrected. It was strange, nevertheless, that
Felix should speak in that positive way about his sister's beauty.
"I think I shall think her handsome," Gertrude said. "It must be very
interesting to know her. I don't feel as if I ever could."

"Ah, you will know her well; you will become great friends," Felix
declared, as if this were the easiest thing in the world.

"She is very graceful," said Gertrude, looking after the Baroness,
suspended to her father's arm. It was a pleasure to her to say that any
one was graceful.

Felix had been looking about him. "And your little cousin, of
yesterday," he said, "who was so wonderfully pretty--what has become of
her?"

"She is in the parlor," Gertrude answered. "Yes, she is very pretty."
She felt as if it were her duty to take him straight into the house,
to where he might be near her cousin. But after hesitating a moment she
lingered still. "I did n't believe you would come back," she said.

"Not come back!" cried Felix, laughing. "You did n't know, then, the
impression made upon this susceptible heart of mine."

She wondered whether he meant the impression her cousin Lizzie had made.
"Well," she said, "I did n't think we should ever see you again."

"And pray what did you think would become of me?"

"I don't know. I thought you would melt away."

"That 's a compliment to my solidity! I melt very often," said Felix,
"but there is always something left of me."

"I came and waited for you by the door, because the others did,"
Gertrude went on. "But if you had never appeared I should not have been
surprised."

"I hope," declared Felix, looking at her, "that you would have been
disappointed."

She looked at him a little, and shook her head. "No--no!"

"Ah, par exemple!" cried the young man. "You deserve that I should never
leave you."

Going into the parlor they found Mr. Wentworth performing introductions.
A young man was standing before the Baroness, blushing a good deal,
laughing a little, and shifting his weight from one foot to the other--a
slim, mild-faced young man, with neatly-arranged features, like those
of Mr. Wentworth. Two other gentlemen, behind him, had risen from their
seats, and a little apart, near one of the windows, stood a remarkably
pretty young girl. The young girl was knitting a stocking; but, while
her fingers quickly moved, she looked with wide, brilliant eyes at the
Baroness.

"And what is your son's name?" said Eugenia, smiling at the young man.

"My name is Clifford Wentworth, ma'am," he said in a tremulous voice.

"Why did n't you come out to meet me, Mr. Clifford Wentworth?" the
Baroness demanded, with her beautiful smile.

"I did n't think you would want me," said the young man, slowly sidling
about.

"One always wants a beau cousin,--if one has one! But if you are very
nice to me in future I won't remember it against you." And Madame M;
auunster transferred her smile to the other persons present. It rested
first upon the candid countenance and long-skirted figure of Mr. Brand,
whose eyes were intently fixed upon Mr. Wentworth, as if to beg him not
to prolong an anomalous situation. Mr. Wentworth pronounced his name.
Eugenia gave him a very charming glance, and then looked at the other
gentleman.

This latter personage was a man of rather less than the usual stature
and the usual weight, with a quick, observant, agreeable dark eye, a
small quantity of thin dark hair, and a small mustache. He had been
standing with his hands in his pockets; and when Eugenia looked at him
he took them out. But he did not, like Mr. Brand, look evasively and
urgently at their host. He met Eugenia's eyes; he appeared to appreciate
the privilege of meeting them. Madame Munster instantly felt that he
was, intrinsically, the most important person present. She was not
unconscious that this impression was in some degree manifested in the
little sympathetic nod with which she acknowledged Mr. Wentworth's
announcement, "My cousin, Mr. Acton!"

"Your cousin--not mine?" said the Baroness.

"It only depends upon you," Mr. Acton declared, laughing.

The Baroness looked at him a moment, and noticed that he had very white
teeth. "Let it depend upon your behavior," she said. "I think I
had better wait. I have cousins enough. Unless I can also claim
relationship," she added, "with that charming young lady," and she
pointed to the young girl at the window.

"That 's my sister," said Mr. Acton. And Gertrude Wentworth put her arm
round the young girl and led her forward. It was not, apparently, that
she needed much leading. She came toward the Baroness with a light,
quick step, and with perfect self-possession, rolling her stocking
round its needles. She had dark blue eyes and dark brown hair; she was
wonderfully pretty.

Eugenia kissed her, as she had kissed the other young women, and then
held her off a little, looking at her. "Now this is quite another type,"
she said; she pronounced the word in the French manner. "This is a
different outline, my uncle, a different character, from that of your
own daughters. This, Felix," she went on, "is very much more what we
have always thought of as the American type."

The young girl, during this exposition, was smiling askance at every one
in turn, and at Felix out of turn. "I find only one type here!" cried
Felix, laughing. "The type adorable!"

This sally was received in perfect silence, but Felix, who learned
all things quickly, had already learned that the silences frequently
observed among his new acquaintances were not necessarily restrictive
or resentful. It was, as one might say, the silence of expectation,
of modesty. They were all standing round his sister, as if they were
expecting her to acquit herself of the exhibition of some peculiar
faculty, some brilliant talent. Their attitude seemed to imply that she
was a kind of conversational mountebank, attired, intellectually, in
gauze and spangles. This attitude gave a certain ironical force to
Madame Munster's next words. "Now this is your circle," she said to her
uncle. "This is your salon. These are your regular habitu; aaes, eh? I
am so glad to see you all together."

"Oh," said Mr. Wentworth, "they are always dropping in and out. You must
do the same."

"Father," interposed Charlotte Wentworth, "they must do something more."
And she turned her sweet, serious face, that seemed at once timid and
placid, upon their interesting visitor. "What is your name?" she asked.

"Eugenia-Camilla-Dolores," said the Baroness, smiling. "But you need n't
say all that."

"I will say Eugenia, if you will let me. You must come and stay with
us."

The Baroness laid her hand upon Charlotte's arm very tenderly; but she
reserved herself. She was wondering whether it would be possible to
"stay" with these people. "It would be very charming--very charming,"
she said; and her eyes wandered over the company, over the room. She
wished to gain time before committing herself. Her glance fell upon
young Mr. Brand, who stood there, with his arms folded and his hand
on his chin, looking at her. "The gentleman, I suppose, is a sort of
ecclesiastic," she said to Mr. Wentworth, lowering her voice a little.

"He is a minister," answered Mr. Wentworth.

"A Protestant?" asked Eugenia.

"I am a Unitarian, madam," replied Mr. Brand, impressively.

"Ah, I see," said Eugenia. "Something new." She had never heard of this
form of worship.

Mr. Acton began to laugh, and Gertrude looked anxiously at Mr. Brand.

"You have come very far," said Mr. Wentworth.