VANE had not intended to go to Mrs. Roster’s ball the next night; but he went, nevertheless. Vane was always a rather cynical spectator at large parties in New York. Somehow, it was so different from all that he had hoped; it was so like Paris, with more frivolity and fewer social gifts. 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. “You are quite different from what I thought you were,” she said. “I used to think you were serious and queer.”
“Really,” said Vane; “and what do you think me now?”
“At least, I do not think you serious and queer. Certainly, not serious.”
“But I am.”
“Can that be?” There was a heightened color in her cheek.
“As you see me. Will you go to walk with me next Sunday afternoon?”
Miss Thomas looked up suddenly with her soft eyes; then as suddenly cast them down again. Vane must have seen that she blushed a little.
“Yes.” And then, “if you do not leave Fifth Avenue,” she added.
“After that I shall certainly ask you to go into the Park,” he said.
“You had better not—at least not before the Sunday afternoon—or I will not go with you at all,” laughed Miss Baby, roguishly.
Vane bent and took her hand for a moment; as it hung among the orange leaves in the conservatory. Then he bowed and left her without an apology. She did not draw her hand away; and as Vane looked back at her from the door she was, this time, blushing violently. Vane himself walked home in a somewhat agitated frame of mind, and went to sleep; and when he woke up in the morning, he discovered that he was very much in love with Baby Thomas. This discovery caused him more surprise than disapproval; and yet he felt bound to confess himself a good deal of a fool.
He thought of it several times during the day, in the intervals of business, and not without considerable mental invective. However, as he walked home in the afternoon, he became less out of humor with himself. She certainly was a very charming girl, and well worth winning. At all events it was pleasant to be in love with her. He expected to see her that evening, and the prospect gave him a great deal of happiness, not without a slight seasoning of excitement, that made quite a novel enjoyment in his life. Certainly, he reflected, he was very much in love. It was surprising how it had grown in the night—like Jack and his bean-stalk. However, he saw no particular reason why he should try to cut it down. Perhaps he secretly doubted whether he could do so if he chose; and the doubt was agreeable.
Miss Thomas was not at the party that evening; and Vane found himself a little uneasy in consequence. He left early, and went to see John Haviland.
“John,” said he, “I am in love with Miss Thomas.”
“Many of us have been through that,” said John, calmly; “it is not fatal.”
“But,” said Vane, “my constitution may be more delicate. I am not a hide-bound rhinoceros.”
“Neither,” said John, “am I.” And he defended the aspersion upon his epidermis with a quadrupedal sigh.
“But I want to marry her.”
“That is also a symptom. You need not do it, however.”
“What do you know against her?”
“Nothing; but Ten Eyck has rather too heavy a prior mortgage.”
“I don’t care for Ten Eyck.”
“The question is, whether she does.”
“I know very well that she can’t.”
“She would hardly wish you to know the opposite, if the opposite were true.”
“Bah! I know something about women——”
“The devil himself can’t know a woman who doesn’t know herself.”
“Anyhow, it is a free field——”
“And plenty of favor.”
“She hasn’t seen Ten Eyck for years——”
“The last time was this afternoon.”
“What?”
“I saw them walking on Fourth Avenue, as I came up-town in a horse-car.”
“Humph!” said Vane, and he dropped the conversation.
For some weeks he said nothing more to John about Miss Thomas; and during that time he was trying, with more or less success, to persuade himself of his own folly. But he found it more easy to bend his energies to the subjugation of Miss Thomas’s heart than of his own. And John noticed that he left his business rather earlier in the afternoon than usual, and always took the Fourth Avenue car up-town. In his evenings he exhausted a large part of the most cynical French literature in convincing himself that he was a fool. But in spite of Balzac and Scribe, he found that he looked forward anxiously to the evenings when he was to meet her; and it was more easy for him to laugh at his own infatuation—no, interest was the name he gave it—than to go for a couple of days without seeing its object.
The first Sunday that he let pass without a visit, he was very nervous all the evening, and going to bed early made a vain effort to sleep. 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. If she loved nobody, his chance was assured.
This settled, Vane went to bed with the easy mind of a general who has planned the morning’s march.