VANE, however, did not carry his analysis quite so far as this. He found that it was unreal; there he stopped; the why was too heavy a burden for him. He was ready and anxious enough to make it real; but still, all through his life, the substance of life itself had kept eluding him, and left the shadow in his hand.
Many of the girls (at Cinerea every woman under thirty is a girl)—many of the girls were reading novels, American summer stories, written by girls about other girls, and revelling in the summer life of girls. Vane borrowed some of these and read them. They were so prettily written, so charming, so awfully true, he was told; and he liked not to confess that they gave him but a little passing amusement, which was followed by much mental depression. It was all true and real, then? Was Vane himself something of a prig? John Haviland did not think so. But these stories seemed to him more immoral, or at all events, more corrupting, than many a French romance ending in adultery. There was in them an ignorance of all that is highest in life, a calm, self-satisfied acceptance of a petty standard. The strength of crime implies the strength of virtue, but the negation of both is hopelessness. In defence of Vane, it might be said that he was really not in the mood for pleasure at this time.
The straw-ride was unanimously declared to be a great success. Miss Morse brought her volume of Mérimée along and read it to her young man in the woods. Her young man for the afternoon, that is; she had no special young man. The chaperone was the beautiful Mrs. Miles Breeze, of Baltimore; she arrived suddenly, in the nick of time to go; and Vane could see that Miss Morse was much elated at being under the wing of so real a social personage. Ned Eddy was with her. When the company paired off and scattered in the woods, Vane fell to the lot of a Miss Gibbs, of Philadelphia, a still newer acquaintance to whom Miss Storrs had introduced him. Miss Gibbs had a volume of Rossetti’s poems with her, and Vane read to her the “Last Confession” under the pine trees. For many a foreigner, it would have been his first. But the hearts of American young men are (very properly) bound in triple brass. Miss Gibbs also knew Miss Thomas. She seemed relieved when she gathered from Vane that Miss Storrs was an acquaintance of a few hours, and Misses Morse and Westerhouse of the morning only. Evidently, thought Vane, there were distinctions if not differences. Miss Gibbs combined much good-breeding with her fascinations; and a dangerous savoir faire.
The next day he went to walk with a dark-haired girl in the morning, and to drive with a yellow-haired widow in the afternoon. In the evening he found himself drifting on the lake in a boat with Miss Gibbs. Any one of these beauties would have been termed, by a Frenchman, adorable; and probably he would have ventured to adore. Other boats with similar couples were scattered over the lake, no one too near another. As far as Vane could judge, it seemed to be considered the proper thing for every young man to simulate the deepest love for his companion of the hour. It was a sort of private theatrical, with the out-door night for a stage; a midsummer night’s dream, of which the theme was let’s pretend we’re lovers. He was here alone with Miss Gibbs under circumstances which in France would have compelled him to marry her; and it was doubtful whether she would even remember him as an acquaintance, in the city, a few weeks later.
He was glad to admit that there was something very creditable in the fact that the thing was possible. Still this trifling, this mild but continuous drugging of the affections, must have its demoralizing effect. It was part result and part cause of that same unreality. The only real thing about the hotel was the stock-ticker; and even there, the stock that it registered was water. It was all very amusing. Yet the fancy continually recurred of Miss Thomas, in this situation, though he, of all men, would have had no right to be displeased; for had she not definitely told him he had none? Still, it was hard to divest himself of a certain sense of property in her; he had mentally appropriated her for so long.
He was plashing carelessly with his oars, and watching the sheen of moonlight on the outline of his companion’s fair face, suffering himself for a moment to wonder how the same light would have fallen in Winifred’s blue eyes, when Miss Gibbs again spoke of her.
“I had a letter from your friend Miss Thomas, to-day,” said she. The deuce she had! thought Vane; so she corresponds with Miss Gibbs, does she? Vane was disgusted with himself for thinking so much about the girl, and here he was caught thinking of her again.
He pulled a few nervous strokes. How could he see the letter without exciting Miss Gibbs’ curiosity? He managed it, finally, and read the letter. He was secretly relieved to find that the note was quite formal and was simply to tell Miss Gibbs that she need not forward a piece of embroidery which had been left behind. More surprising was the news that Miss Thomas was coming back. Vane made himself doubly attentive to Miss Gibbs; and as each man walked back with his lady, and said to her a long good night on the hotel piazza, implying all the sorrow of a Romeo in parting from a Juliet, Vane was secretly wondering what the deuce he was to do. “What the deuce!” was again the phrase he mentally used. He did not wish to see the girl again—that was certain enough; but it was decidedly undignified to run away. There was really a sort of fatality in their meeting.
But the best way to treat a fatality is to make nothing of it. Thus treated, it is seldom fatal. Then he was rather curious to see how Miss Thomas would behave among these Dibbles and these Westerhouses. After all, she too was an American; a little more sophisticated, a little better endowed by nature; but she, too, made a toy of love, and actors in private theatricals of her more “exciting” friends. “Exciting” was a word that Vane had heard Miss Westerhouse apply to Mr. Dibble. Vane had caught a little of the Parisian’s contempt for flirting with young girls. In a flirtation with married women, he thought, there were at least possibilities; and the flirtations were not so utterly silly. But marriage was far too serious an affair to be made fun of. At this period Vane affected to himself an extreme cynicism. Intercourse with Cinerea girls had corrupted him. They had given him their own levity. At another time, he would have deplored the vulgarization of a lofty sentiment; but since the past June he had been in a flippant mood himself. The American cue was to make game of everything in fun, and to make a hazard of life in earnest. He felt that he was becoming Americanized.
Feminine companionship was certainly corrupting to earnestness, if not to morals. By the end of this week he felt cloyed with too much trifle. He sighed for a man and a cigar, for a seat in a club, for a glass of brandy, for anything else masculine, for a little of man’s plain language and strong thinking. Yet these girls were no fools: they read Prosper Mérimée’s Letters, for example. They were emancipated enough. But they also read Lucile. He understood why women were not let into ancient religions, Freemasonry and the Egyptian mysteries. They belittled the imagination. Per contra, they were essential to the Eleusinian. Their only truly great rôle was the Mœnad. And yet, he thought, these sentiments of his would have shocked these girls.
Vane’s thoughts came and went nervously. He was driving in a buggy alone, or, at least, only Miss Morse was with him. He was ashamed of himself; he was ashamed of his thinking; he was ashamed, thinking as he did, of his inconsistency in driving with Miss Morse in a buggy. Postiche, postiche, it was all postiche, or was it frankness? Was it the troubled dream, the low beginning of the new conditions? Was his disapproval a bit of feudal prejudice? Vane was troubled, excited, disgusted, confused. Miss Morse noticed all this, but thought he was in love with her.
The only green spots in the man’s memory were Rennes, and Monserrat, and Carcassonne; yes, and the littered desk in the down-town office in New York—the scene of his only labors and his one success. And that success was no longer necessary; it no longer profited any one but himself. Vane had never formulated his position with such precision before. The last person of his own family was dead; he had claims upon no one, no one had any claim upon him; he had no further ambitions upon Mammon. Given this problem, what solution could the world offer—the New York world, that is? Somebody says life is made up of labor, art, love, and worship. New York had given him labor, which he had performed. And of the others? Had it given him love, even? Was he a barbarian, better fitted for a struggle with crude nature than New York, not up to the refinements of modern civilization? Should he leave these places? Now, that day Miss Thomas was to come, and he must decide. He thirsted for happiness; how was he best to find it? These thoughts, perhaps, seemed selfish, cold-blooded, practical, but there was a sadness in them for Vane.
So thinking, as he drove his buggy along the road, they passed Miss Thomas, walking gracefully, and the rich, slow color burned through her face and fell away at her temples as she bowed. Vane drove on the faster, flicking his horse with the whip, and considered what he would do now that she had returned.
He would treat her like Miss Westerhouse and Miss Gibbs of Philadelphia. He would not have his own movements disturbed by her coming and going. He would stay his intended fortnight out and then go.