CHAPTER XI.
Buchanan Budd had been doing a good deal of deep thinking of late—proof positive that the times were out of joint. Budd, of course, was obliged to do more or less thinking in order to be always correctly dressed, but it was only a great crisis that could compel him to ponder really weighty problems for any length of time.
When a subterranean disturbance shakes a city it is the most clumsily constructed houses that go down first. In like manner, when the most select circle of society is in trouble, it is the man who has no very good claim to recognition in that circle who first feels the effects of the internal agitation.
As Buchanan Budd listened to the current gossip at his clubs, and read in the newspapers impudent criticisms on the doings of the people with whom he associated, he came reluctantly, but firmly, to the conclusion that it behooved him to take some step that would strengthen his position as a recognized member of the most exclusive social clique in the country—perhaps in the world.
It did not take him long to decide that the only fitting strategical move on his part lay along the line of matrimony. Not that he came to this conviction willingly. He enjoyed life as a bachelor, and he felt that in taking to himself a wife he would be making a most dangerous experiment. He could not blind himself to the fact that the unpleasant publicity at that time being thrust upon certain members of the inner circle had had its origin in unfortunate marriages. Nevertheless, he realized that society expected of him, at some time or other, a personal sacrifice of his liberty on the altar of matrimony; and the present crisis seemed to be an appropriate moment for propitiating the powers controlling the inner circle by taking to himself a wife who would render him safe for the future in any sifting process in which society might indulge.
After going over the list of eligible young women in his set, he had decided, without much hesitation, that Gertrude Van Vleck was, as he put it to himself, the card for him to play. She possessed several characteristics that rendered her especially eligible. In the first place, her position in society was thoroughly assured. Furthermore, she possessed sufficient mental alertness to render her companionable to a man who had not been quite able to crush all fondness for originality out of his make-up. Then again—and this was an important consideration—he had never made love to her. They had been good friends, to use a rather meaningless phrase, and Budd was encouraged by the thought that he had never prejudiced his chances with her by invoking sentiment to add spice to their intercourse.
That she had rejected several suitors was a fact well known to society, and there had been a good deal of discussion as to Gertrude Van Vleck’s motive for refusing at least two offers that were generally considered especially desirable. In weighing this phase of the case, Buchanan Budd, who was not an abnormally modest man, asked himself if the explanation of her reluctance to enter into wedlock had not been due to the fact that he, in certain respects one of the most eligible bachelors in the city, had hitherto approached her only as a friend. It is true that she had sometimes appeared to indulge in a little sarcasm at his expense, but her tongue might have been inspired by pique. What more likely than that his failure to put any special warmth into his manner, when she had hoped for something more than friendship, had been the underlying cause of those shafts of satire that she had sometimes launched at him? The more Buchanan Budd questioned himself on this point, the more he became convinced that Gertrude Van Vleck concealed a fondness for him that she only awaited a change in his manner to reveal.
There was one peculiarity possessed by Budd that might have enabled him to earn his own living, if fate had not ordained that he should lie on a bed of roses. When he had decided upon a course of action, he never hesitated to begin operations at once. But, as he seldom reached any conclusion that demanded the exercise of energy and directness, there was something novel and inspiring in the emotions that animated him as he sent in his card to Gertrude Van Vleck on the very evening on which he had pursued, while smoking a cigar at his favorite club, the mental processes outlined above. He felt that there was something Napoleonic in thus moving on the enemy’s stronghold at once, and he entered her drawing-room with almost the air of a conqueror. One fact that rendered bachelorhood so satisfactory to Buchanan Budd was that he possessed quite a vivid imagination. No man will grow too lonely if he can constantly delude himself with flattering fancies, and picture himself as the centre of the universe, with the ends of space to do his bidding.
“And what am I to have from you this evening, Mr. Budd?” asked Gertrude, seating herself for a chat that she knew would prove amusing. “Censure for the new woman?”
“No, Miss Van Vleck; I crave advice for the old-fashioned man.”
Gertrude smiled, and her eyes flashed merrily as she exclaimed,—
“There is a mystery here! Mr. Buchanan Budd seeking advice from a woman whom he suspects of holding advanced ideas! That seems hardly reasonable.”
There was something in Gertrude Van Vleck’s manner and appearance that struck Budd as unusual. He had always considered her a handsome woman, but to-night her eyes were more brilliant, her complexion more dazzling, than he had ever seen them, while there was something in the tone of her voice and the movements of her hands that seemed to indicate suppressed excitement. These phenomena, he argued, augured well for the advance movement that he, with Napoleonic cleverness, had determined to order along the entire line of his attack. But the moment for his forward movement had not quite come. A little skirmishing in the open field was essential before he ordered up his heavy troops.
“But why is it not reasonable, Miss Van Vleck? Surely, even a conservative, and, if you please, reactionary, man may feel anxious to put himself in touch with the new ideas. It may even be that he honestly desires to embrace as many of the iconoclastic theories of the day as possible, if for no other purpose than to retain the friendships he made in the peaceful days before—before”—
“Before the women of our set began to think, you mean,” said Gertrude, as he hesitated a moment. “It is certainly complimentary on your part—and so self-sacrificing.” There was a touch of sarcasm in her voice.
Budd looked at her appealingly. “You hardly do justice to my motives, Miss Van Vleck. I am honestly anxious to overcome my ancient prejudices and to put myself in sympathy with the age in which I live. You can do so much to help me in this—if you will.”
There was a note of tenderness in his voice that Gertrude had never heard in it before, and she glanced at him suspiciously. She had derived considerable pleasure, in a mild way, from her friendly intercourse with Buchanan Budd; and her liking for him had been based, to a great extent, on the utter absence of flirtatiousness in his manner. That he had any intention of jeopardizing their friendship by injecting sentiment into the relationship was a new thought to her. At that moment it was the most unwelcome suspicion that could have entered her mind. There is no time when a woman so dreads the advances of a man to whom she is indifferent as the moment when she admits to herself that her heart is influenced by another. Buchanan Budd had unconsciously forced Gertrude Van Vleck into a self-confession that made her pulse flutter and her cheek turn pale.
“I fear, Mr. Budd,” she went on with nervous vivacity, “that you would not be willing to follow us very far—no matter how great an effort I made to put you in sympathy with the new movement. Let me tell you, Mr. Budd, there is no predicting where it will all end. A woman in Vienna has applied to the authorities to be appointed chief-executioner. A Miss Edith Walker is an applicant in Bogota, Columbia, for the office of chief of police. I see by your face that you are shocked at all this. I am so glad.”
“Glad that I am shocked?” exclaimed Budd confusedly.
“No, not that; but that I have had the courage to warn you.”
“To warn me?”
“Yes,” answered Gertrude, the former paleness of her cheeks giving place to a slight flush, “to warn you. Don’t you see that there is great danger in attempting to keep up with the restless activity of the fin-de-siècle woman? I think you will be much happier, Mr. Budd, in sticking to your former convictions, and not attempting to take an interest in movements and tendencies with which, you know, you are not in sympathy at heart.”
“But,” persisted Budd, who felt that somehow his plan of campaign was not working itself out with the success that should attend a truly Napoleonic manœuvre, “I came here to ask you to help me, not by throwing cold water on my aspirations, but by telling me how to become worthy of—of the new woman.”
Gertrude Van Vleck laughed nervously.
“I appreciate the compliment you have paid me, Mr. Budd, but I am unworthy of the trust you seem to place in me. Frankly, I find it so difficult to adjust my former, I might say my hereditary, convictions to the teachings of the day, that I feel that I must remain a follower instead of a leader, even at the expense of not winning for the cause so valuable a champion as Mr. Buchanan Budd.”
For the first time since he had opened fire, Buchanan Budd realized that his skirmish-line had been driven back. But a battle is never lost until the last charge is made.
“I am sorry,” he said in a musing tone, “that you have not given me more encouragement in my effort to—to revise my ideas regarding—regarding woman’s sphere, I think you call it. I assure you, Miss Van Vleck,” and he bent toward her, “that my motive in asking you to help me in this matter was not of small importance to myself. I am very anxious to—to”—
He paused for words with a hesitation that was not at all Napoleonic. At that moment a servant entered with a card for Miss Van Vleck.
“Mr. John Fenton!” exclaimed Gertrude, with something in her voice that did not please Buchanan Budd.
Then she turned calmly toward him and asked, “Do you know Mr. Fenton, Mr. Budd?”
A hitherto unpublished anecdote tells how a daring onlooker approached Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo and said,—
“Pardon me, Sire, but have you ever met Wellington before?”