II.
The marriage was a quiet one, and took place in the early following spring. Pauline made a very lovely bride, but as this comment is delivered upon a most ample percentage of all the brides in Christendom, it is scarcely worth being recorded. The whole important constituency of her kindred were graciously pleased at the match, with a single exception. This was Courtlandt Beekman, who managed to be absent in Washington at the time of the wedding. Pauline's presents were superb; the Poughkeepsies, Amsterdams, and all the rest, came forth in expensive sanction of the nuptials. After a brief Southern tour the wedded pair took up their abode in the newly appointed Bond Street mansion. Mrs. Van Corlear, already ensconced there, welcomed them with as beaming a smile as her invalid state would permit. Pauline, as she kissed her, wondered if those same bloodless lips would ever have any further excuse for querulous complaint. It was pathetic to note the old lady's gratified quiver while her thin hand was gallantly imprinted, as well, by the kiss of her new son-in-law. She had surely reached the goal of all her earthly hopes. She had a silken chair to rock in, and a maid as her special attendant, and a doctor to be as devoted and exorbitant as he chose. Her neuralgia, her asthma, her rheumatism, her thousand and one ailments, were henceforth to wreak their dolorous inflictions among the most comfortable and sumptuous surroundings. And yet, as if in mockery of her new facilities for being the truly aristocratic invalid, this poor lady, after a few weeks of the most encouraging opportunity, forsook all its commodious temptations and quietly died in her bed of a sudden heart-seizure.
On the occasion of her death Pauline's husband, who had thus far been scrupulously polite, made a remark which struck his wife as brutal, and roused her resentment. He was a good deal more brutal, in a glacial, exasperating way, as Pauline's anger manifested itself. But shortly after the funeral he was prostrated by a sharp attack of his gout, during which Pauline nursed him with forgiving assiduity.
The young wife was now in deep mourning. Her husband's attack had been almost fatal. His recovery was slow, and a voyage to Europe was urgently recommended by his physicians. They sailed in latter June. Courtlandt was among those who saw Pauline off in the steamer. He looked, while taking her hand in farewell, as if he felt very sorry for her. Pauline seemed in excellent spirits; her black dress became her; she was so blonde that you saw the gold hair before you marked the funereal garb; and then she had her smile very ready, which had always won nearly everybody. Perhaps only Courtlandt, in his wise, grave taciturnity, saw just how factitious the smile was.
Mr. Varick quite recovered from this attack. Pauline's letters said so. They had soon left London, near which the Cunarder had brought them, and gone to Paris; Mr. Varick was feeling so much better from the voyage, and had always felt so at home in Paris. For several months afterward Pauline's letters were sent over-sea in the most desultory and irregular fashion. And what they contained by no means pleased their recipients. She appeared to tell nothing about herself; she was always writing of the city. As if one couldn't read of the Tuileries and Nôtre Dame in a thousand books! As if one hadn't been there oneself! Why did she not write how they were getting on together? That was the one imperative stimulus for curiosity among all Pauline's friends and kindred—how they were getting on together. All, we should add, except Courtlandt, who seemed to manifest no curiosity of whatever sort. Of course one could not write and ask her, point blank! What was one to do? Did rambling essays upon the pleasures of a trip to Versailles, or the recreation of a glimpse of Fontainebleau, mean that Mr. Varick had or had not broken loose in a mettlesome manner from his latter-day matrimonial traces?
"We are prepared for anything, you know," Mrs. Poughkeepsie, Pauline's aunt and former patron, had once rather effusively said to Courtlandt. "Now that Hamilton Varick is well, he might be larking over there to any dreadful extent. And Pauline, from sheer pride, mightn't be willing to tell us."
"Very cruel of her, certainly," Courtlandt had responded, laconic and not a little sarcastic as well.
But as months went by, Pauline's correspondents forgot, in the absorption engendered by more national incentives for gossip, the unsatisfactory tone of her letters. Once, however, Pauline wrote that she wished very much to return, but that her husband preferred remaining in Paris.
"He won't come back!" immediately rose the cry on this side of the water. "He's keeping her over there against her will! How perfectly horrible! Well, she deserves it for marrying a vieux galant like that! Poor Pauline! With her looks she might have married somebody of respectable age. But she wouldn't wait. She was so crazy to make her market, poor girl! It's to be hoped that he doesn't beat her, or anything of that frightful sort!"