A Knight of the Nineteenth Century

by Edward Payson Roe

When, at last, Laura's engagement became a recognized fact, he received the intelligence as quietly as the soldier who is ordered to take and hold a position that will long try his fortitude and courage to the utmost.

As for Laura, the weeks that followed her engagement were like a beautiful dream, but one that was created largely by the springing hopes and buoyancy of youth, and the witchery of her own vivid imagination. The springtime had come again, and the beauty and promise of her own future seemed reflected in nature. Every day she took long drives into the country with her lover, or made expeditions to picture galleries in New York; again, they would visit public parks or beautiful private grounds in which the landscape gardener had lavished his art. She lived and fairly revelled in a world of beauty, and for the time it intoxicated her with delight.

There was also such a chorus of congratulation that she could not help feeling complacent. Society indorsed her choice so emphatically and universally that she was sure she had made no mistake. She was caused to feel that she had carried off the richest prize ever known in Hillaton, and she was sufficiently human to be elated over the fact.

Nor was the congratulation all on one side. Society was quite as positive that Beaumont had been equally fortunate, and there were some that insisted that he had gained the richer prize. It was known that Laura had considerable property in her own name, and it was the general belief that she would eventually become heiress of a large part of the colossal fortune supposed to be in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Arnot. In respect to character, beauty, accomplishments-in brief, the minor considerations in the world's estimation-it was admitted by all that Laura had few superiors. Mr. Beaumont's parents were lavish in the manifestations of their pleasure and approval. And thus it would seem that these two lives were fitly joined by the affinity of kindred tastes, by the congenial habits of equal rank, and by universal acclamation.

Gradually, however, the glamour thrown around her new relationship by its very novelty, by unnumbered congratulations, and the excitement attendant on so momentous a step in a young lady's life, began to pass away. Every fine drive in the country surrounding the city had been taken again and again; all the fine galleries had been visited, and the finer pictures admired and dwelt upon in Mr. Beaumont's refined and quiet tones, until there was little more to be said. Laura had come to know exactly why her favorite paintings were beautiful, and precisely the marks which gave them value. The pictures remained just as beautiful, but she became rather tired of hearing Mr. Beaumont analyze them. Not that she could find any fault with what he said, but it was the same thing over and over again. She became, slowly and unpleasantly, impressed with the thought that, while Mr. Beaumont would probably take the most correct view of every object that met his eye, he would always take the same view, and, having once heard him give an opinion, she could anticipate on all future occasions just what he would say. We all know, by disagreeable experience, that no man is so wearisome as he who repeats himself over and over again without variation, no matter how approved his first utterance may have been. Beaumont was remarkably gifted with the power of forming a correct judgment of the technical work of others in all departments of art and literature, and to the perfecting of this accurate aesthetic taste he had given the energies of his maturer years. He had carefully scrutinized in every land all that the best judges considered pre-eminently great and beautiful, but his critical powers were those of an expert, a connoisseur, only. His mind had no freshness or originality. He had very little imagination. Laura's spirit would kindle before a beautiful painting until her eyes suffused with tears. He would observe coolly, with an eye that measured and compared everything with the received canons of art, and if the drawing and coloring were correct he was simply—satisfied.

Again, he had a habit of forgetting that he had given his artistic views upon a subject but a brief time before, and would repeat them almost word for word, and often his polished sentences and quiet monotone were as wearisome as a thrice-told tale.

As time wore on the disagreeable thought began to suggest itself to Laura that the man himself had culminated; that he was perfected to the limit of his nature, and finished off. She foresaw with dread that she might reach a point before very long when she would know all that he knew, or, at least, all that he kept in his mind, and that thereafter everything would be endless repetition to the end of life. He dressed very much the same every day; his habits were very uniform and methodical. In the world's estimation he was, indeed, a bright luminary, and he certainly resembled the heavenly bodies in the following respects. Laura was learning that she could calculate his orbit to a nicety, and know beforehand what he would do and say in given conditions. When she came to know him better she might be able to trace the unwelcome resemblance still further, in the fact that he did not seem to be progressing toward anything, but was going round and round a habitual circle of thought and action, with himself as the centre of his universe.

Laura resisted the first and infrequent coming of these thoughts, as if they were suggestions of the evil one; but, in spite of all effort, all self-reproach, they would return. Sometimes as little a thing as an elegant pose—so perfect, indeed, as to suggest that it had been studied and learned by heart years ago—would occasion them, and the happy girl began to sigh over a faint foreboding of trouble.

By no word or thought did she ever show him what was passing in her mind, and she would have to show such thoughts plainly before he would even dream of their existence, for no man ever more thoroughly believed in himself than did Auguste Beaumont. He was satisfied he had learned the best and most approved way of doing everything, and as his action was always the same, it was, therefore, always right. Moreover, Laura eventually divined, while calling with him on his parents, that the greatest heresy and most aggravated offence that any one could be guilty of in the Beaumont mansion would be to find fault with Auguste. It would be a crime for which neither reason nor palliation could be found.

Thus the prismatic hues which had surrounded this man began to fade, and Laura, who had hoped to escape the prose of life, was reluctantly compelled to admit to herself at times that she found her lover tiresomely prosy and "splendidly null."