“I must go to church that afternoon. I am so sorry.”
Vane bowed again, and took his departure more piqued than he was willing to acknowledge. As he went down the steps he heard a few chords upon the piano. It was the beginning of the love-song from Francesca da Rimini. After all, he thought, why should he be offended? She had behaved just as he should have wished her to. He could hardly expect her to acknowledge that she had waited for him in vain. How pretty she had looked in the firelight!
The next Sunday, about sunset, as he and John were returning from a long walk in the country, two figures came out of a small church on Sixth Avenue, well known for the excellence of its music. Miss Thomas was one, the other John recognized as Ten Eyck. She did not seem to see them, but the two walked rapidly ahead of them the length of the block, and then turned down a side street. Vane pretended to be wholly unconscious of the scene. John alone gave a grunt of surprise. And for two weeks or more Vane treated Miss Thomas with alternate neglect and familiarity when he met her in society; the former when he found it possible to avoid her, the latter when he was necessarily thrown with her. One night at a german she gave him a favor. Vane, after dancing with her, felt obliged, in common politeness, to talk with her for a few moments. He sought refuge in that sort of clumsy pleasantry which our English models have taught us to call chaff; she said nothing, but looked at him wonderingly, with large troubled eyes. She seemed as if grieved at his manner and too proud to reproach him with it. Could she really love the man? thought Vane. How could she? He felt as if the suspicion did her an injury. Vane’s heart melted to her as he came home that night. He had mentally judged her as he would have judged a woman in one of his cynical French comedies. He had treated her like a character in a seventeenth century memoir. And how much above such judgment was this sweet American girl! She was fond of her friends, and true to them, and frank to him, so that he saw that she cared for him. What did she know of the world, or of older societies, or the women in his wicked French memoirs? She lived in new, pure, honest America; not in the chronicles of the Œil-de-bœuf. And Vane felt that the best amends he could make was to ask her to become his wife. When he hinted this intention to Haviland that philosopher, for the first and only time in his life, improvised a couplet:
“Jamais la femme ne varie,
Bien fol est toujours qui s’y fie.”
Having got off this gâtha, John retired to his pipe, and became, like a Hindoo god, impassive, ugly, and impenetrable.
X.
FOR some weeks Vane rested satisfied with the conclusions arrived at in the last chapter. It was so satisfactory to have made such a resolve; and besides, there was no cause for hastening the event. There was singularly little impulse in his inclination. Most certainly, he meant to put his fate to the test; but not at point-blank range. Vane was cool enough to proceed warily; and he still clung sufficiently to the precepts of his French authorities in matters feminine to know better than that. For a repulse always puts the garrison on its guard, and doubles the difficulty of investment; and a woman’s heart should be taken by siege, not assault. Other supplies should be cut off; and then the citadel be undermined and sapped in a quiet way. The attacker should imply boundless admiration, without actually committing himself to a more particular sentiment—flirtation from behind earthworks—and so, without being exposed to rebuff, gradually surround her with such an atmosphere of incense that at last it becomes indispensable to her; and, after one or two futile sallies, she falls before his arms. This is the wisdom of the serpent; but Vane knew that it was never wasted on a woman, however sweet and dovelike; if you wish her to take your attentions seriously, you should make her think they are not serious. And if Vane was willing to marry, he had no mind to be refused. When Vane expounded these theories to John, the latter seemed relieved.
A lover in New York is at no loss for opportunities to win, if he has leisure to woo; but Vane suffered many chances to pass by without improving them. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with his love, with himself, with his life as he found it; he remembered, like all boys, trying to live as if he were the hero of a novel; now it was altogether too difficult not to live like the hero of a comedy. Vane abhorred the eighteenth century, and all its belongings; but it seemed to him that the world around him, and himself as part of it, were subjects apter to a Congreve than a Homer.
All the more, he sought to wind his affections around their object; he would not admit to himself that there was something wanting even in her. But the winter was nearly over before he resolved to take any decisive step; and Miss Thomas had been growing prettier every day. Mrs. Levison Gower was to give a sleigh-ride. They were to drive in a procession of single sleighs, and stop at some one’s country house for an hour’s skating. This opportunity would be most propitious; and Vane decided that Miss Baby Thomas should be his companion.