He went home, a very lonely man in a very empty world.
It felt cold to him now; the sky had grown gray. He had a fire kindled in his drawing-room, and sat dejectedly before it through the twilight. After a while his servant brought in the lamps, at the same time handing him a parcel that had come from his bookseller’s. The parcel was wrapped in an old copy of the Paris edition of the New York Herald; and he spread it out, and glanced at it listlessly. It always filled him with a vague sort of melancholy to look at an old newspaper; on the day of its appearance the life that it recorded, the joys and pains, had seemed of so great importance, such instant interest; and now they mattered as little, they were as much a part of ancient history, as the lives and the joys and the sorrows of the Cæsars. His eye fell presently upon a column headed Obituary; and there he read of the death of Samuel Merrow. He turned the paper up hurriedly to discover its date; November of last year; quite six months ago. Samuel Merrow had died at New York, six months ago; and Samuel Merrow was her husband.
II
There were not many passengers on the steamer; at this season the current of travel ran in the opposite direction. There was a puffy little white-haired, important man, who accosted him on the deck, the second day out, and asked whether it was his first visit abroad that he was returning from. He reflected for a moment, and answered yes; for though he had lived abroad half a lifetime, he had crossed the ocean only once before. He was too shy to enter upon an explanation, so he answered yes. Then the puffy man boasted of the immense numbers of voyages he had made. “Oh, I know Europe!” he declaimed, and told how his business—he described himself as “buyer” for a firm of printing-ink importers—took him to that continent two or three times a year. He had an inquiring mind, and a great facility for questioning people. “Excuse me, Mr. Aigrefield,” he said (he had learned our friend’s name from the passenger-list) “but what does that red button in your buttonhole mean? Some society you belong to?”
Aigrefield, concealing what he suffered, again sought refuge in an ambiguous yes; but he slunk away to his cabin, and put the “red button” in his box: it was absurd to wear the insignia of a French order outside of France.
Then, of course, the ship’s company was completed by a highly intelligent lady in eyeglasses, who lay in a deck-chair all day, and read Mr. Pater’s Mariys (the volume lasted her throughout the voyage); a statistical clergyman, returning from his vacation, a mine of practical misinformation; a couple of Frenchmen, travelling no one could guess why, since they seemed quite cast-down and in despair about it; a half-dozen Hebrews, travelling one couldn’t help knowing wherefore, since they discussed “voollens” and prices and shipments at the tops of their cheerful voices; and the inevitable young Western girl, travelling alone. For the first time in twenty years, almost, he had descended from the cloud he lived in, and was rubbing against the actualities of the earth.
The highly intelligent lady “knew who he was,” as she told him sweetly, and would speak of nothing but art, in her highly intelligent way. If he had had more humour, her perfervid enthusiasms, couched in an extremely rudimental studio-slang (she talked a vast deal of values and keys, of atmosphere and light, of things being badly modelled or a little “out”)—if he had had more humour, all this might have amused him; but he was, as we have said, somewhat too literally inclined; and the cant of it jarred upon him, and made him sick at heart. Her formula for opening up a topic, “Now, Mr. Aigrefield, tell me, what do you think of...” became an obsession, that would descend upon him in the dead of night, making him dread the morrow. All these people, he remarked, Mr. Aigrefielded him unpityingly. He wished the English language had, for the use of his compatriots (in England they seem to get on well enough without forever naming names) a mode of address similar to the French monsieur.
But the solitary young Western girl he liked. She had made her first appeal to his eye, through her form and colour; but when he came to know her a little he liked her for her spirit. She was tall, with a strong, supple figure, a face picturesque in the discreet irregularity of its features, a pair of limpid gray eyes, a fresh complexion, and an overhanging ornament of warm brown hair. She was much given to smiling, also,—a smile that played in lovely curves about lips, if anything, a thought too full, a semitone too scarlet,—whence he inferred that she had an amiable disposition, a light heart, and an easy conscience. Hearing her speak, he observed that her voice was of a depth, smoothness, and rotundity, that atoned in great measure for the occidental quality of her accent. At all events, he was drawn to her: they walked the deck a good deal together, and often had their chairs placed side by side. He philosophised her attraction for him by saying, “She is a force of nature, she is fresh and simple.” The “buyer” for the firm of printing-ink importers had struck him as fresh, indeed, but not as simple; the lady who read Mr. Pater, as simple but not fresh; the Hebrew gentlemen, even the unhappy Frenchmen, if you will, as natural forces: but the Western girl combined these several advantages in her single person, and so she became his favourite amongst his shipmates.
Her name was Lillian Goddard; she lived in Minneapolis, where, as she informed him, her father was a judge. She had been abroad nearly a year, had passed the winter in Rome, could speak a little Italian, a little French, and an immense deal of American. I have described her as young, and I hope it will not be considered an anachronism when I add that her age was twenty-six.
She was tremendously patriotic, and appeared shocked and grieved when she learned that he had remained continuously absent from his country for a score of years.