IT now becomes our duty to follow for a time the fortunes of Mr. Thomas Bendibow. This honest and prosperous young gentleman, had he been as familiar with the text of Shakspeare as he was with those of some other dramatic authors, might have compared his plight to that of Prince Hamlet, when the noble Dane was in a state of collapse at the scene of domestic revolution which followed so hard upon his father’s decease. Though never exceptionally dutiful in his filial relations, he had a genuine fondness for the author of his being, and allowed no liberties to be taken with his name and character by any one beside himself. But since the reception at the house of the Marquise Desmoines, and the conversation that he had overheard there, his mental attitude had undergone a dolorous transformation. Whatever his other failings, Tom had always possessed the honesty and fearless candor that belonged to his idea of a gentleman, and had never thought of questioning his father’s proficiency in the same virtues. Even now he could not bring himself fully to adopt the inferences that obtruded themselves upon him. Further information might modify the aspect of the case. Nevertheless, an uncertainty as to whether the modification would be for the better or for the worse, hindered the young gentleman from putting it to the test. Moreover, he recoiled, when it came to the point, from directly questioning his father on a subject involving the latter’s honor. The degradation of such a situation would be mutual. Therefore poor Tom nursed his despondency in secret; when all at once it occurred to him, as an illumination from on high, to seek sympathy and perchance enlightenment from the Marquise. He did not give this inspiration time to cool, but acted upon it at once. With his ostensible purpose in visiting her may have mingled another, not the less dear because not openly avowed; and which we, as well as he, may leave to its own development. So, at about the hour when Merton Fillmore and Mr. Grant were having their interview in the lawyer’s office, Thomas Bendibow, Esquire, caused himself to be announced at Madame Desmoines’.
Perdita was in a delightful humor. She had, indeed, a singularly even and cheerful temper, the result of an habitually good digestion and a general sense of the adequacy of her means to her ends. Yet she, too, had her moments of especial loveliness, and this was one of them. She was sitting in a chair by the window, with her hair drawn up on the top of her head, and arranged in flat curls on her forehead. She wore a thin, black silk gown, charmingly disposed about the throat and shoulders; a book lay open on her lap, and in her white hands she idly held a piece of embroidery, on which she might be supposed to be at work, though in reality she had taken hardly a dozen stitches in it that afternoon. She was languorous and dreamy.
“Oh, Tom!” she said, stretching her arms above her head, and parting her smiling lips in a pretty yawn. “How pleasant to see you. Poor boy, my pleasure is your pain.”
“Eh? Why do you say that?” he demanded, stopping midway in the ceremonious obeisance he was making.
“Your face told me. So pale and sorrowful! Poor child, what is it?”
“I am not a child, Madame Desmoines,” said Tom with dignity.
“You are not civil, sir.”
“Not civil—to you!”
“It is not civil to remind a lady of her age. I like to remember the time when you and I were children together, Tom, and to forget the years since then.”
“Oh, to be sure! I didn’t look at it in that way; and I hope you’ll forgive me,” said the youth repentantly. “I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, Perdita; upon my soul, now, I wouldn’t! But about my being a child, you know—in a certain way I shouldn’t mind—for your sake, I mean, so that you needn’t imagine you’re any older. But in another way—as a matter of fact—of course I can’t help being a man, and feeling it. And in that way I’d like you to feel it, too; because what I feel for you isn’t at all what a child would feel; and ... I hope you understand me!”