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Page 10
Mr. Heathcote at least was not sorry to find that they were, as he said.
"booked for Baltimore." The image of the beautiful Miss Bascombe had not
been effaced. Perhaps he had photographed it by some private process on
his heart with the lover's camera, which takes rather idealized but very
charming pictures, some of which never fade. At all events, there it
was, very distinct and very lovely, and always hung on the line in his
mental picture-gallery. It was positively with trepidation that he
presented himself before her very soon after his arrival; and an
undeniable blush "mantled" his cheek--if a blush can be said with any
propriety to mantle the male cheek--- when he marched into the
drawing-room, where she was doing a dainty bit of embroidery, and with
much simplicity and directness said, "You said I might come, you know,
and I have come; and I begged of Ethel to come too, but she could not
leave my aunt," before he had so much as shaken hands. Of course no
well-regulated and well-bred young woman--and Miss Bascombe was
both--ever permits herself to remember any man until she is engaged to
him; but she need not forget one that has impressed her agreeably. Miss
Bascombe had not forgotten the handsome Englishman she had met at Jenny
De Witt's, nor the little lecture she had given him on the duties of
brothers to sisters, and it did not strike her that his inaugural
address was at all eccentric or mysterious. He had been told what he
ought to do; he had tried to do it, as was quite right and proper. He
deserved some reward. And he got it,--though only as an encouragement to
abstract virtue, of course. The young lady was pleased to be friendly,
gracious, charming. Her mother came in presently, was equally friendly
and gracious, and almost as charming. Her father came home to dinner,
and was friendly too, and hearty, and very hospitable. Her brothers were
friendliest of all. He knew quite well that he had no claim on them,
that he had not saved the life of any member of the family or laid them
under any sort of obligation, individually or collectively, and no
reception could have seemed more special and dangerously cordial, yet no
anxieties oppressed, no fears distracted him. The weight of excessive
eligibility suddenly slipped off him, like the albatross from the neck
of the Ancient Mariner, leaving him a thankful and a happy man, and in
a week he had established himself firmly at the Bascombes', declined to
accompany his uncle to Virginia, and definitely settled in his own mind
that he would take the step matrimonial,--the step from the sublime
to--well, not always the ridiculous. With this resolution he naturally
thought that the greatest obstacle to success had been removed; but he
was soon disillusionized. He had already come to see that American girls
were very much in the habit of being gracious to everybody, and saying
pretty and pleasant things, with no thought of an hereafter; also that
they did not live with St. George's, Hanover Square, or its American
equivalent, Trinity Church, New York, stamped on the mental retina. Miss
Bascombe was "very nice" to him, he told himself, but she was quite as
nice to a dozen other men. She was uniformly kind, courteous, agreeable,
to every one who came to the house. Her cordiality to him meant nothing
whatever. Yes, he was quite free,--free as air; he saw that plainly, and
perversely longed to assume the fetters he had so long and so skilfully
avoided. What was the use of having serious intentions when not the
slightest notice was taken of the most compromising behavior? It was
true that he was perfectly at liberty to see more of Edith than an
Englishman ever does of any woman not related to him, and to say and do
a thousand things any one of which at home would have necessitated a
proposal or instant flight. But no importance whatever seemed to be
attached to them here, and he was utterly at a loss how to make his
seriousness felt. Yet it was quite clear that if there was to be any
wooing done, he would have to do it,--go every step of the way himself,
with no assistance from Miss Bascombe. "How on earth am I to show her
that I care for her?" he thought. "Other men send her dozens of
bouquets, and box after box of expensive sweets, and loads of books, and
music without end, and they come to see her continually, and take her
about everywhere, and are entirely devoted to her. I wonder what
fellows over here do when they are serious? How do they make themselves
understood when they go on in this way habitually? It is a most
extraordinary state of affairs! And neither party seems to feel in the
least compromised by it. There is that fellow Clinch, who fairly lives
at the Bascombes', and when I asked her if she was engaged to him she
said, 'Engaged to George Clinch? What an idea! _No_. What put that in
your head? He is a nice fellow, and I like him immensely, but there's
nothing of that sort between us. What made you think there was? And when
I explained, she said, 'Oh, _that's_ nothing! He is just as nice to lots
of other girls.' And when I suggested to him that he was attached to
her, he said, 'Edith Bascombe? Oh, no! She is a great friend of mine,
and a charming girl, but I have never thought of that, nor has she. I go
there a good deal, but I have never paid her any marked attention.' No
marked attention, indeed! Nothing seems to mean anything here: it is
worse than being in England, where everything means something. No, it
isn't, either. I vow that when I am at the Clintons' in Surrey I
scarcely dare offer the girls so much as a muffin, and if I ask the
carroty one, Beatrice, the simplest question, she blushes and stammers
as if I were proposing out of hand. But what am I to do? I can't sing
and take to serenading Edith on moonlit nights with a guitar and a blue
ribbon around my neck. I can't push her into the river that I may pull
her out again. I dare say there is nothing for it but to adopt the
American method,--enter with about fifty others for a sort of
sentimental steeple-chase, elbow or knock every other fellow out of the
way in the running, work awfully hard to please the girl, and get in by
half a length, if one wins at all. There is no feeling sure of her until
one is coming back from the altar, evidently."
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