Chapter V

Mr. Ruck failed to take his departure for Appenzell on the morrow, in spite of the eagerness to see him off quaintly attributed by him to Mrs. Church. He continued on the contrary for many days after to hang about the garden, to wander up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in desultory conversation with his fellow boarders, and to endeavour to assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the American journals. But it was at least on the morrow that I had the honour of making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance. She came into the salon after the midday breakfast, her German octavo under her arm, and appealed to me for assistance in selecting a quiet corner.

“Would you very kindly,” she said, “move that large fauteuil a little more this way? Not the largest; the one with the little cushion. The fauteuils here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for another. Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that will do. Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired after she had seated herself. “If not I should like briefly to converse with you. It’s some time since I’ve met a young American of your—what shall I call it?—affiliations. I’ve learned your name from Madame Beaurepas; I must have known in other days some of your people. I ask myself what has become of all my friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, but now I meet no one I either know or desire to know. Don’t you think there’s a great difference between the people one meets and the people one would like to meet? Fortunately, sometimes,” my patroness graciously added, “there’s no great difference. I suppose you’re a specimen—and I take you for a good one,” she imperturbably went on—“of modern young America. Tell me, then, what modern young America is thinking of in these strange days of ours. What are its feelings, its opinions, its aspirations? What is its _ideal_?” I had seated myself and she had pointed this interrogation with the gaze of her curiously bright and impersonal little eyes. I felt it embarrassing to be taken for a superior specimen of modern young America and to be expected to answer for looming millions. Observing my hesitation Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and gave a dismal, a desperate smile. “_Has_ it an ideal?” she softly asked. “Well, we must talk of this,” she proceeded without insisting. “Speak just now for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe to any intelligent conscious end?”

“No great end to boast of,” I said. “But I seem to feel myself study a little.”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that. You’re gathering up a little European culture; that’s what we lack, you know, at home. No individual can do much, of course; but one mustn’t be discouraged—every little so counts.”

“I see that you at least are doing your part,” I bravely answered, dropping my eyes on my companion’s learned volume.

“Ah yes, I go as straight as possible to the sources. There’s no one after all like the Germans. That is for digging up the facts and the evidence. For conclusions I frequently diverge. I form my opinions myself. I’m sorry to say, however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I don’t do much to spread the light. I’m afraid I’m sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I frankly confess it—to the class of impenitent absentees.”

“I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, “of making the acquaintance of your daughter. She tells me you’ve been a long time in Europe.”

She took it blandly. “Can one ever be _too_ long? You see it’s _our_ world, that of us few real fugitives from the rule of the mob. We shall never go back to that.”

“Your daughter nevertheless fancies she yearns!” I replied.

“Has she been taking you into her confidence? She’s a more sensible young lady than she sometimes appears. I’ve taken great pains with her; she’s really—I may be permitted to say it—superbly educated.”

“She seemed to me to do you honour,” I made answer. “And I hear she speaks fluently four languages.”

“It’s not only that,” said Mrs. Church in the tone of one sated with fluencies and disillusioned of diplomas. “She has made what we call _de fortes études_—such as I suppose you’re making now. She’s familiar with the results of modern science; she keeps pace with the new historical school.”

“Ah,” said I, “she has gone much further than I!”

She seemed to look at me a moment as for the tip of the ear of irony. “You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you force me therefore to mention the fact that I speak of such matters with a certain intelligence.”

“I should never dream of doubting it,” I returned, “but your daughter nevertheless strongly holds that you ought to take her home.” I might have feared that these words would practically represent treachery to the young lady, but I was reassured by seeing them produce in her mother’s placid surface no symptom whatever of irritation.

“My daughter has her little theories,” that lady observed; “she has, I may say, her small fond illusions and rebellions. And what wonder! What would youth be without its Sturm and Drang? Aurora says to herself—all at her ease—that she would be happier in their dreadful New York, in their dreary Boston, in their desperate Philadelphia, than in one of the charming old cities in which our lot is cast. But she knows not what she babbles of—that’s all. We must allow our children their yearning to make mistakes, mustn’t we? But we must keep the mistakes down to as few as possible.”

Her soft sweet positiveness, beneath which I recognised all sorts of really hard rigours of resistance and aggression, somehow breathed a chill on me. “American cities,” I none the less threw off, “are the paradise of the female young.”

“Do you mean,” she inquired, “that the generations reared in those places are angels?”

“Well,” I said resolutely, “they’re the nicest of all girls.”

“This young lady—what’s her odd name?—with whom my daughter has formed a somewhat precipitate acquaintance: is Miss Ruck an angel and one of the nicest of all? But I won’t,” she amusedly added, “force you to describe her as she deserves. It would be too cruel to make a single exception.”

“Well,” I at any rate pleaded, “in America they’ve the easiest lot and the best time. They’ve the most innocent liberty.”

My companion laid her hand an instant on my arm. “My dear young friend, I know America, I know the conditions of life there down to the ground. There’s perhaps no subject on which I’ve reflected more than on our national idiosyncrasies.”

“To the effect, I see, of your holding them in horror,” I said a little roughly.

Rude indeed as was my young presumption Mrs. Church had still her cultivated patience, even her pity, for it. “We’re very crude,” she blandly remarked, “and we’re proportionately indigestible.” And lest her own refined strictures should seem to savour of the vice she deprecated she went on to explain. “There are two classes of minds, you know—those that hold back and those that push forward. My daughter and I are not pushers; we move with the slow considerate steps to which a little dignity may still cling. We like the old trodden paths; we like the old old world.”

“Ah,” said I, “you know what you like. There’s a great virtue in that.”

“Yes, we like Europe; we prefer it. We like the opportunities of Europe; we like the _rest_. There’s so much in that, you know. The world seems to me to be hurrying, pressing forward so fiercely, without knowing in the least where it’s going. ‘Whither?’ I often ask in my little quiet way. But I’ve yet to learn that any one can tell me.”

“You’re a grand old conservative,” I returned while I wondered whether I myself might have been able to meet her question.

Mrs. Church gave me a smile that was equivalent to a confession. “I wish to retain a wee bit—just a wee bit. Surely we’ve done so much we might rest a while; we might pause. That’s all my feeling—just to stop a little, to wait, to take breath. I’ve seen so many changes. I want to draw in, to draw in—to hold back, to hold back.”

“You shouldn’t hold your daughter back!” I laughed as I got up. I rose not by way of closing our small discussion, for I felt my friend’s exposition of her views to be by no means complete, but in order to offer a chair to Miss Aurora, who at this moment drew near. She thanked me and remained standing, but without at first, as I noticed, really facing her parent.

“You’ve been engaged with your new acquaintance, my dear?” this lady inquired.

“Yes, mamma,” said the girl with a sort of prompt sweet dryness.

“Do you find her very edifying?”

Aurora had a silence; then she met her mother’s eyes. “I don’t know, mamma. She’s very fresh.”

I ventured a respectful laugh. “Your mother has another word for that. But I must not,” I added, “be indigestibly raw.”

“Ah, vous m’en voulez?” Mrs. Church serenely sighed. “And yet I can’t pretend I said it in jest. I feel it too much. We’ve been having a little social discussion,” she said to her daughter. “There’s still so much to be said. And I wish,” she continued, turning to me, “that I could give you our point of view. Don’t you wish, Aurora, that we could give him our point of view?”

“Yes, mamma,” said Aurora.

“We consider ourselves very fortunate in our point of view, don’t we, dearest?” mamma demanded.

“Very fortunate indeed, mamma.”

“You see we’ve acquired an insight into European life,” the elder lady pursued. “We’ve our place at many a European fireside. We find so much to esteem—so much to enjoy. Don’t we find delightful things, my daughter?”

“So very delightful, mamma,” the girl went on with her colourless calm. I wondered at it; it offered so strange a contrast to the mocking freedom of her tone the night before; but while I wondered I desired to testify to the interest at least with which she inspired me.

“I don’t know what impression you ladies may have found at European firesides,” I again ventured, “but there can be very little doubt of the impression you must have made there.”

Mrs. Church got in motion to acknowledge my compliment. “We’ve spent some charming hours. And that reminds me that we’ve just now such an occasion in prospect. We’re to call upon some Genevese friends—the family of the Pasteur Galopin. They’re to go with us to the old library at the Hôtel de Ville, where there are some very interesting documents of the period of the Reformation: we’re promised a glimpse of some manuscripts of poor Servetus, the antagonist and victim, you know, of the dire Calvin. Here of course one can only speak of ce monsieur under one’s breath, but some day when we’re more private”—Mrs. Church looked round the room—“I’ll give you my view of him. I think it has a force of its own. Aurora’s familiar with it—aren’t you, my daughter, familiar with my view of the evil genius of the Reformation?”

“Yes, mamma—_very_,” said Aurora with docility—and also, as I thought, with subtlety—while the two ladies went to prepare for their visit to the Pasteur Galopin.