'Please go on,' said the girl, earnestly.
'You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and liberty and what is called in Europe a 'position.' But you take a painful view of life, as one may say.'
'One ought to think it bright and charming and delightful, eh?' asked Gertrude.
'I should say so—if one can. It is true it all depends upon that,' Felix added.
'You know there is a great deal of misery in the world,' said his model.
'I have seen a little of it,' the young man rejoined. 'But it was all over there—beyond the sea. I don't see any here. This is a paradise.'
Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work. 'To 'enjoy,'' she began at last, 'to take life—not painfully, must one do something wrong?'
Felix gave his long, light laugh again. 'Seriously, I think not. And for this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time as incapable of wrong- doing.'
'I am sure,' said Gertrude, 'that you are very wrong in telling a person that she is incapable of that. We are never nearer to evil than when we believe that.'
'You are handsomer than ever,' observed Felix, irrelevantly.
Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this. There was not so much excitement in it as at first. 'What ought one to do?' she continued. 'To give parties, to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?'
'I don't think it 's what one does or one does n't do that promotes enjoyment,' her companion answered. 'It is the general way of looking at life.'
'They look at it as a discipline—that 's what they do here. I have often been told that.'
'Well, that 's very good. But there is another way,' added Felix, smiling: 'to look at it as an opportunity.'
'An opportunity—yes,' said Gertrude. 'One would get more pleasure that way.'
'I don't attempt to say anything better for it than that it has been my own way—and that is not saying much!' Felix had laid down his palette and brushes; he was leaning back, with his arms folded, to judge the effect of his work. 'And you know,' he said, 'I am a very petty personage.'
'You have a great deal of talent,' said Gertrude.
'No—no,' the young man rejoined, in a tone of cheerful impartiality, 'I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable. I assure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure. The world will never hear of me.' Gertrude looked at him with a strange feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew and which she did not, and how full of brilliant talents it must be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities. 'You need n't in general attach much importance to anything I tell you,' he pursued; 'but you may believe me when I say this,—that I am little better than a good-natured feather-head.'
'A feather-head?' she repeated.
'I am a species of Bohemian.'
'A Bohemian?' Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as a geographical denomination; and she quite failed to understand the figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it. But it gave her pleasure.
Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet; he slowly came toward her, smiling. 'I am a sort of adventurer,' he said, looking down at her.
She got up, meeting his smile. 'An adventurer?' she repeated. 'I should like to hear your adventures.'
For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand; but he dropped his own hands suddenly into the pockets of his painting-jacket. 'There is no reason why you should n't,' he said. 'I have been an adventurer, but my adventures have been very innocent. They have all been happy ones; I don't think there are any I should n't tell. They were very pleasant and very pretty; I should like to go over them in memory. Sit down again, and I will begin,' he added in a moment, with his naturally persuasive smile.
Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played the violin in a little band of musicians—not of high celebrity—who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial concerts. He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a troupe of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences.
While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived in a fantastic world; she seemed to herself to be reading a romance that came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing so delightful since the perusal of 'Nicholas Nickleby.' One afternoon she went to see her cousin, Mrs. Acton, Robert's mother, who was a great invalid, never leaving the house. She came back alone, on foot, across the fields—this being a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston with her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon some of his friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother—remembered her, but said nothing about her—and several of whom, with the gentle ladies their wives, had driven out from town to pay their respects at the little house among the apple-trees, in vehicles which reminded the Baroness, who received her visitors with discriminating civility, of the large, light, rattling barouche in which she herself had made her journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning; in the western sky the great picture of a New England sunset, painted in crimson and silver, was suspended from the zenith; and the stony pastures, as Gertrude traversed them, thinking intently to herself, were covered with a light, clear glow. At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from the distance a man's figure; he stood there as if he were waiting for her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand. She had a feeling as of not having seen him for some time; she could not have said for how long, for it yet seemed to her that he had been very lately at the house.
