“It is very good of you,” Tristrem began; “I didn’t know, of course—you see, I knew that if you saw the young lady—but what am I calling her a young lady for?” he asked, in an aside, of himself—“Miss Raritan, I mean,” he continued aloud, “you would think me fortunate as a king’s cousin.” He paused. “I am sure,” he reflected, “I don’t know what I am talking about. What I say—is sheer imbecility. However,” he continued, again, “I want to thank you. You have seen so little of me that I did not expect you would be particularly interested, I—I—”
He hesitated again, and then ceased speaking. He had been looking at his father, and something in his father’s stare fascinated and disturbed his train of thought. For the moment he was puzzled. From his childhood he had felt that his father disliked him, though the reason of that dislike he had never understood. It was one of those things that you get so accustomed to that it is accepted, like baldness, as a matter of course, as a thing which had to be and could not be otherwise. To his grandfather, who was at once the most irascible and gentlest of men, and whom he had loved instinctively, from the first, with the unreasoning faith that children have—to him he had, in earlier days, spoken more than once of the singularity of his father’s attitude. The old gentleman, however, had no explanation to give. Or, if he had one, he preferred to keep it to himself. But he petted the boy outrageously, with some idea of making up for it all, and of showing that he at least had love enough for two.
And now, as Tristrem gazed in his father’s face, he seemed to decipher something that was not dislike—rather the contented look of one who learns of an enemy’s disgrace, a compound of malice and of glee.
“That was all I had to say,” Tristrem added, with his winning smile, as though apologizing for the lameness of the conclusion. And thereupon he left the room and went out to consult a jeweller and bear the tidings to other ears.
For some time he was absurdly happy. His grandfather received the announcement of the coming marriage with proper enthusiasm. He laughed sagaciously at Tristrem’s glowing descriptions of the bride that was to be, and was for going to call on the mother and daughter at once, and was only prevented on learning that they had both left town.
“But I must write,” he said, and write he did, two elaborate letters, couched in that phraseology at once recondite and simple which made our ancestors the delightful correspondents that they were. The letters were old-fashioned indeed. Some of the sentences were enlivened with the eccentricities of orthography which were in vogue in the days of the Spectator. The handwriting was infamous, and the signature on each was adorned with an enormous flourish. They were not models for a Perfect Letter Writer, but they were heartfelt and honest, and they served their purpose very well.
“And, Tristrem,” the old gentleman said, when the addresses had been dried with a shower of sand and the letters despatched, “you must take her this, with my love. I gave it to your mother on her wedding day, and now it should go to her.” From a little red case he took a diamond brooch, set in silver, which he polished reflectively on his sleeve. “She was very sweet, Tristrem, your mother was—a good girl, and a pretty one. Did I ever tell you about the time—”
And the old gentleman ran on with some anecdote of the dear dead days in which his heart was tombed. Tristrem listened with the interest of those that love. He had heard the story, and many others of a similar tenor, again and again, but, somehow, he never heard them too often. There was nothing wearisome to him in such chronicles; and as he sat listening, and now and then prompting with some forgotten detail, anyone who had happened on the scene would have accounted it pleasant to watch the young fellow and the old man talking together over the youth of her who had been mother to one and daughter to the other.
“See!” said Tristrem at last, when his grandfather had given the brooch into his keeping. “See! I have something for her too.” And with that he displayed a ruby, unset, that was like a clot of blood. “I shall have it put in a ring,” he explained, “but this might do for a bonnet-pin;” and then he produced a green stone, white-filmed, that had a heart of oscillating flame.
Mr. Van Norden had taken the ruby in his hand and held it off at arm’s length, and then between two fingers, to the light, that he might the better judge of its beauty. But at the mention of the bonnet-pin he turned to look:
“Surely, Tristrem, you would not give her that; it’s an opal.”
“And what if it is?”
“But it is not lucky.”
Tristrem smiled blithely, with the bravery that comes of nineteenth-century culture.
“It’s a pearl with a soul,” he answered, “that’s what it is. And if Viola doesn’t like it I’ll send it to you.”
“God forbid,” Mr. Van Norden replied; “if anyone sent me
