the fresh spring sunshine which had so often attended lizzie weston her dusty climb up the hill of st.-cloud beamed on her, some two years later, in a scene and a situation of altered import.
the horse-chestnuts of the champs–elysees filtered its rays through the symmetrical umbrage inclosing the graveled space about daurent’s restaurant, and miss west, seated at a table within that privileged circle, presented to the light a hat much better able to sustain its scrutiny than those which had sheltered the brow of juliet deering’s instructress.
her dress was in keeping with the hat, and both belonged to a situation rich in such possibilities as the act of a leisurely luncheon at daurent’s in the opening week of the salon. her companions, of both sexes, confirmed and emphasized this impression by an elaborateness of garb and an ease of attitude implying the largest range of selection between the forms of parisian idleness; and even andora macy, seated opposite, as in the place of co-hostess or companion, reflected, in coy grays and mauves, the festal note of the occasion.
this note reverberated persistently in the ears of a solitary gentleman straining for glimpses of the group from a table wedged in the remotest corner of the garden; but to miss west herself the occurrence did not rise above the usual. for nearly a year she had been acquiring the habit of such situations, and the act of offering a luncheon at daurent’s to her cousins, the harvey mearses of providence, and their friend mr. jackson benn, produced in her no emotion beyond the languid glow which mr. benn’s presence was beginning to impart to such scenes.
“it’s frightful, the way you’ve got used to it,” andora macy had wailed in the first days of her friend’s transfigured fortune, when lizzie west had waked one morning to find herself among the heirs of an old and miserly cousin whose testamentary dispositions had formed, since her earliest childhood, the subject of pleasantry and conjecture in her own improvident family. old hezron mears had never given any sign of life to the luckless wests; had perhaps hardly been conscious of including them in the carefully drawn will which, following the old american convention, scrupulously divided his hoarded millions among his kin. it was by a mere genealogical accident that lizzie, falling just within the golden circle, found herself possessed of a pittance sufficient to release her from the prospect of a long gray future in mme. clopin’s pension.
the release had seemed wonderful at first; yet she presently found that it had destroyed her former world without giving her anew one. on the ruins of the old pension life bloomed the only flower that had ever sweetened her path; and beyond the sense of present ease, and the removal of anxiety for the future, her reconstructed existence blossomed with no compensating joys. she had hoped great things from the opportunity to rest, to travel, to look about her, above all, in various artful feminine ways, to be “nice” to the companions of her less privileged state; but such widenings of scope left her, as it were, but the more conscious of the empty margin of personal life beyond them. it was not till she woke to the leisure of her new days that she had the full sense of what was gone from them.
their very emptiness made her strain to pack them with transient sensations: she was like the possessor of an unfurnished house, with random furniture and bric-a-brac perpetually pouring in “on approval.” it was in this experimental character that mr. jackson benn had fixed her attention, and the languid effort of her imagination to adjust him to her requirements was seconded by the fond complicity of andora and the smiling approval of her cousins. lizzie did not discourage these demonstrations: she suffered serenely andora’s allusions to mr. benn’s infatuation, and mrs. mears’s casual boast of his business standing. all the better if they could drape his narrow square-shouldered frame and round unwinking countenance in the trailing mists of sentiment: lizzie looked and listened, not unhopeful of the miracle.
“i never saw anything like the way these frenchmen stare! doesn’t it make you nervous, lizzie?” mrs. mears broke out suddenly, ruffling her feather boa about an outraged bosom. mrs. mears was still in that stage of development when her countrywomen taste to the full the peril of being exposed to the gaze of the licentious gaul.
lizzie roused herself from the contemplation of mr. benn’s round baby cheeks and the square blue jaw resting on his perpendicular collar. “is some one staring at me?” she asked with a smile.
“don’t turn round, whatever you do! there — just over there, between the rhododendrons — the tall fair man alone at that table. really, harvey, i think you ought to speak to the head-waiter, or something; though i suppose in one of these places they’d only laugh at you,” mrs. mears shudderingly concluded.
her husband, as if inclining to this probability, continued the undisturbed dissection of his chicken wing; but mr. benn, perhaps aware that his situation demanded a more punctilious attitude, sternly revolved upon the parapet of his high collar in the direction of mrs. mears’s glance.
“what, that fellow all alone over there? why, he’s not french; he’s an american,” he then proclaimed with a perceptible relaxing of the facial muscles.
“oh!” murmured mrs. mears, as perceptibly disappointed, and mr. benn continued carelessly: “he came over on the steamer with me. he’s some kind of an artist — a fellow named deering. he was staring at me, i guess: wondering whether i was going to remember him. why, how d’ ‘e do? how are you? why, yes, of course; with pleasure — my friends, mrs. harvey mears — mr. mears; my friends miss macy and miss west.”
“i have the pleasure of knowing miss west,” said vincent deering with a smile.
