Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/308



HE was complete, perfected, one might almost dare the word—elegant; "fine lady" was so beautifully a part of her—was her, indeed. Keppel, who had always apprehended things quite out of himself, whose perceptions, like the rays of a candle, constantly struck and illumined and compassed a world which, whatever it might be, wasn't as yet his, knew her at once for the realest thing of her kind. For him there was first the joy of knowing—just as for the humble collector there is the joy of knowing a perfect Gainsborough, for instance, though possession is another matter.

But it was, after all, destined to be possession for Keppel. How it came about—this possession, in its despair, its hope, its humility, its frightened courage, its despondency, and its last ultimate siege and storm, that recognized no barrier and assailed furiously, till she was won, till Frances was his wife—a little panting, a little startled, but wonderfully admiring of his strength,—how all this came about Keppel could not think out. Looked at calmly—not a common quality of his own view—it all came to an acknowledgment of Keppel's real worth—worth for Frances, at least.

There she was—Frances—anyway. Keppel loved the fact of her, the sense of her, as his wife! His love of what she was, what she represented, almost equalled, in a way, his love of her. It was nothing to Keppel's discredit that he so strongly cherished the pride of possession: pride that took itself out in little ways of congratulation, wonder, and satisfaction. His whole attitude toward Frances and what she represented to him was a nice part of his sensitiveness to the best things—things that in reality belonged to him, though his earlier life had held them in a vague perspective only.

In his eagerness to show her how far he had gone, how clearly he saw the values of his canvas, Keppel had spoken, at first, lightly of this earlier life, though not with shame. He gave her the truth of it, but he gave it humorously, with the result that Frances saw it, as he made her, of no great seriousness. The sum that she had to make out of his home, his friends, above all, his kindred, amounted of necessity to something rather unimportant. It was a relief to find it so. Not only were complications lessened, but he assumed a nearer valuation in her eyes.

After their marriage in Paris—which, it must be confessed, had been rather tumultuous and hurried, with little time on either side for subdued realization of what each was getting—the first month was their own, and perfectly their own. In the absorption of sharing all of himself, Keppel had no chance for the first old fear to creep in—the fear that Frances was, after all, too far removed from him by virtue of her ancestry, her fortune, her attenuation of fineness. And as for her, she accepted Keppel so generously, and, indeed, so simply, that what she was she made him, unquestioningly. They both felt it—this goodness of themselves, though it wasn't, of course, a thing to put into words.

There was one thing, it happened later, that Frances was not to understand about Keppel, nor could it be expected of her, in view of all the circumstances. She, herself, had never known it, for her girlhood had been spent almost wholly in travel abroad; and that, too, without parents, for they had died out of her memory. Life had resulted for her in an existence with a guardian's family, who, however excellent in attitude they were, made few attempts to establish a relation with their ward to simulate blood-kinship. Therefore the incomprehensible was destined to be Keppel's punctilious observance of close relations with his relatives.