Other persons still, on closer observation, would have felt that his most appropriate field was neither the army nor the church, but simply the world--the social, successful, worldly world.If he had a sword in one hand and a Bible in the other he had a Court Guide concealed somewhere about his person.His profile was hard and handsome, his eyes were both cold and kind, his dark straight hair was imperturbably smooth and prematurely streaked with grey.There was nothing in existence that he didn't take seriously.He had a first-rate power of work and an ambition as minutely organised as a German plan of invasion.His only real recreation was to go to church, but he went to parties when he had time.If he was in love with Rose Tramore this was distracting to him only in the same sense as his religion, and it was included in that department of his extremely sub-divided life.His religion indeed was of an encroaching, annexing sort.Seen from in front he looked diffident and blank, but he was capable of exposing himself in a way (to speak only of the paths of peace) wholly inconsistent with shyness.He had a passion for instance for open-air speaking, but was not thought on the whole to excel in it unless he could help himself out with a hymn.In conversation he kept his eyes on you with a kind of colourless candour, as if he had not understood what you were saying and, in a fashion that made many people turn red, waited before answering.This was only because he was considering their remarks in more relations than they had intended.He had in his face no expression whatever save the one just mentioned, and was, in his profession, already very distinguished.
He had seen Rose Tramore for the first time on a Sunday of the previous March, at a house in the country at which she was staying with her father, and five weeks later he had made her, by letter, an offer of marriage.She showed her father the letter of course, and he told her that it would give him great pleasure that she should send Captain Jay about his business."My dear child," he said, "we must really have some one who will be better fun than that." Rose had declined the honour, very considerately and kindly, but not simply because her father wished it.She didn't herself wish to detach this flower from the stem, though when the young man wrote again, to express the hope that he MIGHT hope--so long was he willing to wait--and ask if he might not still sometimes see her, she answered even more indulgently than at first.She had shown her father her former letter, but she didn't show him this one; she only told him what it contained, submitting to him also that of her correspondent.Captain Jay moreover wrote to Mr.Tramore, who replied sociably, but so vaguely that he almost neglected the subject under discussion--a communication that made poor Bertram ponder long.
He could never get to the bottom of the superficial, and all the proprieties and conventions of life were profound to him.
Fortunately for him old Mrs.Tramore liked him, he was satisfactory to her long-sightedness; so that a relation was established under cover of which he still occasionally presented himself in Hill Street--presented himself nominally to the mistress of the house.He had had scruples about the veracity of his visits, but he had disposed of them; he had scruples about so many things that he had had to invent a general way, to dig a central drain.Julia Tramore happened to meet him when she came up to town, and she took a view of him more benevolent than her usual estimate of people encouraged by her mother.The fear of agreeing with that lady was a motive, but there was a stronger one, in this particular case, in the fear of agreeing with her niece, who had rejected him.His situation might be held to have improved when Mr.Tramore was taken so gravely ill that with regard to his recovery those about him left their eyes to speak for their lips; and in the light of the poor gentleman's recent death it was doubtless better than it had ever been.