by Henry James
“What a clever fellow he is!” thought Mason. “There he stands, rattling off musical terms as if he had never thought of anything else. And yet, when he talks medicine, it’s impossible to talk more to the point.” Mason continued to be very well satisfied with Knight’s intelligence of his case, and with his treatment of it. He had been in the country now for three weeks, and he would hesitate indeed to affirm that he felt materially better; but he felt more comfortable. There were moments when he feared to push the inquiry as to his real improvement, because he had a sickening apprehension that he would discover that in one or two important particulars he was worse. In the course of time he imparted these fears to his physician. “But I may be mistaken,” he added, “and for this reason. During the last fortnight I have become much more sensible of my condition than while I was in town. I then accepted each additional symptom as a matter of course. The more the better, I thought. But now I expect them to give an account of themselves. Now I have a positive wish to recover.”
Dr. Knight looked at his patient for a moment curiously. “You are right,” he said; “a little impatience is a very good thing.”
“O, I’m not impatient. I’m patient to a most ridiculous extent. I allow myself a good six months, at the very least.”
“That is certainly not unreasonable,” said Knight. “And will you allow me a question? Do you intend to spend those six months in this place?”
“I’m unable to answer you. I suppose I shall finish the summer here, unless the summer finishes me. Mrs. Mason will hear of nothing else. In September I hope to be well enough to go back to town, even if I’m not well enough to think of work. What do you advise?”
“I advise you to put away all thoughts of work. That is imperative. Haven’t you been at work all your life long? Can’t you spare a pitiful little twelvemonth to health and idleness and pleasure?”
“Ah, pleasure, pleasure!” said Mason, ironically.
“Yes, pleasure,” said the Doctor. “What has she done to you that you should speak of her in that manner?”
“O, she bothers me,” said Mason.
“You are very fastidious. It’s better to be bothered by pleasure than by pain.”
“I don’t deny it. But there is a way of being indifferent to pain. I don’t mean to say that I have found it out, but in the course of my illness I have caught a glimpse of it. But it’s beyond my strength to be indifferent to pleasure. In two words, I’m afraid of dying of kindness.”
“O, nonsense!”
“Yes, it’s nonsense; and yet it’s not. There would be nothing miraculous in my not getting well.”
“It will be your fault if you don’t. It will prove that you’re fonder of sickness than health, and that you’re not fit company for sensible mortals. Shall I tell you?” continued the Doctor, after a moment’s hesitation. “When I knew you in the army, I always found you a step beyond my comprehension. You took things too hard. You had scruples and doubts about everything. And on top of it all you were devoured with a mania of appearing to take things easily and to be perfectly indifferent. You played your part very well, but you must do me justice to confess that it was a part.”
“I hardly know whether that’s a compliment or an impertinence. I hope, at least, that you don’t mean to accuse me of playing a part at the present moment.”
“On the contrary. I’m your physician; you’re frank.”
“It’s not because you’re my physician that I’m frank,” said Mason. “I shouldn’t think of burdening you in that capacity with my miserable caprices and fancies”; and Ferdinand paused a moment. “You’re a man!” he pursued, laying his hand on his companion’s arm. “There’s nothing here but women, Heaven reward them! I’m saturated with whispers and perfumes and smiles, and the rustling of dresses. It takes a man to understand a man.”
“It takes more than a man to understand you, my dear Mason,” said Knight, with a kindly smile. “But I listen.”
Mason remained silent, leaning back in his chair, with his eyes wandering slowly over the wide patch of sky disclosed by the window, and his hands languidly folded on his knees. The Doctor examined him with a look half amused, half perplexed. But at last his face grew quite sober, and he contracted his brow. He placed his hand on Mason’s arm and shook it gently, while Ferdinand met his gaze. The Doctor frowned, and, as he did so, his companion’s mouth expanded into a placid smile. “If you don’t get well,” said Knight,—“if you don’t get well—” and he paused.
“What will be the consequences?” asked Ferdinand, still smiling.
“I shall hate you,” said Knight, half smiling too.
Mason broke into a laugh. “What shall I care for that?”
“I shall tell people that you were a poor, spiritless fellow,—that you are no loss.”
“I give you leave,” said Ferdinand.
The Doctor got up. “I don’t like obstinate patients,” he said.
Ferdinand burst into a long loud laugh, which ended in a fit of coughing.
“I’m getting too amusing,” said Knight; “I must go.”
“Nay, laugh and grow fat,” cried Ferdinand. “I promise to get well.” But that evening, at least, he was no better, as it turned out, for his momentary exhilaration. Before turning in for the night, he went into the drawing-room to spend half an hour with the ladies. The room was empty, but the lamp was lighted, and he sat down by the table and read a chapter in a novel. He felt excited, light-headed, light-hearted, half-intoxicated, as if he had been drinking strong coffee. He put down his book, and went over to the mantelpiece, above which hung a mirror, and looked at the reflection of his face. For almost the first time in his life he examined his features, and wondered if he were good-looking. He was able to conclude only that he looked very thin and pale, and utterly unfit for the business of life. At last he heard an opening of doors overhead, and a rustling of voluminous skirts on the stairs. Mrs. Mason came in, fresh from the hands of her maid, and dressed for a party.
And is Miss Hofmann going?” asked Mason. He felt that his heart was beating, and that he hoped Mrs. Mason would say no. His momentary sense of strength, the mellow lamplight, the open piano, and the absence, of the excellent woman before him, struck him as so many reasons for her remaining at home. But the sound of the young lady’s descent upon the stairs was an affirmative to his question. She forthwith appeared upon the threshold, dressed in crape of a kind of violent blue, with desultory clusters of white roses. For some ten minutes Mason had the pleasure of being witness to that series of pretty movements and preparations with which women in full dress beguile the interval before their carriage is announced; their glances at the mirror, their slow assumption of their gloves, their mutual revisions and felicitations.
“Isn’t she lovely?” said Miss Hofmann to the young man, nodding at her aunt, who looked every inch the handsome woman that she was.
“Lovely, lovely, lovely!” said Ferdinand, so emphatically, that Miss Hofmann transferred her glance to him; while Mrs. Mason good-humoredly turned her back, and Caroline saw that Mason was engaged in a survey of her own person.
Miss Hofmann smiled discreetly. “I wish very much you might come,” she said.
“I shall go to bed,” answered Ferdinand, simply.
“Well, that’s much better. We shall go to bed at two o’clock. Meanwhile I shall caper about the rooms to the sound of a piano and fiddle, and Aunt Maria will sit against the wall with her toes tucked under a chair. Such is life!”
“You’ll dance then,” said Mason.
“I shall dance. Dr. Knight has invited me.”
“Does he dance well, Caroline?” asked Mrs. Mason.
“That remains to be seen. I have a strong suspicion that he does not.”
“Why?” asked Ferdinand.
“He does so many other things well.”
“That’s no reason,” said Mrs. Mason. “Do you dance, Ferdinand?”
Ferdinand shook his head.
“I
like a man to dance,” said Caroline, “and yet I like him not to dance.”
“That’s a very womanish speech, my dear,” said Mrs. Mason.
“I suppose it is. It’s inspired by my white gloves and my low dress, and my roses. When once a woman gets on such things, Colonel Mason, expect nothing but nonsense.—Aunt Maria,” the young lady continued, “will you button my glove?”
“Let me do it,” said Ferdinand. “Your aunt has her gloves on.”
“Thank you.” And Miss Hofmann extended a long white arm, and drew back with her other hand the bracelet from her wrist. Her glove had three buttons, and Mason performed the operation with great deliberation and neatness.
“And now,” said he, gravely, “I hear the carriage. You want me to put on your shawl.”
“If you please,”—Miss Hofmann passed her full white drapery into his hands, and then turned about her fair shoulders. Mason solemnly covered them, while the waiting-maid, who had come in, performed the same service for the elder lady.
“Good by,” said the latter, giving him her hand. “You’re not to come out into the air.” And Mrs. Mason, attended by her maid, transferred herself to the carriage. Miss Hofmann gathered up her loveliness, and prepared to follow. Ferdinand stood leaning against the parlor door, watching her; and as she rustled past him she nodded farewell with a silent smile. A characteristic smile, Mason thought it,—a smile in which there was no expectation of triumph and no affectation of reluctance, but just the faintest suggestion of perfectly good-humored resignation. Mason went to the window and saw the carriage roll away with its lighted lamps, and then stood looking out into the darkness. The sky was cloudy. As he turned away the maidservant came in, and took from the table a pair of rejected gloves. “I hope you’re feeling better, sir,” she said, politely.
“Thank you, I think I am.”
“It’s a pity you couldn’t have gone with the ladies.”
“I’m not well enough yet to think of such things,” said Mason, trying to smile. But as he walked across the floor he felt himself attacked by a sudden sensation, which cannot be better described than as a general collapse. He felt dizzy, faint, and sick. His head swam and his knees trembled. “I’m ill,” he said, sitting down on the sofa; “you must call William.”
William speedily arrived, and conducted the young man to his room. “What on earth had you been doing, sir?” asked this most irreproachable of serving-men, as he helped him to undress.
Ferdinand was silent a moment. “I had been putting on Miss Hofmann’s shawl,” he said.
“Is that all, sir?”
“And I had been buttoning her glove.”
“Well, sir, you must be very prudent.”
“So it appears,” said Ferdinand.
He slept soundly, however, and the next morning was the better for it. “I’m certainly better,” he said to himself, as he slowly proceeded to his toilet. “A month ago such an attack as that of last evening would have effectually banished sleep. Courage, then. The Devil isn’t dead, but he’s dying.”
In the afternoon he received a visit from Horace Knight. “So you danced last evening at Mrs. Bradshaw’s,” he said to his friend.
“Yes, I danced. It’s a great piece of frivolity for a man in my position; but I thought there would be no harm in doing it just once, to show them I know how. My abstinence in future will tell the better. Your ladies were there. I danced with Miss Hofmann. She was dressed in blue, and she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Every one was talking about it.”
“I saw her,” said Mason, “before she went off.”
“You should have seen her there,” said Knight. “The music, the excitement, the spectators, and all that, bring out a woman’s beauty.”
“So I suppose,” said Ferdinand.
“What strikes me,” pursued the Doctor, “is her—what shall I call it?—her vitality, her quiet buoyancy. Of course, you didn’t see her when she came home? If you had, you would have noticed, unless I’m very much mistaken, that she was as fresh and elastic at two o’clock as she had been at ten. While all the other women looked tired and jaded and used up, she alone showed no signs of exhaustion. She was neither pale nor flushed, but still light-footed, rosy, and erect. She’s solid. You see I can’t help looking at such things as a physician. She has a magnificent organization. Among all those other poor girls she seemed to have something of the inviolable strength of a goddess”; and Knight smiled frankly as he entered the region of eloquence. “She wears her artificial roses and dew-drops as if she had gathered them on the mountain-tops, instead of buying them in Broadway. She moves with long steps, her dress rustles, and to a man of fancy it’s the sound of Diana on the forest-leaves.”
Ferdinand nodded assent. “So you’re a man of fancy,” he said.
“Of course I am,” said the Doctor.
Ferdinand was not inclined to question his friend’s estimate of Miss Hofmann, nor to weigh his words. They only served to confirm an impression which was already strong in his own mind. Day by day he had felt the growth of this impression. “He must be a strong man who would approach her,” he said to himself. “He must be as vigorous and elastic as she herself, or in the progress of courtship she will leave him far behind. He must be able to forget his lungs and his liver and his digestion. To have broken down in his country’s defence, even, will avail him nothing. What is that to her? She needs a man who has defended his country without breaking down,—a being complete, intact, well seasoned, invulnerable. Then,—then,” thought Ferdinand, “perhaps she will consider him. Perhaps it will be to refuse him. Perhaps, like Diana, to whom Knight compares her, she is meant to live alone. It’s certain, at least, that she is able to wait. She will be young at forty-five. Women who are young at forty-five are perhaps not the most interesting women. They are likely to have felt for nobody and for nothing. But it’s often less their own fault than that of the men and women about them. This one at least can feel; the thing is to move her. Her soul is an instrument of a hundred strings, only it takes a strong hand to draw sound. Once really touched, they will reverberate for ever and ever.”
In fine, Mason was in love. It will be seen that his passion was not arrogant nor uncompromising; but, on the contrary, patient, discreet, and modest,—almost timid. For ten long days, the most memorable days of his life,—days which, if he had kept a journal, would have been left blank,—he held his tongue. He would have suffered anything rather than reveal his emotions, or allow them to come accidentally to Miss Hofmann’s knowledge. He would cherish them in silence until he should feel in all his sinews that he was himself again, and then he would open his heart. Meanwhile he would be patient; he would be the most irreproachable, the most austere, the most insignificant of convalescents. He was as yet unfit to touch her, to look at her, to speak to her. A man was not to go a wooing in his dressing-gown and slippers.
There came a day, however, when, in spite of his high resolves, Ferdinand came near losing his balance. Mrs. Mason had arranged with him to drive in the phaeton after dinner. But it befell that, an hour before the appointed time, she was sent for by a neighbor who had been taken ill.
“But it’s out of the question that you should lose your drive,” said Miss Hofmann, who brought him her aunt’s apologies. “If you are still disposed to go, I shall be happy to take the reins. I shall not be as good company as Aunt Maria, but perhaps I shall be as good company as Thomas.” It was settled, accordingly, that Miss Hofmann should act as her aunt’s substitute, and at five o’clock the phaeton left the door. The first half of their drive was passed in silence; and almost the first words they exchanged were as they finally drew near to a space of enclosed ground, beyond which, through the trees at its farther extremity, they caught a glimpse of a turn in the river. Miss Hofmann involuntarily pulled up. The sun had sunk low, and the cloudless western sky glowed with rosy yellow. The trees which concealed the view flung over the grass a great screen of shadow, which reached out into the road. Betwe
en their scattered stems gleamed the broad white current of the Hudson. Our friends both knew the spot. Mason had seen it from a boat, when one morning a gentleman in the neighborhood, thinking to do him a kindness, had invited him to take a short sail; and with Miss Hofmann it had long been a frequent resort.
“How beautiful!” she said, as the phaeton stopped.
“Yes, if it wasn’t for those trees,” said Ferdinand. “They conceal the best part of the view.”
“I should rather say they indicate it,” answered his companion. “From here they conceal it; but they suggest to you to make your way in, and lose yourself behind them, and enjoy the prospect in privacy.”