by Henry James
“I hardly know. I never fancied there was anything between them, and yet, now that I look back, there has been nothing against it. They have talked of each other neither too much nor too little. Upon my soul, they’re an accomplished couple!” Glancing back at his friend’s constant reserve and self-possession, Ferdinand—strange as it may seem—could not repress a certain impulse of sympathetic admiration. He had had no vulgar rival. “Yes,” he repeated gravely, “she might do worse.”
“I suppose she might. He’s poor, but he’s clever; and I’m sure I hope to Heaven he loves her!”
Ferdinand said nothing.
“May I ask,” he resumed at length, “whether they became engaged yesterday, on that walk around the lawn?”
“No; it would be fine if they had, under our very noses! It was all done while Caroline was at the Stapletons’. It was agreed between them yesterday that she should tell me at once.”
“And when are they to be married?”
“In September, if possible. Caroline told me to tell you that she counts upon your staying for the wedding.”
“Staying where?” asked Mason, with a little nervous laugh.
“Staying here, of course,—in the house.”
Ferdinand looked his hostess full in the eyes, taking her hand as he did so. “‘The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.’”
“Ah, hold your tongue!” cried Mrs. Mason, pressing his hand. “How can you be so horrible? When Caroline leaves me, Ferdinand, I shall be quite alone. The tie which binds us together will be very much slackened by her marriage. I can’t help thinking that it was never very close, when I consider that I’ve had no part in the most important step of her life. I don’t complain. I suppose it’s natural enough. Perhaps it’s the fashion,—come in with striped petticoats and pea-jackets. Only it makes me feel like an old woman. It removes me twenty years at a bound from my own engagement, and the day I burst out crying on my mother’s neck because your uncle had told a young girl I knew, that he thought I had beautiful eyes. Now-a-days I suppose they tell the young ladies themselves, and have them cry on their own necks. It’s a great saving of time. But I shall miss Caroline all the same; and then, Ferdinand, I shall make a great deal of you.”
“The more the better,” said Ferdinand, with the same laugh; and at this moment Mrs. Mason was called away.
Ferdinand had not been a soldier for nothing. He had received a heavy blow, and he resolved to bear it like a man. He refused to allow himself a single moment of self-compassion. On the contrary, he spared himself none of the hard names offered by his passionate vocabulary. For not guessing Caroline’s secret, he was perhaps excusable. Women were all inscrutable, and this one especially so. But Knight was a man like himself,—a man whom he esteemed, but whom he was loath to credit with a deeper and more noiseless current of feeling than his own, for his own was no babbling brook, betraying its course through green leaves. Knight had loved modestly and decently, but frankly and heartily, like a man who was not ashamed of what he was doing, and if he had not found it out it was his own fault. What else had he to do? He had been a besotted day-dreamer, while his friend had simply been a genuine lover. He deserved his injury, and he would bear it in silence. He had been unable to get well on an illusion; he would now try getting well on a truth. This was stern treatment, the reader will admit, likely to kill if it didn’t cure.
Miss Hofmann was absent for several hours. At dinner-time she had not returned, and Mrs. Mason and the young man accordingly sat down without her. After dinner Ferdinand went into the little parlor, quite indifferent as to how soon he met her. Seeing or not seeing her, time hung equally heavy. Shortly after her companions had risen from table, she rode up to the door, dismounted, tired and hungry, passed directly into the dining-room, and sat down to eat in her habit. In half an hour she came out, and, crossing the hall on her way up stairs, saw Mason in the parlor. She turned round, and, gathering up her long skirts with one hand, while she held a little sweet-cake to her lips with the other, stopped at the door to bid him good day. He left his chair, and went towards her. Her face wore a somewhat weary smile.
“So you’re going to be married,” he began abruptly.
Miss Hofmann assented with a slight movement of her head.
“I congratulate you. Excuse me if I don’t do it with the last grace. I feel all I dare to feel.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said Caroline, smiling, and taking a bite from her cake.
“I’m not sure that it’s not more unexpected than even such things have a right to be. There’s no doubt about it?”
“None whatever.”
“Well, Knight’s a very good fellow. I haven’t seen him yet,” he pursued, as Caroline was silent. “I don’t know that I’m in any hurry to see him. But I mean to talk to him. I mean to tell him that if he doesn’t do his duty by you, I shall—”
“Well?”
“I shall remind him of it.”
“O, I shall do that,” said Miss Hofmann.
Ferdinand looked at her gravely. “By Heaven! you know,” he cried with intensity, “it must be either one thing or the other.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“O, I understand myself. You’re not a woman to be thrown away, Miss Hofmann.”
Caroline made a gesture of impatience. “I don’t understand you,” she repeated. “You must excuse me. I’m very tired.” And she went rapidly up stairs.
On the following day Ferdinand had an opportunity to make his compliments to the Doctor. “I don’t congratulate you on doing it,” he said, “so much as on the way you’ve done it.”
“What do you know about the way?” asked Knight.
“Nothing whatever. That’s just it. You took good care of that. And you’re to be married in the autumn?”
“I hope so. Very quietly, I suppose. The parson to do it, and Mrs. Mason and my mother and you to see it’s done properly.” And the Doctor put his hand on Ferdinand’s shoulder.
“O, I’m the last person to choose,” said Mason. “If he were to omit anything, I should take good care not to cry out.” It is often said, that, next to great joy, no state of mind is so frolicsome as great distress. It was in virtue of this truth, I suppose, that Ferdinand was able to be facetious. He kept his spirits. He talked and smiled and lounged about with the same deferential languor as before. During the interval before the time appointed for the wedding it was agreed between the parties interested that Miss Hofmann should go over and spend a few days with her future mother-in-law, where she might partake more freely and privately than at home of the pleasure of her lover’s company. She was absent a week; a week during which Ferdinand was thrown entirely upon his hostess for entertainment and diversion,—things he had a very keen sense of needing. There were moments when it seemed to him that he was living by mere force of will, and that, if he loosened the screws for a single instant, he would sink back upon his bed again, and never leave it. He had forbidden himself to think of Caroline, and had prescribed a course of meditation upon that other mistress, his first love, with whom he had long since exchanged pledges,—she of a hundred names,—work, letters, philosophy, fame. But, after Caroline had gone, it was supremely difficult not to think of her. Even in absence she was supremely conspicuous. The most that Ferdinand could do was to take refuge in books,—an immense number of which he now read, fiercely, passionately, voraciously,—in conversation with Mrs. Mason, and in such society as he found in his path. Mrs. Mason was a great gossip,—a gossip on a scale so magnificent as to transform the foible into a virtue. A gossip, moreover, of imagination, dealing with the future as well as the present and the past,—with a host of delightful half-possibilities, as well as with stale hyper-verities. With her, then, Ferdinand talked of his own future, into which she entered with the most outspoken and intelligent sympathy. “A man,” he declared, “couldn’t do better; and a man certainly would do worse.” Mrs. Mason arranged a European tour and a residence
for her nephew, in the manner of one who knew her ground. Caroline once married, she herself would go abroad, and fix herself in one of the several capitals in which an American widow with an easy income may contrive to support existence. She would make her dwelling a base of supplies—a pied-à-terre—for Ferdinand, who should take his time to it, and visit every accessible spot in Europe and the East. She would leave him free to go and come as he pleased, and to live as he listed; and I may say that, thanks to Mrs. Mason’s observation of Continental manners, this broad allowance covered in her view quite as much as it did in poor Ferdinand’s, who had never been out of his own country. All that she would ask of him would be to show himself say twice a year in her drawing-room, and to tell her stories of what he had seen; that drawing-room which she already saw in her mind’s eye,—a compact little entresol with tapestry hangings in the doorways and a coach-house in the court attached. Mrs. Mason was not a severe moralist; but she was quite too sensible a woman to wish to demoralize her nephew, and to persuade him to trifle with his future,—that future of which the war had already made light, in its own grim fashion. Nay, she loved him; she thought him the cleverest, the most promising, of young men. She looked to the day when his name would be on men’s lips, and it would be a great piece of good fortune to have very innocently married his uncle. Herself a great observer of men and manners, she wished to give him advantages which had been sterile in her own case.
In the way of society, Ferdinand made calls with his hostess, went out twice to dine, and caused Mrs. Mason herself to entertain company at dinner. He presided on these occasions with distinguished good grace. It happened, moreover, that invitations had been out some days for a party at the Stapletons’,—Miss Hofmann’s friends,—and that, as there was to be no dancing, Ferdinand boldly announced his intention of going thither. “Who knows?” he said; “it may do me more good than harm. We can go late, and come away early.” Mrs. Mason doubted of the wisdom of the act; but she finally assented, and prepared herself. It was late when they left home, and when they arrived the rooms—rooms of exceptional vastness—were at their fullest. Mason received on this his first appearance in society a most flattering welcome, and in a very few moments found himself in exclusive possession of Miss Edith Stapleton, Caroline’s particular friend. This young lady has had no part in our story, because our story is perforce short, and condemned to pick and choose its constituent elements. With the least bit wider compass we might long since have whispered to the reader, that Miss Stapleton—who was a charming girl—had conceived a decided preference for our Ferdinand over all other men whomsoever. That Ferdinand was utterly ignorant of the circumstance is our excuse for passing it by; and we linger upon it, therefore, only long enough to suggest that the young girl must have been very happy at this particular moment.
“Is Miss Hofmann here?” Mason asked, as he accompanied her into an adjoining room.
“Do you call that being here?” said Miss Stapleton, looking across the apartment. Mason, too, looked across.
There he beheld Miss Hofmann, full-robed in white, standing fronted by a semicircle of no less than five gentlemen,—all good-looking and splendid. Her head and shoulders rose serene from the bouillonnement of her beautiful dress, and she looked and listened with that half-abstracted air which is pardonable in a woman beset by half a dozen admirers. When Caroline’s eyes fell upon her friend, she stared a moment, surprised, and then made him the most gracious bow in the world,—a bow so gracious that her little circle half divided itself to let it pass, and looked around to see where the deuce it was going. Taking advantage of this circumstance, Miss Hofmann advanced several steps. Ferdinand went towards her, and there, in sight of a hundred men and as many women, she gave him her hand, and smiled upon him with extraordinary sweetness. They went back together to Miss Stapleton, and Caroline made him sit down, she and her friend placing themselves on either side. For half an hour Ferdinand had the honor of engrossing the attention of the two most charming girls present,—and, thanks to this distinction, indeed the attention of the whole company. After which the two young ladies had him introduced successively to every maiden and matron in the assembly in the least remarkable for loveliness or wit. Ferdinand rose to the level of the occasion, and conducted himself with unprecedented gallantry. Upon others he made, of course, the best impression, but to himself he was an object almost of awe. I am compelled to add, however, that he was obliged to fortify himself with repeated draughts of wine; and that even with the aid of this artificial stimulant he was unable to conceal from Mrs. Mason and his physician that he was looking far too much like an invalid to be properly where he was.
“Was there ever anything like the avidity of these dreadful girls?” said Mrs. Mason to the Doctor. “They’ll let a man swoon at their feet sooner than abridge a tête-à-tête that amuses them. Then they’ll have up another. Look at little Miss McCarthy, yonder, with Ferdinand and George Stapleton before her. She’s got them contradicting each other, and she looks like a Roman fast lady at the circus. What does she care so long as she makes her evening? They like a man to look as if he were going to die,—it’s interesting.”
Knight went over to his friend, and told him sternly that it was high time he should be at home and in bed. “You’re looking horribly,” he added shrewdly, as Ferdinand resisted.
“You’re not looking horribly, Colonel Mason,” said Miss McCarthy, a very audacious little person, overhearing this speech.
“It isn’t a matter of taste, madam,” said the Doctor, angrily; “it’s a fact.” And he led away his patient.
Ferdinand insisted that he had not hurt himself, that, on the contrary, he was feeling uncommonly well; but his face contradicted him. He continued for two or three days more to play at “feeling well,” with a courage worthy of a better cause. Then at last he let disease have its way. He settled himself on his pillows, and fingered his watch, and began to wonder how many revolutions he would still witness of those exquisite little needles. The Doctor came, and gave him a sound rating for what he called his imprudence. Ferdinand heard him out patiently; and then assured him that prudence or imprudence had nothing to do with it; that death had taken fast hold of him, and that now his only concern was to make easy terms with his captor. In the course of the same day he sent for a lawyer and altered his will. He had no known relatives, and his modest patrimony stood bequeathed to a gentleman of his acquaintance who had no real need of it. He now divided it into two unequal portions, the smaller of which he devised to William Bowles, Mrs. Mason’s man-servant and his personal attendant; and the larger—which represented a considerable sum—to Horace Knight. He informed Mrs. Mason of these arrangements, and was pleased to have her approval.
From this moment his strength began rapidly to ebb, and the shattered fragments of his long-resisting will floated down its shallow current into dissolution. It was useless to attempt to talk, to beguile the interval, to watch the signs, or to count the hours. A constant attendant was established at his side, and Mrs. Mason appeared only at infrequent moments. The poor woman felt that her heart was broken, and spent a great deal of time in weeping. Miss Hofmann remained, naturally, at Mrs. Knight’s. “As far as I can judge,” Horace had said, “it will be a matter of a week. But it’s the most extraordinary case I ever heard of. The man was steadily getting well.” On the fifth day he had driven Miss Hofmann home, at her suggestion that it was no more than decent that she should give the young man some sign of sympathy. Horace went up to Ferdinand’s bedside, and found the poor fellow in the languid middle condition between sleeping and waking in which he had passed the last forty-eight hours. “Colonel,” he asked gently, “do you think you could see Caroline?”
For all answer, Ferdinand opened his eyes. Horace went out, and led his companion back into the darkened room. She came softly up to the bedside, stood looking down for a moment at the sick man, and then stooped over him.
“I thought I’d come and make you a little visit,” she said.
“Does it disturb you?”
“Not in the least,” said Mason, looking her steadily in the eyes. “Not half as much as it would have done a week ago. Sit down.”
“Thank you. Horace won’t let me. I’ll come again.”
“You’ll not have another chance,” said Ferdinand. “I’m not good for more than two days yet. Tell them to go out. I wish to see you alone. I wouldn’t have sent for you, but, now that you’re here, I might as well take advantage of it.”
“Have you anything particular to say?” asked Knight, kindly.
“O, come,” said Mason, with a smile which he meant to be good-natured, but which was only ghastly; “you’re not going to be jealous of me at this time of day.”
Knight looked at Miss Hofmann for permission, and then left the room with the nurse. But a minute had hardly elapsed before Miss Hofmann hurried into the adjoining apartment, with her face pale and discomposed.
“Go to him!” she exclaimed. “He’s dying!”
When they reached him he was dead.
In the course of a few days his will was opened, and Knight came to the knowledge of his legacy. “He was a good, generous fellow,” he said to Mrs. Mason and Miss Hofmann, “and I shall never be satisfied that he mightn’t have recovered. It was a most extraordinary case.” He was considerate enough of his audience to abstain from adding that he would give a great deal to have been able to make an autopsy. Miss Hofmann’s wedding was, of course, not deferred. She was married in September, “very quietly.” It seemed to her lover, in the interval, that she was very silent and thoughtful. But this was certainly natural under the circumstances.
1868
CRAWFORD’S CONSISTENCY
WE were great friends, and it was natural that he should have let me know with all the promptness of his ardor that his happiness was complete. Ardor is here, perhaps, a misleading word, for Crawford’s passion burned with a still and hidden flame; if he had written sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow, he had never declaimed them in public. But he was deeply in love; he had been full of tremulous hopes and fears, and his happiness, for several weeks, had hung by a hair—the extremely fine line that appeared to divide the yea and nay of the young lady’s parents. The scale descended at last with their heavily-weighted consent in it, and Crawford gave himself up to tranquil bliss. He came to see me at my office—my name, on the little tin placard beneath my window, was garnished with an M.D., as vivid as new gilding could make it—long before that period of the morning at which my irrepressible buoyancy had succumbed to the teachings of experience (as it usually did about twelve o’clock), and resigned itself to believe that the particular day was not to be distinguished by the advent of the female form that haunted my dreams—the confiding old lady, namely, with a large account at the bank, and a mild, but expensive chronic malady. On that day I quite forgot the paucity of my patients and the vanity of my hopes in my enjoyment of Crawford’s contagious felicity. If we had been less united in friendship, I might have envied him; but as it was, with my extreme admiration and affection for him, I felt for half an hour as if I were going to marry the lovely Elizabeth myself. I reflected after he had left me that I was very glad I was not, for lovely as Miss Ingram was, she had always inspired me with a vague mistrust. There was no harm in her, certainly; but there was nothing else either. I don’t know to what I compared her—to a blushing rose that had no odor, to a blooming peach that had no taste. All that nature had asked of her was to be the prettiest girl of her time, and this request she obeyed to the letter. But when, of a morning, she had opened wide her beautiful, candid eyes, and half parted her clear, pink lips, and gathered up her splendid golden tresses, her day, as far as her own opportunity was concerned, was at an end; she had put her house in order, and she could fold her arms. She did so invariably, and it was in this attitude that Crawford saw her and fell in love with her. I could heartily congratulate him, for the fact that a blooming statue would make no wife for me, did not in the least discredit his own choice. I was human and erratic; I had an uneven temper and a prosaic soul. I wished to get as much as I gave—to be the planet, in short, and not the satellite. But Crawford had really virtue enough for two—enough of vital fire, of intelligence and devotion. He could afford to marry an inanimate beauty, for he had the wisdom which would supply her shortcomings, and the generosity which would forgive them.