by Henry James
“I don’t follow you at all—I never follow you,” I said, wishing I could have sketched her just as she sat there. She was quite grotesque.
“I would rather go without you,” she repeated.
“I think that after I come into my property I shall do just as I do now,” said Eunice. “After all, where will the difference be? I have to-day everything I shall ever have. It’s more than enough.”
“You won’t have to ask Mr. Caliph for everything.”
“I ask him for nothing now.”
“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Ermine, “you don’t deserve to be rich.”
“I am not rich,” Eunice remarked.
“Ah, well, if you want a million!”
“I don’t want anything,” said Eunice.
That’s not exactly true. She does want something, but I don’t know what it is.
May 2.—Mr. Caliph is really very delightful. He made his appearance to-day and carried everything before him. When I say he carried everything, I mean he carried me; for Eunice had not my prejudices to get over. When I said to her after he had gone, “Your trustee is a very clever man,” she only smiled a little, and turned away in silence. I suppose she was amused with the air of importance with which I announced this discovery. Eunice had made it several years ago, and could not be excited about it. I had an idea that some allusion would be made to the way he has neglected her—some apology at least for his long absence. But he did something better than this. He made no definite apology; he only expressed, in his manner, his look, his voice, a tenderness, a charming benevolence, which included and exceeded all apologies. He looks rather tired and preoccupied; he evidently has a great many irons of his own in the fire, and has been thinking these last weeks of larger questions than the susceptibilities of a little girl in New York who happened several years ago to have an exuberant mother. He is thoroughly genial, and is the best talker I have seen since my return. A totally different type from the young Adrian. He is not in the least handsome—is, indeed, rather ugly; but with a fine, expressive, pictorial ugliness. He is forty years old, large and stout, may even be pronounced fat; and there is something about him that I don’t know how to describe except by calling it a certain richness. I have seen Italians who have it, but this is the first American. He talks with his eyes, as well as with his lips, and his features are wonderfully mobile. His smile is quick and delightful; his hands are well-shaped, but distinctly fat; he has a pale complexion and a magnificent brown beard—the beard of Haroun-al-Raschid. I suppose I must write it very small; but I have an intimate conviction that he is a Jew, or of Jewish origin. I see that in his plump, white face, of which the tone would please a painter, and which suggests fatigue, but is nevertheless all alive; in his remarkable eye, which is full of old expressions—expressions which linger there from the past, even when they are not active to-day; in his profile, in his anointed beard, in the very rings on his large pointed fingers. There is not a touch of all this in his step-brother; so I suppose the Jewish blood is inherited from his father. I don’t think he looks like a gentleman; he is something apart from all that. If he is not a gentleman, he is not in the least a bourgeois—neither is he of the Bohemian type. In short, as I say, he is a Jew; and Jews of the upper class have a style of their own. He is very clever, and I think genuinely kind. Nothing could be more charming than his way of talking to Eunice—a certain paternal interest mingled with an air of respectful gallantry (he gives her good advice, and at the same time pays her compliments); the whole thing being not in the least overdone. I think he found her changed—“more of a person,” as Mrs. Ermine says; I even think he was a little surprised. She seems slightly afraid of him, which rather surprised me—she was, from her own account, so familiar with him of old. He is decidedly florid, and was very polite to me; that was a part of the floridity. He asked if we had seen his step-brother; begged us to be kind to him and to let him come and see us often. He doesn’t know many people in New York, and at that age it is everything (I quote Mr. Caliph) for a young fellow to be at his ease with one or two charming women. “Adrian takes a great deal of knowing; is horribly shy; but is most intelligent, and has one of the sweetest natures! I’m very fond of him—he’s all I’ve got. Unfortunately the poor boy is cursed with a competence. In this country there is nothing for such a young fellow to do; he hates business, and has absolutely no talent for it. I shall send him back here the next time I see him.” Eunice made no answer to this, and, in fact, had little answer to make to most of Mr. Caliph’s remarks, only sitting looking at the floor with a smile. I thought it proper therefore to reply that we had found Mr. Frank very pleasant, and hoped he would soon come again. Then I mentioned that the other day I had had a long visit from him alone; we had talked for an hour, and become excellent friends. Mr. Caliph, as I said this, was leaning forward with his elbow on his knee and his hand uplifted, grasping his thick beard. The other hand, with the elbow out, rested on the other knee; his head was turned toward me, askance. He looked at me a moment with his deep bright eye—the eye of a much older man than he; he might have been posing for a water-colour. If I had painted him, it would have been in a high-peaked cap, and an amber-coloured robe, with a wide girdle of pink silk wound many times round his waist, stuck full of knives with jewelled handles. Our eyes met, and we sat there exchanging a glance. I don’t know whether he’s vain, but I think he must see I appreciate him; I am sure he understands everything.
“I like you when you say that,” he remarked at the end of a minute.
“I am glad to hear you like me!” This sounds horrid and pert as I relate it.
“I don’t like every one,” said Mr. Caliph.
“Neither do Eunice and I; do we, Eunice?”
“I am afraid we only try to,” she answered, smiling her most beautiful smile.
“Try to? Heaven forbid! I protest against that,” I cried. I said to Mr. Caliph that Eunice was too good.
“She comes honestly by that. Your mother was an angel, my child,” he said to her.
Cousin Letitia was not an angel, but I have mentioned that Mr. Caliph is florid. “You used to be very good to her,” Eunice murmured, raising her eyes to him.
He had got up; he was standing there. He bent his head, smiling like an Italian. “You must be the same, my child.”
“What can I do?” Eunice asked.
“You can believe in me—you can trust me.”
“I do, Mr. Caliph. Try me and see!”
This was unexpectedly gushing, and I instinctively turned away. Behind my back, I don’t know what he did to her—I think it possible he kissed her. When you call a girl “my child,” I suppose you may kiss her; but that may be only my bold imagination. When I turned round he had taken up his hat and stick, to say nothing of buttoning a very tightly-fitting coat round a very spacious person, and was ready to offer me his hand in farewell.
“I am so glad you are with her. I am so glad she has a companion so accomplished—so capable.”
“So capable of what?” I said, laughing; for the speech was absurd, as he knows nothing about my accomplishments.
There is nothing solemn about Mr. Caliph; but he gave me a look which made it appear to me that my levity was in bad taste. Yes, humiliating as it is to write it here, I found myself rebuked by a Jew with fat hands! “Capable of advising her well!” he said softly.
“Ah, don’t talk about advice,” Eunice exclaimed. “Advice always gives an idea of trouble, and I am very much afraid of trouble.”
“You ought to get married,” he said, with his smile coming back to him.
Eunice coloured and turned away, and I observed—to say something—that this was just what Mrs. Ermine said.
“Mrs. Ermine? ah, I hear she’s a charming woman!” And shortly after that he went away.
That was almost the only weak thing he said—the only thing for mere form, for of course no one can really think her charming; least of all a clever man like that. I don’t like Americans
to resemble Italians, or Italians to resemble Americans; but putting that aside, Mr. Caliph is very prepossessing. He is wonderfully good company; he will spoil us for other people. He made no allusion to business, and no appointment with Eunice for talking over certain matters that are pending; but I thought of this only half an hour after he had gone. I said nothing to Eunice about it, for she would have noticed the omission herself, and that was enough. The only other point in Mr. Caliph that was open to criticism is his asking Eunice to believe in him—to trust him. Why shouldn’t she, pray? If that speech was curious—and, strange to say, it almost appeared so—it was incredibly naïf. But this quality is insupposable of Mr. Caliph; who ever heard of a naïf Jew? After he had gone I was on the point of saying to Eunice, “By the way, why did you never mention that he is a Hebrew? That’s an important detail.” But an impulse that I am not able to define stopped me, and now I am glad I didn’t speak. I don’t believe Eunice ever made the discovery, and I don’t think she would like it if she did make it. That I should have done so on the instant only proves that I am in the habit of studying the human profile!
May 9.—Mrs. Ermine must have discovered that Mr. Caliph has heard she is charming, for she is perpetually coming in here with the hope of meeting him. She appears to think that he comes every day; for when she misses him, which she has done three times (that is, she arrives just after he goes), she says that if she doesn’t catch him on the morrow she will go and call upon him. She is capable of that, I think; and it makes no difference that he is the busiest of men and she the idlest of women. He has been here four times since his first call, and has the air of wishing to make up for the neglect that preceded it. His manner to Eunice is perfect; he continues to call her “my child,” but in a superficial, impersonal way, as a Catholic priest might do it. He tells us stories of Washington, describes the people there, and makes us wonder whether we should care for K Street and 141/2 Street. As yet, to the best of my knowledge, not a word about Eunice’s affairs; he behaves as if he had simply forgotten them. It was, after all, not out of place the other day to ask her to “believe in him”; the faith wouldn’t come as a matter of course. On the other hand he is so pleasant that one would believe in him just to oblige him. He has a great deal of trust-business, and a great deal of law-business of every kind. So at least he says; we really know very little about him but what he tells us. When I say “we,” of course I speak mainly for myself, as I am perpetually forgetting that he is not so new to Eunice as he is to me. She knows what she knows, but I only know what I see. I have been wondering a good deal what is thought of Mr. Caliph town,” as they say here, but without much result, for naturally I can’t go down-town and see. The appearance of the thing prevents my asking questions about him; it would be very compromising to Eunice, and make people think that she complains of him—which is so far from being the case. She likes him just as he is, and is apparently quite satisfied. I gather, moreover, that he is thought very brilliant, though a little peculiar, and that he has made a great deal of money. He has a way of his own of doing things, and carries imagination and humour, and a sense of the beautiful, into Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. Mrs. Ermine announced the other day that he is “considered the most fascinating man in New York”; but that is the romantic up-town view of him, and not what I want. His brother has gone out of town for a few days, but he continues to recommend the young Adrian to our hospitality. There is something really touching in his relation to that rather limited young man.
May 11.—Mrs. Ermine is in high spirits; she has met Mr. Caliph—I don’t know where—and she quite confirms the up-town view. She thinks him the most fascinating man she has ever seen, and she wonders that we should have said so little about him. He is so handsome, so high-bred; his manners are so perfect; he’s a regular old dear. I think, of course ill-naturedly, several degrees less well of him since I have heard Mrs. Ermine’s impressions. He is not handsome, he is not high-bred, and his manners are not perfect. They are original, and they are expressive; and if one likes him there is an interest in looking for what he will do and say. But if one should happen to dislike him, one would detest his manners and think them familiar and vulgar. As for breeding, he has about him, indeed, the marks of antiquity of race; yet I don’t think Mrs. Ermine would have liked me to say, “Oh yes, all Jews have blood!” Besides, I couldn’t before Eunice. Perhaps I consider Eunice too much; perhaps I am betrayed by my old habit of trying to see through millstones; perhaps I interpret things too richly—just as (I know) when I try to paint an old wall I attempt to put in too much “character”; character being in old walls, after all, a finite quantity. At any rate she seems to me rather nervous about Mr. Caliph: that appeared after a little when Mrs. Ermine came back to the subject. She had a great deal to say about the oddity of her never having seen him before, of old, “for after all,” as she remarked, “we move in the same society—he moves in the very best.” She used to hear Eunice talk about her trustee, but she supposed a trustee must be some horrid old man with a lot of papers in his hand, sitting all day in an office. She never supposed he was a prince in disguise. “We’ve got a trustee somewhere, only I never see him; my husband does all the business. No wonder he keeps him out of the way if he resembles Mr. Caliph.” And then suddenly she said to Eunice, “My dear, why don’t you marry him? I should think you would want to.” Mrs. Ermine doesn’t look through millstones; she contents herself with giving them a poke with her parasol. Eunice coloured, and said she hadn’t been asked; she was evidently not pleased with Mrs. Ermine’s joke, which was of course as flat as you like. Then she added in a moment—“I should be very sorry to marry Mr. Caliph, even if he were to ask me. I like him, but I don’t like him enough for that.”
“I should think he would be quite in your style—he’s so literary. They say he writes,” Mrs. Ermine went on.
“Well, I don’t write,” Eunice answered, laughing.
“You could if you would try. I’m sure you could make a lovely book.” Mrs. Ermine’s amiability is immense.
“It’s safe for you to say that—you never read.”
“I have no time,” said Mrs. Ermine, “but I like literary conversation. It saves time, when it comes in that way. Mr. Caliph has ever so much.”
“He keeps it for you. With us he is very frivolous,” I ventured to observe.
“Well, what you call frivolous! I believe you think the prayer-book frivolous.”
“Mr. Caliph will never marry any one,” Eunice said, after a moment. “That I am very sure of.”
Mrs. Ermine stared; there never is so little expression in her face as when she is surprised. But she soon recovered herself. “Don’t you believe that! He will take some quiet little woman, after you have all given him up.”
Eunice was sitting at the piano, but had wheeled round on the stool when her cousin came in. She turned back to it and struck a few vague chords, as if she were feeling for something. “Please don’t speak that way; I don’t like it,” she said, as she went on playing.
“I will speak any way you like!” Mrs. Ermine cried, with her vacant laugh.
“I think it very low.” For Eunice this was severe. “Girls are not always thinking about marriage. They are not always thinking of people like Mr. Caliph—that way.”
“They must have changed then, since my time! Wasn’t it so in yours, Miss Condit?” She’s so stupid that I don’t think she meant to make a point.
“I had no ‘time,’ Mrs. Ermine. I was born an old maid.”
“Well, the old maids are the worst. I don’t see why it’s low to talk about marriage. It’s thought very respectable to marry. You have only to look round you.”
“I don’t want to look round me; it’s not always so beautiful, what you see,” Eunice said, with a small laugh and a good deal of perversity, for a young woman so reasonable.
“I guess you read too much,” said Mrs. Ermine, getting up and setting her bonnet-ribbons at the mirror.
“I sh
ould think he would hate them!” Eunice exclaimed, striking her chords.
“Hate who?” her cousin asked.
“Oh, all the silly girls.”
“Who is ‘he,’ pray?” This ingenious inquiry was mine.
“Oh, the Grand Turk!” said Eunice, with her voice covered by the sound of her piano. Her piano is a great resource.
May 12.—This afternoon, while we were having our tea, the Grand Turk was ushered in, carrying the most wonderful bouquet of Boston roses that seraglio ever produced. (That image, by the way, is rather mixed; but as I write for myself alone, it may stand.) At the end of ten minutes he asked Eunice if he might see her alone—“on a little matter of business.” I instantly rose to leave them, but Eunice said that she would rather talk with him in the library; so she led him off to that apartment. I remained in the drawing-room, saying to myself that I had at last discovered the fin mot of Mr. Caliph’s peculiarities, which is so very simple that I am a great goose not to have perceived it before. He is a man with a system; and his system is simply to keep business and entertainment perfectly distinct. There may be pleasure for him in his figures, but there are no figures in his pleasure—which has hitherto been to call upon Eunice as a man of the world. Today he was to be the trustee; I could see it in spite of his bouquet, as soon as he came in. The Boston roses didn’t contradict that, for the excellent reason that as soon as he had shaken hands with Eunice, who looked at the flowers and not at him, he presented them to Catherine Condit. Eunice then looked at this lady; and as I took the roses I met her eyes, which had a charming light of pleasure. It would be base in me, even in this strictly private record, to suggest that she might possibly have been displeased; but if I cannot say that the expression of her face was lovely without appearing in some degree to point to an ignoble alternative, it is the fault of human nature. Why Mr. Caliph should suddenly think it necessary to offer flowers to Catherine Condit—that is a line of inquiry by itself. As I said some time back, it’s a part of his floridity. Besides, any presentation of flowers seems sudden; I don’t know why, but it’s always rather a coup de théâtre. I am writing late at night; they stand on my table, and their fragrance is in the air. I don’t say it for the flowers, but no one has ever treated poor Miss Condit with such consistent consideration as Mr. Caliph. Perhaps she is morbid: this is probably the Diary of a Morbid Woman; but in such a matter as that she admires consistency. That little glance of Eunice comes back to me as I write; she is a pure, enchanting soul. Mrs. Ermine came in while she was in the library with Mr. Caliph, and immediately noticed the Boston roses, which effaced all the other flowers in the room.