by Henry James
Longmore felt himself gape, but he gasped an “Ah!” to cover it. Madame Clairin’s dip into the family annals had apparently imparted an honest zeal to her indignation. “For a long time,” she continued, “my belle-soeur has been taking the attitude of an injured woman, affecting a disgust with the world and shutting herself up to read free-thinking books. I’ve never permitted myself, you may believe, the least observation on her conduct, but I can’t accept it as the last word either of taste or of tact. When a woman with her prettiness lets her husband stray away she deserves no small part of her fate. I don’t wish you to agree with me—on the contrary; but I call such a woman a pure noodle. She must have bored him to death. What has passed between them for many months needn’t concern us; what provocation my sister has had—monstrous, if you wish—what ennui my brother has suffered. It’s enough that a week ago, just after you had ostensibly gone to Brussels, something happened to produce an explosion. She found a letter in his pocket, a photograph, a trinket, que sais-je? At any rate there was a grand scene. I didn’t listen at the keyhole, and I don’t know what was said; but I’ve reason to believe that my poor brother was hauled over the coals as I fancy none of his ancestors have ever been—even by angry ladies who weren’t their wives.”
Longmore had leaned forward in silent attention with his elbows on his knees, and now, impulsively, he dropped his face into his hands. “Ah poor, poor woman!”
“Voilà!” said Madame Clairin. “You pity her.”
“Pity her?” cried Longmore, looking up with ardent eyes and forgetting the spirit of the story to which he had been treated in the miserable facts. “Don’t you?”
“A little. But I’m not acting sentimentally—I’m acting scientifically. We’ve always been capable of ideas. I want to arrange things; to see my brother free to do as he chooses; to see his wife contented. Do you understand me?”
“Very well, I think,” the young man said. “You’re the most immoral person I’ve lately had the privilege of conversing with.”
Madame Clairin took it calmly. “Possibly. When was ever a great peacemaker not immoral?”
“Ah no,” Longmore protested. “You’re too superficial to be a great peacemaker. You don’t begin to know anything about Madame de Mauves.”
She inclined her head to one side while her fine eyes kept her visitor in view; she mused a moment and then smiled as with a certain compassionate patience. “It’s not in my interest to contradict you.”
“It would be in your interest to learn, madam” he resolutely returned, “what honest men most admire in a woman—and to recognise it when you see it.”
She was wonderful—she waited a moment. “So you are in love!” she then effectively brought out.
For a moment he thought of getting up, but he decided to stay. “I wonder if you’d understand me,” he said at last, “if I were to tell you that I have for Madame de Mauves the most devoted and most respectful friendship?”
“You underrate my intelligence. But in that case you ought to exert your influence to put an end to these painful domestic scenes.”
“Do you imagine she talks to me about her domestic scenes?” Longmore cried.
His companion stared. “Then your friendship isn’t returned?” And as he but ambiguously threw up his hands, “Now, at least,” she added, “she’ll have something to tell you. I happen to know the upshot of my brother’s last interview with his wife.” Longmore rose to his feet as a protest against the indelicacy of the position into which he had been drawn; but all that made him tender made him curious, and she caught in his averted eyes an expression that prompted her to strike her blow. “My brother’s absurdly entangled with a certain person in Paris; of course he ought not to be, but he wouldn’t be my brother if he weren’t. It was this irregular passion that dictated his words. ‘Listen to me, madam,’ he cried at last; ‘let us live like people who understand life! It’s unpleasant to be forced to say such things outright, but you’ve a way of bringing one down to the rudiments. I’m faithless, I’m heartless, I’m brutal, I’m everything horrible—it’s understood. Take your revenge, console yourself: you’re too charming a woman to have anything to complain of. Here’s a handsome young man sighing himself into a consumption for you. Listen to your poor compatriot and you’ll find that virtue’s none the less becoming for being good-natured. You’ll see that it’s not after all such a doleful world and that there’s even an advantage in having the most impudent of husbands.”’ Madame Clairin paused; Longmore had turned very pale. “You may believe it,” she amazingly pursued; “the speech took place in my presence; things were done in order. And now, monsieur”—this with a wondrous strained grimace which he was too troubled at the moment to appreciate, but which he remembered later with a kind of awe—“we count on you!”
“Her husband said this to her face to face, as you say it to me now?” he asked after a silence.
“Word for word and with the most perfect politeness.”
“And Madame de Mauves—what did she say?”
Madame Clairin smiled again. “To such a speech as that a woman says—nothing. She had been sitting with a piece of needlework, and I think she hadn’t seen Richard since their quarrel the day before. He came in with the gravity of an ambassador, and I’m sure that when he made his demande en mariage his manner wasn’t more respectful. He only wanted white gloves!” said Longmore’s friend. “My belle-soeur sat silent a few moments, drawing her stitches, and then without a word, without a glance, walked out of the room. It was just what she should have done!”
“Yes,” the young man repeated, “it was just what she should have done.”
“And I, left alone with my brother, do you know what I said?”
Longmore shook his head.
“Mauvals sujet!” he suggested.
“‘You’ve done me the honour,’ I said, ‘to take this step in my presence. I don’t pretend to qualify it. You know what you’re about, and it’s your own affair. But you may confide in my discretion.’ Do you think he has had reason to complain of it?” She received no answer; her visitor had slowly averted himself; he passed his gloves mechanically round the band of his hat. “I hope,” she cried, “you’re not going to start for Brussels!”
Plainly he was much disturbed, and Madame Clairin might congratulate herself on the success of her plea for old-fashioned manners. And yet there was something that left her more puzzled than satisfied in the colourless tone with which he answered, “No, I shall remain here for the present.” The processes of his mind were unsociably private, and she could have fancied for a moment that he was linked with their difficult friend in some monstrous conspiracy of asceticism.
“Come this evening,” she nevertheless bravely resumed. “The rest will take care of itself. Meanwhile I shall take the liberty of telling my sister-in-law that I’ve repeated—in short, that I’ve put you au fait.”
He had a start but he controlled himself, speaking quietly enough. “Tell her what you please. Nothing you can tell her will affect her conduct.”
“Voyons! Do you mean to tell me that a woman young, pretty, sentimental, neglected, wronged if you will—? I see you don’t believe it. Believe simply in your own opportunity!” she went on. “But for heaven’s sake, if it is to lead anywhere, don’t come back with that visage de croquemort. You look as if you were going to bury your heart—not to offer it to a pretty woman. You’re much better when you smile—you’re very nice then. Come, do yourself justice.”
He remained a moment face to face with her, but his expression didn’t change. “I shall do myself justice,” he however after an instant made answer; and abruptly, with a bow, he took his departure.
VII
HE FELT, when he found himself unobserved and outside, that he must plunge into violent action, walk fast and far and defer the opportunity for thought. He strode away into the forest, swinging his cane, throwing back his head, casting his eyes into verdurous vistas and following the road without
a purpose. He felt immensely excited, but could have given no straight name to his agitation. It was a joy as all increase of freedom is joyous; something seemed to have been cleared out of his path and his destiny to have rounded a cape and brought him into sight of an open sea. But it was a pain in the degree in which his freedom somehow resolved itself into the need of despising all mankind with a single exception; and the fact that Madame de Mauves inhabited a planet contaminated by the presence of the baser multitude kept elation from seeming a pledge of ideal bliss.
There she was, at any rate, and circumstances now forced them to be intimate. She had ceased to have what men call a secret for him, and this fact itself brought with it a sort of rapture. He had no prevision that he should “profit,” in the vulgar sense, by the extraordinary position into which they had been thrown; it might be but a cruel trick of destiny to make hope a harsher mockery and renunciation a keener suffering. But above all this rose the conviction that she could do nothing that wouldn’t quicken his attachment. It was this conviction that gross accident—all odious in itself—would force the beauty of her character into more perfect relief for him that made him stride along as if he were celebrating a spiritual feast. He rambled at hazard for a couple of hours, finding at last that he had left the forest behind him and had wandered into an unfamiliar region. It was a perfectly rural scene, and the still summer day gave it a charm for which its meagre elements but half accounted.
He thought he had never seen anything so characteristically French; all the French novels seemed to have described it, all the French landscapists to have painted it. The fields and trees were of a cool metallic green; the grass looked as if it might stain his trousers and the foliage his hands. The clear light had a mild greyness, the sheen of silver, not of gold, was in the work-a-day sun. A great red-roofed high-stacked farmhouse, with whitewashed walls and a straggling yard, surveyed the highroad, on one side, from behind a transparent curtain of poplars. A narrow stream half-choked with emerald rushes and edged with grey aspens occupied the opposite quarter. The meadows rolled and sloped away gently to the low horizon, which was barely concealed by the continuous line of clipped and marshalled trees. The prospect was not rich, but had a frank homeliness that touched the young man’s fancy. It was full of light atmosphere and diffused clearness, and if it was prosaic it was somehow sociable.
Longmore was disposed to walk further, and he advanced along the road beneath the poplars. In twenty minutes he came to a village which straggled away to the right, among orchards and potagers. On the left, at a stone’s throw from the road, stood a little pink-faced inn which reminded him that he had not breakfasted, having left home with a prevision of hospitality from Madame de Mauves. In the inn he found a brick-tiled parlour and a hostess in sabots and a white cap, whom, over the omelette she speedily served him—borrowing licence from the bottle of sound red wine that accompanied it—he assured she was a true artist. To reward his compliment she invited him to smoke his cigar in her little garden behind the house.
Here he found a tonnelle and a view of tinted crops stretching down to the stream. The tonnelle was rather close, and he preferred to lounge on a bench against the pink wall, in the sun, which was not too hot. Here, as he rested and gazed and mused, he fell into a train of thought which, in an indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the scene about him. His heart, which had been beating fast for the past three hours, gradually checked its pulses and left him looking at life with rather a more level gaze. The friendly tavern sounds coming out through the open windows, the sunny stillness of the yellowing grain which covered so much vigorous natural life, conveyed no strained nor high-pitched message, had little to say about renunciation—nothing at all about spiritual zeal. They communicated the sense of plain ripe nature, expressed the unperverted reality of things, declared that the common lot isn’t brilliantly amusing and that the part of wisdom is to grasp frankly at experience lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was for his beginning to wonder after this whether a deeply-wounded heart might be soothed and healed by such a scene, it would be difficult to explain; certain it was that as he sat there he dreamt, awake, of an unhappy woman who strolled by the slow-flowing stream before him and who pulled down the fruit-laden boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused, and at last found himself quite angry that he couldn’t somehow think worse of Madame de Mauves—or at any rate think otherwise. He could fairly claim that in the romantic way he asked very little of life—made modest demands on passion: why then should his only passion be born to ill fortune? Why should his first—his last—glimpse of positive happiness be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?
It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the same stock, he had in his composition a lurking principle of sacrifice, sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake, to the authority of which he had ever paid due deference, that he now felt all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce, to renounce again, to renounce for ever, was this all that youth and longing and ardour were meant for? Was experience to be muffled and mutilated like an indecent picture? Was a man to sit and deliberately condemn his future to be the blank memory of a regret rather than the long possession of a treasure? Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds muddled by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist now seemed not to dare, but simply to BE, to live on possible terms.
His hostess came out to hang a moist cloth on the hedge, and, though her guest was sitting quietly enough, she might have imagined in his kindled eyes a flattering testimony to the quality of her wine. As she turned back into the house she was met by a young man of whom Longmore took note in spite of his high distraction. He was evidently a member of that jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has an affinity with the unestablished and unexpected in life—the element often gazed at with a certain wistfulness out of the curtained windows even of the highest respectability.
Longmore was struck first with his looking like a very clever man and then with his looking like a contented one. The combination, as it was expressed in his face, might have arrested the attention of a less exasperated reasoner. He had a slouched hat and a yellow beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished sketch in oils under the other. He stopped and stood talking for some moments to the landlady, while something pleasant played in his face. They were discussing the possibilities of dinner; the hostess enumerated some very savoury ones, and he nodded briskly, assenting to everything. It couldn’t be, Longmore thought, that he found such ideal ease in the prospect of lamb-chops and spinach and a croûte aux fruits. When the dinner had been ordered he turned up his sketch, and the good woman fell to admiring and comparing, to picking up, off by the stream-side, the objects represented.
Was it his work, Longmore wondered, that made him so happy? Was a strong talent the best thing in the world? The landlady went back to her kitchen, and the young painter stood, as if he were waiting for something, beside the gate which opened upon the path across the fields. Longmore sat brooding and asking himself if it weren’t probably better to cultivate the arts than to cultivate the passions. Before he had answered the question the painter had grown tired of waiting. He had picked up a pebble, tossed it lightly into an upper window and called familiarly “Claudine!” Claudine appeared; Longmore heard her at the window, bidding the young man cultivate patience. “But I’m losing my light,” he said; “I must have my shadows in the same place as yesterday.”
“Go without me then,” Claudine answered; “I’ll join you in ten minutes.” Her voice was fresh and young; it represented almost aggressively to Longmore that she was as pleased as her companion.
“Don’t forget the Chénier,” cried the young man, who, turning away, passed out of the gate and followed the path across the fields until he disappeared among the trees by the side of the stream. Who might Claudine be? Longmore vaguely wondered; and was she as pretty as her voice? Before long he had a chance to satisfy himself; she came out of the house with her hat and parasol, prepared to follow her compa
nion. She had on a pink muslin dress and a little white hat, and she was as pretty as suffices almost any Frenchwoman to be pleasing. She had a clear brown skin and a bright dark eye and a step that made walking as light a matter as being blown—and this even though she happened to be at the moment not a little over-weighted. Her hands were encumbered with various articles involved in her pursuit of her friend. In one arm she held her parasol and a large roll of needlework, and in the other a shawl and a heavy white umbrella, such as painters use for sketching. Meanwhile she was trying to thrust into her pocket a paper-covered volume which Longmore saw to be the poems of Andre Chénier, and in the effort dropping the large umbrella and marking this with a half-smiled exclamation of disgust. Longmore stepped forward and picked up the umbrella, and as she, protesting her gratitude, put out her hand to take it, he recognised her as too obliging to the young man who had preceded her.