Great Short Novels of Henry James

by Henry James

  Her faith, however, was short-lived. Nothing had made any difference; it was perhaps too late. The London world heard in the first days of July, not that Sir Arthur Demesne was to marry Mrs. Headway, but that the pair had been privately and, it was to be hoped as regards Mrs. Headway on this occasion, indissolubly united. His mother gave neither sign nor sound; she only retired to the country.

  “I think you might have done differently,” said Mrs. Dolphin, very pale, to her brother. “But of course everything will come out now.”

  “Yes, and make her more the fashion than ever!” Littlemore answered with cynical laughter. After his little interview with the elder Lady Demesne he didn’t feel at liberty to call again on the younger; and he never learned—he never even wished to know—whether in the pride of her success she forgave him.

  Waterville—it was very strange—was positively scandalised at this success. He held that Mrs. Headway ought never to have been allowed to marry a confiding gentleman, and he used in speaking to Littlemore the same words as Mrs. Dolphin. He thought Littlemore might have done differently. But he spoke with such vehemence that Littlemore looked at him hard—hard enough to make him blush. “Did you want to marry her yourself?” his friend inquired. “My dear fellow, you’re in love with her! That’s what’s the matter with you.”

  This, however, blushing still more, Waterville indignantly denied. A little later he heard from New York that people were beginning to ask who in the world Lady Demesne “had been.”

  Lady Barberina

  Lady Barberina

  IN THE “international” novels and tales the basic Jamesian relation between Europe and America is a relation of marriage—a marriage symbolizing the reconciliation of competing cultures, the union of ­innocence and experience, faith and civilization. If you are disposed to take a less idealistic view of the matter you might see it simply as the inevitable conjunction of wealth and aristocracy. In some cases the marriage fails to come off because no way is found to bridge the conflict of manners or morals; yet regardless of the specific turn of the plot, the American side of the equation is nearly always represented by a young woman and the European by a young man. Lady Barberina (1884) is among the very few exceptions, for its story deals with the marriage of an English noblewoman and an American doctor. This reversal of the social law is in the nature of an experiment on the author’s part, and considering the historical circumstances, the experiment could hardly have been expected to yield positive results. Dr. Jackson Lemon may regard himself as the “heir of all the ages,” yet even he must confess his blunder in attempting to adapt “a flower of the British aristocracy” to American soil.

  In the preface to Lady Barberina (New York Edition, 1907–1917) James noted his deviation in this instance from the norm of ­transatlantic marriages, explaining at some length that though the “bridal migrations were eastward without exception—as rigidly as if settled by custom,” it was precisely the “observed rarity of the case” which prompted him to select it for an imaginative test. “There was nothing . . . to ‘go by’; we had seen the American girl ‘of position’ absorbed again and again into the European social system, but we had only seen young foreign candidates for places as cooks and housemaids absorbed into the American. The more one viewed the possible instance, accordingly, the more it appealed to speculative study; so that, failing all valid testimony, one had studiously, as it were, to forge the very documents.”

  At this point the observant reader might well ask whether James doesn’t go too far in his preoccupation with national differences. The Europe-America contrast can scarcely be made to pay endless dividends; it is, after all, but a limited subject. This objection is one of which James was aware and in the above-mentioned preface he tried to meet it. He points out that in quite a few of his fictions his concern is with matters altogether apart from the “international” relation, and that in others it is reduced to a subordinate level of interest. But he goes on to defend his “unnatural mixture” by remarking that no artist is really free to choose his general range of vision and “the experience from which ideas and themes and suggestions spring: this proves ever what it has had to be, this is one with the very turn one’s life has taken; so that whatever it ‘gives,’ whatever it makes us feel and think of, we regard very much as imposed and inevitable. The subject thus pressed upon the artist is the necessity of his case and the fruit of his consciousness; which truth has ever made of any quarrel with his subject, any stupid attempt to go behind that, the true stultification of criticism.” As for himself, he has “never pretended to go behind” his own experience, for the profitable thing is “to have your experience, to recognize and understand it . . . .”

  James’s argument is more than plausible; its truth is guaranteed by his great and intimate knowledge of the creative process. Nothing more needs to be said, except to note the complex uses to which James puts his “international” subject. There is its documentary or social and historical use; but beyond that it is employed aesthetically as a kind of individual theatre or personal convention, a framework enclosing a representation of life at once pictorial and dramatic. Thus in Lady Barberina the American hero and the English heroine move toward and away from each other like figures in a ballet, and the beauty of their movement lies in its stylization, in its intricate and delicate choreography. The Americanism of the one figure and the Anglicism of the other serve only as the principle of animation by which the dancers are released for their ritual dance of fate.

  PART I

  I

  IT IS well known that there are few sights in the world more brilliant than the main avenues of Hyde Park of a fine afternoon in June. This was quite the opinion of two persons who on a beautiful day at the beginning of that month, four years ago, had established themselves under the great trees in a couple of iron chairs—the big ones with arms, for which, if I mistake not, you pay twopence—and sat there with the slow procession of the Drive behind them while their faces were turned to the more vivid agitation of the Row. Lost in the multitude of observers they belonged, superficially at least, to that class of persons who, wherever they may be, rank rather with the spectators than with the spectacle. They were quiet simple elderly, of aspect somewhat neutral; you would have liked them extremely but would scarcely have noticed them. It is to them, obscure in all that shining host, that we must nevertheless give our attention. On which the reader is begged to have confidence; he is not asked to make vain concessions. It was indicated touchingly in the faces of our friends that they were growing old together and were fond enough of each other’s company not to object—since it was a condition—even to that. The reader will have guessed that they were husband and wife; and perhaps while he is about it will further have guessed that they were of that nationality for which Hyde Park at the height of the season is most completely illustrative. They were native aliens, so to speak, and people at once so initiated and so detached could only be Americans. This reflexion indeed you would have made only after some delay; for it must be allowed that they bristled with none of those modern signs that carry out the tradition of the old indigenous war-paint and feathers. They had the American turn of mind, but that was very secret; and to your eye—if your eye had cared about it—they might have been either intimately British or more remotely foreign. It was as if they studied, for convenience, to be superficially colourless; their colour was all in their talk. They were not in the least verdant; they were grey rather, of monotonous hue. If they were interested in the riders, the horses, the walkers, the great exhibition of English wealth and health, beauty, luxury and leisure, it was because all this referred itself to other impressions, because they had the key to almost everything that needed an answer—because, in a word, they were able to compare. They had not arrived, they had only returned; and recognition much more than surprise was expressed in their quiet eyes. Dexter Freer and his wife belonged in fine to that great company of Americans who are constantly “passing through” London. Enjoyers
of a fortune of which, from any standpoint, the limits were plainly visible, they were unable to treat themselves to that commonest form of ease, the ease of living at home. They found it much more possible to economise at Dresden or Florence than at Buffalo or Minneapolis. The saving was greater and the strain was less. From Dresden, from Florence, moreover, they constantly made excursions that wouldn’t have been possible with an excess of territory; and it is even to be feared they practised some eccentricities of thrift. They came to London to buy their portmanteaus, their toothbrushes, their writing-paper; they occasionally even recrossed the Atlantic westward to assure themselves that westward prices were still the same. They were eminently a social pair; their interests were mainly personal. Their curiosity was so invidiously human that they were supposed to be too addicted to gossip, and they certainly kept up their acquaintance with the affairs of other people. They had friends in every country, in every town; and it was not their fault if people told them their secrets. Dexter Freer was a tall lean man, with an interested eye and a nose that rather drooped than aspired, yet was salient withal. He brushed his hair, which was streaked with white, forward over his ears and into those locks represented in the portraits of clean-shaven gentlemen who flourished fifty years ago and wore an old-fashioned neckcloth and gaiters. His wife, a small plump person, rather polished than naturally fresh, with a white face and hair still evenly black, smiled perpetually, but had never laughed since the death of a son whom she had lost ten years after her marriage. Her husband, on the other hand, who was usually quite grave, indulged on great occasions in resounding mirth. People confided in her less than in him, but that mattered little, as she confided much in herself. Her dress, which was always black or dark grey, was so harmoniously simple that you could see she was fond of it; it was never smart by accident or by fear. She was full of intentions of the most judicious sort and, though perpetually moving about the world, had the air of waiting for every one else to pass. She was celebrated for the promptitude with which she made her sitting-room at an inn, where she might be spending a night or two, appear a real temple of memory. With books, flowers, photographs, draperies, rapidly distributed—she had even a way, for the most part, of not failing of a piano—the place seemed almost hereditary. The pair were just back from America, where they had spent three months, and now were able to face the world with something of the elation of people who have been justified of a stiff conviction. They had found their native land quite ruinous.

  “There he is again!” said Mr. Freer, following with his eyes a young man who passed along the Row, riding slowly. “That’s a beautiful thoroughbred!”

  Mrs. Freer asked idle questions only when she wanted time to think. At present she had simply to look and see who it was her husband meant. “The horse is too big,” she remarked in a moment.

  “You mean the rider’s too small,” her husband returned. “He’s mounted on his millions.”

  “Is it really millions?”

  “Seven or eight, they tell me.”

  “How disgusting!” It was so that Mrs. Freer usually spoke of the large fortunes of the day. “I wish he’d see us,” she added.

  “He does see us, but he doesn’t like to look at us. He’s too conscious. He isn’t easy.”

  “Too conscious of his big horse?”

  “Yes and of his big fortune. He’s rather ashamed of that.”

  “This is an odd place to hang one’s head in,” said Mrs. Freer.

  “I’m not so sure. He’ll find people here richer than himself, and other big horses in plenty, and that will cheer him up. Perhaps too he’s looking for that girl.”

  “The one we heard about? He can’t be such a fool.”

  “He isn’t a fool,” said Dexter Freer. “If he’s thinking of her he has some good reason.”

  “I wonder what Mary Lemon would say,” his wife pursued.

  “She’d say it was all right if he should do it. She thinks he can do no wrong. He’s immensely fond of her.”

  “I shan’t be sure of that,” said Mrs. Freer, “if he takes home a wife who’ll despise her.”

  “Why should the girl despise her? She’s a delightful woman.”

  “The girl will never know it—and if she should it would make no difference: she’ll despise everything.”

  “I don’t believe it, my dear; she’ll like some things very much. Every one will be very nice to her.”

  “She’ll despise them all the more. But we’re speaking as if it were all arranged. I don’t believe in it at all,” said Mrs. Freer.

  “Well, something of the sort—in this case or in some other—is sure to happen sooner or later,” her husband replied, turning round a little toward the back-water, as it were, formed, near the entrance to the Park, by the confluence of the two great vistas of the Drive and the Row.

  Our friends had turned their backs, as I have said, to the solemn revolution of wheels and the densely-packed mass of spectators who had chosen that aspect of the show. These spectators were now agitated by a unanimous impulse: the pushing-back of chairs, the shuffle of feet, the rustle of garments and the deepening murmur of voices sufficiently expressed it. Royalty was approaching—royalty was passing—royalty had passed. Mr. Freer turned his head and his ear a little, but failed to alter his position further, and his wife took no notice of the flurry. They had seen royalty pass, all over Europe, and they knew it passed very quickly. Sometimes it came back; sometimes it didn’t; more than once they had seen it pass for the last time. They were veteran tourists and they knew as perfectly as regular attendants at complicated church-services when to get up and when to remain seated. Mr. Freer went on with his proposition. “Some young fellow’s certain to do it, and one of these girls is certain to take the risk. They must take risks over here more and more.”

  “The girls, I’ve no doubt, will be glad enough; they have had very little chance as yet. But I don’t want Jackson to begin.”

  “Do you know I rather think I do,” said Dexter Freer. “It will be so very amusing.”

  “For us perhaps, but not for him. He’ll repent of it and be wretched. He’s too good for that.”

  “Wretched never! He has no capacity for wretchedness, and that’s why he can afford to risk it.”

  “He’ll have to make great concessions,” Mrs. Freer persisted.

  “He won’t make one.”

  “I should like to see.”

  “You admit, then, that it will be amusing: all I contend for,” her husband replied. “But, as you say, we’re talking as if it were settled, whereas there’s probably nothing in it after all. The best stories always turn out false. I shall be sorry in this case.”

  They relapsed into silence while people passed and repassed them—continuous successive mechanical, with strange facial, strange expressional, sequences and contrasts. They watched the procession, but no one heeded them, though every one was there so admittedly to see what was to be seen. It was all striking, all pictorial, and it made a great composition. The wide long area of the Row, its red-brown surface dotted with bounding figures, stretched away into the distance and became suffused and misty in the bright thick air. The deep dark English verdure that bordered and overhung it looked rich and old, revived and refreshed though it was by the breath of June. The mild blue of the sky was spotted with great silvery clouds, and the light drizzled down in heavenly shafts over the quieter spaces of the Park, as one saw them beyond the Row. All this, however, was only a background, for the scene was before everything personal; quite splendidly so, and full of the gloss and lustre, the contrasted tones, of a thousand polished surfaces. Certain things were salient, pervasive—the shining flanks of the perfect horses, the twinkle of bits and spurs, the smoothness of fine cloth adjusted to shoulders and limbs, the sheen of hats and boots, the freshness of complexions, the expression of smiling talking faces, the flash and flutter of rapid gallops. Faces were everywhere, and they were the great effect—above all the fair faces of women on tall horses
, flushed a little under their stiff black hats, with figures stiffened, in spite of much definition of curve, by their tight-fitting habits. Their well-secured helmets, their neat compact heads, their straight necks, their firm tailor-made armour, their frequent hardy bloom, all made them look singularly like amazons about to ride a charge. The men, with their eyes before them, with hats of undulating brim, good profiles, high collars, white flowers on their chests, long legs and long feet, had an air more elaboratively decorative, as they jolted beside the ladies, always out of step. These were the younger types; but it was not all youth, for many a saddle sustained a richer rotundity, and ruddy faces with short white whiskers or with matronly chins looked down comfortably from an equilibrium that seemed moral as well as physical. The walkers differed from the riders only in being on foot and in looking at the riders more than these looked at them; for they would have done as well in the saddle and ridden as the others ride. The women had tight little bonnets and still tighter little knots of hair; their round chins rested on a close swathing of lace or in some cases on throttling silver chains and circlets. They had flat backs and small waists, they walked slowly, with their elbows out, carrying vast parasols and turning their heads very little to the right or the left. They were amazons unmounted, quite ready to spring into the saddle. There was a great deal of beauty and a diffused look of happy expansion, all limited and controlled, which came from clear quiet eyes and well-cut lips, rims of stout vessels that didn’t overflow and on which syllables were liquid and sentences brief. Some of the young men, as well as the women, had the happiest proportions and oval faces—faces in which line and colour were pure and fresh and the idea of the moment far from intense.