Great Short Novels of Henry James

by Henry James

  “If you want the genuine thing you ought to come out on the plains,” Mr. Longstraw interposed with bright sincerity. “I guess that was your mother’s idea. Why don’t you all come out?” He had been looking intently at Lady Agatha while the remarks I have just repeated succeeded each other on her lips—looking at her with a fascinated approbation, for all the world as if he had been a slightly slow-witted English gentleman and the girl herself a flower of the West, a flower that knew the celebrated language of flowers. Susceptible even as Mrs. Lemon was he made no secret of the fact that Lady Agatha’s voice was music to him, his ear being much more accessible than his own inflexions would have indicated. To Lady Agatha those inflexions were not displeasing, partly because, like Mr. Herman himself in general, she had not a perception of shades; and partly because it never occurred to her to compare them with any other tones. He seemed to her to speak a foreign language altogether—a romantic dialect through which the most comical meanings gleamed here and there.

  “I should like it above all things,” she said in answer to his last observation.

  “The scenery’s ahead of anything round here,” Mr. Longstraw went on.

  Mrs. Lemon, as we have gathered, was the mildest of women; but, as an old New Yorker, she had no patience with some of the new fashions. Chief among these was the perpetual reference, which had become common only within a few years, to the outlying parts of the country, the States and Territories of which children, in her time, used to learn the names, in their order, at school, but which no one ever thought of going to or talking about. Such places, in her opinion, belonged to the geography-books, or at most to the literature of newspapers, but neither to society nor to conversation; and the change—which, so far as it lay in people’s talk, she thought at bottom a mere affectation—threatened to make her native land appear vulgar and vague. For this amiable daughter of Manhattan the normal existence of man, and still more of women, had been “located,” as she would have said, between Trinity Church and the beautiful Reservoir at the top of the Fifth Avenue—monuments of which she was personally proud; and if we could look into the deeper parts of her mind I am afraid we should discover there an impression that both the countries of Europe and the remainder of her own continent were equally far from the centre and the light.

  “Well, scenery isn’t everything,” she made soft answer to Mr. Longstraw; “and if Lady Agatha should wish to see anything of that kind all she has got to do is to take the boat up the Hudson.” Mrs. Lemon’s recognition of this river, I should say, was all it need have been; she held the Hudson existed for the purpose of supplying New Yorkers with poetical feelings, helping them to face comfortably occasions like the present and, in general, meet foreigners with confidence—part of the oddity of foreigners being their conceit about their own places.

  “That’s a good idea, Lady Agatha; let’s take the boat,” said Mr. Longstraw. “I’ve had great times on the boats.”

  Lady Agatha fixed on her amoroso her singular charming eyes, eyes of which it was impossible to say at any moment whether they were the shyest or the frankest in the world; and she was not aware while this contemplation lasted that her brother-in-law was observing her. He was thinking of certain things while he did so, of things he had heard about the English; who still, in spite of his having married into a family of that nation, appeared to him very much through the medium of hearsay. They were more passionate than the Americans, and they did things that would never have been expected; though they seemed steadier and less excitable there was much social evidence to prove them more wildly impulsive.

  “It’s so very kind of you to propose that,” Lady Agatha said in a moment to Mrs. Lemon. “I think I’ve never been in a ship—except of course coming from England. I’m sure mamma would wish me to see the Hudson. We used to go in immensely for boating in England.”

  “Did you boat in a ship?” Herman Longstraw asked, showing his teeth hilariously and pulling his moustaches.

  “Lots of my mother’s people have been in the navy.” Lady Agatha perceived vaguely and good-naturedly that she had said something the odd Americans thought odd and that she must justify herself. Something most unnatural was happening to her standard of oddity.

  “I really think you had better come back to us,” Jackson repeated: “your sister’s very lonely without you.”

  “She’s much more lonely with me. We’re perpetually having differences. Barb’s dreadfully vexed because I like America instead of—instead of—” And Lady Agatha paused a moment; for it just occurred to her that this might be treacherous.

  “Instead of what?” Jackson inquired.

  “Instead of perpetually wanting to go to England, as she does,” she went on, only giving her phrase a little softer turn; for she felt the next moment that Barb could have nothing to hide and must of course have the courage of her opinions. “Of course England’s best, but I daresay I like to be bad,” the girl said artlessly.

  “Oh there’s no doubt you’re awfully bad,” Mr. Longstraw broke out, with joyous eagerness. Naturally he couldn’t know that what she had principally in mind was an exchange of opinions that had taken place between her sister and herself just before she came to stay with Mrs. Lemon. This incident, of which he himself was the occasion, might indeed have been called a discussion, for it had carried them quite into the cold air of the abstract. Lady Barb had said she didn’t see how Agatha could look at such a creature as that—an odious familiar vulgar being who had not about him the rudiments of a gentleman. Lady Agatha had replied that Mr. Longstraw was familiar and rough and that he had a twang and thought it amusing to talk to her as “the Princess”; but that he was a gentleman for all that and was tremendous fun whatever one called him—it didn’t seem to matter what one called any one or anything there. Her sister had returned to this that if he was rough and familiar he couldn’t be a gentleman, inasmuch as that was just what a gentleman meant—a man who was civil and well-bred and well-born. Lady Agatha had argued that such a point was just where she differed; that a man might perfectly be a gentleman and yet be rough, and even ignorant, so long as he was really nice. The only thing was that he should be really nice, which was the case with Mr. Longstraw, who, moreover, was quite extraordinarily civil—as civil as a man could be. And then Lady Agatha herself made the strongest point she had ever made in her life (she had never been so inspired) in saying that Mr. Longstraw was rough perhaps, but not rude—a distinction altogether wasted on her sister, who declared that she hadn’t come to America, of all places, to learn what a gentleman was. The discussion in short had been a trifle grim. I know not whether it was the tonic effect on them too, alien organisms as they were, of the fine winter weather, or that of Lady Barb’s being bored and having nothing else to do; but Lord Canterville’s daughters went into the question with the moral earnestness of a pair of approved Bostonians. It was part of Lady Agatha’s view of her admirer that he after all much resembled other tall people with smiling eyes and tawny moustaches who had ridden a good deal in rough countries and whom she had seen in other places. If he was more familiar he was also more alert; still, the difference was not in himself, but in the way she saw him—the way she saw everybody in America. If she should see the others in the same way no doubt they’d be quite the same; and Lady Agatha sighed a little over the possibilities of life; for this peculiar way, especially regarded in connexion with gentlemen, had become very pleasant to her.

  She had betrayed her sister more than she thought, even though Jackson didn’t particularly show it in the tone in which he commented: “Of course she knows she’s going to see your mother in the summer.” His tone was rather that of irritation at so much harping on the very obvious.

  “Oh it isn’t only mamma,” the girl said.

  “I know she likes a cool house,” Mrs. Lemon contributed.

  “When she goes you had better bid her good-bye,” Lady Agatha went on.

  “Of course I shall bid her good-bye,” said Mrs. Lemon, to
whom apparently this remark was addressed.

  “I’ll never bid you good-bye, Princess,” Herman Longstraw interposed. “You can bet your life on that.”

  “Oh it doesn’t matter about me, for of course I shall come back; but if Barb once gets to England she never will.”

  “Oh my dear child!” Mrs. Lemon wailed, addressing her young visitor, but looking at her son, who on his side looked at the ceiling, at the floor, looked above all very conscious.

  “I hope you don’t mind my saying that, Jackson dear,” Lady Agatha said to him, for she was very fond of her brother-in-law.

  “Ah well then, she shan’t go there,” he threw off in a moment with a small strange dry laugh that attached his mother’s eyes in shy penetration to his face.

  “But you promised mamma, you know,” said the girl with the confidence of her affection.

  Jackson’s countenance expressed to her none even of his very moderate hilarity. “Your mother, then, must bring her back.”

  “Get some of your navy people to supply an ironclad!” cried Mr. Longstraw.

  “It would be very pleasant if the Marchioness could come over,” said Mrs. Lemon.

  “Oh she’d hate it more than poor Barb,” Lady Agatha quickly replied. It didn’t at all suit her to find a marchioness inserted into her field of vision.

  “Doesn’t she feel interested from what you’ve told her?” Lady Agatha’s admirer inquired. But Jackson didn’t heed his sister-in-law’s answer—he was thinking of something else. He said nothing more, however, about the subject of his thought, and before ten minutes were over took his departure, having meanwhile neglected also to revert to the question of Lady Agatha’s bringing her visit to his mother to a close. It wasn’t to speak to him of this—for, as we know, she wished to keep the girl and somehow couldn’t bring herself to be afraid of Herman Longstraw—that when her son took leave she went with him to the door of the house, detaining him a little while she stood on the steps, as people had always done in New York in her time, though it was another of the new fashions she didn’t like, the stiffness of not coming out of the parlour. She placed her hand on his arm to keep him on the “stoop” and looked up and down into the lucid afternoon and the beautiful city—its chocolate-coloured houses so extraordinarily smooth—in which it seemed to her that even the most fastidious people ought to be glad to live. It was useless to attempt to conceal it: his marriage had made a difference and a worry, had put a barrier that she was yet under the painful obligation of trying to seem not to notice. It had brought with it a problem much more difficult than his old problem of how to make his mother feel herself still, as she had been in his childhood, the dispenser of his rewards. The old problem had been easily solved, the new was a great tax. Mrs. Lemon was sure her daughter-in-law didn’t take her seriously, and that was a part of the barrier. Even if Barberina liked her better than any one else this was mostly because she liked every one else so little. Mrs. Lemon had in her nature no grain of resentment, and it wasn’t to feed a sense of wrong that she permitted herself to criticise her son’s wife. She couldn’t help feeling that his marriage wasn’t altogether fortunate if his wife didn’t take his mother seriously. She knew she wasn’t otherwise remarkable than as being his mother; but that position, which was no merit of hers—the merit was all Jackson’s in being her son—affected her as one which, familiar as Lady Barb appeared to have been in England with positions of various kinds, would naturally strike the girl as very high and to be accepted as freely as a fine morning. If she didn’t think of his mother as an indivisible part of him perhaps she didn’t think of other things either; and Mrs. Lemon vaguely felt that, remarkable as Jackson was, he was made up of parts, and that it would never do that these should be rated lower one by one, since there was no knowing what that might end in. She feared that things were rather cold for him at home when he had to explain so much to his wife—explain to her, for instance, all the sources of happiness that were to be found in New York. This struck her as a new kind of problem altogether for a husband. She had never thought of matrimony without a community of feeling in regard to religion and country; one took those great conditions for granted just as one assumed that one’s food was to be cooked; and if Jackson should have to discuss them with his wife he might, in spite of his great abilities, be carried into regions where he would get entangled and embroiled—from which even possibly he wouldn’t come back at all. Mrs. Lemon had a horror of losing him in some way, and this fear was in her eyes as she stood by the doorway of her house and, after she had glanced up and down the street, eyed him a moment in silence. He simply kissed her again and said she would take cold.

  “I’m not afraid of that—I’ve a shawl!” Mrs. Lemon, who was very small and very fair, with pointed features and an elaborate cap, passed her life in a shawl, and owed to this habit her reputation for being an invalid—an idea she scorned, naturally enough, inasmuch as it was precisely her shawl that, as she believed, kept every ill at bay. “Is it true Barberina won’t come back?” she then asked.

  “I don’t know that we shall ever find out; I don’t know that I shall take her to England,” Jackson distinctly returned.

  She looked more anxious still. “Didn’t you promise, dear?”

  “I don’t know that I promised—not absolutely.”

  “But you wouldn’t keep her here against her will?” quavered Mrs. Lemon.

  “I guess she’ll get used to it,” he returned with a levity that misrepresented the state of his nerves.

  Mrs. Lemon looked up and down the street again and gave a little sigh. “What a pity she isn’t American!” She didn’t mean this as a reproach, a hint of what might have been; it was simply embarrassment resolved into speech.

  “She couldn’t have been American,” said Jackson with decision.

  “Couldn’t she, dear?” His mother spoke with conscientious respect; she felt there were imperceptible reasons in this.

  “It was just as she is that I wanted her,” Jackson added.

  “Even if she won’t come back?” Mrs. Lemon went on with wonder.

  “Oh she has got to come back!” Jackson said as he went down the steps.

  VI

  LADY BARB, after this, didn’t decline to see her New York acquaintances on Sunday afternoons, though she refused for the present to enter into a project of her husband’s, who thought it would be pleasant she should entertain his friends on the evening of that day. Like all good Americans, Doctor Lemon devoted much consideration to the great question of how, in his native land, society was to be brought into being. It seemed to him it would help on the good cause, for which so many Americans are ready to lay down their lives, if his wife should, as he jocularly called it, open a saloon. He believed, or tried to believe, the salon now possible in New York on condition of its being reserved entirely for adults; and in having taken a wife out of a country in which social traditions were rich and ancient he had done something toward qualifying his own house—so splendidly qualified in all strictly material respects—to be the scene of such an effort. A charming woman accustomed only to the best on each side, as Lady Beauchemin said, what mightn’t she achieve by being at home—always to adults only—in an easy early inspiring comprehensive way and on the evening of the seven when worldly engagements were least numerous? He laid this philosophy before Lady Barb in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked New York on a short acquaintance she couldn’t fail to like it on a long. Jackson believed in the New York mind—not so much indeed in its literary artistic philosophic or political achievements as in its general quickness and nascent adaptability. He clung to this belief, for it was an indispensable neat block in the structure he was attempting to rear. The New York mind would throw its glamour over Lady Barb if she would only give it a chance; for it was thoroughly bright responsive and sympathetic. If she would only set up by the turn of her hand a blest snug social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming organ might expand and where she might in
hale its fragrance in the most convenient and luxurious way, without, as it were, getting up from her chair; if she would only just try this graceful good-natured experiment—which would make every one like her so much too—he was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out. But Lady Barb didn’t rise at all to his conception and hadn’t the least curiosity about the New York mind. She thought it would be extremely disagreeable to have a lot of people tumbling in on Sunday evening without being invited; and altogether her husband’s sketch of the Anglo-American saloon seemed to her to suggest crude familiarity, high vociferation—she had already made a remark to him about “screeching women”—and random extravagant laughter. She didn’t tell him—for this somehow it wasn’t in her power to express, and, strangely enough, he never completely guessed it—that she was singularly deficient in any natural or indeed acquired understanding of what a saloon might be. She had never seen or dreamed of one—and for the most part was incapable of imagining a thing she hadn’t seen. She had seen great dinners and balls and meets and runs and races; she had seen garden-parties and bunches of people, mainly women—who, however, didn’t screech—at dull stuffy teas, and distinguished companies collected in splendid castles; but all this gave her no clue to a train of conversation, to any idea of a social agreement that the interest of talk, its continuity, its accumulations from season to season, shouldn’t be lost. Conversation, in Lady Barb’s experience, had never been continuous; in such a case it would surely have been a bore. It had been occasional and fragmentary, a trifle jerky, with allusions that were never explained; it had a dread of detail—it seldom pursued anything very far or kept hold of it very long.