by Henry James
“No indeed, why should I?” Adela knew that he knew she hadn’t been, since Mrs. Churchley would have told him.
“Don’t you call on people after you dine with them?” said Colonel Chart.
“Yes, in the course of time. I don’t rush off within the week.”
Her father looked at her, and his eyes were colder than she had ever seen them, which was probably, she reflected, just the way hers appeared to himself. “Then you’ll please rush off to-morrow. She’s to dine with us on the 12th, and I shall expect your sisters to come down.”
Adela stared. “To a dinner-party?”
“It’s not to be a dinner-party. I want them to know Mrs. Churchley.”
“Is there to be nobody else?”
“Godfrey of course. A family party,” he said with an assurance before which she turned cold.
The girl asked her brother that evening if THAT wasn’t tantamount to an announcement. He looked at her queerly and then said: “I’VE been to see her.”
“What on earth did you do that for?”
“Father told me he wished it.”
“Then he HAS told you?”
“Told me what?” Godfrey asked while her heart sank with the sense of his making difficulties for her.
“That they’re engaged, of course. What else can all this mean?”
“He didn’t tell me that, but I like her.”
“LIKE her!” the girl shrieked.
“She’s very kind, very good.”
“To thrust herself upon us when we hate her? Is that what you call kind? Is that what you call decent?”
“Oh I don’t hate her”—and he turned away as if she bored him.
She called the next day on Mrs. Churchley, designing to break out somehow, to plead, to appeal—”Oh spare us! have mercy on us! let him alone! go away!” But that wasn’t easy when they were face to face. Mrs. Churchley had every intention of getting, as she would have said—she was perpetually using the expression—into touch; but her good intentions were as depressing as a tailor’s misfits. She could never understand that they had no place for her vulgar charity, that their life was filled with a fragrance of perfection for which she had no sense fine enough. She was as undomestic as a shop-front and as out of tune as a parrot. She would either make them live in the streets or bring the streets into their life—it was the same thing. She had evidently never read a book, and she used intonations that Adela had never heard, as if she had been an Australian or an American. She understood everything in a vulgar sense; speaking of Godfrey’s visit to her and praising him according to her idea, saying horrid things about him—that he was awfully good-looking, a perfect gentleman, the kind she liked. How could her father, who was after all in everything else such a dear, listen to a woman, or endure her, who thought she pleased him when she called the son of his dead wife a perfect gentleman? What would he have been, pray? Much she knew about what any of them were! When she told Adela she wanted her to like her the girl thought for an instant her opportunity had come— the chance to plead with her and beg her off. But she presented such an impenetrable surface that it would have been like giving a message to a varnished door. She wasn’t a woman, said Adela; she was an address.
When she dined in Seymour Street the “children,” as the girl called the others, including Godfrey, liked her. Beatrice and Muriel stared shyly and silently at the wonders of her apparel (she was brutally over-dressed) without of course guessing the danger that tainted the air. They supposed her in their innocence to be amusing, and they didn’t know, any more than she did herself, how she patronised them. When she was upstairs with them after dinner Adela could see her look round the room at the things she meant to alter—their mother’s things, not a bit like her own and not good enough for her. After a quarter of an hour of this our young lady felt sure she was deciding that Seymour Street wouldn’t do at all, the dear old home that had done for their mother those twenty years. Was she plotting to transport them all to her horrible Prince’s Gate? Of one thing at any rate Adela was certain: her father, at that moment alone in the dining-room with Godfrey, pretending to drink another glass of wine to make time, was coming to the point, was telling the news. When they reappeared they both, to her eyes, looked unnatural: the news had been told.
She had it from Godfrey before Mrs. Churchley left the house, when, after a brief interval, he followed her out of the drawing-room on her taking her sisters to bed. She was waiting for him at the door of her room. Her father was then alone with his fiancee—the word was grotesque to Adela; it was already as if the place were her home.
“What did you say to him?” our young woman asked when her brother had told her.
“I said nothing.” Then he added, colouring—the expression of her face was such—”There was nothing to say.”
“Is that how it strikes you?”—and she stared at the lamp.
“He asked me to speak to her,” Godfrey went on.
“In what hideous sense?”
“To tell her I was glad.”
“And did you?” Adela panted.
“I don’t know. I said something. She kissed me.”
“Oh how COULD you?” shuddered the girl, who covered her face with her hands.
“He says she’s very rich,” her brother returned.
“Is that why you kissed her?”
“I didn’t kiss her. Good-night.” And the young man, turning his back, went out.
When he had gone Adela locked herself in as with the fear she should be overtaken or invaded, and during a sleepless feverish memorable night she took counsel of her uncompromising spirit. She saw things as they were, in all the indignity of life. The levity, the mockery, the infidelity, the ugliness, lay as plain as a map before her; it was a world of gross practical jokes, a world pour rire; but she cried about it all the same. The morning dawned early, or rather it seemed to her there had been no night, nothing but a sickly creeping day. But by the time she heard the house stirring again she had determined what to do. When she came down to the breakfast-room her father was already in his place with newspapers and letters; and she expected the first words he would utter to be a rebuke to her for having disappeared the night before without taking leave of Mrs. Churchley. Then she saw he wished to be intensely kind, to make every allowance, to conciliate and console her. He knew she had heard from Godfrey, and he got up and kissed her. He told her as quickly as possible, to have it over, stammering a little, with an “I’ve a piece of news for you that will probably shock you,” yet looking even exaggeratedly grave and rather pompous, to inspire the respect he didn’t deserve. When he kissed her she melted, she burst into tears. He held her against him, kissing her again and again, saying tenderly “Yes, yes, I know, I know.” But he didn’t know else he couldn’t have done it. Beatrice and Muriel came in, frightened when they saw her crying, and still more scared when she turned to them with words and an air that were terrible in their comfortable little lives: “Papa’s going to be married; he’s going to marry Mrs. Churchley!” After staring a moment and seeing their father look as strange, on his side, as Adela, though in a different way, the children also began to cry, so that when the servants arrived with tea and boiled eggs these functionaries were greatly embarrassed with their burden, not knowing whether to come in or hang back. They all scraped together a decorum, and as soon as the things had been put on table the Colonel banished the men with a glance. Then he made a little affectionate speech to Beatrice and Muriel, in which he described Mrs. Churchley as the kindest, the most delightful of women, only wanting to make them happy, only wanting to make HIM happy, and convinced that he would be if they were and that they would be if he was.
“What do such words mean?” Adela asked herself. She declared privately that they meant nothing, but she was silent, and every one was silent, on account of the advent of Miss Flynn the governess, before whom Colonel Chart preferred not to discuss the situation. Adela recognised on the spot that if things were to go as he wis
hed his children would practically never again be alone with him. He would spend all his time with Mrs. Churchley till they were married, and then Mrs. Churchley would spend all her time with him. Adela was ashamed of him, and that was horrible—all the more that every one else would be, all his other friends, every one who had known her mother. But the public dishonour to that high memory shouldn’t be enacted; he shouldn’t do as he wished.
After breakfast her father remarked to her that it would give him pleasure if in a day or two she would take her sisters to see their friend, and she replied that he should be obeyed. He held her hand a moment, looking at her with an argument in his eyes which presently hardened into sternness. He wanted to know that she forgave him, but also wanted to assure her that he expected her to mind what she did, to go straight. She turned away her eyes; she was indeed ashamed of him.
She waited three days and then conveyed her sisters to the repaire, as she would have been ready to term it, of the lioness. That queen of beasts was surrounded with callers, as Adela knew she would be; it was her “day” and the occasion the girl preferred. Before this she had spent all her time with her companions, talking to them about their mother, playing on their memory of her, making them cry and making them laugh, reminding them of blest hours of their early childhood, telling them anecdotes of her own. None the less she confided to them that she believed there was no harm at all in Mrs. Churchley, and that when the time should come she would probably take them out immensely. She saw with smothered irritation that they enjoyed their visit at Prince’s Gate; they had never been at anything so “grown-up,” nor seen so many smart bonnets and brilliant complexions. Moreover they were considered with interest, quite as if, being minor elements, yet perceptible ones, of Mrs. Churchley’s new life, they had been described in advance and were the heroines of the occasion. There were so many ladies present that this personage didn’t talk to them much; she only called them her “chicks” and asked them to hand about tea-cups and bread and butter. All of which was highly agreeable and indeed intensely exciting to Beatrice and Muriel, who had little round red spots in THEIR cheeks when they came away. Adela quivered with the sense that her mother’s children were now Mrs. Churchley’s “chicks” and a part of the furniture of Mrs. Churchley’s dreadful consciousness.
It was one thing to have made up her mind, however; it was another thing to make her attempt. It was when she learned from Godfrey that the day was fixed, the 20th of July, only six weeks removed, that she felt the importance of prompt action. She learned everything from Godfrey now, having decided it would be hypocrisy to question her father. Even her silence was hypocritical, but she couldn’t weep and wail. Her father showed extreme tact; taking no notice of her detachment, treating it as a moment of bouderie he was bound to allow her and that would pout itself away. She debated much as to whether she should take Godfrey into her confidence; she would have done so without hesitation if he hadn’t disappointed her. He was so little what she might have expected, and so perversely preoccupied that she could explain it only by the high pressure at which he was living, his anxiety about his “exam.” He was in a fidget, in a fever, putting on a spurt to come in first; sceptical moreover about his success and cynical about everything else. He appeared to agree to the general axiom that they didn’t want a strange woman thrust into their life, but he found Mrs. Churchley “very jolly as a person to know.” He had been to see her by himself—he had been to see her three times. He in fact gave it out that he would make the most of her now; he should probably be so little in Seymour Street after these days. What Adela at last determined to give him was her assurance that the marriage would never take place. When he asked what she meant and who was to prevent it she replied that the interesting couple would abandon the idea of themselves, or that Mrs. Churchley at least would after a week or two back out of it.
“That will be really horrid then,” Godfrey pronounced. “The only respectable thing, at the point they’ve come to, is to put it through. Charming for poor Dad to have the air of being ‘chucked’!”
This made her hesitate two days more, but she found answers more valid than any objections. The many-voiced answer to everything—it was like the autumn wind round the house—was the affront that fell back on her mother. Her mother was dead but it killed her again. So one morning at eleven o’clock, when she knew her father was writing letters, she went out quietly and, stopping the first hansom she met, drove to Prince’s Gate. Mrs. Churchley was at home, and she was shown into the drawing-room with the request that she would wait five minutes. She waited without the sense of breaking down at the last, and the impulse to run away, which were what she had expected to have. In the cab and at the door her heart had beat terribly, but now suddenly, with the game really to play, she found herself lucid and calm. It was a joy to her to feel later that this was the way Mrs. Churchley found her: not confused, not stammering nor prevaricating, only a little amazed at her own courage, conscious of the immense responsibility of her step and wonderfully older than her years. Her hostess sounded her at first with suspicious eyes, but eventually, to Adela’s surprise, burst into tears. At this the girl herself cried, and with the secret happiness of believing they were saved. Mrs. Churchley said she would think over what she had been told, and she promised her young friend, freely enough and very firmly, not to betray the secret of the latter’s step to the Colonel. They were saved—they were saved: the words sung themselves in the girl’s soul as she came downstairs. When the door opened for her she saw her brother on the step, and they looked at each other in surprise, each finding it on the part of the other an odd hour for Prince’s Gate. Godfrey remarked that Mrs. Churchley would have enough of the family, and Adela answered that she would perhaps have too much. None the less the young man went in while his sister took her way home.
CHAPTER III
She saw nothing of him for nearly a week; he had more and more his own times and hours, adjusted to his tremendous responsibilities, and he spent whole days at his crammer’s. When she knocked at his door late in the evening he was regularly not in his room. It was known in the house how much he was worried; he was horribly nervous about his ordeal. It was to begin on the 23rd of June, and his father was as worried as himself. The wedding had been arranged in relation to this; they wished poor Godfrey’s fate settled first, though they felt the nuptials would be darkened if it shouldn’t be settled right.
Ten days after that performance of her private undertaking Adela began to sniff, as it were, a difference in the general air; but as yet she was afraid to exult. It wasn’t in truth a difference for the better, so that there might be still a great tension. Her father, since the announcement of his intended marriage, had been visibly pleased with himself, but that pleasure now appeared to have undergone a check. She had the impression known to the passengers on a great steamer when, in the middle of the night, they feel the engines stop. As this impression may easily sharpen to the sense that something serious has happened, so the girl asked herself what had actually occurred. She had expected something serious; but it was as if she couldn’t keep still in her cabin—she wanted to go up and see. On the 20th, just before breakfast, her maid brought her a message from her brother. Mr. Godfrey would be obliged if she would speak to him in his room. She went straight up to him, dreading to find him ill, broken down on the eve of his formidable week. This was not the case however—he rather seemed already at work, to have been at work since dawn. But he was very white and his eyes had a strange and new expression. Her beautiful young brother looked older; he looked haggard and hard. He met her there as if he had been waiting for her, and he said at once: “Please tell me this, Adela—what was the purpose of your visit the other morning to Mrs. Churchley, the day I met you at her door?”
She stared—she cast about. “The purpose? What’s the matter? Why do you ask?”
“They’ve put it off—they’ve put it off a month.”
“Ah thank God!” said Adela.
“Why the devil do you thank God?” Godfrey asked with a strange impatience.
She gave a strained intense smile. “You know I think it all wrong.”
He stood looking at her up and down. “What did you do there? How did you interfere?”
“Who told you I interfered?” she returned with a deep flush.
“You said something—you did something. I knew you had done it when I saw you come out.”
“What I did was my own business.”
“Damn your own business!” cried the young man.
She had never in her life been so spoken to, and in advance, had she been given the choice, would have said that she’d rather die than be so handled by Godfrey. But her spirit was high, and for a moment she was as angry as if she had been cut with a whip. She escaped the blow but felt the insult. “And YOUR business then?” she asked. “I wondered what that was when I saw YOU.”
He stood a moment longer scowling at her; then with the exclamation “You’ve made a pretty mess!” he turned away from her and sat down to his books.
They had put it off, as he said; her father was dry and stiff and official about it. “I suppose I had better let you know we’ve thought it best to postpone our marriage till the end of the summer— Mrs. Churchley has so many arrangements to make”: he was not more expansive than that. She neither knew nor greatly cared whether she but vainly imagined or correctly observed him to watch her obliquely for some measure of her receipt of these words. She flattered herself that, thanks to Godfrey’s forewarning, cruel as the form of it had been, she was able to repress any crude sign of elation. She had a perfectly good conscience, for she could now judge what odious elements Mrs. Churchley, whom she had not seen since the morning in Prince’s Gate, had already introduced into their dealings. She gathered without difficulty that her father hadn’t concurred in the postponement, for he was more restless than before, more absent and distinctly irritable. There was naturally still the question of how much of this condition was to be attributed to his solicitude about Godfrey. That young man took occasion to say a horrible thing to his sister: “If I don’t pass it will be your fault.” These were dreadful days for the girl, and she asked herself how she could have borne them if the hovering spirit of her mother hadn’t been at her side. Fortunately she always felt it there, sustaining, commending, sanctifying. Suddenly her father announced to her that he wished her to go immediately, with her sisters, down to Brinton, where there was always part of a household and where for a few weeks they would manage well enough. The only explanation he gave of this desire was that he wanted them out of the way. Out of the way of what?” she queried, since there were to be for the time no preparations in Seymour Street. She was willing to take it for out of the way of his nerves.