by Henry James
“But he talks to you freely,” she answered; “I know you are his confidant. He has told me certainly a great many things, but I always feel as if he were keeping something back; as if he were holding something behind him, and showing me only one hand at once. He seems often to be hovering on the edge of a secret. I have had several friendships in my life—thank Heaven! but I have had none more dear to me than this one. Yet in the midst of it I have the painful sense of my friend being half afraid of me; of his thinking me terrible, strange, perhaps a trifle out of my wits. Poor me! If he only knew what a plain good soul I am, and how I only want to know him and befriend him!”
These words were full of a plaintive magnanimity which made mistrust seem cruel. How much better I might play providence over Pickering’s experiments with life if I could engage the fine instincts of this charming woman on the providential side! Pickering’s secret was, of course, his engagement to Miss Vernor; it was natural enough that he should have been unable to bring himself to talk of it to Madame Blumenthal. The simple sweetness of this young girl’s face had not faded from my memory; I could not rid myself of the suspicion that in going further Pickering might fare much worse. Madame Blumenthal’s professions seemed a virtual promise to agree with me, and, after some hesitation, I said that my friend had, in fact, a substantial secret, and that perhaps I might do him a good turn by putting her in possession of it. In as few words as possible I told her that Pickering stood pledged by filial piety to marry a young lady at Smyrna. She listened intently to my story; when I had finished it there was a faint flush of excitement in each of her cheeks. She broke out into a dozen exclamations of admiration and compassion. “What a wonderful tale—what a romantic situation! No wonder poor Mr. Pickering seemed restless and unsatisfied; no wonder he wished to put off the day of submission. And the poor little girl at Smyrna, waiting there for the young Western prince like the heroine of an Eastern tale! She would give the world to see her photograph; did I think Mr. Pickering would show it to her? But never fear; she would ask nothing indiscreet! Yes, it was a marvellous story, and if she had invented it herself, people would have said it was absurdly improbable.” She left her seat and took several turns about the room, smiling to herself, and uttering little German cries of wonderment. Suddenly she stopped before the piano and broke into a little laugh; the next moment she buried her face in the great bouquet of roses. It was time I should go, but I was indisposed to leave her without obtaining some definite assurance that, as far as pity was concerned, she pitied the young girl at Smyrna more than the young man at Homburg.
“Of course you know what I wished in telling you this,” I said, rising. “She is evidently a charming creature, and the best thing he can do is to marry her. I wished to interest you in that view of it.”
She had taken one of the roses from the vase and was arranging it in the front of her dress. Suddenly, looking up, “Leave it to me, leave it to me!” she cried. “I am interested!” And with her little blue- gemmed hand she tapped her forehead. “I am deeply interested!”
And with this I had to content myself. But more than once the next day I repented of my zeal, and wondered whether a providence with a white rose in her bosom might not turn out a trifle too human. In the evening, at the Kursaal, I looked for Pickering, but he was not visible, and I reflected that my revelation had not as yet, at any rate, seemed to Madame Blumenthal a reason for prescribing a cooling- term to his passion. Very late, as I was turning away, I saw him arrive—with no small satisfaction, for I had determined to let him know immediately in what way I had attempted to serve him. But he straightway passed his arm through my own and led me off towards the gardens. I saw that he was too excited to allow me to speak first.
“I have burnt my ships!” he cried, when we were out of earshot of the crowd. “I have told her everything. I have insisted that it’s simple torture for me to wait with this idle view of loving her less. It’s well enough for her to ask it, but I feel strong enough now to override her reluctance. I have cast off the millstone from round my neck. I care for nothing, I know nothing, but that I love her with every pulse of my being—and that everything else has been a hideous dream, from which she may wake me into blissful morning with a single word!”
I held him off at arm’s-length and looked at him gravely. “You have told her, you mean, of your engagement to Miss Vernor?”
“The whole story! I have given it up—I have thrown it to the winds. I have broken utterly with the past. It may rise in its grave and give me its curse, but it can’t frighten me now. I have a right to be happy, I have a right to be free, I have a right not to bury myself alive. It was not I who promised—I was not born then. I myself, my soul, my mind, my option—all this is but a month old! Ah,” he went on, “if you knew the difference it makes—this having chosen and broken and spoken! I am twice the man I was yesterday! Yesterday I was afraid of her; there was a kind of mocking mystery of knowledge and cleverness about her, which oppressed me in the midst of my love. But now I am afraid of nothing but of being too happy!”
I stood silent, to let him spend his eloquence. But he paused a moment, and took off his hat and fanned himself. “Let me perfectly understand,” I said at last. “You have asked Madame Blumenthal to be your wife?”
“The wife of my intelligent choice!”
“And does she consent?”
“She asks three days to decide.”
“Call it four! She has known your secret since this morning. I am bound to let you know I told her.”
“So much the better!” cried Pickering, without apparent resentment or surprise. “It’s not a brilliant offer for such a woman, and in spite of what I have at stake, I feel that it would be brutal to press her.”
“What does she say to your breaking your promise?” I asked in a moment.
Pickering was too much in love for false shame. “She tells me that she loves me too much to find courage to condemn me. She agrees with me that I have a right to be happy. I ask no exemption from the common law. What I claim is simply freedom to try to be!”
Of course I was puzzled; it was not in that fashion that I had expected Madame Blumenthal to make use of my information. But the matter now was quite out of my hands, and all I could do was to bid my companion not work himself into a fever over either fortune.
The next day I had a visit from Niedermeyer, on whom, after our talk at the opera, I had left a card. We gossiped a while, and at last he said suddenly, “By the way, I have a sequel to the history of Clorinda. The major is at Homburg!”
“Indeed!” said I. “Since when?”
“These three days.”
“And what is he doing?”
“He seems,” said Niedermeyer, with a laugh, “to be chiefly occupied in sending flowers to Madame Blumenthal. That is, I went with him the morning of his arrival to choose a nosegay, and nothing would suit him but a small haystack of white roses. I hope it was received.”
“I can assure you it was,” I cried. “I saw the lady fairly nestling her head in it. But I advise the major not to build upon that. He has a rival.”
“Do you mean the soft young man of the other night?”
“Pickering is soft, if you will, but his softness seems to have served him. He has offered her everything, and she has not yet refused it.” I had handed my visitor a cigar, and he was puffing it in silence. At last he abruptly asked if I had been introduced to Madame Blumenthal, and, on my affirmative, inquired what I thought of her. “I will not tell you,” I said, “or you’ll call ME soft.”
He knocked away his ashes, eyeing me askance. “I have noticed your friend about,” he said, “and even if you had not told me, I should have known he was in love. After he has left his adored, his face wears for the rest of the day the expression with which he has risen from her feet, and more than once I have felt like touching his elbow, as you would that of a man who has inadvertently come into a drawing-room in his overshoes. You say he has offered our friend everything;
but, my dear fellow, he has not everything to offer her. He evidently is as amiable as the morning, but the lady has no taste for daylight.”
“I assure you Pickering is a very interesting fellow,” I said.
“Ah, there it is! Has he not some story or other? Isn’t he an orphan, or a natural child, or consumptive, or contingent heir to great estates? She will read his little story to the end, and close the book very tenderly and smooth down the cover; and then, when he least expects it, she will toss it into the dusty limbo of her other romances. She will let him dangle, but she will let him drop!”
“Upon my word,” I cried, with heat, “if she does, she will be a very unprincipled little creature!”
Niedermeyer shrugged his shoulders. “I never said she was a saint!”
Shrewd as I felt Niedermeyer to be, I was not prepared to take his simple word for this event, and in the evening I received a communication which fortified my doubts. It was a note from Pickering, and it ran as follows:-
“My Dear Friend—I have every hope of being happy, but I am to go to Wiesbaden to learn my fate. Madame Blumenthal goes thither this afternoon to spend a few days, and she allows me to accompany her. Give me your good wishes; you shall hear of the result. E. P.”
One of the diversions of Homburg for new-comers is to dine in rotation at the different tables d’hote. It so happened that, a couple of days later, Niedermeyer took pot-luck at my hotel, and secured a seat beside my own. As we took our places I found a letter on my plate, and, as it was postmarked Wiesbaden, I lost no time in opening it. It contained but three lines—”I am happy—I am accepted—an hour ago. I can hardly believe it’s your poor friend
E. P.”
I placed the note before Niedermeyer; not exactly in triumph, but with the alacrity of all felicitous confutation. He looked at it much longer than was needful to read it, stroking down his beard gravely, and I felt it was not so easy to confute a pupil of the school of Metternich. At last, folding the note and handing it back, “Has your friend mentioned Madame Blumenthal’s errand at Wiesbaden?” he asked.
“You look very wise. I give it up!” said I.
“She is gone there to make the major follow her. He went by the next train.”
“And has the major, on his side, dropped you a line?”
“He is not a letter-writer.”
“Well,” said I, pocketing my letter, “with this document in my hand I am bound to reserve my judgment. We will have a bottle of Johannisberg, and drink to the triumph of virtue.”
For a whole week more I heard nothing from Pickering—somewhat to my surprise, and, as the days went by, not a little to my discomposure. I had expected that his bliss would continue to overflow in brief bulletins, and his silence was possibly an indication that it had been clouded. At last I wrote to his hotel at Wiesbaden, but received no answer; whereupon, as my next resource, I repaired to his former lodging at Homburg, where I thought it possible he had left property which he would sooner or later send for. There I learned that he had indeed just telegraphed from Cologne for his luggage. To Cologne I immediately despatched a line of inquiry as to his prosperity and the cause of his silence. The next day I received three words in answer—a simple uncommented request that I would come to him. I lost no time, and reached him in the course of a few hours. It was dark when I arrived, and the city was sheeted in a cold autumnal rain. Pickering had stumbled, with an indifference which was itself a symptom of distress, on a certain musty old Mainzerhof, and I found him sitting over a smouldering fire in a vast dingy chamber which looked as if it had grown gray with watching the ennui of ten generations of travellers. Looking at him, as he rose on my entrance, I saw that he was in extreme tribulation. He was pale and haggard; his face was five years older. Now, at least, in all conscience, he had tasted of the cup of life! I was anxious to know what had turned it so suddenly to bitterness; but I spared him all importunate curiosity, and let him take his time. I accepted tacitly his tacit confession of distress, and we made for a while a feeble effort to discuss the picturesqueness of Cologne. At last he rose and stood a long time looking into the fire, while I slowly paced the length of the dusky room.
“Well!” he said, as I came back; “I wanted knowledge, and I certainly know something I didn’t a month ago.” And herewith, calmly and succinctly enough, as if dismay had worn itself out, he related the history of the foregoing days. He touched lightly on details; he evidently never was to gush as freely again as he had done during the prosperity of his suit. He had been accepted one evening, as explicitly as his imagination could desire, and had gone forth in his rapture and roamed about till nearly morning in the gardens of the Conversation-house, taking the stars and the perfumes of the summer night into his confidence. “It is worth it all, almost,” he said, “to have been wound up for an hour to that celestial pitch. No man, I am sure, can ever know it but once.” The next morning he had repaired to Madame Blumenthal’s lodging and had been met, to his amazement, by a naked refusal to see him. He had strode about for a couple of hours—in another mood—and then had returned to the charge. The servant handed him a three-cornered note; it contained these words: “Leave me alone to-day; I will give you ten minutes to- morrow evening.” Of the next thirty-six hours he could give no coherent account, but at the appointed time Madame Blumenthal had received him. Almost before she spoke there had come to him a sense of the depth of his folly in supposing he knew her. “One has heard all one’s days,” he said, “of people removing the mask; it’s one of the stock phrases of romance. Well, there she stood with her mask in her hand. Her face,” he went on gravely, after a pause—”her face was horrible!” … “I give you ten minutes,” she had said, pointing to the clock. “Make your scene, tear your hair, brandish your dagger!” And she had sat down and folded her arms. “It’s not a joke,” she cried, “it’s dead earnest; let us have it over. You are dismissed—have you nothing to say?” He had stammered some frantic demand for an explanation; and she had risen and come near him, looking at him from head to feet, very pale, and evidently more excited than she wished him to see. “I have done with you!” she said, with a smile; “you ought to have done with me! It has all been delightful, but there are excellent reasons why it should come to an end.” “You have been playing a part, then,” he had gasped out; “you never cared for me?” “Yes; till I knew you; till I saw how far you would go. But now the story’s finished; we have reached the denoument. We will close the book and be good friends.” “To see how far I would go?” he had repeated. “You led me on, meaning all the while to do THIS!” “I led you on, if you will. I received your visits, in season and out! Sometimes they were very entertaining; sometimes they bored me fearfully. But you were such a very curious case of—what shall I call it?—of sincerity, that I determined to take good and bad together. I wanted to make you commit yourself unmistakably. I should have preferred not to bring you to this place; but that too was necessary. Of course I can’t marry you; I can do better. So can you, for that matter; thank your fate for it. You have thought wonders of me for a month, but your good-humour wouldn’t last. I am too old and too wise; you are too young and too foolish. It seems to me that I have been very good to you; I have entertained you to the top of your bent, and, except perhaps that I am a little brusque just now, you have nothing to complain of. I would have let you down more gently if I could have taken another month to it; but circumstances have forced my hand. Abuse me, curse me, if you like. I will make every allowance!” Pickering listened to all this intently enough to perceive that, as if by some sudden natural cataclysm, the ground had broken away at his feet, and that he must recoil. He turned away in dumb amazement. “I don’t know how I seemed to be taking it,” he said, “but she seemed really to desire- -I don’t know why—something in the way of reproach and vituperation. But I couldn’t, in that way, have uttered a syllable. I was sickened; I wanted to get away into the air—to shake her off and come to my senses. ‘Have you nothing, nothing, nothing to
say?’ she cried, as if she were disappointed, while I stood with my hand on the door. ‘Haven’t I treated you to talk enough?’ I believed I answered. ‘You will write to me then, when you get home?’ ‘I think not,’ said I. ‘Six months hence, I fancy, you will come and see me!’ ‘Never!’ said I. ‘That’s a confession of stupidity,’ she answered. ‘It means that, even on reflection, you will never understand the philosophy of my conduct.’ The word ‘philosophy’ seemed so strange that I verily believe I smiled. ‘I have given you all that you gave me,’ she went on. ‘Your passion was an affair of the head.’ ‘I only wish you had told me sooner that you considered it so!’ I exclaimed. And I went my way. The next day I came down the Rhine. I sat all day on the boat, not knowing where I was going, where to get off. I was in a kind of ague of terror; it seemed to me I had seen something infernal. At last I saw the cathedral towers here looming over the city. They seemed to say something to me, and when the boat stopped, I came ashore. I have been here a week. I have not slept at night— and yet it has been a week of rest!”