by Henry James
It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur than to think that he was an artist; the former word, to her fancy, had an even subtler connotation. She knew, however, that it was a word to use more soberly. Mr. Wentworth used it freely; for though he had not been exactly familiar with it, he found it convenient as a help toward classifying Felix, who, as a young man extremely clever and active and apparently respectable and yet not engaged in any recognized business, was an importunate anomaly. Of course the Baroness and her brother—she was always spoken of first— were a welcome topic of conversation between Mr. Wentworth and his daughters and their occasional visitors.
“And the young man, your nephew, what is his profession?” asked an old gentleman—Mr. Broderip, of Salem—who had been Mr. Wentworth’s classmate at Harvard College in the year 1809, and who came into his office in Devonshire Street. (Mr. Wentworth, in his later years, used to go but three times a week to his office, where he had a large amount of highly confidential trust-business to transact.)
“Well, he ‘s an amateur,” said Felix’s uncle, with folded hands, and with a certain satisfaction in being able to say it. And Mr. Broderip had gone back to Salem with a feeling that this was probably a “European” expression for a broker or a grain exporter.
“I should like to do your head, sir,” said Felix to his uncle one evening, before them all—Mr. Brand and Robert Acton being also present. “I think I should make a very fine thing of it. It ‘s an interesting head; it ‘s very mediaeval.”
Mr. Wentworth looked grave; he felt awkwardly, as if all the company had come in and found him standing before the looking-glass. “The Lord made it,” he said. “I don’t think it is for man to make it over again.”
“Certainly the Lord made it,” replied Felix, laughing, “and he made it very well. But life has been touching up the work. It is a very interesting type of head. It ‘s delightfully wasted and emaciated. The complexion is wonderfully bleached.” And Felix looked round at the circle, as if to call their attention to these interesting points. Mr. Wentworth grew visibly paler. “I should like to do you as an old prelate, an old cardinal, or the prior of an order.”
“A prelate, a cardinal?” murmured Mr. Wentworth. “Do you refer to the Roman Catholic priesthood?”
“I mean an old ecclesiastic who should have led a very pure, abstinent life. Now I take it that has been the case with you, sir; one sees it in your face,” Felix proceeded. “You have been very—a very moderate. Don’t you think one always sees that in a man’s face?”
“You see more in a man’s face than I should think of looking for,” said Mr. Wentworth coldly.
The Baroness rattled her fan, and gave her brilliant laugh. “It is a risk to look so close!” she exclaimed. “My uncle has some peccadilloes on his conscience.” Mr. Wentworth looked at her, painfully at a loss; and in so far as the signs of a pure and abstinent life were visible in his face they were then probably peculiarly manifest. “You are a beau vieillard, dear uncle,” said Madame M; auunster, smiling with her foreign eyes.
“I think you are paying me a compliment,” said the old man.
“Surely, I am not the first woman that ever did so!” cried the Baroness.
“I think you are,” said Mr. Wentworth gravely. And turning to Felix he added, in the same tone, “Please don’t take my likeness. My children have my daguerreotype. That is quite satisfactory.”
“I won’t promise,” said Felix, “not to work your head into something!”
Mr. Wentworth looked at him and then at all the others; then he got up and slowly walked away.
“Felix,” said Gertrude, in the silence that followed, “I wish you would paint my portrait.”
Charlotte wondered whether Gertrude was right in wishing this; and she looked at Mr. Brand as the most legitimate way of ascertaining. Whatever Gertrude did or said, Charlotte always looked at Mr. Brand. It was a standing pretext for looking at Mr. Brand—always, as Charlotte thought, in the interest of Gertrude’s welfare. It is true that she felt a tremulous interest in Gertrude being right; for Charlotte, in her small, still way, was an heroic sister.
“We should be glad to have your portrait, Miss Gertrude,” said Mr. Brand.
“I should be delighted to paint so charming a model,” Felix declared.
“Do you think you are so lovely, my dear?” asked Lizzie Acton, with her little inoffensive pertness, biting off a knot in her knitting.
“It is not because I think I am beautiful,” said Gertrude, looking all round. “I don’t think I am beautiful, at all.” She spoke with a sort of conscious deliberateness; and it seemed very strange to Charlotte to hear her discussing this question so publicly. “It is because I think it would be amusing to sit and be painted. I have always thought that.”
“I am sorry you have not had better things to think about, my daughter,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“You are very beautiful, cousin Gertrude,” Felix declared.
“That ‘s a compliment,” said Gertrude. “I put all the compliments I receive into a little money-jug that has a slit in the side. I shake them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many yet— only two or three.”
“No, it ‘s not a compliment,” Felix rejoined. “See; I am careful not to give it the form of a compliment. I did n’t think you were beautiful at first. But you have come to seem so little by little.”
“Take care, now, your jug does n’t burst!” exclaimed Lizzie.
“I think sitting for one’s portrait is only one of the various forms of idleness,” said Mr. Wentworth. “Their name is legion.”
“My dear sir,” cried Felix, “you can’t be said to be idle when you are making a man work so!”
“One might be painted while one is asleep,” suggested Mr. Brand, as a contribution to the discussion.
“Ah, do paint me while I am asleep,” said Gertrude to Felix, smiling. And she closed her eyes a little. It had by this time become a matter of almost exciting anxiety to Charlotte what Gertrude would say or would do next.
She began to sit for her portrait on the following day— in the open air, on the north side of the piazza. “I wish you would tell me what you think of us—how we seem to you,” she said to Felix, as he sat before his easel.
“You seem to me the best people in the world,” said Felix.
“You say that,” Gertrude resumed, “because it saves you the trouble of saying anything else.”
The young man glanced at her over the top of his canvas. “What else should I say? It would certainly be a great deal of trouble to say anything different.”
“Well,” said Gertrude, “you have seen people before that you have liked, have you not?”
“Indeed I have, thank Heaven!”
“And they have been very different from us,” Gertrude went on.
“That only proves,” said Felix, “that there are a thousand different ways of being good company.”
“Do you think us good company?” asked Gertrude.
“Company for a king!”
Gertrude was silent a moment; and then, “There must be a thousand different ways of being dreary,” she said; “and sometimes I think we make use of them all.”
Felix stood up quickly, holding up his hand. “If you could only keep that look on your face for half an hour—while I catch it!” he said. “It is uncommonly handsome.”
“To look handsome for half an hour—that is a great deal to ask of me,” she answered.
“It would be the portrait of a young woman who has taken some vow, some pledge, that she repents of,” said Felix, “and who is thinking it over at leisure.”
“I have taken no vow, no pledge,” said Gertrude, very gravely; “I have nothing to repent of.”
“My dear cousin, that was only a figure of speech. I am very sure that no one in your excellent family has anything to repent of.”
“And yet we are always repenting!” Gertrude exclaimed. “That is what I mean by our being dreary. You
know it perfectly well; you only pretend that you don’t.”
Felix gave a quick laugh. “The half hour is going on, and yet you are handsomer than ever. One must be careful what one says, you see.”
“To me,” said Gertrude, “you can say anything.”
Felix looked at her, as an artist might, and painted for some time in silence.
“Yes, you seem to me different from your father and sister— from most of the people you have lived with,” he observed.
“To say that one’s self,” Gertrude went on, “is like saying— by implication, at least—that one is better. I am not better; I am much worse. But they say themselves that I am different. It makes them unhappy.”
“Since you accuse me of concealing my real impressions, I may admit that I think the tendency—among you generally— is to be made unhappy too easily.”
“I wish you would tell that to my father,” said Gertrude.
“It might make him more unhappy!” Felix exclaimed, laughing.
“It certainly would. I don’t believe you have seen people like that.”
“Ah, my dear cousin, how do you know what I have seen?” Felix demanded. “How can I tell you?”
“You might tell me a great many things, if you only would. You have seen people like yourself—people who are bright and gay and fond of amusement. We are not fond of amusement.”
“Yes,” said Felix, “I confess that rather strikes me. You don’t seem to me to get all the pleasure out of life that you might. You don’t seem to me to enjoy….. Do you mind my saying this?” he asked, pausing.
“Please go on,” said the girl, earnestly.
“You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and liberty and what is called in Europe a ‘position.’ But you take a painful view of life, as one may say.”
“One ought to think it bright and charming and delightful, eh?” asked Gertrude.
“I should say so—if one can. It is true it all depends upon that,” Felix added.
“You know there is a great deal of misery in the world,” said his model.
“I have seen a little of it,” the young man rejoined. “But it was all over there—beyond the sea. I don’t see any here. This is a paradise.”
Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work. “To ‘enjoy,’ ” she began at last, “to take life—not painfully, must one do something wrong?”
Felix gave his long, light laugh again. “Seriously, I think not. And for this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time as incapable of wrong-doing.”
“I am sure,” said Gertrude, “that you are very wrong in telling a person that she is incapable of that. We are never nearer to evil than when we believe that.”
“You are handsomer than ever,” observed Felix, irrelevantly.
Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this. There was not so much excitement in it as at first. “What ought one to do?” she continued. “To give parties, to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?”
“I don’t think it ‘s what one does or one does n’t do that promotes enjoyment,” her companion answered. “It is the general way of looking at life.”
“They look at it as a discipline—that ‘s what they do here. I have often been told that.”
“Well, that ‘s very good. But there is another way,” added Felix, smiling: “to look at it as an opportunity.”
“An opportunity—yes,” said Gertrude. “One would get more pleasure that way.”
“I don’t attempt to say anything better for it than that it has been my own way—and that is not saying much!” Felix had laid down his palette and brushes; he was leaning back, with his arms folded, to judge the effect of his work. “And you know,” he said, “I am a very petty personage.”
“You have a great deal of talent,” said Gertrude.
“No—no,” the young man rejoined, in a tone of cheerful impartiality, “I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable. I assure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure. The world will never hear of me.” Gertrude looked at him with a strange feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew and which she did not, and how full of brilliant talents it must be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities. “You need n’t in general attach much importance to anything I tell you,” he pursued; “but you may believe me when I say this,— that I am little better than a good-natured feather-head.”
“A feather-head?” she repeated.
“I am a species of Bohemian.”
“A Bohemian?” Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as a geographical denomination; and she quite failed to understand the figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it. But it gave her pleasure.
Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet; he slowly came toward her, smiling. “I am a sort of adventurer,” he said, looking down at her.
She got up, meeting his smile. “An adventurer?” she repeated. “I should like to hear your adventures.”
For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand; but he dropped his own hands suddenly into the pockets of his painting-jacket. “There is no reason why you should n’t,” he said. “I have been an adventurer, but my adventures have been very innocent. They have all been happy ones; I don’t think there are any I should n’t tell. They were very pleasant and very pretty; I should like to go over them in memory. Sit down again, and I will begin,” he added in a moment, with his naturally persuasive smile.
Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man’s brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter’s knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played the violin in a little band of musicians—not of high celebrity— who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial concerts. He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a troupe of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences.
While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived in a fantastic world; she seemed to herself to be reading a romance that came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing so delightful since the perusal of “Nicholas Nickleby.” One afternoon she went to see her cousin, Mrs. Acton, Robert’s mother, who was a great invalid, never leaving the house. She came back alone, on foot, across the fields—this being a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston with her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon some of his friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother— remembered her, but said nothing about her—and several of whom, with the gentle ladies their wives, had driven out from town to pay their respects at the little house among the apple-trees, in vehicles which reminded the Baroness, who received her visitors with discriminating civility, of the large, light, rattling barouche in which she herself had made her journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning; in the western sky the great picture of a New England sunset, painted in crimson and silver, was suspended from the zenith; and the stony pastures, as Gertrude traversed them, thinking intently to herself, were covered with a light, c
lear glow. At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from the distance a man’s figure; he stood there as if he were waiting for her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand. She had a feeling as of not having seen him for some time; she could not have said for how long, for it yet seemed to her that he had been very lately at the house.