by Henry James
“May I walk back with you?” he asked. And when she had said that he might if he wanted, he observed that he had seen her and recognized her half a mile away.
“You must have very good eyes,” said Gertrude.
“Yes, I have very good eyes, Miss Gertrude,” said Mr. Brand. She perceived that he meant something; but for a long time past Mr. Brand had constantly meant something, and she had almost got used to it. She felt, however, that what he meant had now a renewed power to disturb her, to perplex and agitate her. He walked beside her in silence for a moment, and then he added, “I have had no trouble in seeing that you are beginning to avoid me. But perhaps,” he went on, “one need n’t have had very good eyes to see that.”
“I have not avoided you,” said Gertrude, without looking at him.
“I think you have been unconscious that you were avoiding me,” Mr. Brand replied. “You have not even known that I was there.”
“Well, you are here now, Mr. Brand!” said Gertrude, with a little laugh. “I know that very well.”
He made no rejoinder. He simply walked beside her slowly, as they were obliged to walk over the soft grass. Presently they came to another gate, which was closed. Mr. Brand laid his hand upon it, but he made no movement to open it; he stood and looked at his companion. “You are very much interested—very much absorbed,” he said.
Gertrude glanced at him; she saw that he was pale and that he looked excited. She had never seen Mr. Brand excited before, and she felt that the spectacle, if fully carried out, would be impressive, almost painful. “Absorbed in what?” she asked. Then she looked away at the illuminated sky. She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was vexed with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood there looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes, represented an immense body of half-obliterated obligations, that were rising again into a certain distinctness.
“You have new interests, new occupations,” he went on. “I don’t know that I can say that you have new duties. We have always old ones, Gertrude,” he added.
“Please open the gate, Mr. Brand,” she said; and she felt as if, in saying so, she were cowardly and petulant. But he opened the gate, and allowed her to pass; then he closed it behind himself. Before she had time to turn away he put out his hand and held her an instant by the wrist.
“I want to say something to you,” he said.
“I know what you want to say,” she answered. And she was on the point of adding, “And I know just how you will say it;” but these words she kept back.
“I love you, Gertrude,” he said. “I love you very much; I love you more than ever.”
He said the words just as she had known he would; she had heard them before. They had no charm for her; she had said to herself before that it was very strange. It was supposed to be delightful for a woman to listen to such words; but these seemed to her flat and mechanical. “I wish you would forget that,” she declared.
“How can I—why should I?” he asked.
“I have made you no promise—given you no pledge,” she said, looking at him, with her voice trembling a little.
“You have let me feel that I have an influence over you. You have opened your mind to me.”
“I never opened my mind to you, Mr. Brand!” Gertrude cried, with some vehemence.
“Then you were not so frank as I thought—as we all thought.”
“I don’t see what any one else had to do with it!” cried the girl.
“I mean your father and your sister. You know it makes them happy to think you will listen to me.”
She gave a little laugh. “It does n’t make them happy,” she said. “Nothing makes them happy. No one is happy here.”
“I think your cousin is very happy—Mr. Young,” rejoined Mr. Brand, in a soft, almost timid tone.
“So much the better for him!” And Gertrude gave her little laugh again.
The young man looked at her a moment. “You are very much changed,” he said.
“I am glad to hear it,” Gertrude declared.
“I am not. I have known you a long time, and I have loved you as you were.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Gertrude. “I must be going home. “
He on his side, gave a little laugh.
“You certainly do avoid me—you see!”
“Avoid me, then,” said the girl.
He looked at her again; and then, very gently, “No I will not avoid you,” he replied; “but I will leave you, for the present, to yourself. I think you will remember—after a while—some of the things you have forgotten. I think you will come back to me; I have great faith in that.”
This time his voice was very touching; there was a strong, reproachful force in what he said, and Gertrude could answer nothing. He turned away and stood there, leaning his elbows on the gate and looking at the beautiful sunset. Gertrude left him and took her way home again; but when she reached the middle of the next field she suddenly burst into tears. Her tears seemed to her to have been a long time gathering, and for some moments it was a kind of glee to shed them. But they presently passed away. There was something a little hard about Gertrude; and she never wept again.
CHAPTER VI
Going of an afternoon to call upon his niece, Mr. Wentworth more than once found Robert Acton sitting in her little drawing-room. This was in no degree, to Mr. Wentworth, a perturbing fact, for he had no sense of competing with his young kinsman for Eugenia’s good graces. Madame Munster’s uncle had the highest opinion of Robert Acton, who, indeed, in the family at large, was the object of a great deal of undemonstrative appreciation. They were all proud of him, in so far as the charge of being proud may be brought against people who were, habitually, distinctly guiltless of the misdemeanor known as “taking credit.” They never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vainglorious reference to him; they never quoted the clever things he had said, nor mentioned the generous things he had done. But a sort of frigidly-tender faith in his unlimited goodness was a part of their personal sense of right; and there can, perhaps, be no better proof of the high esteem in which he was held than the fact that no explicit judgment was ever passed upon his actions. He was no more praised than he was blamed; but he was tacitly felt to be an ornament to his circle. He was the man of the world of the family. He had been to China and brought home a collection of curiosities; he had made a fortune— or rather he had quintupled a fortune already considerable; he was distinguished by that combination of celibacy, “property,” and good humor which appeals to even the most subdued imaginations; and it was taken for granted that he would presently place these advantages at the disposal of some well-regulated young woman of his own “set.” Mr. Wentworth was not a man to admit to himself that—his paternal duties apart— he liked any individual much better than all other individuals; but he thought Robert Acton extremely judicious; and this was perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of to the eagerness of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it would have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste. Acton was, in fact, very judicious—and something more beside; and indeed it must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that his cousin’s final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment—for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great discretion in all things—beginning with his estimate of himself. He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world as he was supposed to be in local circles; but it must be added that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach of which he had never quite given local circles the measure. He was addicted to taking the humorous view of things, and he had discovered
that even in the narrowest circles such a disposition may find frequent opportunities. Such opportunities had formed for some time—that is, since his return from China, a year and a half before—the most active element in this gentleman’s life, which had just now a rather indolent air. He was perfectly willing to get married. He was very fond of books, and he had a handsome library; that is, his books were much more numerous than Mr. Wentworth’s. He was also very fond of pictures; but it must be confessed, in the fierce light of contemporary criticism, that his walls were adorned with several rather abortive masterpieces. He had got his learning—and there was more of it than commonly appeared— at Harvard College; and he took a pleasure in old associations, which made it a part of his daily contentment to live so near this institution that he often passed it in driving to Boston. He was extremely interested in the Baroness Munster.
She was very frank with him; or at least she intended to be. “I am sure you find it very strange that I should have settled down in this out-of-the-way part of the world!” she said to him three or four weeks after she had installed herself. “I am certain you are wondering about my motives. They are very pure.” The Baroness by this time was an old inhabitant; the best society in Boston had called upon her, and Clifford Wentworth had taken her several times to drive in his buggy.
Robert Acton was seated near her, playing with a fan; there were always several fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of different colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one. “No, I don’t find it at all strange,” he said slowly, smiling. “That a clever woman should turn up in Boston, or its suburbs—that does not require so much explanation. Boston is a very nice place.”
“If you wish to make me contradict you,” said the Baroness, “vous vous y prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable of agreeing to. Boston is a paradise, and we are in the suburbs of Paradise.”
“Just now I am not at all in the suburbs; I am in the place itself,” rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair. He was, however, not always lounging; and when he was he was not quite so relaxed as he pretended. To a certain extent, he sought refuge from shyness in this appearance of relaxation; and like many persons in the same circumstances he somewhat exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this, the air of being much at his ease was a cover for vigilant observation. He was more than interested in this clever woman, who, whatever he might say, was clever not at all after the Boston fashion; she plunged him into a kind of excitement, held him in vague suspense. He was obliged to admit to himself that he had never yet seen a woman just like this—not even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity of his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking, still superficially, the humorous view of Madame Munster. It was not at all true that he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might have been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of even the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis. This was an impulse for which, surely, no apology was needed; and Madame Munster was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Munster struck him as out of keeping with her little circle; she was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections too crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked to the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And indeed he had no great desire to share his vague mistrust with any one. There was a personal pleasure in it; the greatest pleasure he had known at least since he had come from China. He would keep the Baroness, for better or worse, to himself; he had a feeling that he deserved to enjoy a monopoly of her, for he was certainly the person who had most adequately gauged her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax upon such a monopoly.
One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan) she asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself, to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls. “There are half a dozen places,” she said; “a formidable list. Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They must think me horribly vicious.”
“You ask me to apologize,” said Acton, “but you don’t tell me what excuse I can offer.”
“That is more,” the Baroness declared, “than I am held to. It would be like my asking you to buy me a bouquet and giving you the money. I have no reason except that—somehow—it ‘s too violent an effort. It is not inspiring. Would n’t that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they are very sincere; they don’t tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I don’t see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting some one’s portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth.”
“I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people,” said Acton. “You are having a very quiet time of it here. It ‘s a dull life for you.”
“Ah, the quiet,—the quiet!” the Baroness exclaimed. “That ‘s what I like. It ‘s rest. That ‘s what I came here for. Amusement? I have had amusement. And as for seeing people—I have already seen a great many in my life. If it did n’t sound ungracious I should say that I wish very humbly your people here would leave me alone!”
Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who took being looked at remarkably well. “So you have come here for rest?” he asked.
“So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are no reasons—don’t you know?—and yet that are really the best: to come away, to change, to break with everything. When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I asked myself why I should n’t arrive here.”
“You certainly had time on the way!” said Acton, laughing.
Madame Munster looked at him again; and then, smiling: “And I have certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never ask myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank me.”
“When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path.”
“You mean to put difficulties in my path?” she asked, rearranging the rosebud in her corsage.
“The greatest of all—that of having been so agreeable”—
“That I shall be unable to depart? Don’t be too sure. I have left some very agreeable people over there.”
“Ah,” said Acton, “but it was to come here, where I am!”
“I did n’t know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No,” the Baroness pursued, “it was precisely not to see you—such people as you—that I came.”
“Such people as me?” cried Acton.
“I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations. Don’t you see the difference?”
“The difference tells against me,” said Acton. “I suppose I am an artificial relation.”
“Conventional,” declared the Baroness; “very conventional.”
“Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman may always become natural,” said Acton.
“You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at any rate,” rejoined Eugenia, “nous n’en sommes pas la!”
They were not, as yet; but a little later, when she began to go with him to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were. He came for her several times, alone, in his high “wagon,” drawn by a pair of charming light-limbed horses. It was
different, her having gone with Clifford Wentworth, who was her cousin, and so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be “engaged” to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived that the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whatever; for she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known that her matrimonial condition was of the “morganatic” order; but in its natural aversion to suppose that this meant anything less than absolute wedlock, the conscience of the community took refuge in the belief that it implied something even more.