by Henry James
“My dear uncle,” said Felix, “excuse me if your question makes me smile a little. To begin with, I have never entertained an idea. Ideas often entertain me; but I am afraid I have never seriously made a plan. I know what you are going to say; or rather, I know what you think, for I don’t think you will say it— that this is very frivolous and loose-minded on my part. So it is; but I am made like that; I take things as they come, and somehow there is always some new thing to follow the last. In the second place, I should never propose to settle. I can’t settle, my dear uncle; I ‘m not a settler. I know that is what strangers are supposed to do here; they always settle. But I have n’t—to answer your question— entertained that idea.”
“You intend to return to Europe and resume your irregular manner of life?” Mr. Wentworth inquired.
“I can’t say I intend. But it ‘s very likely I shall go back to Europe. After all, I am a European. I feel that, you know. It will depend a good deal upon my sister. She ‘s even more of a European than I; here, you know, she ‘s a picture out of her setting. And as for ‘resuming,’ dear uncle, I really have never given up my irregular manner of life. What, for me, could be more irregular than this?”
“Than what?” asked Mr. Wentworth, with his pale gravity.
“Well, than everything! Living in the midst of you, this way; this charming, quiet, serious family life; fraternizing with Charlotte and Gertrude; calling upon twenty young ladies and going out to walk with them; sitting with you in the evening on the piazza and listening to the crickets, and going to bed at ten o’clock.”
“Your description is very animated,” said Mr. Wentworth; “but I see nothing improper in what you describe.”
“Neither do I, dear uncle. It is extremely delightful; I should n’t like it if it were improper. I assure you I don’t like improper things; though I dare say you think I do,” Felix went on, painting away.
“I have never accused you of that.”
“Pray don’t,” said Felix, “because, you see, at bottom I am a terrible Philistine.”
“A Philistine?” repeated Mr. Wentworth.
“I mean, as one may say, a plain, God-fearing man.” Mr. Wentworth looked at him reservedly, like a mystified sage, and Felix continued, “I trust I shall enjoy a venerable and venerated old age. I mean to live long. I can hardly call that a plan, perhaps; but it ‘s a keen desire—a rosy vision. I shall be a lively, perhaps even a frivolous old man!”
“It is natural,” said his uncle, sententiously, “that one should desire to prolong an agreeable life. We have perhaps a selfish indisposition to bring our pleasure to a close. But I presume,” he added, “that you expect to marry.”
“That too, dear uncle, is a hope, a desire, a vision,” said Felix. It occurred to him for an instant that this was possibly a preface to the offer of the hand of one of Mr. Wentworth’s admirable daughters. But in the name of decent modesty and a proper sense of the hard realities of this world, Felix banished the thought. His uncle was the incarnation of benevolence, certainly; but from that to accepting—much more postulating—the idea of a union between a young lady with a dowry presumptively brilliant and a penniless artist with no prospect of fame, there was a very long way. Felix had lately become conscious of a luxurious preference for the society—if possible unshared with others—of Gertrude Wentworth; but he had relegated this young lady, for the moment, to the coldly brilliant category of unattainable possessions. She was not the first woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration. He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made, once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated. On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been incapable of taking advantage of his present large allowance of familiarity to make love to the younger of his handsome cousins. Felix had grown up among traditions in the light of which such a proceeding looked like a grievous breach of hospitality. I have said that he was always happy, and it may be counted among the present sources of his happiness that he had as regards this matter of his relations with Gertrude a deliciously good conscience. His own deportment seemed to him suffused with the beauty of virtue— a form of beauty that he admired with the same vivacity with which he admired all other forms.
“I think that if you marry,” said Mr. Wentworth presently, “it will conduce to your happiness.”
“Sicurissimo!” Felix exclaimed; and then, arresting his brush, he looked at his uncle with a smile. “There is something I feel tempted to say to you. May I risk it?”
Mr. Wentworth drew himself up a little. “I am very safe; I don’t repeat things.” But he hoped Felix would not risk too much.
Felix was laughing at his answer.
“It ‘s odd to hear you telling me how to be happy. I don’t think you know yourself, dear uncle. Now, does that sound brutal?”
The old man was silent a moment, and then, with a dry dignity that suddenly touched his nephew: “We may sometimes point out a road we are unable to follow.”
“Ah, don’t tell me you have had any sorrows,” Felix rejoined. “I did n’t suppose it, and I did n’t mean to allude to them. I simply meant that you all don’t amuse yourselves.”
“Amuse ourselves? We are not children.”
“Precisely not! You have reached the proper age. I was saying that the other day to Gertrude,” Felix added. “I hope it was not indiscreet.”
“If it was,” said Mr. Wentworth, with a keener irony than Felix would have thought him capable of, “it was but your way of amusing yourself. I am afraid you have never had a trouble.”
“Oh, yes, I have!” Felix declared, with some spirit; “before I knew better. But you don’t catch me at it again.”
Mr. Wentworth maintained for a while a silence more expressive than a deep-drawn sigh. “You have no children,” he said at last.
“Don’t tell me,” Felix exclaimed, “that your charming young people are a source of grief to you!”
“I don’t speak of Charlotte.” And then, after a pause, Mr. Wentworth continued, “I don’t speak of Gertrude. But I feel considerable anxiety about Clifford. I will tell you another time.”
The next time he gave Felix a sitting his nephew reminded him that he had taken him into his confidence. “How is Clifford to-day?” Felix asked. “He has always seemed to me a young man of remarkable discretion. Indeed, he is only too discreet; he seems on his guard against me— as if he thought me rather light company. The other day he told his sister— Gertrude repeated it to me—that I was always laughing at him. If I laugh it is simply from the impulse to try and inspire him with confidence. That is the only way I have.”
“Clifford’s situation is no laughing matter,” said Mr. Wentworth. “It is very peculiar, as I suppose you have guessed.”
“Ah, you mean his love affair with his cousin?”
Mr. Wentworth stared, blushing a little. “I mean his absence from college. He has been suspended. We have decided not to speak of it unless we are asked.”
“Suspended?” Felix repeated.
“He has been requested by the Harvard authorities to absent himself for six months. Meanwhile he is studying with Mr. Brand. We think Mr. Brand will help him; at least we hope so.”
“What befell him at college?” Felix asked. “He was too fond of pleasure? Mr. Brand certainly will not teach him any of those secrets!”
“He was too fond of something of which he should not have been fond. I suppose it is considered a pleasure.”
Felix gave his light laugh. “My dear uncle, is there any doubt about its being a pleasure? C’est de son age, as they say in France.”
“I should have said rather it was a vice of later life— of disappointed old age.”
Felix glanced at his uncle, with his lifted eyebrows, and then, “Of what are you speaking?” he demanded, smiling.
“Of the situation in which Cliffor
d was found.”
“Ah, he was found—he was caught?”
“Necessarily, he was caught. He could n’t walk; he staggered.”
“Oh,” said Felix, “he drinks! I rather suspected that, from something I observed the first day I came here. I quite agree with you that it is a low taste. It ‘s not a vice for a gentleman. He ought to give it up.”
“We hope for a good deal from Mr. Brand’s influence,” Mr. Wentworth went on. “He has talked to him from the first. And he never touches anything himself.”
“I will talk to him—I will talk to him!” Felix declared, gayly.
“What will you say to him?” asked his uncle, with some apprehension.
Felix for some moments answered nothing. “Do you mean to marry him to his cousin?” he asked at last.
“Marry him?” echoed Mr. Wentworth. “I should n’t think his cousin would want to marry him.”
“You have no understanding, then, with Mrs. Acton?”
Mr. Wentworth stared, almost blankly. “I have never discussed such subjects with her.”
“I should think it might be time,” said Felix. “Lizzie Acton is admirably pretty, and if Clifford is dangerous….”
“They are not engaged,” said Mr. Wentworth. “I have no reason to suppose they are engaged.”
“Par exemple!” cried Felix. “A clandestine engagement? Trust me, Clifford, as I say, is a charming boy. He is incapable of that. Lizzie Acton, then, would not be jealous of another woman.”
“I certainly hope not,” said the old man, with a vague sense of jealousy being an even lower vice than a love of liquor.
“The best thing for Clifford, then,” Felix propounded, “is to become interested in some clever, charming woman.” And he paused in his painting, and, with his elbows on his knees, looked with bright communicativeness at his uncle. “You see, I believe greatly in the influence of women. Living with women helps to make a man a gentleman. It is very true Clifford has his sisters, who are so charming. But there should be a different sentiment in play from the fraternal, you know. He has Lizzie Acton; but she, perhaps, is rather immature.”
“I suspect Lizzie has talked to him, reasoned with him,” said Mr. Wentworth.
“On the impropriety of getting tipsy—on the beauty of temperance? That is dreary work for a pretty young girl. No,” Felix continued; “Clifford ought to frequent some agreeable woman, who, without ever mentioning such unsavory subjects, would give him a sense of its being very ridiculous to be fuddled. If he could fall in love with her a little, so much the better. The thing would operate as a cure.”
“Well, now, what lady should you suggest?” asked Mr. Wentworth.
“There is a clever woman under your hand. My sister.”
“Your sister—under my hand?” Mr. Wentworth repeated.
“Say a word to Clifford. Tell him to be bold. He is well disposed already; he has invited her two or three times to drive. But I don’t think he comes to see her. Give him a hint to come— to come often. He will sit there of an afternoon, and they will talk. It will do him good. “
Mr. Wentworth meditated. “You think she will exercise a helpful influence?”
“She will exercise a civilizing—I may call it a sobering—influence. A charming, clever, witty woman always does—especially if she is a little of a coquette. My dear uncle, the society of such women has been half my education. If Clifford is suspended, as you say, from college, let Eugenia be his preceptress.”
Mr. Wentworth continued thoughtful. “You think Eugenia is a coquette?” he asked.
“What pretty woman is not?” Felix demanded in turn. But this, for Mr. Wentworth, could at the best have been no answer, for he did not think his niece pretty. “With Clifford,” the young man pursued, “Eugenia will simply be enough of a coquette to be a little ironical. That ‘s what he needs. So you recommend him to be nice with her, you know. The suggestion will come best from you.”
“Do I understand,” asked the old man, “that I am to suggest to my son to make a—a profession of—of affection to Madame Munster?”
“Yes, yes—a profession!” cried Felix sympathetically.
“But, as I understand it, Madame Munster is a married woman.”
“Ah,” said Felix, smiling, “of course she can’t marry him. But she will do what she can.”
Mr. Wentworth sat for some time with his eyes on the floor; at last he got up. “I don’t think,” he said, “that I can undertake to recommend my son any such course.” And without meeting Felix’s surprised glance he broke off his sitting, which was not resumed for a fortnight.
Felix was very fond of the little lake which occupied so many of Mr. Wentworth’s numerous acres, and of a remarkable pine grove which lay upon the further side of it, planted upon a steep embankment and haunted by the summer breeze. The murmur of the air in the far off tree-tops had a strange distinctness; it was almost articulate. One afternoon the young man came out of his painting-room and passed the open door of Eugenia’s little salon. Within, in the cool dimness, he saw his sister, dressed in white, buried in her arm-chair, and holding to her face an immense bouquet. Opposite to her sat Clifford Wentworth, twirling his hat. He had evidently just presented the bouquet to the Baroness, whose fine eyes, as she glanced at him over the big roses and geraniums, wore a conversational smile. Felix, standing on the threshold of the cottage, hesitated for a moment as to whether he should retrace his steps and enter the parlor. Then he went his way and passed into Mr. Wentworth’s garden. That civilizing process to which he had suggested that Clifford should be subjected appeared to have come on of itself. Felix was very sure, at least, that Mr. Wentworth had not adopted his ingenious device for stimulating the young man’s aesthetic consciousness. “Doubtless he supposes,” he said to himself, after the conversation that has been narrated, “that I desire, out of fraternal benevolence, to procure for Eugenia the amusement of a flirtation—or, as he probably calls it, an intrigue—with the too susceptible Clifford. It must be admitted—and I have noticed it before—that nothing exceeds the license occasionally taken by the imagination of very rigid people.” Felix, on his own side, had of course said nothing to Clifford; but he had observed to Eugenia that Mr. Wentworth was much mortified at his son’s low tastes. “We ought to do something to help them, after all their kindness to us,” he had added. “Encourage Clifford to come and see you, and inspire him with a taste for conversation. That will supplant the other, which only comes from his puerility, from his not taking his position in the world— that of a rich young man of ancient stock—seriously enough. Make him a little more serious. Even if he makes love to you it is no great matter.”
“I am to offer myself as a superior form of intoxication— a substitute for a brandy bottle, eh?” asked the Baroness. “Truly, in this country one comes to strange uses.”
But she had not positively declined to undertake Clifford’s higher education, and Felix, who had not thought of the matter again, being haunted with visions of more personal profit, now reflected that the work of redemption had fairly begun. The idea in prospect had seemed of the happiest, but in operation it made him a trifle uneasy. “What if Eugenia—what if Eugenia”— he asked himself softly; the question dying away in his sense of Eugenia’s undetermined capacity. But before Felix had time either to accept or to reject its admonition, even in this vague form, he saw Robert Acton turn out of Mr. Wentworth’s inclosure, by a distant gate, and come toward the cottage in the orchard. Acton had evidently walked from his own house along a shady by-way and was intending to pay a visit to Madame Munster. Felix watched him a moment; then he turned away. Acton could be left to play the part of Providence and interrupt— if interruption were needed—Clifford’s entanglement with Eugenia.
Felix passed through the garden toward the house and toward a postern gate which opened upon a path leading across the fields, beside a little wood, to the lake. He stopped and looked up at the house; his eyes rested more particularly upon a certain o
pen window, on the shady side. Presently Gertrude appeared there, looking out into the summer light. He took off his hat to her and bade her good-day; he remarked that he was going to row across the pond, and begged that she would do him the honor to accompany him. She looked at him a moment; then, without saying anything, she turned away. But she soon reappeared below in one of those quaint and charming Leghorn hats, tied with white satin bows, that were worn at that period; she also carried a green parasol. She went with him to the edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered between the trees. The place was delightfully cool, and had the added charm that— in the softly sounding pine boughs—you seemed to hear the coolness as well as feel it. Felix and Gertrude sat down on the rust-colored carpet of pine-needles and talked of many things. Felix spoke at last, in the course of talk, of his going away; it was the first time he had alluded to it.