by Henry James
“You are going away?” said Gertrude, looking at him.
“Some day—when the leaves begin to fall. You know I can’t stay forever.”
Gertrude transferred her eyes to the outer prospect, and then, after a pause, she said, “I shall never see you again.”
“Why not?” asked Felix. “We shall probably both survive my departure.”
But Gertrude only repeated, “I shall never see you again. I shall never hear of you,” she went on. “I shall know nothing about you. I knew nothing about you before, and it will be the same again.”
“I knew nothing about you then, unfortunately,” said Felix. “But now I shall write to you.”
“Don’t write to me. I shall not answer you,” Gertrude declared.
“I should of course burn your letters,” said Felix.
Gertrude looked at him again. “Burn my letters? You sometimes say strange things.”
“They are not strange in themselves,” the young man answered. “They are only strange as said to you. You will come to Europe.”
“With whom shall I come?” She asked this question simply; she was very much in earnest. Felix was interested in her earnestness; for some moments he hesitated. “You can’t tell me that,” she pursued. “You can’t say that I shall go with my father and my sister; you don’t believe that.”
“I shall keep your letters,” said Felix, presently, for all answer.
“I never write. I don’t know how to write.” Gertrude, for some time, said nothing more; and her companion, as he looked at her, wished it had not been “disloyal” to make love to the daughter of an old gentleman who had offered one hospitality. The afternoon waned; the shadows stretched themselves; and the light grew deeper in the western sky. Two persons appeared on the opposite side of the lake, coming from the house and crossing the meadow. “It is Charlotte and Mr. Brand,” said Gertrude. “They are coming over here.” But Charlotte and Mr. Brand only came down to the edge of the water, and stood there, looking across; they made no motion to enter the boat that Felix had left at the mooring-place. Felix waved his hat to them; it was too far to call. They made no visible response, and they presently turned away and walked along the shore.
“Mr. Brand is not demonstrative,” said Felix. “He is never demonstrative to me. He sits silent, with his chin in his hand, looking at me. Sometimes he looks away. Your father tells me he is so eloquent; and I should like to hear him talk. He looks like such a noble young man. But with me he will never talk. And yet I am so fond of listening to brilliant imagery!”
“He is very eloquent,” said Gertrude; “but he has no brilliant imagery. I have heard him talk a great deal. I knew that when they saw us they would not come over here.”
“Ah, he is making la cour, as they say, to your sister? They desire to be alone?”
“No,” said Gertrude, gravely, “they have no such reason as that for being alone.”
“But why does n’t he make la cour to Charlotte?” Felix inquired. “She is so pretty, so gentle, so good.”
Gertrude glanced at him, and then she looked at the distantly-seen couple they were discussing. Mr. Brand and Charlotte were walking side by side. They might have been a pair of lovers, and yet they might not. “They think I should not be here,” said Gertrude.
“With me? I thought you did n’t have those ideas.”
“You don’t understand. There are a great many things you don’t understand.”
“I understand my stupidity. But why, then, do not Charlotte and Mr. Brand, who, as an elder sister and a clergyman, are free to walk about together, come over and make me wiser by breaking up the unlawful interview into which I have lured you?”
“That is the last thing they would do,” said Gertrude.
Felix stared at her a moment, with his lifted eyebrows. “Je n’y comprends rien!” he exclaimed; then his eyes followed for a while the retreating figures of this critical pair. “You may say what you please,” he declared; “it is evident to me that your sister is not indifferent to her clever companion. It is agreeable to her to be walking there with him. I can see that from here.” And in the excitement of observation Felix rose to his feet.
Gertrude rose also, but she made no attempt to emulate her companion’s discovery; she looked rather in another direction. Felix’s words had struck her; but a certain delicacy checked her. “She is certainly not indifferent to Mr. Brand; she has the highest opinion of him.”
“One can see it—one can see it,” said Felix, in a tone of amused contemplation, with his head on one side. Gertrude turned her back to the opposite shore; it was disagreeable to her to look, but she hoped Felix would say something more. “Ah, they have wandered away into the wood,” he added.
Gertrude turned round again. “She is not in love with him,” she said; it seemed her duty to say that.
“Then he is in love with her; or if he is not, he ought to be. She is such a perfect little woman of her kind. She reminds me of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs; you know I am very fond of sugar. And she is very nice with Mr. Brand; I have noticed that; very gentle and gracious.”
Gertrude reflected a moment. Then she took a great resolution. “She wants him to marry me,” she said. “So of course she is nice.”
Felix’s eyebrows rose higher than ever. “To marry you! Ah, ah, this is interesting. And you think one must be very nice with a man to induce him to do that?”
Gertrude had turned a little pale, but she went on, “Mr. Brand wants it himself.”
Felix folded his arms and stood looking at her. “I see—I see,” he said quickly. “Why did you never tell me this before?”
“It is disagreeable to me to speak of it even now. I wished simply to explain to you about Charlotte.”
“You don’t wish to marry Mr. Brand, then?”
“No,” said Gertrude, gravely.
“And does your father wish it?”
“Very much.”
“And you don’t like him—you have refused him?”
“I don’t wish to marry him.”
“Your father and sister think you ought to, eh?”
“It is a long story,” said Gertrude. “They think there are good reasons. I can’t explain it. They think I have obligations, and that I have encouraged him.”
Felix smiled at her, as if she had been telling him an amusing story about some one else. “I can’t tell you how this interests me,” he said. “Now you don’t recognize these reasons—these obligations?”
“I am not sure; it is not easy.” And she picked up her parasol and turned away, as if to descend the slope.
“Tell me this,” Felix went on, going with her: “are you likely to give in— to let them persuade you?”
Gertrude looked at him with the serious face that she had constantly worn, in opposition to his almost eager smile. “I shall never marry Mr. Brand,” she said.
“I see!” Felix rejoined. And they slowly descended the hill together, saying nothing till they reached the margin of the pond. “It is your own affair,” he then resumed; “but do you know, I am not altogether glad? If it were settled that you were to marry Mr. Brand I should take a certain comfort in the arrangement. I should feel more free. I have no right to make love to you myself, eh?” And he paused, lightly pressing his argument upon her.
“None whatever,” replied Gertrude quickly—too quickly.
“Your father would never hear of it; I have n’t a penny. Mr. Brand, of course, has property of his own, eh?”
“I believe he has some property; but that has nothing to do with it.”
“With you, of course not; but with your father and sister it must have. So, as I say, if this were settled, I should feel more at liberty. “
“More at liberty?” Gertrude repeated. “Please unfasten the boat.”
Felix untwisted the rope and stood holding it. “I should be able to say things to you that I can’t give myself the pleasure of saying now,” he went on. “I could tell you h
ow much I admire you, without seeming to pretend to that which I have no right to pretend to. I should make violent love to you,” he added, laughing, “if I thought you were so placed as not to be offended by it.”
“You mean if I were engaged to another man? That is strange reasoning!” Gertrude exclaimed.
“In that case you would not take me seriously.”
“I take every one seriously,” said Gertrude. And without his help she stepped lightly into the boat.
Felix took up the oars and sent it forward. “Ah, this is what you have been thinking about? It seemed to me you had something on your mind. I wish very much,” he added, “that you would tell me some of these so-called reasons—these obligations.”
“They are not real reasons—good reasons,” said Gertrude, looking at the pink and yellow gleams in the water.
“I can understand that! Because a handsome girl has had a spark of coquetry, that is no reason.”
“If you mean me, it ‘s not that. I have not done that.”
“It is something that troubles you, at any rate,” said Felix.
“Not so much as it used to,” Gertrude rejoined.
He looked at her, smiling always. “That is not saying much, eh?” But she only rested her eyes, very gravely, on the lighted water. She seemed to him to be trying to hide the signs of the trouble of which she had just told him. Felix felt, at all times, much the same impulse to dissipate visible melancholy that a good housewife feels to brush away dust. There was something he wished to brush away now; suddenly he stopped rowing and poised his oars. “Why should Mr. Brand have addressed himself to you, and not to your sister?” he asked. “I am sure she would listen to him.”
Gertrude, in her family, was thought capable of a good deal of levity; but her levity had never gone so far as this. It moved her greatly, however, to hear Felix say that he was sure of something; so that, raising her eyes toward him, she tried intently, for some moments, to conjure up this wonderful image of a love-affair between her own sister and her own suitor. We know that Gertrude had an imaginative mind; so that it is not impossible that this effort should have been partially successful. But she only murmured, “Ah, Felix! ah, Felix!”
“Why should n’t they marry? Try and make them marry!” cried Felix.
“Try and make them?”
“Turn the tables on them. Then they will leave you alone. I will help you as far as I can.”
Gertrude’s heart began to beat; she was greatly excited; she had never had anything so interesting proposed to her before. Felix had begun to row again, and he now sent the boat home with long strokes. “I believe she does care for him!” said Gertrude, after they had disembarked.
“Of course she does, and we will marry them off. It will make them happy; it will make every one happy. We shall have a wedding and I will write an epithalamium.”
“It seems as if it would make me happy,” said Gertrude.
“To get rid of Mr. Brand, eh? To recover your liberty?”
Gertrude walked on. “To see my sister married to so good a man.”
Felix gave his light laugh. “You always put things on those grounds; you will never say anything for yourself. You are all so afraid, here, of being selfish. I don’t think you know how,” he went on. “Let me show you! It will make me happy for myself, and for just the reverse of what I told you a while ago. After that, when I make love to you, you will have to think I mean it.”
“I shall never think you mean anything,” said Gertrude. “You are too fantastic.”
“Ah,” cried Felix, “that ‘s a license to say everything! Gertrude, I adore you!”
CHAPTER VIII
Charlotte and Mr. Brand had not returned when they reached the house; but the Baroness had come to tea, and Robert Acton also, who now regularly asked for a place at this generous repast or made his appearance later in the evening. Clifford Wentworth, with his juvenile growl, remarked upon it.
“You are always coming to tea nowadays, Robert,” he said. “I should think you had drunk enough tea in China.”
“Since when is Mr. Acton more frequent?” asked the Baroness.
“Since you came,” said Clifford. “It seems as if you were a kind of attraction.”
“I suppose I am a curiosity,” said the Baroness. “Give me time and I will make you a salon.”
“It would fall to pieces after you go!” exclaimed Acton.
“Don’t talk about her going, in that familiar way,” Clifford said. “It makes me feel gloomy.”
Mr. Wentworth glanced at his son, and taking note of these words, wondered if Felix had been teaching him, according to the programme he had sketched out, to make love to the wife of a German prince.
Charlotte came in late with Mr. Brand; but Gertrude, to whom, at least, Felix had taught something, looked in vain, in her face, for the traces of a guilty passion. Mr. Brand sat down by Gertrude, and she presently asked him why they had not crossed the pond to join Felix and herself.
“It is cruel of you to ask me that,” he answered, very softly. He had a large morsel of cake before him; but he fingered it without eating it. “I sometimes think you are growing cruel,” he added.
Gertrude said nothing; she was afraid to speak. There was a kind of rage in her heart; she felt as if she could easily persuade herself that she was persecuted. She said to herself that it was quite right that she should not allow him to make her believe she was wrong. She thought of what Felix had said to her; she wished indeed Mr. Brand would marry Charlotte. She looked away from him and spoke no more. Mr. Brand ended by eating his cake, while Felix sat opposite, describing to Mr. Wentworth the students’ duels at Heidelberg. After tea they all dispersed themselves, as usual, upon the piazza and in the garden; and Mr. Brand drew near to Gertrude again.
“I did n’t come to you this afternoon because you were not alone,” he began; “because you were with a newer friend.”
“Felix? He is an old friend by this time.”
Mr. Brand looked at the ground for some moments. “I thought I was prepared to hear you speak in that way,” he resumed. “But I find it very painful.”
“I don’t see what else I can say,” said Gertrude.
Mr. Brand walked beside her for a while in silence; Gertrude wished he would go away. “He is certainly very accomplished. But I think I ought to advise you.”
“To advise me?”
“I think I know your nature.”
“I think you don’t,” said Gertrude, with a soft laugh.
“You make yourself out worse than you are—to please him,” Mr. Brand said, gently.
“Worse—to please him? What do you mean?” asked Gertrude, stopping.
Mr. Brand stopped also, and with the same soft straight-forwardness, “He does n’t care for the things you care for—the great questions of life.”
Gertrude, with her eyes on his, shook her head. “I don’t care for the great questions of life. They are much beyond me.”
“There was a time when you did n’t say that,” said Mr. Brand.
“Oh,” rejoined Gertrude, “I think you made me talk a great deal of nonsense. And it depends,” she added, “upon what you call the great questions of life. There are some things I care for.”
“Are they the things you talk about with your cousin?”
“You should not say things to me against my cousin, Mr. Brand,” said Gertrude. “That is dishonorable.”
He listened to this respectfully; then he answered, with a little vibration of the voice, “I should be very sorry to do anything dishonorable. But I don’t see why it is dishonorable to say that your cousin is frivolous.”
“Go and say it to himself!”
“I think he would admit it,” said Mr. Brand. “That is the tone he would take. He would not be ashamed of it.”
“Then I am not ashamed of it!” Gertrude declared. “That is probably what I like him for. I am frivolous myself.”
“You are trying, as I said just now, to lo
wer yourself.”
“I am trying for once to be natural!” cried Gertrude passionately. “I have been pretending, all my life; I have been dishonest; it is you that have made me so!” Mr. Brand stood gazing at her, and she went on, “Why should n’t I be frivolous, if I want? One has a right to be frivolous, if it ‘s one’s nature. No, I don’t care for the great questions. I care for pleasure—for amusement. Perhaps I am fond of wicked things; it is very possible!”