The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  Mr. Ruck made the acquaintance of Mrs. Church that evening in the parlour, being presented to her by his wife, who presumed on the rights conferred upon herself by the mutual proximity, at table, of the two ladies. I suspected that in Mrs. Church’s view Mrs. Ruck presumed too far. The fugitive from the Pension Chamousset, as M. Pigeonneau called her, was a little fresh, plump, comely woman, looking less than her age, with a round, bright, serious face. She was very simply and frugally dressed, not at all in the manner of Mr. Ruck’s companions, and she had an air of quiet distinction which was an excellent defensive weapon. She exhibited a polite disposition to listen to what Mr. Ruck might have to say, but her manner was equivalent to an intimation that what she valued least in boarding- house life was its social opportunities. She had placed herself near a lamp, after carefully screwing it and turning it up, and she had opened in her lap, with the assistance of a large embroidered marker, an octavo volume, which I perceived to be in German. To Mrs. Ruck and her daughter she was evidently a puzzle, with her economical attire and her expensive culture. The two younger ladies, however, had begun to fraternise very freely, and Miss Ruck presently went wandering out of the room with her arm round the waist of Miss Church. It was a very warm evening; the long windows of the salon stood wide open into the garden, and, inspired by the balmy darkness, M. Pigeonneau and Mademoiselle Beaurepas, a most obliging little woman, who lisped and always wore a huge cravat, declared they would organise a fete de nuit. They engaged in this undertaking, and the fete developed itself, consisting of half-a-dozen red paper lanterns, hung about on the trees, and of several glasses of sirop, carried on a tray by the stout-armed Celestine. As the festival deepened to its climax I went out into the garden, where M. Pigeonneau was master of ceremonies.

  “But where are those charming young ladies,” he cried, “Miss Ruck and the new-comer, l’aimable transfuge? Their absence has been remarked, and they are wanting to the brilliancy of the occasion. Voyez I have selected a glass of syrup—a generous glass—for Mademoiselle Ruck, and I advise you, my young friend, if you wish to make a good impression, to put aside one which you may offer to the other young lady. What is her name? Miss Church. I see; it’s a singular name. There is a church in which I would willingly worship!”

  Mr. Ruck presently came out of the salon, having concluded his interview with Mrs. Church. Through the open window I saw the latter lady sitting under the lamp with her German octavo, while Mrs. Ruck, established, empty-handed, in an arm-chair near her, gazed at her with an air of fascination.

  “Well, I told you she would know what I want,” said Mr. Ruck. “She says I want to go up to Appenzell, wherever that is; that I want to drink whey and live in a high latitude—what did she call it?—a high altitude. She seemed to think we ought to leave for Appenzell to- morrow; she’d got it all fixed. She says this ain’t a high enough lat—a high enough altitude. And she says I mustn’t go too high either; that would be just as bad; she seems to know just the right figure. She says she’ll give me a list of the hotels where we must stop, on the way to Appenzell. I asked her if she didn’t want to go with as, but she says she’d rather sit still and read. I expect she’s a big reader.”

  The daughter of this accomplished woman now reappeared, in company with Miss Ruck, with whom she had been strolling through the outlying parts of the garden.

  “Well,” said Miss Ruck, glancing at the red paper lanterns, “are they trying to stick the flower-pots into the trees?”

  “It’s an illumination in honour of our arrival,” the other young girl rejoined. “It’s a triumph over Madame Chamousset.”

  “Meanwhile, at the Pension Chamousset,” I ventured to suggest, “they have put out their lights; they are sitting in darkness, lamenting your departure.”

  She looked at me, smiling; she was standing in the light that came from the house. M. Pigeonneau, meanwhile, who had been awaiting his chance, advanced to Miss Ruck with his glass of syrup. “I have kept it for you, Mademoiselle,” he said; “I have jealously guarded it. It is very delicious!”

  Miss Ruck looked at him and his syrup, without any motion to take the glass. “Well, I guess it’s sour,” she said in a moment; and she gave a little shake of her head.

  M. Pigeonneau stood staring with his syrup in his hand; then he slowly turned away. He looked about at the rest of us, as if to appeal from Miss Ruck’s insensibility, and went to deposit his rejected tribute on a bench.

  “Won’t you give it to me?” asked Miss Church, in faultless French. “J’adore le sirop, moi.”

  M. Pigeonneau came back with alacrity, and presented the glass with a very low bow. “I adore good manners,” murmured the old man.

  This incident caused me to look at Miss Church with quickened interest. She was not strikingly pretty, but in her charming irregular face there was something brilliant and ardent. Like her mother, she was very simply dressed.

  “She wants to go to America, and her mother won’t let her,” said Miss Sophy to me, explaining her companion’s situation.

  “I am very sorry—for America,” I answered, laughing.

  “Well, I don’t want to say anything against your mother, but I think it’s shameful,” Miss Ruck pursued.

  “Mamma has very good reasons; she will tell you them all.”

  “Well, I’m sure I don’t want to hear them,” said Miss Ruck. “You have got a right to go to your own country; every one has a right to go to their own country.”

  “Mamma is not very patriotic,” said Aurora Church, smiling.

  “Well, I call that dreadful,” her companion declared. “I have heard that there are some Americans like that, but I never believed it.”

  “There are all sorts of Americans,” I said, laughing.

  “Aurora’s one of the right sort,” rejoined Miss Ruck, who had apparently become very intimate with her new friend.

  “Are you very patriotic?” I asked of the young girl.

  “She’s right down homesick,” said Miss Sophy; “she’s dying to go. If I were you my mother would have to take me.”

  “Mamma is going to take me to Dresden.”

  “Well, I declare I never heard of anything so dreadful!” cried Miss Ruck. “It’s like something in a story.”

  “I never heard there was anything very dreadful in Dresden,” I interposed.

  Miss Ruck looked at me a moment. “Well, I don’t believe YOU are a good American,” she replied, “and I never supposed you were. You had better go in there and talk to Mrs. Church.”

  “Dresden is really very nice, isn’t it?” I asked of her companion.

  “It isn’t nice if you happen to prefer New York,” said Miss Sophy. “Miss Church prefers New York. Tell him you are dying to see New York; it will make him angry,” she went on.

  “I have no desire to make him angry,” said Aurora, smiling.

  “It is only Miss Ruck who can do that,” I rejoined. “Have you been a long time in Europe?”

  “Always.”

  “I call that wicked!” Miss Sophy declared.

  “You might be in a worse place,” I continued. “I find Europe very interesting.”

  Miss Ruck gave a little laugh. “I was saying that you wanted to pass for a European.”

  “Yes, I want to pass for a Dalmatian.”

  Miss Ruck looked at me a moment. “Well, you had better not come home,” she said. “No one will speak to you.”

  “Were you born in these countries?” I asked of her companion.

  “Oh, no; I came to Europe when I was a small child. But I remember America a little, and it seems delightful.”

  “Wait till you see it again. It’s just too lovely,” said Miss Sophy.

  “It’s the grandest country in the world,” I added.

  Miss Ruck began to toss her head. “Come away, my dear,” she said. “If there’s a creature I despise it’s a man that tries to say funny things about his own country.”

  “Don’t you think one can be tired of Europe?
” Aurora asked, lingering.

  “Possibly—after many years.”

  “Father was tired of it after three weeks,” said Miss Ruck.

  “I have been here sixteen years,” her friend went on, looking at me with a charming intentness, as if she had a purpose in speaking. “It used to be for my education. I don’t know what it’s for now.”

  “She’s beautifully educated,” said Miss Ruck. “She knows four languages.”

  “I am not very sure that I know English.”

  “You should go to Boston!” cried Miss Sophy. “They speak splendidly in Boston.”

  “C’est mon reve,” said Aurora, still looking at me.

  “Have you been all over Europe,” I asked—”in all the different countries?”

  She hesitated a moment. “Everywhere that there’s a pension. Mamma is devoted to pensions. We have lived, at one time or another, in every pension in Europe.”

  “Well, I should think you had seen about enough,” said Miss Ruck.

  “It’s a delightful way of seeing Europe,” Aurora rejoined, with her brilliant smile. “You may imagine how it has attached me to the different countries. I have such charming souvenirs! There is a pension awaiting us now at Dresden,—eight francs a day, without wine. That’s rather dear. Mamma means to make them give us wine. Mamma is a great authority on pensions; she is known, that way, all over Europe. Last winter we were in Italy, and she discovered one at Piacenza,—four francs a day. We made economies.”

  “Your mother doesn’t seem to mingle much,” observed Miss Ruck, glancing through the window at the scholastic attitude of Mrs. Church.

  “No, she doesn’t mingle, except in the native society. Though she lives in pensions, she detests them.”

  “Why does she live in them, then?” asked Miss Sophy, rather resentfully.

  “Oh, because we are so poor; it’s the cheapest way to live. We have tried having a cook, but the cook always steals. Mamma used to set me to watch her; that’s the way I passed my jeunesse—my belle jeunesse. We are frightfully poor,” the young girl went on, with the same strange frankness—a curious mixture of girlish grace and conscious cynicism. “Nous n’avons pas le sou. That’s one of the reasons we don’t go back to America; mamma says we can’t afford to live there.”

  “Well, any one can see that you’re an American girl,” Miss Ruck remarked, in a consolatory manner. “I can tell an American girl a mile off. You’ve got the American style.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t the American toilette,” said Aurora, looking at the other’s superior splendour.

  “Well, your dress was cut in France; any one can see that.”

  “Yes,” said Aurora, with a laugh, “my dress was cut in France—at Avranches.”

  “Well, you’ve got a lovely figure, any way,” pursued her companion.

  “Ah,” said the young girl, “at Avranches, too, my figure was admired.” And she looked at me askance, with a certain coquetry. But I was an innocent youth, and I only looked back at her, wondering. She was a great deal nicer than Miss Ruck, and yet Miss Ruck would not have said that. “I try to be like an American girl,” she continued; “I do my best, though mamma doesn’t at all encourage it. I am very patriotic. I try to copy them, though mamma has brought me up a la francaise; that is, as much as one can in pensions. For instance, I have never been out of the house without mamma; oh, never, never. But sometimes I despair; American girls are so wonderfully frank. I can’t be frank, like that. I am always afraid. But I do what I can, as you see. Excusez du peu!”

  I thought this young lady at least as outspoken as most of her unexpatriated sisters; there was something almost comical in her despondency. But she had by no means caught, as it seemed to me, the American tone. Whatever her tone was, however, it had a fascination; there was something dainty about it, and yet it was decidedly audacious.

  The young ladies began to stroll about the garden again, and I enjoyed their society until M. Pigeonneau’s festival came to an end.

  CHAPTER V.

  Mr. Ruck did not take his departure for Appenzell on the morrow, in spite of the eagerness to witness such an event which he had attributed to Mrs. Church. He continued, on the contrary, for many days after, to hang about the garden, to wander up to the banker’s and back again, to engage in desultory conversation with his fellow- boarders, and to endeavour to assuage his constitutional restlessness by perusal of the American journals. But on the morrow I had the honour of making Mrs. Church’s acquaintance. She came into the salon, after the midday breakfast, with her German octavo under her arm, and she appealed to me for assistance in selecting a quiet corner.

  “Would you very kindly,” she said, “move that large fauteuil a little more this way? Not the largest; the one with the little cushion. The fauteuils here are very insufficient; I must ask Madame Beaurepas for another. Thank you; a little more to the left, please; that will do. Are you particularly engaged?” she inquired, after she had seated herself. “If not, I should like to have some conversation with you. It is some time since I have met a young American of your- -what shall I call it?—your affiliations. I have learned your name from Madame Beaurepas; I think I used to know some of your people. I don’t know what has become of all my friends. I used to have a charming little circle at home, but now I meet no one I know. Don’t you think there is a great difference between the people one meets and the people one would like to meet? Fortunately, sometimes,” added my interlocutress graciously, “it’s quite the same. I suppose you are a specimen, a favourable specimen,” she went on, “of young America. Tell me, now, what is young America thinking of in these days of ours? What are its feelings, its opinions, its aspirations? What is its IDEAL?” I had seated myself near Mrs. Church, and she had pointed this interrogation with the gaze of her bright little eyes. I felt it embarrassing to be treated as a favourable specimen of young America, and to be expected to answer for the great republic. Observing my hesitation, Mrs. Church clasped her hands on the open page of her book and gave an intense, melancholy smile. “HAS it an ideal?” she softly asked. “Well, we must talk of this,” she went on, without insisting. “Speak, for the present, for yourself simply. Have you come to Europe with any special design?”

  “Nothing to boast of,” I said. “I am studying a little.”

  “Ah, I am glad to hear that. You are gathering up a little European culture; that’s what we lack, you know, at home. No individual can do much, of coarse. But you must not be discouraged; every little counts.”

  “I see that you, at least, are doing your part,” I rejoined gallantly, dropping my eyes on my companion’s learned volume.

  “Yes, I frankly admit that I am fond of study. There is no one, after all, like the Germans. That is, for facts. For opinions I by no means always go with them. I form my opinions myself. I am sorry to say, however,” Mrs. Church continued, “that I can hardly pretend to diffuse my acquisitions. I am afraid I am sadly selfish; I do little to irrigate the soil. I belong—I frankly confess it—to the class of absentees.”

  “I had the pleasure, last evening,” I said, “of making the acquaintance of your daughter. She told me you had been a long time in Europe.”

  Mrs. Church smiled benignantly. “Can one ever be too long? We shall never leave it.”

  “Your daughter won’t like that,” I said, smiling too.

  “Has she been taking you into her confidence? She is a more sensible young lady than she sometimes appears. I have taken great pains with her; she is really—I may be permitted to say it—superbly educated.”

  “She seemed to me a very charming girl,” I rejoined. “And I learned that she speaks four languages.”

  “It is not only that,” said Mrs. Church, in a tone which suggested that this might be a very superficial species of culture. “She has made what we call de fortes etudes—such as I suppose you are making now. She is familiar with the results of modern science; she keeps pace with the new historical school.”

  �
�Ah,” said I, “she has gone much farther than I!”

  “You doubtless think I exaggerate, and you force me, therefore, to mention the fact that I am able to speak of such matters with a certain intelligence.”

  “That is very evident,” I said. “But your daughter thinks you ought to take her home.” I began to fear, as soon as I had uttered these words, that they savoured of treachery to the young lady, but I was reassured by seeing that they produced on her mother’s placid countenance no symptom whatever of irritation.

  “My daughter has her little theories,” Mrs. Church observed; “she has, I may say, her illusions. And what wonder! What would youth be without its illusions? Aurora has a theory that she would be happier in New York, in Boston, in Philadelphia, than in one of the charming old cities in which our lot is cast. But she is mistaken, that is all. We must allow our children their illusions, must we not? But we must watch over them.”

  Although she herself seemed proof against discomposure, I found something vaguely irritating in her soft, sweet positiveness.

  “American cities,” I said, “are the paradise of young girls.”

  “Do you mean,” asked Mrs. Church, “that the young girls who come from those places are angels?”

  “Yes,” I said, resolutely.

  “This young lady—what is her odd name?—with whom my daughter has formed a somewhat precipitate acquaintance: is Miss Ruck an angel? But I won’t force you to say anything uncivil. It would be too cruel to make a single exception.”

  “Well,” said I, “at any rate, in America young girls have an easier lot. They have much more liberty.”

  My companion laid her hand for an instant on my arm. “My dear young friend, I know America, I know the conditions of life there, so well. There is perhaps no subject on which I have reflected more than on our national idiosyncrasies.”

  “I am afraid you don’t approve of them,” said I, a little brutally.