The Complete Works of Henry James

by Henry James

  CHAPTER 22

  On one of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr. Touchett’s death, a small group that might have been described by a painter as composing well was gathered in one of the many rooms of an ancient villa crowning an olive-muffled hill outside of the Roman gate of Florence. The villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, with the far-projecting roof which Tuscany loves and which, on the hills that encircle Florence, when considered from a distance, makes so harmonious a rectangle with the straight, dark, definite cypresses that usually rise in groups of three or four beside it. The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular relations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to the base of the structure and useful as a lounging-place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude—this antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way—looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. In that quarter the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in the manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses and other old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The parapet of the terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of the place that we are concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tenants had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively cross-barred, and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on tiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a row of three of these jealous apertures—one of the several distinct apartments into which the villa was divided and which were mainly occupied by foreigners of random race long resident in Florence—a gentleman was seated in company with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was, however, less sombre than our indications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the tangled garden behind; and the tall iron lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. It was moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed, and containing a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those angular specimens of pictorial art in frames as pedantically primitive, those perverse-looking relics of medieval brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. These things kept terms with articles of modern furniture in which large allowance had been made for a lounging generation; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep and well padded and that much space was occupied by a writing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of London and the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion and magazines and newspapers, and a few small, odd, elaborate pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room easel before which, at the moment we begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the picture in silence.

  Silence—absolute silence—had not fallen upon her companions; but their talk had an appearance of embarrassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled themselves in their respective chairs; their attitude expressed a final reserve and their faces showed the glaze of prudence. They were plain, ample, mild-featured women, with a kind of business-like modesty to which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened linen and of the serge that draped them as if nailed on frames gave an advantage. One of them, a person of a certain age, in spectacles, with a fresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating manner than her colleague, as well as the responsibility of their errand, which apparently related to the young girl. This object of interest wore her hat—an ornament of extreme simplicity and not at variance with her plain muslin gown, too short for her years, though it must already have been “let out.” The gentleman who might have been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function, it being in its way as arduous to converse with the very meek as with the very mighty. At the same time he was clearly much occupied with their quiet charge, and while she turned her back to him his eyes rested gravely on her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty, with a high but well-shaped head, on which the hair, still dense, but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine, narrow, extremely modelled and composed face, of which the only fault was just this effect of its running a trifle too much to points; an appearance to which the shape of the beard contributed not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of which the ends had a romantic upward flourish, gave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive of the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that he studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine his original clime and country; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his veins it had probably received some French or Italian commixture; but he suggested, fine gold coin as he was, no stamp nor emblem of the common mintage that provides for general circulation; he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a special occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languid-looking figure, and was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar things.

  “Well, my dear, what do you think of it?” he asked of the young girl. He used the Italian tongue, and used it with perfect ease; but this would not have convinced you he was Italian.

  The child turned her head earnestly to one side and the other. “It’s very pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself?”

  “Certainly I made it. Don’t you think I’m clever?”

  “Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures.” And she turned round and showed a small, fair face painted with a fixed and intensely sweet smile.

  “You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.”

  “I’ve brought a great many; they’re in my trunk.”

  “She draws very—very carefully,” the elder of the nuns remarked, speaking in French.

  “I’m glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?”

  “Happily no,” said the good sister, blushing a little. “Ce n’est pas ma partie. I teach nothing; I leave that to those who are wiser. We’ve an excellent drawing-master, Mr.—Mr.—what is his name?” she asked of her companion.

  Her companion looked about at the carpet. “It’s a German name,” she said in Italian, as if it needed to be translated.

  “Yes,” the other went on, “he’s a German, and we’ve had him many years.”

  The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had wandered away to the open door of the large room and stood looking into the garden. “And you, my sister, are French,” said the gentleman.

  “Yes, sir,” the visitor gently replied. “I speak to the pupils in my own tongue. I know no other. But we have sisters of other countries—English, German, Irish. They all speak their proper language.”

  The gentleman gave a smile. “Has my daughter been under the care of one
of the Irish ladies?” And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected a joke, though failing to understand it, “You’re very complete,” he instantly added.

  “Oh, yes, we’re complete. We’ve everything, and everything’s of the best.”

  “We have gymnastics,” the Italian sister ventured to remark. “But not dangerous.”

  “I hope not. Is that YOUR branch?” A question which provoked much candid hilarity on the part of the two ladies; on the subsidence of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked that she had grown.

  “Yes, but I think she has finished. She’ll remain—not big,” said the French sister.

  “I’m not sorry. I prefer women like books—very good and not too long. But I know,” the gentleman said, “no particular reason why my child should be short.”

  The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might be beyond our knowledge. “She’s in very good health; that’s the best thing.”

  “Yes, she looks sound.” And the young girl’s father watched her a moment. “What do you see in the garden?” he asked in French.

  “I see many flowers,” she replied in a sweet, small voice and with an accent as good as his own.

  “Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out and gather some for ces dames.”

  The child turned to him with her smile heightened by pleasure. “May I, truly?”

  “Ah, when I tell you,” said her father.

  The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. “May I, truly, ma mere?”

  “Obey monsieur your father, my child,” said the sister, blushing again.

  The child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the threshold and was presently lost to sight. “You don’t spoil them,” said her father gaily.

  “For everything they must ask leave. That’s our system. Leave is freely granted, but they must ask it.”

  “Oh, I don’t quarrel with your system; I’ve no doubt it’s excellent. I sent you my daughter to see what you’d make of her. I had faith.”

  “One must have faith,” the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her spectacles.

  “Well, has my faith been rewarded What have you made of her?”

  The sister dropped her eyes a moment. “A good Christian, monsieur.”

  Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement had in each case a different spring. “Yes, and what else?”

  He watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking she would say that a good Christian was everything; but for all her simplicity she was not so crude as that. “A charming young lady —a real little woman—a daughter in whom you will have nothing but contentment.”

  “She seems to me very gentille,” said the father. “She’s really pretty.”

  “She’s perfect. She has no faults.”

  “She never had any as a child, and I’m glad you have given her none.”

  “We love her too much,” said the spectacled sister with dignity.

  “And as for faults, how can we give what we have not? Le couvent n’est pas comme le monde, monsieur. She’s our daughter, as you may say. We’ve had her since she was so small.”

  “Of all those we shall lose this year she’s the one we shall miss most,” the younger woman murmured deferentially.

  “Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her,” said the other. “We shall hold her up to the new ones.” And at this the good sister appeared to find her spectacles dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment, presently drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture.

  “It’s not certain you’ll lose her; nothing’s settled yet,” their host rejoined quickly; not as if to anticipate their tears, but in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable to himself. “We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very young to leave us.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet used, “it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could keep her always!”

  “Ah, monsieur,” said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, “good as she is, she’s made for the world. Le monde y gagnera.”

  “If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would the world get on?” her companion softly enquired, rising also.

  This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmonising view by saying comfortably: “Fortunately there are good people everywhere.”

  “If you’re going there will be two less here,” her host remarked gallantly.

  For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl with two large bunches of roses—one of them all white, the other red.

  “I give you your choice, mamman Catherine,” said the child. “It’s only the colour that’s different, mamman Justine; there are just as many roses in one bunch as in the other.”

  The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with “Which will you take?” and “No, it’s for you to choose.”

  “I’ll take the red, thank you,” said Catherine in the spectacles. “I’m so red myself. They’ll comfort us on our way back to Rome.”

  “Ah, they won’t last,” cried the young girl. I wish I could give you something that would last!”

  “You’ve given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That will last!”

  “I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads,” the child went on.

  “And do you go back to Rome to-night?” her father enquired.

  “Yes, we take the train again. We’ve so much to do la-bas.”

  “Are you not tired?”

  “We are never tired.”

  “Ah, my sister, sometimes,” murmured the junior votaress.

  “Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu vows garde, ma fine.”

  Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went forward to open the door through which they were to pass; but as he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond. The door opened into a vaulted ante-chamber, as high as a chapel and paved with red tiles; and into this antechamber a lady had just been admitted by a servant, a lad in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the apartment in which our friends were grouped. The gentleman at the door, after dropping his exclamation, remained silent; in silence too the lady advanced. He gave her no further audible greeting and offered her no hand, but stood aside to let her pass into the saloon. At the threshold she hesitated. “Is there any one?” she asked.