by Henry James
“So my mother says.”
“And she must be delighted.”
“Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?” Nick asked.
“I was thinking of your mother. But I don’t exclude the charming lady. I remember her as a little girl. I must have seen her at Windrush. Now I understand the fine spirit with which she threw herself into your canvass.”
“It was her they elected,” said Nick.
“I don’t know,” his host went on, “that I’ve ever been an enthusiast for political women, but there’s no doubt that in approaching the mass of electors a graceful, affable manner, the manner of the real English lady, is a force not to be despised.”
“Julia’s a real English lady and at the same time a very political woman,” Nick remarked.
“Isn’t it rather in the family? I remember once going to see her mother in town and finding the leaders of both parties sitting with her.”
“My principal friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I don’t think he troubles himself much about that sort of thing,” said Nick.
“What does he trouble himself about?” Mr. Carteret asked with a certain gravity.
“He’s in the diplomatic service; he’s a secretary in Paris.”
“That may be serious,” said the old man.
“He takes a great interest in the theatre. I suppose you’ll say that may be serious too,” Nick laughed.
“Oh!”—and Mr. Carteret looked as if he scarcely understood. Then he continued; “Well, it can’t hurt you.”
“It can’t hurt me?”
“If Mrs. Dallow takes an interest in your interests.”
“When a man’s in my situation he feels as if nothing could hurt him.”
“I’m very glad you’re happy,” said Mr. Carteret. He rested his mild eyes on our young man, who had a sense of seeing in them for a moment the faint ghost of an old story, the last strange flicker, as from cold ashes, of a flame that had become the memory of a memory. This glimmer of wonder and envy, the revelation of a life intensely celibate, was for an instant infinitely touching. Nick had harboured a theory, suggested by a vague allusion from his father, who had been discreet, that their benevolent friend had had in his youth an unhappy love-affair which had led him to forswear for ever the commerce of woman. What remained in him of conscious renunciation gave a throb as he looked at his bright companion, who proposed to take the matter so much the other way. “It’s good to marry and I think it’s right. I’ve not done right, I know that. If she’s a good woman it’s the best thing,” Mr. Carteret went on. “It’s what I’ve been hoping for you. Sometimes I’ve thought of speaking to you.”
“She’s a very good woman,” said Nick.
“And I hope she’s not poor.” Mr. Carteret spoke exactly with the same blandness.
“No indeed, she’s rich. Her husband, whom I knew and liked, left her a large fortune.”
“And on what terms does she enjoy it?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” said Nick.
Mr. Carteret considered. “I see. It doesn’t concern you. It needn’t concern you,” he added in a moment.
Nick thought of his mother at this, but he returned: “I daresay she can do what she likes with her money.”
“So can I, my dear young friend,” said Mr. Carteret.
Nick tried not to look conscious, for he felt a significance in the old man’s face. He turned his own everywhere but toward it, thinking again of his mother. “That must be very pleasant, if one has any.”
“I wish you had a little more.”
“I don’t particularly care,” said Nick.
“Your marriage will assist you; you can’t help that,” Mr. Carteret declared. “But I should like you to be under obligations not quite so heavy.”
“Oh I’m so obliged to her for caring for me–-!”
“That the rest doesn’t count? Certainly it’s nice of her to like you. But why shouldn’t she? Other people do.”
“Some of them make me feel as if I abused it,” said Nick, looking at his host. “That is, they don’t make me, but I feel it,” he corrected.
“I’ve no son “—and Mr. Carteret spoke as if his companion mightn’t have been sure. “Shan’t you be very kind to her?” he pursued. “You’ll gratify her ambition.”
“Oh she thinks me cleverer than I am.”
“That’s because she’s in love,” the old gentleman hinted as if this were very subtle. “However, you must be as clever as we think you. If you don’t prove so–-!” And he paused with his folded hands.
“Well, if I don’t?” asked Nick.
“Oh it won’t do—it won’t do,” said Mr. Carteret in a tone his companion was destined to remember afterwards. “I say I’ve no son,” he continued; “but if I had had one he should have risen high.”
“It’s well for me such a person doesn’t exist. I shouldn’t easily have found a wife.”
“He would have gone to the altar with a little money in his pocket.”
“That would have been the least of his advantages, sir,” Nick declared.
“When are you to be married?” Mr. Carteret asked.
“Ah that’s the question. Julia won’t yet say.”
“Well,” said the old man without the least flourish, “you may consider that when it comes off I’ll make you a settlement.”
“I feel your kindness more than I can express,” Nick replied; “but that will probably be the moment when I shall be least conscious of wanting anything.”
“You’ll appreciate it later—you’ll appreciate it very soon. I shall like you to appreciate it,” Mr. Carteret went on as if he had a just vision of the way a young man of a proper spirit should feel. Then he added; “Your father would have liked you to appreciate it.”
“Poor father!” Nick exclaimed vaguely, rather embarrassed, reflecting on the oddity of a position in which the ground for holding up his head as the husband of a rich woman would be that he had accepted a present of money from another source. It was plain he was not fated to go in for independence; the most that he could treat himself to would be dependence that was duly grateful “How much do you expect of me?” he inquired with a grave face.
“Well, Nicholas, only what your father did. He so often spoke of you, I remember, at the last, just after you had been with him alone—you know I saw him then. He was greatly moved by his interview with you, and so was I by what he told me of it. He said he should live on in you—he should work in you. It has always given me a special feeling, if I may use the expression, about you.”
“The feelings are indeed not usual, dear Mr. Carteret, which take so munificent a form. But you do—oh you do—expect too much,” Nick brought himself to say.
“I expect you to repay me!” the old man returned gaily. “As for the form, I have it in my mind.”
“The form of repayment?”
“The form of repayment!”
“Ah don’t talk of that now,” said Nick, “for, you see, nothing else is settled. No one has been told except my mother. She has only consented to my telling you.”
“Lady Agnes, do you mean?”
“Ah no; dear mother would like to publish it on the house-tops. She’s so glad—she wants us to have it over to-morrow. But Julia herself,” Nick explained, “wishes to wait. Therefore kindly mention it for the present to no one.”
“My dear boy, there’s at this rate nothing to mention! What does Julia want to wait for?”
“Till I like her better—that’s what she says.”
“It’s the way to make you like her worse,” Mr. Carteret knowingly declared. “Hasn’t she your affection?”
“So much so that her delay makes me exceedingly unhappy.”
Mr. Carteret looked at his young friend as if he didn’t strike him as quite wretched; but he put the question: “Then what more does she want?” Nick laughed out at this, though perceiving his host hadn’t meant it as an epigram; while the latter resumed: “I don’t understand. You’re
engaged or you’re not engaged.”
“She is, but I’m not. That’s what she says about it. The trouble is she doesn’t believe in me.”
Mr. Carteret shone with his candour. “Doesn’t she love you then?”
“That’s what I ask her. Her answer is that she loves me only too well. She’s so afraid of being a burden to me that she gives me my freedom till I’ve taken another year to think.”
“I like the way you talk about other years!” Mr. Carteret cried. “You had better do it while I’m here to bless you.”
“She thinks I proposed to her because she got me in for Harsh,” said Nick.
“Well, I’m sure it would be a very pretty return.”
“Ah she doesn’t believe in me,” the young man repeated.
“Then I don’t believe in her.”
“Don’t say that—don’t say that. She’s a very rare creature. But she’s proud, shy, suspicious.”
“Suspicious of what?”
“Of everything. She thinks I’m not persistent.”
“Oh, oh!”—Nick’s host deprecated such freedom.
“She can’t believe I shall arrive at true eminence.”
“A good wife should believe what her husband believes,” said Mr. Carteret.
“Ah unfortunately”—and Nick took the words at a run—”I don’t believe it either.”
Mr. Carteret, who might have been watching an odd physical rush, spoke with a certain dryness. “Your dear father did.”
“I think of that—I think of that,” Nick replied.
“Certainly it will help me. If I say we’re engaged,” he went on, “it’s because I consider it so. She gives me my liberty, but I don’t take it.”
“Does she expect you to take back your word?”
“That’s what I ask her. She never will. Therefore we’re as good as tied.”
“I don’t like it,” said Mr. Carteret after a moment. “I don’t like ambiguous, uncertain situations. They please me much better when they’re definite and clear.” The retreat of expression had been sounded in his face—the aspect it wore when he wished not to be encouraging. But after an instant he added in a tone more personal: “Don’t disappoint me, dear boy.”
“Ah not willingly!” his visitor protested.
“I’ve told you what I should like to do for you. See that the conditions come about promptly in which I may, do it. Are you sure you do everything to satisfy Mrs. Dallow?” Mr. Carteret continued.
“I think I’m very nice to her,” Nick declared. “But she’s so ambitious. Frankly speaking, it’s a pity for her that she likes me.”
“She can’t help that!” the old man charmingly said.
“Possibly. But isn’t it a reason for taking me as I am? What she wants to do is to take me as I may be a year hence.”
“I don’t understand—since you tell me that even then she won’t take back her word,” said Mr. Carteret.
“If she doesn’t marry me I think she’ll never marry again at all.”
“What then does she gain by delay?”
“Simply this, as I make it out,” said Nick—”that she’ll feel she has been very magnanimous. She won’t have to reproach herself with not having given me a chance to change.”
“To change? What does she think you liable to do?”
Nick had a pause. “I don’t know!” he then said—not at all candidly.
“Everything has altered: young people in my day looked at these questions more naturally,” Mr. Carteret observed. “A woman in love has no need to be magnanimous. If she plays too fair she isn’t in love,” he added shrewdly.
“Oh, Julia’s safe—she’s safe,” Nick smiled.
“If it were a question between you and another gentleman one might comprehend. But what does it mean, between you and nothing?”
“I’m much obliged to you, sir,” Nick returned. “The trouble is that she doesn’t know what she has got hold of.”
“Ah, if you can’t make it clear to her!”—and his friend showed the note of impatience.
“I’m such a humbug,” said the young man. And while his companion stared he continued: “I deceive people without in the least intending it.”
“What on earth do you mean? Are you deceiving me?”
“I don’t know—it depends on what you think.”
“I think you’re flighty,” said Mr. Carteret, with the nearest approach to sternness Nick had ever observed in him. “I never thought so before.”
“Forgive me; it’s all right. I’m not frivolous; that I promise you I’m not.”
“You have deceived me if you are.”
“It’s all right,” Nick stammered with a blush.
“Remember your name—carry it high.”
“I will—as high as possible.”
“You’ve no excuse. Don’t tell me, after your speeches at Harsh!” Nick was on the point of declaring again that he was a humbug, so vivid was his inner sense of what he thought of his factitious public utterances, which had the cursed property of creating dreadful responsibilities and importunate credulities for him. If he was “clever” (ah the idiotic “clever”!) what fools many other people were! He repressed his impulse and Mr. Carteret pursued. “If, as you express it, Mrs. Dallow doesn’t know what she has got hold of, won’t it clear the matter up a little by informing her that the day before your marriage is definitely settled to take place you’ll come into something comfortable?”
A quick vision of what Mr. Carteret would be likely to regard as something comfortable flitted before Nick, but it didn’t prevent his replying: “Oh I’m afraid that won’t do any good. It would make her like you better, but it wouldn’t make her like me. I’m afraid she won’t care for any benefit that comes to me from another hand than hers. Her affection’s a very jealous sentiment.”
“It’s a very peculiar one!” sighed Mr. Carteret. “Mine’s a jealous sentiment too. However, if she takes it that way don’t tell her.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as she comes round,” said Nick.
“And you’ll tell your mother,” Mr. Carteret returned. “I shall like her to know.”
“It will be delightful news to her. But she’s keen enough already.”
“I know that. I may mention now that she has written to me,” the old man added.
“So I suspected.”
“We’ve—a—corresponded on the subject,” Mr. Carteret continued to confess. “My view of the advantageous character of such an alliance has entirely coincided with hers.”
“It was very good-natured of you then to leave me to speak first,” said Nick.
“I should have been disappointed if you hadn’t. I don’t like all you’ve told me. But don’t disappoint me now.”
“Dear Mr. Carteret!” Nick vaguely and richly sounded.
“I won’t disappoint you,” that gentleman went on with a finer point while he looked at his big old-fashioned watch.
BOOK FOURTH
XVIII
At first Peter Sherringham thought of asking to be transferred to another post and went so far, in London, as to take what he believed good advice on the subject. The advice, perhaps struck him as the better for consisting of a strong recommendation to do nothing so foolish. Two or three reasons were mentioned to him why such a request would not, in the particular circumstances, raise him in the esteem of his superiors, and he promptly recognised their force. He next became aware that it might help him—not with his superiors but with himself—to apply for an extension of leave, and then on further reflexion made out that, though there are some dangers before which it is perfectly consistent with honour to flee, it was better for every one concerned that he should fight this especial battle on the spot. During his holiday his plan of campaign gave him plenty of occupation. He refurbished his arms, rubbed up his strategy, laid down his lines of defence.
There was only one thing in life his mind had been much made up to, but on this question he had never wavered: he would get
on, to the utmost, in his profession. That was a point on which it was perfectly lawful to be unamiable to others—to be vigilant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He had not in fact been unamiable to others, for his affairs had not required it: he had got on well enough without hardening his heart. Fortune had been kind to him and he had passed so many competitors on the way that he could forswear jealousy and be generous. But he had always flattered himself his hand wouldn’t falter on the day he should find it necessary to drop bitterness into his cup. This day would be sure to dawn, since no career could be all clear water to the end; and then the sacrifice would find him ready. His mind was familiar with the thought of a sacrifice: it is true that no great plainness invested beforehand the occasion, the object or the victim. All that particularly stood out was that the propitiatory offering would have to be some cherished enjoyment. Very likely indeed this enjoyment would be associated with the charms of another person—a probability pregnant with the idea that such charms would have to be dashed out of sight. At any rate it never had occurred to Sherringham that he himself might be the sacrifice. You had to pay to get on, but at least you borrowed from others to do it. When you couldn’t borrow you didn’t get on, for what was the situation in life in which you met the whole requisition yourself?