The Europeans

H >> Henry James >> The Europeans


It might perhaps have been feared that after the completion of those
graceful domiciliary embellishments which have been mentioned Madame M;
auunster would have found herself confronted with alarming possibilities
of ennui. But as yet she had not taken the alarm. The Baroness was a
restless soul, and she projected her restlessness, as it may be said,
into any situation that lay before her. Up to a certain point her
restlessness might be counted upon to entertain her. She was always
expecting something to happen, and, until it was disappointed,
expectancy itself was a delicate pleasure. What the Baroness expected
just now it would take some ingenuity to set forth; it is enough
that while she looked about her she found something to occupy her
imagination. She assured herself that she was enchanted with her new
relatives; she professed to herself that, like her brother, she felt
it a sacred satisfaction to have found a family. It is certain that she
enjoyed to the utmost the gentleness of her kinsfolk's deference.
She had, first and last, received a great deal of admiration, and her
experience of well-turned compliments was very considerable; but she
knew that she had never been so real a power, never counted for so
much, as now when, for the first time, the standard of comparison of her
little circle was a prey to vagueness. The sense, indeed, that the good
people about her had, as regards her remarkable self, no standard of
comparison at all gave her a feeling of almost illimitable power. It was
true, as she said to herself, that if for this reason they would be
able to discover nothing against her, so they would perhaps neglect
to perceive some of her superior points; but she always wound up her
reflections by declaring that she would take care of that.

Charlotte and Gertrude were in some perplexity between their desire
to show all proper attention to Madame Munster and their fear of being
importunate. The little house in the orchard had hitherto been occupied
during the summer months by intimate friends of the family, or by poor
relations who found in Mr. Wentworth a landlord attentive to repairs and
oblivious of quarter-day. Under these circumstances the open door of the
small house and that of the large one, facing each other across their
homely gardens, levied no tax upon hourly visits. But the Misses
Wentworth received an impression that Eugenia was no friend to the
primitive custom of "dropping in;" she evidently had no idea of living
without a door-keeper. "One goes into your house as into an inn--except
that there are no servants rushing forward," she said to Charlotte. And
she added that that was very charming. Gertrude explained to her sister
that she meant just the reverse; she did n't like it at all. Charlotte
inquired why she should tell an untruth, and Gertrude answered that
there was probably some very good reason for it which they should
discover when they knew her better. "There can surely be no good reason
for telling an untruth," said Charlotte. "I hope she does not think so."

They had of course desired, from the first, to do everything in the way
of helping her to arrange herself. It had seemed to Charlotte that
there would be a great many things to talk about; but the Baroness was
apparently inclined to talk about nothing.

"Write her a note, asking her leave to come and see her. I think that is
what she will like," said Gertrude.

"Why should I give her the trouble of answering me?" Charlotte asked.
"She will have to write a note and send it over."

"I don't think she will take any trouble," said Gertrude, profoundly.

"What then will she do?"

"That is what I am curious to see," said Gertrude, leaving her sister
with an impression that her curiosity was morbid.

They went to see the Baroness without preliminary correspondence; and in
the little salon which she had already created, with its becoming light
and its festoons, they found Robert Acton.

Eugenia was intensely gracious, but she accused them of neglecting her
cruelly. "You see Mr. Acton has had to take pity upon me," she said. "My
brother goes off sketching, for hours; I can never depend upon him. So I
was to send Mr. Acton to beg you to come and give me the benefit of your
wisdom."

Gertrude looked at her sister. She wanted to say, "That is what she
would have done." Charlotte said that they hoped the Baroness would
always come and dine with them; it would give them so much pleasure;
and, in that case, she would spare herself the trouble of having a cook.

"Ah, but I must have a cook!" cried the Baroness. "An old negress in a
yellow turban. I have set my heart upon that. I want to look out of my
window and see her sitting there on the grass, against the background of
those crooked, dusky little apple-trees, pulling the husks off a lapful
of Indian corn. That will be local color, you know. There is n't much
of it here--you don't mind my saying that, do you?--so one must make
the most of what one can get. I shall be most happy to dine with you
whenever you will let me; but I want to be able to ask you sometimes.
And I want to be able to ask Mr. Acton," added the Baroness.

"You must come and ask me at home," said Acton. "You must come and see
me; you must dine with me first. I want to show you my place; I want to
introduce you to my mother." He called again upon Madame M; auunster,
two days later. He was constantly at the other house; he used to walk
across the fields from his own place, and he appeared to have fewer
scruples than his cousins with regard to dropping in. On this occasion
he found that Mr. Brand had come to pay his respects to the charming
stranger; but after Acton's arrival the young theologian said nothing.
He sat in his chair with his two hands clasped, fixing upon his hostess
a grave, fascinated stare. The Baroness talked to Robert Acton, but, as
she talked, she turned and smiled at Mr. Brand, who never took his
eyes off her. The two men walked away together; they were going to Mr.
Wentworth's. Mr. Brand still said nothing; but after they had passed
into Mr. Wentworth's garden he stopped and looked back for some time at
the little white house. Then, looking at his companion, with his head
bent a little to one side and his eyes somewhat contracted, "Now
I suppose that 's what is called conversation," he said; "real
conversation."

"It 's what I call a very clever woman," said Acton, laughing.

"It is most interesting," Mr. Brand continued. "I only wish she would
speak French; it would seem more in keeping. It must be quite the
style that we have heard about, that we have read about--the style of
conversation of Madame de Stael, of Madame Recamier."

Acton also looked at Madame Munster's residence among its hollyhocks and
apple-trees. "What I should like to know," he said, smiling, "is just
what has brought Madame Recamier to live in that place!"






CHAPTER V

Mr. Wentworth, with his cane and his gloves in his hand, went every
afternoon to call upon his niece. A couple of hours later she came over
to the great house to tea. She had let the proposal that she should
regularly dine there fall to the ground; she was in the enjoyment of
whatever satisfaction was to be derived from the spectacle of an
old negress in a crimson turban shelling peas under the apple-trees.
Charlotte, who had provided the ancient negress, thought it must be
a strange household, Eugenia having told her that Augustine managed
everything, the ancient negress included--Augustine who was naturally
devoid of all acquaintance with the expurgatory English tongue. By far
the most immoral sentiment which I shall have occasion to attribute to
Charlotte Wentworth was a certain emotion of disappointment at finding
that, in spite of these irregular conditions, the domestic arrangements
at the small house were apparently not--from Eugenia's peculiar point of
view--strikingly offensive. The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea;
she dressed as if for dinner. The tea-table offered an anomalous and
picturesque repast; and on leaving it they all sat and talked in the
large piazza, or wandered about the garden in the starlight, with their
ears full of those sounds of strange insects which, though they are
supposed to be, all over the world, a part of the magic of summer
nights, seemed to the Baroness to have beneath these western skies an
incomparable resonance.

Mr. Wentworth, though, as I say, he went punctiliously to call upon her,
was not able to feel that he was getting used to his niece. It taxed his
imagination to believe that she was really his half-sister's child. His
sister was a figure of his early years; she had been only twenty when
she went abroad, never to return, making in foreign parts a willful and
undesirable marriage. His aunt, Mrs. Whiteside, who had taken her to
Europe for the benefit of the tour, gave, on her return, so lamentable
an account of Mr. Adolphus Young, to whom the headstrong girl had united
her destiny, that it operated as a chill upon family feeling--especially
in the case of the half-brothers. Catherine had done nothing
subsequently to propitiate her family; she had not even written to
them in a way that indicated a lucid appreciation of their suspended
sympathy; so that it had become a tradition in Boston circles that the
highest charity, as regards this young lady, was to think it well to
forget her, and to abstain from conjecture as to the extent to which
her aberrations were reproduced in her descendants. Over these young
people--a vague report of their existence had come to his ears--Mr.
Wentworth had not, in the course of years, allowed his imagination to
hover. It had plenty of occupation nearer home, and though he had many
cares upon his conscience the idea that he had been an unnatural uncle
was, very properly, never among the number. Now that his nephew and
niece had come before him, he perceived that they were the fruit of
influences and circumstances very different from those under which his
own familiar progeny had reached a vaguely-qualified maturity. He felt
no provocation to say that these influences had been exerted for evil;
but he was sometimes afraid that he should not be able to like
his distinguished, delicate, lady-like niece. He was paralyzed and
bewildered by her foreignness. She spoke, somehow, a different language.
There was something strange in her words. He had a feeling that another
man, in his place, would accommodate himself to her tone; would ask
her questions and joke with her, reply to those pleasantries of her
own which sometimes seemed startling as addressed to an uncle. But Mr.
Wentworth could not do these things. He could not even bring himself
to attempt to measure her position in the world. She was the wife of
a foreign nobleman who desired to repudiate her. This had a singular
sound, but the old man felt himself destitute of the materials for
a judgment. It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own
experience, as a man of the world and an almost public character; but
they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself--much
more to reveal to Eugenia by interrogations possibly too innocent--the
unfurnished condition of this repository.

It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said,
to his nephew; though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe. He
was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible not to
think well of him; and yet it seemed as if there were something almost
impudent, almost vicious--or as if there ought to be--in a young man
being at once so joyous and so positive. It was to be observed that
while Felix was not at all a serious young man there was somehow more of
him--he had more weight and volume and resonance--than a number of young
men who were distinctly serious. While Mr. Wentworth meditated upon this
anomaly his nephew was admiring him unrestrictedly. He thought him a
most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman, with a very handsome
head, of the ascetic type, which he promised himself the profit of
sketching. Felix was far from having made a secret of the fact that he
wielded the paint-brush, and it was not his own fault if it failed to be
generally understood that he was prepared to execute the most striking
likenesses on the most reasonable terms. "He is an artist--my cousin is
an artist," said Gertrude; and she offered this information to every one
who would receive it. She offered it to herself, as it were, by way
of admonition and reminder; she repeated to herself at odd moments,
in lonely places, that Felix was invested with this sacred character.
Gertrude had never seen an artist before; she had only read about such
people. They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life
was made up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other
persons. And it merely quickened her meditations on this point that
Felix should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an
artist. "I have never gone into the thing seriously," he said. "I have
never studied; I have had no training. I do a little of everything, and
nothing well. I am only an amateur."

It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur than to
think that he was an artist; the former word, to her fancy, had an even
subtler connotation. She knew, however, that it was a word to use
more soberly. Mr. Wentworth used it freely; for though he had not
been exactly familiar with it, he found it convenient as a help toward
classifying Felix, who, as a young man extremely clever and active and
apparently respectable and yet not engaged in any recognized business,
was an importunate anomaly. Of course the Baroness and her brother--she
was always spoken of first--were a welcome topic of conversation between
Mr. Wentworth and his daughters and their occasional visitors.

"And the young man, your nephew, what is his profession?" asked an
old gentleman--Mr. Broderip, of Salem--who had been Mr. Wentworth's
classmate at Harvard College in the year 1809, and who came into his
office in Devonshire Street. (Mr. Wentworth, in his later years, used to
go but three times a week to his office, where he had a large amount of
highly confidential trust-business to transact.)

"Well, he 's an amateur," said Felix's uncle, with folded hands, and
with a certain satisfaction in being able to say it. And Mr. Broderip
had gone back to Salem with a feeling that this was probably a
"European" expression for a broker or a grain exporter.

"I should like to do your head, sir," said Felix to his uncle one
evening, before them all--Mr. Brand and Robert Acton being also present.
"I think I should make a very fine thing of it. It 's an interesting
head; it 's very mediaeval."

Mr. Wentworth looked grave; he felt awkwardly, as if all the company had
come in and found him standing before the looking-glass. "The Lord made
it," he said. "I don't think it is for man to make it over again."

"Certainly the Lord made it," replied Felix, laughing, "and he made
it very well. But life has been touching up the work. It is a very
interesting type of head. It 's delightfully wasted and emaciated.
The complexion is wonderfully bleached." And Felix looked round at the
circle, as if to call their attention to these interesting points.
Mr. Wentworth grew visibly paler. "I should like to do you as an old
prelate, an old cardinal, or the prior of an order."

"A prelate, a cardinal?" murmured Mr. Wentworth. "Do you refer to the
Roman Catholic priesthood?"

"I mean an old ecclesiastic who should have led a very pure, abstinent
life. Now I take it that has been the case with you, sir; one sees it in
your face," Felix proceeded. "You have been very--a very moderate. Don't
you think one always sees that in a man's face?"

"You see more in a man's face than I should think of looking for," said
Mr. Wentworth coldly.

The Baroness rattled her fan, and gave her brilliant laugh. "It is a
risk to look so close!" she exclaimed. "My uncle has some peccadilloes
on his conscience." Mr. Wentworth looked at her, painfully at a loss;
and in so far as the signs of a pure and abstinent life were visible in
his face they were then probably peculiarly manifest. "You are a beau
vieillard, dear uncle," said Madame M; auunster, smiling with her
foreign eyes.

"I think you are paying me a compliment," said the old man.

"Surely, I am not the first woman that ever did so!" cried the Baroness.

"I think you are," said Mr. Wentworth gravely. And turning to Felix he
added, in the same tone, "Please don't take my likeness. My children
have my daguerreotype. That is quite satisfactory."

"I won't promise," said Felix, "not to work your head into something!"

Mr. Wentworth looked at him and then at all the others; then he got up
and slowly walked away.

"Felix," said Gertrude, in the silence that followed, "I wish you would
paint my portrait."

Charlotte wondered whether Gertrude was right in wishing this; and she
looked at Mr. Brand as the most legitimate way of ascertaining. Whatever
Gertrude did or said, Charlotte always looked at Mr. Brand. It was a
standing pretext for looking at Mr. Brand--always, as Charlotte thought,
in the interest of Gertrude's welfare. It is true that she felt a
tremulous interest in Gertrude being right; for Charlotte, in her small,
still way, was an heroic sister.

"We should be glad to have your portrait, Miss Gertrude," said Mr.
Brand.

"I should be delighted to paint so charming a model," Felix declared.

"Do you think you are so lovely, my dear?" asked Lizzie Acton, with her
little inoffensive pertness, biting off a knot in her knitting.

"It is not because I think I am beautiful," said Gertrude, looking all
round. "I don't think I am beautiful, at all." She spoke with a sort
of conscious deliberateness; and it seemed very strange to Charlotte to
hear her discussing this question so publicly. "It is because I think it
would be amusing to sit and be painted. I have always thought that."

"I am sorry you have not had better things to think about, my daughter,"
said Mr. Wentworth.

"You are very beautiful, cousin Gertrude," Felix declared.

"That 's a compliment," said Gertrude. "I put all the compliments I
receive into a little money-jug that has a slit in the side. I shake
them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many yet--only two or
three."

"No, it 's not a compliment," Felix rejoined. "See; I am careful not to
give it the form of a compliment. I did n't think you were beautiful at
first. But you have come to seem so little by little."

"Take care, now, your jug does n't burst!" exclaimed Lizzie.

"I think sitting for one's portrait is only one of the various forms of
idleness," said Mr. Wentworth. "Their name is legion."

"My dear sir," cried Felix, "you can't be said to be idle when you are
making a man work so!"

"One might be painted while one is asleep," suggested Mr. Brand, as a
contribution to the discussion.

"Ah, do paint me while I am asleep," said Gertrude to Felix, smiling.
And she closed her eyes a little. It had by this time become a matter of
almost exciting anxiety to Charlotte what Gertrude would say or would do
next.

She began to sit for her portrait on the following day--in the open
air, on the north side of the piazza. "I wish you would tell me what you
think of us--how we seem to you," she said to Felix, as he sat before
his easel.

"You seem to me the best people in the world," said Felix.

"You say that," Gertrude resumed, "because it saves you the trouble of
saying anything else."

The young man glanced at her over the top of his canvas. "What else
should I say? It would certainly be a great deal of trouble to say
anything different."

"Well," said Gertrude, "you have seen people before that you have liked,
have you not?"

"Indeed I have, thank Heaven!"

"And they have been very different from us," Gertrude went on.

"That only proves," said Felix, "that there are a thousand different
ways of being good company."

"Do you think us good company?" asked Gertrude.

"Company for a king!"

Gertrude was silent a moment; and then, "There must be a thousand
different ways of being dreary," she said; "and sometimes I think we
make use of them all."

Felix stood up quickly, holding up his hand. "If you could only keep
that look on your face for half an hour--while I catch it!" he said. "It
is uncommonly handsome."

"To look handsome for half an hour--that is a great deal to ask of me,"
she answered.

"It would be the portrait of a young woman who has taken some vow, some
pledge, that she repents of," said Felix, "and who is thinking it over
at leisure."

"I have taken no vow, no pledge," said Gertrude, very gravely; "I have
nothing to repent of."

"My dear cousin, that was only a figure of speech. I am very sure that
no one in your excellent family has anything to repent of."

"And yet we are always repenting!" Gertrude exclaimed. "That is what I
mean by our being dreary. You know it perfectly well; you only pretend
that you don't."

Felix gave a quick laugh. "The half hour is going on, and yet you are
handsomer than ever. One must be careful what one says, you see."

"To me," said Gertrude, "you can say anything."

Felix looked at her, as an artist might, and painted for some time in
silence.

"Yes, you seem to me different from your father and sister--from most of
the people you have lived with," he observed.

"To say that one's self," Gertrude went on, "is like saying--by
implication, at least--that one is better. I am not better; I am much
worse. But they say themselves that I am different. It makes them
unhappy."

"Since you accuse me of concealing my real impressions, I may admit that
I think the tendency--among you generally--is to be made unhappy too
easily."

"I wish you would tell that to my father," said Gertrude.

"It might make him more unhappy!" Felix exclaimed, laughing.

"It certainly would. I don't believe you have seen people like that."

"Ah, my dear cousin, how do you know what I have seen?" Felix demanded.
"How can I tell you?"

"You might tell me a great many things, if you only would. You have
seen people like yourself--people who are bright and gay and fond of
amusement. We are not fond of amusement."

"Yes," said Felix, "I confess that rather strikes me. You don't seem to
me to get all the pleasure out of life that you might. You don't seem to
me to enjoy..... Do you mind my saying this?" he asked, pausing.

"Please go on," said the girl, earnestly.

"You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and
liberty and what is called in Europe a 'position.' But you take a
painful view of life, as one may say."

"One ought to think it bright and charming and delightful, eh?" asked
Gertrude.

"I should say so--if one can. It is true it all depends upon that,"
Felix added.

"You know there is a great deal of misery in the world," said his model.

"I have seen a little of it," the young man rejoined. "But it was all
over there--beyond the sea. I don't see any here. This is a paradise."

Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the
currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work. "To
'enjoy,'" she began at last, "to take life--not painfully, must one do
something wrong?"

Felix gave his long, light laugh again. "Seriously, I think not. And for
this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable of enjoying,
if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time as incapable of
wrong-doing."

"I am sure," said Gertrude, "that you are very wrong in telling a person
that she is incapable of that. We are never nearer to evil than when we
believe that."

"You are handsomer than ever," observed Felix, irrelevantly.

Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this. There was not so much
excitement in it as at first. "What ought one to do?" she continued. "To
give parties, to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?"

"I don't think it 's what one does or one does n't do that promotes
enjoyment," her companion answered. "It is the general way of looking at
life."

"They look at it as a discipline--that 's what they do here. I have
often been told that."

"Well, that 's very good. But there is another way," added Felix,
smiling: "to look at it as an opportunity."

"An opportunity--yes," said Gertrude. "One would get more pleasure that
way."

"I don't attempt to say anything better for it than that it has been my
own way--and that is not saying much!" Felix had laid down his palette
and brushes; he was leaning back, with his arms folded, to judge
the effect of his work. "And you know," he said, "I am a very petty
personage."

"You have a great deal of talent," said Gertrude.

"No--no," the young man rejoined, in a tone of cheerful impartiality,
"I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable.
I assure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure. The
world will never hear of me." Gertrude looked at him with a strange
feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew and which she
did not, and how full of brilliant talents it must be, since it could
afford to make light of his abilities. "You need n't in general attach
much importance to anything I tell you," he pursued; "but you may
believe me when I say this,--that I am little better than a good-natured
feather-head."