The Europeans

H >> Henry James >> The Europeans


"A feather-head?" she repeated.

"I am a species of Bohemian."

"A Bohemian?" Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as a
geographical denomination; and she quite failed to understand the
figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it. But it
gave her pleasure.

Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet; he slowly came
toward her, smiling. "I am a sort of adventurer," he said, looking down
at her.

She got up, meeting his smile. "An adventurer?" she repeated. "I should
like to hear your adventures."

For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand; but he
dropped his own hands suddenly into the pockets of his painting-jacket.
"There is no reason why you should n't," he said. "I have been an
adventurer, but my adventures have been very innocent. They have all
been happy ones; I don't think there are any I should n't tell. They
were very pleasant and very pretty; I should like to go over them in
memory. Sit down again, and I will begin," he added in a moment, with
his naturally persuasive smile.

Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on several other
days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories,
and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips;
she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he
thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a
single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This would have
been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope
than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good
conscience; for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this
young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good
intentions which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting
their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy
with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking
off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he
had played the violin in a little band of musicians--not of high
celebrity--who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial
concerts. He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a
troupe of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting
Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences.

While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived in a
fantastic world; she seemed to herself to be reading a romance that
came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing so delightful since
the perusal of "Nicholas Nickleby." One afternoon she went to see her
cousin, Mrs. Acton, Robert's mother, who was a great invalid, never
leaving the house. She came back alone, on foot, across the fields--this
being a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston with
her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon some of his
friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother--remembered her, but
said nothing about her--and several of whom, with the gentle ladies
their wives, had driven out from town to pay their respects at the
little house among the apple-trees, in vehicles which reminded the
Baroness, who received her visitors with discriminating civility, of
the large, light, rattling barouche in which she herself had made her
journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning; in the western
sky the great picture of a New England sunset, painted in crimson
and silver, was suspended from the zenith; and the stony pastures, as
Gertrude traversed them, thinking intently to herself, were covered with
a light, clear glow. At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from
the distance a man's figure; he stood there as if he were waiting for
her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand. She had a feeling
as of not having seen him for some time; she could not have said for
how long, for it yet seemed to her that he had been very lately at the
house.

"May I walk back with you?" he asked. And when she had said that he
might if he wanted, he observed that he had seen her and recognized her
half a mile away.

"You must have very good eyes," said Gertrude.

"Yes, I have very good eyes, Miss Gertrude," said Mr. Brand. She
perceived that he meant something; but for a long time past Mr. Brand
had constantly meant something, and she had almost got used to it. She
felt, however, that what he meant had now a renewed power to disturb
her, to perplex and agitate her. He walked beside her in silence for a
moment, and then he added, "I have had no trouble in seeing that you are
beginning to avoid me. But perhaps," he went on, "one need n't have had
very good eyes to see that."

"I have not avoided you," said Gertrude, without looking at him.

"I think you have been unconscious that you were avoiding me," Mr. Brand
replied. "You have not even known that I was there."

"Well, you are here now, Mr. Brand!" said Gertrude, with a little laugh.
"I know that very well."

He made no rejoinder. He simply walked beside her slowly, as they were
obliged to walk over the soft grass. Presently they came to another
gate, which was closed. Mr. Brand laid his hand upon it, but he made no
movement to open it; he stood and looked at his companion. "You are very
much interested--very much absorbed," he said.

Gertrude glanced at him; she saw that he was pale and that he looked
excited. She had never seen Mr. Brand excited before, and she felt
that the spectacle, if fully carried out, would be impressive, almost
painful. "Absorbed in what?" she asked. Then she looked away at the
illuminated sky. She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was
vexed with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood there
looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes, represented an
immense body of half-obliterated obligations, that were rising again
into a certain distinctness.

"You have new interests, new occupations," he went on. "I don't know
that I can say that you have new duties. We have always old ones,
Gertrude," he added.

"Please open the gate, Mr. Brand," she said; and she felt as if, in
saying so, she were cowardly and petulant. But he opened the gate, and
allowed her to pass; then he closed it behind himself. Before she had
time to turn away he put out his hand and held her an instant by the
wrist.

"I want to say something to you," he said.

"I know what you want to say," she answered. And she was on the point of
adding, "And I know just how you will say it;" but these words she kept
back.

"I love you, Gertrude," he said. "I love you very much; I love you more
than ever."

He said the words just as she had known he would; she had heard them
before. They had no charm for her; she had said to herself before that
it was very strange. It was supposed to be delightful for a woman to
listen to such words; but these seemed to her flat and mechanical. "I
wish you would forget that," she declared.

"How can I--why should I?" he asked.

"I have made you no promise--given you no pledge," she said, looking at
him, with her voice trembling a little.

"You have let me feel that I have an influence over you. You have opened
your mind to me."

"I never opened my mind to you, Mr. Brand!" Gertrude cried, with some
vehemence.

"Then you were not so frank as I thought--as we all thought."

"I don't see what any one else had to do with it!" cried the girl.

"I mean your father and your sister. You know it makes them happy to
think you will listen to me."

She gave a little laugh. "It does n't make them happy," she said.
"Nothing makes them happy. No one is happy here."

"I think your cousin is very happy--Mr. Young," rejoined Mr. Brand, in a
soft, almost timid tone.

"So much the better for him!" And Gertrude gave her little laugh again.

The young man looked at her a moment. "You are very much changed," he
said.

"I am glad to hear it," Gertrude declared.

"I am not. I have known you a long time, and I have loved you as you
were."

"I am much obliged to you," said Gertrude. "I must be going home."

He on his side, gave a little laugh.

"You certainly do avoid me--you see!"

"Avoid me, then," said the girl.

He looked at her again; and then, very gently, "No I will not avoid
you," he replied; "but I will leave you, for the present, to yourself.
I think you will remember--after a while--some of the things you have
forgotten. I think you will come back to me; I have great faith in
that."

This time his voice was very touching; there was a strong, reproachful
force in what he said, and Gertrude could answer nothing. He turned
away and stood there, leaning his elbows on the gate and looking at the
beautiful sunset. Gertrude left him and took her way home again; but
when she reached the middle of the next field she suddenly burst into
tears. Her tears seemed to her to have been a long time gathering, and
for some moments it was a kind of glee to shed them. But they presently
passed away. There was something a little hard about Gertrude; and she
never wept again.






CHAPTER VI

Going of an afternoon to call upon his niece, Mr. Wentworth more than
once found Robert Acton sitting in her little drawing-room. This was in
no degree, to Mr. Wentworth, a perturbing fact, for he had no sense
of competing with his young kinsman for Eugenia's good graces. Madame
Munster's uncle had the highest opinion of Robert Acton, who, indeed, in
the family at large, was the object of a great deal of undemonstrative
appreciation. They were all proud of him, in so far as the charge
of being proud may be brought against people who were, habitually,
distinctly guiltless of the misdemeanor known as "taking credit." They
never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vainglorious reference to
him; they never quoted the clever things he had said, nor mentioned the
generous things he had done. But a sort of frigidly-tender faith in
his unlimited goodness was a part of their personal sense of right; and
there can, perhaps, be no better proof of the high esteem in which he
was held than the fact that no explicit judgment was ever passed upon
his actions. He was no more praised than he was blamed; but he was
tacitly felt to be an ornament to his circle. He was the man of the
world of the family. He had been to China and brought home a collection
of curiosities; he had made a fortune--or rather he had quintupled a
fortune already considerable; he was distinguished by that combination
of celibacy, "property," and good humor which appeals to even the
most subdued imaginations; and it was taken for granted that he would
presently place these advantages at the disposal of some well-regulated
young woman of his own "set." Mr. Wentworth was not a man to admit to
himself that--his paternal duties apart--he liked any individual much
better than all other individuals; but he thought Robert Acton extremely
judicious; and this was perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of
to the eagerness of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it
would have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste. Acton
was, in fact, very judicious--and something more beside; and indeed it
must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of
his preference there hovered the vague adumbration of a belief that
his cousin's final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling,
rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment--for showing a
larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded.
Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was
made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero; but this is small
blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself.
Acton certainly exercised great discretion in all things--beginning with
his estimate of himself. He knew that he was by no means so much of a
man of the world as he was supposed to be in local circles; but it must
be added that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach
of which he had never quite given local circles the measure. He was
addicted to taking the humorous view of things, and he had discovered
that even in the narrowest circles such a disposition may find frequent
opportunities. Such opportunities had formed for some time--that is,
since his return from China, a year and a half before--the most active
element in this gentleman's life, which had just now a rather indolent
air. He was perfectly willing to get married. He was very fond of
books, and he had a handsome library; that is, his books were much more
numerous than Mr. Wentworth's. He was also very fond of pictures; but it
must be confessed, in the fierce light of contemporary criticism, that
his walls were adorned with several rather abortive masterpieces. He had
got his learning--and there was more of it than commonly appeared--at
Harvard College; and he took a pleasure in old associations, which made
it a part of his daily contentment to live so near this institution that
he often passed it in driving to Boston. He was extremely interested in
the Baroness Munster.

She was very frank with him; or at least she intended to be. "I am
sure you find it very strange that I should have settled down in this
out-of-the-way part of the world!" she said to him three or four weeks
after she had installed herself. "I am certain you are wondering about
my motives. They are very pure." The Baroness by this time was an old
inhabitant; the best society in Boston had called upon her, and Clifford
Wentworth had taken her several times to drive in his buggy.

Robert Acton was seated near her, playing with a fan; there were
always several fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of
different colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with
one. "No, I don't find it at all strange," he said slowly, smiling.
"That a clever woman should turn up in Boston, or its suburbs--that does
not require so much explanation. Boston is a very nice place."

"If you wish to make me contradict you," said the Baroness, "vous vous
y prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable
of agreeing to. Boston is a paradise, and we are in the suburbs of
Paradise."

"Just now I am not at all in the suburbs; I am in the place itself,"
rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair. He was, however,
not always lounging; and when he was he was not quite so relaxed as he
pretended. To a certain extent, he sought refuge from shyness in
this appearance of relaxation; and like many persons in the same
circumstances he somewhat exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this, the
air of being much at his ease was a cover for vigilant observation. He
was more than interested in this clever woman, who, whatever he might
say, was clever not at all after the Boston fashion; she plunged him
into a kind of excitement, held him in vague suspense. He was obliged to
admit to himself that he had never yet seen a woman just like this--not
even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity
of his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking, still
superficially, the humorous view of Madame Munster. It was not at all
true that he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious
pilgrimage. It might have been said of him in advance that he was too
good a Bostonian to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of
even the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis. This was an
impulse for which, surely, no apology was needed; and Madame Munster
was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact,
however, Madame Munster struck him as out of keeping with her little
circle; she was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying
anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these
reflections too crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked
to the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And
indeed he had no great desire to share his vague mistrust with any one.
There was a personal pleasure in it; the greatest pleasure he had known
at least since he had come from China. He would keep the Baroness, for
better or worse, to himself; he had a feeling that he deserved to
enjoy a monopoly of her, for he was certainly the person who had most
adequately gauged her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it
became apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax upon
such a monopoly.

One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan) she asked
him to apologize, should the occasion present itself, to certain people
in Boston for her not having returned their calls. "There are half a
dozen places," she said; "a formidable list. Charlotte Wentworth has
written it out for me, in a terrifically distinct hand. There is
no ambiguity on the subject; I know perfectly where I must go. Mr.
Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and
Charlotte offers to go with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very
stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They
must think me horribly vicious."

"You ask me to apologize," said Acton, "but you don't tell me what
excuse I can offer."

"That is more," the Baroness declared, "than I am held to. It would be
like my asking you to buy me a bouquet and giving you the money. I have
no reason except that--somehow--it 's too violent an effort. It is not
inspiring. Would n't that serve as an excuse, in Boston? I am told they
are very sincere; they don't tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with
me, and he is never in readiness. I don't see him. He is always roaming
about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or
painting some one's portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with
Gertrude Wentworth."

"I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people," said
Acton. "You are having a very quiet time of it here. It 's a dull life
for you."

"Ah, the quiet,--the quiet!" the Baroness exclaimed. "That 's what I
like. It 's rest. That 's what I came here for. Amusement? I have had
amusement. And as for seeing people--I have already seen a great many
in my life. If it did n't sound ungracious I should say that I wish very
humbly your people here would leave me alone!"

Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who
took being looked at remarkably well. "So you have come here for rest?"
he asked.

"So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are no
reasons--don't you know?--and yet that are really the best: to come
away, to change, to break with everything. When once one comes away one
must arrive somewhere, and I asked myself why I should n't arrive here."

"You certainly had time on the way!" said Acton, laughing.

Madame Munster looked at him again; and then, smiling: "And I have
certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However,
I never ask myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you
ought only to thank me."

"When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your
path."

"You mean to put difficulties in my path?" she asked, rearranging the
rosebud in her corsage.

"The greatest of all--that of having been so agreeable"--

"That I shall be unable to depart? Don't be too sure. I have left some
very agreeable people over there."

"Ah," said Acton, "but it was to come here, where I am!"

"I did n't know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so
rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No," the Baroness pursued, "it
was precisely not to see you--such people as you--that I came."

"Such people as me?" cried Acton.

"I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I
knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial
relations. Don't you see the difference?"

"The difference tells against me," said Acton. "I suppose I am an
artificial relation."

"Conventional," declared the Baroness; "very conventional."

"Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman
may always become natural," said Acton.

"You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at
any rate," rejoined Eugenia, "nous n'en sommes pas la!"

They were not, as yet; but a little later, when she began to go with him
to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were. He came for her
several times, alone, in his high "wagon," drawn by a pair of charming
light-limbed horses. It was different, her having gone with Clifford
Wentworth, who was her cousin, and so much younger. It was not to be
imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere
shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to
be "engaged" to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived
that the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whatever; for
she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known that her
matrimonial condition was of the "morganatic" order; but in its natural
aversion to suppose that this meant anything less than absolute wedlock,
the conscience of the community took refuge in the belief that it
implied something even more.

Acton wished her to think highly of American scenery, and he drove her
to great distances, picking out the prettiest roads and the largest
points of view. If we are good when we are contented, Eugenia's virtues
should now certainly have been uppermost; for she found a charm in the
rapid movement through a wild country, and in a companion who from time
to time made the vehicle dip, with a motion like a swallow's flight,
over roads of primitive construction, and who, as she felt, would do
a great many things that she might ask him. Sometimes, for a couple
of hours together, there were almost no houses; there were nothing but
woods and rivers and lakes and horizons adorned with bright-looking
mountains. It seemed to the Baroness very wild, as I have said,
and lovely; but the impression added something to that sense of the
enlargement of opportunity which had been born of her arrival in the New
World.

One day--it was late in the afternoon--Acton pulled up his horses on the
crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect. He let them
stand a long time to rest, while he sat there and talked with Madame
M; auunster. The prospect was beautiful in spite of there being nothing
human within sight. There was a wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a
distant river, and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Massachusetts.
The road had a wide, grassy margin, on the further side of which there
flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in the grass, and
beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton waited a while;
at last a rustic wayfarer came trudging along the road. Acton asked him
to hold the horses--a service he consented to render, as a friendly turn
to a fellow-citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend, and the
two wandered away, across the grass, and sat down on the log beside the
brook.

"I imagine it does n't remind you of Silberstadt," said Acton. It was
the first time that he had mentioned Silberstadt to her, for particular
reasons. He knew she had a husband there, and this was disagreeable to
him; and, furthermore, it had been repeated to him that this husband
wished to put her away--a state of affairs to which even indirect
reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the
Baroness herself had often alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often
wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious
position for a lady--this being known as a repudiated wife; and it is
worthy of observation that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding
grace and dignity. She had made it felt, from the first, that there were
two sides to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose
to present it, would be replete with touching interest.

"It does not remind me of the town, of course," she said, "of the
sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful Schloss,
with its moat and its clustering towers. But it has a little look of
some other parts of the principality. One might fancy one's self among
those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains; the sort of
country one sees from the windows at Shreckenstein."

"What is Shreckenstein?" asked Acton.

"It is a great castle,--the summer residence of the Reigning Prince."

"Have you ever lived there?"

"I have stayed there," said the Baroness. Acton was silent; he looked a
while at the uncastled landscape before him. "It is the first time you
have ever asked me about Silberstadt," she said. "I should think you
would want to know about my marriage; it must seem to you very strange."

Acton looked at her a moment. "Now you would n't like me to say that!"

"You Americans have such odd ways!" the Baroness declared. "You never
ask anything outright; there seem to be so many things you can't talk
about."

"We Americans are very polite," said Acton, whose national consciousness
had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands, and who yet
disliked to hear Americans abused. "We don't like to tread upon
people's toes," he said. "But I should like very much to hear about your
marriage. Now tell me how it came about."