The Europeans

H >> Henry James >> The Europeans


Her sister made her stop in the path, and fixed upon her, in the
darkness, a sweet, reproachful gaze. "If you talk this way I shall
almost believe it. Think of all we owe Mr. Brand. Think of how he has
always expected something of you. Think how much he has been to us.
Think of his beautiful influence upon Clifford."

"He is very good," said Gertrude, looking at her sister. "I know he is
very good. But he should n't speak against Felix."

"Felix is good," Charlotte answered, softly but promptly. "Felix is very
wonderful. Only he is so different. Mr. Brand is much nearer to us. I
should never think of going to Felix with a trouble--with a question.
Mr. Brand is much more to us, Gertrude."

"He is very--very good," Gertrude repeated. "He is more to you; yes,
much more. Charlotte," she added suddenly, "you are in love with him!"

"Oh, Gertrude!" cried poor Charlotte; and her sister saw her blushing in
the darkness.

Gertrude put her arm round her. "I wish he would marry you!" she went
on.

Charlotte shook herself free. "You must not say such things!" she
exclaimed, beneath her breath.

"You like him more than you say, and he likes you more than he knows."

"This is very cruel of you!" Charlotte Wentworth murmured.

But if it was cruel Gertrude continued pitiless. "Not if it 's true,"
she answered. "I wish he would marry you."

"Please don't say that."

"I mean to tell him so!" said Gertrude.

"Oh, Gertrude, Gertrude!" her sister almost moaned.

"Yes, if he speaks to me again about myself. I will say, 'Why don't you
marry Charlotte? She 's a thousand times better than I.'"

"You are wicked; you are changed!" cried her sister.

"If you don't like it you can prevent it," said Gertrude. "You can
prevent it by keeping him from speaking to me!" And with this she walked
away, very conscious of what she had done; measuring it and finding a
certain joy and a quickened sense of freedom in it.

Mr. Wentworth was rather wide of the mark in suspecting that Clifford
had begun to pay unscrupulous compliments to his brilliant cousin; for
the young man had really more scruples than he received credit for in
his family. He had a certain transparent shamefacedness which was
in itself a proof that he was not at his ease in dissipation. His
collegiate peccadilloes had aroused a domestic murmur as disagreeable
to the young man as the creaking of his boots would have been to a
house-breaker. Only, as the house-breaker would have simplified matters
by removing his chaussures, it had seemed to Clifford that the shortest
cut to comfortable relations with people--relations which should make
him cease to think that when they spoke to him they meant something
improving--was to renounce all ambition toward a nefarious development.
And, in fact, Clifford's ambition took the most commendable form. He
thought of himself in the future as the well-known and much-liked Mr.
Wentworth, of Boston, who should, in the natural course of prosperity,
have married his pretty cousin, Lizzie Acton; should live in a
wide-fronted house, in view of the Common; and should drive, behind a
light wagon, over the damp autumn roads, a pair of beautifully matched
sorrel horses. Clifford's vision of the coming years was very simple;
its most definite features were this element of familiar matrimony and
the duplication of his resources for trotting. He had not yet asked his
cousin to marry him; but he meant to do so as soon as he had taken his
degree. Lizzie was serenely conscious of his intention, and she had made
up her mind that he would improve. Her brother, who was very fond of
this light, quick, competent little Lizzie, saw on his side no reason to
interpose. It seemed to him a graceful social law that Clifford and his
sister should become engaged; he himself was not engaged, but every one
else, fortunately, was not such a fool as he. He was fond of Clifford,
as well, and had his own way--of which it must be confessed he was a
little ashamed--of looking at those aberrations which had led to the
young man's compulsory retirement from the neighboring seat of learning.
Acton had seen the world, as he said to himself; he had been to China
and had knocked about among men. He had learned the essential difference
between a nice young fellow and a mean young fellow, and was satisfied
that there was no harm in Clifford. He believed--although it must be
added that he had not quite the courage to declare it--in the doctrine
of wild oats, and thought it a useful preventive of superfluous fears.
If Mr. Wentworth and Charlotte and Mr. Brand would only apply it in
Clifford's case, they would be happier; and Acton thought it a pity
they should not be happier. They took the boy's misdemeanors too much to
heart; they talked to him too solemnly; they frightened and bewildered
him. Of course there was the great standard of morality, which forbade
that a man should get tipsy, play at billiards for money, or cultivate
his sensual consciousness; but what fear was there that poor Clifford
was going to run a tilt at any great standard? It had, however, never
occurred to Acton to dedicate the Baroness Munster to the redemption of
a refractory collegian. The instrument, here, would have seemed to
him quite too complex for the operation. Felix, on the other hand, had
spoken in obedience to the belief that the more charming a woman is the
more numerous, literally, are her definite social uses.

Eugenia herself, as we know, had plenty of leisure to enumerate her
uses. As I have had the honor of intimating, she had come four thousand
miles to seek her fortune; and it is not to be supposed that after this
great effort she could neglect any apparent aid to advancement. It is
my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass the
deportment of this remarkable woman I am obliged to express things
rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance, when I say
that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement in the person
of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards remembered that a
prudent archer has always a second bowstring. Eugenia was a woman of
finely-mingled motive, and her intentions were never sensibly gross.
She had a sort of aesthetic ideal for Clifford which seemed to her a
disinterested reason for taking him in hand. It was very well for a
fresh-colored young gentleman to be ingenuous; but Clifford, really, was
crude. With such a pretty face he ought to have prettier manners. She
would teach him that, with a beautiful name, the expectation of a large
property, and, as they said in Europe, a social position, an only son
should know how to carry himself.

Once Clifford had begun to come and see her by himself and for himself,
he came very often. He hardly knew why he should come; he saw her almost
every evening at his father's house; he had nothing particular to say to
her. She was not a young girl, and fellows of his age called only upon
young girls. He exaggerated her age; she seemed to him an old woman; it
was happy that the Baroness, with all her intelligence, was incapable of
guessing this. But gradually it struck Clifford that visiting old women
might be, if not a natural, at least, as they say of some articles of
diet, an acquired taste. The Baroness was certainly a very amusing old
woman; she talked to him as no lady--and indeed no gentleman--had ever
talked to him before.

"You should go to Europe and make the tour," she said to him one
afternoon. "Of course, on leaving college you will go."

"I don't want to go," Clifford declared. "I know some fellows who have
been to Europe. They say you can have better fun here."

"That depends. It depends upon your idea of fun. Your friends probably
were not introduced."

"Introduced?" Clifford demanded.

"They had no opportunity of going into society; they formed no
relations." This was one of a certain number of words that the Baroness
often pronounced in the French manner.

"They went to a ball, in Paris; I know that," said Clifford.

"Ah, there are balls and balls; especially in Paris. No, you must go,
you know; it is not a thing from which you can dispense yourself. You
need it."

"Oh, I 'm very well," said Clifford. "I 'm not sick."

"I don't mean for your health, my poor child. I mean for your manners."

"I have n't got any manners!" growled Clifford.

"Precisely. You don't mind my assenting to that, eh?" asked the Baroness
with a smile. "You must go to Europe and get a few. You can get them
better there. It is a pity you might not have come while I was living
in--in Germany. I would have introduced you; I had a charming little
circle. You would perhaps have been rather young; but the younger one
begins, I think, the better. Now, at any rate, you have no time to lose,
and when I return you must immediately come to me."

All this, to Clifford's apprehension, was a great mixture--his beginning
young, Eugenia's return to Europe, his being introduced to her charming
little circle. What was he to begin, and what was her little circle? His
ideas about her marriage had a good deal of vagueness; but they were
in so far definite as that he felt it to be a matter not to be freely
mentioned. He sat and looked all round the room; he supposed she was
alluding in some way to her marriage.

"Oh, I don't want to go to Germany," he said; it seemed to him the most
convenient thing to say.

She looked at him a while, smiling with her lips, but not with her eyes.

"You have scruples?" she asked.

"Scruples?" said Clifford.

"You young people, here, are very singular; one does n't know where
to expect you. When you are not extremely improper you are so terribly
proper. I dare say you think that, owing to my irregular marriage, I
live with loose people. You were never more mistaken. I have been all
the more particular."

"Oh, no," said Clifford, honestly distressed. "I never thought such a
thing as that."

"Are you very sure? I am convinced that your father does, and your
sisters. They say to each other that here I am on my good behavior, but
that over there--married by the left hand--I associate with light women."

"Oh, no," cried Clifford, energetically, "they don't say such things as
that to each other!"

"If they think them they had better say them," the Baroness rejoined.
"Then they can be contradicted. Please contradict that whenever you hear
it, and don't be afraid of coming to see me on account of the company I
keep. I have the honor of knowing more distinguished men, my poor child,
than you are likely to see in a life-time. I see very few women; but
those are women of rank. So, my dear young Puritan, you need n't be
afraid. I am not in the least one of those who think that the society of
women who have lost their place in the vrai monde is necessary to form
a young man. I have never taken that tone. I have kept my place myself,
and I think we are a much better school than the others. Trust me,
Clifford, and I will prove that to you," the Baroness continued, while
she made the agreeable reflection that she could not, at least, be
accused of perverting her young kinsman. "So if you ever fall among
thieves don't go about saying I sent you to them."

Clifford thought it so comical that he should know--in spite of her
figurative language--what she meant, and that she should mean what he
knew, that he could hardly help laughing a little, although he tried
hard. "Oh, no! oh, no!" he murmured.

"Laugh out, laugh out, if I amuse you!" cried the Baroness. "I am here
for that!" And Clifford thought her a very amusing person indeed.
"But remember," she said on this occasion, "that you are coming--next
year--to pay me a visit over there."

About a week afterwards she said to him, point-blank, "Are you seriously
making love to your little cousin?"

"Seriously making love"--these words, on Madame Munster's lips, had to
Clifford's sense a portentous and embarrassing sound; he hesitated about
assenting, lest he should commit himself to more than he understood.
"Well, I should n't say it if I was!" he exclaimed.

"Why would n't you say it?" the Baroness demanded. "Those things ought
to be known."

"I don't care whether it is known or not," Clifford rejoined. "But I
don't want people looking at me."

"A young man of your importance ought to learn to bear observation--to
carry himself as if he were quite indifferent to it. I won't say,
exactly, unconscious," the Baroness explained. "No, he must seem to know
he is observed, and to think it natural he should be; but he must appear
perfectly used to it. Now you have n't that, Clifford; you have n't that
at all. You must have that, you know. Don't tell me you are not a young
man of importance," Eugenia added. "Don't say anything so flat as that."

"Oh, no, you don't catch me saying that!" cried Clifford.

"Yes, you must come to Germany," Madame Munster continued. "I will show
you how people can be talked about, and yet not seem to know it. You
will be talked about, of course, with me; it will be said you are my
lover. I will show you how little one may mind that--how little I shall
mind it."

Clifford sat staring, blushing and laughing. "I shall mind it a good
deal!" he declared.

"Ah, not too much, you know; that would be uncivil. But I give you leave
to mind it a little; especially if you have a passion for Miss Acton.
Voyons; as regards that, you either have or you have not. It is very
simple to say it."

"I don't see why you want to know," said Clifford.

"You ought to want me to know. If one is arranging a marriage, one tells
one's friends."

"Oh, I 'm not arranging anything," said Clifford.

"You don't intend to marry your cousin?"

"Well, I expect I shall do as I choose!"

The Baroness leaned her head upon the back of her chair and closed her
eyes, as if she were tired. Then opening them again, "Your cousin is
very charming!" she said.

"She is the prettiest girl in this place," Clifford rejoined.

"'In this place' is saying little; she would be charming anywhere. I am
afraid you are entangled."

"Oh, no, I 'm not entangled."

"Are you engaged? At your age that is the same thing."

Clifford looked at the Baroness with some audacity. "Will you tell no
one?"

"If it 's as sacred as that--no."

"Well, then--we are not!" said Clifford.

"That 's the great secret--that you are not, eh?" asked the Baroness,
with a quick laugh. "I am very glad to hear it. You are altogether too
young. A young man in your position must choose and compare; he must see
the world first. Depend upon it," she added, "you should not settle that
matter before you have come abroad and paid me that visit. There are
several things I should like to call your attention to first."

"Well, I am rather afraid of that visit," said Clifford. "It seems to me
it will be rather like going to school again."

The Baroness looked at him a moment.

"My dear child," she said, "there is no agreeable man who has not, at
some moment, been to school to a clever woman--probably a little older
than himself. And you must be thankful when you get your instructions
gratis. With me you would get it gratis."

The next day Clifford told Lizzie Acton that the Baroness thought her
the most charming girl she had ever seen.

Lizzie shook her head. "No, she does n't!" she said.

"Do you think everything she says," asked Clifford, "is to be taken the
opposite way?"

"I think that is!" said Lizzie.

Clifford was going to remark that in this case the Baroness must desire
greatly to bring about a marriage between Mr. Clifford Wentworth and
Miss Elizabeth Acton; but he resolved, on the whole, to suppress this
observation.






CHAPTER IX

It seemed to Robert Acton, after Eugenia had come to his house, that
something had passed between them which made them a good deal more
intimate. It was hard to say exactly what, except her telling him that
she had taken her resolution with regard to the Prince Adolf; for Madame
Munster's visit had made no difference in their relations. He came to
see her very often; but he had come to see her very often before. It was
agreeable to him to find himself in her little drawing-room; but this
was not a new discovery. There was a change, however, in this sense:
that if the Baroness had been a great deal in Acton's thoughts before,
she was now never out of them. From the first she had been personally
fascinating; but the fascination now had become intellectual as well. He
was constantly pondering her words and motions; they were as interesting
as the factors in an algebraic problem. This is saying a good deal; for
Acton was extremely fond of mathematics. He asked himself whether it
could be that he was in love with her, and then hoped he was not; hoped
it not so much for his own sake as for that of the amatory passion
itself. If this was love, love had been overrated. Love was a poetic
impulse, and his own state of feeling with regard to the Baroness was
largely characterized by that eminently prosaic sentiment--curiosity.
It was true, as Acton with his quietly cogitative habit observed
to himself, that curiosity, pushed to a given point, might become a
romantic passion; and he certainly thought enough about this charming
woman to make him restless and even a little melancholy. It puzzled and
vexed him at times to feel that he was not more ardent. He was not in
the least bent upon remaining a bachelor. In his younger years he had
been--or he had tried to be--of the opinion that it would be a good deal
"jollier" not to marry, and he had flattered himself that his single
condition was something of a citadel. It was a citadel, at all events,
of which he had long since leveled the outworks. He had removed the guns
from the ramparts; he had lowered the draw-bridge across the moat. The
draw-bridge had swayed lightly under Madame Munster's step; why should
he not cause it to be raised again, so that she might be kept prisoner?
He had an idea that she would become--in time at least, and on learning
the conveniences of the place for making a lady comfortable--a tolerably
patient captive. But the draw-bridge was never raised, and Acton's
brilliant visitor was as free to depart as she had been to come. It was
part of his curiosity to know why the deuce so susceptible a man was not
in love with so charming a woman. If her various graces were, as I have
said, the factors in an algebraic problem, the answer to this question
was the indispensable unknown quantity. The pursuit of the unknown
quantity was extremely absorbing; for the present it taxed all Acton's
faculties.

Toward the middle of August he was obliged to leave home for some days;
an old friend, with whom he had been associated in China, had begged him
to come to Newport, where he lay extremely ill. His friend got better,
and at the end of a week Acton was released. I use the word "released"
advisedly; for in spite of his attachment to his Chinese comrade he had
been but a half-hearted visitor. He felt as if he had been called away
from the theatre during the progress of a remarkably interesting drama.
The curtain was up all this time, and he was losing the fourth act; that
fourth act which would have been so essential to a just appreciation of
the fifth. In other words, he was thinking about the Baroness, who, seen
at this distance, seemed a truly brilliant figure. He saw at Newport
a great many pretty women, who certainly were figures as brilliant as
beautiful light dresses could make them; but though they talked a
great deal--and the Baroness's strong point was perhaps also her
conversation--Madame Munster appeared to lose nothing by the comparison.
He wished she had come to Newport too. Would it not be possible to make
up, as they said, a party for visiting the famous watering-place and
invite Eugenia to join it? It was true that the complete satisfaction
would be to spend a fortnight at Newport with Eugenia alone. It would be
a great pleasure to see her, in society, carry everything before her,
as he was sure she would do. When Acton caught himself thinking these
thoughts he began to walk up and down, with his hands in his pockets,
frowning a little and looking at the floor. What did it prove--for
it certainly proved something--this lively disposition to be "off"
somewhere with Madame Munster, away from all the rest of them? Such a
vision, certainly, seemed a refined implication of matrimony, after the
Baroness should have formally got rid of her informal husband. At
any rate, Acton, with his characteristic discretion, forbore to give
expression to whatever else it might imply, and the narrator of these
incidents is not obliged to be more definite.

He returned home rapidly, and, arriving in the afternoon, lost as little
time as possible in joining the familiar circle at Mr. Wentworth's. On
reaching the house, however, he found the piazzas empty. The doors and
windows were open, and their emptiness was made clear by the shafts of
lamp-light from the parlors. Entering the house, he found Mr. Wentworth
sitting alone in one of these apartments, engaged in the perusal of
the "North American Review." After they had exchanged greetings and his
cousin had made discreet inquiry about his journey, Acton asked what had
become of Mr. Wentworth's companions.

"They are scattered about, amusing themselves as usual," said the old
man. "I saw Charlotte, a short time since, seated, with Mr. Brand,
upon the piazza. They were conversing with their customary animation.
I suppose they have joined her sister, who, for the hundredth time, was
doing the honors of the garden to her foreign cousin."

"I suppose you mean Felix," said Acton. And on Mr. Wentworth's
assenting, he said, "And the others?"

"Your sister has not come this evening. You must have seen her at home,"
said Mr. Wentworth.

"Yes. I proposed to her to come. She declined."

"Lizzie, I suppose, was expecting a visitor," said the old man, with a
kind of solemn slyness.

"If she was expecting Clifford, he had not turned up."

Mr. Wentworth, at this intelligence, closed the "North American Review"
and remarked that he had understood Clifford to say that he was going to
see his cousin. Privately, he reflected that if Lizzie Acton had had no
news of his son, Clifford must have gone to Boston for the evening: an
unnatural course of a summer night, especially when accompanied with
disingenuous representations.

"You must remember that he has two cousins," said Acton, laughing. And
then, coming to the point, "If Lizzie is not here," he added, "neither
apparently is the Baroness."

Mr. Wentworth stared a moment, and remembered that queer proposition of
Felix's. For a moment he did not know whether it was not to be wished
that Clifford, after all, might have gone to Boston. "The Baroness
has not honored us tonight," he said. "She has not come over for three
days."

"Is she ill?" Acton asked.

"No; I have been to see her."

"What is the matter with her?"

"Well," said Mr. Wentworth, "I infer she has tired of us."

Acton pretended to sit down, but he was restless; he found it impossible
to talk with Mr. Wentworth. At the end of ten minutes he took up his hat
and said that he thought he would "go off." It was very late; it was ten
o'clock.

His quiet-faced kinsman looked at him a moment. "Are you going home?" he
asked.

Acton hesitated, and then answered that he had proposed to go over and
take a look at the Baroness.

"Well, you are honest, at least," said Mr. Wentworth, sadly.

"So are you, if you come to that!" cried Acton, laughing. "Why should
n't I be honest?"

The old man opened the "North American" again, and read a few lines.
"If we have ever had any virtue among us, we had better keep hold of it
now," he said. He was not quoting.

"We have a Baroness among us," said Acton. "That 's what we must keep
hold of!" He was too impatient to see Madame Munster again to wonder
what Mr. Wentworth was talking about. Nevertheless, after he had passed
out of the house and traversed the garden and the little piece of road
that separated him from Eugenia's provisional residence, he stopped a
moment outside. He stood in her little garden; the long window of
her parlor was open, and he could see the white curtains, with the
lamp-light shining through them, swaying softly to and fro in the warm
night wind. There was a sort of excitement in the idea of seeing Madame
Munster again; he became aware that his heart was beating rather faster
than usual. It was this that made him stop, with a half-amused surprise.
But in a moment he went along the piazza, and, approaching the open
window, tapped upon its lintel with his stick. He could see the Baroness
within; she was standing in the middle of the room. She came to the
window and pulled aside the curtain; then she stood looking at him a
moment. She was not smiling; she seemed serious.

"Mais entrez donc!" she said at last. Acton passed in across the
window-sill; he wondered, for an instant, what was the matter with her.
But the next moment she had begun to smile and had put out her hand.
"Better late than never," she said. "It is very kind of you to come at
this hour."