Henry James - Henry James - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 10)

This production seemed to Roger a marvel of intellectual promise and epistolary grace; it filled his eyes with grateful tears; he carried it in his pocket-book and read it to a dozen people. His tears, however, were partly those of penitence, as well as of delight. He had had a purpose in preserving that silence, which had cost so much to his good-nature. He wished to make Nora miss him, and to let silence combine with absence to plead for him. Had he succeeded? Not too well, it would seem; yet well enough to make him feel that he had been cruel. His letter occupied him so intensely that it was not till within an hour of Mrs. Middleton's dinner that he remembered his engagement. In the drawing-room he found Miss Sands, looking even more beautiful in a dark high-necked dress than in the glory of gauze and flowers. During dinner he was in excellent spirits; he uttered perhaps no epigrams, but he gave, by his laughter, an epigrammatic turn to the ladyish gossip of his companions. Mrs. Middleton entertained the best hopes. When they had left the table she betook herself to her arm-chair, and erected a little hand-screen before her face, behind which she slept or not, as you choose. Roger, suddenly bethinking himself that if Miss Sands had been made a party to the old lady's views, his alacrity of manner might compromise him, checked his vivacity, and asked his companion stiffly if she played the piano. On her confessing to this accomplishment, he of course proceeded to open the instrument which stood in the adjoining room. Here Miss Sands sat down and played with great resolution an exquisite composition of Schubert. As she struck the last note he uttered some superlative of praise. She was silent for a moment, and then, "That is a thing I rarely play," she said.

"It is very difficult, I suppose."

"It is not only difficult, but it is too sad."

"Sad!" cried Roger, "I should call it very joyous."

"You must be in very good spirits! I take it to have been meant for pure sadness. This is what should suit your mood!" and she attacked with great animation one of Strauss's waltzes. But she had played but a dozen chords when he interrupted her. "Spare me," he said. "I may be glad, but not with that gladness. I confess that I am in spirits. I have just had a letter from that young friend of whom I spoke to you."

"Your adopted daughter? Mrs. Middleton told me about her."

"Mrs. Middleton," said Roger, in downright fashion, "knows nothing about her. Mrs. Middleton," and he lowered his voice and laughed, "is not an oracle of wisdom." He glanced into the other room at their hostess and her complaisant screen. He felt with peculiar intensity that, whether she was napping or no, she was a sadly superficial,—in fact a positively immoral,—old woman. It seemed absurd to believe that this fair, wise creature before him had lent herself to a scheme of such a one's making. He looked awhile at her deep clear eyes and her gracious lips. It would be a satisfaction to smile with her over Mrs. Middleton's machinations. "Do you know what she wants to do with us?" he went on. "She wants to make a match between us."

He waited for her smile, but it was heralded by a blush,—a blush portentous, formidable, tragical. Like a sudden glow of sunset in a noonday sky, it covered her fair face and burned on her cloudless brow. "The deuce!" thought Roger. "Can it be,—can it be?" The smile he had invoked followed fast; but this was not the order of nature.

"A match between us! " said Miss Sands. "What a brilliant idea!"

"Not that I cannot easily imagine falling in love with you," Roger rejoined; "but—but—"

"But you are in love with some one else." Her eyes, for a moment, rested on him intently. "With your protégée!"

Roger hesitated. It seemed odd to be making this sacred confidence to a stranger; but with this matter of Mrs. Middleton's little arrangement between them, she was hardly a stranger. If he had offended her, too, the part of gallantry was to admit everything. "Yes, I am in love!" he said. "And with the young lady you so much resemble. She does n't know it. Only one or two persons know it, save yourself. It is the secret of my life, Miss Sands. She is abroad. I have wished to do what I could for her. It is an odd sort of position, you know. I have brought her up with the view of making her my wife, but I have never breathed a word of it to her. She must choose for herself. My hope is that she will choose me. But Heaven knows what turn she may take, what may happen to her over there in Rome. I hope for the best; but I think of little else. Meanwhile I go about with a sober face, and eat and sleep and talk, like the rest of the world; but all the while I am counting the hours. Really, I don't know what has set me going in this way. I don't suppose you will at all understand my situation; but you are evidently so good that I feel as if I might count on your sympathy."

Miss Sands listened with her eyes bent downward, and with great gravity. When he had spoken, she gave him her hand with a certain passionate abruptness. "You have my sympathy!" she said. "Much good may it do you! I know nothing of your friend, but it is hard to fancy her disappointing you. I perhaps don't altogether enter into your situation. It is novel, but it is extremely interesting. I hope before rejecting you she will think twice. I don't bestow my esteem at random, but you have it, Mr. Lawrence, absolutely." And with these words she rose. At the same moment their hostess suspended her siesta, and the conversation became general. It can hardly be said, however, to have prospered. Miss Sands talked with a certain gracious zeal which was not unallied, I imagine, to a desire to efface the trace of that superb blush I have attempted to chronicle. Roger brooded and wondered; and Mrs. Middleton, fancying that things were not going well, expressed her displeasure by abusing every one who was mentioned. She took heart again for the moment when, on the young lady's carriage being announced, the latter, turning in farewell to Roger, asked him if he ever came to New York. "When you are next there," she said, "you must make a point of coming to see me. You will have something to tell me."

After she had gone Roger demanded of Mrs. Middleton whether she had imparted to Miss Sands her scheme for their common felicity. "Never mind what I said or did not say," she replied. "She knows enough not to be taken unawares. And now tell me—" But Roger would tell her nothing. He made his escape, and as he walked home in the frosty starlight, his face wore a smile of the most shameless elation. He had gone up in the market. Nora might do worse! There stood that beautiful woman knocking at his door.

A few evenings after this Roger called upon Hubert. Not immediately, but on what may be called the second line of conversation, Hubert asked him what news he had from Nora. Roger replied by reading her letter aloud. For some moments after he had finished Hubert was silent. "'One grows more in a month in this wonderful Rome,'" he said at last, quoting, "'than in a year at home.'"

"Grow, grow, grow, and Heaven speed it!" said Roger.

"She is growing, you may depend upon it."

"Of course she is; and yet," said Roger, discriminatingly, "there is a kind of girlish freshness, a childish simplicity, in her style."

"Strongly marked," said Hubert, laughing. I "have just got a letter from her you would take to be written by a child of ten."

" You have a letter?"

"It came an hour ago. Let me read it."

"Had you written to her?"

"Not a word. But you will see." And Hubert in his dressing-gown, standing before the fire, with the same silver-sounding accents Nora had admired, distilled her own gentle prose into Roger's attentive ear.

"'I have not forgotten your asking me to write to you about your beloved Pincian view. Indeed, I have been daily reminded of it by having that same view continually before my eyes. From my own window I see the same dark Rome, the same blue Campagua. I have rigorously performed my promise, however, of ascending to your little terrace. I have an old German friend here, a perfect archaeologist in petticoats, in whose company I think as little of climbing to terraces and towers as of diving into catacombs and crypts. We chose the finest day of the winter, and made the pilgrimage together. The plaster-merchant is still in the basement. We saw him in his doorway, standing to dry, whitened over as if he meant personally to be cast. We reached your terrace in safety. It was flooded with light,—you know the Roman light,—the yellow and the purple. A young painter who occupies your rooms had set up his easel under an umbrella in the open air. A young contadina imported, I suppose, from the Piazza di Spagna, was sitting to him in the sunshine, which deepened her brown face, her blue-back hair, and her white head-cloth. He was flattering her to his heart's content, and of course to hers. When I want my portrait painted, I shall know where to go. My friend explained to him that we had come to look at his terrace on behalf of an unhappy faraway American gentleman who had once been lodger there. Hereupon he was charmingly polite. He showed us the little salotto , the fragment of bas-relief inserted in the wall,—was it there in your day?—and a dozen of his own pictures. One of them was a very pretty version of the view from the terrace. Does it betray an indecent greed for applause to let you know that I bought it, and that, if you are very good and write me a delightful long letter, you shall have it when I get home? It seemed to me that you would be glad to learn that your little habitation is not turned to baser uses, and that genius and ambition may still be found there. In your case, I suppose, they were not found in company with dark-eyed contadine , though they had an admirer in the person of that poor little American sculptress. I asked the young painter if she had left any memory behind her. Only a memory, it appears. She died a month after his arrival. I never was so bountifully thanked for anything as for buying our young man's picture. As he poured out his lovely Italian gratitude, I felt like some patronizing duchess of the Renaissance. You will have to do your best, when I transfer the picture to your hands, to give as pretty a turn to your thanks. This is only one specimen of a hundred delightful rambles I have had with Mlle. Stamm. We go a great deal to the churches; I never tire of them. Not in the least that I am turning Papist; though in Mrs. Keith's society, if I chose to do so, I might treat myself to the luxury of being a nine days' wonder, (admire my self-denial!) but because they are so picturesque and historic; so redolent of memories, so rich with traditions, so haunted with the past. To go into most of the churches is like reading some novel, better than I find most novels. They are for different days. On a fine day, if I have on my best bonnet, if I have been to a party the night before, I like to go to Santa-Maria Maggiore. Standing there, I dream, I dream, I dream; I should be ashamed to tell you the nonsense I do dream! On a rainy day, when I tramp out with Mlle. Stamm in my waterproof; when the evening before, instead of going to a party, I have sat quietly at home reading Rio's "Art Chrétien" (recommended by the Abbé Leblond, Mrs. Keith's confessor), I like to go to the Ara Cœli. There you stand among the very bric-à-brac of Christian history. Something takes you at the throat,—but you will have felt it; I need n't try to define the indefinable. Nevertheless, in spite of M. Rio and the Abbé Leblond (he is a very charming old man too, and a keeper of ladies' consciences, if there ever was one), there is small danger of my changing my present faith for one that will make it a sin to go and hear you preach. Of course, we don't only haunt the churches. I know in a way the Vatican, the Capitol, and those charming galleries of the great palaces. Of course, you know them far better. I am stopped short on every side by my deplorable ignorance; still, as far as may be given to a silly girl, I enjoy. I wish you were here, or that I knew some benevolent man of culture. My little German duenna is a marvel of learning and communicativeness, and when she fairly harangues me, I feel as if in my single person I were a young ladies' boarding-school. But only a man can talk really to the point of this manliest of cities. Mrs. Keith sees a great many gentlemen of one sort and another; but what do they know of Brutus and Augustus, of Emperors and Popes? I shall keep my impressions, such as they are, and we shall talk them over at our leisure. I shall bring home plenty of photographs; we shall have charming evenings looking at them. Roger writes that he means next winter to take a furnished house in town. You must come often and see us. We are to spend the summer in England.... Do you often see Roger? I suppose so,—he wrote he was having a 'capital winter.' By the way, I am 'out.' I go to balls and wear Paris dresses. I toil not, neither do I spin. There is apparently no end to my banker's account, and Mrs. Keith sets me a prodigious example of buying. Is Roger meanwhile going about with patched elbows?"