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

She was not pretty; but even when it expressed perplexed irritation her face was most interesting and agreeable. Neither was she in her first youth; yet, though slender, with a great deal of extremely well-fashioned roundness of contour — a suggestion both of maturity and flexibility — she carried her three and thirty years as a light-wristed Hebe might have carried a brimming wine-cup. Her complexion was fatigued, as the French say; her mouth was large, her lips too full, her teeth uneven, her chin rather commonly modeled; she had a thick nose, and when she smiled — she was constantly smiling — the lines beside it rose too high, toward her eyes. But these eyes were charming: gray in color, brilliant, quickly glancing, gently resting, full of intelligence. Her forehead was very low — it was her only handsome feature; and she had a great abundance of crisp dark hair, finely frizzled, which was always braided in a manner that suggested some Southern or Eastern, some remotely foreign, woman. She had a large collection of ear-rings, and wore them in alternation; and they seemed to give a point to her Oriental or exotic aspect. A compliment had once been paid her, which, being repeated to her, gave her greater pleasure than anything she had ever heard. “A pretty woman?” some one had said. “Why, her features are very bad.” “I don’t know about her features,” a very discerning observer had answered; “but she carries her head like a pretty woman.” You may imagine whether, after this, she carried her head less becomingly.

She turned away from the window at last, pressing her hands to her eyes. “It ‘s too horrible!” she exclaimed. “I shall go back — I shall go back!” And she flung herself into a chair before the fire.

“Wait a little, dear child,” said the young man softly, sketching away at his little scraps of paper.

The lady put out her foot; it was very small, and there was an immense rosette on her slipper. She fixed her eyes for a while on this ornament, and then she looked at the glowing bed of anthracite coal in the grate. “Did you ever see anything so hideous as that fire?” she demanded. “Did you ever see anything so — so affreux as — as everything?” She spoke English with perfect purity; but she brought out this French epithet in a manner that indicated that she was accustomed to using French epithets.

“I think the fire is very pretty,” said the young man, glancing at it a moment. “Those little blue tongues, dancing on top of the crimson embers, are extremely picturesque. They are like a fire in an alchemist’s laboratory.”

“You are too good-natured, my dear,” his companion declared.

The young man held out one of his drawings, with his head on one side. His tongue was gently moving along his under-lip. “Good-natured — yes. Too good-natured — no.”

“You are irritating,” said the lady, looking at her slipper.

He began to retouch his sketch. “I think you mean simply that you are irritated.”

“Ah, for that, yes!” said his companion, with a little bitter laugh. “It ‘s the darkest day of my life — and you know what that means.”

“Wait till tomorrow,” rejoined the young man.

“Yes, we have made a great mistake. If there is any doubt about it today, there certainly will be none tomorrow. Ce sera clair, au moins!”

The young man was silent a few moments, driving his pencil. Then at last, “There are no such things as mistakes,” he affirmed.

“Very true — for those who are not clever enough to perceive them. Not to recognize one’s mistakes — that would be happiness in life,” the lady went on, still looking at her pretty foot.

“My dearest sister,” said the young man, always intent upon his drawing, “it ‘s the first time you have told me I am not clever.”

“Well, by your own theory I can’t call it a mistake,” answered his sister, pertinently enough.

The young man gave a clear, fresh laugh. “You, at least, are clever enough, dearest sister,” he said.

“I was not so when I proposed this.”

“Was it you who proposed it?” asked her brother.

She turned her head and gave him a little stare. “Do you desire the credit of it?”

“If you like, I will take the blame,” he said, looking up with a smile.

“Yes,” she rejoined in a moment, “you make no difference in these things. You have no sense of property.”

The young man gave his joyous laugh again. “If that means I have no property, you are right!”

“Don’t joke about your poverty,” said his sister. “That is quite as vulgar as to boast about it.”

“My poverty! I have just finished a drawing that will bring me fifty francs!”

“Voyons,” said the lady, putting out her hand.

He added a touch or two, and then gave her his sketch. She looked at it, but she went on with her idea of a moment before. “If a woman were to ask you to marry her you would say, ‘Certainly, my dear, with pleasure!’ And you would marry her and be ridiculously happy. Then at the end of three months you would say to her, ‘You know that blissful day when I begged you to be mine!’”

The young man had risen from the table, stretching his arms a little; he walked to the window. “That is a description of a charming nature,” he said.

“Oh, yes, you have a charming nature; I regard that as our capital. If I had not been convinced of that I should never have taken the risk of bringing you to this dreadful country.”

“This comical country, this delightful country!” exclaimed the young man, and he broke into the most animated laughter.

“Is it those women scrambling into the omnibus?” asked his companion. “What do you suppose is the attraction?”

“I suppose there is a very good-looking man inside,” said the young man.

“In each of them? They come along in hundreds, and the men in this country don’t seem at all handsome. As for the women — I have never seen so many at once since I left the convent.”

“The women are very pretty,” her brother declared, “and the whole affair is very amusing. I must make a sketch of it.” And he came back to the table quickly, and picked up his utensils — a small sketching-board, a sheet of paper, and three or four crayons. He took his place at the window with these things, and stood there glancing out, plying his pencil with an air of easy skill. While he worked he wore a brilliant smile. Brilliant is indeed the word at this moment for his strongly-lighted face. He was eight and twenty years old; he had a short, slight, well-made figure. Though he bore a noticeable resemblance to his sister, he was a better favored person: fair-haired, clear-faced, witty-looking, with a delicate finish of feature and an expression at once urbane and not at all serious, a warm blue eye, an eyebrow finely drawn and excessively arched — an eyebrow which, if ladies wrote sonnets to those of their lovers, might have been made the subject of such a piece of verse — and a light moustache that flourished upwards as if blown that way by the breath of a constant smile. There was something in his physiognomy at once benevolent and picturesque. But, as I have hinted, it was not at all serious. The young man’s face was, in this respect, singular; it was not at all serious, and yet it inspired the liveliest confidence.

“Be sure you put in plenty of snow,” said his sister. “Bonte divine, what a climate!”

“I shall leave the sketch all white, and I shall put in the little figures in black,” the young man answered, laughing. “And I shall call it — what is that line in Keats? — Mid–May’s Eldest Child!”

“I don’t remember,” said the lady, “that mamma ever told me it was like this.”

“Mamma never told you anything disagreeable. And it ‘s not like this — every day. You will see that tomorrow we shall have a splendid day.”