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

A second young lady presently came out of the house, across the piazza, descended into the garden and approached the young girl of whom I have spoken. This second young lady was also thin and pale; but she was older than the other; she was shorter; she had dark, smooth hair. Her eyes, unlike the other’s, were quick and bright; but they were not at all restless. She wore a straw bonnet with white ribbons, and a long, red, India scarf, which, on the front of her dress, reached to her feet. In her hand she carried a little key.

“Gertrude,” she said, “are you very sure you had better not go to church?”

Gertrude looked at her a moment, plucked a small sprig from a lilac-bush, smelled it and threw it away. “I am not very sure of anything!” she answered.

The other young lady looked straight past her, at the distant pond, which lay shining between the long banks of fir-trees. Then she said in a very soft voice, “This is the key of the dining-room closet. I think you had better have it, if any one should want anything.”

“Who is there to want anything?” Gertrude demanded. “I shall be all alone in the house.”

“Some one may come,” said her companion.

“Do you mean Mr. Brand?”

“Yes, Gertrude. He may like a piece of cake.”

“I don’t like men that are always eating cake!” Gertrude declared, giving a pull at the lilac-bush.

Her companion glanced at her, and then looked down on the ground. “I think father expected you would come to church,” she said. “What shall I say to him?”

“Say I have a bad headache.”

“Would that be true?” asked the elder lady, looking straight at the pond again.

“No, Charlotte,” said the younger one simply.

Charlotte transferred her quiet eyes to her companion’s face. “I am afraid you are feeling restless.”

“I am feeling as I always feel,” Gertrude replied, in the same tone.

Charlotte turned away; but she stood there a moment. Presently she looked down at the front of her dress. “Does n’t it seem to you, somehow, as if my scarf were too long?” she asked.

Gertrude walked half round her, looking at the scarf. “I don’t think you wear it right,” she said.

“How should I wear it, dear?”

“I don’t know; differently from that. You should draw it differently over your shoulders, round your elbows; you should look differently behind.”

“How should I look?” Charlotte inquired.

“I don’t think I can tell you,” said Gertrude, plucking out the scarf a little behind. “I could do it myself, but I don’t think I can explain it.”

Charlotte, by a movement of her elbows, corrected the laxity that had come from her companion’s touch. “Well, some day you must do it for me. It does n’t matter now. Indeed, I don’t think it matters,” she added, “how one looks behind.”

“I should say it mattered more,” said Gertrude. “Then you don’t know who may be observing you. You are not on your guard. You can’t try to look pretty.”

Charlotte received this declaration with extreme gravity. “I don’t think one should ever try to look pretty,” she rejoined, earnestly.

Her companion was silent. Then she said, “Well, perhaps it ‘s not of much use.”

Charlotte looked at her a little, and then kissed her. “I hope you will be better when we come back.”

“My dear sister, I am very well!” said Gertrude.

Charlotte went down the large brick walk to the garden gate; her companion strolled slowly toward the house. At the gate Charlotte met a young man, who was coming in-a tall, fair young man, wearing a high hat and a pair of thread gloves. He was handsome, but rather too stout. He had a pleasant smile. “Oh, Mr. Brand!” exclaimed the young lady.

“I came to see whether your sister was not going to church,” said the young man.

“She says she is not going; but I am very glad you have come. I think if you were to talk to her a little”. . . . And Charlotte lowered her voice. “It seems as if she were restless.”

Mr. Brand smiled down on the young lady from his great height. “I shall be very glad to talk to her. For that I should be willing to absent myself from almost any occasion of worship, however attractive.”

“Well, I suppose you know,” said Charlotte, softly, as if positive acceptance of this proposition might be dangerous. “But I am afraid I shall be late.”

“I hope you will have a pleasant sermon,” said the young man.

“Oh, Mr. Gilman is always pleasant,” Charlotte answered. And she went on her way.

Mr. Brand went into the garden, where Gertrude, hearing the gate close behind him, turned and looked at him. For a moment she watched him coming; then she turned away. But almost immediately she corrected this movement, and stood still, facing him. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead as he approached. Then he put on his hat again and held out his hand. His hat being removed, you would have perceived that his forehead was very large and smooth, and his hair abundant but rather colorless. His nose was too large, and his mouth and eyes were too small; but for all this he was, as I have said, a young man of striking appearance. The expression of his little clean-colored blue eyes was irresistibly gentle and serious; he looked, as the phrase is, as good as gold. The young girl, standing in the garden path, glanced, as he came up, at his thread gloves.

“I hoped you were going to church,” he said. “I wanted to walk with you.”

“I am very much obliged to you,” Gertrude answered. “I am not going to church.”

She had shaken hands with him; he held her hand a moment. “Have you any special reason for not going?”

“Yes, Mr. Brand,” said the young girl.

“May I ask what it is?”

She looked at him smiling; and in her smile, as I have intimated, there was a certain dullness. But mingled with this dullness was something sweet and suggestive. “Because the sky is so blue!” she said.

He looked at the sky, which was magnificent, and then said, smiling too, “I have heard of young ladies staying at home for bad weather, but never for good. Your sister, whom I met at the gate, tells me you are depressed,” he added.

“Depressed? I am never depressed.”

“Oh, surely, sometimes,” replied Mr. Brand, as if he thought this a regrettable account of one’s self.

“I am never depressed,” Gertrude repeated. “But I am sometimes wicked. When I am wicked I am in high spirits. I was wicked just now to my sister.”

“What did you do to her?”

“I said things that puzzled her — on purpose.”

“Why did you do that, Miss Gertrude?” asked the young man.

She began to smile again. “Because the sky is so blue!”

“You say things that puzzle me,” Mr. Brand declared.

“I always know when I do it,” proceeded Gertrude. “But people puzzle me more, I think. And they don’t seem to know!”

“This is very interesting,” Mr. Brand observed, smiling.

“You told me to tell you about my — my struggles,” the young girl went on.

“Let us talk about them. I have so many things to say.”

Gertrude turned away a moment; and then, turning back, “You had better go to church,” she said.

“You know,” the young man urged, “that I have always one thing to say.”

Gertrude looked at him a moment. “Please don’t say it now!”

“We are all alone,” he continued, taking off his hat; “all alone in this beautiful Sunday stillness.”

Gertrude looked around her, at the breaking buds, the shining distance, the blue sky to which she had referred as a pretext for her irregularities. “That ‘s the reason,” she said, “why I don’t want you to speak. Do me a favor; go to church.”