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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (100 page)

BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 594
But if I must give that upthe genius?
Lots of people, you know, think I've kept mine.
You have a genius for torment! Paul Overt exclaimed; but taking his companion's hand in farewell as a mitigation of this judgment.
Poor child, I do bother you. Try, try, then! I think your chances are good, and you'll win a great prize.
Paul held the other's hand a minute; he looked into his face. No, I
am
an artistI can't help it!
Ah, show it then! St. George broke outlet me see before I die the thing I most want, the thing I yearn fora life in which the passion is really intense. If you can be rare, don't fail of it! Think what it ishow it countshow it lives! They had moved to the door and St. George had closed both his own hands over that of his companion. Here they paused again and Paul Overt ejaculatedI want to live!
In what sense?
In the greatest sense.
Well then, stick to itsee it through.
With your sympathyyour help?
Count on thatyou'll be a great figure to me. Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. You'll give me satisfaction!if that has any weight with you. And as Paul appeared still to waver, St. George added: Do you remember what you said to me at Summersoft?
Something infatuated, no doubt!
I'll do anything in the world you tell me. You said that.
And you hold me to it?
Ah, what am I? sighed the master, shaking his head.
Lord, what things I shall have to do! Paul almost moaned as he turned away.
VI.
It goes on too much abroadhang abroad! These, or something like them, had been St. George's remarkable words in relation to the action of
Ginistrella;
and yet, though they had made a sharp impression on Paul Overt, like almost all the master's spoken words, the young man, a week after the conversation I have narrated, left England for a long absence
 
Page 595
and full of projects of work. It is not a perversion of the truth to say that that conversation was the direct cause of his departure. If the oral utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving him deeply it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days afterward, that it appeared to yield its full meaning and exhibit its extreme importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland, and having, in September, begun a new task, he determined not to cross the Alps till he should have made a good start. To this end he returned to a quiet corner that he knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva, within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and a view for which he had an affection springing from old associations, capable of mysterious little revivals and refreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow was on the nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he could climb when his stint was done, on the shortening afternoons. The autumn was fine, the lake was blue, and his book took form and direction. These circumstances, for the time, embroidered his life, and he suffered it to cover him with its mantle. At the end of six weeks he appeared to himself to have learned St. George's lesson by heartto have tested and proved its doctrine. Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had not asked any such favour of him when he went to see her three days before he left Londonthree days after their dinner in Ennismore Gardens. It is true that she had no reason to, for he had not mentioned that he was on the eve of such an excursion. He hadn't mentioned it because he didn't know it; it was that particular visit that made the matter clear. He had paid the visit to see how much he really cared for her, and quick departure, without so much as a farewell, was the sequel to this inquiry, the answer to which had been a distinct superlative. When he wrote to her from Clarens he noted that he owed her an explanation (more than three months after!) for the omission of such a form.
She answered him briefly but very promptly, and gave him a striking piece of news: the death, a week before, of Mrs. St. George. This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the
 
Page 596
country, to a violent attack of inflammation of the lungshe would remember that for a long time she had been delicate. Miss Fancourt added that she heard her husband was over-whelmed with the blow; he would miss her unspeakablyshe had been everything to him. Paul Overt immediately wrote to St. George. He had wished to remain in communication with him, but had hitherto lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy a man. Their long nocturnal talk came back to him in every detail, but this did not prevent his expressing a cordial sympathy with the head of the profession, for had not that very talk made it clear that the accomplished lady was the influence that ruled his life? What catastrophe could be more cruel than the extinction of such an influence? This was exactly the tone that St. George took in answering his young friend, upwards of a month later. He made no allusion, of course, to their important discussion. He spoke of his wife as frankly and generously as if he had quite forgotten that occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in his words. She took every thing off my handsoff my mind. She carried on our life with the greatest art, the rarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, to drive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade. This was a rare servicethe highest she could have rendered me. Would I could have acknowledged it more fitly!
A certain bewilderment, for Paul Overt, disengaged itself from these remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a retractation. He had certainly not expected his correspondent to rejoice in the death of his wife, and it was perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twenty years should have left him sore. But if she was such a benefactress as that, what in the name of consistency had St. George meant by turning
him
upside down that nightby dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, and he went so far as to take the manuscript of the first chapters of his new book out of his table-drawer, to insert it into a pocket of his portmanteau.
 
Page 597
This led to his catching a glimpse of some pages he had not looked at for months, and that accident, in turn, to his being struck with the high promise they containeda rare result of such retrospections, which it was his habit to avoid as much as possible. They usually made him feel that the glow of composition might be a purely subjective and a very barren emotion. On this occasion a certain belief in himself disengaged itself whimsically from the serried erasures of his first draft, making him think it best after all to carry out his present experiment to the end. If he could write as well as that under the influence of renunciation, it would be a pity to change the conditions before the termination of the work. He would go back to London of course, but he would go back only when he should have finished his book. This was the vow he privately made, restoring his manuscript to the table-drawer. It may be added that it took him a long time to finish his book, for the subject was as difficult as it was fine and he was literally embarrassed by the fulness of his notes. Something within him told him that he must make it supremely goodotherwise he should lack, as regards his private behaviour, a handsome excuse. He had a horror of this deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on the question of the lamp and the file. He crossed the Alps at last and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in Italy, where still, at the end of a twelve-month, his task was unachieved. Stick to itsee it through: this general injunction of St. George's was good also for the particular case. He applied it to the utmost, with the result that when in its slow order, the summer had come round again he felt that he had given all that was in him. This time he put his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of his publisher attached, and took his way northward.
He had been absent from London for two yearstwo years which were a long period and had made such a difference in his own life (through the production of a novel far stronger, he believed, than
Ginistrella
) that he turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival, with an indefinite expectation of changes, of finding that things had happened. But there were few transformations in Piccadilly (only three or four big red houses where there had been low black ones),
 
Page 598
and the brightness of the end of June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen it in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting that he appreciated; it seemed friendly and pointed, added to the exhilaration of his finished book, of his having his own country and the huge, oppressive, amusing city that suggested everything, that contained everything, under his hand again. Stay at home and do things heredo subjects we can measure, St. George had said; and now it appeared to him that he should ask nothing better than to stay at home for ever. Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square, looking out for a number he had not forgotten. Miss Fancourt, however, was not within, so that he turned, rather dejectedly, from the door. This movement brought him face to face with a gentleman who was approaching it and whom he promptly perceived to be Miss Fancourt's father. Paul saluted this personage, and the General returned his greeting with his customary good mannera manner so good, however, that you could never tell whether it meant that he placed you. Paul Overt felt the impulse to speak to him; then, hesitating, became conscious both that he had nothing particular to say and that though the old soldier remembered him he remembered him wrong. He therefore passed on, without calculating on the irresistible effect that his own evident recognition would have upon the General, who never neglected a chance to gossip. Our young man's face was expressive, and observation seldom let it pass. He had not taken ten steps before he heard himself called after with a friendly, semi-articulate AI beg your pardon! He turned round and the General, smiling at him from the steps, said: Won't you come in? I won't leave you the advantage of me! Paul declined to come in, and then was sorry he had done so, for Miss Fancourt, so late in the afternoon, might return at any moment. But her father gave him no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to have struck him as inhospitable. A further look at the visitor told him more about him, enough at least to enable him to sayYou've come back, you've come back? Paul was on the point of replying that he had come back the night before, but he bethought himself to suppress this strong light on the immediacy of his
 
Page 599
visit, and, giving merely a general assent, remarked that he was extremely sorry not to have found Miss Fancourt. He had come late, in the hope that she would be in. I'll tell herI'll tell her, said the old man; and then he added quickly, gallantly, You'll be giving us something new? It's a long time, isn't it? Now he remembered him right.
Rather long. I'm very slow, said Paul. I met you at Summersoft a long time ago.
Oh, yes, with Henry St. George. I remember very well. Before his poor wife General Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less. I daresay you know.
About Mrs. St. George's death? Oh yes, I heard at the time.
Oh no; I meanI mean he's to be married.
Ah! I've not heard that. Just as Paul was about to add, To whom? the General crossed his intention with a question.
When did you come back? I know you've been awayfrom my daughter. She was very sorry. You ought to give her something new.
I came back last night, said our young man, to whom something had occurred which made his speech, for the moment, a little thick.
Ah, most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn't you turn up at dinner?
At dinner? Paul Overt repeated, not liking to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking only of that.
There are several people, I believe. Certainly St. George. Or afterwards, if you like better. I believe my daughter expects. He appeared to notice something in Overt's upward face (on his steps he stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and the interruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from which he sought a quick issue.
Perhaps then you haven't heard she's to be married.
To be married? Paul stared.
To Mr. St. Georgeit has just been settled. Odd marriage, isn't it? Paul uttered no opinion on this point: he only continued to stare. But I daresay it will doshe's so awfully literary! said the General.
Paul had turned very red. Oh, it's a surprisevery in-
BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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