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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (101 page)

BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 600
teresting, very charming! I'm afraid I can't dineso many thanks!
Well, you must come to the wedding! cried the General.
Oh, I remember that day at Summersoft. He's a very good fellow.
Charmingcharming! Paul stammered, retreating. He shook hands with the General and got off. His face was red and he had the sense of its growing more and more crimson. All the evening at homehe went straight to his rooms and remained there dinnerlesshis cheek burned at intervals as if it had been smitten. He didn't understand what had happened to him, what trick had been played him, what treachery practised. None, none, he said to himself. I've nothing to do with it. I'm out of itit's none of my business. But that bewildered murmur was followed again and again by the incongruous ejaculationWas it a planwas it a plan? Some-times he cried to himself, breathless, Am I a dupeam I a dupe? If he was, he was an absurd, and abject one. It seemed to him he had never lost her till now. He had renounced her, yes; but that was another affairthat was a closed but not a locked door. Now he felt as if the door had been slammed in his face. Did he expect her to waitwas she to give him his time like that: two years at a stretch? He didn't know what he had expectedhe only knew what he hadn't. It wasn't thisit wasn't this. Mystification, bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity with which he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and the light was long; but even when it had darkened he remained without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, and he lay there through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing into the gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something, to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easythat idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven o'clock strike, he jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had said about his coming after dinner. He would gohe would see her at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt as if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the others were
 
Page 601
wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he was in possession of them all.
He dressed quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was at Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the doora party was going on; a circumstance which at the last gave him a slight relief, for now he would rather see her in a crowd. People passed him on the staircase; they were going away, going on, with the hunted, herdlike movement of London society at night. But sundry groups remained in the drawing-room, and it was some minutes, as she didn't hear him announced, before he discovered her and spoke to her. In this short interval he had perceived that St. George was there, talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he looked away from him, for the moment, and therefore failed to see whether the author of
Shadowmere
noticed him. At all events he didn't come to him. Miss Fancourt did, as soon as she saw him; she almost rushed at him, smiling, rustling, radiant, beautiful. He had forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she was in white, there were gold figures on her dress, and her hair was like a casque of gold. In a single moment he saw she was happy, happy with a kind of aggressiveness, of splendour. But she would not speak to him of that, she would speak only of himself.
I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come! She struck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over her, that he said to himself, irresistibly: Why to
him,
why not to youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich young capacity, to failure, to abdication, to superannuation? In his thought, at that sharp moment, he blasphemed even against all that had been left of his faith in the peccable master. I'm so sorry I missed you, she went on. My father told me. How charming of you to have come so soon!
Does that surprise you? Paul Overt asked.
The first day? No, from younothing that's nice. She was interrupted by a lady who bade her good-night, and he seemed to read that it cost her nothing to speak to one in that tone; it was her old bounteous, demonstrative way, with a certain added amplitude that time had brought; and if it
 
Page 602
began to operate on the spot, at such a juncture in her history, perhaps in the other days too it had meant just as little or as mucha sort of mechanical charity, with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready to give but asking nothing. Oh, she was satisfiedand why shouldn't she be? Why shouldn't she have been surprised at his coming the first dayfor all the good she had ever got from him? As the lady continued to hold her attention Paul Overt turned from her with a strange irritation in his complicated artistic soul and a kind of disinterested disappointment. She was so happy that it was almost stupidit seemed to deny the extraordinary intelligence he had formerly found in her. Didn't she know how bad St. George could be, hadn't she perceived the deplorable thinness? If she didn't she was nothing, and if she did why such an insolence of serenity? This question expired as our young man's eyes settled at last upon the genius who had advised him in a great crisis. St. George was still before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone (fixed, waiting, as if he meant to remain after every one), and he met the clouded gaze of the young friend who was tormented with uncertainty as to whether he had the right (which his resentment would have enjoyed,) to regard himself as his victim. Somehow, the fantastic inquiry I have just noted was answered by St. George's aspect. It was as fine in its way as Marian Fancourt'sit denoted the happy human being; but somehow it represented to Paul Overt that the author of
Shadowmere
had now definitively ceased to countceased to count as a writer. As he smiled a welcome across the room he was almost
banal,
he was almost smug. Paul had the impression that for a moment he hesitated to make a movement forward, as if he had a bad conscience; but the next they had met in the middle of the room and had shaken hands, expressively, cordially on St. George's part. Then they had passed together to where the elder man had been standing, while St. George said: I hope you are never going away again. I have been dining here; the General told me. He was handsome, he was young, he looked as if he had still a great fund of life. He bent the friendliest, most unconfessing eyes upon Paul Overt; asked him about everything, his health, his plans, his late occupations, the new book. When will it be outsoon, soon, I
 
Page 603
hope? Splendid, eh? That's right; you're a comfort! I've read you all over again, the last six months. Paul waited to see if he would tell him what the General had told him in the afternoon, and what Miss Fancourt, verbally at least, of course had not. But as it didn't come out he asked at last: Is it true, the great news I hear, that you're to be married?
Ah, you
have
heard it then?
Didn't the General tell you? Paul Overt went on.
Tell me what?
That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?
My dear fellow, I don't remember. We've been in the midst of people. I'm sorry, in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing to you a fact that touches me so nearly. It
is
a fact, strange as it may appear. It has only just become one. Isn't it ridiculous? St. George made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so far as Paul could see, without latent impudence. It appeared to his interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, he must simply have forgotten what had passed between them. His next words, however, showed that he had not, and they had, as an appeal to Paul's own memory, an effect which would have been ludicrous if it had not been cruel. Do you recollect the talk we had at my house that night, into which Miss Fancourt's name entered? I've often thought of it since.
Yesno wonder you said what you did, said Paul, looking at him.
In the light of the present occasion? Ah! but there was no light then. How could I have foreseen this hour?
Didn't you think it probable?
Upon my honour, no, said Henry St. George. Certainly, I owe you that assurance. Think how my situation has changed.
I seeI see, Paul murmured.
His companion went on, as if, now that the subject had been broached, he was, as a man of imagination and tact, perfectly ready to give every satisfactionbeing able to enter fully into everything another might feel. But it's not only thatfor honestly, at my age, I never dreameda widower, with big boys and with so little else! It has turned out differently from any possible calculation, and I am fortunate be-
 
Page 604
yond all measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents. Better than any one else perhapsfor I remember how you liked her, before you went away, and how she liked youyou can intelligently congratulate me.
She has been so free! Those words made a great impression on Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to which it little mattered whether it was intentional or casual. Of course she had been free and, appreciably perhaps, by his own act; for was not St. George's allusion to her having liked him a part of the irony too? I thought that by your theory you disapproved of a writer's marrying.
Surelysurely. But you don't call me a writer?
You ought to be ashamed, said Paul.
Ashamed of marrying again?
I won't say thatbut ashamed of your reasons.
You must let me judge of them, my friend.
Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine.
The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for Henry St. George, to suggest the unsuspected. He stared as if he read a bitterness in them. Don't you think I have acted fair?
You might have told me at the time, perhaps.
My dear fellow, when I say I couldn't pierce futurity!
I mean afterwards.
St. George hesitated. After my wife's death?
When this idea came to you.
Ah, never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious as you are.
Are you marrying Miss Fancourt to save me?
Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure. I shall be the making of you, said St. George, smiling. I was greatly struck, after our talk, with the resolute way you quitted the country and still more, perhaps, with your force of character in remaining abroad. You're very strongyou're wonderfully strong.
Paul Overt tried to sound his pleasant eyes; the strange thing was that he appeared sincerenot a mocking fiend. He turned away, and as he did so he heard St. George say something about his giving them the proof, being the joy of his old age. He faced him again, taking another look. Do you mean to say you've stopped writing?
 
Page 605
My dear fellow, of course I have. It's too late. Didn't I tell you?
I can't believe it!
Of course you can'twith your own talent! No, no; for the rest of my life I shall only read you.
Does she know thatMiss Fancourt?
She willshe will. Our young man wondered whether St. George meant this as a covert intimation that the assistance he should derive from that young lady's fortune, moderate as it was, would make the difference of putting it in his power to cease to work, ungratefully, an exhausted vein. Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his successful manhood, he did not suggest that any of his veins were exhausted. Don't you remember the moral I offered myself to youthat nightas pointing? St. George continued. Consider, at any rate, the warning I am at present.
This was too muchhe
was
the mocking fiend. Paul separated from him with a mere nod for good-night; the sense that he might come back to him some time in the far future but could not fraternise with him now. It was necessary to his sore spirit to believe for the hour that he had a grievanceall the more cruel for not being a legal one. It was doubtless in the attitude of hugging this wrong that he descended the stairs without taking leave of Miss Fancourt, who had not been in view at the moment he quitted the room. He was glad to get out into the honest, dusky, unsophisticating night, to move fast, to take his way home on foot. He walked a long time, missing his way, not thinking of it. He was thinking of too many other things. His steps recovered their direction, however, and at the end of an hour he found himself before his door, in the small, inexpensive, empty street. He lingered, questioning himself still, before going in, with nothing around and above him but moonless blackness, a bad lamp or two and a few faraway dim stars. To these last faint features he raised his eyes; he had been saying to himself that there would have been mockery indeed if now, on his new foundation, at the end of a year, St. George should put forth something with his early qualitysomething of the type of
Shadowmere
and finer than his finest. Greatly as he admired his talent Paul literally hoped such an incident would not occur; it seemed to
BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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