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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (70 page)

BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 412
American humour. On one occasion he stayed away from work altogether and took her up the Hudson, on the steamer, to West Pointan excursion in which she found a peculiar charm. Every day she lunched intimately with a dozen ladies, at the house of one or other of them.
In due time Sir Rufus returned from Canada, the Mississippi, the Rocky Mountains and California; he had achieved marvels in the way of traversing distances and seeing manners and men with rapidity and facility. Everything had been settled in regard to their sailing for England almost directly after his return; there were only to be two more days in New York, then a rush to Boston, followed by another rush to Philadelphia and Washington. Macarthy made no inquiry whatever of his brother-in-law touching his impression of the great West; he neglected even to ask him if he had been favourably impressed with Candada. There would not have been much opportunity however, for Sir Rufus on his side was extremely occupied with the last things he had to do. He had not even time as yet to impart his impressions to his wife, and she forbore to interrogate him, feeling that the voyage close at hand would afford abundant leisure for the history of his adventures. For the moment almost the only light that he threw upon them was by saying to Agatha (not before Macarthy) that it was a pleasure to him to see a handsome woman again, as he had not had that satisfaction in the course of his travels. Lady Chasemore wondered, exclaimed, protested, eliciting from him the declaration that to his sense, and in the interior at least, the beauty of the women was, like a great many other things, a gigantic American fraud. Sir Rufus had looked for it in vainhe went so far as to say that he had, in the course of extensive wanderings about the world, seen no female type on the whole less to his taste than that of the ladies in whose society, in hundreds (there was no paucity of specimens), in the long, hot, heaving trains, he had traversed a large part of the American continent. His wife inquired whether by chance he preferred the young persons they had (or at least she had) observed at Liverpool the night before their departure; to which he replied that they were no doubt sad creatures, but that the looks of a woman mattered only so long as one lived with her, and he did not live, and never should live, with the
 
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daughters of that grimy seaport. With the women in the American cars he had been livingoh, tremendously! and they were deucedly plain. Thereupon Lady Chasemore wished to know whether he did not think Mrs. Eugene had beauty, and Mrs. Ripley, and her sister Mrs. Redwood, and Mrs. Long, and several other ornaments of the society in which they had mingled during their stay in New York. Mrs. Eugene is Mrs. Eugene and Mrs. Redwood is Mrs. Redwood, Sir Rufus retorted; but the women in the cars weren't either, and all the women I saw were like the women in the cars.Well, there may be something in the cars, said Lady Chasemore, pensively; and she mentioned that it was very odd that during her husband's absence, as she roamed about New York, she should have made precisely the opposite reflection and been struck with the number of pretty faces. Oh, pretty faces, pretty faces, I daresay! But Sir Rufus had no time to develop this vague rejoinder.
When they came back from Washington to sail Agatha told her brother that he was going to write a book about America: it was for this he had made so many inquiries and taken so many notes. She had not known it before; it was only while they were in Washington that he told her he had made up his mind to it. Something he saw or heard in Washington appeared to have brought this resolution to a point. Lady Chasemore privately thought it rather a formidable fact; her husband had startled her a good deal in announcing his intention. She had said, Of course it will be friendlyyou'll say nice things? And he had replied, My poor child, they will abuse me like a pickpocket. This had scarcely been reassuring, so that she had had it at heart to probe the question further, in the train, after they left Washington. But as it happened, in the train, all the way, Sir Rufus was engaged in conversation with a Democratic Congressman whom he had picked up she did not know howvery certainly he had not met him at any respectable house in Washington. They sat in front of her in the car, with their heads almost touching, and although she was a better American than her husband she should not have liked hers to be so close to that of the Democratic Congressman. Now of course she knew that Sir Rufus was taking in material for his book. This idea made her uncomfortable and
 
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she would have liked immensely to separate him from his companionshe scarcely knew why, after all, except that she could not believe the Representative represented anything very nice. She promised herself to ascertain thoroughly, after they should be comfortably settled in the ship, the animus with which the book was to be written. She was a very good sailor and she liked to talk at sea; there her husband would not be able to escape from her, and she foresaw the manner in which she should catechise him. It exercised her greatly in advance and she was more agitated than she could easily have expressed by the whole question of the book. Meanwhile, however, she was careful not to show her agitation to Macarthy. She referred to her husband's project as casually as possible, and the reason she referred to it was that this seemed more loyalmore loyal to Macarthy. If the book, when written, should attract attention by the severity of its criticism (and that by many qualities it would attract attention of the widest character Lady Chasemore could not doubt), she should feel more easy not to have had the air of concealing from her brother that such a work was in preparation, which would also be the air of having a bad conscience about it. It was to prove, both to herself and Macarthy, that she had a good conscience that she told him of Sir Rufus's design. The habit of detachment from matters connected with his brother-in-law's activity was strong in him; nevertheless he was not able to repress some sign of emotionhe flushed very perceptibly. Quickly, however, he recovered his appearance of considering that the circumstance was one in which he could not hope to interest himself much; though the next moment he observed, with a certain inconsequence, I am rather sorry to hear it.
Why are you sorry? asked Agatha. She was surprised and indeed gratified that he should commit himself even so far as to express regret. What she had supposed he would say, if he should say anything, was that he was obliged to her for the information, but that if it was given him with any expectation that he might be induced to read the book he must really let her know that such an expectation was extremely vain. He could have no more affinity with Sir Rufus's printed ideas than with his spoken ones.
 
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Well, it will be rather disagreeable for you, he said, in answer to her question. Unless indeed you don't care what he says.
But I do care. The book will be sure to be very able. Do you mean if it should be severethat would be disagreeable for me? Very certainly it would; it would put me in a false, in a ridiculous position, and I don't see how I should bear it, Lady Chasemore went on, feeling that her candour was generous and wishing it to be. But I shan't allow it to be severe. To prevent that, if it's necessary, I will write every word of it myself.
She laughed as she took this vow, but there was nothing in Macarthy's face to show that
he
could lend himself to a mirthful treatment of the question. I think an Englishman had better look at home, he said, and if he does so I don't easily see how the occupation should leave him any leisure or any assurance for reading lectures to other nations. The self-complacency of your husband's countrymen is colossal, imperturbable. Therefore, with the tight place they find themselves in to-day and with the judgment of the rest of the world upon them being what it is, it's grotesque to see them still sitting in their old judgment-seat and pronouncing upon the short-comings of people who are full of the life that has so long since left
them.
Macarthy Grice spoke slowly, mildly, with a certain dryness, as if he were delivering himself once for all and would not return to the subject. The quietness of his manner made the words solemn for his sister, and she started at him a moment, wondering, as if they pointed to strange things which she had hitherto but imperfectly apprehended.
The judgment of the rest of the worldwhat is that?
Why, that they are simply finished; that they don't count.
Oh, a nation must count which produces such men as my husband, Agatha rejoined, with another laugh. Macarthy was on the point of retorting that it counted as the laughing-stock of the world (that of course was something), but he checked himself and she moreover checked him by going on: Why Macarthy, you ought to come out with a book yourself about the English. You would steal my husband's thunder.
Nothing would induce me to do anything of the sort; I pity them too much.
 
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You pity them? Lady Chasemore exclaimed. It would amuse my husband to hear that.
Very likely, and it would be exactly a proof of what is so pitiablethe contrast between their gross pretensions and the real facts of their condition. They have pressing upon them at once every problem, every source of weakness, every danger that can threaten the life of a people, and they have nothing to meet the situation with but their classic stupidity.
Well, that has been useful to them before, said Lady Chasemore, smiling. Her smile was a little forced and she coloured as her brother had done when she first spoke to him. She found it impossible not to be impressed by what he said and yet she was vexed that she was, because this was far from her desire.
He looked at her as if he saw some warning in her face and continued: Excuse my going so far. In this last month that we have spent together so happily for me I had almost forgotten that you are one of them.
Lady Chasemore said nothingshe did not deny that she was one of them. If her husband's country was denouncedafter all he had not written his book yetshe felt as if such a denial would be a repudiation of one of the responsibilities she had taken in marrying him.
VI
The postman was at the door in Grosvenor Crescent when she came back from her drive; the servant took the letters from his hand as she passed into the house. In the hall she stopped to see which of the letters were for her; the butler gave her two and retained those that were for Sir Rufus. She asked him what orders Sir Rufus had given about his letters and he replied that they were to be forwarded up to the following night. This applied only to letters, not to parcels, pamphlets and books. But would he wish this to go, my lady? the man asked, holding up a small packet; he added that it appeared to be a kind of document. She took it from him: her eye had caught a name printed on the wrapper and though she made no great profession of literature she recognised the name as that of a distinguished publisher and the packet as a
 
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roll of proof-sheets. She turned it up and down while the servant waited; it had quite a different look from the bundles of printed official papers which the postman was perpetually leaving and which, when she scanned the array on the hall-table in her own interest, she identified even at a distance. They were certainly the sheets, at least the first, of her husband's bookthose of which he had said to her on the steamer, on the way back from New York a year before, My dear child, when I tell you that you shall see themevery page of themthat you shall have complete control of them! Since she was to have complete control of them she began with telling the butler not to forward themto lay them on the hall-table. She went upstairs to dressshe was dining out in her husband's absenceand when she came down to re-enter her carriage she saw the packet lying where it had been placed. So many months had passed that she had ended by forgetting that the book was on the stocks; nothing had happened to remind her of it. She had believed indeed that it was not on the stocks and even that the project would die a natural death. Sir Rufus would have no time to carry it outhe had returned from America to find himself more than ever immersed in official workand if he did not put his hand to it within two or three years at the very most he would never do so at all, for he would have lost the freshness of his impressions, on which the success of the whole thing would depend. He had his notes of course, but none the less a delay would be fatal to the production of the volume (it was to be only a volume and not a big one), inasmuch as by the time it should be published it would have to encounter the objection that everything changed in America in two or three years and no one wanted to know anything about a dead past.
Such had been the reflections with which Lady Chasemore consoled herself for the results of those inquiries she had promised herself, in New York, to make when once she should be ensconced in a sea-chair by her husband's side and which she had in fact made to her no small discomposure. Meanwhile apparently he had stolen a march upon her, he had put his hand to
The Modern Warning
(that was to be the title, as she had learned on the ship), he had worked at it in his odd hours, he had sent it to the printers and here were the first-
BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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