Генри Джеймс
In the Cage
CHAPTER XV
She never knew afterwards quite what she had done to settle it, and at the time she only knew that they presently moved, with vagueness, yet with continuity, away from the picture of the lighted vestibule and the quiet stairs and well up the street together. This also must have been in the absence of a definite permission, of anything vulgarly articulate, for that matter, on the part of either; and it was to be, later on, a thing of remembrance and reflexion for her that the limit of what just here for a longish minute passed between them was his taking in her thoroughly successful deprecation, though conveyed without pride or sound or touch, of the idea that she might be, out of the cage, the very shop-girl at large that she hugged the theory she wasn’t. Yes, it was strange, she afterwards thought, that so much could have come and gone and yet not disfigured the dear little intense crisis either with impertinence or with resentment, with any of the horrid notes of that kind of acquaintance. He had taken no liberty, as she would have so called it; and, through not having to betray the sense of one, she herself had, still more charmingly, taken none. On the spot, nevertheless, she could speculate as to what it meant that, if his relation with Lady Bradeen continued to be what her mind had built it up to, he should feel free to proceed with marked independence. This was one of the questions he was to leave her to deal with—the question whether people of his sort still asked girls up to their rooms when they were so awfully in love with other women. Could people of his sort do that without what people of her sort would call being “false to their love”? She had already a vision of how the true answer was that people of her sort didn’t, in such cases, matter—didn’t count as infidelity, counted only as something else: she might have been curious, since it came to that, to see exactly what.
Strolling together slowly in their summer twilight and their empty corner of Mayfair, they found themselves emerge at last opposite to one of the smaller gates of the Park; upon which, without any particular word about it—they were talking so of other things—they crossed the street and went in and sat down on a bench. She had gathered by this time one magnificent hope about him—the hope he would say nothing vulgar. She knew thoroughly what she meant by that; she meant something quite apart from any matter of his being “false.” Their bench was not far within; it was near the Park Lane paling and the patchy lamplight and the rumbling cabs and ‘buses. A strange emotion had come to her, and she felt indeed excitement within excitement; above all a conscious joy in testing him with chances he didn’t take. She had an intense desire he should know the type she really conformed to without her doing anything so low as tell him, and he had surely begun to know it from the moment he didn’t seize the opportunities into which a common man would promptly have blundered. These were on the mere awkward surface, and their relation was beautiful behind and below them. She had questioned so little on the way what they might be doing that as soon as they were seated she took straight hold of it. Her hours, her confinement, the many conditions of service in the post-office, had—with a glance at his own postal resources and alternatives—formed, up to this stage, the subject of their talk. “Well, here we are, and it may be right enough; but this isn’t the least, you know, where I was going.”
“You were going home?”
“Yes, and I was already rather late. I was going to my supper.”
“You haven’t had it?”
“No indeed!”
“Then you haven’t eaten—?”
He looked of a sudden so extravagantly concerned that she laughed out. “All day? Yes, we do feed once. But that was long ago. So I must presently say good-bye.”
“Oh deary me!” he exclaimed with an intonation so droll and yet a touch so light and a distress so marked—a confession of helplessness for such a case, in short, so unrelieved—that she at once felt sure she had made the great difference plain. He looked at her with the kindest eyes and still without saying what she had known he wouldn’t. She had known he wouldn’t say “Then sup with me!” but the proof of it made her feel as if she had feasted.
“I’m not a bit hungry,” she went on.
“Ah you must be, awfully!” he made answer, but settling himself on the bench as if, after all, that needn’t interfere with his spending his evening. “I’ve always quite wanted the chance to thank you for the trouble you so often take for me.”
“Yes, I know,” she replied; uttering the words with a sense of the situation far deeper than any pretence of not fitting his allusion. She immediately felt him surprised and even a little puzzled at her frank assent; but for herself the trouble she had taken could only, in these fleeting minutes—they would probably never come back—be all there like a little hoard of gold in her lap. Certainly he might look at it, handle it, take up the pieces. Yet if he understood anything he must understand all. “I consider you’ve already immensely thanked me.” The horror was back upon her of having seemed to hang about for some reward. “It’s awfully odd you should have been there just the one time—!”
“The one time you’ve passed my place?”
“Yes; you can fancy I haven’t many minutes to waste. There was a place to-night I had to stop at.”
“I see, I see—” he knew already so much about her work. “It must be an awful grind—for a lady.”
“It is, but I don’t think I groan over it any more than my companions—and you’ve seen they’re not ladies!” She mildly jested, but with an intention. “One gets used to things, and there are employments I should have hated much more.” She had the finest conception of the beauty of not at least boring him. To whine, to count up her wrongs, was what a barmaid or a shop-girl would do, and it was quite enough to sit there like one of these.
“If you had had another employment,” he remarked after a moment, “we might never have become acquainted.”
“It’s highly probable—and certainly not in the same way.” Then, still with her heap of gold in her lap and something of the pride of it in her manner of holding her head, she continued not to move—she only smiled at him. The evening had thickened now; the scattered lamps were red; the Park, all before them, was full of obscure and ambiguous life; there were other couples on other benches whom it was impossible not to see, yet at whom it was impossible to look. “But I’ve walked so much out of my way with you only just to show you that—that”—with this she paused; it was not after all so easy to express—“that anything you may have thought is perfectly true.”
“Oh I’ve thought a tremendous lot!” her companion laughed. “Do you mind my smoking?”
“Why should I? You always smoke there.”
“At your place? Oh yes, but here it’s different.”
“No,” she said as he lighted a cigarette, “that’s just what it isn’t. It’s quite the same.”
“Well, then, that’s because ‘there’ it’s so wonderful!”
“Then you’re conscious of how wonderful it is?” she returned.
He jerked his handsome head in literal protest at a doubt. “Why that’s exactly what I mean by my gratitude for all your trouble. It has been just as if you took a particular interest.” She only looked at him by way of answer in such sudden headlong embarrassment, as she was quite aware, that while she remained silent he showed himself checked by her expression. “You have—haven’t you?—taken a particular interest?”
“Oh a particular interest!” she quavered out, feeling the whole thing—her headlong embarrassment—get terribly the better of her, and wishing, with a sudden scare, all the more to keep her emotion down. She maintained her fixed smile a moment and turned her eyes over the peopled darkness, unconfused now, because there was something much more confusing. This, with a fatal great rush, was simply the fact that they were thus together. They were near, near, and all she had imagined of that had only become more true, more dreadful and overwhelming. She stared straight away in silence till she felt she looked an idiot; then, to say something, to say nothing, she attempted a sound which ended in a flood of tears.
CHAPTER XVI
Her tears helped her really to dissimulate, for she had instantly, in so public a situation, to recover herself. They had come and gone in half a minute, and she immediately explained them. “It‘s only because I’m tired. It’s that—it’s that!” Then she added a trifle incoherently: “I shall never see you again.”
“Ah but why not?” The mere tone in which her companion asked this satisfied her once for all as to the amount of imagination for which she could count on him. It was naturally not large: it had exhausted itself in having arrived at what he had already touched upon—the sense of an intention in her poor zeal at Cocker’s. But any deficiency of this kind was no fault in him: he wasn’t obliged to have an inferior cleverness—to have second-rate resources and virtues. It had been as if he almost really believed she had simply cried for fatigue, and he accordingly put in some kind confused plea—“You ought really to take something: won’t you have something or other somewhere?” to which she had made no response but a headshake of a sharpness that settled it. “Why shan’t we all the more keep meeting?”
“I mean meeting this way—only this way. At my place there—that I’ve nothing to do with, and I hope of course you’ll turn up, with your correspondence, when it suits you. Whether I stay or not, I mean; for I shall probably not stay.”
“You’re going somewhere else?” he put it with positive anxiety.
“Yes, ever so far away—to the other end of London. There are all sorts of reasons I can’t tell you; and it’s practically settled. It’s better for me, much; and I’ve only kept on at Cocker’s for you.”
“For me?”
Making out in the dusk that he fairly blushed, she now measured how far he had been from knowing too much. Too much, she called it at present; and that was easy, since it proved so abundantly enough for her that he should simply be where he was. “As we shall never talk this way but to-night—never, never again!—here it all is. I’ll say it; I don’t care what you think; it doesn’t matter; I only want to help you. Besides, you’re kind—you’re kind. I’ve been thinking then of leaving for ever so long. But you’ve come so often—at times—and you’ve had so much to do, and it has been so pleasant and interesting, that I’ve remained, I’ve kept putting off any change. More than once, when I had nearly decided, you’ve turned up again and I’ve thought ‘Oh no!’ That’s the simple fact!” She had by this time got her confusion down so completely that she could laugh. “This is what I meant when I said to you just now that I ‘knew.’ I’ve known perfectly that you knew I took trouble for you; and that knowledge has been for me, and I seemed to see it was for you, as if there were something—I don’t know what to call it!—between us. I mean something unusual and good and awfully nice—something not a bit horrid or vulgar.”
She had by this time, she could see, produced a great effect on him; but she would have spoken the truth to herself had she at the same moment declared that she didn’t in the least care: all the more that the effect must be one of extreme perplexity. What, in it all, was visibly clear for him, none the less, was that he was tremendously glad he had met her. She held him, and he was astonished at the force of it; he was intent, immensely considerate. His elbow was on the back of the seat, and his head, with the pot-hat pushed quite back, in a boyish way, so that she really saw almost for the first time his forehead and hair, rested on the hand into which he had crumpled his gloves. “Yes,” he assented, “it’s not a bit horrid or vulgar.”
She just hung fire a moment, then she brought out the whole truth. “I’d do anything for you. I’d do anything for you.” Never in her life had she known anything so high and fine as this, just letting him have it and bravely and magnificently leaving it. Didn’t the place, the associations and circumstances, perfectly make it sound what it wasn’t? and wasn’t that exactly the beauty?
So she bravely and magnificently left it, and little by little she felt him take it up, take it down, as if they had been on a satin sofa in a boudoir. She had never seen a boudoir, but there had been lots of boudoirs in the telegrams. What she had said at all events sank into him, so that after a minute he simply made a movement that had the result of placing his hand on her own—presently indeed that of her feeling herself firmly enough grasped. There was no pressure she need return, there was none she need decline; she just sat admirably still, satisfied for the time with the surprise and bewilderment of the impression she made on him. His agitation was even greater on the whole than she had at first allowed for. “I say, you know, you mustn’t think of leaving!” he at last broke out.
“Of leaving Cocker’s, you mean?”
“Yes, you must stay on there, whatever happens, and help a fellow.”
She was silent a little, partly because it was so strange and exquisite to feel him watch her as if it really mattered to him and he were almost in suspense. “Then you have quite recognised what I’ve tried to do?” she asked.
“Why, wasn’t that exactly what I dashed over from my door just now to thank you for?”
“Yes; so you said.”
“And don’t you believe it?”
She looked down a moment at his hand, which continued to cover her own; whereupon he presently drew it back, rather restlessly folding his arms. Without answering his question she went on: “Have you ever spoken of me?”
“Spoken of you?”
“Of my being there—of my knowing, and that sort of thing.”
“Oh never to a human creature!” he eagerly declared.
She had a small drop at this, which was expressed in another pause, and she then returned to what he had just asked her. “Oh yes, I quite believe you like it—my always being there and our taking things up so familiarly and successfully: if not exactly where we left them,” she laughed, “almost always at least at an interesting point!” He was about to say something in reply to this, but her friendly gaiety was quicker. “You want a great many things in life, a great many comforts and helps and luxuries—you want everything as pleasant as possible. Therefore, so far as it’s in the power of any particular person to contribute to all that—” She had turned her face to him smiling, just thinking.
“Oh see here!” But he was highly amused. “Well, what then?” he enquired as if to humour her.
“Why the particular person must never fail. We must manage it for you somehow.”
He threw back his head, laughing out; he was really exhilarated. “Oh yes, somehow!”
“Well, I think we each do—don’t we?—in one little way and another and according to our limited lights. I’m pleased at any rate, for myself, that you are; for I assure you I’ve done my best.”
“You do better than any one!” He had struck a match for another cigarette, and the flame lighted an instant his responsive finished face, magnifying into a pleasant grimace the kindness with which he paid her this tribute. “You’re awfully clever, you know; cleverer, cleverer, cleverer—!” He had appeared on the point of making some tremendous statement; then suddenly, puffing his cigarette and shifting almost with violence on his seat, he let it altogether fall.
CHAPTER XVII
In spite of this drop, if not just by reason of it, she felt as if Lady Bradeen, all but named out, had popped straight up; and she practically betrayed her consciousness by waiting a little before she rejoined: “Cleverer than who?”
“Well, if I wasn’t afraid you’d think I swagger, I should say—than anybody! If you leave your place there, where shall you go?” he more gravely asked.
“Oh too far for you ever to find me!”
“I’d find you anywhere.”
The tone of this was so still more serious that she had but her one acknowledgement. “I’d do anything for you—I’d do anything for you,” she repeated. She had already, she felt, said it all; so what did anything more, anything less, matter? That was the very reason indeed why she could, with a lighter note, ease him generously of any awkwardness produced by solemnity, either his own or hers. “Of course it must be nice for you to be able to think there are people all about who feel in such a way.”
In immediate appreciation of this, however, he only smoked without looking at her. “But you don’t want to give up your present work?” he at last threw out. “I mean you will stay in the post-office?”
“Oh yes; I think I’ve a genius for that.”
“Rather! No one can touch you.” With this he turned more to her again. “But you can get, with a move, greater advantages?”
“I can get in the suburbs cheaper lodgings. I live with my mother. We need some space. There’s a particular place that has other inducements.”
He just hesitated. “Where is it?”
“Oh quite out of your way. You’d never have time.”
“But I tell you I’d go anywhere. Don’t you believe it?”
“Yes, for once or twice. But you’d soon see it wouldn’t do for you.”
He smoked and considered; seemed to stretch himself a little and, with his legs out, surrender himself comfortably. “Well, well, well—I believe everything you say. I take it from you—anything you like—in the most extraordinary way.” It struck her certainly—and almost without bitterness—that the way in which she was already, as if she had been an old friend, arranging for him and preparing the only magnificence she could muster, was quite the most extraordinary. “Don’t, don’t go!” he presently went on. “I shall miss you too horribly!”
“So that you just put it to me as a definite request?”—oh how she tried to divest this of all sound of the hardness of bargaining! That ought to have been easy enough, for what was she arranging to get? Before he could answer she had continued: “To be perfectly fair I should tell you I recognise at Cocker’s certain strong attractions. All you people come. I like all the horrors.”
“The horrors?”
“Those you all—you know the set I mean, your set—show me with as good a conscience as if I had no more feeling than a letter-box.”
He looked quite excited at the way she put it. “Oh they don’t know!”
“Don’t know I’m not stupid? No, how should they?”
“Yes, how should they?” said the Captain sympathetically. “But isn’t ‘horrors’ rather strong?”
“What you do is rather strong!” the girl promptly returned.
“What I do?”
“Your extravagance, your selfishness, your immorality, your crimes,” she pursued, without heeding his expression.
“I say!”—her companion showed the queerest stare.
“I like them, as I tell you—I revel in them. But we needn’t go into that,” she quietly went on; “for all I get out of it is the harmless pleasure of knowing. I know, I know, I know!”—she breathed it ever so gently.
“Yes; that’s what has been between us,” he answered much more simply.
She could enjoy his simplicity in silence, and for a moment she did so. “If I do stay because you want it—and I’m rather capable of that—there are two or three things I think you ought to remember. One is, you know, that I’m there sometimes for days and weeks together without your ever coming.”
“Oh I’ll come every day!” he honestly cried.
She was on the point, at this, of imitating with her hand his movement of shortly before; but she checked herself, and there was no want of effect in her soothing substitute. “How can you? How can you?” He had, too manifestly, only to look at it there, in the vulgarly animated gloom, to see that he couldn’t; and at this point, by the mere action of his silence, everything they had so definitely not named, the whole presence round which they had been circling, became part of their reference, settled in solidly between them. It was as if then for a minute they sat and saw it all in each other’s eyes, saw so much that there was no need of a pretext for sounding it at last. “Your danger, your danger—!” Her voice indeed trembled with it, and she could only for the moment again leave it so.
During this moment he leaned back on the bench, meeting her in silence and with a face that grew more strange. It grew so strange that after a further instant she got straight up. She stood there as if their talk were now over, and he just sat and watched her. It was as if now—owing to the third person they had brought in—they must be more careful; so that the most he could finally say was: “That’s where it is!”
“That’s where it is!” the girl as guardedly replied. He sat still, and she added: “I won’t give you up. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”—he appealed, but without moving.
“I don’t quite see my way, but I won’t give you up,” she repeated. “There. Good-bye.”
It brought him with a jerk to his feet, tossing away his cigarette. His poor face was flushed. “See here—see here!”
“No, I won’t; but I must leave you now,” she went on as if not hearing him.
“See here—see here!” He tried, from the bench, to take her hand again.
But that definitely settled it for her: this would, after all, be as bad as his asking her to supper. “You mustn’t come with me—no, no!”
He sank back, quite blank, as if she had pushed him. “I mayn’t see you home?”
“No, no; let me go.” He looked almost as if she had struck him, but she didn’t care; and the manner in which she spoke—it was literally as if she were angry—had the force of a command. “Stay where you are!”
“See here—see here!” he nevertheless pleaded.
“I won’t give you up!” she cried once more—this time quite with passion; on which she got away from him as fast as she could and left him staring after her.
