Генри Джеймс
The Diary of a Man of Fifty
“I live in the past,” I said. “I go into the galleries, into the old palaces and the churches. Today I spent an hour in Michael Angelo’s chapel at San Loreozo.”
“Ah yes, that’s the past,” said the Countess. “Those things are very old.”
“Twenty-seven years old,” I answered.
“Twenty-seven? Altro!”
“I mean my own past,” I said. “I went to a great many of those places with your mother.”
“Ah, the pictures are beautiful,” murmured the Countess, glancing at Stanmer.
“Have you lately looked at any of them?” I asked. “Have you gone to the galleries with him?”
She hesitated a moment, smiling. “It seems to me that your question is a little impertinent. But I think you are like that.”
“A little impertinent? Never. As I say, your mother did me the honour, more than once, to accompany me to the Uffizzi.”
“My mother must have been very kind to you.”
“So it seemed to me at the time.”
“At the time only?”
“Well, if you prefer, so it seems to me now.”
“Eh,” said the Countess, “she made sacrifices.”
“To what, cara Signora? She was perfectly free. Your lamented father was dead—and she had not yet contracted her second marriage.”
“If she was intending to marry again, it was all the more reason she should have been careful.”
I looked at her a moment; she met my eyes gravely, over the top of her fan. “Are you very careful?” I said.
She dropped her fan with a certain violence. “Ah, yes, you are impertinent!”
“Ah no,” I said. “Remember that I am old enough to be your father; that I knew you when you were three years old. I may surely ask such questions. But you are right; one must do your mother justice. She was certainly thinking of her second marriage.”
“You have not forgiven her that!” said the Countess, very gravely.
“Have you?” I asked, more lightly.
“I don’t judge my mother. That is a mortal sin. My stepfather was very kind to me.”
“I remember him,” I said; “I saw him a great many times—your mother already received him.”
My hostess sat with lowered eyes, saying nothing; but she presently looked up.
“She was very unhappy with my father.”
“That I can easily believe. And your stepfather—is he still living?”
“He died—before my mother.”
“Did he fight any more duels?”
“He was killed in a duel,” said the Countess, discreetly.
It seems almost monstrous, especially as I can give no reason for it—but this announcement, instead of shocking me, caused me to feel a strange exhilaration. Most assuredly, after all these years, I bear the poor man no resentment. Of course I controlled my manner, and simply remarked to the Countess that as his fault had been so was his punishment. I think, however, that the feeling of which I speak was at the bottom of my saying to her that I hoped that, unlike her mother’s, her own brief married life had been happy.
“If it was not,” she said, “I have forgotten it now.”—I wonder if the late Count Scarabelli was also killed in a duel, and if his adversary . . . Is it on the books that his adversary, as well, shall perish by the pistol? Which of those gentlemen is he, I wonder? Is it reserved for poor little Stanmer to put a bullet into him? No; poor little Stanmer, I trust, will do as I did. And yet, unfortunately for him, that woman is consummately plausible. She was wonderfully nice last evening; she was really irresistible. Such frankness and freedom, and yet something so soft and womanly; such graceful gaiety, so much of the brightness, without any of the stiffness, of good breeding, and over it all something so picturesquely simple and southern. She is a perfect Italian. But she comes honestly by it. After the talk I have just jotted down she changed her place, and the conversation for half an hour was general. Stanmer indeed said very little; partly, I suppose, because he is shy of talking a foreign tongue. Was I like that—was I so constantly silent? I suspect I was when I was perplexed, and Heaven knows that very often my perplexity was extreme. Before I went away I had a few more words tête-à-tête with the Countess.
“I hope you are not leaving Florence yet,” she said; “you will stay a while longer?”
I answered that I came only for a week, and that my week was over.
“I stay on from day to day, I am so much interested.”
“Eh, it’s the beautiful moment. I’m glad our city pleases you!”
“Florence pleases me—and I take a paternal interest to our young friend,” I added, glancing at Stanmer. “I have become very fond of him.”
“Bel tipo inglese,” said my hostess. “And he is very intelligent; he has a beautiful mind.”
She stood there resting her smile and her clear, expressive eyes upon me.
“I don’t like to praise him too much,” I rejoined, “lest I should appear to praise myself; he reminds me so much of what I was at his age. If your beautiful mother were to come to life for an hour she would see the resemblance.”
She gave me a little amused stare.
“And yet you don’t look at all like him!”
“Ah, you didn’t know me when I was twenty-five. I was very handsome! And, moreover, it isn’t that, it’s the mental resemblance. I was ingenuous, candid, trusting, like him.”
“Trusting? I remember my mother once telling me that you were the most suspicious and jealous of men!”
“I fell into a suspicious mood, but I was, fundamentally, not in the least addicted to thinking evil. I couldn’t easily imagine any harm of any one.”
“And so you mean that Mr. Stanmer is in a suspicions mood?”
“Well, I mean that his situation is the same as mine.”
The Countess gave me one of her serious looks. “Come,” she said, “what was it—this famous situation of yours? I have heard you mention it before.”
“Your mother might have told you, since she occasionally did me the honour to speak of me.”
“All my mother ever told me was that you were—a sad puzzle to her.”
At this, of course, I laughed out—I laugh still as I write it.
“Well, then, that was my situation—I was a sad puzzle to a very clever woman.”
“And you mean, therefore, that I am a puzzle to poor Mr. Stanmer?”
“He is racking his brains to make you out. Remember it was you who said he was intelligent.”
She looked round at him, and as fortune would have it, his appearance at that moment quite confirmed my assertion. He was lounging back in his chair with an air of indolence rather too marked for a drawing-room, and staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who has just been asked a conundrum. Madame Scarabelli seemed struck with his attitude.
“Don’t you see,” I said, “he can’t read the riddle?”
“You yourself,” she answered, “said he was incapable of thinking evil. I should be sorry to have him think any evil of me.”
And she looked straight at me—seriously, appealingly—with her beautiful candid brow.
I inclined myself, smiling, in a manner which might have meant—“How could that be possible?”
“I have a great esteem for him,” she went on; “I want him to think well of me. If I am a puzzle to him, do me a little service. Explain me to him.”
“Explain you, dear lady?”
“You are older and wiser than he. Make him understand me.”
She looked deep into my eyes for a moment, and then she turned away.
26th.—I have written nothing for a good many days, but meanwhile I have been half a dozen times to Casa Salvi. I have seen a good deal also of my young friend—had a good many walks and talks with him. I have proposed to him to come with me to Venice for a fortnight, but he won’t listen to the idea of leaving Florence. He is very happy in spite of his doubts, and I confess that in the perception of his happiness I have lived over again my own. This is so much the case that when, the other day, he at last made up his mind to ask me to tell him the wrong that Madame de Salvi had done me, I rather checked his curiosity. I told him that if he was bent upon knowing I would satisfy him, but that it seemed a pity, just now, to indulge in painful imagery.
“But I thought you wanted so much to put me out of conceit of our friend.”
“I admit I am inconsistent, but there are various reasons for it. In the first place—it’s obvious—I am open to the charge of playing a double game. I profess an admiration for the Countess Scarabelli, for I accept her hospitality, and at the same time I attempt to poison your mind; isn’t that the proper expression? I can’t exactly make up my mind to that, though my admiration for the Countess and my desire to prevent you from taking a foolish step are equally sincere. And then, in the second place, you seem to me, on the whole, so happy! One hesitates to destroy an illusion, no matter how pernicious, that is so delightful while it lasts. These are the rare moments of life. To be young and ardent, in the midst of an Italian spring, and to believe in the moral perfection of a beautiful woman—what an admirable situation! Float with the current; I’ll stand on the brink and watch you.”
“Your real reason is that you feel you have no case against the poor lady,” said Stanmer. “You admire her as much as I do.”
“I just admitted that I admired her. I never said she was a vulgar flirt; her mother was an absolutely scientific one. Heaven knows I admired that! It’s a nice point, however, how much one is hound in honour not to warn a young friend against a dangerous woman because one also has relations of civility with the lady.”
“In such a case,” said Stanmer, “I would break off my relations.”
I looked at him, and I think I laughed.
“Are you jealous of me, by chance?”
He shook his head emphatically.
“Not in the least; I like to see you there, because your conduct contradicts your words.”
“I have always said that the Countess is fascinating.”
“Otherwise,” said Stanmer, “in the case you speak of I would give the lady notice.”
“Give her notice?”
“Mention to her that you regard her with suspicion, and that you propose to do your best to rescue a simple-minded youth from her wiles. That would be more loyal.” And he began to laugh again.
It is not the first time he has laughed at me; but I have never minded it, because I have always understood it.
“Is that what you recommend me to say to the Countess?” I asked.
“Recommend you!” he exclaimed, laughing again; “I recommend nothing. I may be the victim to be rescued, but I am at least not a partner to the conspiracy. Besides,” he added in a moment, “the Countess knows your state of mind.”
“Has she told you so?”
Stanmer hesitated.
“She has begged me to listen to everything you may say against her. She declares that she has a good conscience.”
“Ah,” said I, “she’s an accomplished woman!”
And it is indeed very clever of her to take that tone. Stanmer afterwards assured me explicitly that he has never given her a hint of the liberties I have taken in conversation with—what shall I call it?—with her moral nature; she has guessed them for herself. She must hate me intensely, and yet her manner has always been so charming to me! She is truly an accomplished woman!
May 4th.—I have stayed away from Casa Salvi for a week, but I have lingered on in Florence, under a mixture of impulses. I have had it on my conscience not to go near the Countess again—and yet from the moment she is aware of the way I feel about her, it is open war. There need be no scruples on either side. She is as free to use every possible art to entangle poor Stanmer more closely as I am to clip her fine-spun meshes. Under the circumstances, however, we naturally shouldn’t meet very cordially. But as regards her meshes, why, after all, should I clip them? It would really be very interesting to see Stanmer swallowed up. I should like to see how he would agree with her after she had devoured him—(to what vulgar imagery, by the way, does curiosity reduce a man!) Let him finish the story in his own way, as I finished it in mine. It is the same story; but why, a quarter of a century later, should it have the same dénoúment? Let him make his own dénoûment.
