Генри Джеймс
The Path Of Duty
VI
In October I met him at Doubleton; we spent three days there together. He was enjoying his respite, as he didn’t scruple to tell me; and he talked to me a great deal—as usual—about Lady Vandeleur. He did n’t mention Joscelind’s name, except by implication in this assurance of how much he valued his weeks of grace.
“Do you mean to say that, under the circumstances, Lady Vandeleur is willing to marry you?”
I made this inquiry more expressively, doubtless, than before; for when we had talked of the matter then he had naturally spoken of her consent as a simple contingency. It was contingent upon the lapse of the first months of her bereavement; it was not a question he could begin to press a few days after her husband’s death.
“Not immediately, of course; but if I wait, I think so.” That, I remember, was his answer.
“If you wait till you get rid of that poor girl, of course.”
“She knows nothing about that,—it’s none of her business.”
“Do you mean to say she does n’t know you are engaged?”
“How should she know it, how should she believe it, when she sees how I love her?” the young man exclaimed; but he admitted afterwards that he had not deceived her, and that she rendered full justice to the motives that had determined him. He thought he could answer for it that she would marry him some day or other.
“Then she is a very cruel woman,” I said, “and I should like, if you please, to hear no more about her.” He protested against this, and, a month later, brought her up again, for a purpose. The purpose, you will see, was a very strange one indeed. I had then come back to town; it was the early part of December. I supposed he was hunting, with his own hounds; but he appeared one afternoon in my drawing-room and told me I should do him a great favor if I would go and see Lady Vandeleur.
“Go and see her? Where do you mean, in Norfolk?”
“She has come up to London—did n’t you know it? She has a lot of business. She will be kept here till Christmas; I wish you would go.”
“Why should I go?” I asked. “Won’t you be kept here till Christmas too, and is n’t that company enough for her?”
“Upon my word, you are cruel,” he said, “and it’s a great shame of you, when a man is trying to do his duty and is behaving like a saint.”
“Is that what you call saintly, spending all your time with Lady Vandeleur? I will tell you whom I think a saint, if you would like to know.”
“You need n’t tell me; I know it better than you. I haven’t a word to say against her; only she is stupid and hasn’t any perceptions. If I am stopping a bit in London you don’t understand why; it’s as if you had n’t any perceptions either! If I am here for a few days, I know what I am about.”
“Why should I understand?” I asked,—not very candidly, because I should have been glad to. “It’s your own affair; you know what you are about, as you say, and of course you have counted the cost.”
“What cost do you mean? It’s a pretty cost, I can tell you.” And then he tried to explain—if I would only enter into it, and not be so suspicious. He was in London for the express purpose of breaking off.
“Breaking off what,—your engagement?”
“No, no, damn my engagement,—the other thing. My acquaintance, my relations—”
“Your intimacy with Lady Van—?” It was not very gentle, but I believe I burst out laughing. “If this is the way you break off, pray what would you do to keep up?”
He flushed, and looked both foolish and angry, for of course it was not very difficult to see my point. But he was—in a very clumsy manner of his own—trying to cultivate a good conscience, and he was getting no credit for it. “I suppose I may be allowed to look at her! It’s a matter we have to talk over. One does n’t drop such a friend in half an hour.”
“One does n’t drop her at all, unless one has the strength to make a sacrifice.”
“It’s easy for you to talk of sacrifice. You don’t know what she is!” my visitor cried.
“I think I know what she is not. She is not a friend, as you call her, if she encourages you in the wrong, if she does n’t help you. No, I have no patience with her,” I declared; “I don’t like her, and I won’t go to see her!”
Mr. Tester looked at me a moment, as if he were too vexed to trust himself to speak. He had to make an effort not to say something rude. That effort however, he was capable of making, and though he held his hat as if he were going to walk out of the house, he ended by staying, by putting it down again, by leaning his head, with his elbows on his knees, in his hands, and groaning out that he had never heard of anything so impossible, and that he was the most wretched man in England. I was very sorry for him, and of course I told him so; but privately I did n’t think he stood up to his duty as he ought. I said to him, however, that if he would give me his word of honor that he would not abandon Miss Bernardstone, there was no trouble I would n’t take to be of use to him. I did n’t think Lady Vandeleur was behaving well. He must allow me to repeat that; but if going to see her would give him any pleasure (of course there was no question of pleasure for her) I would go fifty times. I could n’t imagine how it would help him, but I would do it as I would do anything else he asked me. He did n’t give me his word of honor, but he said quietly, “I shall go straight; you need n’t be afraid;” and as he spoke there was honor enough in his face. This left an opening, of course, for another catastrophe. There might be further postponements, and poor Lady Emily, indignant for the first time in her life, might declare that her daughter’s situation had become intolerable and that they withdrew from the engagement. But this was too odious a chance, and I accepted Mr. Tester’s assurance. He told me that the good I could do by going to see Lady Vandeleur was that it would cheer her up, in that dreary, big house in Upper Brook Street, where she was absolutely alone, with horrible overalls on the furniture, and newspapers—actually newspapers—on the mirrors. She was seeing no one, there was no one to see; but he knew she would see me. I asked him if she knew, then, he was to speak to me of coming, and whether I might allude to him, whether it was not too delicate. I shall never forget his answer to this, nor the tone in which he made it, blushing a little, and looking away. “Allude to me? Rather!” It was not the most fatuous speech I had ever heard; it had the effect of being the most modest; and it gave me an odd idea, and especially a new one, of the condition in which, at any time, one might be destined to find Lady Vandeleur. If she, too, were engaged in a struggle with her conscience (in this light they were an edifying pair!) it had perhaps changed her considerably, made her more approachable; and I reflected, ingeniously, that it probably had a humanizing effect upon her. Ambrose Tester did n’t go away after I had told him that I would comply with his request. He lingered, fidgeting with his stick and gloves, and I perceived that he had more to tell me, and that the real reason why he wished me to go and see Lady Vandeleur was not that she had newspapers on her mirrors. He came out with it at last, for that “Rather!” of his (with the way I took it) had broken the ice.
“You say you don’t think she behaved well” (he naturally wished to defend her). “But I dare say you don’t understand her position. Perhaps you would n’t behave any better in her place.”
“It’s very good of you to imagine me there!” I remarked, laughing.
“It’s awkward for me to say. One doesn’t want to dot one’s i’s to that extent.”
“She would be delighted to marry you. That’s not such a mystery.”
“Well, she likes me awfully,” Mr. Tester said, looking like a handsome child. “It’s not all on one side; it’s on both. That’s the difficulty.”
“You mean she won’t let you go?—she holds you fast?”
But the poor fellow had, in delicacy, said enough, and at this he jumped up. He stood there a moment, smoothing his hat; then he broke out again: “Please do this. Let her know—make her feel. You can bring it in, you know.” And here he paused, embarrassed.
“What can I bring in, Mr. Tester? That’s the difficulty, as you say.”
“What you told me the other day. You know. What you have told me before.”
“What I have told you—?”
“That it would put an end to Joscelind! If you can’t work round to it, what’s the good of being—you?” And with this tribute to my powers he took his departure.
VII
It was all very well of him to be so flattering, but I really did n’t see myself talking in that manner to Lady Vandeleur. I wondered why he didn’t give her this information himself, and what particular value it could have as coming from me. Then I said to myself that of course he had mentioned to her the truth I had impressed upon him (and which by this time he had evidently taken home), but that to enable it to produce its full effect upon Lady Yandeleur the further testimony of a witness more independent was required. There was nothing for me but to go and see her, and I went the next day, fully conscious that to execute Mr. Tester’s commission I should have either to find myself very brave or to find her strangely confidential; and fully prepared, also, not to be admitted. But she received me, and the house in Upper Brook Street was as dismal as Ambrose Tester had represented it. The December fog (the afternoon was very dusky) seemed to pervade the muffled rooms, and her ladyship’s pink lamplight to waste itself in the brown atmosphere. He had mentioned to me that the heir to the title (a cousin of her husband), who had left her unmolested for several months, was now taking possession of everything, so that what kept her in town was the business of her “turning out,” and certain formalities connected with her dower. This was very ample, and the large provision made for her included the London house. She was very gracious on this occasion, but she certainly had remarkably little to say. Still, she was different, or at any rate (having taken that hint), I saw her differently. I saw, indeed, that I had never quite done her justice, that I had exaggerated her stiffness, attributed to her a kind of conscious grandeur which was in reality much more an accident of her appearance, of her figure, than a quality of her character. Her appearance is as grand as you know, and on the day I speak of, in her simplified mourning, under those vaguely gleaming lambris, she looked as beautiful as a great white lily. She is very simple and good-natured; she will never make an advance, but she will always respond to one, and I saw, that evening, that the way to get on with her was to treat her as if she were not too imposing. I saw also that, with her nun-like robes and languid eyes, she was a woman who might be immensely in love. All the same, we hadn’t much to say to each other. She remarked that it was very kind of me to come, that she wondered how I could endure London at that season, that she had taken a drive and found the Park too dreadful, that she would ring for some more tea if I did n’t like what she had given me. Our conversation wandered, stumbling a little, among these platitudes, but no allusion was made on either side to Ambrose Tester. Nevertheless, as I have said, she was different, though it was not till I got home that I phrased to myself what I had detected.
Then, recalling her white face, and the deeper, stranger expression of her beautiful eyes, I entertained myself with the idea that she was under the influence of “suppressed exaltation.” The more I thought of her the more she appeared to me not natural; wound up, as it were, to a calmness beneath which there was a deal of agitation. This would have been nonsense if I had not, two days afterwards, received a note from her which struck me as an absolutely “exalted” production. Not superficially, of course; to the casual eye it would have been perfectly commonplace. But this was precisely its peculiarity, that Lady Vandeleur should have written me a note which had no apparent point save that she should like to see me again, a desire for which she did succeed in assigning a reason. She reminded me that she was paying no calls, and she hoped I wouldn’t stand on ceremony, but come in very soon again, she had enjoyed my visit so much. We had not been on note-writing terms, and there was nothing in that visit to alter our relations; moreover, six months before, she would not have dreamed of addressing me in that way. I was doubly convinced, therefore, that she was passing through a crisis, that she was not in her normal state of nerves. Mr. Tester had not reappeared since the occasion I have described at length, and I thought it possible he had been capable of the bravery of leaving town. I had, however, no fear of meeting him in Upper Brook Street; for, according to my theory of his relations with Lady Vaudeleur, he regularly spent his evenings with her, it being clear to me that they must dine together. I could answer her note only by going to see her the next day, when I found abundant confirmation of that idea about the crisis. I must confess to you in advance that I have never really understood her behavior,—never understood why she should have taken me so suddenly—with whatever reserves, and however much by implication merely—into her confidence. All I can say is that this is an accident to which one is exposed with English people, who, in my opinion, and contrary to common report, are the most demonstrative, the most expansive, the most gushing in the world. I think she felt rather isolated at this moment, and she had never had many intimates of her own sex. That sex, as a general thing, disapproved of her proceedings during the last few months, held that she was making Joscelind Bernardstone suffer too cruelly. She possibly felt the weight of this censure, and at all events was not above wishing some one to know that whatever injury had fallen upon the girl to whom Mr. Tester had so stupidly engaged himself, had not, so far as she was concerned, been wantonly inflicted. I was there, I was more or less aware of her situation, and I would do as well as any one else.
She seemed really glad to see me, but she was very nervous. Nevertheless, nearly half an hour elapsed, and I was still wondering whether she had sent for me only to discuss the question of how a London house whose appointments had the stamp of a debased period (it had been thought very handsome in 1850) could be “done up” without being made æsthetic. I forget what satisfaction I gave her on this point; I was asking myself how I could work round in the manner prescribed by Joscelind’s intended. At the last, however, to my extreme surprise, Lady Vandeleur herself relieved me of this effort.
“I think you know Mr. Tester rather well,” she remarked, abruptly, irrelevantly, and with a face’ more conscious of the bearings of things than any I had ever seen her wear. On my confessing to such an acquaintance, she mentioned that Mr. Tester (who had been in London a few days—perhaps I had seen him) had left town and would n’t come back for several weeks. This, for the moment, seemed to be all she had to communicate; but she sat looking at me from the corner of her sofa as if she wished me to profit in some way by the opportunity she had given me. Did she want help from outside, this proud, inscrutable woman, and was she reduced to throwing out signals of distress? Did she wish to be protected against herself,—applauded for such efforts as she had already made? I didn’t rush forward, I was not precipitate, for I felt that now, surely, I should be able at my convenience to execute my commission. What concerned me was not to prevent Lady Vandeleur’s marrying Mr. Tester, but to prevent Mr. Tester’s marrying her. In a few moments—with the same irrelevance—she announced to me that he wished to, and asked whether I didn’t know it I saw that this was my chance, and instantly, with extreme energy, I exclaimed,—
