Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (125 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 747
met his look, handed him the telegram. It was really by wise looks (they knew each other so well), that, while the telegraph-boy, in his waterproof cape, made a great puddle on the floor, the thing was settled between them. Pemberton wrote the answer with a pencil against the frescoed wall, and the messenger departed. When he had gone Pemberton said to Morgan:
I'll make a tremendous charge; I'll earn a lot of money in a short time, and we'll live on it.
Well, I hope the opulent youth will be stupidhe probably will Morgan parenthesised, and keep you a long time.
Of course, the longer he keeps me the more we shall have for our old age.
But suppose
they
don't pay you! Morgan awfully suggested.
Oh, there are not two such! Pemberton paused, he was on the point of using an invidious term. Instead of this he said two such chances.
Morgan flushedthe tears came to his eyes.
Dites toujours,
two such rascally crews! Then, in a different tone, he added: Happy opulent youth!
Not if he's stupid!
Oh, they're happier then. But you can't have everything, can you? the boy smiled.
Pemberton held him, his hands on his shoulders. What will become of
you,
what will you do? He thought of Mrs. Moreen, desperate for sixty francs.
I shall turn into a man. And then, as if he recognised all the bearings of Pemberton's allusion: I shall get on with them better when you're not here.
Ah, don't say thatit sounds as if I set you against them!
You dothe sight of you. It's all right; you know what I mean. I shall be beautiful. I'll take their affairs in hand; I'll marry my sisters.
You'll marry yourself! joked Pemberton; as high, rather tense pleasantry would evidently be the right, or the safest, tone for their separation.
It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan
 
Page 748
suddenly asked: But I sayhow will you get to your jolly job? You'll have to telegraph to the opulent youth for money to come on.
Pemberton bethought himself. They won't like that, will they?
Oh, look out for them!
Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. I'll go to the American Consul; I'll borrow some money of himjust for the few days, on the strength of the telegram.
Morgan was hilarious. Show him the telegramthen stay and keep the money!
Pemberton entered into the joke enough to reply that, for Morgan, he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more serious, and to prove that he hadn't meant what he said, not only hurried him off to the Consulate (since he was to start that evening, as he had wired to his friend), but insisted on going with him. They splashed through the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and they passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen and Ulick go into a jeweller's shop. The Consul proved accommodating (Pemberton said it wasn't the letter, but Morgan's grand air), and on their way back they went into St. Mark's for a hushed ten minutes. Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who was very angry when he had announced to her his intention, should charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly, and in reference to the loan she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they should get something out of him. On the other hand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise that when, on coming in,
they
heard the cruel news, they took it like perfect men of the world.
VIII..
When Pemberton got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be taken in hand for Balliol, he found himself unable to say whether he was really an idiot or it was only, on his own part, the long association with an intensely living little mind that made him seem so. From Morgan he heard half-
 
Page 749
a-dozen times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in little squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest illustrationsletters that he was divided between the impulse to show his present disciple, as a kind of wasted incentive, and the sense of something in them that was profanable by publicity. The opulent youth went up, in due course, and failed to pass; but it seemed to add to the presumption that brilliancy was not expected of him all at once that his parents, condoning the lapse, which they goodnaturedly treated as little as possible as if were Pemberton's, should have sounded the rally again, begged the young coach to keep his pupil in hand another year.
The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreen sixty francs, and he sent her a post-office order for the amount. In return for this favour he received a frantic, scribbled line from her: Implore you to come back instantlyMorgan dreadfully ill. They were on the rebound, once more in Parisoften as Pemberton had seen them depressed he had never seen them crushedand communication was therefore rapid. He wrote to the boy to ascertain the state of his health, but he received no answer to his letter. Accordingly he took an abrupt leave of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at the small hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysées, of which Mrs. Moreen had given him the address. A deep if dumb dissatisfaction with this lady and her companions bore him company: they couldn't be vulgarly honest, but they could live at hotels, in velvety
entresols,
amid a smell of burnt pastilles, in the most expensive city in Europe. When he had left them, in Venice, it was with an irrepressible suspicion that something was going to happen; but the only thing that had happened was that they succeeded in getting away. How is he? where is he? he asked of Mrs. Moreen; but before she could speak, these questions were answered by the pressure round his neck of a pair of arms, in shrunken sleeves, which were perfectly capable of an effusive young foreign squeeze.
Dreadfully illI don't see it! the young man cried. And then, to Morgan: Why on earth didn't you relieve me? Why didn't you answer my letter?
Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad,
 
Page 750
and Pemberton learned at the same time from the boy that he had answered every letter he had received. This led to the demonstration that Pemberton's note had been intercepted. Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, as Pemberton perceived, the moment he faced her, that she was prepared for a good many other things. She was prepared above all to maintain that she had acted from a sense of duty, that she was enchanted she had got him over, whatever they might say; and that it was useless of him to pretend that he didn't
know,
in all his bones, that his place at such a time was with Morgan. He had taken the boy away from them, and now he had no right to abandon him. He had created for himself the gravest responsibilities; he must at least abide by what he had done.
Taken him away from you? Pemberton exclaimed indignantly.
Do itdo it, for pity's sake; that's just what I want. I can't stand
this
and such scenes. They're treacherous! These words broke from Morgan, who had intermitted his embrace, in a key which made Pemberton turn quickly to him, to see that he had suddenly seated himself, was breathing with evident difficulty and was very pale.
Now
do you say he's not illmy precious pet? shouted his mother, dropping on her knees before him with clasped hands, but touching him no more than if he had been a gilded idol. It will passit's only for an instant; but don't say such dreadful things!
I'm all rightall right, Morgan panted to Pemberton, whom he sat looking up at with a strange smile, his hands resting on either side on the sofa.
Now do you pretend I've been treacherousthat I've deceived? Mrs. Moreen flashed at Pemberton as she got up.
It isn't
he
says it, it's I! the boy returned, apparently easier, but sinking back against the wall; while Pemberton, who had sat down beside him, taking his hand, bent over him.
Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many things to consider, urged Mrs. Moreen. It's his
place
his only place. You see
you
think it is now.
Take me awaytake me away, Morgan went on, smiling to Pemberton from his white face.
 
Page 751
Where shall I take you, and howoh,
how,
my boy? the young man stammered, thinking of the rude way in which his friends in London held that, for his convenience, and without a pledge of instantaneous return, he had thrown them over; of the just resentment with which they would already have called in a successor, and of the little help as regarded finding fresh employment that resided for him in the flatness of his having failed to pass his pupil.
Oh, we'll settle that. You used to talk about it, said Morgan. If we can only go, all the rest's a detail.
Talk about it as much as you like, but don't think you can attempt it. Mr. Moreen would never consentit would be so precarious, Pemberton's hostess explained to him. Then to Morgan she explained: It would destroy our peace, it would break our hearts. Now that he's back it will be all the same again. You'll have your life, your work and your freedom, and we'll all be happy as we used to be. You'll bloom and grow perfectly well, and we won't have any more silly experiments, will we? They're too absurd. It's Mr. Pemberton's placeevery one in his place. You in yours, your papa in his, me in mine
n'est-ce pas, chèri?
We'll all forget how foolish we've been, and we'll have lovely times.
She continued to talk and to surge vaguely about the little draped, stuffy
salon,
while Pemberton sat with the boy, whose colour gradually came back; and she mixed up her reasons, dropping that there were going to be changes, that the other children might scatter (who knew?Paula had her ideas), and that then it might be fancied how much the poor old parent-birds would want the little nestling. Morgan looked at Pemberton, who wouldn't let him move; and Pemberton knew exactly how he felt at hearing himself called a little nestling. He admitted that he had had one or two bad days, but he protested afresh against the iniquity of his mother's having made them the ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton. Poor Pemberton could laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs. Moreen's producing so much philosophy for her defence (she seemed to shake it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over the light gilt chairs), so little did the sick boy strike him as qualified to repudiate any advantage.
He himself was in for it, at any rate. He should have
 
Page 752
Morgan on his hands again indefinitely; though indeed he saw the lad had a private theory to produce which would be intended to smooth this down. He was obliged to him for it in advance; but the suggested amendment didn't keep his heart from sinking a little, any more than it prevented him from accepting the prospect on the spot, with some confidence moreover that he would do so even better if he could have a little supper. Mrs. Moreen threw out more hints about the changes that were to be looked for, but she was such a mixture of smiles and shudders (she confessed she was very nervous), that he couldn't tell whether she were in high feather or only in hysterics. If the family were really at last going to pieces why shouldn't she recognise the necessity of pitching Morgan into some sort of lifeboat? This presumption was fostered by the fact that they were established in luxurious quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where they naturally
would
be established in view of going to pieces. Moreover didn't she mention that Mr. Moreen and the others were enjoying themselves at the opera with Mr. Granger, and wasn't
that
also precisely where one would look for them on the eve of a smash? Pemberton gathered that Mr. Granger was a rich, vacant Americana big bill with a flourishy heading and no items; so that one of Paula's ideas was probably that this time she had really done it, which was indeed an unprecedented blow to the general cohesion. And if the cohesion was to terminate what was to become of poor Pemberton? He felt quite enough bound up with them to figure, to his alarm, as a floating spar in case of a wreck.
It was Morgan who eventually asked if no supper had been ordered for him; sitting with him below, later, at the dim, delayed meal, in the presence of a great deal of corded green plush, a plate of ornamental biscuit and a languor marked on the part of the waiter. Mrs. Moreen had explained that they had been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of the house; and Morgan's consolation (he offered it while Pemberton reflected on the nastiness of lukewarm sauces), proved to be, largely, that this circumstance would facilitate their escape. He talked of their escape (recurring to it often afterwards), as if they were making up a boy's book together. But he likewise expressed his sense that there was something

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