Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (65 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 382
with her little conscious, cautions face, taking his hand in hers. She had had a long and important talk with Agatha the previous evening, after they went upstairs, and she had extracted from the girl some information which she had within a day or two begun very much to desire.
It's about Sir Rufus Chasemore. I couldn't but think you would wonderjust as I was wondering myself, said Mrs. Grice. I felt as if I couldn't be satisfied till I had asked. I don't know how you will feel about it. I am afraid it will upset you a little; but anything that you may thinkwell, yes, it
is
the case.
Do you mean she is engaged to be married to your Englishman? Macarthy demanded, with a face that suddenly flushed.
No, she's not engaged. I presume she wouldn't take that step without finding out how you'd feel. In fact that's what she said last night.
I feel like thunder, I feel like hell! Macarthy exclaimed; and I hope you'll tell her so.
Mrs. Grice looked frightened and pained. Well, my son, I'm glad you've come, if there is going to be any trouble.
Troublewhat trouble should there be? He can't marry her if she won't have him.
Well, she didn't say she wouldn't have him; she said the question hadn't come up. But she thinks it would come up if she were to give him any sort of opening. That's what I thought and that's what I wanted to make sure of.
Macarthy looked at his mother for some moments in extreme seriousness; then he took out his watch and looked at that. What time is the first boat? he asked.
I don't knowthere are a good many.
Well, we'll take the firstwe'll quit this. And the young man put back his watch and got up with decision.
His mother sat looking at him rather ruefully. Would you feel so badly if she were to do it?
She may do it without my consent; she shall never do it with, said Macarthy Grice.
Well, I could see last evening, by the way you acted his mother murmured, as if she thought it her duty to try and enter into his opposition.
 
Page 383
How did I act, ma'am?
Well, you acted as if you didn't think much of the English.
Well, I don't, said the young man.
Agatha noticed it and she thought Sir Rufus noticed it too.
They have such thick hides in general that they don't notice anything. But if he is more sensitive than the others perhaps it will keep him away.
Would you like to wound him, Macarthy? his mother inquired, with an accent of timid reproach.
Wound him? I should like to kill him! Please to let Agatha know that we'll move on, the young man added.
Mrs. Grice got up as if she were about to comply with this injunction, but she stopped in the middle of the room and asked of her son, with a quaint effort at conscientious impartiality which would have made him smile if he had been capable of smiling in such a connection, Don't you think that in some respects the English are a fine nation?
Well, yes; I like them for pale ale and note-paper and umbrellas; and I got a firstrate trunk there the other day. But I want my sister to marry one of her own people.
Yes, I presume it would be better, Mrs. Grice remarked. But Sir Rufus has occupied very high positions in his own country.
I know the kind of positions he has occupied; I can tell what they were by looking at him. The more he has done of that the more intensely he represents what I don't like.
Of course he would stand up for England, Mrs. Grice felt herself compelled to admit.
Then why the mischief doesn't he do so instead of running round after Americans? Macarthy demanded.
He doesn't run round after us; but we knew his sister, Lady Bolitho, in Rome. She is a most sweet woman and we saw a great deal of her; she took a great fancy to Agatha. I surmise that she mentioned us to him pretty often when she went back to England, and when he came abroad for his autumn holiday, as he calls ithe met us first in the Engadine, three or four weeks ago, and came down here with usit seemed as if we already knew him and he knew us. He is very talented and he is quite well off.
 
Page 384
Mother, said Macarthy Grice, going close to the old lady and speaking very gravely, why do you know so much about him? Why have you gone into it so?
I haven't gone into it; I only know what he has told us.
But why have you given him the right to tell you? How does it concern you whether he is well off?
The poor woman began to look flurried and scared. My son, I have given him no right; I don't know what you mean. Besides, it wasn't he who told us he is well off; it was his sister.
It would have been better if you hadn't known his sister, said the young man, gloomily.
Gracious, Macarthy, we must know some one! Mrs. Grice rejoined, with a flicker of spirit.
I don't see the necessity of your knowing the English.
Why Macarthy, can't we even
know
them? pleaded his mother.
You see the sort of thing it gets you into.
It hasn't got us into anything. Nothing has been done.
So much the better, mother darling, said the young man.
In that case we will go on to Venice. Where is he going?
I don't know, but I suppose he won't come on to Venice if we don't ask him.
I don't believe any delicacy would prevent him, Macarthy rejoined. But he loathes me; that's an advantage.
He
loathes
youwhen he wanted so to know you?
Oh yes, I understand. Well, now he knows me! He knows he hates everything I like and I hate everything he likes.
He doesn't imagine you hate your sister, I suppose! said the old lady, with a little vague laugh.
Mother, said Macarthy, still in front of her with his hands in his pockets, I verily believe I should hate her if she were to marry him.
Oh, gracious, my son, don't, don't! cried Mrs. Grice, throwing herself into his arms with a shudder of horror and burying her face on his shoulder.
Her son held her close and as he bent over her he went on: Dearest mother, don't you see that we must remain together, that at any rate we mustn't be separated by different ideas, different associations and institutions? I don't believe any fam-
 
Page 385
ily has ever had more of the feeling that holds people closely together than we have had: therefore for heaven's sake let us keep it, let us find our happiness in it as we always have done. Of course Agatha will marry some day; but why need she marry in such a way as to make a gulf? You and she are all I have, andI may be selfishI should like very much to keep you.
Of course I will let her know the way you feel, said the old lady, a moment later, rearranging her cap and her shawl and putting away her pocket-handkerchief.
It's a matter she certainly ought to understand. She would wish to, unless she is very much changed, Macarthy added, as if he saw all this with high lucidity.
Oh, she isn't changedshe'll never change! his mother exclaimed, with rebounding optimism. She thought it wicked not to take cheerful views.
She wouldn't if she were to marry an Englishman, he declared, as Mrs. Grice left him to go to her daughter.
She told him an hour later that Agatha would be quite ready to start for Venice on the morrow and that she said he need have no fear that Sir Rufus Chasemore would follow them. He was naturally anxious to know from her what words she had had with Agatha, but the only very definite information he extracted was to the effect that the girl had declared with infinite feeling that she would never marry an enemy of her country. When he saw her later in the day he thought she had been crying; but there was nothing in her manner to show that she resented any pressure her mother might have represented to her that he had put upon her or that she was making a reluctant sacrifice. Agatha Grice was very fond of her brother, whom she knew to be upright, distinguished and exceedingly mindful of the protection and support that he owed her mother and herself. He was perverse and obstinate, but she was aware that in essentials he was supremely tender, and he had always been very much the most eminent figure in her horizon.
No allusion was made between them to Sir Rufus Chasemore, though the silence on either side was rather a conscious one, and they talked of the prospective pleasures of Venice and of the arrangements Macarthy would be able to make in
 
Page 386
regard to his mother's spending another winter in Rome. He was to accompany them to Venice and spend a fortnight with them there, after which he was to return to London to terminate his business and then take his way back to New York. There was a plan of his coming to see them again later in the winter, in Rome, if he should succeed in getting six weeks off. As a man of energy and decision, though indeed of a some-what irritable stomach, he made light of the Atlantic voyage: it was a rest and a relief, alternating with his close attention to business. That the disunion produced by the state of Mrs. Grice's health was a source of constant regret and even of much depression to him was well known to his mother and sister, who would not have broken up his home by coming to live in Europe if he had not insisted upon it. Macarthy was in the highest degree conscientious; he was capable of suffering the extremity of discomfort in a cause which he held to be right. But his mother and sister
were
his home, all the same, and in their absence he was perceptibly desolate. Fortunately it had been hoped that a couple of southern winters would quite set Mrs. Grice up again and that then everything in America would be as it had been before. Agatha's affection for her brother was very nearly as great as his affection for herself; but it took the form of wishing that his loneliness might be the cause of his marrying some thoroughly nice girl, inasmuch as after all her mother and she might not always be there. Fraternal tenderness in Macarthy's bosom followed a different logic. He was so fond of his sister that he had a secret hope that she would never marry at all. He had spoken otherwise to his mother, because that was the only way not to seem offensively selfish; but the essence of his thought was that on the day Agatha should marry she would throw him over. On the day she should marry an Englishman she would not throw him overshe would betray him. That is she would betray her country, and it came to the same thing. Macarthy's patriotism was of so intense a hue that to his own sense the national life and his own life flowed in an indistinguishable current.
The particular Englishman he had his eye upon now was not, as a general thing, visible before luncheon. He had told Agatha, who mentioned it to her brother, that in the morning
 
Page 387
he was immersed in workin letter-writing. Macarthy wondered what his work might be, but did not condescend to inquire. He was enlightened however by happening by an odd chance to observe an allusion to Sir Rufus in a copy of the London
Times
which he took up in the reading-room of the hotel. This occurred in a letter to the editor of the newspaper, the writer of which accused Agatha's friend of having withheld from the public some information to which the public was entitled. The information had respect to the situation in South Africa, and Sir Rufus was plainly an agent of the British government, the head of some kind of department or sub-department. This did not make Macarthy like him any better. He was displeased with the idea of England's possessing colonies at all and considered that she had acquired them by force and fraud and held them by a frail and unnatural tenure. It appeared to him that any man who occupied a place in this unrighteous system must have false, detestable views.
Sir Rufus Chasemore turned up on the terrace in the afternoon and bore himself with the serenity of a man unconscious of the damaging inferences that had been formed about him. Macarthy neither avoided him nor sought him outhe even relented a little toward him mentally when he thought of the loss he was about to inflict on him; but when the Englishman approached him and appeared to wish to renew their conversation of the evening before it struck him that he was wanting in delicacy. There was nothing strange in that however, for delicacy and tact were not the strong point of one's transatlantic cousins, with whom one had always to dot one's i's. It seemed to Macarthy that Sir Rufus Chasemore ought to have guessed that he cared little to keep up an acquaintance with him, though indeed the young American would have been at a loss to say how he was to guess it, inasmuch as he would have resented the imputation that he himself had been rude enough to make such a fact patent. The American ladies were in their apartments, occupied in some manner connected with their intended retreat, and there was nothing for Macarthy but to stroll up and down for nearly half an hour with the personage who was so provokingly the cause of it. It had come over him now that he should have liked extremely to spend several days on the lake of Como. The place struck him as

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