Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (140 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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She was startled by the words, for she on her side had been reflectingreflecting that he had broken with her grandmother and that this pointed to a reason. It suggested at least that he wouldn't now be so much like a mouthpiece for that cold ancestral tone. She turned off his questionsaid it never was a fair one, as you gave yourself away however you answered it. When he repeated You give yourself away? as if he didn't understand, she remembered that he had not read the funny American books. This brought them to a silence, for she had enlightened him only by another laugh, and he was evidently preparing another question, which he wished carefully to disconnect from the former. Presently, just as they were coming near Mrs. Tramore, it arrived in the words Is this lady your mother? On Rose's assenting, with the addition that she was travelling with her, he said: Will you be so kind as to introduce me to her? They were so close to Mrs. Tramore that she probably heard, but she floated away with a single stroke of her paddle and an inattentive poise of her head. It was a striking exhibition of the famous tact, for Rose delayed to answer, which was exactly what might have made her mother wish to turn; and indeed when at last the girl spoke she only said to her companion: Why do you ask me that?
Because I desire the pleasure of making her acquaintance.
Rose had stopped, and in the middle of the square they stood looking at each other. Do you remember what you said to me the last time I saw you?
Oh, don't speak of that!
It's better to speak of it now than to speak of it later.
Bertram Jay looked round him, as if to see whether any one would hear; but the bright foreignness gave him a sense of safety, and he unexpectedly exclaimed: Miss Tramore, I love you more than ever!
Then you ought to have come to see us, declared the girl, quickly walking on.
You treated me the last time as if I were positively offensive to you.
So I did, but you know my reason.
Because I protested against the course you were taking? I
 
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did, I did! the young man rang out, as if he still, a little, stuck to that.
His tone made Rose say gaily: Perhaps you do so yet?
I can't tell till I've seen more of your circumstances, he replied with eminent honesty.
The girl stared; her light laugh filled the air. And it's in order to see more of them and judge that you wish to make my mother's acquaintance?
He coloured at this and he evaded; then he broke out with a confused Miss Tramore, let me stay with you a little! which made her stop again.
Your company will do us great honour, but there must be a rigid condition attached to our acceptance of it.
Kindly mention it, said Captain Jay, staring at the facade of the cathedral.
You don't take us on trial.
On trial?
You don't make an observation to menot a single one, ever, ever!on the matter that, in Hill Street, we had our last words about.
Captain Jay appeared to be counting the thousand pinnacles of the church. I think you really must be right, he remarked at last.
There you are! cried Rose Tramore, and walked rapidly away.
He caught up with her, he laid his hand upon her arm to stay her. If you're going to Venice, let me go to Venice with you!
You don't even understand my condition.
I'm sure you're right, then: you must be right about everything.
That's not in the least true, and I don't care a fig whether you're sure or not. Please let me go.
He had barred her way, he kept her longer. I'll go and speak to your mother myself!
Even in the midst of another emotion she was amused at the air of audacity accompanying this declaration. Poor Captain Jay might have been on the point of marching up to a battery. She looked at him a moment; then she said: You'll be disappointed!
 
Page 842
Disappointed?
She's much more proper than grandmamma, because she's much more amiable.
Dear Miss Tramoredear Miss Tramore! the young man murmured helplessly.
You'll see for yourself. Only there's another condition, Rose went on.
Another? he cried, with discouragement and alarm.
You must understand thoroughly, before you throw in your lot with us even for a few days, what our position really is.
Is it very bad? asked Bertram Jay artlessly.
No one has anything to do with us, no one speaks to us, no one looks at us.
Really? stared the young man.
We've no social existence, we're utterly despised.
Oh, Miss Tramore! Captain Jay interposed. He added quickly, vaguely, and with a want of presence of mind of which he as quickly felt ashamed: Do none of your family? The question collapsed; the brilliant girl was looking at him.
We're extraordinarily happy, she threw out.
Now that's all I wanted to know! he exclaimed, with a kind of exaggerated cheery reproach, walking on with her briskly to overtake her mother.
He was not dining at their inn, but he insisted on coming that evening to their
table d'hôte.
He sat next Mrs. Tramore, and in the evening he accompanied them gallantly to the opera, at a third-rate theatre where they were almost the only ladies in the boxes. The next day they went together by rail to the Charterhouse of Pavia, and while he strolled with the girl, as they waited for the homeward train, he said to her candidly: Your mother's remarkably pretty. She remembered the words and the feeling they gave her: they were the first note of new era. The feeling was somewhat that of an anxious, gratified matron who has presented her child and is thinking of the matrimonial market. Men might be of no use, as Mrs. Tramore said, yet it was from this moment Rose dated the rosy dawn of her confidence that her
protégée
would go off; and when later, in crowded assemblies, the phrase, or something like it behind a hat or a fan, fell repeatedly on her
 
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anxious ear, Your mother
is
in beauty! or I've never seen her look better! she had a faint vision of the yellow sunshine and the afternoon shadows on the dusty Italian platform.
Mrs. Tramore's behaviour at this period was a revelation of her native understanding of delicate situations. She needed no account of this one from her daughterit was one of the things for which she had a scent; and there was a kind of loyalty to the rules of a game in the silent sweetness with which she smoothed the path of Bertram Jay. It was clear that she was in her element in fostering the exercise of the affections, and if she ever spoke without thinking twice it is probable that she would have exclaimed, with some gaiety, Oh, I know all about
love!
Rose could see that she thought their companion would be a help, in spite of his being no dispenser of patronage. The key to the gates of fashion had not been placed in his hand, and no one had ever heard of the ladies of his family, who lived in some vague hollow of the Yorkshire moors; but none the less he might administer a muscular push. Yes indeed, men in general were broken reeds, but Captain Jay was peculiarly representative. Respectability was the woman's maximum, as honour was the man's, but this distinguished young soldier inspired more than one kind of confidence. Rose had a great deal of attention for the use to which his respectability was put; and there mingled with this attention some amusement and much compassion. She saw that after a couple of days he decidedly liked her mother, and that he was yet not in the least aware of it. He took for granted that he believed in her but little; notwithstanding which he would have trusted her with anything except Rose herself. His trusting her with Rose would come very soon. He never spoke to her daughter about her qualities of character, but two or three of them (and indeed these were all the poor lady had, and they made the best show) were what he had in mind in praising her appearance. When he remarked: What attention Mrs. Tramore seems to attract everywhere! he meant: What a beautifully simple nature it is! and when he said: There's something extraordinarily harmonious in the colours she wears, it signified: Upon my word, I never saw such a sweet temper in my life! She lost one of her boxes at Verona, and made the prettiest joke of it to Captain Jay. When Rose saw
 
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this she said to herself, Next season we shall have only to choose. Rose knew what was in the box.
By the time they reached Venice (they had stopped at half a dozen little old romantic cities in the most frolicsome aesthetic way) she liked their companion better than she had ever liked him before. She did him the justice to recognise that if he was not quite honest with himself he was at least wholly honest with
her.
She reckoned up everything he had been since he joined them, and put upon it all an interpretation so favourable to his devotion that, catching herself in the act of glossing over one or two episodes that had not struck her at the time as disinterested she exclaimed, beneath her breath, Look outyou're falling in love! But if he liked correctness wasn't he quite right? Could any one possibly like it more than
she
did? And if he had protested against her throwing in her lot with her mother, this was not because of the benefit conferred but because of the injury received. He exaggerated that injury, but this was the privilege of a lover perfectly willing to be selfish on behalf of his mistress. He might have wanted her grandmother's money for her, but if he had given her up on first discovering that she was throwing away her chance of it (oh, this was
her
doing too!) he had given up her grandmother as much: not keeping well with the old woman, as some men would have done; not waiting to see how the perverse experiment would turn out and appeasing her, if it should promise tolerably, with a view to future operations. He had had a simple-minded, evangelical, lurid view of what the girl he loved would find herself in for. She could see this nowshe could see it from his present bewilderment and mystification, and she liked him and pitied him, with the kindest smile, for the original
naïveté
as well as for the actual meekness. No wonder he hadn't known what she was in for, since he now didn't even know what he was in for himself. Were there not moments when he thought his companions almost unnaturally good, almost suspiciously safe? He had lost all power to verify that sketch of their isolation and
déclassement
to which she had treated him on the great square at Milan. The last thing he noticed was that they were neglected, and he had never, for himself, had such an impression of society.
 
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It could scarcely be enhanced even by the apparition of a large, fair, hot, red-haired young man, carrying a lady's fan in his hand, who suddenly stood before their little party as, on the third evening after their arrival in Venice, it partook of ices at one of the tables before the celebrated Café Florian. The lamplit Venetian dusk appeared to have revealed them to this gentleman as he sat with other friends at a neighbouring table, and he had sprung up, with unsophisticated glee, to shake hands with Mrs. Tramore and her daughter. Rose recalled him to her mother, who looked at first as though she didn't remember him but presently bestowed a sufficiently gracious smile on Mr. Guy Mangler. He gave with youthful candour the history of his movements and indicated the whereabouts of his family: he was with his mother and sisters; they had met the Bob Veseys, who had taken Lord Whiteroy's yacht and were going to Constantinople. His mother and the girls, poor things, were at the Grand Hotel, but he was on the yacht with the Veseys, where they had Lord Whiteroy's cook. Wasn't the food in Venice filthy, and wouldn't they come and look at the yacht? She wasn't very fast, but she was awfully jolly. His mother might have come if she would, but she wouldn't at first, and now, when she wanted to, there were other people, who naturally wouldn't turn out for her. Mr. Mangler sat down; he alluded with artless resentment to the way, in July, the door of his friends had been closed to him. He was going to Constantinople, but he didn't careif
they
were going anywhere; meanwhile his mother hoped awfully they would look her up.
Lady Maresfield, if she had given her son any such message, which Rose disbelieved, entertained her hope in a manner compatible with her sitting for half an hour, surrounded by her little retinue, without glancing in the direction of Mrs. Tramore. The girl, however, was aware that this was not a good enough instance of their humiliation; inasmuch as it was rather she who, on the occasion of their last contact, had held off from Lady Maresfield. She was a little ashamed now of not having answered the note in which this affable personage ignored her mother. She couldn't help perceiving indeed a dim movement on the part of some of the other members of the group; she made out an attitude of observation in the high-

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