Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (114 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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Page 680
of the Tiber. He didn't meet my eye, and he was serious; which struck me as a promise of further entertainment. From the Ripetta we strolled to the Piazza del Popolo, and then began to mount one of the winding ways that diversify the slope of the Pincian. Before we got to the top Wilmerding said to me: What do you mean by the different way we people see things? Whom do you mean by us people?
You innocent children of the west, most unsophisticated of Yankees. Your ideas, your standards, your measures, your manners are different.
The ideas and the manners of gentlemen are the same all the world over.
YesI fear I can't gainsay you there, I replied.
I don't ask for the least allowance on the score of being a child of the west. I don't propose to be a barbarian anywhere.
You're the best fellow in the world, I continued; but it's nevertheless trueI have been impressed with it on various occasionsthat your countrypeople have, in perfect good faith, a different attitude toward women. They think certain things possible that we Europeans, cynical and corrupt, look at with a suspicious eye.
What things do you mean?
Oh, don't you know them? You have more freedom than we.
Ah, never! my companion cried, in a tone of conviction that still rings in my ears.
What I mean is that you have less, I said, laughing. Evidently women,
chez vous,
are not so easily compromised. You must live, over there, in a state of Arcadian, or rather of much more than Arcadian innocence. You can do all sorts of things without committing yourselves. With a quarter of them, in this uncomfortable hemisphere, one is up to one's neck in engagements.
In engagements?
One has given pledges that have in honour to be redeemedunless a fellow chooses to wriggle out of them. There is the question of intentions, and the question of how far, in the eyes of the world, people have really gone. Here
 
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it's the fashion to assume, if there is the least colour for it, that they have gone pretty far. I daresay often they haven't. But they get the credit of it. That's what makes them often ask themselvesor each otherwhy they mayn't as well die for sheep as for lambs.
I know perfectly well what you mean: that's precisely what makes me so careful, said Wilmerding.
I burst into mirth at thisI liked him even better when he was subtile than when he was simple. You're a dear fellow and a gentleman to the core, and it's all right, and you have only to trust your instincts. There goes the Boccarossa, I said, as we entered the gardens which crown the hill and which used to be as pleasantly neglected of old as they are regulated and cockneyfied to-day. The lovely afternoon was waning and the good-humoured,
blasé
crowd (it has seen so much, in its time) formed a public to admire the heavy Roman coaches, laden with yellow principessas, which rumbled round the contracted circle. The old statues in the shrubbery, the colour of the sunset, the view of St. Peter's, the pines against the sky on Monte Mario, and all the roofs and towers of Rome betweenthese things are doubtless a still fresher remembrance with you than with me. I leaned with Wilmerding against the balustrade of one of the terraces and we gave the usual tribute of a gaze to the dome of Michael Angelo. Then my companion broke out, with perfect irrelevance:
Don't you think I've been careful enough?
It's needlessit would be odiousto tell you in detail what advantage I took of this. I hated (I told him) the slang of the subject, but I was bound to say he would be generally judgedin any English, in any French circleto have shown what was called marked interest.
Marked interest in what? Marked interest in whom? You can't appear to have been attentive to four women at once.
Certainly not. But isn't there one whom you may be held particularly to have distinguished?
One? Wilmerding stared. You don't mean the old lady?
Commediante!
Does your conscience say absolutely nothing to you?
 
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My conscience? What has that got to do with it?
Call it then your sense of the way thatto effete prejudicethe affair may have looked.
The affairwhat affair?
Honestly, can't you guess? Surely there is one of the young ladies to whom the proprieties point with a tolerably straight finger.
He hesitated; then he cried: Heaven help meyou don't mean Veronica?
The pleading wail with which he uttered this question was almost tragic, and for a moment his fate trembled in the balance. I was on the point of letting him off, as I may say, if he disliked the girl so much as that. It was a revelationI didn't know how much he did dislike her. But at this moment a carriage stopped near the place where we had rested, and, turning round, I saw it contained two ladies whom I knew. They greeted me and prepared to get out, so that I had to go and help them. But before I did this I said to my companion: Don't worry, after all. It will all blow over.
Upon my word, it will have to! I heard him ejaculate as I left him. He turned back to the view of St. Peter's. My ladies alighted and wished to walk a little, and I spent five minutes with them; after which, when I looked for Wilmerding, he had disappeared. The last words he had spoken had had such a sharp note of impatience that I was reassured. I had ruffled him, but I had won my bet of Montaut.
Late that night (I had just come inI was never at home in the evening) there was a tinkle of my bell, and my servant informed me that the signorino of the American embassy wished to speak to me. Wilmerding was ushered in, very pale, so pale that I thought he had come to demand satisfaction of me for having tried to make a fool of him. But he hadn't, it soon appeared; he hadn't in the least: he wanted explanations, but they were quite of another kind. He only wished to arrive at the truthto ask me two or three earnest questions. I ought of course to have told him on the spot that I had only been making use of him for a slight psychological experiment. But I didn't, and this omission was my great fault. I can only declare, in extenuation of it, that I had scruples about betraying Montaut. Besides, I did cling a little to my experiment.
 
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There was something that fascinated me in the idea of the supreme sacrifice he was ready to make if it should become patent to him that he had put upon an innocent girl, or upon a confiding mother, a slight, a disappointment even purely conventional. I urged him to let me lay the ghost I had too inconsiderately raised, but at the same time I was curious to see what he would do if the idea of reparation should take possession of him. He would be consistent, and it would be strange to see that. I remember saying to him before he went away: Have you really a very great objection to Veronica Goldie? I thought he was going to reply I loathe her! But he answered:
A great objection? I pity her, if I've deceived her.
Women must have an easy time in your country, I said; and I had an idea the remark would contribute to soothe him.
Nevertheless, the next day, early in the afternoon, being still uneasy, I went to his lodgings. I had had, by a rare chance, a busy morning, and this was the first moment I could spare. Wilmerding had delightful quarters in an old palace with a gardenan old palace with old busts ranged round an old loggia and an old porter in an old cocked hat and a coat that reached to his heels leaning against the
Portone.
From this functionary I learned that the signorino had quitted Rome in a two-horse carriage an hour before: he had gone back to Frascatihe had taken a servant and a portmanteau. This news did not confirm my tranquillity in exactly the degree I could have wished, and I stood there looking, and I suppose feeling, rather blank while I considered it. A moment later I was surprised in this attitude by Guy de Montaut, who turned into the court with the step of a man bent on the same errand as myself. We looked at each otherhe with a laugh, I with a frownand then I said: I don't like ithe's gone.
Gone?to America?
On the contraryback to the hills.
Montaut's laugh rang out, and he exclaimed: Of course you don't like it! Please to hand me over the sum of money that I have had the honour of winning from you.
Not so fast. What proves to you that you've won it?
Why, his going like thisafter the talk I had with him this morning.
 
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What talk had you with him this morning?
Montaut looked at the old porter, who of course couldn't understand us, but, as if he scented the drift of things, was turning his perceptive Italian eye from one of us to the other. Come and walk with me, and I'll tell you. The drollest thing! he went on, as we passed back to the street. The poor child has been to see me.
To propose to you a meeting?
Not a bitto ask my advice.
Your advice?
As to how to act in the premises.
Il est impayable.
And what did you say to him?
I said Veronica was one of the most charming creatures I had ever seen.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Tudieu, mon cher,
so ought you, if you come to that! Montaut replied, taking his hand out of my arm.
It's just what I am. We're a pair of scoundrels.
Speak for yourself. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
You wouldn't have missed what?
His visit to me to-daysuch an exhibition!
What did he exhibit?
The desire to be correctbut in a degree! You're a race apart,
vous autres.
Don't lump him and me together, I said: the immeasurable ocean divides us. Besides, it's you who were stickling for correctness. It was your insistence to me on what he ought to doon what the family would have a right to expect him to dothat was the origin of the inquiry in which (yesterday, when I met him at St. Peter's,) I so rashly embarked.
My dear fellow, the beauty of it is that the family have brought no pressure: that's an element I was taking for granted. He has no claim to recognise, because none has been made. He tells me that the Honourable Blanche, after her daughter's escapade with him, didn't open her mouth.
Ces Anglaises!
Perhaps that's the way she made her claim, I suggested. But why the deuce, then, couldn't
be
be quiet?
 
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It's exactly what he thinksthat she may have been quiet out of delicacy. He's inimitable!
Fancy, in such a matter, his wanting advice! I groaned, much troubled. We had stopped outside, under the palace windows; the sly porter, from the doorway, was still looking at us.
Call it information, said Montaut.
But I gave him lots, last night. He came to me.
He wanted morehe wanted to be sure! He wanted an honest impression; he begged me, as a favour to him, to be very frank. Had he definitely, yes or no, according to my idea, excited expectations? I told him, definitely, yesaccording to my idea!
I shall go after him, I declared; I shall overtake him I shall bring him back.
You'll not play fair, then.
Play be hanged! The fellow mustn't sacrifice his life.
Where's the sacrifice?she's quite as good as he. I don't detest poor Veronicashe has possibilities, and also very pretty hair. What pretensions can
be
have? He's touching, but he's only a cotton-spinner and a blockhead. Besides, it offends an
aimable Français
to see three unmated virgins withering in a row. You people don't mind that sort of thing, but it violates our sense of formof proper arrangement. Girls marry,
que diable!
I notice they don't marry you! I cried.
I don't go and hide in the bushes with them. Let him arrange itI like to see people act out their character. Don't spoil thisit will be perfect. Such a story to tell!
To tell?
We shall blush for it for ever. Besides, we can tell it even if he does nothing.
Not II shall boast of it. I shall have done a good action, I shall have
assuré un sort
to a portionless girl. Montaut took hold of me again, for I threatened to run after Wilmerding, and he made me walk about with him for half an hour. He took some trouble to persuade me that further interference would be an unwarranted injury to Veronica Goldie. She had apparently got a husbandI had no right to dash him from her lips.
Getting her a husband was none of my business.

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