Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (130 page)

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Authors: Henry James

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Page 779
What made the case worse, what made the girl more sure, was the silence preserved by her companion in the brougham, on their way home. They rolled along in the June darkness from Prince's Gate to Seymour Street, each looking out of a window in conscious dumbness; watching without seeing the hurry of the London night, the flash of lamps, the quick roll on the wood of hansoms and other broughams. Adela had expected that her father would say something about Mrs. Churchley; but when he said nothing, it was, strangely, still more as if he had spoken. In Seymour Street he asked the footman if Mr. Godfrey had come in, to which the servant replied that he had come in early and gone straight to his room. Adela had perceived as much, without saying so, by a lighted window in the third story; but she contributed no remark to the question. At the foot of the stairs her father halted a moment, hesitating, as if he had something on his mind; but what it amounted to, apparently, was only the dry Good-night with which he presently ascended. It was the first time since her mother's death that he had bidden her good-night without kissing her. They were a kissing family, and after her mother's death the habit had taken a fresh spring. She had left behind her such a general passion of regret that in kissing each other they seemed to themselves a little to be kissing her. Now, as, standing in the hall, with the stiff watching footman (she could have said to him angrily, Go away!) planted near her, she looked with unspeakable pain at her father's back while he mounted, the effect was of his having withheld from other and still more sensitive lips the touch of his own.
He was going to his room, and after a moment she heard his door close. Then she said to the servant, Shut up the house (she tried to do everything her mother had done, to be a little of what she had been, conscious only of mediocrity), and took her own way upstairs. After she had reached her room she waited, listening, shaken by the apprehension that she should hear her father come out again and go up to Godfrey. He would go up to tell him, to have it over without delay, precisely because it would be so difficult. She asked herself, indeed, why he should tell Godfrey when he had not taken the occasiontheir drive home was an occasionto tell
 
Page 780
herself. However, she wanted no announcing, no telling; there was such a horrible clearness in her mind that what she now waited for was only to be sure her father wouldn't leave his room. At the end of ten minutes she saw that this particular danger was over, upon which she came out and made her way to Godfrey. Exactly what she wanted to say to him first, if her father counted on the boy's greater indulgence, and before he could say anything, was, Don't forgive him; don't, don't!
He was to go up for an examination, poor fellow, and during these weeks his lamp burned till the small hours. It was for the diplomatic service, and there was to be some frightful number of competitors; but Adela had great hopes of himshe believed so in his talents, and she saw, with pity, how hard he worked. This would have made her spare him, not trouble his night, his scanty rest, if anything less dreadful had been at stake. It was a blessing, however, that one could count upon his coolness, young as he washis bright, good-looking discretion. Moreover he was the one who would care most. If Leonard was the eldest sonhe had, as a matter of course, gone into the army and was in India, on the staff, by good luck, of a governor-generalit was exactly this that would make him comparatively indifferent. His life was elsewhere, and his father and he had been in a measure military comrades, so that he would be deterred by a certain delicacy from protesting; he wouldn't have liked his father to protest in an affair of
his.
Beatrice and Muriel would care, but they were too young to speak, and this was just why her own responsibility was so great.
Godfrey was in working-gearshirt and trousers and slippers and a beautiful silk jacket. His room felt hot, though a window was open to the summer night; the lamp on the table shed its studious light over a formidable heap of text books and papers, and the bed showed that he had flung himself down to think out a problem. As soon as she got in she said to him: Father's going to marry Mrs. Churchley!
She saw the poor boy's pink face turn pale. How do you know?
I've seen with my eyes. We've been dining therewe've just come home. He's in love with hershe's in love with him; they'll arrange it.
 
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Oh, I say! Godfrey exclaimed, incredulous.
He will, he will, he will! cried the girl; and with this she burst into tears.
Godfrey, who had a cigarette in his hand, lighted it at one of the candles on the mantelpiece as if he were embarrassed. As Adela, who had dropped into his arm-chair, continued to sob, he said, after a moment: He oughtn't tohe oughtn't to.
Oh, think of mammathink of mamma! the girl went on.
Yes, he ought to think of mamma; and Godfrey looked at the tip of his cigarette.
To such a woman as that, after
her!
Dear old mamma! said Godfrey, smoking.
Adela rose again, drying her eyes. It's like an insult to her; it's as if he denied her. Now that she spoke of it, she felt herself tremendously exalted. It's as if he rubbed out at a stroke all the years of their happiness.
They were awfully happy, said Godfrey.
Think what she wasthink how no one else will ever again be like her! the girl cried.
I suppose he's not very happy now, Godfrey continued vaguely.
Of course he isn't, any more than you and I are; and it's dreadful of him to want to be.
Well, don't make yourself miserable till you're sure, the young man said.
But his sister showed him confidently that she
was
sure, from the way the pair had behaved together and from her father's attitude on the drive home. If Godfrey had been there he would have seen everything; it couldn't be explained, but he would have felt. When he asked at what moment the girl had first had her suspicion, she replied that it had all come at once, that evening; or that at least she had had no conscious fear till then. There had been signs for two or three weeks, but she hadn't understood themever since the day Mrs. Churchley had dined in Seymour Street. Adela had thought it odd then that her father had wished to invite her, in the quiet way they were living; she was a person they knew so little. He had said something about her having been very civil to him, and that evening, already, she had guessed that he had
 
Page 782
been to Mrs. Churchley's oftener than she had supposed. To-night it had come to her clearly that he had been to see her every day since the day she dined with them; every afternoon, about the hour she thought he was at his club. Mrs. Churchley was his club,she was just like a club. At this Godfrey laughed; he wanted to know what his sister knew about clubs. She was slightly disappointed in his laugh, slightly wounded by it, but she knew perfectly what she meant: she meant that Mrs. Churchley was public and florid, promiscuous and mannish.
Oh, I dare say she's all right, said Godfrey, as if he wanted to get on with his work. He looked at the clock on the mantelshelf; he would have to put in another hour.
All right to come and take darling mamma's placeto sit where
she
used to sit, to lay her horrible hands on
her
things? Adela was appalledall the more that she had not expected itat her brother's apparent acceptance of such a prospect.
He coloured; there was something in her passionate piety that scorched him. She glared at him with her tragic eyes as if he had profaned an altar. Oh, I mean nothing will come of it.
Not if we do our duty, said Adela.
Our duty?
You must speak to himtell him how we feel; that we shall never forgive him, that we can't endure it.
He'll think I'm cheeky, returned Godfrey, looking down at his papers, with his back to her and his hands in his pockets.
Cheeky, to plead for
her
memory?
He'll say it's none of my business.
Then you believe he'll do it? cried the girl.
Not a bit. Go to bed!
I'
ll speak to him, said Adela, as pale as a young priestess.
Don't cry out till you're hurt; wait till he speaks to
you.
He won't, he won't! the girl declared. He'll do it without telling us.
Her brother had faced round to her again; he started a little at this, and again, at one of the candles, lighted his cigarette, which had gone out. She looked at him a moment; then he said something that surprised her.
Is Mrs. Churchley very rich?
 
Page 783
I haven't the least idea. What has that to do with it?
Godfrey puffed his cigarette. Does she live as if she were?
She has got a lot of showy things.
Well, we must keep our eyes open, said Godfrey. And now you
must
let me get on. He kissed his sister, as if to make up for dismissing her, or for his failure to take fire; and she held him a moment, burying her head on his shoulder. A wave of emotion surged through her; she broke out with a wail:
Ah, why did she leave us? Why did she leave us?
Yes, why indeed? the young man sighed, disengaging himself with a movement of oppression.
II.
Adela was so far right as that by the end of the week, though she remained certain, her father had not made the announcement she dreaded. What made her certain was the sense of her changed relations with himof there being between them something unexpressed, something of which she was as conscious as she would have been of an unhealed wound. When she spoke of this to Godfrey, he said the change was of her own making, that she was cruelly unjust to the governor. She suffered even more from her brother's unexpected perversity; she had had so different a theory about him that her disappointment was almost an humiliation and she needed all her fortitude to pitch her faith lower. She wondered what had happened to him and why he had changed. She would have trusted him to feel right about anything, above all about such a matter as this. Their worship of their mother's memory, their recognition of her sacred place in their past, her exquisite influence in their father's life, his fortunes, his career, in the whole history of the family and welfare of the houseaccomplished, clever, gentle, good, beautiful and capable as she had been, a woman whose soft distinction was universally proclaimed, so that on her death one of the Princesses, the most august of her friends, had written Adela such a note about her as princesses were understood very seldom to write: their hushed tenderness over all this was a kind of religion, and also a sort of honour, in falling away from which there was a
 
Page 784
semblance of treachery. This was not the way people usually felt in London, she knew; but, strenuous, ardent, observant girl as she was, with secrecies of sentiment and dim originalities of attitude, she had already made up her mind that London was no place to look for delicacies. Remembrance there was hammered thin, and to be faithful was to be a bore. The patient dead were sacrificed; they had no shrines, for people were literally ashamed of mourning. When they had hustled all sensibility out of their lives, they invented the fiction that they felt too much to utter. Adela said nothing to her sisters; this reticence was part of the virtue it was her system to exercise for them.
She
was to be their mother, a direct deputy and representative. Before the vision of that other woman parading in such a character, she felt capable of ingenuities and subtleties. The foremost of these was tremulously to watch her father. Five days after they had dined together at Mrs. Churchley's he asked her if she had been to see that lady.
No indeed, why should I? Adela knew that he knew she had not been, since Mrs. Churchley would have told him.
Don't you call on people after you dine with them? said Colonel Chart.
Yes, in the course of time. I don't rush off within the week.
Her father looked at her, and his eyes were colder than she had ever seen them, which was probably, she reflected, just the way her own appeared to him. Then you'll please rush off to-morrow. She's to dine with us on the 12th, and I shall expect your sisters to come down.
Adela stared. To a dinner party?
It's not to be a dinner party. I want them to know Mrs. Churchley.
Is there to be nobody else?
Godfrey, of course. A family party.
The girl asked her brother that evening if
that
was not tantamount to an announcement. He looked at her queerly, and then he said,
I'
ve been to see her.
What on earth did you do that for?
Father told me he wished it.
Then he
has
told you?

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