The Reverberator: A Novel

by Henry James

  “Why, Delia, he wants dreadfully to go—he told me so himself,” Francie argued, with passionless pauses.

  “Yes, and when he gets there he’ll want to come back. I thought you were so much interested in Paris.”

  “My poor child, I am interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested, father?”

  “Well, I don’t know how you could act differently, to show it.”

  “Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack understand I will.”

  “Oh, I guess he understands—he’s so bright,” Francie returned.

  “Yes, I guess he does—he is bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night, chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose.

  His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the younger girl. She was always passive however, always docile when Delia was, as she said, on the warpath, and though she had none of her sister’s insistence she was very courageous in suffering. She thought Delia whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have prevented her from ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while her companion’s grossness hurt something delicate that was in her. She knew that Delia loved her—not loving herself meanwhile a bit—as no one else in the world probably ever would; and there was something droll in such plans for her—plans of ambition which could only involve a loss. The real answer to anything, to everything Delia might say in her moods of prefigurement was—“Oh, if you want to make out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. Therefore if there is to be any comfort for either of us we had both much better just go on as we are.” She did not however on this occasion, meet her sister with this syllogism, because there happened to be a certain fascination in the way Delia set forth the great truth that the star of matrimony, for the American girl, was now shining in the east—in England and France and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of one of their own compeers to some count or some lord? Delia insisted on the fact that it was in that vast, vague section of the globe to which she never alluded save as “over here” that the American girl was now called upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie remarked that Mr. Probert was not a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that she didn’t care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she herself didn’t care but that Delia ought to, to be consistent.

  “Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared.

  “He hasn’t the same ability; not half.”

  “He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of people I want you to know.”

  “What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before they could turn round I should do something—in perfect innocence—that they would think monstrous.”

  “Well, what would that matter if he liked you?”

  “Oh, but he wouldn’t, then! He would hate me too.”

  “Then all you’ve got to do is not to do it,” Delia said.

  “Oh, but I should—every time,” her sister went on.

  Delia looked at her a moment. “What are you talking about?”

  “Yes, what am I? It’s disgusting!” And Francie sprang up.

  “I’m sorry you have such thoughts,” said Delia, sententiously.

  “It’s disgusting to talk about a gentleman—and his sisters and his society and everything else—before he has scarcely looked at you.”

  “It’s disgusting if he isn’t just dying; but it isn’t if he is.”

  “Well, I’ll make him skip!” Francie went on.

  “Oh, you’re worse than father!” her sister cried, giving her a push as they went to bed.

  They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before the time that had been fixed for dinner; the purpose of this being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight—a stroll on the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to this entertainment; the grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over the curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here and there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of the garrison. How it came, after Delia’s warning in regard to her carrying on (especially as she had not failed to feel the force of her sister’s wisdom), Francie could not have told herself: certain it is that before ten minutes had elapsed she perceived, first, that the evening would not pass without Mr. Flack’s taking in some way, and for a certain time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind them to exclaim upon the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he ended by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she felt that he wanted a great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched away before them (Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style), and he was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his determinations; they were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to protest, to let him know that it was really a waste of his great cleverness to count upon her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague, soft, negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who had not even the merit of coquetry and who only asked to be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still stood there, only looking, attentively enough, at the absent members of the party. Delia would wave her parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. Waterlow to bring her; Francie looked from one moment to another for some such manifestation as that. But no manifestation came; none at least but the odd spectacle, presently, of the group turning round and, evidently under Delia’s direction, retracing its steps. Francie guessed in a moment what was meant by that: it was the most definite signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, looking up at her companion with troubled eyes, at the idea, of being made the object of converging policies. Such a thankless, bored, evasive little object as she felt herself! What Delia had said in turning away was—“Yes, I am watching you, and I depend upon you to finish him up. Stay there with him—go off with him (I’ll give you half an hour if necessary), only settle him once for all. It is very kind of me to give you this chance; and in return for it I expect you to be able to tell me this evening that he has got his answer. Shut him up!”

  Francie did not in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious historian to admit that he seemed to her decidedly a brilliant being. In many a girl the sort of appreciation she had of him might easily have been converted by peremptory treatment from outside into something more exalted. I do not misrepresent the perversity of women in saying that our young lady might at this moment have replied to her sister with: “No, I was not in love with him, but somehow since you are so very prohibitive I foresee that I shall be if he asks me.” It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie’s simplicity of character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order to prove to herself that she was not bullied. She didn’t care whether she were bullied or not; and she was perfectly capable of letting her sister believe that she had carried mildness to the point of giving up a man she had
a secret sentiment for in order to oblige that large-brained young lady. She was not clear herself as to whether it might not be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed, inert form quite at the bottom of her heart and she had never yet invented any consoling theory to cover her want of a high spirit. She felt, as she looked up at Mr. Flack, that she didn’t care even if he should think that she sacrificed him to a childish subservience. His bright eyes were hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned her own again towards her retreating companions. “They are going to dinner; we oughtn’t to be dawdling here,” she said.

  “Well, if they are going to dinner they’ll have to eat the napkins. I ordered it and I know when it will be ready,” George Flack replied. “Besides they are not going to dinner, they are going to walk in the park. Don’t you worry, we sha’n’t lose them. I wish we could!” the young man added, smiling.

  “You wish we could?”

  “I should like to feel that you were under my particular protection.”

  “Well, I don’t know what the dangers are,” said Francie, setting herself in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few steps he stopped her again.

  “You won’t have confidence. I wish you would believe what I tell you.”

  “You haven’t told me anything.” And she turned her back to him, looking away at the splendid view. “I admire the scenery,” she added in a moment.

  “Oh, bother the scenery! I want to tell you something about myself, if I could flatter myself that you would take any interest in it.” He had thrust his cane, waist-high, into the low wall of the terrace, and he leaned against it, screwing the point gently round with both hands.

  “I’ll take an interest if I can understand,” said Francie.

  “You can understand easy enough, if you’ll try. I’ve got some news from America to-day that has pleased me very much. The Reverberator has taken a jump.”

  This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. “Taken a jump?” she repeated.

  “It has gone straight up. It’s in the second hundred thousand.”

  “Hundred thousand dollars?” said Francie.

  “No, Miss Francie, copies. That’s the circulation. But the dollars are footing up, too.”

  “And do they all come to you?”

  “Precious few of them! I wish they did; it’s a pleasant property.”

  “Then it isn’t yours?” she asked, turning round to him. It was an impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife.

  “Mine? You don’t mean to say you suppose I own it!” George Flack exclaimed. The light projected upon her innocence by these words was so strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly—“It’s a pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for granted. Do you think property grows on you, like a moustache? Well, it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I shouldn’t be stumping round here; I’d give my attention to another branch of the business. That is I would give my attention to all, but I wouldn’t go round with the cart. But I’m going to get hold of it, and I want you to help me,” the young man went on; “that’s just what I wanted to speak to you about. It’s a big thing already and I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper the world has seen. That’s where the future lies, and the man who sees it first is the man who’ll make his pile. It’s a field for enlightened enterprise that hasn’t yet begun to be worked.” He continued, glowing, almost suddenly, with his idea, and one of his eyes half closed itself knowingly, in a way that was habitual with him when he talked consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the prospectus mingling with the accent of passion. But it was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw everything in its largest relations. “There are ten thousand things to do that haven’t been done, and I am going to do them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the prominent members themselves (oh, they can be fixed—you’ll see!) from day to day and from hour to hour and served up at every breakfast-table in the United States—that’s what the American people want and that’s what the American people are going to have. I wouldn’t say it to every one, but I don’t mind telling you, that I consider I have about as fine a sense as any one of what’s going to be required in future over there. I’m going for the secrets, the chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want is just what isn’t told, and I’m going to tell it. Oh, they’re bound to have the plums! That’s about played out, any way, the idea of sticking up a sign of ‘private’ and thinking you can keep the place to yourself. You can’t do it—you can’t keep out the light of the Press. Now what I’m going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet made and to make it shine all over the place. We’ll see who’s private then! I’ll make them crowd in themselves with the information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it’s a job in which you can give me a lovely push.”

  “Well, I don’t see how,” said Francie, candidly. “I haven’t got any secrets.” She spoke gaily, because she was relieved; she thought she had in reality a glimpse of what he wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he didn’t own the great newspaper (her conception of such matters was of the dimmest), he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently comprehended that money was needed for that. She further seemed to perceive that he presented himself to her as moneyless and that this brought them round by a vague but comfortable transition to a pleasant consciousness that her father was not. The remaining induction, silently made, was quick and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum required and just passing it over to Mr. Flack. The greatness of his enterprise and the magnitude of his conceptions appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it did not for a moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for pecuniary aid, though indeed she was capable of thinking that odd if she had meditated upon it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea of putting her hand into her father’s pocket, and she felt that even Delia would be glad to satisfy the young man by this casual gesture. I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from the way in which he replied: “Do you mean to say you don’t know, after all I’ve done?”

  “I am sure I don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “Haven’t I tried—all I know—to make you like me?”

  “Oh dear, I do like you!” cried Francie; “but how will that help you?”

  “It will help me if you will understand that I love you.”

  “Well, I won’t understand!” replied the girl, walking off.

  He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said—“Do you mean to say you haven’t found that out?”

  “Oh, I don’t find things out—I ain’t an editor!” Francie laughed.

  “You draw me out and then you jibe at me,” Mr. Flack remarked.

  “I didn’t draw you out. Couldn’t you see me just straining to get away?”

  “Don’t you sympathise with my ideas?”

  “Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think they’re splendid,” said Francie, who did not in the least understand them.

  “Well, then, why won’t you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, your faith would be everything to me.”

  “I’m very sorry—but I can’t—I can’t,” the girl declared.

  “You could if you would, quick enough.”

  “Well, then, I won’t!” And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to mitigate something of their asperity, Francie paused a moment and said: “You must remember that I never said I would—nor anything like it. I thought you just wanted me to speak to my father.”

  “Of course I su
pposed you would do that.”

  “I mean about your paper.”

  “About my paper?”

  “So as he could give you the money—to do what you want.”

  “Lord, you’re too sweet!” George Flack exclaimed, staring. “Do you suppose I would ever touch a cent of your father’s money?”—a speech not so hypocritical as it may sound, inasmuch as the young man, who had his own refinements, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to be, of the plainness of twitching the purse-strings of his potential father-in-law with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour about the interviewing business, but he had never dreamed that this amiable man would give him money as an interesting straggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that of Francie’s husband, and then it would come to Francie—not to him. This reasoning did not diminish his desire to assume such a character, and his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side ached together in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him blush red for a moment. This caused her own colour to rise—she could scarcely have said why—and she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assured her he was the best fellow in the world. To this she replied that if he didn’t leave her alone she would cry—and how would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He said, “Damn the others!” but that did not help his case, and at last he broke out: “Will you just tell me this, then—is it because you’ve promised Miss Delia?” Francie answered that she had not promised Miss Delia anything, and her companion went on: “Of course I know what she has got in her head: she wants to get you into the high set—the grand monde, as they call it here; but I didn’t suppose you’d let her fix your life for you. You were very different before he turned up.”

  “She never fixed anything for me. I haven’t got any life and I don’t want to have,” said Francie. “And I don’t know who you are talking about, either!”