The New York Stories of Henry James

by Henry James

  June 6.—Her unconsciousness is being rapidly dispelled; Mr. Frank has been here every day since I last wrote. He is a singular youth, and I don’t make him out; I think there is more in him than I supposed at first. He doesn’t bore us, and he has become, to a certain extent, one of the family. I like him very much, and he excites my curiosity. I don’t quite see where he expects to come out. I mentioned some time back that Eunice had told me he made her uncomfortable; and now, if that continues, she appears to have resigned herself. He has asked her repeatedly to drive with him, and twice she has consented; he has a very pretty pair of horses, and a vehicle that holds but two persons. I told him I could give him no positive help, but I do leave them together. Of course Eunice has noticed this—it is the only intimation I have given her that I am aware of his intentions. I have constantly expected her to say something, but she has said nothing, and it is possible that Mr. Frank is making an impression. He makes love very reasonably; evidently his idea is to be intensely gradual. Of course it isn’t gradual to come every day; but he does very little on any one occasion. That, at least, is my impression; for when I talk of his making love I don’t mean that I see it. When the three of us are together he talks to me quite as much as to her, and there is no difference in his manner from one of us to the other. His shyness is wearing off, and he blushes so much less that I have discovered his natural hue. It has several shades less of crimson than I supposed. I have taken care that he should not see me alone, for I don’t wish him to talk to me of what he is doing—I wish to have nothing to say about it. He has looked at me several times in the same way in which he looked just before we parted, that day he found me sketching in the Park; that is, as if he wished to have some special understanding with me. But I don’t want a special understanding, and I pretend not to see his looks. I don’t exactly see why Eunice doesn’t speak to me, and why she expresses no surprise at Mr. Frank’s sudden devotion. Perhaps Mr. Caliph has notified her, and she is prepared for everything—prepared even to accept the young Adrian. I have an idea he will be rather taken in if she does. Perhaps the day will come soon when I shall think it well to say: “Take care, take care; you may succeed!” He improves on acquaintance; he knows a great many things, and he is a gentleman to his fingertips. We talk very often about Rome; he has made out every inscription for himself, and has got them all written down in a little book. He brought it the other afternoon and read some of them out to us, and it was more amusing than it may sound. I listen to such things because I can listen to anything about Rome; and Eunice listens possibly because Mr. Caliph has told her to. She appears ready to do anything he tells her; he has been sending her some more papers to sign. He has not been here since the day he gave me the flowers; he went back to Washington shortly after that. She has received several letters from him, accompanying documents that look very legal. She has said nothing to me about them, and since I uttered those words of warning which I noted here at the time, I have asked no questions and offered no criticism. Sometimes I wonder whether I myself had not better speak to Mr. Ermine; it is only the fear of being idiotic and meddlesome that restrains me. It seems to me so odd there should be no one else; Mr. Caliph appears to have everything in his own hands. We are to go down to our “seat,” as Mrs. Ermine says, next week. That brilliant woman has left town herself, like many other people, and is staying with one of her daughters. Then she is going to the other, and then she is coming to Eunice, at Cornerville.

  II

  JUNE 8.—Late this afternoon—about an hour before dinner—Mr. Frank arrived with what Mrs. Ermine calls his equipage, and asked her to take a short drive with him. At first she declined—said it was too hot, too late, she was too tired; but he seemed very much in earnest and begged her to think better of it. She consented at last, and when she had left the room to arrange herself, he turned to me with a little grin of elation. I saw he was going to say something about his prospects, and I determined, this time, to give him a chance. Besides, I was curious to know how he believed himself to be getting on. To my surprise, he disappointed my curiosity; he only said, with his timid brightness, “I am always so glad when I carry my point.”

  “Your point? Oh yes. I think I know what you mean.”

  “It’s what I told you that day.” He seemed slightly surprised that I should be in doubt as to whether he had really presented himself as a lover.

  “Do you mean to ask her to marry you?”

  He stared a little, looking graver. “Do you mean to-day?”

  “Well, yes, to-day, for instance; you have urged her so to drive.”

  “I don’t think I will do it to-day; it’s too soon.”

  His gravity was natural enough, I suppose; but it had suddenly become so intense that the effect was comical, and I could not help laughing. “Very good; whenever you please.”

  “Don’t you think it’s too soon?” he asked.

  “Ah, I know nothing about it.”

  “I have seen her alone only four or five times.”

  “You must go on as you think best,” I said.

  “It’s hard to tell. My position is very difficult.” And then he began to smile again. He is certainly very odd.

  It is my fault, I suppose, that I am too impatient of what I don’t understand; and I don’t understand this odd mixture of calculation and passion, or the singular alternation of Mr. Frank’s confessions and reserves. “I can’t enter into your position,” I said; “I can’t advise you or help you in any way.” Even to myself my voice sounded a little hard as I spoke, and he was evidently discomposed by it.

  He blushed as usual, and fell to putting on his gloves. “I think a great deal of your opinion, and for several days I have wanted to ask you.”

  “Yes, I have seen that.”

  “How have you seen it?”

  “By the way you have looked at me.”

  He hesitated a moment. “Yes, I have looked at you—I know that. There is a great deal in your face to see.”

  This remark, under the circumstances, struck me as absurd; I began to laugh again. “You speak of it as if it were a collection of curiosities.” He looked away now, he wouldn’t meet my eye, and I saw that I had made him feel thoroughly uncomfortable. To lead the conversation back into the commonplace, I asked him where he intended to drive.

  “It doesn’t matter much where we go—it’s so pretty everywhere now.” He was evidently not thinking of his drive, and suddenly he broke out, “I want to know whether you think she likes me.”

  “I haven’t the least idea. She hasn’t told me.”

  “Do you think she knows that I mean to propose to her?”

  “You ought to be able to judge of that better than I.”

  “I am afraid of taking too much for granted; also of taking her by surprise.”

  “So that—in her agitation—she might accept you? Is that what you are afraid of?”

  “I don’t know what makes you say that. I wish her to accept me.”

  “Are you very sure?”

  “Perfectly sure. Why not? She is a charming creature.”

  “So much the better, then; perhaps she will.”

  “You don’t believe it,” he exclaimed, as if it were very clever of him to have discovered that.

  “You think too much of what I believe. That has nothing to do with the matter.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Mr. Frank, apparently wishing very much to agree with me.

  “You had better find out as soon as possible from Eunice herself,” I added.

  “I haven’t expected to know—for some time.”

  “Do you mean for a year or two? She will be ready to tell you before that.”

  “Oh no—not a year or two; but a few weeks.”

  “You know you come to the house every day. You ought to explain to her.”

  “Perhaps I had better not come so often.”

  “Perhaps not!”

  “I like it very much,” he said, smiling.

  I look
ed at him a moment; I don’t know what he has got in his eyes. “Don’t change! You are such a good young man that I don’t know what we should do without you.” And I left him to wait alone for Eunice.

  From my window, above, I saw them leave the door; they make a fair, bright young couple as they sit together. They had not been gone a quarter of an hour when Mr. Caliph’s name was brought up to me. He had asked for me—me alone; he begged that I would do him the favour to see him for ten minutes. I don’t know why this announcement should have made me nervous; but it did. My heart beat at the prospect of entering into direct relations with Mr. Caliph. He is very clever, much thought of, and talked of; and yet I had vaguely suspected him—of I don’t know what! I became conscious of that, and felt the responsibility of it; though I didn’t foresee, and indeed don’t think I foresee yet, any danger of a collision between us. It is to be noted, moreover, that even a woman who is both plain and conceited must feel a certain agitation at entering the presence of Haroun-al-Raschid. I had begun to dress for dinner, and I kept him waiting till I had taken my usual time to finish. I always take some such revenge as that upon men who make me nervous. He is the sort of man who feels immediately whether a woman is well-dressed or not; but I don’t think this reflection really had much to do with my putting on the freshest of my three little French gowns.

  He sat there, watch in hand; at least he slipped it into his pocket as I came into the room. He was not pleased at having had to wait, and when I apologised, hypocritically, for having kept him, he answered, with a certain dryness, that he had come to transact an important piece of business in a very short space of time. I wondered what his business could be, and whether he had come to confess to me that he had spent Eunice’s money for his own purposes. Did he wish me to use my influence with her not to make a scandal? He didn’t look like a man who has come to ask a favour of that kind; but I am sure that if he ever does ask it he will not look at all as he might be expected to look. He was clad in white garments, from head to foot, in recognition of the hot weather, and he had half a dozen roses in his button-hole. This time his flowers were for himself. His white clothes made him look as big as Henry VIII; but don’t tell me he is not a Jew! He’s a Jew of the artistic, not of the commercial type; and as I stood there I thought him a very strange person to have as one’s trustee. It seemed to me that he would carry such an office into transcendental regions, out of all common jurisdictions; and it was a comfort to me to remember that I have no property to be taken care of. Mr. Caliph kept a pocket-handkerchief, with an enormous monogram, in his large tapering hand, and every other moment he touched his face with it. He evidently suffers from the heat. With all that, il est bien beau. His business was not what had at first occurred to me; but I don’t know that it was much less strange.

  “I knew I should find you alone, because Adrian told me this morning that he meant to come and ask our young friend to drive. I was glad of that; I have been wishing to see you alone, and I didn’t know how to manage it.”

  “You see it’s very simple. Didn’t you send your brother?” I asked. In another place, to another person, this might have sounded impertinent; but evidently, addressed to Mr. Caliph, things have a special measure, and this I instinctively felt. He will take a great deal, and he will give a great deal.

  He looked at me a moment, as if he were trying to measure what I would take. “I see you are going to be a very satisfactory person to talk with,” he answered. “That’s exactly what I counted on. I want you to help me.”

  “I thought there was some reason why Mr. Frank should urge Eunice so to go,” I went on; refreshed a little, I admit, by these words of commendation. “At first she was unwilling.”

  “Is she usually unwilling—and does he usually have to be urgent?” he asked, like a man pleased to come straight to the point.

  “What does it matter, so long as she consents in the end?” I responded, with a smile that made him smile. There is a singular stimulus, even a sort of excitement, in talking with him; he makes one wish to venture. And this not as women usually venture, because they have a sense of impunity, but, on the contrary, because one has a prevision of penalties—those penalties which give a kind of dignity to sarcasm. He must be a dangerous man to irritate.

  “Do you think she will consent, in the end?” he inquired; and though I had now foreseen what he was coming to, I felt that, even with various precautions, which he had plainly decided not to take, there would still have been a certain crudity in it when, a moment later, he put his errand into words. “I want my little brother to marry her, and I want you to help me bring it about.” Then he told me that he knew his brother had already spoken to me, but that he believed I had not promised him much countenance. He wished me to think well of the plan; it would be a delightful marriage.

  “Delightful for your brother, yes. That’s what strikes me most.”

  “Delightful for him, certainly; but also very pleasant for Eunice, as things go here. Adrian is the best fellow in the world; he’s a gentleman; he hasn’t a vice or a fault; he is very well educated; and he has twenty thousand a year. A lovely property.”

  “Not in trust?” I said, looking into Mr. Caliph’s extraordinary eyes.

  “Oh no; he has full control of it. But he is wonderfully careful.”

  “He doesn’t trouble you with it?”

  “Oh, dear, no; why should he? Thank God, I haven’t got that on my back. His property comes to him from his father, who had nothing to do with me; didn’t even like me, I think. He has capital advisers—presidents of banks, overseers of hospitals, and all that sort of thing. They have put him in the way of some excellent investments.”

  As I write this, I am surprised at my audacity; but, somehow, it didn’t seem so great at the time, and he gave absolutely no sign of seeing more in what I said than appeared. He evidently desires the marriage immensely, and he was thinking only of putting it before me so that I too should think well of it; for evidently, like his brother, he has the most exaggerated opinion of my influence with Eunice. On Mr. Frank’s part this doesn’t surprise me so much; but I confess it seems to me odd that a man of Mr. Caliph’s acuteness should make the mistake of taking me for one of those persons who covet influence and like to pull the wires of other people’s actions. I have a horror of influence, and should never have consented to come and live with Eunice if I had not seen that she is at bottom much stronger than I, who am not at all strong, in spite of my grand airs. Mr. Caliph, I suppose, cannot conceive of a woman in my dependent position being indifferent to opportunities for working in the dark; but he ought to leave those vulgar imputations to Mrs. Ermine. He ought, with his intelligence, to see one as one is; or do I possibly exaggerate that intelligence? “Do you know I feel as if you were asking me to take part in a conspiracy?” I made that announcement with as little delay as possible.

  He stared a moment, and then he said that he didn’t in the least repudiate that view of his proposal. He admitted that he was a conspirator—in an excellent cause. All match-making was conspiracy. It was impossible that as a superior woman I should enter into his ideas, and he was sure that I had seen too much of the world to say anything so banal as that the young people were not in love with each other. That was only a basis for marriage when better things were lacking. It was decent, it was fitting, that Eunice should be settled in life; his conscience would not be at rest about her until he should see that well arranged. He was not in the least afraid of that word “arrangement”; a marriage was an eminently practical matter, and it could not be too much arranged. He confessed that he took the European view. He thought that a young girl’s elders ought to see that she marries in a way in which certain definite proprieties are observed. He was sure of his brother; he knew how faultless Adrian was. He talked for some time, and said a great deal that I had said to myself the other day, after Mr. Frank spoke to me; said, in particular, very much what I had thought, about the beauty of arrangements—that there are far too few
among Americans who marry, that we are the people in the world who divorce and separate most, that there would be much less of this sort of thing if young people were helped to choose; if marriages were, as one might say, presented to them. I listened to Mr. Caliph with my best attention, thinking it was odd that, on his lips, certain things which I had phrased to myself in very much the same way should sound so differently. They ought to have sounded better, uttered as they were with the energy, the authority, the lucidity, of a man accustomed to making arguments; but somehow they didn’t. I am afraid I am very perverse. I answered—I hardly remember what; but there was a taint of that perversity in it. As he rejoined, I felt that he was growing urgent—very urgent; he has an immense desire that something may be done. I remember saying at last, “What I don’t understand is why your brother should wish to marry my cousin. He has told me he is not in love with her. Has your presentation of the idea, as you call it—has that been enough? Is he acting simply at your request?”

  I saw that his reply was not perfectly ready, and for a moment those strange eyes of his emitted a ray that I had not seen before. They seemed to say, “Are you really taking liberties with me? Be on your guard; I may be dangerous.” But he always smiles. Yes, I think he is dangerous, though I don’t know exactly what he could do to me. I believe he would smile at the hangman, if he were condemned to meet him. He is very angry with his brother for having admitted to me that the sentiment he entertains for Eunice is not a passion; as if it would have been possible for him, under my eyes, to pretend that he is in love! I don’t think I am afraid of Mr. Caliph; I don’t desire to take liberties with him (as his eyes seemed to call it) or with any one; but, decidedly, I am not afraid of him. If it came to protecting Eunice, for instance; to demanding justice—But what extravagances am I writing? He answered, in a moment, with a good deal of dignity, and even a good deal of reason, that his brother has the greatest admiration for my cousin, that he agrees fully and cordially with everything he (Mr. Caliph) has said to him about its being an excellent match, that he wants very much to marry, and wants to marry as a gentleman should. If he is not in love with Eunice, moreover, he is not in love with any one else.