The New York Stories of Henry James

by Henry James

  I saw Mr. Frank the next day; I had given him leave to come back at noon. He joined me in the grounds, where as usual I had set up my easel. I left it to his discretion to call first at the house and explain both his absence and his presence to Eunice and Mrs. Ermine—the latter especially—ignorant as yet of his visit the night before, of which I had not spoken to them. He sat down beside me on a garden-chair and watched me as I went on with my work. For half an hour very few words passed between us; I felt that he was happy to sit there, to be near me, to see me—strange as it seems! and for myself there was a certain sweetness in knowing it, though it was the sweetness of charity, not of elation or triumph. He must have seen I was only pretending to paint—if he followed my brush, which I suppose he didn’t. My mind was full of a determination I had arrived at after many waverings in the hours of the night. It had come to me toward morning as a kind of inspiration. I could never marry him, but was there not some way in which I could utilise his devotion? At the present moment, only forty-eight hours later, it seems strange, unreal, almost grotesque; but for ten minutes I thought I saw the light. As we sat there under the great trees, in the stillness of the noon, I suddenly turned and said to him—

  “I thank you for everything you have told me; it gives me very nearly all the pleasure you could wish. I believe in you; I accept every assurance of your devotion. I think that devotion is capable of going very far; and I am going to put it to a tremendous test, one of the greatest, probably, to which a man was ever subjected.”

  He stared, leaning forward, with his hands on his knees. “Any test—any test——” he murmured.

  “Don’t give up Eunice, then; make another trial; I wish her to marry you!”

  My words may have sounded like an atrocious joke, but they represented for me a great deal of hope and cheer. They brought a deep blush into Adrian Frank’s face; he winced a little, as if he had been struck by a hand whose blow he could not return, and the tears suddenly started to his eyes. “Oh, Miss Condit!” he exclaimed.

  What I saw before me was bright and definite; his distress seemed to me no obstacle, and I went on with a serenity of which I longed to make him perceive the underlying support. “Of course what I say seems to you like a deliberate insult; but nothing would induce me to give you pain if it were possible to spare you. But it isn’t possible, my dear friend; it isn’t possible. There is pain for you in the best thing I can say to you; there are situations in life in which we can only accept our pain. I can never marry you; I shall never marry any one. I am an old maid, and how can an old maid have a husband? I will be your friend, your sister, your brother, your mother, but I will never be your wife. I should like immensely to be your brother, for I don’t like the brother you have got, and I think you deserve a better one. I believe, as I tell you, in everything you have said to me—in your affection, your tenderness, your honesty, the full consideration you have given to the whole matter. I am happier and richer for knowing it all; and I can assure you that it gives something to life which life didn’t have before. We shall be good friends, dear friends, always, whatever happens. But I can’t be your wife—I want you for some one else. You will say I have changed—that I ought to have spoken in this way three months ago. But I haven’t changed—it is circumstances that have changed. I see reasons for your marrying my cousin that I didn’t see then. I can’t say that she will listen to you now, any more than she did then; I don’t speak of her; I speak only of you and of myself. I wish you to make another attempt; and I wish you to make it, this time, with my full confidence and support. Moreover, I attach a condition to it—a condition I will tell you presently. Do you think me slightly demented, malignantly perverse, atrociously cruel? If you could see the bottom of my heart you would find something there which, I think, would almost give you joy. To ask you to do something you don’t want to do as a substitute for something you desire, and to attach to the hard achievement a condition which will require a good deal of thinking of and will certainly make it harder—you may well believe I have some extraordinary reason for taking such a line as this. For remember, to begin with, that I can never marry you.”

  “Never—never—never?”

  “Never, never, never.”

  “And what is your extraordinary reason?”

  “Simply that I wish Eunice to have your protection, your kindness, your fortune.”

  “My fortune?”

  “She has lost her own. She will be poor.”

  “Pray, how has she lost it?” the poor fellow asked, beginning to frown, and more and more bewildered.

  “I can’t tell you that, and you must never ask. But the fact is certain. The greater part of her property has gone; she has known it for some little time.”

  “For some little time? Why, she never showed any change.”

  “You never saw it, that was all! You were thinking of me,” and I believe I accompanied this remark with a smile—a smile which was most inconsiderate, for it could only mystify him more.

  I think at first he scarcely believed me. “What a singular time to choose to give a large party!” he exclaimed, looking at me with eyes quite unlike his old—or rather his young—ones; eyes that, instead of overlooking half the things before them (which was their former habit), tried to see a great deal more in my face, in my words, than was visible on the surface. I don’t know what poor Adrian Frank saw—I shall never know all that he saw.

  “I agree with you that it was a very singular time,” I said. “You don’t understand me—you can’t—I don’t expect you to”; I went on. “That is what I mean by devotion, and that is the kind of appeal I make to you: to take me on trust, to act in the dark, to do something simply because I wish it.”

  He looked at me as if he would fathom the depths of my soul, and my soul had never seemed to myself so deep. “To marry your cousin—that’s all?” he said, with a strange little laugh.

  “Oh no, it’s not all: to be very kind to her as well.”

  “To give her plenty of money, above all?”

  “You make me feel very ridiculous; but I should not make this request of you if you had not a fortune.”

  “She can have my money without marrying me.”

  “That’s absurd. How could she take your money?”

  “How, then, can she take me?”

  “That’s exactly what I wish to see. I told you with my own lips, weeks ago, that she would only marry a man she should love; and I may seem to contradict myself in taking up now a supposition so different. But, as I tell you, everything has changed.”

  “You think her capable, in other words, of marrying for money.”

  “For money? Is your money all there is of you? Is there a better fellow than you—is there a more perfect gentleman?”

  He turned away his face at this, leaned it in his hands and groaned. I pitied him, but I wonder now that I shouldn’t have pitied him more; that my pity should not have checked me. But I was too full of my idea. “It’s like a fate,” he murmured; “first my brother, and then you. I can’t understand.”

  “Yes, I know your brother wants it—wants it now more than ever. But I don’t care what your brother wants; and my idea is entirely independent of his. I have not the least conviction that you will succeed at first any better than you have done already. But it may be only a question of time, if you will wait and watch, and let me help you. You know you asked me to help you before, and then I wouldn’t. But I repeat it again and again, at present everything is changed. Let me wait with you, let me watch with you. If you succeed, you will be very dear to me; if you fail, you will be still more so. You see it’s an act of devotion, if there ever was one. I am quite aware that I ask of you something unprecedented and extraordinary. Oh, it may easily be too much for you. I can only put it before you—that’s all; and as I say, I can help you. You will both be my children—I shall be near you always. If you can’t marry me, perhaps you will make up your mind that this is the next best thing. You know you said that las
t night, yourself.”

  He had begun to listen to me a little, as if he were being persuaded. “Of course, I should let her know that I love you.”

  “She is capable of saying that you can’t love me more than she does.”

  “I don’t believe she is capable of saying any such folly. But we shall see.”

  “Yes; but not to-day, not to-morrow. Not at all for the present. You must wait a great many months.”

  “I will wait as long as you please.”

  “And you mustn’t say a word to me of the kind you said last night.”

  “Is that your condition?”

  “Oh no; my condition is a very different matter, and very difficult. It will probably spoil everything.”

  “Please, then, let me hear it at once.”

  “It is very hard for me to mention it; you must give me time.” I turned back to my little easel and began to daub again; but I think my hand trembled, for my heart was beating fast. There was a silence of many moments; I couldn’t make up my mind to speak.

  “How in the world has she lost her money?” Mr. Frank asked, abruptly, as if the question had just come into his mind. “Hasn’t my brother the charge of her affairs?”

  “Mr. Caliph is her trustee. I can’t tell you how the losses have occurred.”

  He got up quickly. “Do you mean that they have occurred through him?”

  I looked up at him, and there was something in his face which made me leave my work and rise also. “I will tell you my condition now,” I said. “It is that you should ask no questions—not one!” This was not what I had had in my mind; but I had not courage for more, and this had to serve.

  He had turned very pale, and I laid my hand on his arm, while he looked at me as if he wished to wrest my secret out of my eyes. My secret, I call it, by courtesy; God knows I had come terribly near telling it. God will forgive me, but Eunice probably will not. Had I broken my vow, or had I kept it? I asked myself this, and the answer, so far as I read it in Mr. Frank’s eyes, was not reassuring. I dreaded his next question; but when it came it was not what I had expected. Something violent took place in his own mind—something I couldn’t follow.

  “If I do what you ask me, what will be my reward?”

  “You will make me very happy.”

  “And what shall I make your cousin?—God help us!”

  “Less wretched than she is to-day.”

  “Is she ‘wretched’?” he asked, frowning as he did before—a most distressing change in his mild mask.

  “Ah, when I think that I have to tell you that—that you have never noticed it—I despair!” I exclaimed, with a laugh.

  I had laid my hand on his arm, and he placed his right hand upon it, holding it there. He kept it a moment in his grasp, and then he said, “Don’t despair!”

  “Promise me to wait,” I answered. “Everything is in your waiting.”

  “I promise you!” After which he asked me to kiss him, and I did so, on the lips. It was as if he were starting on a journey—leaving me for a long time.

  “Will you come when I send for you?” I asked.

  “I adore you!” he said; and he turned quickly away, to leave the place without going near the house. I watched him, and in a moment he was gone. He has not reappeared; and when I found, at lunch, that neither Eunice nor Mrs. Ermine alluded to his visit, I determined to keep the matter to myself. I said nothing about it, and up to the moment Eunice was taken ill—the next evening—he was not mentioned between us. I believe Mrs. Ermine more than once gave herself up to wonder as to his whereabouts, and declared that he had not the perfect manners of his step-brother, who was a religious observer of the convenances; but I think I managed to listen without confusion. Nevertheless, I had a bad conscience, and I have it still. It throbs a good deal as I sit there with Eunice in her darkened room. I have given her away; I have broken my vow. But what I wrote above is not true; she will forgive me! I sat at my easel for an hour after Mr. Frank left me, and then suddenly I found that I had cured myself of my folly by giving it out. It was the result of a sudden passion of desire to do something for Eunice. Passion is blind, and when I opened my eyes I saw ten thousand difficulties; that is, I saw one, which contained all the rest. That evening I wrote to Mr. Frank, to his New York address, to tell him that I had had a fit of madness, and that it had passed away; but that I was sorry to say it was not any more possible for me to marry him. I have had no answer to this letter; but what answer can he make to that last declaration? He will continue to adore me. How strange are the passions of men!

  New York, November 20.—I have been silent for three months, for good reasons. Eunice was ill for many weeks, but there was never a moment when I was really alarmed about her; I knew she would recover. In the last days of October she was strong enough to be brought up to town, where she had business to transact, and now she is almost herself again. I say almost, advisedly; for she will never be herself,—her old, sweet, trustful self, so far as I am concerned. She has simply not forgiven me! Strange things have happened—things that I don’t dare to consider too closely, lest I should not forgive myself. Eunice is in complete possession of her property! Mr. Caliph has made over to her everything—everything that had passed away; everything of which, three months ago, he could give no account whatever. He was with her in the country for a long day before we came up to town (during which I took care not to meet her), and after our return he was in and out of this house repeatedly. I once asked Eunice what he had to say to her, and she answered that he was “explaining.” A day or two later she told me that he had given a complete account of her affairs; everything was in order; she had been wrong in what she told me before. Beyond this little statement, however, she did no further penance for the impression she had given of Mr. Caliph’s earlier conduct. She doesn’t yet know what to think; she only feels that if she has recovered her property there has been some interference; and she traces, or at least imputes, such interference to me. If I have interfered, I have broken my vow; and for this, as I say, the gentle creature can’t forgive me. If the passions of men are strange, the passions of women are stranger still! It was sweeter for her to suffer at Mr Caliph’s hands than to receive her simple dues from them. She looks at me askance, and her coldness shows through a conscientious effort not to let me see the change in her feeling. Then she is puzzled and mystified; she can’t tell what has happened, or how and why it has happened. She has waked up from her illness into a different world—a world in which Mr. Caliph’s accounts were correct after all; in which, with the washing away of his stains, the colour has been quite washed out of his rich physiognomy. She vaguely feels that a sacrifice, a great effort of some kind, has been made for her, whereas her plan of life was to make the sacrifices and efforts herself. Yet she asks me no questions; the property is her right, after all, and I think there are certain things she is afraid to know. But I am more afraid than she, for it comes over me that a great sacrifice has indeed been made. I have not seen Adrian Frank since he parted from me under the trees three months ago. He has gone to Europe, and the day before he left I got a note from him. It contained only these words: “When you send for me I will come. I am waiting, as you told me.” It is my belief that up to the moment I spoke of Eunice’s loss of money and requested him to ask no questions, he had not definitely suspected his noble kinsman, but that my words kindled a train that lay all ready. He went away then to his shame, to the intolerable weight of it, and to heaven knows what sickening explanations with his step-brother! That gentleman has a still more brilliant bloom; he looks to my mind exactly as people look who have accepted a sacrifice; and he hasn’t had another word to say about Eunice’s marrying Mr. Adrian Frank. Mrs. Ermine sticks to her idea that Mr. Caliph and Eunice will make a match; but my belief is that Eunice is cured. Oh yes, she is cured! But I have done more than I meant to do, and I have not done it as I meant to do it; and I am very weary, and I shall write no more.

  November 27.—Oh yes, Eunice
is cured! And that is what she has not forgiven me. Mr. Caliph told her yesterday that Mr. Frank meant to spend the winter in Rome.

  December 3.—I have decided to return to Europe, and have written about my apartment in Rome. I shall leave New York, if possible, on the 10th. Eunice tells me she can easily believe I shall be happier there.

  December 7.—I must note something I had the satisfaction to-day to say to Mr. Caliph. He has not been here for three weeks, but this afternoon he came to call. He is no longer the trustee; he is only the visitor. I was alone in the library, into which he was ushered; and it was ten minutes before Eunice appeared. We had some talk, though my disgust for him is now unspeakable. At first it was of a very perfunctory kind; but suddenly he said, with more than his old impudence, “That was a most extraordinary interview of ours, at Cornerville!” I was surprised at his saying only this, for I expected him to take his revenge on me by some means or other for having put his brother on the scent of his misdeeds. I can only account for his silence on that subject by the supposition that Mr. Frank has been able to extract from him some pledge that I shall not be molested. He was, however, such an image of unrighteous success that the sight of him filled me with gall, and I tried to think of something which would make him smart.

  “I don’t know what you have done, nor how you have done it,” I said; “but you took a very roundabout way to arrive at certain ends. There was a time when you might have married Eunice.”