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Title: Four Meetings
Author: Henry James
Release Date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21773]
[Most recently updated: April 15, 2023]
Language: English
Produced by: David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR MEETINGS ***
FOUR MEETINGS
By Henry James
1885
I saw her only four times, but I remember them vividly; she made an
impression upon me. I thought her very pretty and very interesting,—a
charming specimen of a type. I am very sorry to hear of her death; and
yet, when I think of it, why should I be sorry? The last time I saw her
she was certainly not—But I will describe all our meetings in order.I saw her only four times, but I remember them vividly; she made an impression
upon me. I thought her very pretty and very interesting,—a charming specimen of
a type. I am very sorry to hear of her death; and yet, when I think of it, why
should I be sorry? The last time I saw her she was certainly not—But I will
describe all our meetings in order.
Contents
I.
The first one took place in the country, at a little tea-party, one snowy
night. It must have been some seventeen years ago. My friend Latouche, going to
spend Christmas with his mother, had persuaded me to go with him, and the good
lady had given in our honor the entertainment of which I speak. To me it was
really entertaining; I had never been in the depths of New England at that
season. It had been snowing all day, and the drifts were knee-high. I wondered
how the ladies had made their way to the house; but I perceived that at
Grimwinter a conversazione offering the attraction of two gentlemen from New
York was felt to be worth an effort.
Mrs. Latouche, in the course of the evening, asked me if I “didn’t want to”
show the photographs to some of the young ladies. The photographs were in a
couple of great portfolios, and had been brought home by her son, who, like
myself, was lately returned from Europe. I looked round and was struck with the
fact that most of the young ladies were provided with an object of interest
more absorbing than the most vivid sun-picture. But there was a person standing
alone near the mantelshelf, and looking round the room with a small gentle
smile which seemed at odds, somehow, with her isolation. I looked at her a
moment, and then said, “I should like to show them to that young lady.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Latouche, “she is just the person. She doesn’t care for
flirting; I will speak to her.”
I rejoined that if she did not care for flirting, she was, perhaps, not just
the person; but Mrs. Latouche had already gone to propose the photographs to
her.
“She’s delighted,” she said, coming back. “She is just the person, so quiet and
so bright.” And then she told me the young lady was, by name, Miss Caroline
Spencer, and with this she introduced me.
Miss Caroline Spencer was not exactly a beauty, but she was a charming little
figure. She must have been close upon thirty, but she was made almost like a
little girl, and she had the complexion of a child. She had a very pretty head,
and her hair was arranged as nearly as possible like the hair of a Greek bust,
though indeed it was to be doubted if she had ever seen a Greek bust. She was
“artistic,” I suspected, so far as Grimwinter allowed such tendencies. She had
a soft, surprised eye, and thin lips, with very pretty teeth. Round her neck
she wore what ladies call, I believe, a “ruche,” fastened with a very small pin
in pink coral, and in her hand she carried a fan made of plaited straw and
adorned with pink ribbon. She wore a scanty black silk dress. She spoke with a
kind of soft precision, showing her white teeth between her narrow but
tender-looking lips, and she seemed extremely pleased, even a little fluttered,
at the prospect of my demonstrations. These went forward very smoothly, after I
had moved the portfolios out of their corner and placed a couple of chairs near
a lamp. The photographs were usually things I knew,—large views of Switzerland,
Italy, and Spain, landscapes, copies of famous buildings, pictures, and
statues. I said what I could about them, and my companion, looking at them as I
held them up, sat perfectly still, with her straw fan raised to her underlip.
Occasionally, as I laid one of the pictures down, she said very softly, “Have
you seen that place?” I usually answered that I had seen it several times (I
had been a great traveller), and then I felt that she looked at me askance for
a moment with her pretty eyes. I had asked her at the outset whether she had
been to Europe; to this she answered, “No, no, no,” in a little quick,
confidential whisper. But after that, though she never took her eyes off the
pictures, she said so little that I was afraid she was bored. Accordingly,
after we had finished one portfolio, I offered, if she desired it, to desist. I
felt that she was not bored, but her reticence puzzled me, and I wished to make
her speak. I turned round to look at her, and saw that there was a faint flush
in each of her cheeks. She was waving her little fan to and fro. Instead of
looking at me she fixed her eyes upon the other portfolio, which was leaning
against the table.
“Won’t you show me that?” she asked, with a little tremor in her voice. I could
almost have believed she was agitated.
“With pleasure,” I answered, “if you are not tired.”
“No, I am not tired,” she affirmed. “I like it—I love it.”
And as I took up the other portfolio she laid her hand upon it, rubbing it
softly.
“And have you been here too?” she asked.
On my opening the portfolio it appeared that I had been there. One of the first
photographs was a large view of the Castle of Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva.
“Here,” I said, “I have been many a time. Is it not beautiful?” And I pointed
to the perfect reflection of the rugged rocks and pointed towers in the clear
still water. She did not say, “Oh, enchanting!” and push it away to see the
next picture. She looked awhile, and then she asked if it was not where
Bonnivard, about whom Byron wrote, was confined. I assented, and tried to quote
some of Byron’s verses, but in this attempt I succeeded imperfectly.
She fanned herself a moment, and then repeated the lines correctly, in a soft,
flat, and yet agreeable voice. By the time she had finished she was blushing. I
complimented her and told her she was perfectly equipped for visiting
Switzerland and Italy. She looked at me askance again, to see whether I was
serious, and I added, that if she wished to recognize Byron’s descriptions she
must go abroad speedily; Europe was getting sadly dis-Byronized.
“How soon must I go?” she asked.
“Oh, I will give you ten years.”
“I think I can go within ten years,” she answered very soberly.
“Well,” I said, “you will enjoy it immensely; you will find it very charming.”
And just then I came upon a photograph of some nook in a foreign city which I
had been very fond of, and which recalled tender memories. I discoursed (as I
suppose) with a certain eloquence; my companion sat listening, breathless.
“Have you been very long in foreign lands?” she asked, some time after I
had ceased.
“Many years,” I said.
“And have you travelled everywhere?”
“I have travelled a great deal. I am very fond of it; and, happily, I have been
able.”
Again she gave me her sidelong gaze. “And do you know the foreign languages?”
“After a fashion.”
“Is it hard to speak them?”
“I don’t believe you would find it hard,” I gallantly responded.
“Oh, I shouldn’t want to speak; I should only want to listen,” she said. Then,
after a pause, she added, “They say the French theatre is so beautiful.”
“It is the best in the world.”
“Did you go there very often?”
“When I was first in Paris I went every night.”
“Every night!” And she opened her clear eyes very wide. “That to me is:—” and
she hesitated a moment—“is very wonderful.” A few minutes later she asked,
“Which country do you prefer?”
“There is one country I prefer to all others. I think you would do the same.”
She looked at me a moment, and then she said softly, “Italy?”
“Italy,” I answered softly, too; and for a moment we looked at each other. She
looked as pretty as if, instead of showing her photographs, I had been making
love to her. To increase the analogy, she glanced away, blushing. There was a
silence, which she broke at last by saying,—
“That is the place which, in particular, I thought of going to.”
“Oh, that’s the place, that’s the place!” I said.
She looked at two or three photographs in silence. “They say it is not so
dear.”
“As some other countries? Yes, that is not the least of its charms.”
“But it is all very dear, is it not?”
“Europe, you mean?”
“Going there and travelling. That has been the trouble. I have very little
money. I give lessons,” said Miss Spencer.
“Of course one must have money,” I said, “but one can manage with a moderate
amount.”
“I think I should manage. I have laid something by, and I am always adding a
little to it. It’s all for that.” She paused a moment, and then went on with a
kind of suppressed eagerness, as if telling me the story were a rare, but a
possibly impure satisfaction, “But it has not been only the money; it has been
everything. Everything has been against it I have waited and waited. It has
been a mere castle in the air. I am almost afraid to talk about it. Two or
three times it has been a little nearer, and then I have talked about it and it
has melted away. I have talked about it too much,” she said hypocritically; for
I saw that such talking was now a small tremulous ecstasy. “There is a lady who
is a great friend of mine; she does n’t want to go; I always talk to her about
it. I tire her dreadfully. She told me once she didn’t know what would become
of me. I should go crazy if I did not go to Europe, and I should certainly go
crazy if I did.”
“Well,” I said, “you have not gone yet, and nevertheless you are not crazy.”
She looked at me a moment, and said, “I am not so sure. I don’t think of
anything else. I am always thinking of it. It prevents me from thinking of
things that are nearer home, things that I ought to attend to. That is a kind
of craziness.”
“The cure for it is to go,” I said.
“I have a faith that I shall go. I have a cousin in Europe!” she announced.
We turned over some more photographs, and I asked her if she had always lived
at Grimwinter.
“Oh, no, sir,” said Miss Spencer. “I have spent twenty-three months in Boston.”
I answered, jocosely, that in that case foreign lands would probably prove a
disappointment to her; but I quite failed to alarm her.
“I know more about them than you might think,” she said, with her shy, neat
little smile. “I mean by reading; I have read a great deal I have not only read
Byron; I have read histories and guidebooks. I know I shall like it.”
“I understand your case,” I rejoined. “You have the native American
passion,—the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is
primordial,—antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows us
something we have dreamt of.”
“I think that is very true,” said Caroline Spencer. “I have dreamt of
everything; I shall know it all!”
“I am afraid you have wasted a great deal of time.”
“Oh, yes, that has been my great wickedness.”
The people about us had begun to scatter; they were taking their leave. She got
up and put out her hand to me, timidly, but with a peculiar brightness in her
eyes.
“I am going back there,” I said, as I shook hands with her. “I shall look out
for you.”
“I will tell you,” she answered, “if I am disappointed.”
And she went away, looking delicately agitated, and moving her little straw
fan.
II.
A few months after this I returned to Europe, and some three years elapsed. I
had been living in Paris, and, toward the end of October, I went from that city
to Havre, to meet my sister and her husband, who had written me that they were
about to arrive there. On reaching Havre I found that the steamer was already
in; I was nearly two hours late. I repaired directly to the hotel, where my
relatives were already established. My sister had gone to bed, exhausted and
disabled by her voyage; she was a sadly incompetent sailor, and her sufferings
on this occasion had been extreme. She wished, for the moment, for undisturbed
rest, and was unable to see me more than five minutes; so it was agreed that we
should remain at Havre until the next day. My brother-in-law, who was anxious
about his wife, was unwilling to leave her room; but she insisted upon his
going out with me to take a walk and recover his landlegs. The early autumn day
was warm and charming, and our stroll through the bright-colored, busy streets
of the old French seaport was sufficiently entertaining. We walked along the
sunny, noisy quays, and then turned into a wide, pleasant street, which lay
half in sun and half in shade—a French provincial street, that looked like an
old water-color drawing: tall, gray, steep-roofed, red-gabled, many-storied
houses; green shutters on windows and old scroll-work above them; flower-pots
in balconies, and white-capped women in doorways. We walked in the shade; all
this stretched away on the sunny side of the street and made a picture. We
looked at it as we passed along; then, suddenly, my brother-in-law stopped,
pressing my arm and staring. I followed his gaze and saw that we had paused
just before coming to a café, where, under an awning, several tables and
chairs were disposed upon the pavement The windows were open behind; half a
dozen plants in tubs were ranged beside the door; the pavement was besprinkled
with clean bran. It was a nice little, quiet, old-fashioned café;
inside, in the comparative dusk, I saw a stout, handsome woman, with pink
ribbons in her cap, perched up with a mirror behind her back, smiling at some
one who was out of sight. All this, however, I perceived afterwards; what I
first observed was a lady sitting alone, outside, at one of the little
marble-topped tables. My brother-in-law had stopped to look at her. There was
something on the little table, but she was leaning back quietly, with her hands
folded, looking down the street, away from us. I saw her only in something less
than profile; nevertheless, I instantly felt that I had seen her before.
“The little lady of the steamer!” exclaimed my brother-in-law.
“Was she on your steamer?” I asked.
“From morning till night She was never sick. She used to sit perpetually at the
side of the vessel with her hands crossed that way, looking at the eastward
horizon.”
“Are you going to speak to her?”
“I don’t know her. I never made acquaintance with her. I was too seedy. But I
used to watch her and—I don’t know why—to be interested in her. She’s a dear
little Yankee woman. I have an idea she is a schoolmistress taking a holiday,
for which her scholars have made up a purse.”
She turned her face a little more into profile, looking at the steep gray
house-fronts opposite to her. Then I said, “I shall speak to her myself.”
“I would n’t; she is very shy,” said my brother-in-law.
“My dear fellow, I know her. I once showed her photographs at a tea-party.”
And I went up to her. She turned and looked at me, and I saw she was in fact
Miss Caroline Spencer. But she was not so quick to recognize me; she looked
startled. I pushed a chair to the table and sat down.
“Well,” I said, “I hope you are not disappointed!”
She stared, blushing a little; then she gave a small jump which betrayed
recognition.
“It was you who showed me the photographs, at Grimwinter!”
“Yes, it was I. This happens very charmingly, for I feel as if it were for me
to give you a formal reception here, an official welcome. I talked to you so
much about Europe.”
“You didn’t say too much. I am so happy!” she softly exclaimed.
Very happy she looked. There was no sign of her being older; she was as
gravely, decently, demurely pretty as before. If she had seemed before a
thin-stemmed, mild-hued flower of Puritanism, it may be imagined whether in her
present situation this delicate bloom was less apparent. Beside her an old
gentleman was drinking absinthe; behind her the dame de comptoir in the
pink ribbons was calling “Alcibiade! Alcibiade!” to the long-aproned waiter. I
explained to Miss Spencer that my companion had lately been her shipmate, and
my brother-in-law came up and was introduced to her. But she looked at him as
if she had never seen him before, and I remembered that he had told me that her
eyes were always fixed upon the eastward horizon. She had evidently not noticed
him, and, still timidly smiling, she made no attempt whatever to pretend that
she had. I stayed with her at the café door, and he went back to the
hotel and to his wife. I said to Miss Spencer that this meeting of ours in the
first hour of her landing was really very strange, but that I was delighted to
be there and receive her first impressions.
“Oh, I can’t tell you,” she said; “I feel as if I were in a dream. I have been
sitting here for an hour, and I don’t want to move. Everything is so
picturesque. I don’t know whether the coffee has intoxicated me; it’s so
delicious.”
“Really,” said I, “if you are so pleased with this poor prosaic Havre, you will
have no admiration left for better things. Don’t spend your admiration all the
first day; remember it’s your intellectual letter of credit. Remember all the
beautiful places and things that are waiting for you; remember that lovely
Italy!”
“I’m not afraid of running short,” she said gayly, still looking at the
opposite houses. “I could sit here all day, saying to myself that here I am at
last. It’s so dark and old and different.”
“By the way,” I inquired, “how come you to be sitting here? Have you not gone
to one of the inns?” For I was half amused, half alarmed, at the good
conscience with which this delicately pretty woman had stationed herself in
conspicuous isolation on the edge of the trottoir.
“My cousin brought me here,” she answered. “You know I told you I had a cousin
in Europe. He met me at the steamer this morning.”
“It was hardly worth his while to meet you if he was to desert you so soon.”
“Oh, he has only left me for half an hour,” said Miss Spencer. “He has gone to
get my money.”
“Where is your money?”
She gave a little laugh. “It makes me feel very fine to tell you! It is in some
circular notes.”
“And where are your circular notes?”
“In my cousin’s pocket.”
This statement was very serenely uttered, but—I can hardly say why—it gave me a
sensible chill At the moment I should have been utterly unable to give the
reason of this sensation, for I knew nothing of Miss Spencer’s cousin. Since he
was her cousin, the presumption was in his favor. But I felt suddenly
uncomfortable at the thought that, half an hour after her landing, her scanty
funds should have passed into his hands.
“Is he to travel with you?” I asked.
“Only as far as Paris. He is an art-student, in Paris. I wrote to him that I
was coming, but I never expected him to come off to the ship. I supposed he
would only just meet me at the train in Paris. It is very kind of him. But he
is very kind, and very bright.”
I instantly became conscious of an extreme curiosity to see this bright cousin
who was an art-student.
“He is gone to the banker’s?” I asked.
“Yes, to the banker’s. He took me to a hotel, such a queer, quaint, delicious
little place, with a court in the middle, and a gallery all round, and a lovely
landlady, in such a beautifully fluted cap, and such a perfectly fitting dress!
After a while we came out to walk to the banker’s, for I haven’t got any French
money. But I was very dizzy from the motion of the vessel, and I thought I had
better sit down. He found this place for me here, and he went off to the
banker’s himself. I am to wait here till he comes back.”
It may seem very fantastic, but it passed through my mind that he would never
come back. I settled myself in my chair beside Miss Spencer and determined to
await the event. She was extremely observant; there was something touching in
it. She noticed everything that the movement of the street brought before
us,—peculiarities of costume, the shapes of vehicles, the big Norman horses,
the fat priests, the shaven poodles. We talked of these things, and there was
something charming in her freshness of perception and the way her
book-nourished fancy recognized and welcomed everything.
“And when your cousin comes back, what are you going to do?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment. “We don’t quite know.”
“When do you go to Paris? If you go by the four o’clock train, I may have the
pleasure of making the journey with you.”
“I don’t think we shall do that. My cousin thinks I had better stay here a few
days.”
“Oh!” said I; and for five minutes said nothing more. I was wondering what her
cousin was, in vulgar parlance, “up to.” I looked up and down the street, but
saw nothing that looked like a bright American art-student. At last I took the
liberty of observing that Havre was hardly a place to choose as one of the
æsthetic stations of a European tour. It was a place of convenience, nothing
more; a place of transit, through which transit should be rapid. I recommended
her to go to Paris by the afternoon train, and meanwhile to amuse herself by
driving to the ancient fortress at the mouth of the harbor,—that picturesque
circular structure which bore the name of Francis the First, and looked like a
small castle of St. Angelo. (It has lately been demolished.)
She listened with much interest; then for a moment she looked grave.
“My cousin told me that when he returned he should have something particular to
say to me, and that we could do nothing or decide nothing until I should have
heard it. But I will make him tell me quickly, and then we will go to the
ancient fortress. There is no hurry to get to Paris; there is plenty of time.”
She smiled with her softly severe little lips as she spoke those last words.
But I, looking at her with a purpose, saw just a tiny gleam of apprehension in
her eye.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, “that this wretched man is going to give you bad
news!”
“I suspect it is a little bad, but I don’t believe it is very bad. At any rate,
I must listen to it.”
I looked at her again an instant. “You didn’t come to Europe to listen,” I
said. “You came to see!” But now I was sure her cousin would come back; since
he had something disagreeable to say to her, he certainly would turn up. We sat
a while longer, and I asked her about her plans of travel She had them on her
fingers’ ends, and she told over the names with a kind of solemn distinctness:
from Paris to Dijon and to Avignon, from Avignon to Marseilles and the Cornice
road; thence to Genoa, to Spezia, to Pisa, to Florence, to Home. It apparently
had never occurred to her that there could be the least incommodity in her
travelling alone; and since she was unprovided with a companion I of course
scrupulously abstained from disturbing her sense of security. At last her
cousin came back. I saw him turn towards us out of a side street, and from the
moment my eyes rested upon him I felt that this was the bright American
art-student. He wore a slouch hat and a rusty black velvet jacket, such as I
had often encountered in the Rue Bonaparte. His shirt-collar revealed the
elongation of a throat which, at a distance, was not strikingly statuesque. He
was tall and lean; he had red hair and freckles. So much I had time to observe
while he approached the café, staring at me with natural surprise from
under his umbrageous coiffure. When he came up to us I immediately introduced
myself to him as an old acquaintance of Miss Spencer. He looked at me hard with
a pair of little red eyes, then he made me a solemn bow in the French fashion,
with his sombrero.
“You were not on the ship?” he said.
“No, I was not on the ship. I have been in Europe these three years.”
He bowed once more, solemnly, and motioned me to be seated again. I sat down,
but it was only for the purpose of observing him an instant; I saw it was time
I should return to my sister. Miss Spencer’s cousin was a queer fellow. Nature
had not shaped him for a Raphaelesque or Byronic attire, and his velvet doublet
and naked neck were not in harmony with his facial attributes. His hair was
cropped close to his head; his ears were large and ill-adjusted to the same. He
had a lackadaisical carriage and a sentimental droop which were peculiarly at
variance with his keen, strange-colored eyes. Perhaps I was prejudiced, but I
thought his eyes treacherous. He said nothing for some time; he leaned his
hands on his cane and looked up and down the street Then at last, slowly
lifting his cane and pointing with it, “That’s a very nice bit,” he remarked,
softly. He had his head on one side, and his little eyes were half closed. I
followed the direction of his stick; the object it indicated was a red cloth
hung out of an old window. “Nice bit of color,” he continued; and without
moving his head he transferred his half-closed gaze to me. “Composes well,” he
pursued. “Make a nice thing.” He spoke in a hard vulgar voice.
“I see you have a great deal of eye,” I replied. “Your cousin tells me you are
studying art.” He looked at me in the same way without answering, and I went on
with deliberate urbanity, “I suppose you are at the studio of one of those
great men.”
Still he looked at me, and then he said softly, “Gérôme.”
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Do you understand French?” he said.
“Some kinds,” I answered.
He kept his little eyes on me; then he said, “J’adore la peinture!”
“Oh, I understand that kind!” I rejoined. Miss Spencer laid her hand upon her
cousin’s arm with a little pleased and fluttered movement; it was delightful to
be among people who were on such easy terms with foreign tongues. I got up to
take leave, and asked Miss Spencer where, in Paris, I might have the honor of
waiting upon her. To what hotel would she go?
She turned to her cousin inquiringly, and he honored me again with his little
languid leer. “Do you know the Hôtel des Princes?”
“I know where it is.”
“I shall take her there.”
“I congratulate you,” I said to Caroline Spencer. “I believe it is the best inn
in the world; and in case I should still have a moment to call upon you here,
where are you lodged?”
“Oh, it’s such a pretty name,” said Miss Spencer gleefully. “À la Belle
Normande.”
As I left them her cousin gave me a great flourish with his picturesque hat.
III.
My sister, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored to leave Havre by the
afternoon train; so that, as the autumn dusk began to fall, I found myself at
liberty to call at the sign of the Fair Norman. I must confess that I had spent
much of the interval in wondering what the disagreeable thing was that my
charming friend’s disagreeable cousin had been telling her. The “Belle
Normande” was a modest inn in a shady bystreet, where it gave me satisfaction
to think Miss Spencer must have encountered local color in abundance. There was
a crooked little court, where much of the hospitality of the house was carried
on; there was a staircase climbing to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall;
there was a small trickling fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst of
it; there was a little boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper vessels at
a conspicuous kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced,
arranging apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid upon a pink plate. I
looked about, and on a green bench outside of an open door labelled Salle à
Manger, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No sooner had I looked at her than I
saw that something had happened since the morning. She was leaning back on her
bench, her hands were clasped in her lap, and her eyes were fixed upon the
landlady, at the other side of the court, manipulating her apricots.
But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently,
thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying. I sat
down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she had done so, she
simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her sad eyes upon me.
Something very bad indeed had happened; she was completely changed.
I immediately charged her with it. “Your cousin has been giving you bad news;
you are in great distress.”
For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to speak,
lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that in the short
time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning she had shed them
all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely composed.
“My poor cousin is in distress,” she said at last. “His news was bad.” Then,
after a brief hesitation, “He was in terrible want of money.”
“In want of yours, you mean?”
“Of any that he could get—honestly. Mine was the only money.”
“And he has taken yours?”
She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading. “I gave
him what I had.”
I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most angelic bit of
human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost with a sense of
personal outrage, I jumped up. “Good heavens!” I said, “do you call that
getting, it honestly?”
I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. “We will not speak of it,” she said.
“We must speak of it,” I answered, sitting down again. “I am your
friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your cousin?”
“He is in debt.”
“No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?”
“He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him.”
“So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money.”
“Certainly he will; as soon as he can.”
“When will that be?”
“When he has finished his great picture.”
“My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this desperate
cousin?”
She certainly hesitated now. Then,—“At his dinner,” she answered.
I turned about and looked through the open door into the salle à manger.
There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object of Miss
Spencer’s compassion, the bright young art-student. He was dining too
attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting down a
well-emptied wineglass he caught sight of my observant attitude. He paused in
his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre jaws slowly moving,
fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came lightly brushing by with her
pyramid of apricots.
“And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?” I exclaimed.
Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. “They do that so prettily!” she murmured.
I felt helpless and irritated. “Come now, really,” I said; “do you approve of
that long strong fellow accepting your funds?” She looked away from me; I was
evidently giving her pain. The case was hopeless; the long strong fellow had
“interested” her.
“Excuse me if I speak of him so unceremoniously,” I said. “But you are really
too generous, and he is not quite delicate enough. He made his debts himself;
he ought to pay them himself.”
“He has been foolish,” she answered; “I know that. He has told me everything.
We had a long talk this morning; the poor fellow threw himself upon my charity.
He has signed notes to a large amount.”
“The more fool he!”
“He is in extreme distress; and it is not only himself. It is his poor wife.”
“Ah, he has a poor wife?”
“I didn’t know it; but he confessed everything. He married two years since,
secretly.”
“Why secretly?”
Caroline Spencer glanced about her, as if she feared listeners. Then softly, in
a little impressive tone,—“She was a countess!”
“Are you very sure of that?”
“She has written me a most beautiful letter.”
“Asking you for money, eh?”
“Asking me for confidence and sympathy,” said Miss Spencer. “She has been
disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she tells it in
her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance. Her father opposed the
marriage, and when he discovered that she had secretly disobeyed him he cruelly
cast her off. It is really most romantic. They are the oldest family in
Provence.”
I looked and listened in wonder. It really seemed that the poor woman was
enjoying the “romance” of having a discarded countess-cousin, out of Provence,
so deeply as almost to lose the sense of what the forfeiture of her money meant
for her.
“My dear young lady,” I said, “you don’t want to be ruined for picturesqueness’
sake?”
“I shall not be ruined. I shall come back before long to stay with them. The
Countess insists upon that.”
“Come back! You are going home, then?”
She sat for a moment with her eyes lowered, then with an heroic suppression of
a faint tremor of the voice,—“I have no money for travelling!” she answered.
“You gave it all up?”
“I have kept enough to take me home.”
I gave an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer’s cousin, the
fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provençal
countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an
instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from
the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn
there, gratefully, stood looking at us, with his long legs apart and his hands
dropped into the pockets of his velvet jacket. My companion got up, giving him
a thin glance which I caught in its passage, and which expressed a strange
commixture of resignation and fascination,—a sort of perverted exaltation.
Ugly, vulgar, pretentious, dishonest, as I thought the creature, he had
appealed successfully to her eager and tender imagination. I was deeply
disgusted, but I had no warrant to interfere, and at any rate I felt that it
would be vain.
The young man waved his hand with a pictorial gesture. “Nice old court,” he
observed. “Nice mellow old place. Good tone in that brick. Nice crooked old
staircase.”
Decidedly, I could n’t stand it; without responding I gave my hand to Caroline
Spencer. She looked at me an instant with her little white face and expanded
eyes, and as she showed her pretty teeth I suppose she meant to smile.
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said, “I am very sure I shall see something of
this dear old Europe yet.”
I told her that I would not bid her goodby; I should find a moment to come back
the next morning. Her cousin, who had put on his sombrero again, flourished it
off at me by way of a bow, upon which I took my departure.
The next morning I came back to the inn, where I met in the court the landlady,
more loosely laced than in the evening. On my asking for Miss
Spencer,—“Partie, monsieu,” said the hostess. “She went away last night
at ten o’clock, with her—her—not her husband, eh?—in fine, her monsieur.
They went down to the American ship.” I turned away; the poor girl had been
about thirteen hours in Europe.
IV.
I myself, more fortunate, was there some five years longer. During this period
I lost my friend Latouche, who died of a malarious fever during a tour in the
Levant. One of the first things I did on my return was to go up to Grimwinter
to pay a consolatory visit to his poor mother. I found her in deep affliction,
and I sat with her the whole of the morning that followed my arrival (I had
come in late at night), listening to her tearful descant and singing the
praises of my friend. We talked of nothing else, and our conversation
terminated only with the arrival of a quick little woman who drove herself up
to the door in a “carryall,” and whom I saw toss the reins upon the horse’s
back with the briskness of a startled sleeper throwing back the bed-clothes.
She jumped out of the carryall and she jumped into the room. She proved to be
the minister’s wife and the great town-gossip, and she had evidently, in the
latter capacity, a choice morsel to communicate. I was as sure of this as I was
that poor Mrs. Latouche was not absolutely too bereaved to listen to her. It
seemed to me discreet to retire; I said I believed I would go and take a walk
before dinner.
“And, by the way,” I added, “if you will tell me where my old friend Miss
Spencer lives, I will walk to her house.”
The minister’s wife immediately responded. Miss Spencer lived in the fourth
house beyond the “Baptist church; the Baptist church was the one on the right,
with that queer green thing over the door; they called it a portico, but it
looked more like an old-fashioned bedstead.
“Yes, do go and see poor Caroline,” said Mrs. Latouche. “It will refresh her to
see a strange face.”
“I should think she had had enough of strange faces!” cried the minister’s
wife.
“I mean, to see a visitor,” said Mrs. Latouche, amending her phrase.
“I should think she had had enough of visitors!” her companion rejoined. “But
you don’t mean to stay ten years,” she added, glancing at me.
“Has she a visitor of that sort?” I inquired, perplexed.
“You will see the sort!” said the minister’s wife. “She’s easily seen; she
generally sits in the front yard. Only take care what you say to her, and be
very sure you are polite.”
“Ah, she is so sensitive?”
The minister’s wife jumped up and dropped me a curtsey, a most ironical
curtsey.
“That’s what she is, if you please. She’s a countess!”
And pronouncing this word with the most scathing accent, the little woman
seemed fairly to laugh in the Countess’s face. I stood a moment, staring,
wondering, remembering.
“Oh, I shall be very polite!” I cried; and grasping my hat and stick, I went on
my way.
I found Miss Spencer’s residence without difficulty. The Baptist church was
easily identified, and the small dwelling near it, of a rusty white, with a
large central chimney-stack and a Virginia creeper, seemed naturally and
properly the abode of a frugal old maid with a taste for the picturesque. As I
approached I slackened my pace, for I had heard that some one was always
sitting in the front yard, and I wished to reconnoitre. I looked cautiously
over the low white fence which separated the small garden-space from the
unpaved street; but I descried nothing in the shape of a countess. A small
straight path led up to the crooked doorstep, and on either side of it was a
little grass-plot, fringed with currant-bushes. In the middle of the grass, on
either side, was a large quince-tree, full of antiquity and contortions, and
beneath one of the quince-trees were placed a small table and a couple of
chairs. On the table lay a piece of unfinished embroidery and two or three
books in bright-colored paper covers. I went in at the gate and paused halfway
along the path, scanning the place for some farther token of its occupant,
before whom—I could hardly have said why—I hesitated abruptly to present
myself. Then I saw that the poor little house was very shabby. I felt a sudden
doubt of my right to intrude; for curiosity had been my motive, and curiosity
here seemed singularly indelicate. While I hesitated, a figure appeared in the
open doorway and stood there looking at me. I immediately recognized Caroline
Spencer, but she looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Gently, but
gravely and timidly, I advanced to the doorstep, and then I said, with an
attempt at friendly badinage,—
“I waited for you over there to come back, but you never came.”
“Waited where, sir?” she asked softly, and her light-colored eyes expanded more
than before.
She was much older; she looked tired and wasted.
“Well,” I said, “I waited at Havre.”
She stared; then she recognized me. She smiled and blushed and clasped her two
hands together. “I remember you now,” she said. “I remember that day.” But she
stood there, neither coming out nor asking me to come in. She was embarrassed.
I, too, felt a little awkward. I poked my stick into the path. “I kept looking
out for you, year after year,” I said.
“You mean in Europe?” murmured Miss Spencer.
“In Europe, of course! Here, apparently, you are easy enough to find.”
She leaned her hand against the unpainted doorpost, and her head fell a little
to one side. She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and I thought I
recognized the expression that one sees in women’s eyes when tears are rising.
Suddenly she stepped out upon the cracked slab of stone before the threshold
and closed the door behind her. Then she began to smile intently, and I saw
that her teeth were as pretty as ever. But there had been tears too.
“Have you been there ever since?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
“Until three weeks ago. And you—you never came back?”
Still looking at me with her fixed smile, she put her hand behind her and
opened the door again. “I am not very polite,” she said. “Won’t you come in?”
“I am afraid I incommode you.”
“Oh, no!” she answered, smiling more than ever. And she pushed back the door,
with a sign that I should enter.
I went in, following her. She led the way to a small room on the left of the
narrow hall, which I supposed to be her parlor, though it was at the back of
the house, and we passed the closed door of another apartment which apparently
enjoyed a view of the quince-trees. This one looked out upon a small woodshed
and two clucking hens. But I thought it very pretty, until I saw that its
elegance was of the most frugal kind; after which, presently, I thought it
prettier still, for I had never seen faded chintz and old mezzotint engravings,
framed in varnished autumn leaves, disposed in so graceful a fashion. Miss
Spencer sat down on a very small portion of the sofa, with her hands tightly
clasped in her lap. She looked ten years older, and it would have sounded very
perverse now to speak of her as pretty. But I thought her so; or at least I
thought her touching. She was peculiarly agitated. I tried to appear not to
notice it; but suddenly, in the most inconsequent fashion,—it was an
irresistible memory of our little friendship at Havre,—I said to her, “I do
incommode you. You are distressed.”
She raised her two hands to her face, and for a moment kept it buried in them.
Then, taking them away,—“It’s because you remind me—” she said.
“I remind you, you mean, of that miserable day at Havre?”
She shook her head. “It was not miserable. It was delightful.”
“I never was so shocked as when, on going back to your inn the next morning, I
found you had set sail again.”
She was silent a moment; and then she said, “Please let us not speak of that.”
“Did you come straight back here?” I asked.
“I was back here just thirty days after I had gone away.”
“And here you have remained ever since?”
“Oh, yes!” she said gently.
“When are you going to Europe again?”
This question seemed brutal; but there was something that irritated me in the
softness of her resignation, and I wished to extort from her some expression of
impatience.
She fixed her eyes for a moment upon a small sunspot on the carpet; then she
got up and lowered the window-blind a little, to obliterate it. Presently, in
the same mild voice, answering my question, she said, “Never!”
“I hope your cousin repaid you your money.”
“I don’t care for it now,” she said, looking away from me.
“You don’t care for your money?”
“For going to Europe.”
“Do you mean that you would not go if you could?”
“I can’t—I can’t,” said Caroline Spencer. “It is all over; I never think of
it.”
“He never repaid you, then!” I exclaimed.
“Please—please,” she began.
But she stopped; she was looking toward the door. There had been a rustling aud
a sound of steps in the hall.
I also looked toward the door, which was open, and now admitted another person,
a lady, who paused just within the threshold. Behind her came a young man. The
lady looked at me with a good deal of fixedness, long enough for my glance to
receive a vivid impression of herself. Then she turned to Caroline Spencer,
and, with a smile and a strong foreign accent,—
“Excuse my interruption!” she said. “I knew not you had company, the gentleman
came in so quietly.”
With this she directed her eyes toward me again.
She was very strange; yet my first feeling was that I had seen her before. Then
I perceived that I had only seen ladies who were very much like her. But I had
seen them very far away from Grimwinter, and it was an odd sensation to be
seeing her here. Whither was it the sight of her seemed to transport me? To
some dusky landing before a shabby Parisian quatrième,—to an open door
revealing a greasy antechamber, and to Madame leaning over the banisters, while
she holds a faded dressing-gown together and bawls down to the portress to
bring up her coffee. Miss Spencer’s visitor was a very large woman, of middle
age, with a plump, dead-white face, and hair drawn back a la chinoise.
She had a small penetrating eye, and what is called in French an agreeable
smile. She wore an old pink cashmere dressing-gown, covered with white
embroideries, and, like the figure in my momentary vision, she was holding it
together in front with a bare and rounded arm and a plump and deeply dimpled
hand.
“It is only to spick about my café,” she said to Miss Spencer, with her
agreeable smile. “I should like it served in the garden under the leetle tree.”
The young man behind her had now stepped into the room, and he also stood
looking at me. He was a pretty-faced little fellow, with an air of provincial
foppishness,—a tiny Adonis of Grimwinter. He had a small pointed nose, a small
pointed chin, and, as I observed, the most diminutive feet. He looked at me
foolishly, with his mouth open.
“You shall have your coffee,” said Miss Spencer, who had a faint red spot in
each of her cheeks.
“It is well!” said the lady in the dressing-gown. “Find your bouk,” she added,
turning to the young man.
He gazed vaguely round the room. “My grammar, d’ye mean?” he asked, with a
helpless intonation.
But the large lady was inspecting me, curiously, and gathering in her
dressing-gown with her white arm.
“Find your bouk, my friend,” she repeated.
“My poetry, d’ye mean?” said the young man, also staring at me again.
“Never mind your bouk,” said his companion. “To-day we will talk. We will make
some conversation. But we must not interrupt. Come;” and she turned away.
“Under the leetle tree,” she added, for the benefit of Miss Spencer.
Then she gave me a sort of salutation, and a “Monsieur!” with which she swept
away again, followed by the young man.
Caroline Spencer stood there with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“The Countess, my cousin.”
“And who is the young man?”
“Her pupil, Mr. Mixter.”
This description of the relation between the two persons who had just left the
room made me break into a little laugh. Miss Spencer looked at me gravely.
“She gives French lessons; she has lost her fortune.”
“I see,” I said. “She is determined to be a burden to no one. That is very
proper.”
Miss Spencer looked down on the ground again, “I must go and get the coffee,”
she said.
“Has the lady many pupils?” I asked.
“She has only Mr. Mixter. She gives all her time to him.”
At this I could not laugh, though I smelt provocation; Miss Spencer was too
grave. “He pays very well,” she presently added, with simplicity. “He is very
rich. He is very kind. He takes the Countess to drive.” And she was turning
away.
“You are going for the Countess’s coffee?” I said.
“If you will excuse me a few moments.”
“Is there no one else to do it?”
She looked at me with the softest serenity. “I keep no servants.”
“Can she not wait upon herself?”
“She is not used to that.”
“I see,” said I, as gently as possible. “But before you go, tell me this: who
is this lady?”
“I told you about her before—that day. She is the wife of my cousin, whom you
saw.”
“The lady who was disowned by her family in consequence of her marriage?”
“Yes; they have never seen her again. They have cast her off.”
“And where is her husband?”
“He is dead.”
“And where is your money?”
The poor girl flinched; there was something too consistent in my questions. “I
don’t know,” she said wearily.
But I continued a moment. “On her husband’s death this lady came over here?”
“Yes, she arrived one day.”
“How long ago?”
“Two years.”
“She has been here ever since?”
“Every moment.”
“How does she like it?”
“Not at all.”
“And how do you like it?”
Miss Spencer laid her face in her two hands an instant, as she had done ten
minutes before.
Then, quickly, she went to get the Countess’s coffee.
I remained alone in the little parlor; I wanted to see more, to learn more. At
the end of five minutes the young man whom Miss Spencer had described as the
Countess’s pupil came in. He stood looking at me for a moment with parted lips.
I saw he was a very rudimentary young man.
“She wants to know if you won’t come out there,” he observed at last.
“Who wants to know?”
“The Countess. That French lady.”
“She has asked you to bring me?”
“Yes, sir,” said the young man feebly, looking at my six feet of stature.
I went out with him, and we found the Countess sitting under one of the little
quince-trees in front of the house. She was drawing a needle through the piece
of embroidery which she had taken from the small table. She pointed graciously
to the chair beside her, and I seated myself. Mr. Mixter glanced about him, and
then sat down in the grass at her feet. He gazed upward, looking with parted
lips from the Countess to me. “I am sure you speak French,” said the Countess,
fixing her brilliant little eyes upon me.
“I do, madam, after a fashion,” I answered in the lady’s own tongue.
“Voilà!” she cried most expressively. “I knew it so soon as I looked at
you. You have been in my poor dear country.”
“A long time.”
“You know Paris?”
“Thoroughly, madam.” And with a certain conscious purpose I let my eyes meet
her own.
She presently, hereupon, moved her own and glanced down at Mr. Mixter “What are
we talking about?” she demanded of her attentive pupil.
He pulled his knees up, plucked at the grass with his hand, stared, blushed a
little. “You are talking French,” said Mr. Mixter.
“La belle découverte!” said the Countess. “Here are ten months,” she
explained to me, “that I am giving him lessons. Don’t put yourself out not to
say he’s an idiot; he won’t understand you.”
“I hope your other pupils are more gratifying,” I remarked.
“I have no others. They don’t know what French is in this place; they don’t
want to know. You may therefore imagine the pleasure it is to me to meet a
person who speaks it like yourself.” I replied that my own pleasure was not
less; and she went on drawing her stitches through her embroidery, with her
little finger curled out. Every few moments she put her eyes close to her work,
nearsightedly. I thought her a very disagreeable person; she was coarse,
affected, dishonest, and no more a countess than I was a caliph. “Talk to me of
Paris,” she went on. “The very name of it gives me an emotion! How long since
you were there?”
“Two months ago.”
“Happy man! Tell me something about it What were they doing? Oh, for an hour of
the boulevard!”
“They were doing about what they are always doing,—amusing themselves a good
deal.”
“At the theatres, eh?” sighed the Countess. “At the cafés-concerts, at
the little tables in front of the doors? Quelle existence! You know I am
a Parisienne, monsieur,” she added, “to my fingertips.”
“Miss Spencer was mistaken, then,” I ventured to rejoin, “in telling me that
you are a Provençale.”
She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had a
dingy, desultory aspect. “Ah, I am a Provençale by birth; but I am a Parisienne
by—inclination.”
“And by experience, I suppose?” I said.
She questioned me a moment with her hard little eyes. “Oh, experience! I could
talk of experience if I wished. I never expected, for example, that experience
had this in store for me.” And she pointed with her bare elbow, and with
a jerk of her head, at everything that surrounded her,—at the little white
house, the quince-tree, the rickety paling, even at Mr. Mixter.
“You are in exile!” I said, smiling.
“You may imagine what it is! These two years that I have been here I have
passed hours—hours! One gets used to things, and sometimes I think I have got
used to this. But there are some things that are always beginning over again.
For example, my coffee.”
“Do you always have coffee at this hour?” I inquired.
She tossed back her head and measured me.
“At what hour would you prefer me to have it? I must have my little cup after
breakfast.”
“Ah, you breakfast at this hour?”
“At midday—comme cela se fait. Here they breakfast at a quarter past
seven! That ‘quarter past’ is charming!”
“But you were telling me about your coffee? I observed sympathetically.
“My cousine can’t believe in it; she can’t understand it. She’s an
excellent girl; but that little cup of black coffee, with a drop of cognac,
served at this hour,—they exceed her comprehension. So I have to break the ice
every day, and it takes the coffee the time you see to arrive. And when it
arrives, monsieur! If I don’t offer you any of it you must not take it ill. It
will be because I know you have drunk it on the boulevard.”
I resented extremely this scornful treatment of poor Caroline Spencer’s humble
hospitality; but I said nothing, in order to say nothing uncivil. I only looked
on Mr. Mixter, who had clasped his arms round his knees and was watching my
companion’s demonstrative graces in solemn fascination. She presently saw that
I was observing him; she glanced at me with a little bold explanatory smile.
“You know, he adores me,” she murmured, putting her nose into her tapestry
again. I expressed the promptest credence, and she went on. “He dreams of
becoming my lover! Yes, it’s his dream. He has read a French novel; it took him
six months. But ever since that he has thought himself the hero, and me the
heroine!”
Mr. Mixter had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he was too
preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment Caroline Spencer
came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little tray. I noticed that on
her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick, vaguely
appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt that it signified a sort
of half-frightened longing to know what, as a man of the world who had been in
France, I thought of the Countess. It made me extremely uncomfortable. I could
not tell her that the Countess was very possibly the runaway wife of a little
hair-dresser. I tried suddenly, on the contrary, to show a high consideration
for her. But I got up; I could n’t stay longer. It vexed me to see Caroline
Spencer standing there like a waiting-maid.
“You expect to remain some time at Grimwinter?” I said to the Countess.
She gave a terrible shrug.
“Who knows? Perhaps for years. When one is in misery!—Chere belle” she
added, turning to Miss Spencer, “you have forgotten the cognac!”
I detained Caroline Spencer as, after looking a moment in silence at the little
table, she was turning away to procure this missing delicacy. I silently gave
her my hand in farewell. She looked very tired, but there was a strange hint of
prospective patience in her severely mild little face. I thought she was rather
glad I was going. Mr. Mixter had risen to his feet and was pouring out the
Countess’s coffee. As I went back past the Baptist church I reflected that poor
Miss Spencer had been right in her presentiment that she should still see
something of that dear old Europe.
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