Collected Stories by Henry James
It was one thing to have made up her mind, however; it was another thing to make her attempt. It was when she learned from Godfrey that the day was fixed, the 20th of July, only six weeks removed, that she felt the importance of prompt action. She learned everything from Godfrey now, having determined that it would be hypocrisy to question her father. Even her silence was hypocritical, but she couldn’t weep and wail. Her father showed extreme tact; taking no notice of her detachment, treating her as if it were a moment of bouderie which he was bound to allow her and which would pout itself away. She debated much as to whether she should take Godfrey into her confidence; she would have done so without hesitation if he had not disappointed her. He was so strange and so perversely preoccupied that she could explain it only by the high pressure at which he was living, his anxiety about his ‘exam’. He was in a fidget, in a fever, putting on a spurt to come in first; sceptical moreover about his success and cynical about everything else. He appeared to agree to the general axiom that they didn’t want a strange woman thrust into their home, but he found Mrs Churchley ‘very jolly as a person to know’. He had been to see her by himself; he had been to see her three times. He said to his sister that he would make the most of her now; he should probably be so little in Seymour Street after these days. What Adela at last determined to say to him was that the marriage would never take place. When he asked her what she meant and who was to prevent it, she replied that the interesting couple would give it up themselves, or that Mrs Churchley at least would after a week or two back out of it.
‘That will be really horrid then,’ Godfrey rejoined. ‘The only respectable thing, at the point they’ve come to, is to put it through. Charming for poor father to have the air of being “chucked”.’
This made her hesitate two days more, but she found answers more valid than any objections. The many-voiced answer to everything – it was like the autumn wind around the house – was the backward affront to her mother. Her mother was dead, but it killed her again. So one morning, at eleven o’clock, when Adela knew her father was writing letters, she went out quietly and, stopping the first hansom she met, drove to Prince’s Gate. Mrs Churchley was at home, and she was shown into the drawing-room with the request that she would wait five minutes. She waited, without the sense of breaking down at the last, the impulse to run away, which was what she had expected to have. In the cab and at the door her heart had beat terribly, but now, suddenly, with the game really to play, she found herself lucid and calm. It was a joy to her to feel later that this was the way Mrs Churchley found her; not confused, not stammering nor prevaricating, only a little amazed at her own courage, conscious of the immense responsibility of her step and wonderfully older than her years. Her hostess fixed her at first with the waiting eyes of a cashier, but after a little, to Adela’s surprise, she burst into tears. At this the girl cried herself, but with the secret happiness of believing they were saved. Mrs Churchley said she would think over what she had been told, and she promised Adela, freely enough and very firmly, not to betray the secret of her visit to the Colonel. They were saved – they were saved: the words sung themselves in the girl’s soul as she came downstairs. When the door was opened for her she saw her brother on the step, and they looked at each other in surprise, each finding it on the part of the other an odd hour for Prince’s Gate. Godfrey remarked that Mrs Churchley would have enough of the family, and Adela answered that she would perhaps have too much. None the less the young man went in, while his sister took her way home.
III
ADELA CHART saw nothing of her brother for nearly a week; he had more and more his own time and hours, adjusted to his tremendous responsibilities, and he spent whole days at his crammer’s. When she knocked at his door, late in the evening, he was not in his room. It was known in the house that he was greatly worried; he was horribly nervous about his ordeal. It was to begin on the 23d of June, and his father was as worried as himself. The wedding had been arranged in relation to this; they wished poor Godfrey’s fate settled first, though it was felt that the nuptials would be darkened if it should not be settled right.
Ten days after her morning visit to Mrs Churchley Adela began to perceive that there was a difference in the air; but as yet she was afraid to exult. It was not a difference for the better, so that there might be still many hours of pain. Her father, since the announcement of his intended marriage, had been visibly pleased with himself, but that pleasure appeared to have undergone a check. Adela had the impression which the passengers on a great steamer receive when, in the middle of the night, they hear the engines stop. As this impression resolves itself into the general sense that something serious has happened, so the girl asked herself what had happened now. She had expected something serious; but it was as if she couldn’t keep still in her cabin – she wanted to go up and see. On the 20th, just before breakfast, her maid brought her a message from her brother. Mr Godfrey would be obliged if she would speak to him in his room. She went straight up to him, dreading to find him ill, broken down on the eve of his formidable week. This was not the case, however, inasmuch as he appeared to be already at work, to have been at work since dawn. But he was very white, and his eyes had a strange and new expression. Her beautiful young brother looked older; he looked haggard and hard. He met her there as if he had been waiting for her, and he said immediately: ‘Please to tell me this, Adela: what was the purpose of your visit, the other morning, to Mrs Churchley – the day I met you at her door?’
She stared – she hesitated. ‘The purpose? What’s the matter? Why do you ask?’
‘They’ve put it off – they’ve put it off a month.’
‘Ah, thank God!’ said Adela.
‘Why do you thank God?’ Godfrey exclaimed roughly.
His sister gave a strained, intense smile. ‘You know I think it’s all wrong.’
He stood looking at her up and down. ‘What did you do there? How did you interfere?’
‘Who told you I interfered?’ she asked, flushing.
‘You said something – you did something. I knew you had done it when I saw you come out.’
‘What I did was my own business.’
‘Damn your own business!’ cried the young man.
She had never in her life been so spoken to, and in advance, if she had been given the choice, she would have said that she would rather die than be so spoken to by Godfrey. But her spirit was high, and for a moment she was as angry as if some one had cut at her with a whip. She escaped the blow, but she felt the insult. ‘And your business, then?’ she asked. ‘I wondered what that was when I saw you.’
He stood a moment longer frowning at her; then, with the exclamation ‘You’ve made a pretty mess!’ he turned away from her and sat down to his books.
They had put it off, as he said; her father was dry and stiff and official about it. ‘I suppose I had better let you know that we have thought it best to postpone our marriage till the end of the summer – Mrs Churchley has so many arrangements to make’: he was not more expansive than that. She neither knew nor greatly cared whether it was her fancy or a reality that he watched her obliquely, to see how she would take these words. She flattered herself that, thanks to Godfrey’s preparation, cruel as the form of it had been, she took them very cleverly. She had a perfectly good conscience, for she was now able to judge what odious elements Mrs Churchley, whom she had not seen since the morning in Prince’s Gate, had already introduced into their relations with each other. She was able to infer that her father had not concurred in the postponement, for he was more restless than before, more absent, and distinctly irritable. There was of course still the question of how much of this condition was to be attributed to his solicitude about Godfrey. That young man took occasion to say a horrible thing to his sister: ‘If I don’t pass it will be your fault.’ These were dreadful days for the girl, and she asked herself how she could have borne them if the hovering spirit of her mother had not been at her side. Fortunately, she always felt i
She never needed urging, however, to go to Overland, the dearest old house in the world, where the happiest days of her young life had been spent and the silent nearness of her mother always seemed greatest. She was happy again, with Beatrice and Muriel and Miss Flynn, and the air of summer, and the haunted rooms, and her mother’s garden, and the talking oaks and the nightingales. She wrote briefly to her father, to give him, as he had requested, an account of things; and he wrote back that, since she was so contented (she didn’t remember telling him that), she had better not return to town at all. The rest of the season was not important for her, and he was getting on very well. He mentioned that Godfrey had finished his exam; but, as she knew, there would be a tiresome wait before they could learn the result. Godfrey was going abroad for a month with young Sherard – he had earned a little rest and a little fun. He went abroad without a word to Adela, but in his beautiful little hand he took a chaffing leave of Beatrice. The child showed her sister the letter, of which she was very proud and which contained no message for Adela. This was the worst bitterness of the whole crisis for that young lady – that it exhibited so strangely the creature in the world whom, after her mother, she had loved best.
Colonel Chart had said he would ‘run down’ while his children were at Overland, but they heard no more about it. He only wrote two or three times to Miss Flynn, upon matters in regard to which Adela was surprised that he should not have communicated with herself. Muriel accomplished an upright little letter to Mrs Churchley – her eldest sister neither fostered nor discouraged the performance – to which Mrs Churchley replied, after a fortnight, in a meagre and, as Adela thought, illiterate fashion, making no allusion to the approach of any closer tie. Evidently the situation had changed; the question of the marriage was dropped, at any rate for the time. This idea gave the girl a singular and almost intoxicating sense of power; she felt as if she were riding a great wave of responsibility. She had chosen and acted, and the greatest could do no more than that. The grand thing was to see one’s results, and what else was she doing? These results were in important and opulent lives; the stage was large on which she moved her figures. Such a vision was exciting, and as they had the use of a couple of ponies at Overland she worked off her excitement by a long gallop. A day or two after this, however, came news of which the effect was to rekindle it. Godfrey had come back, the list had been published, he had passed first. These happy tidings proceeded from the young man himself; he announced them by a telegram to Beatrice, who had never in her life before received such a missive and was proportionately inflated. Adela reflected that she herself ought to have felt snubbed, but she was too happy. They were free again, they were themselves, the nightmare of the previous weeks was blown away, the unity and dignity of her father’s life were restored, and, to round off her sense of success, Godfrey had achieved his first step toward high distinction. She wrote to him the next day, as frankly and affectionately as if there had been no estrangement between them; and besides telling him that she rejoiced in his triumph, she begged him in charity to let them know exactly how the case stood with regard to Mrs Churchley.
Late in the summer afternoon she walked through the park to the village with her letter, posted it and came back. Suddenly, at one of the turns of the avenue, half-way to the house, she saw a young man looking toward her and waiting for her – a young man who proved to be Godfrey, on his march, on foot, across from the station. He had seen her, as he took his short cut, and if he had come down to Overland it was not, apparently, to avoid her. There was none of the joy of his triumph in his face, however, as he came a very few steps to meet her; and although, stiffly enough, he let her kiss him and say, ‘I’m so glad – I’m so glad!’ she felt that this tolerance was not quite the calmness of the rising diplomatist. He turned toward the house with her and walked on a short distance, while she uttered the hope that he had come to stay some days.
‘Only till to-morrow morning. They are sending me straight to Madrid. I came down to say good-by; there’s a fellow bringing my portmanteau.’
‘To Madrid? How awfully nice! And it’s awfully nice of you to have come,’ Adela said, passing her hand into his arm.
The movement made him stop, and, stopping, he turned on her, in a flash, a face of something more than suspicion – of passionate reprobation. ‘What I really came for – you might as well know without more delay – is to ask you a question.’
‘A question?’ Adela repeated with a beating heart.
They stood there, under the old trees, in the lingering light, and, young and fine and fair as they both were, they were in complete superficial accord with the peaceful English scene. A near view, however, would have shown that Godfrey Chart had not come down to Overland to be superficial. He looked deep into his sister’s eyes and demanded: ‘What was it you said that morning to Mrs Churchley?’
Adela gazed at the ground a moment; then, raising her eyes: ‘If she has told you, why do you ask?’
‘She has told me nothing. I’ve seen for myself.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘She has broken it off – everything’s over – father’s in the depths.’
‘In the depths?’ the girl quavered.
‘Did you think it would make him jolly?’ asked her brother.
‘He’ll get over it; he’ll be glad.’
‘That remains to be seen. You interfered, you invented something, you got round her. I insist on knowing what you did.’
Adela felt that she could be obstinate if she wished, and that if it should be a question of organising a defence she should find treasures of perversity under her hand. She stood looking down again a moment, and saying to herself, ‘I could be dumb and dogged if I chose, but I scorn to be.’ She was not ashamed of what she had done, but she wanted to be clear. ‘Are you absolutely certain it’s broken off?’
‘He is, and she is; so that’s as good.’
‘What reason has she given?’
‘None at all – or half a dozen; it’s the same thing. She has changed her mind – she mistook her feelings – she can’t part with her independence; moreover, he has too many children.’
‘Did he tell you this?’ said Adela.
‘Mrs Churchley told me. She has gone abroad for a year.’
‘And she didn’t tell you what I said to her?’
‘Why should I take this trouble if she had?’
‘You might have taken it to make me suffer,’ said Adela. ‘That appears to be what you want to do.’
‘No, I leave that to you; it’s the good turn you’ve done me!’ cried the young man, with hot tears in his eyes.
She stared, aghast with the perception that there was some dreadful thing she didn’t know; but he walked on, dropping the question angrily and turning his back to her as if he couldn’t trust himself. She read his disgust in his averted face, in the way he squared his shoulders and smote the ground with his stick, and she hurried after him and presently overtook him. She accompanied him for a moment in silence; then she pleaded: ‘What do you mean? What in the world have I done to you?’
‘She would have helped me; she was all ready to do it,’ said Godfrey.
‘Helped you in what?’ She wondered what he meant; if he had made debts that he was afraid to confess to his father and – of all horrible things – had been looking to Mrs Churchley to pay. She turned red with the mere apprehension of this and, on the heels of her guess, exulted again at having perhaps averted such a shame.
‘Can’t
She seized his arm, she made him stop, she stood looking up at him like a frightened little girl. ‘What’s the matter, Godfrey – what is the matter?’
‘You’ve vexed me so – I could strangle you!’ he growled. This idea added nothing to her dread; her dread was that he had done some wrong, was stained with some guilt. She uttered it to him with clasped hands, begging him to tell her the worst; but, still more passionately, he cut her short with his own cry: ‘In God’s name, satisfy me! What infernal thing did you do?’
‘It was not infernal; it was right. I told her mamma had been wretched,’ said Adela.
‘Wretched? You told her such a lie?’