Collected Stories by Henry James
‘It appears,’ he said, ‘to be the paper of the country.’
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I believe it’s the best.’
He gazed at it again, still holding it at arm’s-length, as if it had been a looking-glass. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose it’s natural a small country should have small papers. You could wrap it up, mountains and all, in one of our dailies!’
I found my Galignani and went off with it into the garden, where I seated myself on a bench in the shade. Presently I saw the tall gentleman in the hat appear in one of the open windows of the salon, and stand there with his hands in his pockets and his legs a little apart. He looked very much bored, and – I don’t know why – I immediately began to feel sorry for him. He was not at all a picturesque personage; he looked like a jaded, faded man of business. But after a little he came into the garden and began to stroll about; and then his restless, unoccupied carriage, and the vague, unacquainted manner in which his eyes wandered over the place seemed to make it proper that, as an older resident, I should exercise a certain hospitality. I said something to him, and he came and sat down beside me on my bench, clasping one of his long knees in his hands.
‘When is it this big breakfast of theirs comes off?’ he inquired. ‘That’s what I call it – the little breakfast and the big breakfast. I never thought I should live to see the time when I should care to eat two breakfasts. But a man’s glad to do anything, over here.’
‘For myself,’ I observed, ‘I find plenty to do.’
He turned his head and glanced at me with a dry, deliberate, kind-looking eye. ‘You’re getting used to the life, are you?’
‘I like the life very much,’ I answered, laughing.
‘How long have you tried it?’
‘Do you mean in this place?’
‘Well, I mean anywhere. It seems to me pretty much the same all over.’
‘I have been in this house only a fortnight,’ I said.
‘Well, what should you say, from what you have seen?’ my companion asked.
‘Oh,’ said I, ‘you can see all there is immediately. It’s very simple.’
‘Sweet simplicity, eh? I’m afraid my two ladies will find it too simple.’
‘Everything is very good,’ I went on. ‘And Madame Beaurepas is a charming old woman. And then it’s very cheap.’
‘Cheap, is it?’ my friend repeated meditatively.
‘Doesn’t it strike you so?’ I asked. I thought it very possible he had not inquired the terms. But he appeared not to have heard me; he sat there, clasping his knee and blinking, in a contemplative manner, at the sunshine.
‘Are you from the United States, sir?’ he presently demanded, turning his head again.
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied; and I mentioned the place of my nativity.
‘I presumed,’ he said, ‘that you were American or English. I’m from the United States myself; from New York city. Many of our people here?’
‘Not so many as, I believe, there have sometimes been. There are two or three ladies.’
‘Well,’ my interlocutor declared, ‘I am very fond of ladies’ society. I think when it’s superior there’s nothing comes up to it. I’ve got two ladies here myself; I must make you acquainted with them.’
I rejoined that I should be delighted, and I inquired of my friend whether he had been long in Europe.
‘Well, it seems precious long,’ he said, ‘but my time’s not up yet. We have been here fourteen weeks and a half.’
‘Are you travelling for pleasure?’ I asked.
My companion turned his head again and looked at me – looked at me so long in silence that I at last also turned and met his eyes.
‘No, sir,’ he said presently. ‘No, sir,’ he repeated, after a considerable interval.
‘Excuse me,’ said I, for there was something so solemn in his tone that I feared I had been indiscreet.
He took no notice of my ejaculation; he simply continued to look at me. ‘I’m travelling,’ he said, at last, ‘to please the doctors. They seemed to think they would like it.’
‘Ah, they sent you abroad for your health?’
‘They sent me abroad because they were so confoundedly muddled they didn’t know what else to do.’
‘That’s often the best thing,’ I ventured to remark.
‘It was a confession of weakness; they wanted me to stop plaguing them. They didn’t know enough to cure me, and that’s the way they thought they would get round it. I wanted to be cured – I didn’t want to be transported. I hadn’t done any harm.’
I assented to the general proposition of the inefficiency of doctors, and asked my companion if he had been seriously ill.
‘I didn’t sleep,’ he said, after some delay.
‘Ah, that’s very annoying. I suppose you were overworked.’
‘I didn’t eat; I took no interest in my food.’
‘Well, I hope you both eat and sleep now,’ I said.
‘I couldn’t hold a pen,’ my neighbour went on. ‘I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t walk from my house to the cars – and it’s only a little way. I lost my interest in business.’
‘You needed a holiday,’ I observed.
‘That’s what the doctors said. It wasn’t so very smart of them. I had been paying strict attention to business for twenty-three years.’
‘In all that time you have never had a holiday?’ I exclaimed, with horror.
My companion waited a little. ‘Sundays,’ he said at last.
‘No wonder, then, you were out of sorts.’
‘Well, sir,’ said my friend, ‘I shouldn’t have been where I was three years ago if I had spent my time travelling round Europe. I was in a very advantageous position. I did a very large business. I was considerably interested in lumber.’ He paused, turned his head, and looked at me a moment. ‘Have you any business interests yourself?’ I answered that I had none, and he went on again, slowly, softly, deliberately. ‘Well, sir, perhaps you are not aware that business in the United States is not what it was a short time since. Business interests are very insecure. There seems to be a general falling-off. Different parties offer different explanations of the fact, but so far as I am aware none of their observations have set things going again.’ I ingeniously intimated that if business was dull, the time was good for coming away; whereupon my neighbour threw back his head and stretched his legs a while. ‘Well, sir, that’s one view of the matter certainly. There’s something to be said for that. These things should be looked at all round. That’s the ground my wife took. That’s the ground,’ he added in a moment, ‘that a lady would naturally take’; and he gave a little dry laugh.
‘You think it’s slightly illogical,’ I remarked.
‘Well, sir, the ground I took was that the worse a man’s business is, the more it requires looking after. I shouldn’t want to go out to take a walk – not even to go to church – if my house was on fire. My firm is not doing the business it was; it’s like a sick child, it requires nursing. What I wanted the doctors to do was to fix me up, so that I could go on at home. I’d have taken anything they’d have given me, and as many times a day. I wanted to be right there; I had my reasons; I have them still. But I came off, all the same,’ said my friend, with a melancholy smile.
I was a great deal younger than he, but there was something so simple and communicative in his tone, so expressive of a desire to fraternise, and so exempt from any theory of human differences, that I quite forgot his seniority, and found myself offering him paternal advice. ‘Don’t think about all that,’ said I. ‘Simply enjoy yourself, amuse yourself, get well. Travel about and see Europe. At the end of a year, by the time you are ready to go home, things will have improved over there, and you will be quite well and happy.’
My friend laid his hand on my knee; he looked at me for some moments, and I thought he was going to say, ‘You are very young!’ But he said presently, ‘You have got used to Europe any way!’
III
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‘Will you allow me to introduce you to my daughter?’ he said, moved apparently by a paternal inclination to provide this young lady with social diversion. She was standing with her mother, in one of the paths, looking about with no great complacency, as I imagined, at the homely characteristics of the place, and old M. Pigeonneau was hovering near, hesitating apparently between the desire to be urbane and the absence of a pretext. ‘Mrs Ruck – Miss Sophy Ruck,’ said my friend, leading me up.
Mrs Ruck was a large, plump, light coloured person, with a smooth fair face, a somnolent eye, and an elaborate coiffure. Miss Sophy was a girl of one and twenty, very small and very pretty – what I suppose would have been called a lively brunette. Both of these ladies were attired in black silk dresses, very much trimmed; they had an air of the highest elegance.
‘Do you think highly of this pension?’ inquired Mrs Ruck, after a few preliminaries.
‘It’s a little rough, but it seems to me comfortable,’ I answered.
‘Does it take a high rank in Geneva?’ Mrs Ruck pursued.
‘I imagine it enjoys a very fair fame,’ I said, smiling.
‘I should never dream of comparing it to a New York boarding-house,’ said Mrs Ruck.
‘It’s quite a different style,’ her daughter observed. Miss Ruck had folded her arms; she was holding her elbows with a pair of white little hands, and she was tapping the ground with a pretty little foot.
‘We hardly expected to come to a pension,’ said Mrs Ruck. ‘But we thought we would try; we had heard so much about Swiss pensions. I was saying to Mr Ruck that I wondered whether this was a favourable specimen. I was afraid we might have made a mistake.’
‘We knew some people who had been here; they thought everything of Madame Beaurepas,’ said Miss Sophy. ‘They said she was a real friend.’
‘Mr and Mrs Parker – perhaps you have heard her speak of them,’ Mrs Ruck pursued.
‘Madame Beaurepas has had a great many Americans; she is very fond of Americans,’ I replied.
‘Well, I must say I should think she would be, if she compares them with some others.’
‘Mother is always comparing,’ observed Miss Ruck.
‘Of course I am always comparing,’ rejoined the elder lady. ‘I never had a chance till now; I never knew my privileges. Give me an American!’ And Mrs Ruck indulged in a little laugh.
‘Well, I must say there are some things I like over here,’ said Miss Sophy, with courage. And indeed I could see that she was a young woman of great decision.
‘You like the shops – that’s what you like,’ her father affirmed.
The young lady addressed herself to me, without heeding this remark. ‘I suppose you feel quite at home here.’
‘Oh, he likes it; he has got used to the life!’ exclaimed Mr Ruck.
‘I wish you’d teach Mr Ruck,’ said his wife. ‘It seems as if he couldn’t get used to anything.’
‘I’m used to you, my dear,’ the husband retorted, giving me a humorous look.
‘He’s intensely restless,’ continued Mrs Ruck. ‘That’s what made me want to come to a pension. I thought he would settle down more.’
‘I don’t think I am used to you, after all,’ said her husband.
In view of a possible exchange of conjugal repartee I took refuge in conversation with Miss Ruck, who seemed perfectly able to play her part in any colloquy. I learned from this young lady that, with her parents, after visiting the British islands, she had been spending a month in Paris, and that she thought she should have died when she left that city. ‘I hung out of the carriage, when we left the hotel,’ said Miss Ruck, ‘I assure you I did. And mother did, too.’
‘Out of the other window, I hope,’ said I.
‘Yes, one out of each window,’ she replied, promptly. ‘Father had hard work, I can tell you. We hadn’t half finished; there were ever so many places we wanted to go to.’
‘Your father insisted on coming away?’
‘Yes; after we had been there about a month he said he had enough. He’s fearfully restless; he’s very much out of health. Mother and I said to him that if he was restless in Paris he needn’t hope for peace anywhere. We don’t mean to leave him alone till he takes us back.’ There was an air of keen resolution in Miss Ruck’s pretty face, of lucid apprehension of desirable ends, which made me, as she pronounced these words, direct a glance of covert compassion toward her poor recalcitrant father. He had walked away a little with his wife, and I saw only his back and his stooping, patient-looking shoulders, whose air of acute resignation was thrown into relief by the voluminous tranquillity of Mrs Ruck. ‘He will have to take us back in September, any way,’ the young girl pursued; ‘he will have to take us back to get some things we have ordered.’
‘Have you ordered a great many things?’ I asked, jocosely.
‘Well, I guess we have ordered some. Of course we wanted to take advantage of being in Paris – ladies always do. We have left the principal things till we go back. Of course that is the principal interest, for ladies. Mother said she should feel so shabby, if she just passed through. We have promised all the people to be back in September, and I never broke a promise yet. So Mr Ruck has got to make his plans accordingly.’
‘And what are his plans?’
‘I don’t know; he doesn’t seem able to make any. His great idea was to get to Geneva; but now that he has got here he doesn’t seem to care. It’s the effect of ill health. He used to be so bright; but now he is quite subdued. It’s about time he should improve, any way. We went out last night to look at the jewellers’ windows – in that street behind the hotel. I had always heard of those jewellers’ windows. We saw some lovely things, but it didn’t seem to rouse father. He’ll get tired of Geneva sooner than he did of Paris.’
‘Ah,’ said I, ‘there are finer things here than the jewellers’ windows. We are very near some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe.’
‘I suppose you mean the mountains. Well, we have seen plenty of mountains at home. We used to go to the mountains every summer. We are familiar enough with the mountains. Aren’t we, mother?’ the young lady demanded, appealing to Mrs Ruck, who, with her husband, had drawn near again.
‘Aren’t we what?’ inquired the elder lady.
‘Aren’t we familiar with the mountains?’
‘Well, I hope so,’ said Mrs Ruck.
Mr Ruck, with his hands in his pockets, gave me a sociable wink. ‘There’s nothing much you can tell them!’ he said.
The two ladies stood face to face a few moments, surveying each other’s garments. ‘Don’t you want to go out?’ the young girl at last inquired of her mother.
‘Well, I think we had better; we have got to go up to that place.’
‘To what place?’ asked Mr Ruck.
‘To that jeweller’s – to that big one.’
‘They all seemed big enough; they were too big!’ And Mr Ruck gave me another wink.
‘That one where we saw the blue cross,’ said his daughter.
‘Oh, come, what do you want of that blue cross?’ poor Mr Ruck demanded.
‘She wants to hang it on a black velvet ribbon and tie it round her neck,’ said his wife.
‘A black velvet ribbon? No, I thank you!’ cried the young lady. ‘Do you suppose I would wear that cross on a black velvet ribbon? On a nice little gold chain, if you please – a little narrow gold chain, like an old-fashioned watch-chain. That’s the proper thing for that blue cross. I know the sort of chain I mean; I’m going to look for one. When I want a thing,’ said Miss Ruck, with decision, ‘I can generally find it.’
‘Look here, Sophy,’ her father urged, ‘you don’t want that blue cross.’
Her laugh, which in itself was pretty, suggested that there were various relations in which one might stand to Miss Ruck; but I think I was conscious of a certain satisfaction in not occupying the paternal one. ‘Don’t worry the poor child,’ said her mother.
‘Come on, mother,’ said Miss Ruck.
‘We are going to look about a little,’ explained the elder lady to me, by way of taking leave.
‘I know what that means,’ remarked Mr Ruck, as his companions moved away. He stood looking at them a moment, while he raised his hand to his head, behind, and stood rubbing it a little, with a movement that displaced his hat. (I may remark in parenthesis that I never saw a hat more easily displaced than Mr Ruck’s.) I supposed he was going to say something querulous, but I was mistaken. Mr Ruck was unhappy, but he was very good-natured. ‘Well, they want to pick up something,’ he said. ‘That’s the principal interest, for ladies.’
IV
MR RUCK distinguished me, as the French say. He honoured me with his esteem, and, as the days elapsed, with a large portion of his confidence. Sometimes he bored me a little, for the tone of his conversation was not cheerful, tending as it did almost exclusively to a melancholy dirge over the financial prostration of our common country. ‘No, sir, business in the United States is not what it once was,’ he found occasion to remark several times a day. ‘There’s not the same spring – there’s not the same hopeful feeling. You can see it in all departments.’ He used to sit by the hour in the little garden of the pension, with a roll of American newspapers in his lap and his high hat pushed back, swinging one of his long legs and reading the New York Herald. He paid a daily visit to the American banker’s, on the other side of the Rhone, and remained there a long time, turning over the old papers on the green velvet table in the middle of the Salon des Étrangers and fraternising with chance compatriots. But in spite of these diversions his time hung heavily upon his hands. I used sometimes to propose to him to take a walk; but he had a mortal horror of pedestrianism, and regarded my own taste for it as a morbid form of activity. ‘You’ll kill yourself, if you don’t look out,’ he said, ‘walking all over the country. I don’t want to walk round that way; I ain’t a postman!’ Briefly speaking, Mr Ruck had few resources. His wife and daughter, on the other hand, it was to be supposed, were possessed of a good many that could not be apparent to an unobtrusive young man. They also sat a great deal in the garden or in the salon, side by side, with folded hands, contemplating material objects, and were remarkably independent of most of the usual feminine aids to idleness – light literature, tapestry, the use of the piano. They were, however, much fonder of locomotion than their companion, and I often met them in the Rue du Rhone and on the quays, loitering in front of the jewellers’ windows. They might have had a cavalier in the person of old M. Pigeonneau, who possessed a high appreciation of their charms, but who, owing to the absence of a common idiom, was deprived of the pleasures of intimacy. He knew no English, and Mrs Ruck and her daughter had, as it seemed, an incurable mistrust of the beautiful tongue which, as the old man endeavoured to impress upon them, was pre-eminently the language of conversation.