Collected Stories by Henry James
‘I hope they haven’t injured you,’ I said.
‘Well, they haven’t helped me much. So many houses on fire, that’s all. If they happen to take place in your own street, they don’t increase the value of your property. When mine catches, I suppose they’ll write and tell me – one of these days, when they’ve got nothing else to do. I didn’t get a blessed letter this morning; I suppose they think I’m having such a good time over here it’s a pity to disturb me. If I could attend to business for about half an hour, I’d find out something. But I can’t, and it’s no use talking. The state of my health was never so unsatisfactory as it was about five o’clock this morning.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that,’ I said, ‘and I recommend you strongly not to think of business.’
‘I don’t,’ Mr Ruck replied. ‘I’m thinking of cathedrals; I’m thinking of the beauties of nature. Come,’ he went on, turning round on the bench and leaning his elbow on the parapet, ‘I’ll think of those mountains over there; they are pretty, certainly. Can’t you get over there?’
‘Over where?’
‘Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train right up?’
‘You can go to Chamouni,’ I said. ‘You can go to Grindelwald and Zermatt and fifty other places. You can’t go by rail, but you can drive.’
‘All right, we’ll drive – and not in a one-horse concern, either. Yes, Chamouni is one of the places we put down. I hope there are a few nice shops in Chamouni.’ Mr Ruck spoke with a certain quickened emphasis, and in a tone more explicitly humorous than he commonly employed. I thought he was excited, and yet he had not the appearance of excitement. He looked like a man who has simply taken, in the face of disaster, a sudden, somewhat imaginative, resolution not to ‘worry’. He presently twisted himself about on his bench again and began to watch for his companions. ‘Well, they are walking round,’ he resumed; ‘I guess they’ve hit on something, somewhere. And they’ve got a carriage waiting outside of that archway, too. They seem to do a big business in archways here, don’t they. They like to have a carriage to carry home the things – those ladies of mine. Then they’re sure they’ve got them’. The ladies, after this, to do them justice, were not very long in appearing. They came toward us, from under the archway to which Mr Ruck had somewhat invidiously alluded, slowly and with a rather exhausted step and expression. My companion looked at them a moment, as they advanced. ‘They’re tired,’ he said softly. ‘When they’re tired, like that, it’s very expensive.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Ruck, ‘I’m glad you’ve had some company.’ Her husband looked at her, in silence, through narrowed eyelids, and I suspected that this gracious observation on the lady’s part was prompted by a restless conscience.
Miss Sophy glanced at me with her little straightforward air of defiance. ‘It would have been more proper if we had had the company. Why didn’t you come after us, instead of sitting there?’ she asked of Mr Ruck’s companion.
‘I was told by your father,’ I explained, ‘that you were engaged in sacred rites.’ Miss Ruck was not gracious, though I doubt whether it was because her conscience was better than her mother’s.
‘Well, for a gentleman there is nothing so sacred as ladies’ society,’ replied Miss Ruck, in the manner of a person accustomed to giving neat retorts.
‘I suppose you refer to the cathedral,’ said her mother. ‘Well, I must say, we didn’t go back there. I don’t know what it may be of a Sunday, but it gave me a chill.’
‘We discovered the loveliest little lace-shop,’ observed the young girl, with a serenity that was superior to bravado.
Her father looked at her a while; then turned about again, leaning on the parapet, and gazed away at the ‘hills’.
‘Well, it was certainly cheap,’ said Mrs Ruck, also contemplating the Alps.
‘We are going to Chamouni,’ said her husband. ‘You haven’t any occasion for lace at Chamouni.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear you have decided to go somewhere,’ rejoined his wife. ‘I don’t want to be a fixture at a boarding-house.’
‘You can wear lace anywhere,’ said Miss Ruck, ‘if you put it on right. That’s the great thing, with lace. I don’t think they know how to wear lace in Europe. I know how I mean to wear mine; but I mean to keep it till I get home.’
Her father transferred his melancholy gaze to her elaborately-appointed little person; there was a great deal of very new-looking detail in Miss Ruck’s appearance. Then, in a tone of voice quite out of consonance with his facial despondency, ‘Have you purchased a great deal?’ he inquired.
‘I have purchased enough for you to make a fuss about.’
‘He can’t make a fuss about that,’ said Mrs Ruck.
‘Well, you’ll see!’ declared the young girl with a little sharp laugh.
But her father went on, in the same tone: ‘Have you got it in your pocket? Why don’t you put it on – why don’t you hang it round you?’
‘I’ll hang it round you, if you don’t look out!’ cried Miss Sophy.
‘Don’t you want to show it to this gentleman?’ Mr Ruck continued.
‘Mercy, how you do talk about that lace!’ said his wife.
‘Well, I want to be lively. There’s every reason for it; we’re going to Chamouni.’
‘You’re restless; that’s what’s the matter with you.’ And Mrs Ruck got up.
‘No, I ain’t,’ said her husband. ‘I never felt so quiet; I feel as peaceful as a little child.’
Mrs Ruck, who had no sense whatever of humour, looked at her daughter and at me. ‘Well, I hope you’ll improve,’ she said.
‘Send in the bills,’ Mr Ruck went on, rising to his feet. ‘Don’t hesitate, Sophy. I don’t care what you do now. In for a penny, in for a pound.’
Miss Ruck joined her mother, with a little toss of her head, and we followed the ladies to the carriage. ‘In your place,’ said Miss Sophy to her father, ‘I wouldn’t talk so much about pennies and pounds before strangers.’
Poor Mr Ruck appeared to feel the force of this observation, which, in the consciousness of a man who had never been ‘mean’, could hardly fail to strike a responsive chord. He coloured a little, and he was silent; his companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of which was adorned with a large parcel. Mr Ruck gave the parcel a little poke with his umbrella, and then, turning to me with a rather grimly penitential smile, ‘After all,’ he said, ‘for the ladies that’s the principal interest.’
VII
OLD M. Pigeonneau had more than once proposed to me to take a walk, but I had hitherto been unable to respond to so alluring an invitation. It befell, however, one afternoon, that I perceived him going forth upon a desultory stroll, with a certain lonesomeness of demeanour that attracted my sympathy. I hastily overtook him, and passed my hand into his venerable arm, a proceeding which produced in the good old man so jovial a sense of comradeship that he ardently proposed we should bend our steps to the English Garden; no locality less festive was worthy of the occasion. To the English Garden, accordingly, we went; it lay beyond the bridge, beside the lake. It was very pretty and very animated; there was a band playing in the middle, and a considerable number of persons sitting under the small trees, on benches and little chairs, or strolling beside the blue water. We joined the strollers, we observed our companions, and conversed on obvious topics. Some of these last, of course, were the pretty women who embellished the scene, and who, in the light of M. Pigeonneau’s comprehensive criticism, appeared surprisingly numerous. He seemed bent upon our making up our minds as to which was the prettiest, and as this was an innocent game I consented to play at it.
Suddenly M. Pigeonneau stopped, pressing my arm with the liveliest emotion. ‘La voilà, la voilà, the prettiest!’ he quickly murmured, ‘coming toward us, in a blue dress, with the other.’ It was at the other I was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our interesting fellow-pensioner, the daughter of a vigilant mother. M. Pigeonneau, meanwhile, had redoubled his exclamations; he
had recognised Miss Sophy Ruck. ‘Oh, la belle rencontre, nos aimables convives; the prettiest girl in the world, in effect!’
We immediately greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene.
‘I was citing you with admiration to my friend, even before I had recognised you,’ said M. Pigeonneau to Miss Ruck.
‘I don’t believe in French compliments,’ remarked this young lady, presenting her back to the smiling old man.
‘Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?’ I asked of her companion. ‘You had better accept of M. Pigeonneau’s gallant protection, and of mine.’
Aurora Church had taken her hand out of Miss Ruck’s arm; she looked at me, smiling, with her head a little inclined, while, upon her shoulder, she made her open parasol revolve. ‘Which is most improper, – to walk alone or to walk with gentlemen? I wish to do what is most improper.’
‘What mysterious logic governs your conduct?’ I inquired.
‘He thinks you can’t understand him when he talks like that,’ said Miss Ruck. ‘But I do understand you, always!’
‘So I have always ventured to hope, my dear Miss Ruck.’
‘Well, if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be much loss,’ rejoined this young lady.
‘Allons, en marche!’ cried M. Pigeonneau, smiling still, and undiscouraged by her inhumanity. ‘Let us make together the tour of the garden.’ And he imposed his society upon Miss Ruck with a respectful, elderly grace which was evidently unable to see anything in her reluctance but modesty, and was sublimely conscious of a mission to place modesty at its ease. This ill-assorted couple walked in front, while Aurora Church and I strolled along together.
‘I am sure this is more improper,’ said my companion; ‘this is delightfully improper. I don’t say that as a compliment to you,’ she added. ‘I would say it to any man, no matter how stupid.’
‘Oh, I am very stupid,’ I answered, ‘but this doesn’t seem to me wrong.’
‘Not for you, no; only for me. There is nothing that a man can do that is wrong, is there? En morale, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can steal; but I think there is nothing else, is there?’
‘I don’t know. One doesn’t know those things until after one has done them. Then one is enlightened.’
‘And you mean that you have never been enlightened? You make yourself out very good.’
‘That is better than making one’s self out bad, as you do.’ The young girl glanced at me a moment, and then, with her charming smile, ‘That’s one of the consequences of a false position.’
‘Is your position false?’ I inquired, smiling too at this large formula.
‘Distinctly so.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, in every way. For instance, I have to pretend to be a jeune fille. I am not a jeune fille; no American girl is a jeune fille; an American girl is an intelligent, responsible creature. I have to pretend to be very innocent, but I am not very innocent.’
‘You don’t pretend to be very innocent; you pretend to be – what shall I call it? – very wise.’
‘That’s no pretence. I am wise.’
‘You are not an American girl,’ I ventured to observe.
My companion almost stopped, looking at me; there was a little flush in her cheek. ‘Voilà!’ she said. ‘There’s my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I’m not.’
‘Do you want me to tell you?’ I went on. ‘An American girl wouldn’t talk as you are talking now.’
‘Please tell me,’ said Aurora Church, with expressive eagerness. ‘How would she talk?’
‘I can’t tell you all the things an American girl would say, but I think I can tell you the things she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct, as you seem to me to do.’
Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. ‘I see. She would be simpler. To do very simple things that are not at all simple – that is the American girl!’
I permitted myself a small explosion of hilarity. ‘I don’t know whether you are a French girl, or what you are,’ I said, ‘but you are very witty.’
‘Ah, you mean that I strike false notes!’ cried Aurora Church, sadly. ‘That’s just what I want to avoid. I wish you would always tell me.’
The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not become a close one. The young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question: ‘Don’t you want some ice cream?’
‘She doesn’t strike false notes,’ I murmured.
There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a café, and at which the delicacies procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs which were set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next to Aurora Church; our companions were on the other side of the table.
My neighbour was delighted with our situation. ‘This is best of all,’ she said. ‘I never believed I should come to a café with two strange men! Now, you can’t persuade me this isn’t wrong.’
‘To make it wrong we ought to see your mother coming down that path.’
‘Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,’ said the young girl, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before: ‘You must promise to tell me – to warn me in some way – whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that – ahem!’
‘You will keep me very busy, and people will think I am in a consumption.’
‘Voyons,’ she continued, ‘why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven’t you been “attentive”? That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss Ruck calls it.’
I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot, and that Miss Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla cream. ‘Because you are always entwined with that young lady. There is no getting near you.’
Aurora looked at her friend while the latter devoted herself to her ice. ‘You wonder why I like her so much, I suppose. So does mamma; elle s’y perd. I don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas folle. But she gives me information; she tells me about America. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing anything about it, and I am all the more curious. And then Miss Ruck is very fresh.’
‘I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,’ I said, ‘but in future, when you want information, I recommend you to come to me for it.’
‘Our friend offers to take me to America; she invites me to go back with her, to stay with her. You couldn’t do that, could you?’ And the young girl looked at me a moment. ‘Bon, a false note! I can see it by your face; you remind me of a maître de piano.’
‘You overdo the character – the poor American girl,’ I said. ‘Are you going to stay with that delightful family?’
‘I will go and stay with any one that will take me or ask me. It’s a real nostalgie. She says that in New York – in Thirty-Seventh Street – I should have the most lovely time.’
‘I have no doubt you would enjoy it.’
‘Absolute liberty to begin with.’
‘It seems to me you have a certain liberty here,’ I rejoined.
‘Ah, this? Oh, I shall pay for this. I shall be punished by mamma, and I shall be lectured by Madame Galopin.’
‘The wife of the pasteur?’
‘His digne épouse. Madame Galopin, for mamma, is the incarnation of European opinion. That’s what vexes me with mamma, her thinking so much of people like Madame Galopin. Going to see Madame Galopin – mamma calls that being in European society. European society! I’m so sick of that expression; I have heard it since I was six years old. Who is Madame Galopin – who thinks anything of her here? She is nobody; she is perfectly third-rate. If I like America better than mamma, I also know Europe better.’
‘But your mother, certainly,’ I objected, a trifle timidly, for my young lady was excited, and had a charming little passion in her eye – ‘your mother has a great many social relations all over the continent.’
‘She thinks so, but half the people don’t care for us. They are not so good as we, and they know it – I’ll do them that justice – and they wonder why we should care for them. When we are polite to them, they think the less of us; there are plenty of people like that. Mamma thinks so much of them simply because they are foreigners. If I could tell you all the dull, stupid, second-rate people I have had to talk to, for no better reason than that they were de leur pays! – Germans, French, Italians, Turks, everything. When I complain, mamma always says that at any rate it’s practice in the language. And she makes so much of the English, too; I don’t know what that’s practice in.’
Before I had time to suggest an hypothesis, as regards this latter point, I saw something that made me rise, with a certain solemnity, from my chair. This was nothing less than the neat little figure of Mrs Church – a perfect model of the femme comme il faut – approaching our table with an impatient step, and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by the pre-eminent form of Mr Ruck. She had evidently come in quest of her daughter, and if she had commanded this gentleman’s attendance, it had been on no softer ground than that of his unenvied paternity to her guilty child’s accomplice. My movement had given the alarm, and Aurora Church and M. Pigeonneau got up; Miss Ruck alone did not, in the local phrase, derange herself. Mrs Church, beneath her modest little bonnet, looked very serious, but not at all fluttered; she came straight to her daughter, who received her with a smile, and then she looked all round at the rest of us, very fixedly and tranquilly, without bowing. I must do both these ladies the justice to mention that neither of them made the least little ‘scene’.
‘I have come for you, dearest,’ said the mother.
‘Yes, dear mamma.’
‘Come for you – come for you,’ Mrs Church repeated, looking down at the relics of our little feast. ‘I was obliged to ask Mr Ruck’s assistance. I was puzzled; I thought a long time.’
‘Well, they haven’t helped me much. So many houses on fire, that’s all. If they happen to take place in your own street, they don’t increase the value of your property. When mine catches, I suppose they’ll write and tell me – one of these days, when they’ve got nothing else to do. I didn’t get a blessed letter this morning; I suppose they think I’m having such a good time over here it’s a pity to disturb me. If I could attend to business for about half an hour, I’d find out something. But I can’t, and it’s no use talking. The state of my health was never so unsatisfactory as it was about five o’clock this morning.’
‘I am very sorry to hear that,’ I said, ‘and I recommend you strongly not to think of business.’
‘I don’t,’ Mr Ruck replied. ‘I’m thinking of cathedrals; I’m thinking of the beauties of nature. Come,’ he went on, turning round on the bench and leaning his elbow on the parapet, ‘I’ll think of those mountains over there; they are pretty, certainly. Can’t you get over there?’
‘Over where?’
‘Over to those hills. Don’t they run a train right up?’
‘You can go to Chamouni,’ I said. ‘You can go to Grindelwald and Zermatt and fifty other places. You can’t go by rail, but you can drive.’
‘All right, we’ll drive – and not in a one-horse concern, either. Yes, Chamouni is one of the places we put down. I hope there are a few nice shops in Chamouni.’ Mr Ruck spoke with a certain quickened emphasis, and in a tone more explicitly humorous than he commonly employed. I thought he was excited, and yet he had not the appearance of excitement. He looked like a man who has simply taken, in the face of disaster, a sudden, somewhat imaginative, resolution not to ‘worry’. He presently twisted himself about on his bench again and began to watch for his companions. ‘Well, they are walking round,’ he resumed; ‘I guess they’ve hit on something, somewhere. And they’ve got a carriage waiting outside of that archway, too. They seem to do a big business in archways here, don’t they. They like to have a carriage to carry home the things – those ladies of mine. Then they’re sure they’ve got them’. The ladies, after this, to do them justice, were not very long in appearing. They came toward us, from under the archway to which Mr Ruck had somewhat invidiously alluded, slowly and with a rather exhausted step and expression. My companion looked at them a moment, as they advanced. ‘They’re tired,’ he said softly. ‘When they’re tired, like that, it’s very expensive.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Ruck, ‘I’m glad you’ve had some company.’ Her husband looked at her, in silence, through narrowed eyelids, and I suspected that this gracious observation on the lady’s part was prompted by a restless conscience.
Miss Sophy glanced at me with her little straightforward air of defiance. ‘It would have been more proper if we had had the company. Why didn’t you come after us, instead of sitting there?’ she asked of Mr Ruck’s companion.
‘I was told by your father,’ I explained, ‘that you were engaged in sacred rites.’ Miss Ruck was not gracious, though I doubt whether it was because her conscience was better than her mother’s.
‘Well, for a gentleman there is nothing so sacred as ladies’ society,’ replied Miss Ruck, in the manner of a person accustomed to giving neat retorts.
‘I suppose you refer to the cathedral,’ said her mother. ‘Well, I must say, we didn’t go back there. I don’t know what it may be of a Sunday, but it gave me a chill.’
‘We discovered the loveliest little lace-shop,’ observed the young girl, with a serenity that was superior to bravado.
Her father looked at her a while; then turned about again, leaning on the parapet, and gazed away at the ‘hills’.
‘Well, it was certainly cheap,’ said Mrs Ruck, also contemplating the Alps.
‘We are going to Chamouni,’ said her husband. ‘You haven’t any occasion for lace at Chamouni.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear you have decided to go somewhere,’ rejoined his wife. ‘I don’t want to be a fixture at a boarding-house.’
‘You can wear lace anywhere,’ said Miss Ruck, ‘if you put it on right. That’s the great thing, with lace. I don’t think they know how to wear lace in Europe. I know how I mean to wear mine; but I mean to keep it till I get home.’
Her father transferred his melancholy gaze to her elaborately-appointed little person; there was a great deal of very new-looking detail in Miss Ruck’s appearance. Then, in a tone of voice quite out of consonance with his facial despondency, ‘Have you purchased a great deal?’ he inquired.
‘I have purchased enough for you to make a fuss about.’
‘He can’t make a fuss about that,’ said Mrs Ruck.
‘Well, you’ll see!’ declared the young girl with a little sharp laugh.
But her father went on, in the same tone: ‘Have you got it in your pocket? Why don’t you put it on – why don’t you hang it round you?’
‘I’ll hang it round you, if you don’t look out!’ cried Miss Sophy.
‘Don’t you want to show it to this gentleman?’ Mr Ruck continued.
‘Mercy, how you do talk about that lace!’ said his wife.
‘Well, I want to be lively. There’s every reason for it; we’re going to Chamouni.’
‘You’re restless; that’s what’s the matter with you.’ And Mrs Ruck got up.
‘No, I ain’t,’ said her husband. ‘I never felt so quiet; I feel as peaceful as a little child.’
Mrs Ruck, who had no sense whatever of humour, looked at her daughter and at me. ‘Well, I hope you’ll improve,’ she said.
‘Send in the bills,’ Mr Ruck went on, rising to his feet. ‘Don’t hesitate, Sophy. I don’t care what you do now. In for a penny, in for a pound.’
Miss Ruck joined her mother, with a little toss of her head, and we followed the ladies to the carriage. ‘In your place,’ said Miss Sophy to her father, ‘I wouldn’t talk so much about pennies and pounds before strangers.’
Poor Mr Ruck appeared to feel the force of this observation, which, in the consciousness of a man who had never been ‘mean’, could hardly fail to strike a responsive chord. He coloured a little, and he was silent; his companions got into their vehicle, the front seat of which was adorned with a large parcel. Mr Ruck gave the parcel a little poke with his umbrella, and then, turning to me with a rather grimly penitential smile, ‘After all,’ he said, ‘for the ladies that’s the principal interest.’
VII
OLD M. Pigeonneau had more than once proposed to me to take a walk, but I had hitherto been unable to respond to so alluring an invitation. It befell, however, one afternoon, that I perceived him going forth upon a desultory stroll, with a certain lonesomeness of demeanour that attracted my sympathy. I hastily overtook him, and passed my hand into his venerable arm, a proceeding which produced in the good old man so jovial a sense of comradeship that he ardently proposed we should bend our steps to the English Garden; no locality less festive was worthy of the occasion. To the English Garden, accordingly, we went; it lay beyond the bridge, beside the lake. It was very pretty and very animated; there was a band playing in the middle, and a considerable number of persons sitting under the small trees, on benches and little chairs, or strolling beside the blue water. We joined the strollers, we observed our companions, and conversed on obvious topics. Some of these last, of course, were the pretty women who embellished the scene, and who, in the light of M. Pigeonneau’s comprehensive criticism, appeared surprisingly numerous. He seemed bent upon our making up our minds as to which was the prettiest, and as this was an innocent game I consented to play at it.
Suddenly M. Pigeonneau stopped, pressing my arm with the liveliest emotion. ‘La voilà, la voilà, the prettiest!’ he quickly murmured, ‘coming toward us, in a blue dress, with the other.’ It was at the other I was looking, for the other, to my surprise, was our interesting fellow-pensioner, the daughter of a vigilant mother. M. Pigeonneau, meanwhile, had redoubled his exclamations; he
We immediately greeted and joined the young ladies, who, like ourselves, were walking arm in arm and enjoying the scene.
‘I was citing you with admiration to my friend, even before I had recognised you,’ said M. Pigeonneau to Miss Ruck.
‘I don’t believe in French compliments,’ remarked this young lady, presenting her back to the smiling old man.
‘Are you and Miss Ruck walking alone?’ I asked of her companion. ‘You had better accept of M. Pigeonneau’s gallant protection, and of mine.’
Aurora Church had taken her hand out of Miss Ruck’s arm; she looked at me, smiling, with her head a little inclined, while, upon her shoulder, she made her open parasol revolve. ‘Which is most improper, – to walk alone or to walk with gentlemen? I wish to do what is most improper.’
‘What mysterious logic governs your conduct?’ I inquired.
‘He thinks you can’t understand him when he talks like that,’ said Miss Ruck. ‘But I do understand you, always!’
‘So I have always ventured to hope, my dear Miss Ruck.’
‘Well, if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be much loss,’ rejoined this young lady.
‘Allons, en marche!’ cried M. Pigeonneau, smiling still, and undiscouraged by her inhumanity. ‘Let us make together the tour of the garden.’ And he imposed his society upon Miss Ruck with a respectful, elderly grace which was evidently unable to see anything in her reluctance but modesty, and was sublimely conscious of a mission to place modesty at its ease. This ill-assorted couple walked in front, while Aurora Church and I strolled along together.
‘I am sure this is more improper,’ said my companion; ‘this is delightfully improper. I don’t say that as a compliment to you,’ she added. ‘I would say it to any man, no matter how stupid.’
‘Oh, I am very stupid,’ I answered, ‘but this doesn’t seem to me wrong.’
‘Not for you, no; only for me. There is nothing that a man can do that is wrong, is there? En morale, you know, I mean. Ah, yes, he can steal; but I think there is nothing else, is there?’
‘I don’t know. One doesn’t know those things until after one has done them. Then one is enlightened.’
‘And you mean that you have never been enlightened? You make yourself out very good.’
‘That is better than making one’s self out bad, as you do.’ The young girl glanced at me a moment, and then, with her charming smile, ‘That’s one of the consequences of a false position.’
‘Is your position false?’ I inquired, smiling too at this large formula.
‘Distinctly so.’
‘In what way?’
‘Oh, in every way. For instance, I have to pretend to be a jeune fille. I am not a jeune fille; no American girl is a jeune fille; an American girl is an intelligent, responsible creature. I have to pretend to be very innocent, but I am not very innocent.’
‘You don’t pretend to be very innocent; you pretend to be – what shall I call it? – very wise.’
‘That’s no pretence. I am wise.’
‘You are not an American girl,’ I ventured to observe.
My companion almost stopped, looking at me; there was a little flush in her cheek. ‘Voilà!’ she said. ‘There’s my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I’m not.’
‘Do you want me to tell you?’ I went on. ‘An American girl wouldn’t talk as you are talking now.’
‘Please tell me,’ said Aurora Church, with expressive eagerness. ‘How would she talk?’
‘I can’t tell you all the things an American girl would say, but I think I can tell you the things she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct, as you seem to me to do.’
Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. ‘I see. She would be simpler. To do very simple things that are not at all simple – that is the American girl!’
I permitted myself a small explosion of hilarity. ‘I don’t know whether you are a French girl, or what you are,’ I said, ‘but you are very witty.’
‘Ah, you mean that I strike false notes!’ cried Aurora Church, sadly. ‘That’s just what I want to avoid. I wish you would always tell me.’
The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not become a close one. The young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question: ‘Don’t you want some ice cream?’
‘She doesn’t strike false notes,’ I murmured.
There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a café, and at which the delicacies procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs which were set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next to Aurora Church; our companions were on the other side of the table.
My neighbour was delighted with our situation. ‘This is best of all,’ she said. ‘I never believed I should come to a café with two strange men! Now, you can’t persuade me this isn’t wrong.’
‘To make it wrong we ought to see your mother coming down that path.’
‘Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,’ said the young girl, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before: ‘You must promise to tell me – to warn me in some way – whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that – ahem!’
‘You will keep me very busy, and people will think I am in a consumption.’
‘Voyons,’ she continued, ‘why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven’t you been “attentive”? That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss Ruck calls it.’
I assured myself that our companions were out of ear-shot, and that Miss Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla cream. ‘Because you are always entwined with that young lady. There is no getting near you.’
Aurora looked at her friend while the latter devoted herself to her ice. ‘You wonder why I like her so much, I suppose. So does mamma; elle s’y perd. I don’t like her particularly; je n’en suis pas folle. But she gives me information; she tells me about America. Mamma has always tried to prevent my knowing anything about it, and I am all the more curious. And then Miss Ruck is very fresh.’
‘I may not be so fresh as Miss Ruck,’ I said, ‘but in future, when you want information, I recommend you to come to me for it.’
‘Our friend offers to take me to America; she invites me to go back with her, to stay with her. You couldn’t do that, could you?’ And the young girl looked at me a moment. ‘Bon, a false note! I can see it by your face; you remind me of a maître de piano.’
‘You overdo the character – the poor American girl,’ I said. ‘Are you going to stay with that delightful family?’
‘I will go and stay with any one that will take me or ask me. It’s a real nostalgie. She says that in New York – in Thirty-Seventh Street – I should have the most lovely time.’
‘I have no doubt you would enjoy it.’
‘Absolute liberty to begin with.’
‘It seems to me you have a certain liberty here,’ I rejoined.
‘Ah, this? Oh, I shall pay for this. I shall be punished by mamma, and I shall be lectured by Madame Galopin.’
‘The wife of the pasteur?’
‘His digne épouse. Madame Galopin, for mamma, is the incarnation of European opinion. That’s what vexes me with mamma, her thinking so much of people like Madame Galopin. Going to see Madame Galopin – mamma calls that being in European society. European society! I’m so sick of that expression; I have heard it since I was six years old. Who is Madame Galopin – who thinks anything of her here? She is nobody; she is perfectly third-rate. If I like America better than mamma, I also know Europe better.’
‘She thinks so, but half the people don’t care for us. They are not so good as we, and they know it – I’ll do them that justice – and they wonder why we should care for them. When we are polite to them, they think the less of us; there are plenty of people like that. Mamma thinks so much of them simply because they are foreigners. If I could tell you all the dull, stupid, second-rate people I have had to talk to, for no better reason than that they were de leur pays! – Germans, French, Italians, Turks, everything. When I complain, mamma always says that at any rate it’s practice in the language. And she makes so much of the English, too; I don’t know what that’s practice in.’
Before I had time to suggest an hypothesis, as regards this latter point, I saw something that made me rise, with a certain solemnity, from my chair. This was nothing less than the neat little figure of Mrs Church – a perfect model of the femme comme il faut – approaching our table with an impatient step, and followed most unexpectedly in her advance by the pre-eminent form of Mr Ruck. She had evidently come in quest of her daughter, and if she had commanded this gentleman’s attendance, it had been on no softer ground than that of his unenvied paternity to her guilty child’s accomplice. My movement had given the alarm, and Aurora Church and M. Pigeonneau got up; Miss Ruck alone did not, in the local phrase, derange herself. Mrs Church, beneath her modest little bonnet, looked very serious, but not at all fluttered; she came straight to her daughter, who received her with a smile, and then she looked all round at the rest of us, very fixedly and tranquilly, without bowing. I must do both these ladies the justice to mention that neither of them made the least little ‘scene’.
‘I have come for you, dearest,’ said the mother.
‘Yes, dear mamma.’
‘Come for you – come for you,’ Mrs Church repeated, looking down at the relics of our little feast. ‘I was obliged to ask Mr Ruck’s assistance. I was puzzled; I thought a long time.’