Collected Stories by Henry James
He is troubled, too, about Mr Sloane. His attitude toward the bonhomme quite passes my comprehension. It’s the queerest jumble of contraries. He penetrates him, disapproves of him – yet respects and admires him. It all comes of the poor boy’s shrinking New England conscience. He’s afraid to give his perceptions a fair chance, lest, forsooth, they should look over his neighbour’s wall. He’ll not understand that he may as well sacrifice the old reprobate for a lamb as for a sheep. His view of the gentleman, therefore, is a perfect tissue of cobwebs – a jumble of half-way sorrows, and wire-drawn charities, and hair-breadth ‘scapes from utter damnation, and sudden platitudes of generosity – fit, all of it, to make an angel curse!’
‘The man’s a perfect egotist and fool,’ say I, ‘but I like him.’ Now Theodore likes him – or rather wants to like him; but he can’t reconcile it to his self-respect – fastidious deity! – to like a fool. Why the deuce can’t he leave it alone altogether? It’s a purely practical matter. He ought to do the duties of his place all the better for having his head clear of officious sentiment. I don’t believe in disinterested service; and Theodore is too desperately bent on preserving his disinterestedness. With me it’s different. I am perfectly free to love the bonhomme – for a fool. I’m neither a scribe nor a Pharisee; I am simply a student of the art of life.
And then, Theodore is troubled about his sisters. He’s afraid he’s not doing his duty by them. He thinks he ought to be with them – to be getting a larger salary – to be teaching his nieces. I am not versed in such questions. Perhaps he ought.
May 3rd. – This morning Theodore sent me word that he was ill and unable to get up; upon which I immediately went in to see him. He had caught cold, was sick and a little feverish. I urged him to make no attempt to leave his room, and assured him that I would do what I could to reconcile Mr Sloane to his absence. This I found an easy matter. I read to him for a couple of hours, wrote four letters – one in French – and then talked for a while – a good while. I have done more talking, by the way, in the last fortnight, than in any previous twelve months – much of it, too, none of the wisest, nor, I may add, of the most superstitiously veracious. In a little discussion, two or three days ago, with Theodore, I came to the point and let him know that in gossiping with Mr Sloane I made no scruple, for our common satisfaction, of ‘colouring’ more or less. My confession gave him ‘that turn’, as Mrs Gamp would say, that his present illness may be the result of it. Nevertheless, poor dear fellow, I trust he will be on his legs to-morrow. This afternoon, somehow, I found myself really in the humour of talking. There was something propitious in the circumstances; a hard, cold rain without, a wood-fire in the library, the bonhomme puffing cigarettes in his arm-chair, beside him a portfolio of newly imported prints and photographs, and – Theodore tucked safely away in bed. Finally, when I brought our tête-à-tête to a close (taking good care not to overstay my welcome) Mr Sloane seized me by both hands and honoured me with one of his venerable grins. ‘Max,’ he said – ‘you must let me call you Max – you are the most delightful man I ever knew.’
Verily, there’s some virtue left in me yet. I believe I almost blushed.
‘Why didn’t I know you ten years ago?’ the old man went on. ‘There are ten years lost.’
‘Ten years ago I was not worth your knowing,’ Max remarked.
‘But I did know you!’ cried the bonhomme. ‘I knew you in knowing your mother.’
Ah! my mother again. When the old man begins that chapter I feel like telling him to blow out his candle and go to bed.
‘At all events,’ he continued, ‘we must make the most of the years that remain. I am a rotten old carcase, but I have no intention of dying. You won’t get tired of me and want to go away?’
‘I am devoted to you, sir,’ I said. ‘But I must be looking for some occupation, you know.’
‘Occupation? bother! I’ll give you occupation. I’ll give you wages.’
‘I am afraid that you will want to give me the wages without the work.’ And then I declared that I must go up and look at poor Theodore.
The bonhomme still kept my hands. ‘I wish very much that I could get you to be as fond of me as you are of poor Theodore.’
‘Ah, don’t talk about fondness, Mr Sloane. I don’t deal much in that article.’
‘Don’t you like my secretary?’
‘Not as he deserves.’
‘Nor as he likes you, perhaps?’
‘He likes me more than I deserve.’
‘Well, Max,’ my host pursued, ‘we can be good friends all the same. We don’t need a hocus-pocus of false sentiment. We are men, aren’t we? – men of sublime good sense.’ And just here, as the old man looked at me, the pressure of his hands deepend to a convulsive grasp, and the bloodless mask of his countenance was suddenly distorted with a nameless fear. ‘Ah, my dear young man!’ he cried, ‘come and be a son to me – the son of my age and desolation! For God’s sake, don’t leave me to pine and die alone!’
I was greatly surprised – and I may add I was moved. Is it true, then, that this dilapidated organism contains such measureless depths of horror and longing? He has evidently a mortal fear of death. I assured him on my honour that he may henceforth call upon me for any service.
8th. – Theodore’s little turn proved more serious than I expected. He has been confined to his room till to-day. This evening he came down to the library in his dressing-gown. Decidedly, Mr Sloane is an eccentric, but hardly, as Theodore thinks, a ‘charming’ one. There is something extremely curious in his humours and fancies – the incongruous fits and starts, as it were, of his taste. For some reason, best known to himself, he took it into his head to regard it as a want of delicacy, of respect, of savoir-vivre – of heaven knows what – that poor Theodore, who is still weak and languid, should enter the sacred precinct of his study in the vulgar drapery of a dressing-gown. The sovereign trouble with the bonhomme is an absolute lack of the instinct of justice. He’s of the real feminine turn – I believe I have written it before – without the redeeming fidelity of the sex. I honestly believe that I might come into his study in my night-shirt and he would smile at it as a picturesque déshabillé. But for poor Theodore to-night there was nothing but scowls and frowns, and barely a civil inquiry about his health. But poor Theodore is not such a fool, either; he will not die of a snubbing; I never said he was a weakling. Once he fairly saw from what quarter the wind blew, he bore the master’s brutality with the utmost coolness and gallantry. Can it be that Mr Sloane really wishes to drop him? The delicious old brute! He understands favour and friendship only as a selfish rapture – a reaction, an infatuation, an act of aggressive, exclusive patronage. It’s not a bestowal, with him, but a transfer, and half his pleasure in causing his sun to shine is that – being woefully near its setting – it will produce certain long fantastic shadows. He wants to cast my shadow, I suppose, over Theodore; but fortunately I am not altogether an opaque body. Since Theodore was taken ill he has been into his room but once, and has sent him none but a dry little message or two. I, too, have been much less attentive than I should have wished to be; but my time has not been my own. It has been, every moment of it, at the disposal of my host. He actually runs after me; he devours me; he makes a fool of himself, and is trying hard to make one of me. I find that he will bear – that, in fact, he actually enjoys – a sort of unexpected contradiction. He likes anything that will tickle his fancy, give an unusual tone to our relations, remind him of certain historical characters whom he thinks he resembles. I have stepped into Theodore’s shoes, and done – with what I feel in my bones to be very inferior skill and taste – all the reading, writing, condensing, transcribing and advising that he has been accustomed to do. I have driven with the bonhomme; played chess and cribbage with him; beaten him, bullied him, contradicted him; forced him into going out on the water under my charge. Who shall say, after this, that I haven’t done my best to discourage his advances, put myself in a bad light? As yet,
13th. – I have refused, of course, to supplant Theodore further, in the exercise of his functions, and he has resumed his morning labours with Mr Sloane. I, on my side, have spent these morning hours in scouring the country on that capital black mare, the use of which is one of the perquisites of Theodore’s place. The days have been magnificent – the heat of the sun tempered by a murmuring, wandering wind, the whole north a mighty ecstasy of sound and verdure, the sky a far-away vault of bended blue. Not far from the mill at M-, the other end of the lake, I met, for the third time, that very pretty young girl who reminds me so forcibly of A. L. She makes so lavish a use of her eyes that I ventured to stop and bid her good-morning. She seems nothing loath to an acquaintance. She’s a pure barbarian in speech, but her eyes are quite articulate. These rides do me good; I was growing too pensive.
There is something the matter with Theodore; his illness seems to have left him strangely affected. He has fits of silent stiffness, alternating with spasms of extravagant gaiety. He avoids me at times for hours together, and then he comes and looks at me with an inscrutable smile, as if he were on the verge of a burst of confidence – which again is swallowed up in the immensity of his dumbness. Is he hatching some astounding benefit to his species? Is he working to bring about my removal to a higher sphere of action? Nous verrons bien.
18th. – Theodore threatens departure. He received this morning a letter from one of his sisters – the young widow – announcing her engagement to a clergyman whose acquaintance she has recently made, and intimating her expectation of an immediate union with the gentleman – a ceremony which would require Theodore’s attendance. Theodore, in high good humour, read the letter aloud at breakfast – and, to tell the truth, it was a charming epistle. He then spoke of his having to go on to the wedding, a proposition to which Mr Sloane graciously assented – much more than assented. ‘I shall be sorry to lose you, after so happy a connection,’ said the old man. Theodore turned pale, stared a moment, and then, recovering his colour and his composure, declared that he should have no objection in life to coming back.
‘Bless your soul!’ cried the bonhomme, ‘you don’t mean to say you will leave your other sister all alone?’
To which Theodore replied that he would arrange for her and her little girl to live with the married pair. ‘It’s the only proper thing,’ he remarked, as if it were quite settled. Has it come to this, then, that Mr Sloane actually wants to turn him out of the house? The shameless old villain! He keeps smiling an uncanny smile, which means, as I read it, that if the poor young man once departs he shall never return on the old footing – for all his impudence!
20th. – This morning, at breakfast, we had a terrific scene. A letter arrives for Theodore; he opens it, turns white and red, frowns, falters, and then informs us that the clever widow has broken off her engagement. No wedding, therefore, and no departure for Theodore. The bonhomme was furious. In his fury he took the liberty of calling poor Mrs Parker (the sister) a very uncivil name. Theodore rebuked him, with perfect good taste, and kept his temper.
‘If my opinions don’t suit you, Mr Lisle,’ the old man broke out, ‘and my mode of expressing them displeases you, you know you can easily protect yourself.’
‘My dear Mr Sloane,’ said Theodore, ‘your opinions, as a general thing, interest me deeply, and have never ceased to act beneficially upon the formation of my own. Your mode of expressing them is always brilliant, and I wouldn’t for the world, after all our pleasant intercourse, separate from you in bitterness. Only, I repeat, your qualification of my sister’s conduct is perfectly uncalled for. If you knew her, you would be the first to admit it.’
There was something in Theodore’s look and manner, as he said these words, which puzzled me all the morning. After dinner, finding myself alone with him, I told him I was glad he was not obliged to go away. He looked at me with the mysterious smile I have mentioned, thanked me, and fell into meditation. As this bescribbled chronicle is the record of my follies as well of my hauts faits, I needn’t hesitate to say that for a moment I was a good deal vexed. What business has this angel of candour to deal in signs and portents, to look unutterable things? What right has he to do so with me especially, in whom he has always professed an absolute confidence? Just as I was about to cry out, ‘Come, my dear fellow, this affectation of mystery has lasted quite long enough – favour me at last with the result of your cogitations!’ – as I was on the point of thus expressing my impatience of his ominous behaviour, the oracle at last addressed itself to utterance.
‘You see, my dear Max,’ he said, ‘I can’t, in justice to myself, go away in obedience to the sort of notice that was served on me this morning. What do you think of my actual footing here?’
Theodore’s actual footing here seems to me impossible; of course I said so.
‘No, I assure you it’s not,’ he answered. ‘I should, on the contrary, feel very uncomfortable to think that I had come away, except by my own choice. You see a man can’t afford to cheapen himself. What are you laughing at?’
‘I am laughing, in the first place, my dear fellow, to hear on your lips the language of cold calculation; and in the second place, at your odd notion of the process by which a man keeps himself up in the market.’
‘I assure you it’s the correct notion. I came here as a particular favour to Mr Sloane; it was expressly understood so. The sort of work was odious to me; I had regularly to break myself in. I had to trample on my convictions, preferences, prejudices. I don’t take such things easily; I take them hard; and when once the effort has been made, I can’t consent to have it wasted. If Mr Sloane needed me then, he needs me still. I am ignorant of any change having taken place in his intentions, or in his means of satisfying them. I came, not to amuse him, but to do a certain work; I hope to remain until the work is completed. To go away sooner is to make a confession of incapacity which, I protest, costs me too much. I am too conceited, if you like.’
Theodore spoke these words with a face which I have never seen him wear – a fixed, mechanical smile; a hard, dry glitter in his eyes; a harsh, strident tone in his voice – in his whole physiognomy a gleam, as it were, a note of defiance. Now I confess that for defiance I have never been conscious of an especial relish. When I am defied I am beastly. ‘My dear man,’ I replied, ‘your sentiments do you prodigious credit. Your very ingenious theory of your present situation, as well as your extremely pronounced sense of your personal value, are calculated to ensure you a degree of practical success which can very well dispense with the furtherance of my poor good wishes.’ Oh, the grimness of his visage as he listened to this, and, I suppose I may add, the grimness of mine! But I have ceased to be puzzled. Theodore’s conduct for the past ten days is suddenly illumined with a backward, lurid ray. I will note down here a few plain truths which it behooves me to take to heart – commit to memory. Theodore is jealous of Maximus Austin. Theodore hates the said Maximus. Theodore has been seeking for the past three months to see his name written, last b
21st. – I have lost no time. This evening, late, after I had heard Theodore go to his room (I had left the library early, on the pretext of having letters to write), I repaired to Mr Sloane, who had not yet gone to bed, and informed him I should be obliged to leave him at once, and pick up a subsistence somehow in New York. He felt the blow; it brought him straight down on his marrow-bones. He went through the whole gamut of his arts and graces; he blustered, whimpered, entreated, flattered. He tried to drag in Theodore’s name; but this I, of course, prevented. But, finally, why, why, WHY, after all my promises of fidelity, must I thus cruelly desert him? Then came my trump card: I have spent my last penny; while I stay, I’m a beggar. The remainder of this extraordinary scene I have no power to describe: how the bonhomme, touched, inflamed, inspired, by the thought of my destitution, and at the same time annoyed, perplexed, bewildered at having to commit himself to doing anything for me, worked himself into a nervous frenzy which deprived him of a clear sense of the value of his words and his actions; how I, prompted by the irresistible spirit of my desire to leap astride of his weakness and ride it hard to the goal of my dreams, cunningly contrived to keep his spirit at the fever-point, so that strength and reason and resistance should burn themselves out. I shall probably never again have such a sensation as I enjoyed to-night – actually feel a heated human heart throbbing and turning and struggling in my grasp; know its pants, its spasms, its convulsions, and its final senseless quiescence. At half-past one o’clock Mr Sloane got out of his chair, went to his secretary, opened a private drawer, and took out a folded paper. ‘This is my will,’ he said, ‘made some seven weeks ago. If you will stay with me I will destroy it.’