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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (72 page)

BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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Page 424
cold, lifelong scorn that had kindled in her, while she awaited her husband's return, the passion with which she now protested. He would never read
The Modern Warning
but he would hear all about it; he would meet it in the newspapers, in every one's talk; the very voices of the air would distil the worst pages into his ear and make the scandal of her participation even greater thanas heaven knewit would deserve to be. She thought of the month of renewed association, of happy, pure impressions that she had spent a year before in the midst of American kindness, in the midst of memories more innocent than her visions of to-day; and the effect of this retrospect was galling in the face of her possible shame. Shameshame: she repeated that word to Sir Rufus in a tone which made him stare, as if it dawned upon him that her reason was perhaps deserting her. That shame should attach itself to his wife in consequence of any behaviour of
his
was an idea that he had to make a very considerable effort to embrace; and while his candour betrayed it his wife was touched even through her resentment by seeing that she had not made him angry. He thought she was strangely unreasonable, but he was determined not to fall into that vice on his own side. She was silent about Macarthy because Sir Rufus had accused her before her marriage of being afraid of him, and she had then resolved never again to incur such a taunt; but before things had gone much further between them she reminded her husband that she had Irish blood, the blood of the people, in her veins and that he must take that into account in measuring the provocation he might think it safe to heap upon her. She was far from being a fanatic on this subject, as he knew; but when America was made out to be an object of holy horror to virtuous England she could not but remember that millions of her Celtic cousins had found refuge there from the blessed English dispensation and be struck with his recklessness in challenging comparisons which were better left to sleep.
When his wife began to represent herself as Irish Sir Rufus evidently thought her off her head indeed: it was the first he had heard of it since she communicated the mystic fact to him on the lake of Como. Nevertheless he argued with her for half an hour as if she were sane, and before they separated he made
 
Page 425
her a liberal concession, such as only a perfectly lucid mind would be able to appreciate. This was a simple indulgence, at the end of their midnight discussion; it was not dictated by any recognition of his having been unjust; for though his wife reiterated this charge with a sacred fire in her eyes which made them more beautiful than he had ever known them he took his stand, in his own stubborn opinion, too firmly upon piles of evidence, revelations of political fraud and corruption, and the whole tone of the newspapersto speak only of that. He remarked to her that clearly he must simply give way to her opposition. If she were going to suffer so inordinately it settled the question. The book should not be published and they would say no more about it. He would put it away, he would burn it up and
The Modern Warning
should be as if it had never been. Amen! amen! Lady Chasemore accepted this sacrifice with eagerness, although her husband (it must be added) did not fail to place before her the exceeding greatness of it. He did not lose his temper, he was not petulant nor spiteful, he did not throw up his project and his vision of literary distinction in a huff; but he called her attention very vividly and solemnly to the fact that in deferring to the feelings she so uncompromisingly expressed he renounced the dream of rendering a signal service to his country. There was a certain bitterness in his smile as he told her that
her
wish was the only thing in the world that could have made him throw away such a golden opportunity. The rest of his life would never offer him such another; but patriotism might go to the dogs if only it were settled that she should not have a grudge. He did not care what became of poor old England if once that precious result were obtained; poor old England might pursue impure delusions and rattle down hill as fast as she chose for want of the word his voice would have spokenreally inspired as he held it to be by the justice of his cause.
Lady Chasemore flattered herself that they did not drop the subject that night in acrimony; there was nothing of this in the long kiss which she took from her husband's lips, with wet eyes, with a grateful, comprehensive murmur. It seemed to her that nothing could be fairer or finer than their mutual confidence; her husband's concession was gallant in the extreme; but even more than this was it impressed upon her that
 
Page 426
her own affection was perfect, since it could accept such a renunciation without a fear of the aftertaste. She had been in love with Sir Rufus from the day he sought her hand at Cadenabbia, but she was never so much in love with him as during the weeks that immediately followed his withdrawal of his book. It was agreed between them that neither of them would speak of the circumstance again, but she at least, in private, devoted an immense deal of meditation to it. It gave her a tremendous reprieve, lifted a nightmare off her breast, and that in turn gave her freedom to reflect that probably few men would have made such a graceful surrender. She wanted him to understand, or at any rate she wanted to understand herself, that in all its particulars too she thoroughly appreciated it; if he really was unable to conceive how she could feel as she did, it was all the more generous of him to comply blindly, to take her at her word, little as he could make of it. It did not become less obvious to Lady Chasemore, but quite the contrary, as the weeks went on, that
The Modern Warning
would have been a masterpiece of its class. In her room, that evening, her husband had told her that the best of him intellectually had gone into it, that he believed he had uttered certain truths there as they never would be uttered againcontributed his grain of gold to the limited sum of human wisdom. He had done something to help his country, and thento please herhe had undone it. Above all it was delightful to her that he had not been sullen or rancorous about it, that he never made her pay for his magnanimity. He neither sighed nor scowled nor took on the air of a domestic martyr; he came and went with his usual step and his usual smile, remaining to all appearance the same fresh-coloured, decided, accomplished high official.
Therefore it is that I find it difficult to explain how it was that Lady Chasemore began to feel at the end of a few months that their difficulties had after all not become the mere reminiscence of a flurry, making present security more deep. What if the flurry continued impalpably, insidiously, under the surface? She thought there had been no change, but now she suspected that there was at least a difference. She had read Tennyson and she knew the famous phrase about the little rift within the lute. It came back to her with a larger meaning, it
 
Page 427
haunted her at last, and she asked herself whether when she accepted her husband's relinquishment it had been her happiness and his that she staked and threw away. In the light of this fear she struck herself as having lived in a fool's paradisea misfortune from which she had ever prayed to be delivered. She wanted in every situation to know the worst, and in this case she had not known it; at least she knew it only now, in the shape of the formidable fact that Sir Rufus's outward good manners misrepresented his real reaction. At present she began anxiously, broodingly to take this reaction for granted and to see signs of it in the very things which she had regarded at first as signs of resignation. She secretly watched his face; she privately counted his words. When she began to do this it was no very long time before she made up her mind that the latter had become much fewerthat Sir Rufus talked to her very much less than he had done of old. He took no revenge, but he was cold, and in his coldness there was something horribly inevitable. He looked at her less and less, whereas formerly his eyes had had no more agreeable occupation. She tried to teach herself that her suspicions were woven of air and were an offence to a just man's character; she remembered that Sir Rufus had told her she was morbid, and if the charge had not been true at the time it might very well be true now. But the effect of this reflection was only to suggest to her that Sir Rufus himself was morbid and that her behaviour had made him so. It was the last thing that would be in his nature, but she had subjected that nature to an injurious strain. He was feeling it now; he was feeling that he had failed in the duty of a good citizen: a good citizen being what he had ever most earnestly proposed to himself to be. Lady Chasemore pictured to herself that his cheek burned for this when it was turned away from herthat he ground his teeth with shame in the watches of the night. Then it came over her with unspeakable bitterness that there had been no real solution of their difficulty; that it was too great to be settled by so simple an arrangement as thatan arrangement too primitive for a complicated world. Nothing was less simple than to bury one's gold and live without the interest.
It is a singular circumstance, and suggesting perhaps a perversion of the imagination under the influence of distress, but
 
Page 428
Lady Chasemore at this time found herself thinking with a kind of baffled pride of the merits of
The Modern Warning
as a literary composition, a political essay. It would have been dreadful for her, but at least it would have been superb, and that was what was naturally enough present to the defeated author as he tossed through the sleepless hours. She determined at last to question him, to confess her fears, to make him tell her whether his weaknessif he considered it a weaknessreally did rankle; though when he made the sacrifice months before (nearly a year had come round) he had let her know that he wished the subject buried between them for evermore. She approached it with some trepidation, and the manner in which he looked at her as she stammered out her inquiry was not such as to make the effort easier. He waited in silence till she had expressed herself as she best could, without helping her, without showing that he guessed her trouble, her need to be assured that he did not feel her to have been cruel. Did he?
did
he? that was what she wanted to be certain of. Sir Rufus's answer was in itself a question; he demanded what she meant by imputing to him such hypocrisy, such bad faith. What did she take him for and what right had he given her to make a new scene, when he flattered himself the last pretext had been removed? If he had been dissatisfied she might be very sure he would have told her so; and as he had not told her she might pay him the compliment to believe he was honest. He expressed the hopeand for the first time in his life he was stern with herthat this would be the last endeavour on her part to revive an odious topic. His sternness was of no avail; it neither wounded her nor comforted her; it only had the effect of making her perfectly sure that he suffered and that he regarded himself as a kind of traitor. He was one more in the long list of those whom a woman had ruined, who had sold themselves, sold their honour and the commonwealth, for a fair face, a quiet life, a show of tears, a bribe of caresses. The vision of this smothered pain, which he tried to carry off as a gentleman should, only ministered to the love she had ever borne himthe love that had had the power originally to throw her into his arms in the face of an opposing force. As month followed month all her nature centred itself in this feeling; she loved him more than ever and yet she had
 
Page 429
been the cause of the most tormenting thing that had ever happened to him. This was a tragic contradiction, impossible to bear, and she sat staring at it with tears of rage.
One day she had occasion to tell him that she had received a letter from Macarthy, who announced that he should soon sail for Europe, even intimated that he should spend two or three weeks in London. He had been overworked, it was years since he had had a proper holiday, and the doctor threatened him with nervous prostration unless he very soon broke off everything. His sister had a vision of his reason for offering to let her see him in England; it was a piece of appreciation on Macarthy's part, a reward for their having behavedthat is, for Sir Rufus's having behaved, apparently under her influencebetter than might have been expected. He had the good taste not to bring out his insolent book, and Macarthy gave this little sign, the most mollified thing he had done as yet, that he noticed. If Lady Chasemore had not at this moment been thinking of something else it might have occurred to her that nervous prostration, in her brother's organism, had already set in. The prospect of his visit held Sir Rufus's attention very briefly, and in a few minutes Agatha herself ceased to dwell upon it. Suddenly, illogically, fantastically, she could not have told why, at that moment and in that place, for she had had no such intention when she came into the room, she broke out: My own darling, do you know what has come over me? I have changed entirelyI see it differently; I want you to publish that grand thing. And she stood there smiling at him, expressing the transformation of her feeling so well that he might have been forgiven for not doubting it.
Nevertheless he did doubt it, especially at first. But she repeated, she pressed, she insisted; once she had spoken in this sense she abounded and overflowed. It went on for several days (he had begun by refusing to listen to her, for even in touching the question she had violated his express command), and by the end of a week she persuaded him that she had really come round. She was extremely ingenious and plausible in tracing the process by which she had done so, and she drew from him the confession (they kissed a great deal after it was made) that the manuscript of
The Modern Warning
had not been destroyed at all, but was safely locked up in a cabinet,
BOOK: Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874
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