 CHAPTER IV A FEW DAYS AFTER THE BARONESS MONSTER had presented herself to her American kinsfolk, she came, with her brother, and took up her abode in that small white house adjacent to Mr. Wentworth's own dwelling, of which mention has already been made. It was ongoing with his daughters to return her visit that Mr. Wentworth placed this comfortable cottage at her service, the offer being the result of a domestic colloquy, diffused through the ensuing twenty-four hours, in the course of which the two foreign visitors were discussed and analyzed with a great deal of earnestness and subtlety. The discussion went forward, as I say, in the family circle, but that circle on the evening following Madame Munster's return to town, as on many other occasions included Robert Acton and his pretty sister. If you had been present, it would probably not have seemed to you that the advent of these brilliant strangers was treated as an exhilarating occurrence, a pleasure the more in this tranquil household, a prospective source of entertainment. This was not Mr. Wentworth's way of treating any human occurrence. The sudden eruption into the well-ordered consciousness of the Wentworths, of an element not allowed for in its scheme of usual obligations, required a readjustment of that sense of responsibility which constituted its principal furniture. To consider an event crudely and baldly, and the light of the pleasure it might bring them, was an intellectual exercise with which Felix Young's American cousins were almost wholly unacquainted, in which they scarcely supposed to be largely pursued in any section of human society. The arrival of Felix and his sister was a satisfaction, but it was a singularly joyless and inelastic satisfaction. It was an extension of duty, of the exercise of the more recondite virtues. But neither Mr. Wentworth nor Charlotte, nor Mr. Brand, who among these excellent people, was a great promoter of reflection and aspiration, frankly adverted to it as an extension of enjoyment. This function was ultimately assumed by Gertrude Wentworth, who was a peculiar girl, but the full compass of whose peculiarities had not been exhibited before they very ingeniously found their pretext in the presence of these possibly two agreeable foreigners. Gertrude, however, had to struggle with a great accumulation of obstructions, both of the subjective, as the metaphysicians say, and of the objective, order. And indeed it is no small part of the purpose of this little history to set forth her struggle. What seemed paramount in this abrupt enlargement of Mr. Wentworth's sympathies and those of his daughters was an extension of the field of possible mistakes, and the doctrine, as it may almost be called, of the oppressive gravity of mistakes was one of the most cherished traditions of the Wentworth family. I don't believe she wants to come and stay in this house, said Gertrude. Madame Munster, from this time forward, receiving no other designation than the personal pronoun. Charlotte and Gertrude acquired considerable facility in addressing her directly as Eugenia, but in speaking of her to each other they rarely called her anything but she. Doesn't she think it good enough for her? cried little Lizzie Acton, who was always asking unpractical questions that required in strictness no answer, and to which indeed she expected no other answer than such as she herself invariably furnished in a small, innocently satirical laugh. She certainly expressed a willingness to come, said Mr. Wentworth. That was only politeness, Gertrude rejoined. Yes, she is very polite, very polite, said Mr. Wentworth. She is too polite, his son declared, and a softly growling tone which was habitual to him, but which was an indication of nothing worse than a vaguely humorous intention. It is very embarrassing. That is more than can be said of you, sir, said Lizzie Acton with her little laugh. Well, I don't mean to encourage her, Clifford went on. I'm sure I don't care if you do, cried Lizzie. She will not think of you, Clifford, said Gertrude gravely. I hope not, Clifford exclaimed. She will think of Robert. Gertrude continued in the same tone. Robert Acton began to blush, but there was no occasion for it, for everyone was looking at Gertrude. Everyone at least saved Lizzie, who, with her pretty head on one side, contemplated her brother. Why do you attribute motives, Gertrude? asked Mr. Wentworth. I don't attribute motives, Father, said Gertrude. I only say she will think of Robert, and she will. Gertrude judges by herself, Acton exclaimed, laughing. Don't you, Gertrude? Of course the baroness will think of me. She will think of me from morning till night. She will be very comfortable here, said Charlotte, with something of a housewife's pride. She can have the large northeast room, and the French bedstead, Charlotte added, with a constant sense of the lady's foreignness. She will not like it, said Gertrude, not even if you pin little tighties all over the chairs. Why not, dear? asked Charlotte, perceiving a touch of irony here, but not resenting it. Gertrude had left her chair. She was walking about the room. Her stiff silk dress, which she had put on in honor of the baroness, made a sound upon the carpet. I don't know, she replied. She will want something more private. If she wants to be private, she can stay in her room, Lizzie Acton remarked. Gertrude paused in her walk, looking at her. That would not be pleasant, she answered. She wants privacy and pleasure together. Robert Acton began to laugh again. My dear cousin, what a picture! Charlotte had fixed her serious eyes upon her sister. She wondered whence she had suddenly derived these strange notions. Mr. Wentworth also observed his younger daughter. I don't know what her manner of life may have been, he said, but she certainly never can have enjoyed a more refined and salubrious home. Gertrude stood there looking at them all. She is the wife of a prince, she said. We are all princes here, said Mr. Wentworth, and I don't know of any palace in this neighborhood that is to let. Cousin William, Robert Acton interposed, do you want to do something handsome? Make them a present for three months of the little house over the way. You are very generous with other people's things, cried his sister. But is very generous with his own things, Mr. Wentworth observed dispassionately and looking in cold meditation at his kinsmen. Gertrude, Lizzie went on, I had an idea you were so fond of your new cousin. Which new cousin? asked Gertrude. I don't mean the baroness, the young girl rejoined with her laugh. I thought you expected to see so much of him. Of Felix. I hope to see a great deal of him, said Gertrude simply. Then why do you want to keep him out of the house? Gertrude looked at Lizzie Acton and then looked away. Should you want me to live in the house with you, Lizzie? asked Clifford. I hope you never will. I hate you. Such was this young lady's reply. Father, said Gertrude, stopping before Mr. Wentworth and smiling, with a smile the sweeter, as her smile always was for its rarity. Do let them live in the little house over the way. It'll be lovely. Robert Acton had been watching her. Gertrude is right, he said. Gertrude is the cleverest girl in the world. If I might take the liberty, I should strongly recommend their living there. There is nothing there so pretty as the northeast room, Charlotte urged. She will make it pretty. Leave her alone, Acton exclaimed. Gertrude, at his compliment, had blushed and looked at him. It was as if someone less familiar had complimented her. I am sure she will make it pretty. It will be very interesting. It will be a place to go to. It will be a foreign house. We very sure that we need a foreign house, Mr. Wentworth inquired. Do you think it desirable to establish a foreign house in this quiet place? You speak, said Acton, laughing, as if it were a question of the poor baroness opening a wine-shop or a gaming-table. It would be too lovely, Gertrude declared again, laying her hand on the back of her father's chair. As she should open a gaming-table, Charlotte asked, with great gravity. Gertrude looked at her a moment, and then... Yes, Charlotte, she said simply. Gertrude was growing pert. Clifford Wentworth observed with his humorous young growl that comes of associating with foreigners. Mr. Wentworth looked up at his daughter, who was standing beside him. He drew her gently forward. You must be careful, he said. You must keep watch. Indeed, we must all be careful. This is a great change. We are to be exposed to peculiar influences. I don't say they are bad. I don't judge them in advance. But they may perhaps make it necessary that we should exercise a great deal of wisdom and self-control. It will be a different tone. Gertrude was silent a moment, in deference to her father's speech. Then she spoke in a manner that was not in the least an answer to it. I want to see how they will live. I am sure they will have different hours. She will do all kinds of little things differently. When we go over there, it will be like going to Europe. She will have a boudoir. She will invite us to dinner, very late. She will breakfast in her room. Charlotte gazed at her sister again. Gertrude's imagination seemed to her to be fairly running riot. She had always known that Gertrude had a great deal of imagination. She had been very proud of it. But at the same time she had always felt that it was a dangerous and irresponsible faculty. And now, to her sense, for the moment, it seemed to threaten to make her sister a strange person who should come in suddenly, as from a journey, talking of the peculiar and possibly unpleasant things she had observed. Charlotte's imagination took no journeys whatever. She kept it as it were in her pocket, with the other furniture of this receptacle, a thimble, a little box of peppermint, and a morsel of quartplaster. I don't believe she would have any dinner or any breakfast, said Miss Wentworth. I don't believe she knows how to do anything herself. I should have to get her ever so many servants and she wouldn't like them. She has a maid, said Gertrude, a French maid. She mentioned her. I wonder if the maid has a little fluted cap and red slippers, said Lizzie Acton. There was a French maid in that play that Robert took me to see. She had pink stockings. She was very wicked. She was a soubrette, Gertrude announced, who had never seen a play in her life. They call that a soubrette. It will be a great chance to learn French. Charlotte gave a little soft, helpless groan. She had a vision of a wicked theatrical person, clad in pink stockings and red shoes, and speaking with confounding volubility, an incomprehensible tongue, flitting through the sacred penetralia of that large, clean house. That is one reason in favor of their coming here, Gertrude went on. But we can make Eugenius speak French to us, and Felix. I mean to begin the next time. Mr. Wentworth had kept her standing near him, and he gave her his earnest, thin, unresponsive glance again. I want you to make me a promise, Gertrude, he said. What is it? She asked, smiling. Not to get excited. Not to allow these these occurrences to be an occasion for excitement. She looked down at him a moment, and then she shook her head. I don't think I can promise that, Father. I'm excited already. Mr. Wentworth was silent a while. They all were silent, as if in recognition of something audacious and pretentious. I think they better go to the other house, said Charlotte quietly. I shall keep them in the other house. Mr. Wentworth subjoined more pregnantly. Gertrude turned away. Then she looked across at Robert Acton. Her cousin Robert was a great friend of hers. She often looked at him this way instead of saying things. Her glance on this occasion, however, struck him as a substitute for a larger volume of diffident utterance than usual, inviting him to observe, among other things, the inefficiency of her father's design, if design it was, for diminishing in the interest of quiet nerves their occasions of contact with their foreign relatives. But Acton immediately complimented Mr. Wentworth upon his liberality. That's a very nice thing to do, he said, giving them the little house. We will have treated them handsomely and whatever happens you will be glad of it. Mr. Wentworth was liberal and he knew he was liberal. It gave him pleasure to know it, to feel it, to see it recorded. And this pleasure is the only palpable form of self-indulgence with which the narrator of these incidents will be able to charge him. A three days visit at most over there is all I should have found possible. Madame Munster remarked to her brother, after they had taken possession of the little white house. It would have been too in team, decidedly too in team, breakfast, dinner, and tea on Famille. It would have been the end of the world if I could have reached the third day. And she made the same observation to her maid Augustine, an intelligent person who enjoyed a liberal share of her confidence. Felix declared that he would willingly spend his life in the bosom of the Wentworth family, that they were the kindest, simplest, most amiable people in the world, and that he had taken a prodigious fancy to them all. The Baroness quite agreed with him that they were simple and kind. They were thoroughly nice people, and she liked them extremely. The girls were perfect ladies. It was impossible to be more of a lady than Charlotte Wentworth, in spite of her little village heir. But as for thinking them the best company in the world, said the Baroness, that is another thing. And as for wishing to live port a port with them, I should assume think of wishing myself back in the convent again, to wear a bombazine apron and sleep in a dormitory. And yet the Baroness was in high good humor. She had been very much pleased with her lively perception and her refined imagination. She was capable of enjoying anything that was characteristic, anything that was good of its kind. The Wentworth household seemed to her very perfect in its kind, wonderfully peaceful and unspotted, pervaded by a sort of dove colored freshness that had all the quietude and benevolence of what she deemed to be Quakerism, and yet seemed to be founded upon a degree of material abundance for which, in certain matters of detail, one might have looked in vain at the frugal little court of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. She perceived immediately that her American relatives thought and talked very little about money, and this of itself made an impression upon Eugenia's imagination. She perceived at the same time that if Charlotte or Gertrude should ask their father for a very considerable sum, he would at once place it in their hands, and this made a still greater impression. The greatest impression of all, perhaps, was made by another rapid induction. The Baroness had an immediate conviction that Robert Acton would put his hand into his pocket every day in the week if that rattle-pated little sister of his should bid him. The men in this country, said the Baroness, are evidently very obliging. Her declaration that she was looking for rest or retirement had been by no means wholly untrue, nothing that the Baroness said was wholly untrue. It is but fair to add perhaps that nothing that she said was wholly true. She wrote to a friend in Germany that it was a return to nature. It was like drinking new milk, and she was very fond of new milk. She said to herself, of course, that it would be a little dull, but there can be no better proof of her good spirits than the fact that she thought she should not mind its being a little dull. It seemed to her, when from the piazza of her Eliemosenargie cottage, she looked out over the soundless fields, the stony pastures, the clear-faced ponds, the rugged little orchards, that she had never been in the midst of so peculiarly intense a stillness. It was almost a delicate sensual pleasure. It was all very good, very innocent and safe, and out of it something good must come. Augustine, indeed, who had an unbounded faith in her mistress's wisdom and foresightedness, was a great deal perplexed and depressed. She was always ready to take her cue when she understood it, but she liked to understand it, and on this occasion comprehension failed. What, indeed, was the baroness doing Doncet Gallo? What fish did she expect to land out of these very stagnant waters? The game was evidently a deep one. Augustine could trust her, but the sense of walking in the dark betrayed itself in the physiognomy of the spare, sober, sallow, middle-aged person who had nothing in common with Gertrude Wentworth's conception of a soubrette by the most ironical scowl that had ever rested upon the unpretending tokens of the peace and plenty of the Wentworths. Fortunately Augustine could quench skepticism and action. She quite agreed with her mistress, or rather she quite outstripped her mistress, and thinking that the little White House was pitifully bare. Ilfadre, said Augustine, louis fer un po de toilette. And she began to hang up potierre in the doorways to place wax candles procured after some research in unexpected situations to dispose anomalous draperies over the arms of sofas and the backs of chairs. The baroness had brought with her to the New World a copious provision of the element of costume, and the two Miss Wentworths, when they came over to see her, were somewhat bewildered by the obtrusive distribution of her wardrobe. There were India shawls suspended curtain-wise in the parlor door, and curious fabrics corresponding to Gertrude's metaphysical vision of an opera cloak tumbled about in the sitting places. There were pink silk blinds in the windows by which the room was strangely bedimmed, and along the chimney piece was disposed a remarkable band of velvet covered with coarse, dirty looking lace. I have been making myself a little comfortable, said the baroness, much to the confusion of Charlotte, who had been on the point of proposing to come and help her put her superfluous draperies away. But what Charlotte mistook for an almost culpably delayed subsidence Gertrude very presently perceived to be the most ingenious, the most interesting, the most romantic in tension. What is life indeed without curtains? She secretly asked herself, and she appeared to herself to have been leading hitherto an existence singularly garish and totally devoid of festoons. Felix was not a young man who troubled himself greatly about anything, least of all about the conditions of enjoyment. His faculty of enjoyment was so large, so unconsciously eager, that it may be said of it that it had a permanent advance upon embarrassment and sorrow. His sentient faculty was intrinsically joyous, and novelty and change were in themselves a delight to him. As they had come to him with a great deal of frequency, his life had been more agreeable than appeared. Never was a nature more perfectly fortunate. It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit running a race with a tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put adversity off her guard, dodging and evading her with the easy natural motion of a windshifted flower. Felix extracted entertainment from all things, and all his faculties, his imagination, his intelligence, his affections, his senses, had a hand in the game. It seemed to him that Eugenia and he had been very well treated. There was something absolutely touching in that combination of paternal liberality and social considerateness which marked Mr. Wentworth's deportment. It was most uncommonly kind of him, for instance, to have given them a house. Felix was positively amused at having a house of his own, for the little white cottage among the apple trees, the chalet, as Madame Munster always called it, was much more sensibly his own than any domiciliatory cutthream, looking upon a court with the rent overdue. Felix had spent a good deal of his life in looking into courts, with a perhaps slightly tattered pair of elbows resting upon the ledge of a high perched window and the thin smoke of a cigarette rising into an atmosphere in which street cries died away, and the vibration of chimes from ancient belfries became sensible. He had never known anything so infinitely rural as these New England fields, and he took a great fancy to all their pastoral roughnesses. He had never had a greater sense of luxurious security, and at the risk of making him seem a rather sordid adventurer, I must declare that he found an irresistible charm in the fact that he might dine every day at his uncles. The charm was irresistible, however, because his fancy flung a rosy light over this homely privilege. He appreciated highly the fare that was set before him. There was a kind of fresh-looking abundance about it, which made him think that people must have lived so in the mythological era, when they spread their tables upon the grass, replenished them from cornucopias, and had no particular need of kitchen stoves. But the great thing that Felix enjoyed was having found a family, sitting in the midst of gentle, generous people whom he might call by their first names. He had never known anything more charming than the attention they paid to what he said. It was like a large sheet of clean, fine-grain drawing paper, all ready to be washed over with effective splashes of water color. He had never had any cousins, and he had never before found himself in contact so unrestricted with young unmarried ladies. He was extremely fond of the society of ladies, and it was new to him that it might be enjoyed in just this manner. At first he hardly knew what to make of his state of mind. It seemed to him that he was in love and discriminately with three girls at once. He saw that Lizzie Acton was more brilliantly pretty than Charlotte and Gertrude, but this was scarcely a superiority. His pleasure came from something they had in common, a part of which was indeed that physical delicacy which seemed to make it proper that they should always dress in thin materials and clear colors. But they were delicate in other ways, and it was most agreeable to him to feel that these latter delicacies were appreciable by contact as it were. He had known, fortunately, many virtuous gentle women, but it now appeared to him that in his relations with them, especially when they were unmarried, he had been looking at pictures under glass. He perceived at present what a nuisance the glass had been. How it perverted and interfered, how it caught the reflection of other objects and kept you walking from side to side. He had no need to ask himself whether Charlotte and Gertrude and Lizzie Acton were in the right light. They were always in the right light. He liked everything about them. He was, for instance, not at all above liking the fact that they had very slender feet and high insteps. He liked their pretty noses. He liked their surprised eyes and their hesitating, not at all positive way of speaking. He liked so much knowing that he was perfectly at liberty to be alone for hours anywhere with either of them. That preference for one to the other, as a companion of solitude, remained a minor affair. Charlotte went worth sweetly severe features were as agreeable as as the Acton's wonderfully expressive blue eyes, and Gertrude's air of being always ready to walk about and listen was as charming as anything else, especially as she walked very gracefully. After a while Felix began to distinguish, but even then he would often wish suddenly that they were not also sad. Even Lizzie Acton, in spite of her fine little chatter and laughter, appeared sad. Even Clifford Wentworth, who had extreme youth in his favor, and kept a buggy with enormous wheels and a little sorrel mare with the prettiest legs in the world, even this fortunate lad was apt to have an averted uncomfortable glance and to edge away from you at times in the manner of a person with a bad conscience. The only person in the circle with no sense of oppression of any kind was, to Felix's perception, Robert Acton. It might perhaps have been feared that after the completion of those graceful, domiciliary embellishments which have been mentioned, Madame Munster would have found herself confronted with alarming possibilities of ennui, but as yet she had not taken the alarm. The baroness was a restless soul, and she projected her restlessness, as it may be said, into any situation that lay before her. Up to a certain point her restlessness might be counted upon to entertain her. She was always expecting something to happen, and until it was disappointed, expectancy itself was a delicate pleasure. What the baroness expected just now, it would take some ingenuity to set forth. It is enough that while she looked about her, she found something to occupy her imagination. She assured herself that she was enchanted with her new relatives. She professed to herself that, like her brother, she felt that a sacred satisfaction to have found a family. It is certain that she enjoyed to the utmost the gentleness of her kinfolk's deference. She had, first and last, received a great deal of admiration, and her experience of well-turned compliments was very considerable. But she knew that she had never been so real a power, never counted for so much, as now when, for the first time, the standard of comparison of her little circle was a prey to vagueness. The sense, indeed, that the good people about her had, as regards her remarkable self, no standard of comparison at all, gave her a feeling of almost illimitable power. It was true, as she said to herself, that if for this reason they would be able to discover nothing against her, so they would perhaps neglect to perceive some of her superior points. But she always wound up her reflections by declaring that she would take care of that. Charlotte and Gertrude were in some perplexity between their desire to show all proper attention to Badam Munster and their fear of being importunate. The little house in the orchard had hitherto been occupied during the summer months by intimate friends of the family, or by poor relations who found in Mr. Wentworth a landlord attentive to repairs and oblivious of quarter day. Under these circumstances the open door of the small house and that of the large one, facing each other across their homely gardens, levied no tax upon hourly visits. But the Mrs. Wentworth received an impression that Eugenia was no friend to the primitive custom of dropping in. She evidently had no idea of living without a doorkeeper. One goes into her house as into an inn, except that there are no servants rushing forward, she said to Charlotte. And she added that that was very charming. Gertrude explained to her sister that she meant just the reverse. She didn't like it at all. Charlotte inquired why she should tell an untruth, and Gertrude answered that there was probably some very good reason for it which they should discover when they knew her better. There can surely be no good reason for telling an untruth, said Charlotte. I hope she does not think so. They had, of course, desired from the first to do everything in the way of helping her to arrange herself. It had seemed to Charlotte that there would be a great many things to talk about. But the baroness was apparently inclined to talk about nothing. Write her a note, asking her leave to come and see her. I think that is what she will like, said Gertrude. Why should I give her the trouble of answering me? Charlotte asked. She will have to write a note and send it over. I don't think she will take any trouble, said Gertrude profoundly. What then will she do? That is what I am curious to see, said Gertrude, leaving her sister with an impression that her curiosity was morbid. They went to see the baroness without preliminary correspondence, and in the little salon which she had already created, with its becoming light in its festoons, they found Robert Acton. Eugenia was intensely gracious, but she accused them of neglecting her cruelly. You see, Mr. Acton has had to take pity upon me, she said. My brother goes off sketching for hours. I can never depend upon him. So I was to send Mr. Acton to beg you to come and give me the benefit of your wisdom. Gertrude looked at her sister. She wanted to say, that is what she would have done. Charlotte said that they hoped the baroness would always come and dine with them. It would give them so much pleasure, and in that case she would spare herself the trouble of having a cook. Ah, but I must have a cook! cried the baroness. An old negris and a yellow turban. I have my heart set upon that. I want to look out of my window and see her sitting there on the grass against the background of those crooked, dusky little apple trees pulling the husks off a lapful of Indian corn. That will be local color, you know. There isn't much of it here. You don't mind my saying that, do you? So one must make the most of what one can get. I shall be most happy to dine with you whenever you will let me, but I want to be able to ask you sometimes. And I want to be able to ask Mr. Acton, added the baroness. You must come and ask me at home, said Acton. You must come and see me. You must dine with me first. I want to show you my place. I want to introduce you to my mother. He called again upon Madame Munster two days later. He was constantly at the other house. He used to walk across the field from his own place, and he appeared to have fewer scruples than his cousins with regard to dropping in. On this occasion he found that Mr. Brand had come to pay his respects to the charming stranger. But after Acton's arrival the young theologian said nothing. He sat in his chair with his two hands clasped, fixing upon his hostess a grave-fascinated stare. The baroness talked to Robert Acton, but as she talked she turned and smiled at Mr. Brand, who never took his eyes off her. The two men walked away together. They were going to Mr. Wentworth's. Mr. Brand still said nothing. But after they had passed into Mr. Wentworth's garden he stopped and looked back for some time at the little White House. Then looking at his companion, with his head bent a little to one side, and his eyes somewhat contracted. Now I suppose that's what is called conversation, he said. Real conversation. It's what I call a very clever woman, said Acton, laughing. It is most interesting, Mr. Brand continued. I only wish she would speak French. It would seem more in keeping. It must be quite the style that we have heard about, that we have read about, the style of conversation of Madame de Stael, of Madame Rikamier. Acton also looked at Madame Munster's residence among its hollyhocks and apple trees. What I should like to know, he said smiling, is just what has brought Madame Rikamier to live in that place. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of The Europeans. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. The Europeans by Henry James. Chapter 5. Mr. Wentworth, with his cane and his gloves in his hand, went every afternoon to call upon his niece. A couple of hours later she came over to the great house to tea. She had let the proposal that she should regularly dine there fall to the ground. She was in the enjoyment of whatever satisfaction was to be derived from the spectacle of an old negris and a crimson turban shelling peas under the apple trees. Charlotte, who had provided the ancient negris, thought it must be a strange household. Eugenia having told her that Augustine managed everything, the ancient negris included, Augustine who was naturally devoid of all acquaintance with the expurgatory English tongue. By far the most immoral sentiment which I shall have occasion to attribute to Charlotte Wentworth was a certain emotion of disappointment at finding that, in spite of these irregular conditions, the domestic arrangements at the small house were apparently not, from Eugenia's peculiar point of view, strikingly offensive. The Baroness found that amusing to go to tea, she dressed as if for dinner. The tea table offered an anomalous and picturesque repast, and on leaving it they all sat and talked in the large piazza, or wandered about the garden in the starlight, with their ears full of those sounds of strange insects which, though they are supposed to be all over the world, a part of the magic of summer nights, seemed to the Baroness to have beneath these western skies an incomparable resonance. Mr. Wentworth, though, as I say, he went punctiliously to call upon her, was not able to feel that he was getting used to his niece. It taxed his imagination to believe that she was really his half-sister's child. His sister was a figure of his early years. She had been only twenty when she went abroad, never to return, making in foreign parts a willful and undesirable marriage. His aunt, Mrs. Whiteside, who had taken her to Europe for the benefit of the tour, gave on her return, so lamentable an account of Mr. Adolphus Young, to whom the headstrong girl had united her destiny, that it operated as a chill upon family feeling, especially in the case of the half-brothers. Catherine had done nothing subsequently to propitiate her family. She had not even written to them in a way that indicated a lucid appreciation of their suspended sympathy, so that it had become a tradition in Boston circles that the highest charity, as regards this young lady, was to think it well to forget her and to abstain from conjecture as to the extent to which her aberrations were reproduced in her descendants. Over these young people, a vague report of their existence had come to his ears. Mr. Wentworth had not, in the course of years, allowed his imagination to hover. It had plenty of occupation nearer home, and though he had many cares upon his conscience, the idea that he had been an unnatural uncle was, very properly, never among the number. Now that his nephew and niece had come before him, he perceived that they were the fruit of influences and circumstances very different from those under which his own familiar progeny had reached a vaguely qualified maturity. He felt no provocation to say that these influences had been exerted for evil, but he was sometimes afraid that he should not be able to like his distinguished delicate lady-like niece. He was paralyzed and bewildered by her foreignness. She spoke, somehow, a different language. There was something strange in her words. He had a feeling that another man, in his place, would accommodate himself to her tone, would ask her questions and joke with her, reply to those pleasantries of her own which sometimes seemed startling as addressed to an uncle. But Mr. Wentworth could not do these things. He could not even bring himself to attempt to measure her position in the world. She was the wife of a foreign nobleman who desired to repudiate her. This had a singular sound, but the old man felt himself destitute of the materials for a judgment. It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own experience as a man of the world and an almost public character. But they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself, much more to reveal to you genia by interrogations possibly too innocent, the unfurnished condition of this repository. It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said, to his nephew, though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe. He was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible not to think well of him. And yet it seemed as if there were something almost impudent, almost vicious, as if there ought to be, in a young man being at once so joyous and so positive. It was to be observed that while Felix was not at all a serious young man, there was somehow more of him, he had more weight and volume and resonance, than a number of young men who were distinctly serious. While Mr. Wentworth meditated upon this anomaly, his nephew was admiring him unrestrictedly. He thought him a most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman with a very handsome head of the ascetic type, which he promised himself the profit of sketching. Felix was far from having made a secret of the fact that he wielded the paintbrush, and it was not his own fault if it failed to be generally understood that he was prepared to execute the most striking likenesses on the most reasonable terms. "'He is an artist. My cousin is an artist,' said Gertrude, and she offered this information to everyone who would receive it. She offered it to herself, as it were, by way of admonition and reminder. She repeated to herself at odd moments, in lonely places, that Felix was invested with this sacred character. Gertrude had never seen an artist before. She had only read about such people. They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life was made up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other persons, and it merely quickened her meditations on this point that Felix should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an artist. "'I have never gone into the thing seriously,' he said. "'I have never studied. I have had no training. I do a little of everything and nothing well. I am only an amateur.'" It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur than to think that he was an artist. The former word, to her fancy, had an even subtler connotation. She knew, however, that it was a word to use more soberly. Mr. Wentworth used it freely. For though he had not been exactly familiar with it, he found it convenient as a help toward classifying Felix, who, as a young man extremely clever and active and apparently respectable, and yet not engaged in any recognized business, was an importunate anomaly. Of course the Baroness and her brother, she was always spoken of first, were a welcome topic of conversation between Mr. Wentworth and his daughters and their occasional visitors. "'And the young man, your nephew, what is his profession?' asked an old gentleman, Mr. Broadrip of Salem, who had been Mr. Wentworth's classmate at Harvard College in the year 1809, and who came into his office in Devonshire Street. Mr. Wentworth, in his later years, used to go but three times a week to his office, where he had a large amount of highly confidential trust business to transact. "'Well, he's an amateur,' said Felix's uncle, with folded hands, and with a certain satisfaction in being able to say it. And Mr. Broadrip had gone back to Salem with a feeling that this was probably a European expression for a broker or a grain exporter. "'I should like to do your head, sir,' said Felix, to his uncle one evening, before them all, Mr. Brand and Robert Acton also being present. "'I think I should make a very fine thing of it. It's an interesting head. It's very medieval.' Mr. Wentworth looked grave. He felt awkwardly as if all the company had come in and found him standing before the looking glass. "'The Lord made it,' he said. I don't think it is for man to make it over again.' "'Certainly the Lord made it,' replied Felix, laughing, and he made it very well. But life has been touching up the work. It is a very interesting type of head. It's delightfully wasted and emaciated. The complexion is wonderfully bleached.' And Felix looked round at the circle, as if to call their attention to these interesting points. Mr. Wentworth grew visibly paler. "'I should like to do you as an old prelate, an old cardinal, or the prior of an order.' "'A prelate? A cardinal?' murmured Mr. Wentworth. "'Do you refer to the Roman Catholic priesthood?' "'I mean an old ecclesiastic who should have led a very pure, absent life. Now I take it that has been the case with you, sir, when sees it in your face.' Felix proceeded. "'You have been very—a very moderate. Don't you think one always sees that in a man's face?' "'You see more in a man's face than I should think of looking for,' said Mr. Wentworth coldly. The baroness rattled her fan and gave her brilliant laugh. "'It is a risk to look so close,' she exclaimed. My uncle has some peccadillos on his conscience.' Mr. Wentworth looked at her painfully at a loss, and insofar as the signs of a pure and absent life were visible in his face, they were then probably peculiarly manifest. "'You are a beau-viard, dear uncle,' said Madame Munster, smiling with her foreign eyes. "'I think you are paying me a compliment,' said the old man. "'Surely I am not the first woman that ever did so,' cried the baroness. "'I think you are,' said Mr. Wentworth gravely, and turning to Felix he added, in the same tone. "'Please don't take my likeness. My children have my daguerreotype. That is quite satisfactory.' "'I won't promise,' said Felix, not to work your head into something.' Mr. Wentworth looked at him, and then at all the others. Then he got up and slowly walked away. "'Felix,' said Gertrude, in the silence that followed, "'I wish you would paint my portrait.' Charlotte wondered whether Gertrude was right in wishing this, and she looked at Mr. Brand as the most legitimate way of ascertaining. Whatever Gertrude did or said, Charlotte always looked at Mr. Brand. It was a standing pretext for looking at Mr. Brand, always as Charlotte thought, in the interest of Gertrude's welfare. It is true that she felt a tremulous interest in Gertrude being right, for Charlotte, in her small, still way, was an heroic sister. "'We should be glad to have your portrait, Miss Gertrude,' said Mr. Brand. "'I should be delighted to paint so charming a model,' Felix declared. "'Do you think you are so lovely, my dear?' asked Lizzie Acton, with her little inoffensive pertness, biting off a knot in her knitting. "'It is not because I think I am beautiful,' said Gertrude, looking all round. "'I don't think I am beautiful at all.' She spoke with a sort of conscious deliberateness, and it seemed very strange to Charlotte to hear her discussing this question so publicly. "'It is because I think it would be amusing to sit and be painted. I have always thought that. "'I am sorry you have not had better things to think about, my daughter,' said Mr. Wentworth. "'You are a very beautiful cousin, Gertrude,' Felix declared. "'That's a compliment,' said Gertrude. "'I put all the compliments I receive into a little money jug that has a slit in the side. I shake them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many yet, only two or three.' "'No, it's not a compliment,' Felix rejoined. "'See, I am careful not to give it the form of a compliment. I didn't think you were beautiful at first, but you have come to seem so little by little. "'Take care now, your jug doesn't burst,' exclaimed Lizzie. "'I think sitting for one's portrait is only one of the various forms of idleness,' said Mr. Wentworth. "'Their name is Legion.' "'My dear sir,' cried Felix. "'You can't be said to be idle when you are making a man work so.' "'One might be painted while one is asleep,' suggested Mr. Brand, as a contribution to the discussion. "'Ah, do paint me while I am asleep,' said Gertrude to Felix, smiling, and she closed her eyes a little. It had by this time become a matter of almost exciting anxiety to Charlotte what Gertrude would say or would do next. She began to sit for her portrait on the following day in the open air on the north side of the piazza. "'I wish you would tell me what you think of us, how we seem to you,' she said to Felix as he sat before his easel. "'You seem to me the best people in the world,' said Felix. "'You say that,' Gertrude resumed, because it saves you the trouble of saying anything else. The young man glanced at her over the top of his canvas. "'What else should I say? It would certainly be a great deal of trouble to say anything different.' "'Well,' said Gertrude, "'you've seen people before that you have liked, have you not?' "'Indeed I have, thank heaven.' "'And they have been very different from us,' Gertrude went on. "'That only proves,' said Felix, "'that there are a thousand different ways of being good company.' "'Do you think us good company?' asked Gertrude. "'Company for a king.' Gertrude was silent a moment, and then. "'There must be a thousand different ways of being dreary,' she said, and sometimes I think we make use of them all.' Felix stood up quickly, holding up his hand. "'If you could only keep that look on your face for half an hour while I catch it,' he said, "'it is uncommonly handsome.' "'To look handsome for half an hour, that is a great deal to ask of me,' she answered. "'It would be the portrait of a young woman who has taken some vow, some pledge, that she repents of,' said Felix, and who was thinking it over at leisure. "'I have taken no vow, no pledge,' said Gertrude very gravely. "'I have nothing to repent of.' "'Why, dear cousin, that was only a figure of speech. I am very sure that no one in your excellent family has anything to repent of.' "'And yet we are always repenting,' Gertrude exclaimed. "'That is what I mean by our being dreary. You know it perfectly well. You only pretend that you don't.' Felix gave a quick laugh. "'The half hour is going on, and yet you are handsomer than ever. One must be careful what one says, you see.' "'To me,' said Gertrude, you can say anything.' Felix looked at her as an artist might, and painted for some time in silence. "'Yes, you seem to me different from your father and sister, from most of the people you have lived with,' he observed. "'To say that one's self,' Gertrude went on, is like saying, by implication at least, that one is better. "'I am not better. I am much worse. But they say themselves that I am different. It makes them unhappy. Since you accuse me of concealing my real impressions, I may admit that I think the tendency among you generally is to be made unhappy too easily.' "'I wish you would tell that to my father,' said Gertrude. "'It might make him more unhappy,' Felix exclaimed, laughing. "'It certainly would. I don't believe you have seen people like that.' "'Oh, my dear cousin, how do you know what I have seen?' Felix demanded. "'How can I tell you?' "'You might tell me a great many things, if you only would. You have seen people like yourself, people who are bright and gay and fond of amusement. We are not fond of amusement.' "'Yes,' said Felix. "'I confess that rather strikes me. You don't seem to me to get all the pleasure out of life that you might. You don't seem to me to enjoy. Do you mind my saying this?' He asked, pausing. "'Please go on,' said the girl earnestly. "'You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money and liberty in what is called in Europe a position, which you take a painful view of life, as one may say. Why not to think it bright and charming and delightful, eh?' asked Gertrude. "'I should say so, if one can. It is true it all depends upon that,' Felix added. "'You know there is a great deal of misery in the world,' said his model. "'I have seen a little of it,' the young man rejoined. But it was all over there, beyond the sea. I don't see any here. This is a paradise.' Gertrude said nothing. She sat looking at the dowels and the current bushes in the garden while Felix went on with his work. "'To enjoy,' she began at last, to take life, not painfully. Must one do something wrong?' Felix gave his long, light laugh again. "'Seriously, I think not. And for this reason, among others, you strike me as very capable of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time is incapable of wrongdoing.' "'I am sure,' said Gertrude, that you are very wrong in telling a person that she is incapable of that. We are never nearer to evil than when we believe that.' "'You are handsomer than ever,' observed Felix, irrelevantly.' Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this. There was not so much excitement in it as at first. "'What ought one to do?' she continued. "'To give parties, to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?' "'I don't think it's what one does, or one doesn't do, that promotes enjoyment,' her companion answered. "'It is the general way of looking at life. They look at it as a discipline. That's what they do here. I have often been told that.' "'Well, that's very good, but there is another way,' added Felix smiling, to look at it as an opportunity.' "'An opportunity, yes,' said Gertrude. One would get more pleasure that way.' "'I don't attempt to say anything better for it than that it has been my own way, and that is not saying much.' Felix had laid down his palette and brushes. He was leaning back with his arms folded to judge the effect of his work. "'And you know,' he said. "'I am a very petty personage.' "'You have a great deal of talent,' said Gertrude.' "'No, no,' the young man rejoined in a tone of cheerful impartiality. "'I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable. I assure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure. The world will never hear of me.' Gertrude looked at him with a strange feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew in which she did not, and how full of brilliant talents it must be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities. "'You needn't, in general, attach much importance to anything I tell you,' he pursued, "'which you may believe me when I say this, that I am little better than a good-natured featherhead.' "'A featherhead?' she repeated. "'I am a species of Bohemian.'" "'A Bohemian?' Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as a geographical denomination, and she quite failed to understand the figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it, but it gave her pleasure. Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet. He slowly came toward her, smiling. "'I am a sort of adventurer,' he said, looking down at her. She got up, meeting his smile. "'An adventurer,' she repeated. "'I should like to hear your adventures.'" For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand, but he dropped his own hand subtly into the pockets of his painting-jacket. "'There is no reason why you shouldn't,' he said. "'I have been an adventurer, but my adventurers have been very innocent. They have all been happy ones. I don't think there are any I shouldn't tell. They were very pleasant and very pretty. I should like to go over them in memory. Sit down again and I will begin,' he added in a moment, with his naturally persuasive smile. Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charm divinity. Her eyes rested upon his lips. She was very serious, sometimes from her air of wondering gravity. He thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice. It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience, for the best conscience is a sort of self-approach, and this young man's brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions which were ignorant of any tests save exactness in hitting their mark. He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's knapsack on his back, paying his way off and by knocking off a flattering portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played the violin and a little band of musicians, not of high celebrity, who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial concerts. He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a troupe of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences. While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived in a fantastic world. She seemed to herself to be reading a romance that came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing so delightful since the perusal of Nicholas Nicolby. One afternoon she went to see her cousin, Mrs. Acton, Robert's mother, who was a great invalid, never leaving the house. She came back alone on foot across the fields, this being a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston with her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon some of his friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother, remembered her but said nothing about her, and several of whom, with the gentle ladies their wives, had driven out from town to pay their respects at the little house among the apple trees, and vehicles which reminded the Baroness, who received her visitors with discriminating civility, of the large light rattling barouche in which she herself had made her journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning, in the western sky the great picture of a New England sunset, painted in crimson and silver, was suspended from the zenith, and the stony pastures, as Gertrude traversed them, thinking intently to herself, were covered with a light clear glow. At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from the distance a man's figure. He stood there as if he were waiting for her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand. She had a feeling as if not having seen him for some time. She could not have said for how long, for it yet seemed to her that he had been very lately at the house. "'May I walk back with you?' he asked. And when she had said that he might, if he wanted, he observed that he had seen her and recognized her half a mile away. "'You must have very good eyes,' said Gertrude. "'Yes, I have very good eyes, Miss Gertrude,' said Mr. Brand. She perceived that he meant something. But for a long time past Mr. Brand had constantly meant something, and she had almost got used to it. She felt, however, that what he meant had now a renewed power to disturb her, to perplex and agitate her. He walked beside her in silence for a moment, and then he added. "'I have had no trouble in seeing that you are beginning to avoid me. But perhaps,' he went on, when needon have had very good eyes to see that. "'I have not avoided you,' said Gertrude, without looking at him. "'I think you have been unconscious that you were avoiding me,' Mr. Brand replied. "'You have not even known that I was there.' "'Well, you are here now, Mr. Brand,' said Gertrude, with a little laugh. "'I know that very well.' He made no rejoinder. He simply walked beside her slowly, as they were obliged to walk over the soft grass. Presently they came to another gate, which was closed. Mr. Brand laid his hand upon it, but he made no movement to open it. He stood and looked at his companion. "'You are very much interested, very much absorbed,' he said. Gertrude glanced at him. She saw that he was pale and that he looked excited. She had never seen Mr. Brand excited before, and she felt that the spectacle, if fully carried out, would be impressive, almost painful. "'Absorbed in what?' she asked. Then she looked away at the illuminated sky. She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was vexed with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood there, looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes, represented an immense body of half-obliterated obligations that were rising again into a certain distinctness. "'You have new interests, new occupations,' he went on. "'I don't know that I can say that you have new duties. We have always old ones,' Gertrude, he added. "'Please open the gate, Mr. Brand,' she said, and she felt as if in saying so she were cowardly and petulant. But he opened the gate and allowed her to pass. Then he closed it behind himself. Before she had time to turn away he put out his hand and held her an instant by the wrist. "'I want to say something to you,' he said. "'I know what you want to say,' she answered, and she was on the point of adding, and I know just how you will say it. But these words she kept back. "'I love you, Gertrude,' he said. "'I love you very much. I love you more than ever.' "'He said the words just as she had known he would.' She had heard them before. They had no charm for her. She had said to herself before that it was very strange. It was supposed to be delightful for a woman to listen to such words, but these seemed to her flat and mechanical. I wish you would forget that,' she declared. "'How can I? Why should I?' he asked. "'I have made you no promise, given you no pledge,' she said, looking at him with her voice trembling a little. "'You have let me feel that I have an influence over you. You have opened your mind to me.' "'I never opened my mind to you, Mr. Brand,' Gertrude cried with some vehemence. "'Then you were not so frank as I thought, as we all thought. "'I don't see what anyone else had to do with it,' cried the girl. "'I mean your father and your sister. You know what makes them happy to think you will listen to me?' She gave a little laugh. "'It doesn't make them happy,' she said. "'Nothing makes them happy. No one is happy here.' "'I think your cousin is very happy,' Mr. Young rejoined Mr. Brand in a soft, almost timid tone. "'So much the better for him,' and Gertrude gave her little laugh again. The young man looked at her a moment. "'You are very much changed,' he said. "'I am glad to hear it,' Gertrude declared. "'I am not. I have known you a long time, and I have loved you as you were.' "'I am much obliged to you,' said Gertrude. "'I must be going home.' He on his side gave a little laugh. "'You certainly do avoid me, you see?' "'Avoid me, then,' said the girl. He looked at her again, and then very gently. "'No, I will not avoid you,' he replied. "'But I will leave you for the present to yourself. I think you will remember, after a while, some of the things you have forgotten. I think you will come back to me. I have great faith in that.' This time his voice was very touching. There was a strong reproachful force in what he said, and Gertrude could answer nothing. He turned away and stood there, leaning his elbows on the gate and looking at the beautiful sunset. Gertrude left him and took her way home again. But when she reached the middle of the next field she suddenly burst into tears. Her tears seemed to her to have been a long time gathering, and for some moments it was a kind of glee to shed them. But they presently passed away. There was something a little hard about Gertrude. And she never wept again. End of chapter 5 CHAPTER VI. OF THE EUROPEANS. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Leanne Howlett. THE EUROPEANS by Henry James. CHAPTER VI. Going of an afternoon to call upon his niece, Mr. Wentworth more than once found Robert Acton sitting in her little drawing-room. This was in no degree to Mr. Wentworth a perturbing fact, for he had no sense of competing with his young kinsmen for Eugenia's good graces. Madame Munster's uncle had the highest opinion of Robert Acton, who indeed, in the family at large, was the object of a great deal of undemonstrative appreciation. They were all proud of him, and so far as the charge of being proud may be brought against people who were habitually, distinctly, guiltless of the misdemeanor known as taking credit. They never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vain glorious reference to him. They never quoted the clever things he had said, nor mentioned the generous things he had done. But a sort of frigidly tender faith in his unlimited goodness was a part of their personal sense of right, and there can perhaps be no better proof of the high esteem in which he was held than the fact that no explicit judgment was ever passed upon his actions. He was no more praised than he was blamed, but he was tassantly felt to be an ornament to his circle. He was the man of the world of the family. He had been to China and brought home a collection of curiosities. He had made a fortune, or rather he had quintupled a fortune already considerable. He was distinguished by that combination of celibacy, property, and good humor which appeals to even the most subdued imaginations, and it was taken for granted that he would presently place these advantages at the disposal of some well-regulated young woman of his own set. Richard Wentworth was not a man to admit to himself that his paternal duties apart he liked any individual much better than all other individuals. But he thought Robert Acton extremely judicious, and this was perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of to the eagerness of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it would have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste. Acton was, in fact, very judicious, and something more decide, and indeed it must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague adembration of a belief that his cousin's final merit was a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly, at the sanctions of mere judgment, for showing a larger courage, a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded. Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero. But this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great discretion in all things, beginning with his estimate of himself. He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world as he was supposed to be in local circles. But it must be added that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach of which he had never quite given local circles the measure. He was addicted to taking the humorous view of things, and he had discovered that even in the narrowest circles such a disposition may find frequent opportunities. Such opportunities had formed for some time, that is, since his return from China a year and a half before, the most active element in this gentleman's life, which had just now a rather indolent heir. He was perfectly willing to get married. He was very fond of books, and he had a handsome library, that is, his books were much more numerous than Mr. Wentworth's. He was also very fond of pictures, but it must be confessed in the fierce light of contemporary criticism that his walls were adorned with several rather abortive masterpieces. He had got his learning, and there was more of it than commonly appeared, at Harvard College, and he took a pleasure in old associations, which made it a part of his daily contentment to live so near this institution that he often passed it in driving to Boston. He was extremely interested in the baroness Munster. She was very frank with him, or at least she intended to be. I am sure you find it very strange that I should have settled down in this out-of-the-way part of the world. She said to him three or four weeks after she had installed herself. I am certain you were wondering about my motives. They are very pure. The baroness by this time was an old inhabitant. The best society in Boston had called upon her, and Clifford Wentworth had taken her several times to drive in his buggy. Robert Acton was seated near her, playing with a fan. There were always several fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of different colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one. No, I don't find it at all strange, he said, slowly smiling. That a clever woman should turn up in Boston or its suburbs, that does not require so much explanation. Boston is a very nice place. If you wish to make me contradict you, said the baroness, vuvu i prene mal. In certain moods there is nothing I am not capable of agreeing to. Boston is a paradise, and we are in the suburbs of paradise. Just now I am not at all in the suburbs, I am in the place itself. Rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair. He was, however, not always lounging, and when he was he was not quite so relaxed as he pretended. To a certain extent he sought refuge from shyness in this appearance of relaxation, and like many persons in the same circumstances he somewhat exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this the air of being much at his ease was a cover for vigilant observation. He was more than interested in this clever woman, who, whatever he might say, was clever not at all after the Boston fashion. She plunged him into a kind of excitement, held him in vague suspense. He was obliged to admit to himself that he had never yet seen a woman just like this, not even in China. He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity of his emotion, and he carried it off superficially, by taking, still superficially, the humorous view of Madame Munster. It was not at all true that he thought it very natural of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might have been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of even the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis. This was an impulse for which surely no apology was needed, and Madame Munster was the fortunate possessor of several New England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Munster struck him as out of keeping with her little circle. She was at the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying anomaly. He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections true crudely to Mr. Wentworth. He would never have remarked to the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to. And indeed he had no great desire to share his vague mistrust with anyone. There was a personal pleasure in it, the greatest pleasure he had known at least since he had come from China. He would keep the Baroness, for better or worse, to himself. He had a feeling that he deserved to enjoy a monopoly of her, for he was certainly the person who had most adequately gauged her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax upon such a monopoly. One day he was sitting there again and playing with a fan. She asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself, to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls. There are half a dozen places, she said, a formidable list. Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me in a terrifically distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject. I know perfectly well where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go with me, and a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat. And yet for three days I have been putting it off. They must think me horribly vicious. You ask me to apologize, said Acton. But you don't tell me what excuse I can offer. That is more, the Baroness declared, than I am held to. It would be like my asking you to buy me a bouquet in giving you the money. I have no reason except that, somehow, it's too violent an effort. It is not inspiring. Wouldn't that serve as an excuse in Boston? I am told they are very sincere. They don't tell fibs. And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness. I don't see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting someone's portrait, or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth. I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people, said Acton. You are having a very quiet time of it here. It's a dull life for you. Ah, the quiet, the quiet, the Baroness exclaimed. That's what I like. It's rest. That's what I came here for. Amusement. I have had amusement. And as for seeing people, I have already seen a great many in my life. If it didn't sound ungracious, I should say that I wish very humbly your people here would leave me alone. Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him. She was a woman who took being looked at remarkably well. So you have come here for rest, he asked. So I may say, I came for many of those reasons that are no reasons, don't you know, and yet that are really the best, to come away, to change, to break with everything. When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I asked myself why I shouldn't arrive here. You certainly had time on the way, said Acton, laughing. Madame Munster looked at him again, and then smiling. And I have certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself why I came. However, I never asked myself idle questions. Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank me. When you go away, you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path. You mean to put difficulties in my path? She asked, rearranging the rosebud in her corsage. The greatest of all, that of having been so agreeable, that I shall be unable to depart. Don't be too sure. I have left some very agreeable people over there. Ah, said Acton, but it was to come here, where I am. I didn't know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything so rude, but honestly speaking I did not. No, the barrenness pursued. It was precisely not to see you, such people as you, that I came. Such people as me, cried Acton. I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations. Don't you see the difference? The difference tells against me, said Acton. I suppose I am an artificial relation. Conventional, declared the barrenness, very conventional. Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman may always become natural, said Acton. You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not. And at any rate, rejoined Eugenia, nunain some pala. They were not as yet, but a little later, when she began to go with him to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were. He came for her several times, alone, in his high wagon, drawn by a pair of charming, light-limbed horses. It was different her having gone with Clifford Wentworth, who was her cousin and so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy, and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be engaged to Lizzie Acton. Not indeed that it was to be conceived that the barrenness was a possible party to any flirtation, whatever, for she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known that her matrimonial condition was of the morganatic order. But in its natural aversion to suppose that this meant anything less than absolute wedlock, the conscience of the community took refuge and the belief that it implied something even more. Acton wished her to think highly of American scenery, and he drove her to great distances, picking out the prettiest roads and the largest points of view. If we are good when we are contented, Eugenia's virtues should now certainly have been uppermost, for she found a charm in the rapid movement through a wild country, and in a companion who from time to time made the vehicle dip with emotion like a swallow's flight over roads of primitive construction, and who, as she felt, would do a great many things that she might ask him. Sometimes for a couple of hours together there were almost no houses. There were nothing but woods and rivers and lakes and horizons adorned with bright-looking mountains. It seemed to the Baroness very wild, as I have said, and lovely. But the impression added something to that sense of the enlargement of opportunity which had been borne of her arrival in the New World. One day it was late in the afternoon. Acton pulled up his horses on the crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect. He let them stand a long time to rest while he sat there and talked with Madame Munster. The prospect was beautiful in spite of there being nothing human within sight. There was a wilderness of woods and the gleam of a distant river and a glimpse of half the hilltops in Massachusetts. The road had a wide grassy margin on the further side of which there floated deep, clear a brook. There were wild flowers in the grass and beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree. Acton waited a while. At last a rustic wayfarer came trudging along the road. Acton asked him to hold the horses, a service he consented to render as a friendly term to a fellow citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend and the two wandered away across the grass and sat down on the log beside the brook. I imagine it doesn't remind you of Silverstat, said Acton. It was the first time that he had mentioned Silverstat to her for particular reasons. He knew she had a husband there and this was disagreeable to him, and furthermore it had been repeated to him that this husband wished to put her away, a state of affairs to which even indirect reference was to be deprecated. It was true, nevertheless, that the Baroness herself had often eluded to Silverstat and Acton had often wondered why her husband wished to get rid of her. It was a curious position for a lady, this being known as a repudiated wife, and it is worthy of observation that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding grace and dignity. She had made it felt from the first that there were two sides to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose to present it, would be replete with touching interest. It does not remind me of the town, of course, she said, of the sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the wonderful schloss with its moat and its clustering towers, but it has a little look of some other parts of the principality. One might fancy oneself among those grand old German forests, those legendary mountains, the sort of country one sees from the windows at Schrekenstein. What is Schrekenstein? asked Acton. It is a great castle, the summer residence of the reigning prince. Have you ever lived there? I have stayed there, said the Baroness. Acton was silent. He looked awhile at the uncastled landscape before him. It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silverstat, she said. I should think you would want to know about my marriage. It must seem to you very strange. Acton looked at her a moment. Now you wouldn't like me to say that. You Americans have such odd ways, the Baroness declared. You never ask anything outright. There seem to be so many things you can't talk about. The Americans are very polite, said Acton, whose national consciousness had been complicated by a residence in foreign lands and who yet this like to hear Americans abused. We don't like to tread upon people's toes, he said, but I should like very much to hear about your marriage. Now tell me how it came about. The prince fell in love with me, replied the Baroness simply. He pressed his suit very hard. At first he didn't wish me to marry him, on the contrary. But on that basis I refused to listen to him. So he offered me marriage, and so far as he might. I was young and I confess I was rather flattered. But if it were to be done again now, I certainly should not accept him. How long ago was this? asked Acton. Oh, several years, said Eugenia. You should never ask a woman for dates. Why? I should think that when a woman was relating history, Acton answered. And now he wants to break it off. They want him to make a political marriage. It is his brother's idea. His brother is very clever. They must be a precious pair, cried Robert Acton. The Baroness gave a little philosophic shrug. Que vous les vues? They are princes. They think they are treating me very well. Silberstadt is a perfectly despotic little state, and the reigning prince may annul the marriage by a stroke of his pen, but he has promised me nevertheless not to do so without my formal consent. And this you have refused? Hitherto. It is an indignity, and I have wished at least to make it difficult for them. But I have a little document in my writing-desk which I have only to sign and send back to the prince. Then it will be all over. The Baroness lifted her hand and dropped it again. Of course I shall keep my title. At least I shall be at liberty to keep it if I choose, and I suppose I shall keep it. One must have a name, and I shall keep my pension. It is very small. It is wretchedly small, but it is what I live on. Can you have only to sign that paper? Acton asked. The Baroness looked at him a moment. Do you urge it? He got up slowly and stood with his hands in his pockets. What do you gain by not doing it? I am supposed to gain this advantage, that if I delay or temporize, the prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother. He is very fond of me, and his brother has pushed him only little by little. If he were to come back to you, said Acton, would you, would you take him back? The Baroness met his eyes. She colored just a little. Then she rose. I should have the satisfaction of saying, now it is my turn. I break with your serene highness. They began to walk toward the carriage. Well, said Robert Acton, it's a curious story. How did you make his acquaintance? I was staying with an old lady, an old countess in Dresden. She had been a friend of my father's. My father was dead. I was very much alone. My brother was wandering about the world in a theatrical troupe. Your brother ought to have stayed with you, Acton observed, and kept you from putting your trust in princes. The Baroness was silent a moment, and then— He did what he could, she said. He sent me money. The old countess encouraged the prince. She was even pressing. It seems to me, Madame Munster added gently, that under the circumstances I behaved very well. Acton glanced at her and made the observation, he had made it before, that a woman looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or her sufferings. Well, he reflected audibly, I should like to see you send his Serene Highness somewhere. Madame Munster stooped and plucked a daisy from the grass, and not signed my renunciation. Well, I don't know—I don't know, said Acton. In one case I should have my revenge, in another case I should have my liberty. Acton gave a little laugh as he helped her into the carriage. At any rate, he said, take good care of that paper. A couple of days afterward he asked her to come and see his house. The visit had already been proposed, but it had been put off in consequence of his mother's illness. She was a constant invalid, and she had passed these recent years very patiently in a great flowered armchair at her bedroom window. Lately for some days she had been unable to see anyone, but now she was better, and she sent the Baroness a very civil message. Acton had wished their visitor to come to dinner, but Madame Munster preferred to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that if she should go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also be asked, and that it seemed to her that the peculiar character of the occasion would be best preserved in a tate-a-tate with her host. Why the occasion should have a peculiar character, she explained to no one. As far as anyone could see it was simply very pleasant. Acton came for her and drove her to his door, an operation which was rapidly performed. His house the Baroness mentally pronounced a very good one, more articulately she declared that it was enchanting. It was large and square and painted brown. It stood in a well-kept shrubbery and was approached from the gate by a short drive. It was moreover a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's, and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented. The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material comfort to a sufficiently fine point, and then he possessed the most delightful chinoiserie, trophies of his sojourn in the celestial empire, pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory, mirrored monsters grinning and leering on chimney-pieces and front of beautifully-figured hand-screens, porcelain dinner-sets gleaming behind the glass doors of mahogany buffets, large screens and corners covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons. These things were scattered all over the house, and they gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit. She liked it, she enjoyed it. She thought it a very nice place. It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands, and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy. Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things. She wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers that it was difficult to imagine her immersed and sordid cares. She came to meet Madame Munster on her arrival, but she said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected, she had had occasion to do so before, that American girls had no manners. She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton. Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit, almost a pertness, and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste for housework and the wearing of fresh Parisian-looking dresses suggested the possession of a dangerous energy. It was a source of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it should seem to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a trifle more of a non-entity, for Eugenia had either too been conscious of no moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins. It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie's pertness that she very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother's hands. Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiserie. He knew a good deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac. The Baroness and her progress through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations. She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention. If there had been any one to say it to, she would have declared that she was positively in love with her host, but she could hardly make this declaration even in the strictest confidence to Acton himself. It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of unwattiness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges, that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point. Acton's impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers. The perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an inconvenience. One could trust him at any rate, round all the corners of the world, and with all, he was not absolutely simple, which would have been excess. He was only relatively simple, which was quite enough for the Baroness. Lizzie reappeared to say that her mother would now be happy to receive Madame Munster, and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment. Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing, childishly mocking indifference to the results of comparison. Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty sitting with pillows behind her and looking out on the clump of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill. She made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that. Neither so ill, nor possibly so modest. On a chair beside her lay a volume of Emerson's essays. It was a great occasion for poor Mrs. Acton, in her helpless condition, to be confronted with a clever foreign lady who had more manner than any lady, any dozen ladies, that she had ever seen. I have heard a great deal about you," she said softly to the baroness. From your son, eh? Eugenia asked. He has talked to me immensely of you. Oh, he talks of you as you would like," the baroness declared, as such a son must talk of such a mother. Mrs. Acton sat gazing. This was part of Madame Munster's manner, but Robert Acton was gazing too, and vivid consciousness that he had barely mentioned his mother to their brilliant guest. He never talked of this still maternal presence, a presence refined to such delicacy that it had almost resolved itself with him, simply into this subjective emotion of gratitude. And Acton rarely talked of his emotions. The baroness turned her smile toward him, and she instantly felt that she had been observed to be fibbing. She had struck a false note. And who were these people to whom such fibbing was not pleasing? If they were annoyed, the baroness was equally so. And after the exchange of a few civil inquiries and low-voice responses, she took leave of Mrs. Acton. She begged Robert not to come home with her. She would get into the carriage alone. She preferred that. This was imperious, and she thought he looked disappointed. While she stood before the door with him, the carriage was churning in the gravel walk. This thought restored her serenity. When she had given him her hand and for a while she looked at him a moment. I have almost decided to dispatch that paper, she said. He knew that she alluded to the document that she had called her renunciation, and he assisted her into the carriage without saying anything. But just before the vehicle began to move, he said, Well, when you have in fact dispatched it, I hope you will let me know. End of chapter 6