The Aspern Papers, Louisa Pallant, The Modern Warning (1 volume, London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1888)/The Modern Warning/Chapter 3
III
It may be intimated to the reader that Agatha Grice had written no note to her English friend, and she held no communication with him of any sort, till after she had left the table d'hôte with her mother and brother in the evening. Sir Rufus had seated himself at dinner in the same place as the night before; he was already occupying it and he simply bowed to her with a smile, from a distance, when she came into the room. As she passed out to the terrace later with her companions he overtook her and said to her in a lower tone of voice than usual that he had been exceedingly sorry to hear that she was leaving Cadenabbia so soon. Was it really true? could not they put it off a little? should not they find the weather too hot in Venice and the mosquitoes too numerous? Agatha saw that Sir Rufus asked these questions with the intention of drawing her away, engaging her in a walk, in some talk to which they should have no listeners; and she resisted him at first a little, keeping near the others because she had made up her mind that morning in deep and solitary meditation that she would force him to understand that further acquaintance could lead to nothing profitable for either party. It presently came over her, however, that it would take some little time to explain this truth and that the time might be obtained by their walking a certain distance along the charming shore of the lake together. The windows of the hotel and of the little water-side houses and villas projected over the place long shafts of lamplight which shimmered on the water, broken by the slow-moving barges laden with musicians, and gave the whole region the air of an illuminated garden surrounding a magnificent pond. Agatha made the further reflection that it would be only common kindness to give Sir Rufus an opportunity to say anything he wished to say; that is within the limits she was prepared to allow: they had been too good friends to separate without some of the forms of regret, without a backward look at least, since they might not enjoy a forward one. In short she had taken in the morning a resolution so virtuous, founded on so high and large a view of the whole situation, that she felt herself entitled to some reward, some present liberty of action. She turned away from her relatives with Sir Rufus—she observed that they paid no attention to her—and in a few moments she was strolling by his side at a certain distance from the hotel.
'I will tell you what I should like to do,' he said, as they went; 'I should like to turn up in Venice—about a week hence.'
'I don't recommend you to do that,' the girl replied, promptly enough; though as soon as she had spoken she bethought herself that she could give him no definite reason why he should not follow her; she could give him no reason at all that would not be singularly wanting in delicacy. She had a movement of vexation with her brother for having put her in a false position; it was the first, for in the morning when her mother repeated to her what Macarthy had said and she perceived all that it implied she had not been in the least angry with him—she sometimes in deed wondered why she was not—and she did not propose to become so for Sir Rufus Chasemore. What she had been was sad—touched too with a sense of horror—horror at the idea that she might be in danger of denying, under the influence of an insinuating alien, the pieties and sanctities in which she had been brought up. Sir Rufus was a tremendous conservative, though perhaps that did not matter so much, and he had let her know at an early stage of their acquaintance that he had never liked Americans in the least as a people. As it was apparent that he liked her—all American and very American as she was—she had regarded this shortcoming only in its minor bearings, and it had even gratified her to form a private project of converting him to a friendlier view. If she had not found him a charming man she would not have cared what he thought about her country-people; but, as it happened, she did find him a charming man, and it grieved her to see a mind that was really worthy of the finest initiations (as regarded the American question) wasting itself on poor prejudices. Somehow, by showing him how nice she was herself she could make him like the people better with whom she had so much in common, and as he admitted that his observation of them had after all been very restricted she would also make him know them better. This prospect drew her on till suddenly her brother sounded the note of warning. When it came she understood it perfectly; she could not pretend that she did not. If she were not careful she would give her country away: in the privacy of her own room she had coloured up to her hair at the thought. She had a lurid vision in which the chance seemed to be greater that Sir Rufus Chasemore would bring her over to his side than that she should make him like anything he had begun by disliking; so that she resisted, with the conviction that the complications which might arise from allowing a prejudiced English man to possess himself, as he evidently desired to do, of her affections, would be much greater than a sensitive girl with other loyalties to observe might be able to manage. A moment after she had said to her companion that she did not recommend him to come to Venice she added that of course he was free to do as he liked: only why should he come if he was sure the place was so uncomfortable? To this Sir Rufus replied that it signified little how uncomfortable it was if she should be there and that there was nothing he would not put up with for the sake of a few days more of her society.
'Oh, if it's for that you are coming,' the girl replied, laughing and feeling nervous—feeling that something was in the air which she had wished precisely to keep out of it—'Oh, if it's for that you are coming you had very much better not take the trouble. You would have very little of my society. While my brother is with us all my time will be given up to him.'
'Confound your brother!' Sir Rufus exclaimed. Then he went on: 'You told me yourself he wouldn't be with you long. After he's gone you will be free again and you will still be in Venice, shan't you? I do want to float in a gondola with you.'
'It's very possible my brother may be with us for weeks.'
Sir Rufus hesitated a moment. 'I see what you mean—that he won't leave you so long as I am about the place. In that case if you are so fond of him you ought to take it as a kindness of me to hover about.' Before the girl had time to make a rejoinder to this ingenious proposition he added, 'Why in the world has he taken such a dislike to me?'
'I know nothing of any dislike,' Agatha said, not very honestly. 'He has expressed none to me.'
'He has to me then. He quite loathes me.'
She was silent a little; then she inquired, 'And do you like him very much?'
'I think he's immense fun! He's very clever, like most of the Americans I have seen, including yourself. I should like to show him I like him, and I have salaamed and kowtowed to him whenever I had a chance; but he won't let me get near him. Hang it, it's cruel!'
'It's not directed to you in particular, any dislike he may have. I have told you before that he doesn't like the English,' Agatha remarked.
'Bless me—no more do I! But my best friends have been among them.'
'I don't say I agree with my brother and I don't say I disagree with him,' Sir Rufus's companion went on. 'I have told you before that we are of Irish descent, on my mother's side. Her mother was a Macarthy. We have kept up the name and we have kept up the feeling.'
'I see—so that even if the Yankee were to let me off the Paddy would come down! That's a most unholy combination. But you remember, I hope, what I have also told you—that I am quite as Irish as you can ever be. I had an Irish grandmother—a beauty of beauties, a certain Lady Laura Fitzgibbon, qui vaut bien la vôtre. A charming old woman she was.'
'Oh, well, she wasn't of our kind!' the girl exclaimed, laughing.
'You mean that yours wasn't charming? In the presence of her granddaughter permit me to doubt it.'
'Well, I suppose that those hostilities of race—transmitted and hereditary, as it were—are the greatest of all.' Agatha Grice uttered this sage reflection by no means in the tone of successful controversy and with the faintest possible tremor in her voice.
'Good God! do you mean to say that an hostility of race, a legendary feud, is to prevent you and me from meeting again?' The Englishman stopped short as he made this inquiry, but Agatha continued to walk, as if that might help her to elude it. She had come out with a perfectly sincere determination to prevent Sir Rufus from saying what she believed he wanted to say, and if her voice had trembled just now it was because it began to come over her that her preventive measures would fail. The only tolerably efficacious one would be to turn straight round and go home. But there would be a rudeness in this course and even a want of dignity; and besides she did not wish to go home. She compromised by not answering her companion's question, and though she could not see him she was aware that he was looking after her with an expression in his face of high impatience momentarily baffled. She knew that expression and thought it handsome; she knew all his expressions and thought them all handsome. He overtook her in a few moments and then she was surprised that he should be laughing as he exclaimed: 'It's too absurd!—it's too absurd!' It was not long however before she understood the nature of his laughter, as she understood everything else. If she was nervous he was scarcely less so; his whole manner now expressed the temper of a man wishing to ascertain rapidly whether he may enjoy or must miss great happiness. Before she knew it he had spoken the words which she had flattered herself he should not speak; he had said that since there appeared to be a doubt whether they should soon meet again it was important he should seize the present occasion. He was very glad after all, because for several days he had been wanting to speak. He loved her as he had never loved any woman and he besought her earnestly to believe it. What was this crude stuff about disliking the English and disliking the Americans? what had questions of nationality to do with it any more than questions of ornithology? It was a question simply of being his wife, and that was rather between themselves, was it not? He besought her to consider it, as he had been turning it over from almost the first hour he met her. It was not in Agatha's power to go her way now, because he had laid his hand upon her in a manner that kept her motionless, and while he talked to her in low, kind tones, touching her face with the breath of supplication, she stood there in the warm darkness, very pale, looking as if she were listening to a threat of injury rather than to a declaration of love. 'Of course I ought to speak to your mother,' he said; 'I ought to have spoken to her first. But your leaving at an hour's notice and apparently wishing to shake me off has given me no time. For God's sake give me your permission and I will do it to-night.'
'Don't—don't speak to my mother,' said Agatha, mournfully.
'Don't tell me to-morrow then that she won't hear of it!'
'She likes you, Sir Rufus,' the girl rejoined, in the same singular, hopeless tone.
'I hope you don't mean to imply by that that you don't!'
'No; I like you of course; otherwise I should never have allowed myself to be in this position, because I hate it!' The girl uttered these last words with a sudden burst of emotion and an equally sudden failure of sequence, and turning round quickly began to walk in the direction from which they had come. Her companion, however, was again beside her, close to her, and he found means to prevent her from going as fast as she wished. History has lost the record of what at that moment he said to her; it was something that made her exclaim in a voice which seemed on the point of breaking into tears: 'Please don't say that or anything like it again, Sir Rufus, or I shall have to take leave of you for ever this instant, on the spot.' He strove to be obedient and they walked on a little in silence; after which she resumed, with a slightly different manner: 'I am very sorry you have said this to-night. You have troubled and distressed me; it isn't a good time.'
'I wonder if you would favour me with your idea of what might be a good time?'
'I don't know. Perhaps never. I am greatly obliged to you for the honour you have done me. I beg you to believe me when I say this. But I don't think I shall ever marry. I have other duties. I can't do what I like with my life.'
At this Sir Rufus made her stop again, to tell him what she meant by such an extraordinary speech. What overwhelming duties had she, pray, and what restrictions upon her life that made her so different from other women? He could not, for his part, imagine a woman more free. She explained that she had her mother, who was terribly delicate and who must be her first thought and her first care. Nothing would induce her to leave her mother. She was all her mother had except Macarthy, and he was absorbed in his profession.
'What possible question need there be of your leaving her?' the Englishman demanded. 'What could be more delightful than that she should live with us and that we should take care of her together? You say she is so good as to like me, and I assure you I like her—most uncommonly.'
'It would be impossible that we should take her away from my brother,' said the girl, after an hesitation.
'Take her away?' And Sir Rufus Chasemore stood staring. 'Well, if he won't look after her himself—you say he is so taken up with his work—he has no earthly right to prevent other people from doing so.'
'It's not a man's business—it's mine—it's her daughter's.'
'That's exactly what I think, and what in the world do I wish but to help you? If she requires a mild climate we will find some lovely place in the south of England and be as happy there as the day is long.'
'So that Macarthy would have to come there to see his mother? Fancy Macarthy in the south of England—especially as happy as the day is long! He would find the day very long,' Agatha Grice continued, with the strange little laugh which expressed—or rather which disguised—the mixture of her feelings. 'He would never consent.'
'Never consent to what? Is what you mean to say that he would never consent to your marriage? I certainly never dreamed that you would have to ask him. Haven't you defended to me again and again the freedom, the independence with which American girls marry? Where is the independence when it comes to your own case?' Sir Rufus Chasemore paused a moment and then he went on with bitterness: 'Why don't you say outright that you are afraid of your brother? Miss Grice, I never dreamed that that would be your answer to an offer of everything that a man—and a man of some distinction, I may say, for it would be affectation in me to pretend that I consider myself a nonenity—can lay at the feet of a woman.'
The girl did not reply immediately; she appeared to think over intently what he had said to her, and while she did so she turned her white face and her charming serious eyes upon him. When at last she spoke it was in a very gentle, considerate tone. 'You are wrong in supposing that I am afraid of my brother. How can I be afraid of a person of whom I am so exceedingly fond?'
'Oh, the two things are quite consistent,' said Sir Rufus Chasemore, impatiently. 'And is it impossible that I should ever inspire you with a sentiment which you would consent to place in the balance with this intense fraternal affection?' He had no sooner spoken those somewhat sarcastic words than he broke out in a different tone: 'Oh Agatha, for pity's sake don't make difficulties where there are no difficulties!'
'I don't make them; I assure you they exist. It is difficult to explain them, but I can see them, I can feel them. Therefore we mustn't talk this way any more. Please, please don't,' the girl pursued, imploringly. 'Nothing is possible to-day. Some day or other very likely there will be changes. Then we shall meet; then we shall talk again.'
'I like the way you ask me to wait ten years. What do you mean by "changes"? Before heaven, I shall never change,' Sir Rufus declared.
Agatha Grice hesitated. 'Well, perhaps you will like us better.'
'Us? Whom do you mean by "us"? Are you coming back to that beastly question of one's feelings—real or supposed it doesn't matter—about your great and glorious country? Good God, it's too monstrous! One tells a girl one adores her and she replies that she doesn't care so long as one doesn't adore her compatriots. What do you want me to do to them? What do you want me to say? I will say anything in the English language, or in the American, that you like. I'll say that they're the greatest of the great and have every charm and virtue under heaven. I'll go down on my stomach before them and remain there for ever. I can't do more than that!'
Whether this extravagant profession had the effect of making Agatha Grice ashamed of having struck that note in regard to her companion's international attitude, or whether her nerves were simply upset by his vehemence, his insistence, is more than I can say: what is certain is that her rejoinder to this last speech was a sudden burst of tears. They fell for a moment rapidly, soundlessly, but she was quicker still in brushing them away. 'You may laugh at me or you may despise me,' she said when she could speak, 'and I daresay my state of mind is deplorably narrow. But I couldn't be happy with you if you hated my country.'
'You would hate mine back and we should pass the liveliest, jolliest days!' returned the Englishman, gratified, softened, enchanted by her tears. 'My dear girl, what is a woman's country? It's her house and her garden, her children and her social world. You exaggerate immensely the difference which that part of the business makes. I assure you that if you were to marry me it would be the last thing you would find yourself thinking of. However, to prove how little I hate your country I am perfectly willing to go there and live with you.'
'Oh, Sir Rufus Chasemore!' murmured Agatha Grice, protestingly.
'You don't believe me?'
She believed him not a bit and yet to hear him make such an offer was sweet to her, for it gave her a sense of the reality of his passion. 'I shouldn't ask that—I shouldn't even like it,' she said; and then he wished to know what she would like. 'I should like you to let me go—not to press me, not to distress me any more now. I shall think of everything—of course you know that. But it will take me a long time. That's all I can tell you now, but I think you ought to be content.' He was obliged to say that he was content, and they resumed their walk in the direction of the hotel. Shortly before they reached it Agatha exclaimed with a certain irrelevance, 'You ought to go there first; then you would know.'
'Then I should know what?'
'Whether you would like it.'
'Like your great country? Good Lord, what difference does it make whether I like it or not?'
'No—that's just it—you don't care,' said Agatha; 'yet you said to my brother that you wanted immensely to go.'
'So I do; I am ashamed not to have been; that's an immense drawback to-day, in England, to a man in public life. Something has always stopped me off, tiresomely, from year to year. Of course I shall go the very first moment I can take the time.'
'It's a pity you didn't go this year instead of coming down here,' the girl observed, rather sententiously.
'I thank my stars I didn't!' he responded, in a very different tone.
'Well, I should try to make you like it,' she went on. 'I think it very probable I should succeed.'
'I think it very probable you could do with me exactly whatever you might attempt.'
'Oh, you hypocrite!' the girl exclaimed; and it was on this that she separated from him and went into the house. It soothed him to see her do so instead of rejoining her mother and brother, whom he distinguished at a distance sitting on the terrace. She had perceived them there as well, but she would go straight to her room; she preferred the company of her thoughts. It suited Sir Rufus Chasemore to believe that those thoughts would plead for him and eventually win his suit. He gave a melancholy, loverlike sigh, however, as he walked toward Mrs. Grice and her son. He could not keep away from them, though he was so interested in being and appearing discreet. The girl had told him that her mother liked him, and he desired both to stimulate and to reward that inclination. Whatever he desired he desired with extreme definiteness and energy. He would go and sit down beside the little old lady (with whom hitherto he had no very direct conversation), and talk to her and be kind to her and amuse her. It must be added that he rather despaired of the success of these arts as he saw Macarthy Grice, on becoming aware of his approach, get up and walk away.