Henry James

“ Rose was all there.
"There is a hurry. Some one must go for her."
Dennis had a point to make that he must make on the spot. He spoke before Rose's rejoinder. "With your increasing anxieties, Mr. Bream, I'm quite ashamed to be quartered on you. Hadn't I really better be at the inn?"
"At the inn—to go from here? My dear fellow, are you mad?" Tony sociably scoffed; he wouldn't hear of it. "Don't be afraid; we've plenty of use for you—if only to keep this young woman quiet."
"He can be of use this instant." Rose looked at her suitor as if there were not the shadow of a cloud between them. ”

“ Tony slowly shook his head. "I don't think," he said very gravely, "that I'm afraid of poor Gorham."
Paul looked as if he felt that his warning half failed. "Every one else is. She's tremendously devoted."
"Yes—that's what I mean."
Paul sounded him a moment. "You mean to you?"
The irony was so indulgent—and all irony on this young man's part was so rare—that Tony was to be excused for not perceiving it. "She'll do anything. We're the best of friends." ”

“ Dennis had raised his head and sunk back into the angle of the bench, separated from her by such space as it yielded. His face, presented to her over Effie's curls, was a combat of mystifications. "Why in the world should that give me pleasure?"
"Why in the world shouldn't it?" Rose asked. "What's your revenge but pleasure?"
She had got up again in her dire restlessness; she glowed there in the perversity of her sacrifice. ”

“ Jean felt that one quite did know: she was awfully plain. It may immediately be mentioned that about the charm of the apparition offered meanwhile to her own eyes Rose Armiger had not a particle of doubt: a slim, fair girl who struck her as a light sketch for something larger, a cluster of happy hints with nothing yet quite "put in" but the splendour of the hair and the grace of the clothes—clothes that were not as the clothes of Wilverley. ”

“ The greatest of the parlourmaids came from the hall into the drawing-room at Eastmead—the high, square temple of mahogany and tapestry in which, the last few years, Mrs. Beever had spent much time in rejoicing that she had never set up new gods. She had left it, from the first, as it was—full of the old things that, on succeeding to her husband's mother, she had been obliged, as a young woman of that period, to accept as dolefully different from the things thought beautiful by other young women whose views of drawing-rooms, all about her, had also been intensified by marriage. ”

“ Dennis, left alone, remained rigid in the middle of the room, immersed apparently in a stupor of emotion; then, as if shaken out of it by a return of conscious suffering, he passed in a couple of strides to the door of the library. Here, however, with his hand on the knob, he yielded to another impulse, which kept him irresolute, listening, drawing his breath in pain. Suddenly he turned away—Tony Bream had come in. ”

“ She carries the years almost as you do, and her head better than any young woman I've ever seen. Life is somehow becoming to her. Every one's immensely struck with her. She only needs to get what she wants. She has in short a charm that I recognise."
Her visitor stared at her words as if they had been a framed picture; the reflected colour of it made a light in his face. "And you speak as one who, I remember, doesn't like her."
The lady of Eastmead faltered, but there was help in her characteristic courage. "No—I don't like her."
"I see," Dennis considered. ”

“ It was as if their eyes were indissolubly engaged. That was the way he had been looking a while before into another woman's, but he could think at this moment of the exquisite difference of Jean's. He shook his head with all the sadness and all the tenderness he felt he might permit himself to show just this once and never again. "You've changed—you've changed."
Then she gave up. "Wouldn't you much rather I should never come back?"
"Far rather. But you will come back," said Tony. ”

“ Dennis looked round the garden. "You say you're convinced that, in the face of his promise, he has no particular interest in her. You mean, however, of course, but to the extent of marriage."
"I mean," said Mrs. Beever, "to the extent of anything at all." She also rose; she brought out her whole story. "He's in love with another person."
"Ah," Dennis murmured, "that's none of my business!" He nevertheless closed his eyes an instant with the cool balm of it. "But it makes a lot of difference." ”

“ He has ability; he has ideas; he has absolute honesty; and he has moreover a good stiff back of his own. He's a fellow of head; he's a fellow of heart. In short he's a man of gold."
"He's a man of gold," Jean repeated with punctual acceptance, yet as if it mattered much more that Tony should think so than that she should. "It would be odd," she went on, "to be talking with you on a subject so personal to myself if it were not that I've felt Paul's attitude for so long past to be rather publicly taken for granted. ”

“ Jean had got up before these remarks had gone far, but even though she fell back a few steps her dismay was a force that condemned her to take them in. "God forbid I should understand you," she panted; "I only make out that you say and mean horrible things and that you're doing your best to seek a quarrel with me from which you shall derive some advantage that, I'm happy to feel, is beyond my conception." Both the women were now as pale as death, and Rose was brought to her feet by the pure passion of this retort. ”

“ Beever, making a fresh observation, waited a little before answering. "Do you now call her 'Rose'?"
"Dear, yes—talking with Julia. And with her," he went on as if he couldn't quite remember—"do I too? Yes," he recollected, "I think I must."
"What one must one must," said Mrs. Beever dryly. "'Rose,' then, has gone over to the chemist's for the Doctor."
"How jolly of her!" Tony exclaimed. "She's a tremendous comfort." ”

“ Paul presently asked.
"You?" The blood rushed back to her face with the shock of this question. "Why, you get Jean Martle!" He turned away without a word, and at the same moment, in the distance, she saw the person whose name she had just uttered descend the great square steps. She hereupon slipped through the circle of chairs and rapidly met her companion, who stopped short as she approached. Rose looked him straight in the eyes. "If you give me the peace I pray for, I'll do anything for you in life!" ”

“ Grantham's second husband, my uncle, my mother's brother, had been the first. Julia lost her mother; I lost both my mother and my father. Then Mrs. Grantham took me: she had shortly before made her second marriage. She put me at the horrid school at Weymouth at which she had already put her step-daughter."
"You ought to be obliged to her," Mrs. Beever suggested, "for having made you acquainted."
"We are—we've never ceased to be. It was as if she had made us sisters, with the delightful position for me of the elder, the protecting one. But it's the only good turn she has ever done us." ”

“ Rose echoed.
"Do you mean Mrs. Bream is dead?"
His question rang out so that Rose threw herself back in horror. "Dennis—God forbid!"
"God forbid too, I say. But one doesn't know what you mean—you're too difficult to follow. One thing, at any rate, you clearly have in your head—that we must take it as possibly on the cards. That's enough to make it remarkably to the point to remind you of the great change that would take place in your situation if she should die."
"What else in the world but that change am I thinking of?" Rose asked. ”

“ Rushing to Tony, she wailed under her breath: "I must speak to you—I must speak to you! But how can you ever look at me?—how can you ever forgive me?" In an instant he had met her; in a flash the gulf was bridged: his arms had opened wide to her and she had thrown herself into them. They had only to be face to face to let themselves go; he making no answer but to press her close against him, she pouring out her tears upon him as if the contact quickened the source. He held her and she yielded with a passion no bliss could have given ”

“ Dennis hesitated. "And what does it make my own?"
"Exactly the one you came to take. You have taken it by your startling presence; you're up to your eyes in it, and there's nothing that will become you so as to wear it bravely and gallantly. If you don't like it," Rose added, "you should have thought of that before!"
"You like it so much on your side," Dennis retorted, "that you appear to have engaged in measures to create it even before the argument for it had acquired the force that you give such a fine account of." ”

“ Dennis picked the letter up and, restoring it to its envelope, slipped it almost lovingly into a breastpocket. "It does show, I think, that they don't want to lose me."
"They're not such fools!" Rose had in her turn moved off, but now she faced him, so intensely pale that he was visibly startled; all the more that it marked still more her white grimace. "My dear boy, it's a splendid future."
"I'm glad it strikes you so!" he laughed.
"It's a great joy—you're all right. As I said a while ago, you're a made man."
"Then by the same token, of course, you're a made woman!" ”

“ One's little bothers are one's little bothers—they're all in the day's work. Just give me three minutes, and I shan't show a trace." She straightened herself and even smiled, patting her eyes with her crumpled handkerchief, while Tony marvelled at her courage and good humour.
"Of one thing you must be sure, Rose," he expressively answered, "that whatever happens to you, now or at any time, you've friends here and a home here that are yours for weal and woe." ”

“ Rose smiled at him as if to thank him for being again a trifle sharp with her. "He wants me, as he said, to be kind to you."
"You mean he wants you to do that sort of thing?" His sharpness brought him step by step across the lawn and nearer to her. "Do you care so very much what he wants?"
Again she hesitated; then, with her pleased, patient smile, she tapped the empty place on the bench. "Come and sit down beside me, and I'll tell you how much I care." ”

“ When he looked up again it was gone. "What do you mean by a 'made' man?" he asked.
"Oh, not the usual thing, but the real thing. A man one needn't worry about."
"Thank you! The man not worried about is the man who muffs it."
"That's a horrid, selfish speech," said Rose Armiger. "You don't deserve I should tell you what a success I now feel that you'll be."
"Well, darling," Dennis answered, "that matters the less as I know exactly the occasion on which I shall fully feel it for myself."
Rose manifested no further sense of this occasion than to go straight on with her idea. ”

“ In the indignity of the sensation he struck out. "Pray, why is it the person's obvious interest any more than it's yours?"
"Seeing that I love you quite as much as she does? Because you don't love me quite so much as you love her. That's exactly 'why,' dear Tony Bream!" said Rose Armiger. ”

“ And she gave him, before turning away, what might have been her last look and her last word. "Your conscience is as big as your passion, and if both had been smaller you might perhaps have held your tongue!"
She moved off in a manner that added emphasis to her words, and Tony watched her with his hands still in his pockets and his long legs a little apart. He could turn it over that she accused him, after all, only of having been a particularly injurious fool. "I was under the same impression as you," he said "—the impression that Paul was safe." ”

“ Her life was like a room prepared for a dance: the furniture was all against the walls. About the young lady in question she was perfectly definite; the nicest girl she knew was Jean Martle, whom she had just sent for at Brighton to come and perform in that character. The performance was to be for the benefit of Paul, whose midsummer return was at hand and in whom the imagination of alternatives was to be discouraged from the first. ”

“ Vidal's expression was like a thing battered dead, and his voice was a sound that matched it. "You call your grasp your announcement⸻?"
She threw back her head. "My announcement has reached you? Then you know I've cut off your retreat." Again he turned away from her; he flung himself on the sofa on which, shortly before, Mrs. Beever had sunk down to sob, and, as if with the need to hold on to something, buried his face in one of the hard, square cushions. She came a little nearer to him; she went on with her low lucidity: "So you can't abandon me—you can't. ”

“ Dennis gasped.
"Under the bridge—at the other side. She had been caught, she was held, in the slow current by some obstruction, and by the pier. Don't ask me how—when I arrived, by the mercy of heaven, she had been brought to the bank. But she was gone." With a movement of the head toward the room she had quitted, "We carried her back here," she went on. Vidal's face, which was terrible in the intensity of its sudden vision, struck her apparently as for the instant an echo, wild but interrogative, of what she had last said; so she explained quickly: "To think—to get more time." ”

“ At last, in his hesitation, he pulled up before her. "What makes, all of a sudden, the tremendous need you speak of? Didn't you remind me but an hour ago of how remarkably low, at our last meeting, it had dropped?"
Rose's eyes, in the dimness, widened with their wonder. "You can speak to me in harshness of what I did an hour ago? You can taunt me with an act of penance that might have moved you—that did move you? Does it mean," she continued, "that you've none the less embraced the alternative that seems to you most worthy of your courage? ”

“ Beever gave him an advantage even over the poor fellow whose face, as he stood there, showed the traces of an insufficient forecast of two things: one of them the influence on all his pulses of the sight again, after such an interval, and in the high insolence of life and strength, of the woman he had lost and still loved; the other the instant effect on his imagination of his finding her intimately engaged with the man who had been, however without fault, the occasion of her perversity. ”

“ Mrs. Beever gathered herself. "Are you in love with Rose Armiger, Paul?"
He judiciously weighed the question. "Not in the least. I talk with her of nobody and nothing but Jean."
"And do you talk with Jean of nobody and nothing but Rose?"
Paul appeared to make an effort to remember. "I scarcely talk with her at all. We're such old friends that there's almost nothing to say."
"There's this to say, my dear—that you take too much for granted!"
"That's just what Miss Armiger tells me. Give me, please, some more tea." His mother took his cup, but she look at him hard and searchingly. ”

“ Rose asked.
"Why, as the charmingest, cleverest, handsomest, in every way most wonderful wife that ever any man will have had."
"She is wound up!" Rose laughed. Then she said: "And all the while what does Nurse think?—I don't mean," she added with the same slight irony, "of whether I shall do for Dennis."
"Of Julia's condition? She wants Ramage to come back."
Rose thought a moment. "She's rather a goose, I think—she loses her head."
"So I've taken the liberty of telling her." Tony sat forward, his eyes on the floor, his elbows on his knees and his hands nervously rubbing each other. ”