James Sarsfield

“ At a time when everybody had deserted James, Patrick Sarsfield stood by him, and in the very first encounter with the army of William he proved his courage. The viceroy was now old and crippled by gout, but he insisted upon holding the principal place in James's Council, and when it was announced that William was coming to Ireland, it was he who insisted upon James fighting for his crown, although that monarch was secretly preparing for his return to France. James created defeat for himself, and his motley collection of adventurers made that defeat certain. ”

“ James had long intended to make Ireland independent of England, that, under his Protestant successors, it might be an impregnable refuge for persecuted Catholics. He estimated that it would take five years of preparation. Tyrconnel also contemplated separation, and arranged for a French invasion, if James died. When James came over Tyrconnel thought him hopelessly incompetent, and offered his country to Lewis XIV. Sarsfield detested his treachery, and invited Berwick to undertake the government. ”

“ Il a de la valeur, mais surtout de l'honneur et de la probite a toute epreuve . . . homme qui sera toujours a la tete de ses troupes, et qui en aura grand soin." Leslie, in his Answer to King, says that the Irish Protestants did justice to Sarsfield's integrity and honour. Indeed justice is done to Sarsfield even in such scurrilous pieces as the Royal Flight. ↑ Journal of the Parliament in Ireland, 1689. The reader must not imagine that this journal has an official character. It is merely a compilation made by a Protestant pamphleteer and printed in London. ↑ Life of James, ii. ”

“ It enabled the English to attack the right wing of James, and endangered their seizure of the pass of Duleek, a very narrow defile in the hills, about four miles in their rear, by which they would cut off altogether their retreat. Lauzun, who had posted the main strength of the Irish infantry at the foot of Oldbridge, and supported them by Sarsfield's horse, was compelled to despatch the horse towards Slane Bridge, to guard against this danger, thus weakening his centre. ”

“ He glanced at such a contingency, but it failed to hold him long when once he had reflected that he would have been silly, in this case, with Maria Gostrey and little Bilham, with Madame de Vionnet and little Jeanne, with Lambert Strether, in fine, and above all with Chad Newsome himself. Wouldn’t it be found to have made more for reality to be silly with these persons than sane with Sarah and Jim? ”

“ If the equilibrium might only prevail! Sarah was out with Waymarsh, Mamie was out with Chad, and Jim was out alone. Later on indeed he himself was booked to Jim, was to take him that evening to the Varieties—which Strether was careful to pronounce as Jim pronounced them.
Miss Gostrey drank it in. “What then to-night do the others do?”
“Well, it has been arranged. Waymarsh takes Sarah to dine at Bignon’s.”
She wondered. “And what do they do after? They can’t come straight home.” ”

“ Assingham existed, substantially, or could somehow be made prevailingly to exist, for her private benefit, was the finest flower Maggie had plucked from among the suggestions sown, like abundant seed, on the occasion of the entertainment offered in Portland Place to the Matcham company. Mrs. Assingham, that night, rebounding from dejection, had bristled with bravery and sympathy; she had then absolutely, she had perhaps recklessly, for herself, betrayed the deeper and darker consciousness—an impression it would now be late for her inconsistently to attempt to undo. ”

“ And you offer me Dashwood!"
Sherringham rose in his emotion. "I 'offer' you—?"
Miriam burst out laughing. "You look so droll! [323] You offer me yourself, then, instead of all these things."
"My dear child, I also am a very clever man," he said, trying to sink his consciousness of having for a moment stood gaping.
"You are—you are; I delight in you. No ladies at all—no femmes comme il faut?" she began again.
"Ah what do they matter? Your business is the artistic life!" he broke out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that trivial note again. ”

“ Chad will be, so far as capacity is concerned,” he went on, “the man to do it.”
“Where did he get his capacity,” Jim asked, “over here?”
“He didn’t get it over here, and the wonderful thing is that over here he hasn’t inevitably lost it. He has a natural turn for business, an extraordinary head. He comes by that,” Strether explained, “honestly enough. He’s in that respect his father’s son, and also—for she’s wonderful in her way too—his mother’s. He has other tastes and other tendencies; but Mrs. Newsome and your wife are quite right about his having that. He’s very remarkable.” ”

“ And what about Eric Sanders? Besides he grudged an easy triumph for the oily Boyce. He would like to upset his apple-cart.
The scent of the flowers and a cool breeze were delightful after London. He wandered round the house like a nocturnal cat, and came to the dining-room window. He stopped dead. Yes; he would have another look, while the others were busy.
Returning to the house he went to the dining-room and turned on the electric light. Sir James was staring down at him from over the mantelpiece. He lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the table, gazing keenly at the portrait. ”

“ Strether had a pause. “The difficulty’s Jim. Jim’s the note of home.”
She debated. “Ah surely not the note of Mrs. Newsome.”
But he had it all. “The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome wants him—the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little legs apart, at the door of that tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking, extremely awful.”
Maria stared. “And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with him?”
“Oh he’s all right for me!” Strether laughed. “Any one’s good enough for me. But Sarah shouldn’t, all the same, have brought him. She doesn’t appreciate him.” ”

“ This residence was to be peopled for a month by porters, packers and hammerers, at whose operations it had become peculiarly public—public that is for Portland Place—that Charlotte was to preside in force; operations the quite awful appointed scale and style of which had at no moment loomed so large to Maggie's mind as one day when the dear Assinghams swam back into her ken besprinkled with sawdust and looking as pale as if they had seen Samson pull down the temple. They had seen at least what she was not seeing, rich dim things under the impression of which they had retired ”

“ The night fell, and the lamps upon Piccadilly were lit, and in the increasing silence the roar of London sounded more intensely. From the darkness, as if it were the scene of a play, James watched the cabs and 'buses pass rapidly in the light, the endless procession of people like disembodied souls drifting aimlessly before the wind. It was a comfort and a relief to sit there unseen, under cover of the night. He observed the turmoil with a new, disinterested curiosity, feeling strangely as if he were no longer among the living. ”

“ Jim bethought himself. "Isn't it what you've written that has made Mrs. Newsome pack us off? That, at least, and Chad's still hanging on."
Strether made a reflection of his own. "I see. That she should do something was, no doubt, inevitable, and your wife has therefore, of course, come out to act."
"Oh yes," Jim concurred—"to act. But Sally comes out to act, you know," he lucidly added, "every time she leaves the house. She never comes out but she does act. She's acting moreover now for her mother, and that fixes the scale." ”

“ Art was doing—it came back to that—which politics in most cases weren't. He thus, to pursue our image, planted his supports in the dimness beneath all cursing, and on the platform so improvised was able, in his relief, to dance. He sent out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at the door.
The hour was so early for general commerce that Nick immediately guessed his visitor had come on some rare errand ”

“ He had seen Chad Newsome late the night before, and he had had that morning, as a sequel to this conversation, a second interview with Sarah. "But they're all off," he said, "at last."
It puzzled her a moment. "All?—Mr. Newsome with them?"
"Ah, not yet! Sarah and Jim and Mamie. But Waymarsh with them—for Sarah. It's too beautiful," Strether continued; "I find I don't get over that—it's always a fresh joy. But it's a fresh joy too," he added, "that—well, what do you think? Little Bilham also goes. But he of course goes for Mamie."
Miss Gostrey wondered. "'For' her? ”

“ By this, Marsham had collected his forces, and as he turned to the lamplight, Sir James saw a countenance that reassured him.
"I have no hope of persuading her. It will have to be faced."
"No, I fear there is no hope. She sees all such things in a false light. Forgive me--we must both speak plainly. She will shudder at the bare idea of Juliet Sparling's daughter as your wife; she will think it means a serious injury to your career--in reality it does nothing of the sort--and she will regard it as her duty to assert herself."
"You and Ferrier must do all you can for me," said Marsham, slowly. ”

“ Nothing, decidedly, strikes me as more unnecessary.”
For a minute after this they remained face to face; Maggie had sprung up while her friend sat enthroned, and, after moving to and fro in her intensity, now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had accumulated, considerably, by this time, round Mrs. Assingham’s ample presence, and it made, even to our young woman’s own sense, a medium in which she could at last take a deeper breath. “I’ve affected you, these months—and these last weeks in especial—as quiet and natural and easy?” ”

“ It is no wonder that this sort of friendly intellectual gladiatorship is Sir James's greatest pleasure, for it is his peculiar forte. He has not many equals, and scarcely any superior in it. He is too indolent for an author; too unimpassioned for an orator: but in society he is just vain enough to be pleased with immediate attention, good-humoured enough to listen with patience to others, with great coolness and self-possession, fluent, communicative, and with a manner equally free from violence and insipidity. ”

“ He had struck himself at the hotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on earth was he now? This question was in the air till her own lips quenched it with another. "And do you suppose he—who loves her so—would do anything reckless or cruel?"
He wondered what he supposed. "Do you mean your young man———?"
"I mean yours. I mean Mr. Newsome." It flashed for Strether the next moment a finer light, and the light deepened as she went on. "He takes, thank God, the truest, tenderest interest in her." ”

“ And all the time he laughed and jested as though he were in the highest spirits.
"And what were you doing this morning, Mary?" asked Colonel Parsons.
"Oh, I biked in to Tunbridge Wells with Mr. Dryland to play golf. He plays a rattling good game."
"Did he beat you?"
"Well, no," she answered, modestly. "It so happened that I beat him. But he took his thrashing remarkably well—some men get so angry when they're beaten by a girl."
"The curate has many virtues," said James.
"He was talking about you, Jamie. He said he thought you disliked him; but I told him I was certain you didn't. ”

“ Now this was precisely what Colonel Parsons and his wife could never acknowledge; for them one view was certainly right, and the other as certainly wrong. There was no middle way. To doubt what they believed could only be ascribed to arrant folly or to wickedness. Sometimes James was thrown into a blind rage by the complacency with which from the depths of his nescience his father dogmatised. No man could have been more unassuming than he, and yet on just the points which were most uncertain his attitude was almost inconceivably arrogant. ”

“ I think it will be Jim who'll do it."
She wondered. "Get hold of him?"
"No; just the other thing. Counteract Sarah's spell." And he showed now—our friend—how far he had worked it out. "Jim's intensely cynical."
"Oh dear Jim!" Mme. de Vionnet vaguely smiled.
"Yes, literally, dear Jim! He's awful. What he wants,—heaven forgive him—is to help us."
"You mean"—she was eager—"help me?"
"Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too, though without, as yet, seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see you—if you don't mind—he sees you as very advanced." ”

“ Strether, you seem to have to see about! But you can’t say,” she gaily declared, “that I don’t do what I can to help you. Mr. Waymarsh is placed. I’ve left him in the house with Miss Gostrey.”
“The way,” little Bilham exclaimed, “Mr. Strether gets the ladies to work for him! He’s just preparing to draw in another; to pounce—don’t you see him?—on Madame de Vionnet.”
“Madame de Vionnet? Oh, oh, oh!” Miss Barrace cried in a wonderful crescendo. ”

“ For it was plain that this Jim, or James Woodfall, who occupied all her thoughts had been a very bad man indeed, and that Sarah had assisted him in every way in his wicked deeds.
“Don’t go for that, James,” she said once imploringly. “It’ll be a lifer if they catch you; and they’ve had their eye on you lately. There’s many a safer way of getting money than that.” ”

“ What difference can it make when she has lost her power to contribute?"
Again Mrs. Saltram considered; then very nobly, "There are other things in the world than money," she remarked. This hadn't occurred to her so long as the young lady had any; but she now added, with a glance at my letter, that Mr. and Mrs. Pudney doubtless explained their motives. "It's all in kindness," she continued as she got up.
"Kindness to Miss Anvoy? You took, on the whole, another view of kindness before her reverses."
My companion smiled with some acidity. "Perhaps you're no safer than the Mulvilles!" ”