Mrs. James

“ That James as a husband might remain unblemished in goodness and wisdom she had resolved to know nothing of James the public employer.
James for his part had not so much accepted her sacrifice as not noticed it, and now it was wasted. She knew now what her husband's goodness and wisdom were. He was neither honest, nor loyal, nor pure—he was a loose man, stained, unscrupulous; a man—she told herself this because it made her suffer—a man no better than the men who preyed on Florrie Wilson. ”

“ Mr. James will never forgive me! I could see it in his eye. And Mrs. James was ice itself! I've never felt so horrible in all my life. If you'd only had the sense to keep mum, they might never have found out. You kids are the most frightful nuisance! If I'd had my choice given me when I was born, I wouldn't have been an eldest sister." [Pg 116]
CHAPTER IX The School Service Badge
Settling down at Abbey Close after a month at Highfield was like transferring oneself from a noisy farmyard to the calm of the cloister. ”

“ When yet a young man, Rev. Mr. James was united in marriage to Miss Zerelda Cole, a native of Scott county, Kentucky. Mrs. James is a lady of great determination of mind, and a masculine force 14 of character. Those who knew the couple in the old days seem to think that the minister and his wife were an ill-assorted pair. He was gentle and amiable, while, on the contrary, his wife was strong in passion, and of a very bitter, unrelenting temper—traits of character prominently developed in her sons, Frank and Jesse. ”

“ Mary shivered. She did not disbelieve James, but what he said seemed to her incredible. How was it possible to do what James had done and not care? It did not occur to her to feel sorry for James, for his discomfort and his humiliation, but she found herself for a moment pitying the woman who dwelt in so monstrous a world. To be a woman of whom a man could say, "I never dreamed of caring!" ”

“ She was not one of the women who were fitted, either by training or by an adventurous disposition to work with men, at men's affairs, on a neutral footing. Men, for her, had been creatures to be pleased and to be cared for, and men had loved her and been good to her precisely because of this attitude of hers. To do what James asked would be to approach them on a different basis, and she felt it was hard she should be asked to risk what she had been so proud of—her successful relations with her husband and her son. ”

“ They were good friends, and had never been more; there were no children. That had been a grievance of hers until she got into the way of saying that the Germains were a dwindling race, and—“look at poor John Germain!” I wish the reader to note the subtle change from complaint to complacency in Mrs. James’s outlook. It marks her character. To be a barren wife through no fault of your own and to take comfort in saying that your husband comes of a dwindling stock shows that you have an eye for outline in a family. ”

“ TIME drew on towards the wedding, and James's contentment increased. He felt very well that autumn—his summer holiday had agreed with him—and he was vain of his vigour at an age when many men are already a little wearied by life. Fate, too, was treating him kindly. Mary had settled down, Laura's child was a boy, and a very fine boy, and here was Rosemary marrying an exceedingly decent young fellow who was bound to get on. Moreover business was booming. James went down to his office every morning in an excellent temper. He had made up his mind now that he would carry his cinema project through. ”

“ James made him understand they were speaking of poor Mrs. Joyce.
“Ah!” said John, “she was an angel,—Miss Lucy is very like her mother—very like her—even to the way she has in church of laying her hand on her heart—so,—as if it beat too fast.”
“She does not do that, does she, James?” inquired the sergeant-major, eagerly; “I never saw her do that.”
p. 6“Likely not,” replied James; “John sees a deal more than those who hear; he is obliged to amuse himself with something; and, as he cannot hear, he sees.” ”

“ There was nothing monstrous about it, she told herself, nothing more strange, nothing more unbelievable, than that she had been a fool. James cared for the thing he had created, for his achievement, his title to respect in the eyes of the world. Any man can marry a wife, any man can beget children, but James had built up this business with the strength of his manhood, and now the business made James a powerful man. ”

“ Mrs. Grose was the first to break the spell: she threw herself on her knees and, drawing the child to her breast, clasped in a long embrace the little tender, yielding body. While this dumb convulsion lasted I could only watch it—which I did the more intently when I saw Flora’s face peep at me over our companion’s shoulder. It was serious now—the flicker had left it; but it strengthened the pang with which I at that moment envied Mrs. Grose the simplicity of her relation. Still, all this while, nothing more passed between us save that Flora had let her foolish fern again drop to the ground. ”

“ I said nothing till she came quite near. “With me?” I must have made a wonderful face. “Do I show it?”
“You’re as white as a sheet. You look awful.”
I considered; I could meet on this, without scruple, any innocence. My need to respect the bloom of Mrs. Grose’s had dropped, without a rustle, from my shoulders, and if I wavered for the instant it was not with what I kept back. I put out my hand to her and she took it; I held her hard a little, liking to feel her close to me. There was a kind of support in the shy heave of her surprise. ”

“ I think myself I shall make you a better wife than a stepdaughter. You need not think for one minute that I would have minded you as I do Uncle Tom."
"But you will have to when we are married," said James.
Clemency blushed and quivered. "Well, maybe I will," she whispered. "I suppose I shall be just enough of a fool to stay in the house, if you order me, the way I do when Uncle Tom does."
"You shall stay in the house for no man alive when I have you in charge," said James. ”

“ I replied with assurance, "have, during the last five minutes, made me do so with some sharpness. I don't pretend that I don't now recognise that there must be something the matter. I only desire—not unnaturally—that there should be, to put me in the right for having thought, if, as you're so sure, such a freedom as that can be brought home to me. If Mrs. Server is beautiful and gentle and strange," I speciously went on, "what are those things but an attraction?"
I saw how he had them, whatever they were, before him as he slowly shook his head. "They're not an attraction. They're too queer." ”

“ James was detached and good-humoured, perfectly ready to talk things over with her. He seemed to think that it was really very creditable that she should have stuck to the thing like this, and taken such an interest in it. One gets rather too much into the habit of assuming that women do not care about serious things. Well then, to what revolutionary courses did she—dear little person that she was—wish to commit her wretched husband and his old-fashioned business? ”

“ Something very, very important, please—we want it immediately.'
He really spoke to her as if she had been some strange young woman at Knightsbridge or Paddington; but it had no other effect on her than to give her the measure of his tremendous flurry. Then it was that, above all, she felt how much she had missed in the gaps and blanks and absent answers—how much she had had to dispense with: it was black darkness now, save for this little wild red flare. So much as that she saw and possessed. One of the lovers was quaking somewhere out of town, and the other was quaking just where he stood. ”

“ Should you, James, think of yourself only?"
"I do nor, I trust, think of myself only," said James; "I hope that I am calm enough, and have a heart to think for others. But, I ask you, is it doing right to him to let him marry you in ignorance of the state of your feelings? Is it a kindness to a good and noble man to give yourself to him only seemingly, when the best and noblest part of your affections is gone wholly beyond your control? I am quite sure of that, Mary. I know you do love him very well,—that you would make a most true, affectionate, constant wife to him ”

“ But it’s a difficulty that I’m facing, if you wish to know; that I’ve already faced; that I propose to myself to surmount. The struggle with it—none too pleasant—hasn’t been for me, as you may imagine, in itself charming; I’ve felt in it at times, if I must tell you all, too great and too strange, an ugliness. Yet I believe it may succeed.”
She had risen, with this, Mrs. Verver, and had moved, for the emphasis of it, a few steps away; while Maggie, motionless at first, but sat and looked at her. “You want to take my father FROM me?” ”

“ She enjoyed, invariably, the sense of making her danger present, of making it real, to her husband, and of his almost turning pale, when their eyes met, at this possibility of their compromised state and their shared discredit. The beauty was that, as under a touch of one of the ivory notes at the left of the keyboard, he sounded out with the short sharpness of the dear fond stupid uneasy man. "Conspiring—so far as YOU were concerned—to what end?"
"Why, to the obvious end of getting the Prince a wife—at Maggie's expense. And then to that of getting Charlotte a husband at Mr. Verver's." ”

“ A period of wild excitement followed, while we all helped James to comb her hair and climb into the speckled pinafore of a blameless life. "I will do my best," said James; "but I am sure I shall forget and call you 'Fatty.' Is it father or papa to-day?"
"Her ladyship," responded the doctor, "is, I think, the kind of ladyship who would prefer papa. Let her do all the good she wants to. Mention that we've got a curate here. Webb and I will come up in a little while and collect the cheque. Don't harrow her. She's the kind of ladyship who likes to do business with respectable poverty." ”

“ But again she projected her vision.
“The way it comes to you can scarcely be that she’ll like it!”
“The way it comes to me is that she will live. The way it comes to me is that she’ll triumph.”
She said this with so sudden a prophetic flare that it fairly cheered her husband. “Ah then, we must back her!”
“No—we mustn’t touch her. We mayn’t touch any of them. We must keep our hands off; we must go on tiptoe. We must simply watch and wait. And meanwhile,” said Mrs. Assingham, “we must bear it as we can. That’s where we are—and serves us right. We’re in presence.” ”

“ He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he pursued: “You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I’m much simpler than you think.”
“I think you’re very simple.” And Madame Merle kept her eye on her cup. “I’ve come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it’s only since your marriage that I’ve understood you. I’ve seen better what you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. ”

“ He says that his duty lies here.”
“Oh, James, but you can’t!” she cried. “You poor dear, of course you can’t!”
James shook his head. “We can’t argue,” he said. “Mr. M‘Crae says there’s no time.”
“Then we will all stay together,” she said.
She laid her hands on James’ shoulders and looked up at him. He smiled.
“No, Eva. . . . It is as much your duty to go as mine to stay. You . . . you must fall in with my wishes . . . you must be reasonable . . . you must be a good girl . . .” He stroked her cheek, and the unfamiliar tenderness of the action made her burst into tears. ”

“ Gedge intervened, though quaking a little, "that he would like to pull it down?"
She met, in her free sweetness, this appeal with such a charm! "Oh perhaps not quite the house——!"
"Good. You see we live on it—I mean we people."
The husband had laughed, but had now so completely ceased to look about him that there seemed nothing left for him but to talk avowedly with the caretaker. "I'm interested," he explained, "in what I think the interesting thing—or at all events the eternally tormenting one. The fact of the abysmally little that, in proportion, we know." ”

“ James, if he loves you, will wait for you. Don't marry until the boys are all old enough to be out of trouble. Think, Lizzie, of the misery a step-mother might cause with your brother Jack's impetuous temper, and Sam's hopeless, despairing disposition—each one would be hard for a step-mother to guide. Be a mother to them, my girl; down on your knees, and to make your mother's heart easy, promise before God that you will guide them, and watch over them as long as you are needed. Stay with your father, and Heaven will bless you, as does your dying mother. ”

“ There's no moment of my life at which I'm not imagining something; and it's thanks to that, darling," Mrs. Assingham pursued, "that I figure the sincerity with which your husband, whom you see as viciously occupied with your stepmother, is interested, is tenderly interested, in his admirable adorable wife." She paused a minute as to give her friend the full benefit of this—as to Maggie's measure of which however no sign came; and then, poor woman, haplessly, she crowned her effort. ”

“ I did so; I applied my face to the pane and looked, as he had looked, into the room. As if, at this moment, to show me exactly what his range had been, Mrs. Grose, as I had done for himself just before, came in from the hall. With this I had the full image of a repetition of what had already occurred. She saw me as I had seen my own visitant; she pulled up short as I had done; I gave her something of the shock that I had received. She turned white, and this made me ask myself if I had blanched as much. ”