The Soft Side (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900)/John Delavoy/Chapter 5

by Henry James

V

A few minutes later I had wired to our young lady that, should I hear nothing from her to the contrary, I would come to her that evening. I had other affairs that kept me out; and on going home I found a word to the effect that though she should not be free after dinner she hoped for my presence at five o'clock: a notification betraying to me that the evening would, by arrangement, be Mr. Beston's hour and that she wished to see me first. At five o'clock I was there, and as soon as I entered the room I perceived two things. One of these was that she had been highly impatient; the other was that she had not heard, since my call on him, from Mr. Beston, and that her arrangement with him therefore dated from earlier. The tea-service was by the fire—she herself was at the window; and I am at a loss to name the particular revelation that I drew from this fact of her being restless on general grounds. My telegram had fallen in with complications at which I could only guess; it had not found her quiet; she was living in a troubled air. But her wonder leaped from her lips. 'He does want two?'

I had brought in my proof with me, putting it in my hat and my hat on a chair. 'Oh, no—he wants only one, only yours.'

Her wonder deepened. 'He won't print———?'

'My poor old stuff! He returns it with thanks.'

'Returns it? When he had accepted it!'

'Oh, that doesn't prevent—when he doesn't like it.'

'But he does; he did. He liked it to me. He called it "sympathetic."'

'He only meant that you are—perhaps even that I myself am. He hadn't read it then. He read it but a day or two ago, and horror seized him.'

Miss Delavoy dropped into a chair. 'Horror?'

'I don't know how to express to you the fault he finds with it.' I had gone to the fire, and I looked to where it peeped out of my hat; my companion did the same, and her face showed the pain she might have felt, in the street, at sight of the victim of an accident. 'It appears it's indecent.'

She sprang from her chair. 'To describe my brother?'

'As I've described him. That, at any rate, is how my account sins. What I've said is unprintable.' I leaned against the chimney-piece with a serenity of which, I admit, I was conscious; I rubbed it in and felt a private joy in watching my influence.

'Then what have you said?'

'You know perfectly. You heard my thing from beginning to end. You said it was beautiful.'

She remembered as I looked at her; she showed all the things she called back. 'It was beautiful.' I went over and picked it up; I came back with it to the fire. 'It was the best thing ever said about him,' she went on. 'It was the finest and truest.'

'Well, then———!' I exclaimed.

'But what have you done to it since?'

'I haven't touched it since.'

'You've put nothing else in?'

'Not a line—not a syllable. Don't you remember how you warned me against spoiling it? It's of the thing we read together, liked together, went over and over together; it's of this dear little serious thing of good sense and good faith'—and I held up my roll of proof, shaking it even as Mr. Beston had shaken it—'that he expresses that opinion.'

She frowned at me with an intensity that, though bringing me no pain, gave me a sense of her own. 'Then that's why he has asked me———?'

'To do something instead. But something pure. You, he hopes, won't be indecent.'

She sprang up, more mystified than enlightened; she had pieced things together, but they left the question gaping. 'Is he mad? What is he talking about?'

'Oh, I know—now. Has he specified what he wants of you?'

She thought a moment, all before me. 'Yes—to be very "personal."'

'Precisely. You mustn't speak of the work.'

She almost glared. 'Not speak of it?'

'That's indecent.'

'My brother's work?'

'To speak of it.'

She took this from me as she had not taken anything. 'Then how can I speak of him at all?—how can I articulate? He was his work.'

'Certainly he was. But that's not the kind of truth that will stand in Mr. Boston's way. Don't you know what he means by wanting you to be personal?'

In the way she looked at me there was still for a moment a dim desire to spare him—even perhaps a little to save him. None the less, after an instant, she let herself go. 'Something horrible?'

'Horrible; so long, that is, as it takes the place of something more honest and really so much more clean. He wants—what do they call the stuff?—anecdotes, glimpses, gossip, chat; a picture of his "home life," domestic habits, diet, dress, arrangements—all his little ways and little secrets, and even, to better it still, all your own, your relations with him, your feelings about him, his feelings about you: both his and yours, in short, about anything else you can think of. Don't you see what I mean?' She saw so well that, in the dismay of it, she grasped my arm an instant, half as if to steady herself, half as if to stop me. But she couldn't stop me. 'He wants you just to write round and round that portrait.'

She was lost in the reflections I had stirred, in apprehensions and indignations that slowly surged and spread; and for a moment she was unconscious of everything else. 'What portrait?'

'Why, the beautiful one you did. The beautiful one you gave him.'

'Did I give it to him? Oh, yes!' It came back to her, but this time she blushed red, and I saw what had occurred to her. It occurred, in fact, at the same instant to myself. 'Ah, par exemple,' she cried, 'he shan't have it!'

I couldn't help laughing. 'My dear young lady, unfortunately he has got it!'

'He shall send it back. He shan't use it.'

'I'm afraid he is using it,' I replied. 'I'm afraid he has used it. They've begun to work on it.'

She looked at me almost as if I were Mr. Beston. 'Then they must stop working on it.' Something in her decision somehow thrilled me. 'Mr. Beston must send it straight back. Indeed, I'll wire to him to bring it to-night.'

'Is he coming to-night?' I ventured to inquire.

She held her head very high. 'Yes, he's coming to-night. It's most happy!' she bravely added, as if to forestall any suggestion that it could be anything else.

I thought a moment; first about that, then about something that presently made me say: 'Oh, well, if he brings it back———!'

She continued to look at me. 'Do you mean you doubt his doing so?'

I thought again. 'You'll probably have a stiff time with him.'

She made, for a little, no answer to this but to sound me again with her eyes; our silence, however, was carried off by her then abruptly turning to her tea-tray and pouring me out a cup. 'Will you do me a favour?' she asked as I took it.

'Any favour in life.'

'Will you be present?'

'Present?'—I failed at first to imagine.

'When Mr. Beston comes.'

It was so much more than I had expected that I of course looked stupid in my surprise. 'This evening—here?'

'This evening—here. Do you think my request very strange?'

I pulled myself together. 'How can I tell when I'm so awfully in the dark?'

'In the dark———?' She smiled at me as if I were a person who carried such lights!

'About the nature, I mean, of your friendship.'

'With Mr. Beston?' she broke in. Then in the wonderful way that women say such things: 'It has always been so pleasant.'

'Do you think it will be pleasant for me?' I laughed.

'Our friendship? I don't care whether it is or not!'

'I mean what you'll have out with him—for of course you will have it out. Do you think it will be pleasant for him?'

'To find you here—or to see you come in? I don't feel obliged to think. This is a matter in which I now care for no one but my brother—for nothing but his honour. I stand only on that.'

I can't say how high, with these words, she struck me as standing, nor how the look that she gave me with them seemed to make me spring up beside her. We were at this elevation together a moment. 'I'll do anything in the world you say.'

'Then please come about nine.'

That struck me as so tantamount to saying 'And please therefore go this minute' that I immediately turned to the door. Before I passed it, however, I gave her time to ring out clear: 'I know what I'm about!' She proved it the next moment by following me into the hall with the request that I would leave her my proof. I placed it in her hands, and if she knew what she was about I wondered, outside, what I was.