The Soft Side (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1900)/Maud-Evelyn/Chapter 3

by Henry James

III

He at last, however, turned up; but then it happened that if, on his coming to see me, his immediate picture of his charming new friends quickened even more than I had expected my sense of the variety of the human species, my curiosity about them failed to make me respond when he suggested I should go to see them. It's a difficult thing to explain, and I don't pretend to put it successfully, but doesn't it often happen that one may think well enough of a person without being inflamed with the desire to meet—on the ground of any such sentiment—other persons who think still better? Somehow—little harm as there was in Marmaduke—it was but half a recommendation of the Dedricks that they were crazy about him. I didn't say this—I was careful to say little; which didn't prevent his presently asking if he mightn't then bring them to me. 'If not, why not?' he laughed. He laughed about everything.

'Why not? Because it strikes me that your surrender doesn't require any backing. Since you've done it you must take care of yourself.'

'Oh, but they're as safe,' he returned, 'as the Bank of England. They're wonderful—for respectability and goodness.'

'Those are precisely qualities to which my poor intercourse can contribute nothing.' He hadn't, I observed, gone so far as to tell me they would be 'fun,' and he had, on the other hand, promptly mentioned that they lived in Westbourne Terrace. They were not forty—they were forty-five; but Mr. Dedrick had already, on considerable gains, retired from some primitive profession. They were the simplest, kindest, yet most original and unusual people, and nothing could exceed, frankly, the fancy they had taken to him. Marmaduke spoke of it with a placidity of resignation that was almost irritating. I suppose I should have despised him if, after benefits accepted, he had said they bored him; yet their not boring him vexed me even more than it puzzled. 'Whom do they know?'

'No one but me. There are people in London like that.'

'Who know no one but you?'

'No—I mean no one at all. There are extraordinary people in London, and awfully nice. You haven't an idea. You people don't know every one. They lead their lives—they go their way. One finds—what do you call it?—refinement, books, cleverness, don't you know, and music, and pictures, and religion, and an excellent table—all sorts of pleasant things. You only come across them by chance; but it's all perpetually going on.'

I assented to this: the world was very wonderful, and one must certainly see what one could. In my own quarter too I found wonders enough. 'But are you,' I asked, 'as fond of them———'

'As they are of me?' He took me up promptly, and his eyes were quite unclouded. 'I'm quite sure I shall become so.'

'Then are you taking Lavinia———?'

'Not to see them—no.' I saw, myself, the next minute, of course, that I had made a mistake. 'On what footing can I?'

I bethought myself. 'I keep forgetting you're not engaged.'

'Well,' he said after a moment, 'I shall never marry another.'

It somehow, repeated again, gave on my nerves. 'Ah, but what good will that do her, or me either, if you don't marry her?'

He made no answer to this—only turned away to look at something in the room; after which, when he next faced me, he had a heightened colour. 'She ought to have taken me that day,' he said gravely and gently, fixing me also as if he wished to say more.

I remember that his very mildness irritated me; some show of resentment would have been a promise that the case might still be righted. But I dropped it, the silly case, without letting him say more, and, coming back to Mr. and Mrs. Dedrick, asked him how in the world, without either occupation or society, they passed so much of their time. My question appeared for a moment to leave him at a loss, but he presently found light; which, at the same time, I saw on my side, really suited him better than further talk about Lavinia. 'Oh, they live for Maud-Evelyn.'

'And who's Maud-Evelyn?'

'Why, their daughter.'

'Their daughter?' I had supposed them childless.

He partly explained. 'Unfortunately they've lost her.'

'Lost her?' I required more.

He hesitated again. 'I mean that a great many people would take it that way. But they don't—they won't.'

I speculated. 'Do you mean other people would have given her up?'

'Yes—perhaps even tried to forget her. But the Dedricks can't.'

I wondered what she had done: had it been anything very bad? However, it was none of my business, and I only said: 'They communicate with her?'

'Oh, all the while,'

'Then why isn't she with them?'

Marmaduke thought. 'She is—now.'

'"Now"? Since when?'

'Well, this last year.'

'Then why do you say they've lost her?'

'Ah,' he said, smiling sadly, 'I should call it that. I, at any rate,' he went on, 'don't see her.'

Still more I wondered. 'They keep her apart?'

He thought again. 'No, it's not that. As I say, they live for her.'

'But they don't want you to—is that it?'

At this he looked at me for the first time, as I thought, a little strangely. 'How can I?'

He put it to me as if it were bad of him, somehow, that he shouldn't; but I made, to the best of my ability, a quick end of that. 'You can't. Why in the world should you? Live for my girl. Live for Lavinia.'