Henry James

The Solution

Henry James

(1843–1916)

The Solution

(1892)

Table of Contents

The Solution

I

II

III

IV

The Solution

“Oh yes, you may write it down—every one’s dead.” I profited by my old friend’s permission and made a note of the story, which, at the time he told it to me, seemed curious and interesting. Will it strike you in the same light? Perhaps not, but I will run the risk and copy it out for you as I reported it, with just a little amplification from memory. Though every one is dead, perhaps you had better not let it go further. My old friend is dead himself, and how can I say how I miss him? He had many merits, and not the least of them was that he was always at home. The infirmities of the last years of his life confined him to London and to his own house, and of an afternoon, between five and six o’clock, I often knocked at his door. He is before me now, as he leans back in his chair, with his eyes wandering round the top of his room as if a thousand ghostly pictures were suspended there. Following his profession in many countries, he had seen much of life and knew much of men. This thing dropped from him piece by piece (one wet, windy spring afternoon, when we happened to be uninterrupted), like a painless belated confession. I have only given it continuity.

I

It was in Rome, a hundred years ago, or as nearly so as it must have been to be an episode of my extreme youth. I was just twenty-three, and attached to our diplomatic agency there; the other secretaries were all my seniors. Is it because I was twenty-three, or because the time and the place were really better, that this period glows in my memory with all sorts of poetic, romantic lights? It seems to me to have consisted of five winters of sunshine without a cloud; of long excursions on the Campagna and in the Alban and Sabine hills; of joyous artists’ feasts, spread upon the warm stones of ruined temples and tombs; of splendid Catholic processions and ceremonies; of friendly, familiar evenings, prolonged very late, in the great painted and tapestried saloons of historic palaces. It was the slumberous, pictorial Rome of the Popes, before the Italians had arrived or the local colour departed, and though I have been back there in recent years it is always the early impression that is evoked for me by the name. The yellow steps, where models and beggars lounged in the sun, had a golden tone, and the models and beggars themselves a magnificent brown one, which it looked easy to paint showily. The excavations, in those days, were comparatively few, but the ‘subjects’—I was an incorrigible sketcher—were many. The carnival lasted a month, the flowers (and even the flower-girls) lasted for ever, and the old statues in the villas and the galleries became one’s personal friends.

Of course we had other friends than these, and that is what I am coming to. I have lived in places where the society was perhaps better, but I have lived in none where I liked it better, in spite of the fact that it was considerably pervaded by Mrs Goldie. Mrs Goldie was an English lady, a widow with three daughters, and her name, accompanied not rarely, I fear, with an irreverent objurgation, was inevitably on our lips. She had a house on the Pincian Hill, from winter to winter; she came early in the season and stayed late, and she formed, with her daughters—Rosina, Veronica and Augusta—an uncompromising feature of every entertainment. As the principal object in any view of Rome is the dome of St Peter’s, so the most prominent figure in the social prospect was always the Honourable Blanche. She was a daughter of Lord Bolitho, and there were several elderly persons among us who remembered her in the years before her marriage, when her maiden designation was jocosely—I forget what the original joke had been—in people’s mouths. They reintroduced it, and it became common in speaking of her. There must have been some public occasion when, as a spinster, she had done battle for her precedence and had roared out her luckless title. She was capable of that.

I was so fond of the place that it appeared to be natural every one else should love it, but I afterwards wondered what could have been the source of Mrs Goldie’s interest in it. She didn’t know a Raphael from a Caravaggio, and even after many years could not have told you the names of the seven hills. She used to drive her daughters out to sketch, but she would never have done that if she had cared for the dear old ruins. However, it has always been a part of the magic of Rome that the most dissimilar breasts feel its influence; and though it is, or rather it was, the most exquisite place in the world, uncultivated minds have been known to enjoy it as much as students and poets. It has always touched alike the raffiné and the barbarian. Mrs Goldie was a good deal of a barbarian, and she had her reasons for liking the Papal city. Her mind was fixed on tea-parties and the ‘right people to know’. She valued the easy sociability, the picnics, the functions, the frequent opportunities for producing her girls. These opportunities indeed were largely of her own making; for she was highly hospitable, in the simple Roman fashion, and held incessant receptions and conversazioni. Dinners she never gave, and when she invited you to lunch, al fresco, in the shadow of the aqueducts that stride across the plain, she expected you to bring with you a cold chicken and a bottle of wine. No one, however, in those patriarchal times, was thought the worse of in Rome for being frugal. That was another reason why Mrs Goldie had elected to live there; it was the capital in Europe where the least money—and she had but little—would go furthest in the way of grandeur. It cost her nothing to produce her girls, in proportion to the impressiveness of the spectacle.

I don’t know what we should have done without her house, for the young men of the diplomatic body, as well as many others, treated it almost as a club. It was largely for our benefit that the Misses Goldie were produced. I sometimes wondered, even in those days, if our sense of honour was quite as fine as it might have been, to have permitted us to amuse ourselves at the expense of this innocent and hospitable group. The jokes we made about them were almost as numerous as the cups of tea that we received from the hands of the young ladies; and though I have never thought that youth is delicate (delicacy is an acquired virtue and comes later), there was this excuse for our esoteric mirth, that it was simply contagious. We laughed at the airs of greatness the Honourable Blanche gave herself and at the rough-and-ready usage to which she subjected the foreign tongues. It even seemed to us droll, in a crowd, to see her push and press and make play with her elbows, followed by the compact wedge of Rosina, Veronica and Augusta, whom she had trained to follow up her advantages. We noted the boldness with which she asked for favours when they were not offered and snatched them when they were refused, and we almost admired the perpetual manuvres and conspiracies, all of the most public and transparent kind, which did not prevent her from honestly believing that she was the most shrinking and disinterested of women. She was always in a front seat, always flushed with the achievement of getting there, and always looking round and grimacing, signalling and telegraphing, pointing to other places for other people, waving her parasol and fan and marshalling and ordering the girls. She was tall and angular, and held her head very high; it was surmounted with wonderful turbans and plumages, and indeed the four ladies were caparisoned altogether in a manner of their own.

The oddest thing in the mother was that she bragged about the fine people and the fine things she had left behind her in England; she protested too much, and if you had listened to her you would have had the gravest doubts of her origin and breeding. They were genuinely ‘good’, however, and her vulgarity was as incontestable as her connections. It is a mistake to suppose it is only the people who would like to be what they are not who are snobs. That class includes equally many of those who are what the others would like to be. I used to think, of old, that Thackeray overdid his ridicule of certain types; but I always did him justice when I remembered Mrs Goldie. I don’t want to finish her off by saying she was good-natured; but she certainly never abused people, and if she was very worldly she was not the only one. She never even thought of the people she didn’t like, much less did she speak of them, for all her time was given to talking about her favourites, as she called them, who were usually of princely name (princes in Rome are numerous and d’un commerce facile), and her regard for whom was not chilled by the scant pains they sometimes took to encourage it. What was original in her was the candour and, to a certain extent, the brutality with which she played her game.

The girls were not pretty, but they might have been less plain if they had felt less oppressively the responsibility of their looks. You could not say exactly whether they were ugly or only afraid, on every occasion, that their mother would think them so. This expression was naturally the reverse of ornamental. They were good creatures, though they generally had the air of having slept in their clothes in order to be ready in time. Rosina and Augusta were better than Veronica: we had a theory that Veronica had a temper and sometimes ‘stood up’ to her mother. She was the beauty, she had handsome hair, she sang, alas—she quavered out English ditties beneath the Roman lambris. She had pretensions individually, in short; the others had not even those that their mother had for them. In general, however, they were bullied and overpowered by their stern parent; all they could do was to follow her like frightened sheep, and they lived with their eyes fixed on her, so as to execute, at a glance from her, the evolutions in which they had been drilled. We were sorry for them, for we were sure that she secretly felt, with rage, that they were not brilliant and sat upon them for it with all her weight, which of course didn’t tend to wake them up. None the less we talked of them profanely, and especially of Veronica, who had the habit of addressing us indiscriminately, though so many of us were English, in incomprehensible strange languages.

When I say ‘we’ I must immediately except the young American secretary, with whom we lived much (at least I did, for I liked him, little as the trick I played him may have shown it), and who never was profane about anything: a circumstance to be noticed the more as the conversation of his chief, the representative of the United States près du Saint-Père at that time, was apt (though this ancient worthy was not ‘bearded like the pard’, but clean-shaven—once or twice a week) to be full of strange oaths. His name was Henry Wilmerding, he came from some northern State (I am speaking now of the secretary, not of the minister), and he was as fresh and sociable a young fellow as you could wish to see. The minister was the drollest possible type, but we all delighted in him; indeed I think that among his colleagues he was the most popular man in the diplomatic body. He was a product of the Carolinas and always wore a dress-coat and a faded, superannuated neckcloth; his hat and boots were also of a fashion of his own. He talked very slowly, as if he were delivering a public address, used innumerable ‘sirs’, of the forensic, not in the least of the social kind, and always made me feel as if I were the Speaker of the American Congress, though indeed I never should have ventured to call him to order. The curious part of his conversation was that, though it was rich in expletives, it was also extremely sententious: he uttered them with a solemnity which made them patriarchal and scriptural. He used to remind me of the busts of some of the old dry-faced, powerful Roman lawgivers and administrators. He spoke no language but that of his native State, but that mattered little, as we all learned it and practiced it for our amusement. We ended by making constant use of it among ourselves: we talked it to each other in his presence and under his nose. It seems to me, as I look back, that we must have been rare young brutes; but he was an unsuspecting diplomatist. Indeed they were a pair, for I think Wilmerding never knew—he had such a western bloom of his own.

Wilmerding was a gentleman and he was not a fool, but he was not in the least a man of the world. I couldn’t fancy in what society he had grown up; I could only see it was something very different from any of our milieux. If he had been turned out by one of ours he couldn’t have been so innocent without being stupid or so unworldly without being underbred. He was full of natural delicacy, worse luck: if he hadn’t been I shouldn’t be telling you this little story of my own shame. He once mentioned to me that his ancestors had been Quakers, and though he was not at all what you call a muff (he was a capital rider, and in the exaltation of his ideas of what was due to women a very knight of romance), there was something rather dove-like in his nature, suggestive of drab tints and the smell of lavender. All the Quakers, or people of Quaker origin, of whom I ever heard have been rich, and Wilmerding, happy dog, was not an exception to the rule. I think this was partly the reason why we succumbed to temptation: we should have handled him more tenderly if he had had the same short allowance as ourselves. He never talked of money (I have noticed Americans rarely do—it’s a part of their prudery), but he was free-handed and extravagant and evidently had a long purse to draw upon. He used to buy shocking daubs from those of his compatriots who then cultivated ‘arrt’ (they pronounced the word so oddly), in Rome, and I knew a case where he let a fellow have his picture back (it was certainly a small loss), to sell it over again. His family were proprietors of large cotton-mills from which banknotes appeared to flow in inexhaustible streams. They sent him the handsomest remittances and let him know that the question of supplies was the last he need trouble himself about. There was something so enviable, so ideal in such a situation as this that I daresay it aggravated us a little, in spite of our really having such a kindness for him.

It had that effect especially upon one of our little band—a young French attaché, Guy de Montaut, one of the most delightful creatures I have ever known and certainly the Frenchman I have met in the world whom I have liked best. He had all the qualities of his nation and none of its defects—he was born for human intercourse. He loved a joke as well as I, but his jokes as a general thing were better than mine. It is true that this one I am speaking of, in which he had an equal hand, was bad enough. We were united by a community of debt—we owed money at the same places. Montaut’s family was so old that they had long ago spent their substance and were not in the habit of pressing unsolicited drafts upon his acceptance. Neither of us quite understood why the diplomatic career should be open to a young Quaker, or the next thing to it, who was a cotton-spinner into the bargain. At the British establishment, at least, no form of dissent less fashionable than the Catholic was recognised, and altogether it was very clear to me that the ways of the Americans were not as our ways. Montaut, as you may believe, was as little as possible of a Quaker; and if he was considerate of women it was in a very different manner from poor Wilmerding. I don’t think he respected them much, but he would have insisted that he sometimes spared them. I wondered often how Wilmerding had ever come to be a secretary of legation, as at that period, in America (I don’t know how much they have changed it), such posts were obtained by being begged for and ‘worked’ for in various crooked ways. It was impossible to go in less for haughtiness; yet with all Wilmerding’s mildness, and his being the model of the nice young man, I couldn’t have imagined his asking a favour.

He went to Mrs Goldie’s as much as the rest of us, but really no more, I think—no more, certainly, until the summer we all spent at Frascati. During that happy September we were constantly in and out of her house, and it is possible that when the others were out he was sometimes in. I mean that he played backgammon in the loggia of the villa with Rosy and Gussie, and even strolled, or sat, in the dear old Roman garden with them, looking over Veronica’s shoulder while her pencil vainly attempted a perspective or a perpendicular. It was a charming, sociable, promiscuous time, and these poor girls were more or less gilded, for all of us, by it. The long, hot Roman summer had driven the strangers away, and the native society had gone into villeggiatura. My chief had crossed the Alps, on his annual leave, and the affairs of our house—they were very simple matters, no great international questions—were in the hands of a responsible underling. I forget what had become of Montaut’s people; he himself, at any rate, was not to have his holiday till later. We were in the same situation, he and I, save that I had been able to take several bare rooms, for a couple of months, in a rambling old palace in a fold of the Alban hills. The few survivors of our Roman circle were my neighbours there, and I offered hospitality to Montaut, who, as often as he was free, drove out along the Appian Way to stay with me for a day or two at a time. I think he had a little personal tie in Rome which took up a good deal of his time.

The American minister and his lady—she was easily shocked but still more easily reassured—had fled to Switzerland, so that Wilmerding was left to watch over the interests of the United States. He took a furnished villa at Frascati (you could have one for a few scudi a month), and gave very pleasant and innocent bachelor parties. If he was often at Mrs Goldie’s she returned his visits with her daughters, and I can live over lovely evenings (oh youth, oh memory!) when tables were set for supper in the garden and lighted by the fireflies, when some of the villagers—such voices as one heard there and such natural art!—came in to sing for us, and when we all walked home in the moonlight with the ladies, singing, ourselves, along the road. I am not sure that Mrs Goldie herself didn’t warble to the southern night. This is a proof of the humanising, poetising conditions in which we lived. Mrs Goldie had remained near Rome to save money; there was also a social economy in it, as she kept her eye on some of her princesses. Several of these high dames were in residence in our neighbourhood, and we were a happy family together.

I don’t quite know why we went to see Mrs Goldie so much if we didn’t like her better, unless it be that my immediate colleagues and I inevitably felt a certain loyalty to the principal English house. Moreover we did like the poor lady better in fact than we did in theory and than the irreverent tone we took about her might have indicated. Wilmerding, all the same, remained her best listener, when she poured forth the exploits and alliances of her family. He listened with exaggerated interest—he held it unpardonable to let one’s attention wander from a lady, however great a bore she might be. Mrs Goldie thought very well of him, on these and other grounds, though as a general thing she and her daughters didn’t like strangers unless they were very great people. In that case they recognised their greatness, but thought they would have been much greater if they had been English. Of the greatness of Americans they had but a limited sense, and they never compared them with the English, the French or even the Romans. The most they did was to compare them with each other; and in this respect they had a sort of measure. They thought the rich ones much less small than the others.

The summer I particularly speak of, Mrs Goldie’s was not simply the principal English house but really the only one—that is for the world in general. I knew of another that I had a very different attachment to and was even presumptuous enough to consider that I had an exclusive interest in. It was not exactly a house, however; it was only a big, cool, shabby, frescoed sitting-room in the inn at Albano, a huge, melancholy mansion that had come down in the world. It formed for the time the habitation of a charming woman whom I fondly believed to be more to me than any other human being. This part of my tale is rather fatuous, or it would be if it didn’t refer to a hundred years ago. Not that my devotion was of the same order as my friend Montaut’s, for the object of it was the most honourable of women, an accomplished English lady. Her name was Mrs Rushbrook, and I should be capable at this hour of telling you a great deal about her. The description that would be most to the purpose, I confess (it puts the matter in a word), is that I was very far gone about her. I was really very bad, and she was some five years my elder, which, given my age, only made my condition more natural. She had been in Rome, for short visits, three or four times during my period there: her little girl was delicate, and her idea was to make a long stay in a southern climate.

She was the widow of an officer in the navy; she spoke of herself as very poor, but I knew enough of her relations in England to be sure that she would suffer no real inconvenience. Moreover she was extravagant, careless, even slightly capricious. If the ‘Bohemian’ had been invented in those days she might possibly have been one—a very small, fresh, dainty one. She was so pretty that she has remained in my mind the pretty woman among those I have known, who, thank heaven, have not been few. She had a lovely head, and her chestnut hair was of a shade I have never seen since. And her figure had such grace and her voice such a charm; she was in short the woman a fellow loves. She was natural and clever and kind, and though she was five years older than I she always struck me as an embodiment of youth—of the golden morning of life. We made such happy discoveries together when first I knew her: we liked the same things, we disliked the same people, we had the same favourite statues in the Vatican, the same secret preferences in regard to views on the Campagna. We loved Italy in the same way and in the same degree; that is with the difference that I cared less for it after I knew her, because I cared so much more for her than for anything else. She painted, she studied Italian, she collected and noted the songs of the people, and she had the wit to pick up certain bibelots and curiosities—lucky woman—before other people had thought of them. It was long ago that she passed out of my ken, and yet I feel that she was very modern.

Partly as a new-comer (she had been at Sorrento to give her little girl sea-baths), and partly because she had her own occupations and lived to herself, she was rather out of our circle at Frascati. Mrs Goldie had gone to see her, however, and she had come over to two or three of our parties. Several times I drove to Albano to fetch her, but I confess that my quest usually ended in my remaining with her. She joined more than one of our picnics (it is ridiculous how many we had), and she was notably present on an important occasion, the last general meeting before our little colony dispersed. This was neither more nor less than a tea-party—a regular five o’clock tea, though the fashion hadn’t yet come in—on the summit of Monte Cavo. It sounds very vulgar, but I assure you it was delightful. We went up on foot, on ponies, or donkeys: the animals were for the convenience of the ladies, and our provisions and utensils were easily carried. The great heat had abated; besides, it was late in the day. The Campagna lay beneath us like a haunted sea (if you can imagine that—the ghosts of dead sentries walking on the deep) and the glow of the afternoon was divine. You know it all—the way the Alban mount slopes into the plain and the dome of St Peter’s rises out of it, the colour of the Sabines, which look so near, the old grey villages, the ruins of cities, of nations, that are scattered on the hills.

Wilmerding was of our party, as a matter of course, and Mrs Goldie and the three girls and Montaut, confound him, with his communicative sense that everything was droll. He hadn’t in his composition a grain of respect. Fortunately he didn’t need it to make him happy. We had our tea, we looked at the view, we chattered in groups or strolled about in couples: no doubt we desecrated sufficiently a sublime historic spot. We lingered late, but late as it was we perceived, when we gathered ourselves together to descend the little mountain, that Veronica Goldie was missing. So was Henry Wilmerding, it presently appeared; and then it came out that they had been seen moving away together. We looked for them a little; we called for them; we waited for them. We were all there and we talked about them, Mrs Goldie of course rather more loudly than the rest. She qualified their absence, I remember, as a “most extraordinary performance”. Montaut said to me, in a lowered voice: “Diable, diable, diable!” I remember his saying also: “You others are very lucky. What would have been thought if it was I?” We waited in a small, a very small, embarrassment, and before long the young lady turned up with her companion. I forget where they had been; they told us, without confusion: they had apparently a perfectly good conscience. They had not really been away long; but it so happened that we all noticed it and that for a quarter of an hour we thought of it. Besides, the dusk had considerably deepened. As soon as they joined us we started homeward. A little later we all separated, and Montaut and I betook ourselves to our own quarters. He said to me that evening, in relation to this little incident: “In my country, you know, he would have to marry her.”

“I don’t believe it,” I answered.

“Well, he would believe it, I’m sure.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Try him and you’ll see. He’ll believe anything.”

The idea of trying him—such is the levity of youth—took possession of me; but at the time I said nothing. Montaut returned to Rome the next day, and a few days later I followed him—my villeggiatura was over. Our afternoon at Monte Cavo had had no consequences that I perceived. When I saw Montaut again in Rome one of the first things he said to me was:

“Well, has Wilmerding proposed?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Didn’t you tell him he ought?”

“My dear fellow, he’d knock me down.”

“Never in the world. He’d thank you for the hint—he’s so candid.” I burst out laughing at this, and he asked if our friend had come back. When I said I had left him at Frascati he exclaimed: “Why, he’s compromising her more!”

I didn’t quite understand, and I remember asking: “Do you think he really ought to offer her marriage, as a gentleman?”

“Beyond all doubt, in any civilised society.”

“What a queer thing, then, is civilisation! Because I’m sure he has done her no harm.”

“How can you be sure? However, call it good if you like. It’s a benefit one is supposed to pay for the privilege of conferring.”

“He won’t see it.”

“He will if you open his eyes.”

“That’s not my business. And there’s no one to make him see it,” I replied.

“Couldn’t the Honourable Blanche make him? It seems to me I would trust her.”

“Trust her then and be quiet.”

“You’re afraid of his knocking you down,” Montaut said.

I suppose I replied to this remark with another equally derisive, but I remember saying a moment later: “I’m rather curious to see if he would take such a representation seriously.”

“I bet you a louis he will!” Montaut declared; and there was something in his tone that led me to accept the bet.

II

In Rome, of a Sunday afternoon, every one went over to St Peter’s; I don’t know whether the agreeably frivolous habit still prevails: it had little to do, I fear, with the spirit of worship. We went to hear the music—the famous vesper-service of the Papal choir, and also to learn the news, to stroll about and talk and look at each other. If we treated the great church as a public promenade, or rather as a splendid international salon, the fault was not wholly our own, and indeed practically there was little profanity in such an attitude. One’s attitude was insignificant, and the bright immensity of the place protected conversation and even gossip. It struck one not as a particular temple, but as formed by the very walls of the faith that has no small pruderies to enforce. One early autumn day, in especial, we crossed the Tiber and lifted the ponderous leather curtain of the door to get a general view of the return of our friends to Rome. Half an hour’s wandering lighted up the question of who had arrived, as every one, in his degree, went there for a solution of it. At the end of ten minutes I came upon Henry Wilmerding; he was standing still, with his head thrown back and his eyes raised to the far-arching dome as if he had felt its spell for the first time. The body of the church was almost clear of people; the visitors were collected in the chapel where service was held and just outside of it; the splendid chant and the strange high voices of some of the choristers came to us from a great distance. Before Wilmerding saw me I had time to say to him: “I thought you intended to remain at Frascati till the end of the week.”

“I did, but I changed my mind.”

“You came away suddenly, then?”

“Yes, it was rather sudden.”

“Are you going back?” I presently asked.

“There’s nothing particular to go back for.”

I hesitated a moment. “Was there anything particular to come away for?”

“My dear fellow, not that I know of,” he replied, with a slight flush in his cheek—an intimation (not that I needed it), that I had a little the air of challenging his right to go and come as he chose.

“Not in relation to those ladies?”

“Those ladies?”

“Don’t be so unnaturally blank. Your dearest friends.”

“Do you mean the Goldies?”

“Don’t overdo it. Whom on earth should I mean?”

It is difficult to explain, but there was something youthfully bland in poor Wilmerding which operated as a provocation: it made him seem imperturbable, which he really was not. My little discussion with Montaut about the success with which he might be made to take a joke seriously had not, till this moment, borne any fruit in my imagination, but the idea became prolific, or at least it became amusing, as I stood face to face with him on those solemn fields of marble. There was a temptation to see how much he would swallow. He was candid, and his candour was like a rather foolish blank page, the gaping, gilt-edged page of an album, presenting itself for the receipt of a quotation or a thought. Why shouldn’t one write something on it, to see how it would look? In this case the inscription could only be a covert pleasantry—an impromptu containing a surprise. If Wilmerding was innocent, that, no doubt, ought to have made one kind, and I had not the faintest intention of being cruel. His blandness might have operated to conciliate, and it was only the turn of a hair that it had the other effect. That hair, let me suppose, was simply the intrinsic brutality—or call it the high animal-spirits—of youth. If after the little experiment suggested by Montaut had fixed itself in my fancy I let him off, it would be because I pitied him. But it was absurd to pity Wilmerding—we envied him, as I have hinted, too much. If he was the white album-page seductive to pointed doggerel he was unmistakably gilt-edged.

“Oh, the Goldies,” he said in a moment—“I wouldn’t have stayed any longer for them. I came back because I wanted to—I don’t see that it requires so much explanation.”

“No more do I!” I laughed. “Come and listen to the singing.” I passed my hand into his arm and we strolled toward the choir and the concourse of people assembled before the high doorway. We lingered there a little: till this hour I never can recall without an ache for the old days the way the afternoon light, taking the heavenly music and diffusing it, slants through the golden recesses of the white windows, set obliquely in the walls. Presently we saw Guy de Montaut in the crowd, and he came toward us after having greeted us with a gesture. He looked hard at me, with a smile, as if the sight of us together reminded him of his wager and he wanted to know whether he had lost or won. I let him know with a glance that he was to be quiet or he would spoil everything, and he was as quiet as he knew how to be. This is not saying much, for he always had an itch to play with fire. It was really the desire to keep his hands off Wilmerding that led me to deal with our friend in my own manner. I remember that as we stood there together Montaut made several humorous attempts to treat him as a great conqueror, of which I think Wilmerding honestly failed to perceive the drift. It was Montaut’s saying “You ought to bring them back—we miss them too much,” that made me prepare to draw our amiable victim away.

“They’re not my property,” Wilmerding replied, accepting the allusion this time as to the four English ladies.

“Ah, all of them, mon cher—I never supposed!” the Frenchman cried, with great merriment, as I broke up our colloquy. I laughed, too—the image he presented seemed comical then—and judged that we had better leave the church. I proposed we should take a turn on the Pincian, crossing the Tiber by the primitive ferry which in those days still plied at the marble steps of the Ripetta, just under the back-windows of the Borghese palace.

“Montaut was talking nonsense just then, but have they refused you?” I asked as we took our way along the rustic lane that used to wander behind the castle of St Angelo, skirting the old grassy fortifications and coming down to the Tiber between market-gardens, vineyards and dusty little trellised suburban drinking-shops which had a withered bush over the gate.

“Have who refused me?”

“Ah, you keep it up too long!” I answered; and I was silent a little.

“What’s the matter with you this afternoon?” he asked. “Why can’t you leave the poor Goldies alone?”

“Why can’t you, my dear fellow—that seems to me the natural inquiry. Excuse my having caught Montaut’s tone just now. I don’t suppose you proposed for all of them.”

“Proposed?—I’ve proposed for none of them!”

“Do you mean that Mrs Goldie hasn’t seemed to expect it?”

“I don’t know what she has seemed to expect.”

“Can’t you imagine what she would naturally look for? If you can’t, it’s only another proof of the different way you people see things. Of course you have a right to your own way.”

“I don’t think I know what you are talking about,” said poor Wilmerding.

“My dear fellow, I don’t want to be offensive, dotting my i’s so. You can so easily tell me it’s none of my business.”

“It isn’t your being plain that would be offensive—it’s your kicking up such a dust.”

“You’re very right,” I said; “I’ve taken a liberty and I beg your pardon. We’ll talk about something else.”

We talked about nothing, however; we went our way in silence and reached the bank of the river. We waited for the ferryman without further speech, but I was conscious that a bewilderment was working in my companion. As I relate my behaviour to you it strikes me, at this distance of time, as that of a very demon. All I can say is that it seemed to me innocent then: youth and gaiety and reciprocity, and something in the sophisticating Roman air which converted all life into a pleasant comedy, apologised for me as I went. Besides, I had no vision of consequences: my part was to prove, as against the too mocking Montaut, that there would be no consequences at all. I remember the way Wilmerding, as we crossed, sat on the edge of the big flat boat, looking down at the yellow swirl of the Tiber. He didn’t meet my eye, and he was serious; which struck me as a promise of further entertainment. From the Ripetta we strolled to the Piazza del Popolo, and then began to mount one of the winding ways that diversify the slope of the Pincian. Before we got to the top Wilmerding said to me: “What do you mean by the different way ‘we people’ see things? Whom do you mean by us people?”

“You innocent children of the west, most unsophisticated of Yankees. Your ideas, your standards, your measures, your manners are different.”

“The ideas and the manners of gentlemen are the same all the world over.”

“Yes—I fear I can’t gainsay you there,” I replied.

“I don’t ask for the least allowance on the score of being a child of the west. I don’t propose to be a barbarian anywhere.”

“You’re the best fellow in the world,” I continued; “but it’s nevertheless true—I have been impressed with it on various occasions—that your countrypeople have, in perfect good faith, a different attitude toward women. They think certain things possible that we Europeans, cynical and corrupt, look at with a suspicious eye.”

“What things do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t you know them? You have more freedom than we.”

“Ah, never!” my companion cried, in a tone of conviction that still rings in my ears.

“What I mean is that you have less,” I said, laughing. “Evidently women, chez vous, are not so easily compromised. You must live, over there, in a state of Arcadian, or rather of much more than Arcadian innocence. You can do all sorts of things without committing yourselves. With a quarter of them, in this uncomfortable hemisphere, one is up to one’s neck in engagements.”

“In engagements?”

“One has given pledges that have in honour to be redeemed—unless a fellow chooses to wriggle out of them. There is the question of intentions, and the question of how far, in the eyes of the world, people have really gone. Here it’s the fashion to assume, if there is the least colour for it, that they have gone pretty far. I daresay often they haven’t. But they get the credit of it. That’s what makes them often ask themselves—or each other—why they mayn’t as well die for sheep as for lambs.”

“I know perfectly well what you mean: that’s precisely what makes me so careful,” said Wilmerding.

I burst into mirth at this—I liked him even better when he was subtile than when he was simple. “You’re a dear fellow and a gentleman to the core, and it’s all right, and you have only to trust your instincts. There goes the Boccarossa,” I said, as we entered the gardens which crown the hill and which used to be as pleasantly neglected of old as they are regulated and cockneyfied to-day. The lovely afternoon was waning and the good-humoured, blasé crowd (it has seen so much, in its time) formed a public to admire the heavy Roman coaches, laden with yellow principessas, which rumbled round the contracted circle. The old statues in the shrubbery, the colour of the sunset, the view of St Peter’s, the pines against the sky on Monte Mario, and all the roofs and towers of Rome between—these things are doubtless a still fresher remembrance with you than with me. I leaned with Wilmerding against the balustrade of one of the terraces and we gave the usual tribute of a gaze to the dome of Michael Angelo. Then my companion broke out, with perfect irrelevance:

“Don’t you think I’ve been careful enough?”

It’s needless—it would be odious—to tell you in detail what advantage I took of this. I hated (I told him) the slang of the subject, but I was bound to say he would be generally judged—in any English, in any French circle—to have shown what was called marked interest.

“Marked interest in what? Marked interest in whom? You can’t appear to have been attentive to four women at once.”

“Certainly not. But isn’t there one whom you may be held particularly to have distinguished?”

“One?” Wilmerding stared. “You don’t mean the old lady?”

“Commediante! Does your conscience say absolutely nothing to you?”

“My conscience? What has that got to do with it?”

“Call it then your sense of the way that—to effete prejudice—the affair may have looked.”

“The affair—what affair?”

“Honestly, can’t you guess? Surely there is one of the young ladies to whom the proprieties point with a tolerably straight finger.”

He hesitated; then he cried: “Heaven help me—you don’t mean Veronica?”

The pleading wail with which he uttered this question was almost tragic, and for a moment his fate trembled in the balance. I was on the point of letting him off, as I may say, if he disliked the girl so much as that. It was a revelation—I didn’t know how much he did dislike her. But at this moment a carriage stopped near the place where we had rested, and, turning round, I saw it contained two ladies whom I knew. They greeted me and prepared to get out, so that I had to go and help them. But before I did this I said to my companion: “Don’t worry, after all. It will all blow over.”

“Upon my word, it will have to!” I heard him ejaculate as I left him. He turned back to the view of St Peter’s. My ladies alighted and wished to walk a little, and I spent five minutes with them; after which, when I looked for Wilmerding, he had disappeared. The last words he had spoken had had such a sharp note of impatience that I was reassured. I had ruffled him, but I had won my bet of Montaut.

Late that night (I had just come in—I was never at home in the evening) there was a tinkle of my bell, and my servant informed me that the signorino of the ‘American embassy’ wished to speak to me. Wilmerding was ushered in, very pale, so pale that I thought he had come to demand satisfaction of me for having tried to make a fool of him. But he hadn’t, it soon appeared; he hadn’t in the least: he wanted explanations, but they were quite of another kind. He only wished to arrive at the truth—to ask me two or three earnest questions. I ought of course to have told him on the spot that I had only been making use of him for a slight psychological experiment. But I didn’t, and this omission was my great fault. I can only declare, in extenuation of it, that I had scruples about betraying Montaut. Besides, I did cling a little to my experiment. There was something that fascinated me in the idea of the supreme sacrifice he was ready to make if it should become patent to him that he had put upon an innocent girl, or upon a confiding mother, a slight, a disappointment even purely conventional. I urged him to let me lay the ghost I had too inconsiderately raised, but at the same time I was curious to see what he would do if the idea of reparation should take possession of him. He would be consistent, and it would be strange to see that. I remember saying to him before he went away: “Have you really a very great objection to Veronica Goldie?” I thought he was going to reply ‘I loathe her!’ But he answered:

“A great objection? I pity her, if I’ve deceived her.”

“Women must have an easy time in your country,” I said; and I had an idea the remark would contribute to soothe him.

Nevertheless, the next day, early in the afternoon, being still uneasy, I went to his lodgings. I had had, by a rare chance, a busy morning, and this was the first moment I could spare. Wilmerding had delightful quarters in an old palace with a garden—an old palace with old busts ranged round an old loggia and an old porter in an old cocked hat and a coat that reached to his heels leaning against the portone. From this functionary I learned that the signorino had quitted Rome in a two-horse carriage an hour before: he had gone back to Frascati—he had taken a servant and a portmanteau. This news did not confirm my tranquillity in exactly the degree I could have wished, and I stood there looking, and I suppose feeling, rather blank while I considered it. A moment later I was surprised in this attitude by Guy de Montaut, who turned into the court with the step of a man bent on the same errand as myself. We looked at each other—he with a laugh, I with a frown—and then I said: “I don’t like it—he’s gone.”

“Gone?—to America?”

“On the contrary—back to the hills.”

Montaut’s laugh rang out, and he exclaimed: “Of course you don’t like it! Please to hand me over the sum of money that I have had the honour of winning from you.”

“Not so fast. What proves to you that you’ve won it?”

“Why, his going like this—after the talk I had with him this morning.”

“What talk had you with him this morning?”

Montaut looked at the old porter, who of course couldn’t understand us, but, as if he scented the drift of things, was turning his perceptive Italian eye from one of us to the other. “Come and walk with me, and I’ll tell you. The drollest thing!” he went on, as we passed back to the street. “The poor child has been to see me.”

“To propose to you a meeting?”

“Not a bit—to ask my advice.”

“Your advice?”

“As to how to act in the premises. Il est impayable.”

“And what did you say to him?”

“I said Veronica was one of the most charming creatures I had ever seen.”

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Tudieu, mon cher, so ought you, if you come to that!” Montaut replied, taking his hand out of my arm.

“It’s just what I am. We’re a pair of scoundrels.”

“Speak for yourself. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

“You wouldn’t have missed what?”

“His visit to me to-day—such an exhibition!”

“What did he exhibit?”

“The desire to be correct—but in a degree! You’re a race apart, vous autres.”

“Don’t lump him and me together,” I said: “the immeasurable ocean divides us. Besides, it’s you who were stickling for correctness. It was your insistence to me on what he ought to do—on what the family would have a right to expect him to do—that was the origin of the inquiry in which (yesterday, when I met him at St Peter’s) I so rashly embarked.”

“My dear fellow, the beauty of it is that the family have brought no pressure: that’s an element I was taking for granted. He has no claim to recognise, because none has been made. He tells me that the Honourable Blanche, after her daughter’s escapade with him, didn’t open her mouth. Ces Anglaises!”

“Perhaps that’s the way she made her claim,” I suggested. “But why the deuce, then, couldn’t he be quiet?”

“It’s exactly what he thinks—that she may have been quiet out of delicacy. He’s inimitable!”

“Fancy, in such a matter, his wanting advice!” I groaned, much troubled. We had stopped outside, under the palace windows; the sly porter, from the doorway, was still looking at us.

“Call it information,” said Montaut.

“But I gave him lots, last night. He came to me.”

“He wanted more—he wanted to be sure! He wanted an honest impression; he begged me, as a favour to him, to be very frank. Had he definitely, yes or no, according to my idea, excited expectations? I told him, definitely, yes—according to my idea!”

“I shall go after him,” I declared; “I shall overtake him—I shall bring him back.”

“You’ll not play fair, then.”

“Play be hanged! The fellow mustn’t sacrifice his life.”

“Where’s the sacrifice?—she’s quite as good as he. I don’t detest poor Veronica—she has possibilities, and also very pretty hair. What pretensions can he have? He’s touching, but he’s only a cotton-spinner and a blockhead. Besides, it offends an aimable Français to see three unmated virgins withering in a row. You people don’t mind that sort of thing, but it violates our sense of form—of proper arrangement. Girls marry, que diable!”

“I notice they don’t marry you!” I cried.

“I don’t go and hide in the bushes with them. Let him arrange it—I like to see people act out their character. Don’t spoil this—it will be perfect. Such a story to tell!”

“To tell? We shall blush for it for ever. Besides, we can tell it even if he does nothing.”

“Not I—I shall boast of it. I shall have done a good action, I shall have assuré un sort to a portionless girl.” Montaut took hold of me again, for I threatened to run after Wilmerding, and he made me walk about with him for half an hour. He took some trouble to persuade me that further interference would be an unwarranted injury to Veronica Goldie. She had apparently got a husband—I had no right to dash him from her lips.

“Getting her a husband was none of my business.”

“You did it by accident, and so you can leave it.”

“I had no business to try him.”

“You believed he would resist.”

“I don’t find it so amusing as you,” I said, gloomily.

“What’s amusing is that he has had no equivalent,” Montaut broke out.

“No equivalent?”

“He’s paying for what he didn’t have, I gather, eh? L’imbécile! It’s a reparation without an injury.”

“It’s an injury without a provocation!” I answered, breaking away from him.

I went straight to the stables at which I kept my horse—we all kept horses in Rome, in those days, for the Campagna was an incomparable riding-ground—and ordered the animal to be brought immediately to Porta San Giovanni. There was some delay, for I reached this point, even after the time it took me to change my dress, a good while before he came. When he did arrive I sprang into the saddle and dashed out of the gate. I soon got upon the grass and put the good beast to his speed, and I shall never forget that rich afternoon’s ride. It seemed to me almost historic, at the time, and I thought of all the celebrated gallops, or those of poetry and fiction, that had been taken to bring good news or bad, to warn of dangers, to save cities, to stay executions. I felt as if staying an execution were now the object of mine. I took the direction of the Appian Way, where so many panting steeds, in the succession of ages, had struck fire from the stones; the ghostly aqueducts watched me as I passed, and these romantic associations gave me a sense of heroism. It was dark when I strained up the hill to Frascati, but there were lights in the windows of Wilmerding’s villa, toward which I first pressed my course. I rode straight into the court, and called up to him—there was a window open; and he looked out and asked in unconcealed surprise what had brought me from Rome. “Let me in and I’ll tell you,” I said; and his servant came down and admitted me, summoning another member of the establishment to look after my horse.

It was very well to say to Wilmerding that I would tell him what had brought me: that was not so easy after I had been introduced into his room. Then I saw that something very important had happened: his whole aspect instantly told me so. He was half undressed—he was preparing for dinner—he was to dine at Mrs Goldie’s. This he explained to me without any question of mine, and it led me to say to him, with, I suspect, a tremor in my voice: “Then you have not yet seen her?”

“On the contrary: I drove to their villa as soon as I got here. I’ve been there these two hours. I promised them to go back to dine—I only came round here to tidy myself a little.” I looked at him hard, and he added: “I’m engaged to be married.”

“To which of them?” I asked; and the question seemed to me absurd as soon as I had spoken it.

“Why, to Veronica.”

“Any of them would do,” I rejoined, though this was not much better. And I turned round and looked out of the window into the dark. The tears rose to my eyes—I had ridden heroically, but I had not saved the city.

“What did you desire to say to me?” Wilmerding went on.

“Only that I wish you all the happiness you deserve,” I answered, facing him again.

“Did you gallop out here for that?” he inquired.

“I might have done it for less!” I laughed, awkwardly; but he was very mild—he didn’t fly at me. They had evidently been very nice to him at the other house—well they might be! Veronica had shaken her hair in his eyes, and for the moment he had accepted his fate.

“You had better come back and dine with me,” he said.

“On an occasion so private—so peculiar—when you want them all to yourself? Never in the world.”

“What then will you do here—alone?”

“I’ll wash and dress first, if you’ll lend me some things.”

“My man will give you everything you need.”

His kindness, his courtesy, his extraordinary subjection to his unnecessary doom filled me with a kind of anguish, and I determined that I would save him even yet. I had a sudden inspiration—it was at least an image of help. “To tell the truth, I didn’t ride from Rome at such a rate only to be the first to congratulate you. I’ve taken you on the way; but a considerable part of my business is to go and see Mrs Rushbrook.”

“Mrs Rushbrook? Do you call this on your way? She lives at Albano.”

“Precisely; and when I’ve brushed myself up a bit and had a little bread and wine I shall drive over there.”

“It will take you a full hour, in the dark.”

“I don’t care for that—I want to see her. It came over me this afternoon.”

Wilmerding looked at me a moment—without any visible irony—and demanded, with positive solemnity: “Do you wish to propose to her?”

“Oh, if she’d marry me it would suit me! But she won’t. At least she won’t yet. She makes me wait too long. All the same, I want to see her.”

“She’s very charming,” said Wilmerding, simply. He finished dressing and went off to dine with Veronica, while I passed into another room to repair my own disorder. His servant gave me some things that would serve me for the night; for it was my purpose, at Albano, to sleep at the inn. I was so horrified at what I had done, or at what I had not succeeded in undoing, that I hungered for consolation, or at least for advice. Mrs Rushbrook shone before me in the gloom as a generous dispenser of that sort of comfort.

III

There was nothing extraordinary in my going to see her, but there was something very extraordinary in my taking such an hour for the purpose. I was supposed to be settled in Rome again, but it was ten o’clock at night when I turned up at the old inn at Albano. Mrs Rushbrook had not gone to bed, and she greeted me with a certain alarm, though the theory of our intercourse was that she was always glad to see me. I ordered supper and a room for the night, but I couldn’t touch the repast before I had been ushered into the vast and vaulted apartment which she used as a parlour, the florid bareness of which would have been vulgar in any country but Italy. She asked me immediately if I had brought bad news, and I replied: “Yes, but only about myself. That’s not exactly it,” I added; “it’s about Henry Wilmerding.”

“Henry Wilmerding?” She appeared for the moment not to recognise the name.

“He’s going to marry Veronica Goldie.”

Mrs Rushbrook stared. “Que me contez-vous là? Have you come all this way to tell me that?”

“But he is—it’s all settled—it’s awful!” I went on.

“What do I care, and what do you mean?”

“I’ve got into a mess, and I want you to advise me and to get me out of it,” I persisted.

“My poor friend, you must make it a little clearer then,” she smiled. “Sit down, please—and have you had your dinner?”

She had been sitting at one end of her faded saloon, where, as the autumn night was fresh at Albano, a fire of faggots was crackling in the big marble-framed cavern of the chimney. Her books, her work, her materials for writing and sketching, were scattered near: the place was a comfortable lamplit corner in the general blankness. There was a piano near at hand, and beyond it were the doors of further chambers, in one of which my hostess’s little daughter was asleep. There was always something vaguely annoying to me in these signs of occupation and independence: they seemed to limit the ground on which one could appeal to her for oneself.

“I’m tired and I’m hungry,” I said, “but I can’t think of my dinner till I’ve talked to you.”

“Have you come all the way from Rome?”

“More than all the way, because I’ve been at Frascati.”

“And how did you get here?”

“I hired a chaise and pair at Frascati—the man drove me over.”

“At this hour? You weren’t afraid of brigands?”

“Not when it was a question of seeing you. You must do something for me—you must stop it.”

“What must I do, and what must I stop?” said Mrs Rushbrook, sitting down.

“This odious union—it’s too unnatural.”

“I see, then. Veronica’s to marry some one, and you want her for yourself.”

“Don’t be cruel, and don’t torment me—I’m sore enough already. You know well enough whom I want to marry!” I broke out.

“How can I stop anything?” Mrs Rushbrook asked.

“When I see you this way, at home, between the fire and the lamp, with the empty place beside you—an image of charming domesticity—do you suppose I have any doubt as to what I want?”

She rested her eyes on the fire, as if she were turning my words over as an act of decent courtesy and of pretty form. But immediately afterwards she said: “If you’ve come out here to make love to me, please say so at once, so that we may have it over on the spot. You will gain nothing whatever by it.”

“I’m not such a fool as to have given you such a chance to snub me. That would have been presumptuous, and what is at the bottom of my errand this evening is extreme humility. Don’t therefore think you’ve gained the advantage of putting me in my place. You’ve done nothing of the sort, for I haven’t come out of it—except, indeed, so far as to try a bad joke on Wilmerding. It has turned out even worse than was probable. You’re clever, you’re sympathetic, you’re kind.”

“What has Wilmerding to do with that?”

“Try and get him off. That’s the sort of thing a woman can do.”

“I don’t in the least follow you, you know. Who is Wilmerding?”

“Surely you remember him—you’ve seen him at Frascati, the young American secretary—you saw him a year ago in Rome. The fellow who is always opening the door for you and finding the things you lose.”

“The things I lose?”

“I mean the things women lose. He went with us the other day to Monte Cavo.”

“And got himself lost with the girl? Oh yes, I recall him,” said Mrs Rushbrook.

“It was the darkest hour of his life—or rather of mine. I told him that after that the only thing he could do was to marry Veronica. And he has believed me.”

“Does he believe everything you tell him?” Mrs Rushbrook asked.

“Don’t be impertinent, because I feel very wretched. He loathes Veronica.”

“Then why does he marry her?”

“Because I worked upon him. It’s comical—yet it’s dreadful.”

“Is he an idiot—can’t he judge for himself?” said Mrs Rushbrook.

“He’s marrying her for good manners. I persuaded him they require it.”

“And don’t they, then?”

“Not the least in the world!”

“Was that your idea of good manners? Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t—I backed out, as soon as I saw he believed me. But it was too late. Besides, a friend of mine had a hand in it—he went further than I. I may as well tell you that it’s Guy de Montaut, the little Frenchman of the embassy, whom you’ll remember—he was of our party at Monte Cavo. Between us, in pure sport and without meaning any harm, we have brought this thing on. And now I’m devoured with remorse—it wasn’t a creditable performance.”

“What was the beauty of the joke?” Mrs Rushbrook inquired, with exasperating serenity.

“Don’t ask me now—I don’t see it! It seems to me hideous.”

“And M. de Montaut—has he any compunction?”

“Not a bit—he looks at it from the point of view of the Goldies. Veronica is a fille sans dot, and not generally liked; therefore with poor prospects. He has put a husband in her way—a rich, good-natured young man, without encumbrances and of high character. It’s a service, where a service was needed, of which he is positively proud.”

Mrs Rushbrook looked at me reflectively, as if she were trying to give me her best attention and to straighten out this odd story.

“Mr Wilmerding is rich?” she asked in a moment.

“Dear me, yes—very well off.”

“And of high character?”

“An excellent fellow—without a fault.”

“I don’t understand him, then.”

“No more do I!”

“Then what can we do? How can we interfere?” my companion went on.

“That’s what I want you to tell me. It’s a woman’s business—that’s why I’ve tumbled in on you here. You must invent something, you must attempt something.”

“My dear friend, what on earth do I care for Mr Wilmerding?”

“You ought to care—he’s a knight of romance. Do it for me, then.”

“Oh, for you!” my hostess laughed.

“Don’t you pity me—doesn’t my situation appeal to you?”

“Not a bit! It’s grotesque.”

“That’s because you don’t know.”

“What is it I don’t know?”

“Why, in the first place, what a particularly shabby thing it was to play such a trick on Wilmerding—a gentleman and a man that never injured a fly; and, in the second place, how miserable he’ll be and how little comfort he’ll have with Veronica.”

“What’s the matter with Veronica—is she so bad?”

“You know them all—one doesn’t want to marry them. Fancy putting oneself deliberately under Mrs Goldie’s heel! The great matter with Veronica is that, left to himself, he would never have dreamed of her. That’s enough.”

“You say he hasn’t a fault,” Mrs Rushbrook replied. “But isn’t it rather a fault that he’s such a booby?”

“I don’t know whether it’s because I’m rather exalted, rather morbid, in my reaction against my momentary levity, that he strikes me as so far from being a booby that I really think what he has engaged to do is very fine. If without intending it, and in ignorance of the social perspective of a country not his own, he has appeared to go so far that they have had a right to expect he would go further, he’s willing to pay the penalty. Poor fellow, he pays for all of us.”

“Surely he’s very meek,” said Mrs Rushbrook. “He’s what you call a muff.”

“Que voulez-vous? He’s simple—he’s generous.”

“I see what you mean—I like that.”

“You would like him if you knew him. He has acted like a gallant gentleman—from a sense of duty.”

“It is rather fine,” Mrs Rushbrook murmured.

“He’s too good for Veronica,” I continued.

“And you want me to tell her so?”

“Well, something of that sort. I want you to arrange it.”

“I’m much obliged—that’s a fine large order!” my companion laughed.

“Go and see Mrs Goldie, intercede with her, entreat her to let him go, tell her that they really oughtn’t to take advantage of a momentary aberration, an extravagance of magnanimity.”

“Don’t you think it’s your place to do all that?”

“Do you imagine it would do any good—that they would release him?” I demanded.

“How can I tell? You could try. Is Veronica very fond of him?” Mrs Rushbrook pursued.

“I don’t think any of them can really be very fond of any one who isn’t ‘smart’. They want certain things that don’t belong to Wilmerding at all—to his nationality or his type. He isn’t at all ‘smart’, in their sense.”

“Oh yes, their sense: I know it. It’s not a nice sense!” Mrs Rushbrook exclaimed, with a critical sigh.

“At the same time Veronica is dying to be married, and they are delighted with his money. It makes up for deficiencies,” I explained.

“And is there so much of it?”

“Lots and lots. I know by the way he lives.”

“An American, you say? One doesn’t know Americans.”

“How do you mean, one doesn’t know them?”

“They’re vague to me. One doesn’t meet many.”

“More’s the pity, if they’re all like Wilmerding. But they can’t be. You must know him—I’m sure you’ll like him.”

“He comes back to me; I see his face now,” said Mrs Rushbrook. “Isn’t he rather good-looking?”

“Well enough; but I’ll say he’s another Antinous if it will interest you for him.”

“What I don’t understand is your responsibility,” my friend remarked after a moment. “If he insists and persists, how is it your fault?”

“Oh, it all comes back to that. I put it into his head—I perverted his mind. I started him on the fatal course—I administered the primary push.”

“Why can’t you confess your misdemeanour to him, then?”

“I have confessed—that is, almost. I attenuated, I retracted, when I saw how seriously he took it; I did what I could to pull him back. I rode after him to-day and almost killed my horse. But it was no use—he had moved so abominably fast.”

“How fast do you mean?”

“I mean that he had proposed to Veronica a few hours after I first spoke to him. He couldn’t bear it a moment longer—I mean the construction of his behaviour as shabby.”

“He is rather a knight!” murmured Mrs Rushbrook.

“Il est impayable, as Montaut says. Montaut practiced upon him without scruple. I really think it was Montaut who settled him.”

“Have you told him, then, it was a trick?” my hostess demanded.

I hesitated. “No, not quite that.”

“Are you afraid he’ll cut your throat?”

“Not in the least. I would give him my throat if it would do any good. But he would cut it and then cut his own. I mean he’d still marry the girl.”

“Perhaps he does love her,” Mrs Rushbrook suggested.

“I wish I could think it!”

She was silent a moment; then she asked: “Does he love some one else?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well then,” said Mrs Rushbrook, “the only thing for you to do, that I can see, is to take her off his hands.”

“To take Veronica off?”

“That would be the only real reparation. Go to Mrs Goldie to-morrow and tell her your little story. Say: ‘I want to prevent the marriage, and I’ve thought of the most effective thing. If I will take her, she will let him go, won’t she? Therefore consider that I will take her.’ ”

“I would almost do that; I have really thought of it,” I answered. “But Veronica wouldn’t take me.”

“How do you know? It’s your duty to try.”

“I’ve no money.”

“No, but you’re ‘smart’. And then you’re charming.”

“Ah, you’re cruel—you’re not so sorry for me as I should like!” I returned.

“I thought that what you wanted was that I should be sorry for Mr Wilmerding. You must bring him to see me,” said Mrs Rushbrook.

“And do you care so little about me that you could be witness of my marrying another woman? I enjoy the way you speak of it!” I cried.

“Wouldn’t it all be for your honour? That’s what I care about,” she laughed.

“I’ll bring Wilmerding to see you to-morrow: he’ll make you serious,” I declared.

“Do; I shall be delighted to see him. But go to Mrs Goldie, too—it is your duty.”

“Why mine only? Why shouldn’t Montaut marry her?”

“You forget that he has no compunction.”

“And is that the only thing you can recommend?”

“I’ll think it over—I’ll tell you to-morrow,” Mrs Rushbrook said. “Meanwhile, I do like your American—he sounds so unusual.” I remember her exclaiming further, before we separated: “Your poor Wilmerding—he is a knight! But for a diplomatist—fancy!”

It was agreed between us the next day that she should drive over to Frascati with me; and the vehicle which had transported me to Albano and remained the night at the hotel conveyed us, before noon, in the opposite sense, along the side of the hills and the loveliest road in the world—through the groves and gardens, past the monuments and ruins and the brown old villages with feudal and papal gateways that overhang the historic plain. If I begged Mrs Rushbrook to accompany me there was always reason enough for that in the extreme charm of her society. The day moreover was lovely, and a drive in those regions was always a drive. Besides, I still attached the idea of counsel and aid to Mrs Rushbrook’s presence, in spite of her not having as yet, in regard to my difficulty, any acceptable remedy to propose. She had told me she would try to think of something, and she now assured me she had tried, but the happy idea that would put everything right had not descended upon her. The most she could say was that probably the marriage wouldn’t really take place. There was time for accidents; I should get off with my fright; the girl would see how little poor Wilmerding’s heart was in it and wouldn’t have the ferocity to drag him to the altar. I endeavoured to take that view, but through my magnifying spectacles I could only see Veronica as ferocious, and I remember saying to Mrs Rushbrook, as we journeyed together: “I wonder if they would take money.”

“Whose money—yours?”

“Mine—what money have I? I mean poor Wilmerding’s.”

“You can always ask them—it’s a possibility,” my companion answered; from which I saw that she quite took for granted I would intercede with the Honourable Blanche. This was a formidable prospect, a meeting on such delicate ground, but I steeled myself to it in proportion as I seemed to perceive that Mrs Rushbrook held it to be the least effort I could reputably make. I desired so to remain in her good graces that I was ready to do anything that would strike her as gallant—I didn’t want to be so much less of a ‘knight’ than the wretched Wilmerding. What I most hoped for—secretly, however, clinging to the conception of a clever woman’s tact as infinite—was that she would speak for me either to Mrs Goldie or to Veronica herself. She had powers of manipulation and she would manipulate. It was true that she protested against any such expectation, declaring that intercession on her part would be in the worst possible taste and would moreover be attributed to the most absurd motives: how could I fail to embrace a truth so flagrant? If she was still supposed to be trying to think of something, it was something that I could do. Fortunately she didn’t say again to me that the solution was that I should ‘take over’ Veronica; for I could scarcely have endured that. You may ask why, if she had nothing to suggest and wished to be out of it, if above all she didn’t wish, in general, to encourage me, she should have gone with me on this occasion to Frascati. I can only reply that that was her own affair, and I was so far from quarrelling with such a favour that as we rolled together along the avenues of ilex, in the exquisite Roman weather, I was almost happy.

I went straight to Mrs Goldie’s residence, as I should have gone to a duel, and it was agreed that Mrs Rushbrook should drive on to the Villa Mondragone, where I would rejoin her after the imperfect vindication of my honour. The Villa Mondragone—you probably remember its pompous, painted, faded extent and its magnificent terrace—was open to the public, and any lover of old Rome was grateful for a pretext for strolling in its picturesque, neglected, enchanted grounds. It had been a resource for all of us at Frascati, but Mrs Rushbrook had not seen so much of it as the rest of us, or as she desired.

I may as well say at once that I shall not attempt to make my encounter with the terrible dowager a vivid scene to you, for to this day I see it only through a blur of embarrassment and confusion, a muddle of difficulties suspended like a sort of enlarging veil before a monstrous Gorgon face. What I had to say to Mrs Goldie was in truth neither easy nor pleasant, and my story was so abnormal a one that she may well have been excused for staring at me, with a stony refusal to comprehend, while I stammered it forth. I was even rather sorry for her, inasmuch as it was not the kind of appeal that she had reason to expect, and as her imagination had surely never before been led such a dance. I think it glimmered upon her at first, from my strange manner, that I had come to ask for one of the other girls; but that illusion cannot have lasted long. I have no idea of the order or succession of the remarks that we exchanged; I only recall that at a given moment Mrs Goldie rose, in righteous wrath, to cast me out of her presence. Everything was a part of the general agitation; for the house had been startled by the sudden determination of its mistress to return to Rome. Of this she informed me as soon as I presented myself, and she apprised me in the same breath, you may be sure, of the important cause. Veronica’s engagement had altered all their plans; she was to be married immediately, absence and delay being incompatible with dear Henry’s official work (I winced at ‘dear Henry’), and they had no time to lose for conference with dressmakers and shopkeepers. Veronica had gone out for a walk with dear Henry; and the other girls, with one of the maids, had driven to Rome, at an early hour, to see about putting to rights the apartment in Via Babuino. It struck me as characteristic of the Honourable Blanche that she had remained on the spot, as if to keep hold of dear Henry.

These announcements gave me, of course, my opening. “Can’t you see he is only going through with it as a duty? Do you mean to say you were not very much surprised when he proposed?” I fearlessly demanded.

I maintained that it was not a duty—that Wilmerding had a morbid sense of obligation and that at that rate any one of us might be hauled up for the simple sociability, the innocent conviviality of youth. I made a clean breast of it and tried to explain the little history of my unhappy friend’s mistake. I am not very proud of any part of my connection with this episode; but though it was a delicate matter to tell a lady that it had been a blunder to offer marriage to her daughter, what I am on the whole least ashamed of is the manner in which I fronted the Honourable Blanche. I was supported by the sense that she was dishonest in pretending that she had not been surprised—that she had regarded our young man as committed to such a step. This was rubbish—her surprise had been at least equal to her satisfaction. I was irritated by her quick assumption, at first, that if I wanted the engagement broken it was because I myself was secretly enamoured of the girl.

Before I went away she put me to the real test, so that I was not able to say afterwards to Mrs Rushbrook that the opportunity to be fully heroic had not been offered me. She gave me the queerest look I had ever seen a worldly old woman give, and proffered an observation of which the general copious sense was this:

‘Come, I do see what you mean, and though you have made a pretty mess with your French monkey-tricks, it may be that if dear Henry’s heart isn’t in it it simply isn’t, and that my sweet, sensitive girl will in the long run have to pay too much for what looks now like a tolerably good match. It isn’t so brilliant after all, for what do we really know about him or about his obscure relations in the impossible country to which he may wish to transplant my beloved? He has money, or rather expectations, but he has nothing else, and who knows about American fortunes? Nothing appears to be settled or entailed. Take her yourself and you may have her—I’ll engage to make it straight with Mr Wilmerding. You’re impecunious and you’re disagreeable, but you’re clever and well-connected; you’ll rise in your profession—you’ll become an ambassador.’

All this (it was a good deal), Mrs Goldie communicated to me in the strange, prolonged, confidential leer with which she suddenly honoured me. It was a good deal, but it was not all, for I understood her still to subjoin: ‘That will show whether you are sincere or not in wishing to get your friend out of this scrape. It’s the only condition on which you can do it. Accept this condition and I will kindly overlook the outrage of your present intrusion and your inexpressible affront to my child.’

No, I couldn’t tell Mrs Rushbrook that I had not had my chance to do something fine, for I definitely apprehended this proposition, I looked it well in the face and I sadly shook my head. I wanted to get Wilmerding off, but I didn’t want to get him off so much as that.

“Pray, is he aware of your present extraordinary proceeding?” Mrs Goldie demanded, as she stood there to give me my congé.

“He hasn’t the faintest suspicion of it.”

“And may I take the liberty of inquiring whether it is your design to acquaint him with the scandalous manner in which you have betrayed his confidence?” She was wonderfully majestic and digne.

“How can I?” I asked, piteously. “How can I, without uttering words not respectful to the young lady he now stands pledged to marry? Don’t you see how that has altered my position?” I wailed.

“Yes, it has given you a delicacy that is wondrous indeed!” cried my hostess, with a laugh of derision which rang in my ears as I withdrew—which rings in my ears at this hour.

I went to the Villa Mondragone, and there, at the end of a quarter of an hour’s quest, I saw three persons—two ladies and a gentleman—coming toward me in the distance. I recognised them in a moment as Mrs Rushbrook, Veronica Goldie, and Wilmerding. The combination amused and even gratified me, as it fell upon my sight, for it immediately suggested that, by the favour of accident, Mrs Rushbrook would already have had the advantage of judging for herself how little one of her companions was pleased with his bargain, and be proportionately stimulated to come to his rescue. Wilmerding had turned out to spend a perfunctory hour with his betrothed; Mrs Rushbrook, strolling there and waiting for me, had met them, and she had remained with them on perceiving how glad they were to be relieved of the grimness of their union. I pitied the mismated couple, pitied Veronica almost as much as my more particular victim, and reflected as they came up to me that unfortunately our charming friend would not always be there to render them this delicate service. She seemed pleased, however, with the good turn she had already done them and even disposed to continue the benevolent work. I looked at her hard, with a perceptible headshake, trying to communicate in this way the fact that nothing had come of my attack on Mrs Goldie; and she smiled back as if to say: ‘Oh, no matter; I daresay I shall think of something now.’

Wilmerding struck me as rather less miserable than I had expected; though of course I knew that he was the man to make an heroic effort not to appear miserable. He immediately proposed that we should all go home with him to luncheon; upon which Veronica said, hesitating with responsibility: “Do you suppose, for me, mamma will mind?” Her intended made no reply to this; his silence was almost a suggestion that if she were in doubt she had perhaps better go home. But Mrs Rushbrook settled the question by declaring that it was, on the contrary, exactly what mamma would like. Besides, was not she, Mrs Rushbrook, the most satisfactory of duennas? We walked slowly together to Wilmerding’s villa, and I was not surprised at his allowing me complete possession of Veronica. He fell behind us with Mrs Rushbrook and succeeded, at any rate, in shaking off his gloom sufficiently to manifest the proper elation at her having consented to partake of his hospitality. As I moved beside Veronica I wondered whether she had an incipient sense that it was to me she owed her sudden prospect of a husband. I think she must have wondered to what she owed it. I said nothing to awaken that conjecture: I didn’t even allude to her engagement—much less did I utter hollow words of congratulation. She had a right to expect something of that sort, and my silence disconcerted her and made her stiff. She felt important now, and she was the kind of girl who likes to show the importance that she feels. I was sorry for her—it was not her fault, poor child—but I couldn’t flatly lie to her, couldn’t tell her I was ‘delighted’. I was conscious that she was waiting for me to speak, and I was even afraid that she would end by asking me if I didn’t know what had happened to her. Her pride, however, kept her from this, and I continued to be dumb and to pity her—to pity her the more as I was sure her mystification would not be cleared up by any revelation in regard to my visit to her mother. Mrs Goldie would never tell her of that.

Our extemporised repast at Wilmerding’s was almost merry; our sociability healed my soreness and I forgot for the moment that I had grounds of discomposure. Wilmerding had always the prettiest courtesy in his own house, with pressing, preoccupied, literal ways of playing the master, and Mrs Rushbrook enjoyed anything that was unexpected and casual. Our carriage was in waiting, to convey us back to Albano, and we offered our companions a lift, as it was time for Wilmerding to take Veronica home. We put them down at the gate of Mrs Goldie’s villa, after I had noticed the double-dyed sweetness with which Mrs Rushbrook said to Veronica, as the carriage stopped: “You must bring him over to Albano to return my visit.” This was spoken in my interest, but even then the finished feminine hypocrisy of it made me wince a little. I should have winced still more had I foreseen what was to follow.

Mrs Rushbrook was silent during much of the rest of our drive. She had begun by saying: “Now that I see them together I understand what you mean”; and she had also requested me to tell her all I could about poor Wilmerding—his situation in life, his character, his family, his history, his prospects—since, if she were really to go into the matter, she must have the facts in her hand. When I had told her everything I knew, she sat turning my instructions over in her mind, as she looked vaguely at the purple Campagna: she was lovely with that expression. I intimated to her that there was very little time to lose: every day that we left him in his predicament he would sink deeper and be more difficult to extricate.

“Don’t you like him—don’t you think he’s worthy to marry some woman he’s really fond of?” I remember asking.

Her answer was rather short: “Oh yes, he’s a good creature.” But before we reached Albano she said to me: “And is he really rich?”

“I don’t know what you call ‘really’—I only wish I had his pocket-money.”

“And is he generous—free-handed?”

“Try him and you’ll see.”

“How can I try him?”

“Well then, ask Mrs Goldie.”

“Perhaps he’d pay to get off,” mused Mrs Rushbrook.

“Oh, they’d ask a fortune!”

“Well, he’s perfect to her.” And Mrs Rushbrook repeated that he was a good creature.

That afternoon I rode back to Rome, having reminded my friend at Albano that I gave her carte blanche and that delay would not improve matters. We had a little discussion about this, she maintaining, as a possible view, that if one left the affair alone a rupture would come of itself.

“Why should it come when, as you say, he’s perfect?”

“Yes, he’s very provoking,” said Mrs Rushbrook: which made me laugh as I got into the saddle.

IV

In Rome I kept quiet three or four days, hoping to hear from Mrs Rushbrook; I even removed myself as much as possible from the path of Guy de Montaut. I observed preparations going forward in the house occupied during the winter by Mrs Goldie, and, in passing, I went so far as to question a servant who was tinkering a flower-stand in the doorway and from whom I learned that the padrona was expected at any hour. Wilmerding, however, returned to Rome without her; I perceived it from meeting him in the Corso—he didn’t come to see me. This might have been accidental, but I was willing to consider that he avoided me, for it saved me the trouble of avoiding him. I couldn’t bear to see him—it made me too uncomfortable; I was always thinking that I ought to say something to him that I couldn’t say, or that he would say something to me that he didn’t. As I had remarked to Mrs Goldie, it was impossible for me now to allude in invidious terms to Veronica, and the same licence on his side would have been still less becoming. And yet it hardly seemed as if we could go on like that. He couldn’t quarrel with me avowedly about his prospective wife, but he might have quarrelled with me ostensibly about something else. Such subtleties however (I began to divine), had no place in his mind, which was presumably occupied with the conscientious effort to like Veronica—as a matter of duty—since he was doomed to spend his life with her. Wilmerding was capable, for a time, of giving himself up to this effort: I don’t know how long it would have lasted. Our relations were sensibly changed, inasmuch as after my singular interview with Mrs Goldie, the day following her daughter’s betrothal, I had scruples about presenting myself at her house as if on the old footing.

She came back to town with the girls, immediately showing herself in her old cardinalesque chariot of the former winters, which was now standing half the time before the smart shops in the Corso and Via Condotti. Wilmerding perceived of course that I had suddenly begun to stay away from his future mother-in-law’s; but he made no observation about it—a reserve of which I afterwards understood the reason. This was not, I may say at once, any revelation from Mrs Goldie of my unmannerly appeal to her. Montaut amused himself with again taking up his habits under her roof; the entertainment might surely have seemed mild to a man of his temper, but he let me know that it was richer than it had ever been before—poor Wilmerding showed such a face there. When I answered that it was just his face that I didn’t want to see, he declared that I was the best sport of all, with my tergiversations and superstitions. He pronounced Veronica très-embellie and said that he was only waiting for her to be married to make love to her himself. I wrote to Mrs Rushbrook that I couldn’t say she had served me very well, and that now the Goldies had quitted her neighbourhood I was in despair of her doing anything. She took no notice of my letter, and I availed myself of the very first Sunday to drive out to Albano and breakfast with her. Riding across the Campagna now suddenly appeared to me too hot and too vain.

Mrs Rushbrook told me she had not replied to me because she was about to return to Rome: she expected to see me almost as soon as, with the Holy Father’s postal arrangements, a letter would be delivered to me. Meanwhile she couldn’t pretend that she had done anything for me; and she confessed that the more she thought of what I wanted the more difficult it seemed. She added however that she now had a project, which she declined to disclose to me. She contradicted herself a little, for she said at one moment that she hadn’t the heart to spoil poor Veronica’s happiness and at the next that it was precisely to carry out her device (such a secret as it was, even from the girl!) that she had decided to quit Albano earlier than she had intended.

“How can you spoil Veronica’s happiness when she won’t have any happiness? How can she have any happiness with a man who will have married her in such absurd conditions?”

“Oh, he’s charming, Mr Wilmerding—everything you told me of him is true: it’s a case of pure chivalry. He’ll be very kind to her—he’ll be sorry for her. Besides, when once he takes her away from her mother Veronica will be all right. Seeing more of them that way, before they left Frascati, I became ever so much interested in them. There’s something in Veronica; when once she’s free it will come out.”

“How will she ever be free? Her mother will be on top of them—she’ll stick to them—she’ll live with them.”

“Why so, when she has her other daughters to work for?”

“Veronica will be rich—I’m sure Mrs Goldie will want to enjoy that.”

“They’ll give her money—Mr Wilmerding won’t haggle!”

“How do you know—have you asked him?”

“Oh, I know,” smiled Mrs Rushbrook. “You know I saw them again. Besides,” she added, “he’ll escape with his wife—he’ll take her to America.”

“Veronica won’t go—she’ll hate that part of it.”

“Why will she hate it?”

“Oh, it isn’t ‘smart’.”

“So much the better. I should like to go there.”

“Very good,” said I. “I daresay I shall be sent there by the Foreign Office some day. I’ll take you over.”

“Oh, I don’t want to go with you,” said Mrs Rushbrook, plainly. And then she added that she should try to get back to Rome by the Thursday.

“How was it you saw so much of them before they went away?” I suddenly inquired.

“Why, they returned my visit—the queer young couple. Mr Wilmerding brought her over to see me the day after we breakfasted with him. They stayed three or four hours—they were charming.”

“Oh, I see; he didn’t tell me.”

Mrs Rushbrook coloured a little. “You say that in a tone! I didn’t ask him not to.”

“I didn’t say you did. However, he has had very little chance: we’ve scarcely spoken since that day.”

“You’re very wrong—he’s such a good fellow.”

“I like the way you give me information about him, because you’ve seen him three times.”

“I’ve seen him four—I’ve seen him five,” Mrs Rushbrook protested. “After they had been here I went over to Mrs Goldie’s.”

“Oh, to speak to her?” I cried, eagerly.

“I spoke to her, of course—it was to bid her good-bye. Mr Wilmerding was there—that made another time. Then he came here once again. In fact, the next day—” Mrs Rushbrook continued.

“He came alone?”

She hesitated a moment. “Yes, he walked over. He said he was so nervous.”

“Ah, to talk it over, you mean?” I exclaimed.

“To talk it over?”

“Your interference, your rescue.”

Mrs Rushbrook stared; then she burst into merriment. “You don’t suppose we’ve spoken of that! Imagine his knowing it!”

I stood corrected—I perceived that wouldn’t have done. “But what then did he come for?” I asked.

“He came to see me—as you do.”

“Oh, as I do!” I laughed.

“He came because he feels so awkward with the girl.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“You told me yourself! We never spoke of Veronica.”

“Then what did you speak of?”

“Of other things. How you catechise!”

“If I catechise it’s because I thought it was all for me.”

“For you—and for him. I went to Frascati again,” said Mrs Rushbrook.

“Lord, and what was that for?”

“It was for you,” she smiled. “It was a kindness, if they’re so uncomfortable together. I relieve them, I know I do!”

“Gracious, you might live with them! Perhaps that’s the way out of it.”

“We took another walk to Villa Mondragone,” my hostess continued. “Augusta Goldie went with us. It went off beautifully.”

“Oh, then it’s all right,” I said, picking up my hat.

Before I took leave of her Mrs Rushbrook told me that she certainly would move to Rome on the Thursday—or on the Friday. She would give me a sign as soon as she was settled. And she added: “I daresay I shall be able to put my idea into execution. But I shall tell you only if it succeeds.”

I don’t know why I felt, at this, a slight movement of contrariety; at any rate I replied: “Oh, you had better leave them alone.”

On the Wednesday night of that week I found, on coming in to go to bed, Wilmerding’s card on my table, with ‘Goodbye—I’m off to-morrow for a couple of months’ scrawled on it. I thought it an odd time for him to be ‘off’—I wondered whether anything had happened. My servant had not seen him; the card had been transmitted by the porter, and I was obliged to sleep upon my mystification. As soon as possible the next morning I went to his house, where I found a post-chaise, in charge of one of the old vetturini and prepared for a journey, drawn up at the door. While I was in the act of asking for him Wilmerding came down, but to my regret, for it was an obstacle to explanations, he was accompanied by his venerable chief. The American Minister had lately come back, and he leaned affectionately on his young secretary’s shoulder. He took, or almost took, the explanations off our hands; he was oratorically cheerful, said that his young friend wanted to escape from the Roman past—to breathe a less tainted air, that he had fixed it all right and was going to see him off, to ride with him a part of the way. The General (have I not mentioned that he was a general?) climbed into the vehicle and waited, like a sitting Cicero, while Wilmerding gave directions for the stowage of two or three more parcels. I looked at him hard as he did this and thought him flushed and excited. Then he put out his hand to me and I held it, with my eyes still on his face. We were a little behind the carriage, out of sight of the General.

“Frankly—what’s the matter?” I asked.

“It’s all over—they don’t want me.”

“Don’t want you?”

“Veronica can’t—she told me yesterday. I mean she can’t marry me,” Wilmerding explained, with touching lucidity. “She doesn’t care for me enough.”

“Ah, thank God!” I murmured, with great relief, pressing his hand.

The General put his head out of the chaise. “If there was a railroad in this queer country I guess we should miss the train.”

“All the same, I’m glad,” said Wilmerding.

“I should think you would be.”

“I mean I’m glad I did it.”

“You’re a preux chevalier.”

“No, I ain’t.” And, blushing, he got into the carriage, which rolled away.

Mrs Rushbrook failed to give me the ‘sign’ she promised, and two days after this I went, to get news of her, to the small hotel at which she intended to alight and to which she had told me, on my last seeing her at Albano, that she had sent her maid to make arrangements. When I asked if her advent had been postponed the people of the inn exclaimed that she was already there—she had been there since the beginning of the week. Moreover she was at home, and on my sending up my name she responded that she should be happy to see me. There was something in her face, when I came in, that I didn’t like, though I was struck with her looking unusually pretty. I can’t tell you now why I should have objected to that. The first words I said to her savoured, no doubt, of irritation: “Will you kindly tell me why you have been nearly a week in Rome without letting me know?”

“Oh, I’ve been occupied—I’ve had other things to do.”

“You don’t keep your promises.”

“Don’t I? You shouldn’t say that,” she answered, with an amused air.

“Why haven’t I met you out—in this place where people meet every day?”

“I’ve been busy at home—I haven’t been running about.”

I looked round me, asked about her little girl, congratulated her on the brightness she imparted to the most banal room as soon as she began to live in it, took up her books, fidgeted, waited for her to say something about Henry Wilmerding. For this, however, I waited in vain; so that at last I broke out: “I suppose you know he’s gone?”

“Whom are you talking about?”

“Veronica’s promesso sposo. He quitted Rome yesterday.”

She was silent a moment; then she replied—“I didn’t know it.”

I thought this odd, but I believed what she said, and even now I have no doubt it was true. “It’s all off,” I went on: “I suppose you know that.”

“How do you know it?” she smiled.

“From his own lips; he told me, at his door, when I bade him good-bye. Didn’t you really know he had gone?” I continued.

“My dear friend, do you accuse me of lying?”

“Jamais de la vie—only of joking. I thought you and he had become so intimate.”

“Intimate—in three or four days? We’ve had very little communication.”

“How then did you know his marriage was off?”

“How you cross-examine one! I knew it from Veronica.”

“And is it your work?”

“Ah, mine—call it rather yours: you set me on.”

“Is that what you’ve been so busy with that you couldn’t send me a message?” I asked.

“What shall I say? It didn’t take long.”

“And how did you do it?”

“How shall I tell you—how shall I tell?”

“You said you would tell me. Did you go to Mrs Goldie?”

“No, I went to the girl herself.”

“And what did you say?”

“Don’t ask me—it’s my secret. Or rather it’s hers.”

“Ah, but you promised to let me know if you succeeded.”

“Who can tell? It’s too soon to speak of success.”

“Why so—if he’s gone away?”

“He may come back.”

“What will that matter if she won’t take him?”

“Very true—she won’t.”

“Ah, what did you do to her?” I demanded, very curious.

Mrs Rushbrook looked at me with strange, smiling eyes. “I played a bold game.”

“Did you offer her money?”

“I offered her yours.”

“Mine? I have none. The bargain won’t hold.”

“I offered her mine, then.”

“You might be serious—you promised to tell me,” I repeated.

“Surely not. All I said was that if my attempt didn’t succeed I wouldn’t tell you.”

“That’s an equivocation. If there was no promise and it was so disagreeable, why did you make the attempt?”

“It was disagreeable to me, but it was agreeable to you. And now, though you goaded me on, you don’t seem delighted.”

“Ah, I’m too curious—I wonder too much!”

“Well, be patient,” said Mrs Rushbrook, “and with time everything will probably be clear to you.”

I endeavoured to conform to this injunction, and my patience was so far rewarded that a month later I began to have a suspicion of the note that Mrs Rushbrook had sounded. I quite gave up Mrs Goldie’s house, but Montaut was in and out of it enough to give me occasional news of ces dames. He had been infinitely puzzled by Veronica’s retractation and Wilmerding’s departure: he took it almost as a personal injury, the postponement of the event that would render it proper for him to make love to the girl. Poor Montaut was destined never to see that attitude legitimated, for Veronica Goldie never married. Mrs Rushbrook, somewhat to my surprise, accepted on various occasions the hospitality of the Honourable Blanche—she became a frequent visitor at Casa Goldie. I was therefore in a situation not to be ignorant of matters relating to it, the more especially as for many weeks after the conversation I have last related my charming friend was remarkably humane in her treatment of me—kind, communicative, sociable, encouraging me to come and see her and consenting often to some delightful rummaging Roman stroll. But she would never tolerate, on my lips, the slightest argument in favour of a union more systematic; she once said, laughing: “How can we possibly marry when we’re so impoverished? Didn’t we spend every penny we possess to buy off Veronica?” This was highly fantastic, of course, but there was just a sufficient symbolism in it to minister to my unsatisfied desire to know what had really taken place.

I seemed to make that out a little better when, before the winter had fairly begun, I learned from both of my friends that Mrs Goldie had decided upon a change of base, a new campaign altogether. She had got some friends to take her house off her hands; she was quitting Rome, embarking on a scheme of foreign travel, going to Naples, proposing to visit the East, to get back to England for the summer, to promener her daughters, in short, in regions hitherto inaccessible and unattempted. This news pointed to a considerable augmentation of fortune on the part of the Honourable Blanche, whose conspicuous thrift we all knew to be funded on slender possessions. If she was undertaking expensive journeys it was because she had ‘come into’ money—a reflection that didn’t make Mrs Rushbrook’s refusal to enlighten my ignorance a whit less tormenting. When I said to this whimsical woman, as I did several times, that she really oughtn’t to leave me so in the dark, her reply was always the same, that the matter was all too delicate—she didn’t know how she had done, there were some transactions so tacit, so made up of subtle sousentendus, that you couldn’t describe them. So I groped for the missing link without finding it—the secret of how it had been possible for Mrs Rushbrook to put the key of Wilmerding’s coffers into Mrs Goldie’s hand.

I was present at the large party the latter lady gave as her leave-taking of her Roman friends, and as soon as I stood face to face with her I recognised that she had had much less ‘feeling’ than I about our meeting again. I might have come at any time. She was good-natured, in her way, she forgot things and was not rancorous: it had now quite escaped her that she had turned me out of the house. The air of prosperity was in the place, the shabby past was sponged out. The tea was potent, the girls had all new frocks, and Mrs Goldie looked at me with an eye that seemed to say that I might still have Veronica if I wanted. Veronica was now a fortune, but I didn’t take it up.

Wilmerding came back to Rome in February, after Casa Goldie, as we had known it, was closed. In his absence I had been at the American Legation on various occasions—no chancellerie in Europe was steeped in dustier leisure—and the good General confided to me that he missed his young friend as a friend, but so far as missing him as a worker went (there was no work), ‘Uncle Sam’ might save his salary. He repeated that he had fixed it all right: Wilmerding had taken three months to cross the Atlantic and see his people. He had doubtless important arrangements to make and copious drafts to explain. They must have been extraordinarily obliging, his people, for Mrs Goldie (to finish with her), was for the rest of her days able to abjure cheap capitals and follow the chase where it was doubtless keenest—among the lordly herds of her native land. If Veronica never married the other girls did, and Miss Goldie, disencumbered and bedizened, reigned as a beauty, a good deal contested, for a great many years. I think that after her sisters went off she got her mother much under control, and she grew more and more to resemble her. She is dead, poor girl, her mother is dead—I told you every one is dead. Wilmerding is dead—his wife is dead.

The subsequent life of this ingenious woman was short: I doubt whether she liked America as well as she had had an idea she should, or whether it agreed with her. She had put me off my guard that winter, and she put Wilmerding a little off his, too, I think, by going down to Naples just before he came back to Rome. She reappeared there, however, late in the spring—though I don’t know how long she stayed. At the end of May, that year, my own residence in Rome terminated. I was assigned to a post in the north of Europe, with orders to proceed to it with speed. I saw them together before I quitted Italy, my two good friends, and then the truth suddenly came over me. As she said herself—for I had it out with her fearfully before I left—I had only myself to thank for it. I had made her think of him, I had made her look at him, I had made her do extraordinary things. You won’t be surprised to hear they were married less than two years after the service I had induced her to render me.

Ah, don’t ask me what really passed between them—that was their own affair. There are i’s in the matter that have never been dotted, and in later years, when my soreness had subsided sufficiently to allow me a certain liberty of mind, I often wondered and theorised. I was sore for a long time and I never even thought of marrying another woman: that i at least I can dot. It made no difference that she probably never would have had me. She fell in love with him, of course—with the idea of him, secretly, in her heart of hearts—the hour I told her, in my distress, of the beau trait of which he had been capable. She didn’t know him, hadn’t seen him, positively speaking; but she took a fancy to the man who had that sort of sense of conduct. Some women would have despised it, but I was careful to pick out the one to whom it happened most to appeal. I dragged them together, I kept them together. When they met he liked her for the interest he was conscious she already took in him, and it all went as softly as when you tread on velvet. Of course I had myself to thank for it, for I not only shut her up with Wilmerding—I shut her up with Veronica.

What she said to Veronica in this situation was no doubt that it was all a mistake (she appealed to the girl’s conscience to justify her there), but that he would pay largely for his mistake. Her warrant for that was simply one of the subtle sousentendus of which she spoke to me when I attacked her and which are the medium of communication of people in love. She took upon herself to speak for him—she despoiled him, at a stroke, in advance, so that when she married him she married a man of relatively small fortune. This was disinterested at least. There was no bargain between them, as I read it—it all passed in the air. He divined what she had promised for him and he immediately performed. Fancy how she must have liked him then! Veronica believed, her mother believed, because he had already given them a specimen of his disposition to do the handsome thing. I had arranged it all in perfection. My only consolation was that I had done what I wanted; but do you suppose that was sufficient?

The End