The Europeans. Генри Джеймс

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Turn me from the door!” Felix exclaimed. “They took me to their hearts; they killed the fatted calf.”

      “I know what you want to say: they are a collection of angels.”

      “Exactly,” said Felix. “They are a collection of angels—simply.”

      “C’est bien vague,” remarked the Baroness. “What are they like?”

      “Like nothing you ever saw.”

      “I am sure I am much obliged; but that is hardly more definite. Seriously, they were glad to see you?”

      “Enchanted. It has been the proudest day of my life. Never, never have I been so lionized! I assure you, I was cock of the walk. My dear sister,” said the young man, “nous n’avons qu’à nous tenir; we shall be great swells!”

      Madame Münster looked at him, and her eye exhibited a slight responsive spark. She touched her lips to a glass of wine, and then she said, “Describe them. Give me a picture.”

      Felix drained his own glass. “Well, it’s in the country, among the meadows and woods; a wild sort of place, and yet not far from here. Only, such a road, my dear! Imagine one of the Alpine glaciers reproduced in mud. But you will not spend much time on it, for they want you to come and stay, once for all.”

      “Ah,” said the Baroness, “they want me to come and stay, once for all? Bon.”

      “It’s intensely rural, tremendously natural; and all overhung with this strange white light, this far-away blue sky. There’s a big wooden house—a kind of three-story bungalow; it looks like a magnified Nuremberg toy. There was a gentleman there that made a speech to me about it and called it a ‘venerable mansion;’ but it looks as if it had been built last night.”

      “Is it handsome—is it elegant?” asked the Baroness.

      Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. “It’s very clean! No splendors, no gilding, no troops of servants; rather straight-backed chairs. But you might eat off the floors, and you can sit down on the stairs.”

      “That must be a privilege. And the inhabitants are straight-backed too, of course.”

      “My dear sister,” said Felix, “the inhabitants are charming.”

      “In what style?”

      “In a style of their own. How shall I describe it? It’s primitive; it’s patriarchal; it’s the ton of the golden age.”

      “And have they nothing golden but their ton? Are there no symptoms of wealth?”

      “I should say there was wealth without symptoms. A plain, homely way of life: nothing for show, and very little for—what shall I call it?—for the senses; but a great aisance, and a lot of money, out of sight, that comes forward very quietly for subscriptions to institutions, for repairing tenements, for paying doctor’s bills; perhaps even for portioning daughters.”

      “And the daughters?” Madame Münster demanded. “How many are there?”

      “There are two, Charlotte and Gertrude.”

      “Are they pretty?”

      “One of them,” said Felix.

      “Which is that?”

      The young man was silent, looking at his sister. “Charlotte,” he said at last.

      She looked at him in return. “I see. You are in love with Gertrude. They must be Puritans to their finger-tips; anything but gay!”

      “No, they are not gay,” Felix admitted. “They are sober; they are even severe. They are of a pensive cast; they take things hard. I think there is something the matter with them; they have some melancholy memory or some depressing expectation. It’s not the epicurean temperament. My uncle, Mr. Wentworth, is a tremendously high-toned old fellow; he looks as if he were undergoing martyrdom, not by fire, but by freezing. But we shall cheer them up; we shall do them good. They will take a good deal of stirring up; but they are wonderfully kind and gentle. And they are appreciative. They think one clever; they think one remarkable!”

      “That is very fine, so far as it goes,” said the Baroness. “But are we to be shut up to these three people, Mr. Wentworth and the two young women—what did you say their names were—Deborah and Hephzibah?”

      “Oh, no; there is another little girl, a cousin of theirs, a very pretty creature; a thorough little American. And then there is the son of the house.”

      “Good!” said the Baroness. “We are coming to the gentlemen. What of the son of the house?”

      “I am afraid he gets tipsy.”

      “He, then, has the epicurean temperament! How old is he?”

      “He is a boy of twenty; a pretty young fellow, but I am afraid he has vulgar tastes. And then there is Mr. Brand—a very tall young man, a sort of lay-priest. They seem to think a good deal of him, but I don’t exactly make him out.”

      “And is there nothing,” asked the Baroness, “between these extremes—this mysterious ecclesiastic and that intemperate youth?”

      “Oh, yes, there is Mr. Acton. I think,” said the young man, with a nod at his sister, “that you will like Mr. Acton.”

      “Remember that I am very fastidious,” said the Baroness. “Has he very good manners?”

      “He will have them with you. He is a man of the world; he has been to China.”

      Madame Münster gave a little laugh. “A man of the Chinese world! He must be very interesting.”

      “I have an idea that he brought home a fortune,” said Felix.

      “That is always interesting. Is he young, good-looking, clever?”

      “He is less than forty; he has a baldish head; he says witty things. I rather think,” added the young man, “that he will admire the Baroness Münster.”

      “It is very possible,” said this lady. Her brother never knew how she would take things; but shortly afterwards she declared that he had made a very pretty description and that on the morrow she would go and see for herself.

      They mounted, accordingly, into a great barouche—a vehicle as to which the Baroness found nothing to criticise but the price that was asked for it and the fact that the coachman wore a straw hat. (At Silberstadt Madame Münster had had liveries of yellow and crimson.) They drove into the country, and the Baroness, leaning far back and swaying her lace-fringed parasol, looked to right and to left and surveyed the way-side objects. After a while she pronounced them affreux. Her brother remarked that it was apparently a country in which the foreground was inferior to the plans reculés; and the Baroness rejoined that the landscape seemed to be all foreground. Felix had fixed with his new friends the hour at which he should bring his sister; it was four o’clock in the afternoon. The large, clean-faced house wore, to his eyes, as the barouche drove up to it, a very friendly aspect; the high, slender elms made lengthening shadows in front of it. The Baroness descended; her American kinsfolk were stationed in the portico. Felix waved his hat to them, and a tall, lean gentleman, with a high forehead and a clean shaven face, came СКАЧАТЬ