The Europeans. Henry Foss James
“You are too good-natured, my dear,” his companion declared.
The young man held out one of his drawings, with his head on one side. His tongue was gently moving along his under-lip. “Good-natured—yes. Too good-natured—no.”
“You are irritating,” said the lady, looking at her slipper.
He began to retouch his sketch. “I think you mean simply that you are irritated.”
“Ah, for that, yes!” said his companion, with a little bitter laugh. “It’s the darkest day of my life—and you know what that means.”
“Wait till tomorrow,” rejoined the young man.
“Yes, we have made a great mistake. If there is any doubt about it today, there certainly will be none tomorrow. Ce sera clair, au moins!”
The young man was silent a few moments, driving his pencil. Then at last, “There are no such things as mistakes,” he affirmed.
“Very true—for those who are not clever enough to perceive them. Not to recognize one’s mistakes—that would be happiness in life,” the lady went on, still looking at her pretty foot.
“My dearest sister,” said the young man, always intent upon his drawing, “it’s the first time you have told me I am not clever.”
“Well, by your own theory I can’t call it a mistake,” answered his sister, pertinently enough.
The young man gave a clear, fresh laugh. “You, at least, are clever enough, dearest sister,” he said.
“I was not so when I proposed this.”
“Was it you who proposed it?” asked her brother.
She turned her head and gave him a little stare. “Do you desire the credit of it?”
“If you like, I will take the blame,” he said, looking up with a smile.
“Yes,” she rejoined in a moment, “you make no difference in these things. You have no sense of property.”
The young man gave his joyous laugh again. “If that means I have no property, you are right!”
“Don’t joke about your poverty,” said his sister. “That is quite as vulgar as to boast about it.”
“My poverty! I have just finished a drawing that will bring me fifty francs!”
“Voyons,” said the lady, putting out her hand.
He added a touch or two, and then gave her his sketch. She looked at it, but she went on with her idea of a moment before. “If a woman were to ask you to marry her you would say, ‘Certainly, my dear, with pleasure!’ And you would marry her and be ridiculously happy. Then at the end of three months you would say to her, ‘You know that blissful day when I begged you to be mine!’ ”
The young man had risen from the table, stretching his arms a little; he walked to the window. “That is a description of a charming nature,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you have a charming nature; I regard that as our capital. If I had not been convinced of that I should never have taken the risk of bringing you to this dreadful country.”
“This comical country, this delightful country!” exclaimed the young man, and he broke into the most animated laughter.
“Is it those women scrambling into the omnibus?” asked his companion. “What do you suppose is the attraction?”
“I suppose there is a very good-looking man inside,” said the young man.
“In each of them? They come along in hundreds, and the men in this country don’t seem at all handsome. As for the women—I have never seen so many at once since I left the convent.”
“The women are very pretty,” her brother declared, “and the whole affair is very amusing. I must make a sketch of it.” And he came back to the table quickly, and picked up his utensils—a small sketching-board, a sheet of paper, and three or four crayons. He took his place at the window with these things, and stood there glancing out, plying his pencil with an air of easy skill. While he worked he wore a brilliant smile. Brilliant is indeed the word at this moment for his strongly-lighted face. He was eight and twenty years old; he had a short, slight, well-made figure. Though he bore a noticeable resemblance to his sister, he was a better favored person: fair-haired, clear-faced, witty-looking, with a delicate finish of feature and an expression at once urbane and not at all serious, a warm blue eye, an eyebrow finely drawn and excessively arched—an eyebrow which, if ladies wrote sonnets to those of their lovers, might have been made the subject of such a piece of verse—and a light moustache that flourished upwards as if blown that way by the breath of a constant smile. There was something in his physiognomy at once benevolent and picturesque. But, as I have hinted, it was not at all serious. The young man’s face was, in this respect, singular; it was not at all serious, and yet it inspired the liveliest confidence.
“Be sure you put in plenty of snow,” said his sister. “Bonté divine, what a climate!”
“I shall leave the sketch all white, and I shall put in the little figures in black,” the young man answered, laughing. “And I shall call it—what is that line in Keats?—Mid-May’s Eldest Child!”
“I don’t remember,” said the lady, “that mamma ever told me it was like this.”
“Mamma never told you anything disagreeable. And it’s not like this—every day. You will see that tomorrow we shall have a splendid day.”
“Qu’en savez-vous? Tomorrow I shall go away.”
“Where shall you go?”
“Anywhere away from here. Back to Silberstadt. I shall write to the Reigning Prince.”
The young man turned a little and looked at her, with his crayon poised. “My dear Eugenia,” he murmured, “were you so happy at sea?”
Eugenia got up; she still held in her hand the drawing her brother had given her. It was a bold, expressive sketch of a group of miserable people on the deck of a steamer, clinging together and clutching at each other, while the vessel lurched downward, at a terrific angle, into the hollow of a wave. It was extremely clever, and full of a sort of tragi-comical power. Eugenia dropped her eyes upon it and made a sad grimace. “How can you draw such odious scenes?” she asked. “I should like to throw it into the fire!” And she tossed the paper away. Her brother watched, quietly, to see where it went. It fluttered down to the floor, where he let it lie. She came toward the window, pinching in her waist. “Why don’t you reproach me—abuse me?” she asked. “I think I should feel better then. Why don’t you tell me that you hate me for bringing you here?”
“Because you would not believe it. I adore you, dear sister! I am delighted to be here, and I am charmed with the prospect.”
“I don’t know what had taken possession of me. I had lost my head,” Eugenia went on.
The young man, on his side, went on plying his pencil. “It is evidently a most curious and interesting country. Here we are, and I mean to enjoy it.”
His companion turned away with an impatient step, but presently came back. “High spirits are doubtless an excellent thing,” she said; “but you give one too much of them, and I can’t see that they have done you any good.”
The young man stared, with lifted eyebrows, smiling; he tapped his handsome nose with his pencil. “They have made me happy!”
“That was the least they could do; they have made you nothing else. You have gone through life thanking fortune for such very small favors that she has never put herself to any trouble for you.”
“She must have put herself to a little, I think, to present me with so admirable a sister.”