Mark my words, he will be very unhappy, unless he learns to be more
amiable. But think! what intelligence, what an eye! And how wonderful it
is to see such an absence of trickery, you know, such simplicity. Does
he live here?
No, he just brings his books in here when it's too cold in his own room.
He is poor?
Yes.
He is poor!
Not very poor, you know. When he really gets down to his last cent he
can always find things to do at once. He's happy to be poor.
And he lives quite alone?
Yes. Oh, yes.
And he is poor. (This caused her a moment's astonished reflection, until
she burst out:) But you know, that is not right! It is society's
duty ... that is, society should be proud to protect such people. Someone
very gifted should be appointed to watch over such people.
But, Princess, James Blair values his independence above everything. He
doesn't want to be watched over.
They should be watched over in spite of themselves. Look, you will bring
him to tea some day. I am sure my husband's library has some more old
maps of the Campagna. We have the bailiff's reports of the Espoli back
into the Sixteenth Century. Wouldn't that bring him?
Even surprised at herself, the Princess tried for a time to talk of
other things, but presently she returned to praise what she called
Blair's single-mindedness; she meant his self-sufficiency, for while we
are in love with a person our knowledge of his weaknesses lies lurking
in the back of our minds and our idealization of the loved one is not so
much an exaggeration of his excellences as a careful "rationalization"
of his defects.
When next I saw Blair he wasted two or three hours before he got up
courage to ask me who she was. He listened darkly while I spoke my
enthusiasm. At last he showed me a note in which she asked him to drive
with her to Espoli, look over the estate, and to examine the archives.
He was to bring me if I wanted. James wished greatly to go; but he was
suspicious of the lady. He liked her and yet he didn't. He was trying to
tell me that he only liked ladies who didn't like him first. He twisted
the letter about trying to decide, then going to the table wrote a note
of refusal.
Then began what it is merely brutal to call a siege. Driving in the
Corso Alix would say to herself: There's nothing unconventional in my
stopping at his room to see if he wants to drive in the Gardens. I could
do as much for a dozen men and it would be perfectly natural. I am much
older than he is, so much so, that it would merely be an act of ...
thoughtfulness. When she stood on the platform before his door (for she
was not content to send up the chauffeur) she would experience a moment
of panic, wishing to recall her ring, imagining when no one answered
that he was in hiding behind the closed door, listening, who knows, in
anger or contempt to her loud heartbeats. Or she would debate all
evening among the gilt chairs of her little salon as to whether she
might drop him a note. She would count the days since last she had
spoken to him and gauge the propriety (the inner, the spiritual
propriety, not the wordly propriety: for the Cabalists the latter had
ceased to exist) of a new meeting. She was always coming upon him by
accident in the city (she called it her proof of the existence of
guardian angels) and it was with these chance meetings that she had
generally to content herself. She would attract his attention the length
of the Piazza Venezia and carry him to whatever destination he confessed
to. No one has ever been happier than Alix on these few occasions when
she sat beside him in her car. How docilely she sat listening to his
lecture; with what tenderness she secretly noticed his tie and shoes and
socks: and with what intensity she fixed her gaze upon his face trying
to imprint upon her memory the exact proportions of his features, the
imprint that indifference retains so much better than the most
passionate love. There was a possibility that they might have become the
most congenial of friends, for he dimly sensed that there was something
in her that allied her to the great ladies of his study. If she had only
succeeded in concealing her tenderness. At the first signs of his liking
for her she would become so intoxicated with the intimation of
cordiality that she would make some shy little remark with a faintly
sentimental implication; she would comment on his appearance or ask him
to lunch. And lose him.
One day he gave her a book that had been mentioned in their
conversations. He did not stop to think that it was the first move he
had made spontaneously in the whole relation. Hitherto every suggestion,
every invitation, had proceeded from her (from her, trembling,
presuffering a rebuff, lightly) and she longed for a first sign of his
interest. When this book was brought to her, then, she lost her balance;
she thought it justified her in pushing the friendship on to new levels,
to almost daily meetings, and to long comradely lazy afternoons. She
never realized that in his eyes she was, first, an enemy to his studies,
and second, that strange hedged monster which all his wide reading had
not been able to humanize: a married woman. She called once too often.
Suddenly he changed; he became rude and abrupt. When she climbed his
stairs he did hide behind the door and the bell rang in vain and with a
menacing sound, though she had her ways of knowing he was in. She became
terrified. Again she confronted that cavern of horror in her nature: she
seemed always to be loving those that did not love her. She came to me,
distraught. I was cautious and offered her philosophy until I could
sound Blair in the matter.
Blair came to me of his own accord. He paced up and down the room,
bewildered, revolted, enraged. His stay in Rome had become impossible.
He no longer dared remain in his room and when he was out he clung to
the side streets. What should he do?