The Sense of the Past

by Henry James

"Well, we're Church folk too in New York, thank God," Ralph said, "but we've scarcely a church that you'd know from a conventicle, and don't you see how even in this elegant talk with yourselves I can scarce keep down my own snuffle?"

"It's you, I'm sure, cousin, who give our conversation its greatest elegance," Mrs. Midmore returned, "and I can't fancy what you mean by our high colour——!"

"Any more than I do"—Molly took the word straight from her—"by his calling us fierce, forsooth, or talking of himself as pale; when he has as fine a brown skin as one would wish to see if one likes brown men; which, however, I never dreamed I should, sir!" she wound up as boldly as ever. "I shouldn't have supposed we were fiercer than a country still containing so many blacks and savages," she as lightly remarked, "and, for our passions, I don't hesitate to say, need I, mother and brother? that I but live to control mine. What in life is our religion for," she inquired of Ralph with the same ready wit, "what is it for but just to teach us to do that?" He took her in afresh as she so put the case, but could pay her the frankest tribute and still return with a laugh: "Of course it's for that, and all I mean is that you strike me as kneeling to your Maker very much as you curtsey to your king—doing it too, to judge by the splendid service I attended at Plymouth after landing, among as many feathers and frills as ever would deck you out at court." There were moments when he so liked the way they listened to him as if his cleverness was beyond their custom that, this impression just now renewing itself, he could only go on. "Our feathers in America, you know, serve for the blacks, who bristle with them from head to foot like so many porcupines when they want to fight us; but," he broke off in friendly amusement at their reception of this, "there isn't a bravery you flaunt or a passion you succeed in smothering that I don't perfectly rejoice in and bless you for. I like you just as you are, and wouldn't have you or have anything a bit different," he sociably declared; "yes, yes, I'm more pleased with what I find you than ever I've been with anything in my life, and not least pleased with my cousin Perry," he resolutely pushed on; "even though he will look as if he doesn't know what to make of me and wouldn't trust me a step nearer to him—or is it, still more than that, a step further than you can keep your eye on me, cousin?"

He put that question, but neither abating nor enlarging his distance; it was one of the moments of his holding them under the spell of his growing brilliancy, as he might for all the world have imagined—too much under it to move an eyelid for the time, and yet also with the betrayed impulse to exchange a wink, vulgarly so to call it, between themselves; the very impulse, all of sharpened comfort surely, to show each other where they felt together, which he had already more than once caught in the act of profiting by its quick opportunity. Not their impulse, however, and not any play of comment that should attest his success with them, was most matter for thought with him now; but exactly his himself so wishing to cry out that he was pleased, to say again and yet again that he liked what was before him, so that there might be no mistake about it for his own nerves. His nerves, happily and helpfully active from the first, had been in just that proportion a pleasure to themselves—so that up to the moment of his first hearing of sweet Nan, whom he was now so oddly unable to figure save as very peculiarly one with this term of allusion to her, which might all have been, as they said in Boston, her "given" name, up to that moment his sail had done nothing but swell in the breeze. Why the mere hint of more sweetness still than the already looked for and the already grasped should have suddenly caused the breeze to drop and the sail to indulge in its first, its single flap, was not so much his concern as to arrest the possibility of any like further little waste of force. It was glorious so to vibrate, but to do it you needed your force—in fact all there was of it; so that to spend even one throb of it on any mystery of a particular muffled point or fact was at the best a loose form of contribution. So played the instinct to make surer still what was sure; yes, such a truth, for instance, as the perfect practicability of Perry even, once he should be really reduced to matter of splendid sport. For didn't it all keep becoming again splendid sport?—that is if he left out the question of sweet Nan, which seemed something different and possibly either of a lower sort of interest or of none at all; unless indeed possibly of a yet greater.

The pitch therefore was at all events that there was no hint of a doubt as to the clear taste of his feast while it thus continued to be served, as well as that the right expression could only consist accordingly of the loudest smack of his lips. The company then, after the fashion we have noted, admired him at this exercise, and his sense of rich free words on Mrs. Midmore's and Molly's part, to the effect that their passing muster with him was perhaps nothing to gape at, had for its sequel a silent turn of Perry back to the window, though whether or no in more complete accommodation remained to be seen. He had at any rate been sufficiently beguiled by his guest's renewed overture of a moment previous not to wish to rebut at once any impression of this. Ralph consequently continued a minute longer to celebrate that idea of his success, as he could but treat himself to the crudity of calling it; while Mrs. Midmore, on her side, and with the breadth of her wisdom, recommended him never to overdo the act of humility, since in their world at least, however it might be in his native, you didn't get much more than what you were ready to fight for, and had always best set an example to people's opinion of you.

"Well," he answered to this, "if I like you, all three, for every mark you carry, every one of 'em without exception, as I again declare, so I want you to believe in me to the same tune, without my leaving in the dark a single side by which I may shine. I'll be as proud as you choose—look at me now," he went on, "and see if you can doubt of that; but I'll be hanged if you shan't love me for my modesty too, since otherwise you'll miss it when it comes to your giving your friends the right account of me. You'll want to be able to say enough to excuse you——!"

"To excuse us pray from what?" Mrs. Midmore sought to know at the very top of her grand air. "Understand, for goodness' sake, that we excuse ourselves here, in the civil way, but from things we haven't done, and that the things we have, the course once taken, the act performed or the need obeyed, we stick to, please, with nobody's leave whatever asked. I should like to see, sir," she wound up at this great elevation, "who you won't be good enough for if you're good enough for us!"

It was just the kind of thing he found he liked to draw from her, though Molly showed now such a peculiar play of consideration for him as made his own eyes while he replied signal back to her. "Oh I leave it to you, I leave it to you—you'll see, as soon as it becomes a question of my really flourishing, for my own opinion at least, how much I shall leave to you. I don't say," he added after this fashion to Molly as well, "that I mayn't do you credit and service as much as you do me, but I'm not flattering myself that Molly at the utmost will know all my reasons for delighting in her, or even guess the half of them."

"I'm perhaps better at guessing than you think," the girl returned, "but I've never myself indeed wanted more reasons for anything than that my taste is my taste and my choice my choice and that I believe myself able to defend them."

"Ah you splendour!"—he radiantly took her up. But she had at once gone on.