Eugene Pickering - Генри Джеймс

Henry James

Eugene Pickering

CHAPTER I

It was at Homburg, several years ago, before the gaming had been suppressed.  The evening was very warm, and all the world was gathered on the terrace of the Kursaal and the esplanade below it to listen to the excellent orchestra; or half the world, rather, for the crowd was equally dense in the gaming-rooms around the tables.  Everywhere the crowd was great.  The night was perfect, the season was at its height, the open windows of the Kursaal sent long shafts of unnatural light into the dusky woods, and now and then, in the intervals of the music, one might almost hear the clink of the napoleons and the metallic call of the croupiers rise above the watching silence of the saloons.  I had been strolling with a friend, and we at last prepared to sit down.  Chairs, however, were scarce.  I had captured one, but it seemed no easy matter to find a mate for it.  I was on the point of giving up in despair, and proposing an adjournment to the silken ottomans of the Kursaal, when I observed a young man lounging back on one of the objects of my quest, with his feet supported on the rounds of another.  This was more than his share of luxury, and I promptly approached him.  He evidently belonged to the race which has the credit of knowing best, at home and abroad, how to make itself comfortable; but something in his appearance suggested that his present attitude was the result of inadvertence rather than of egotism.  He was staring at the conductor of the orchestra and listening intently to the music.  His hands were locked round his long legs, and his mouth was half open, with rather a foolish air.  There are so few chairs, I said, that I must beg you to surrender this second one.  He started, stared, blushed, pushed the chair away with awkward alacrity, and murmured something about not having noticed that he had it.

What an odd-looking youth! said my companion, who had watched me, as I seated myself beside her.

Yes, he is odd-looking; but what is odder still is that I have seen him before, that his face is familiar to me, and yet that I cant place him.  The orchestra was playing the Prayer from Der Freischütz, but Webers lovely music only deepened the blank of memory.  Who the deuce was he? where, when, how, had I known him?  It seemed extraordinary that a face should be at once so familiar and so strange.  We had our backs turned to him, so that I could not look at him again.  When the music ceased we left our places, and I went to consign my friend to her mamma on the terrace.  In passing, I saw that my young man had departed; I concluded that he only strikingly resembled some one I knew.  But who in the world was it he resembled?  The ladies went off to their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at roulette.  Gradually I filtered through to the inner edge, near the table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite to me.  He was watching the game, with his hands in his pockets; but singularly enough, now that I observed him at my leisure, the look of familiarity quite faded from his face.  What had made us call his appearance odd was his great length and leanness of limb, his long, white neck, his blue, prominent eyes, and his ingenuous, unconscious absorption in the scene before him.  He was not handsome, certainly, but he looked peculiarly amiable and if his overt wonderment savoured a trifle of rurality, it was an agreeable contrast to the hard, inexpressive masks about him.  He was the verdant offshoot, I said to myself, of some ancient, rigid stem; he had been brought up in the quietest of homes, and he was having his first glimpse of life.  I was curious to see whether he would put anything on the table; he evidently felt the temptation, but he seemed paralysed by chronic embarrassment.  He stood gazing at the chinking complexity of losses and gains, shaking his loose gold in his pocket, and every now and then passing his hand nervously over his eyes.

Most of the spectators were too attentive to the play to have many thoughts for each other; but before long I noticed a lady who evidently had an eye for her neighbours as well as for the table.  She was seated about half-way between my friend and me, and I presently observed that she was trying to catch his eye.  Though at Homburg, as people said, one could never be sure, I yet doubted whether this lady were one of those whose especial vocation it was to catch a gentlemans eye.  She was youthful rather than elderly, and pretty rather than plain; indeed, a few minutes later, when I saw her smile, I thought her wonderfully pretty.  She had a charming gray eye and a good deal of yellow hair disposed in picturesque disorder; and though her features were meagre and her complexion faded, she gave one a sense of sentimental, artificial gracefulness.  She was dressed in white muslin very much puffed and filled, but a trifle the worse for wear, relieved here and there by a pale blue ribbon.  I used to flatter myself on guessing at peoples nationality by their faces, and, as a rule, I guessed aright.  This faded, crumpled, vaporous beauty, I conceived, was a Germansuch a German, somehow, as I had seen imagined in literature.  Was she not a friend of poets, a correspondent of philosophers, a muse, a priestess of æstheticssomething in the way of a Bettina, a Rahel?  My conjectures, however, were speedily merged in wonderment as to what my diffident friend was making of her.  She caught his eye at last, and raising an ungloved hand, covered altogether with blue-gemmed ringsturquoises, sapphires, and lapisshe beckoned him to come to her.  The gesture was executed with a sort of practised coolness, and accompanied with an appealing smile.  He stared a moment, rather blankly, unable to suppose that the invitation was addressed to him; then, as it was immediately repeated with a good deal of intensity, he blushed to the roots of his hair, wavered awkwardly, and at last made his way to the ladys chair.  By the time he reached it he was crimson, and wiping his forehead with his pocket-handkerchief.  She tilted back, looked up at him with the same smile, laid two fingers on his sleeve, and said something, interrogatively, to which he replied by a shake of the head.  She was asking him, evidently, if he had ever played, and he was saying no.  Old players have a fancy that when luck has turned her back on them they can put her into good-humour again by having their stakes placed by a novice.  Our young mans physiognomy had seemed to his new acquaintance to express the perfection of inexperience, and, like a practical woman, she had determined to make him serve her turn.  Unlike most of her neighbours, she had no little pile of gold before her, but she drew from her pocket a double napoleon, put it into his hand, and bade him place it on a number of his own choosing.  He was evidently filled with a sort of delightful trouble; he enjoyed the adventure, but he shrank from the hazard.  I would have staked the coin on its being his companions last; for although she still smiled intently as she watched his hesitation, there was anything but indifference in her pale, pretty face.  Suddenly, in desperation, he reached over and laid the piece on the table.  My attention was diverted at this moment by my having to make way for a lady with a great many flounces, before me, to give up her chair to a rustling friend to whom she had promised it; when I again looked across at the lady in white muslin, she was drawing in a very goodly pile of gold with her little blue-gemmed claw.  Good luck and bad, at the Homburg tables, were equally undemonstrative, and this happy adventuress rewarded her young friend for the sacrifice of his innocence with a single, rapid, upward smile.  He had innocence enough left, however, to look round the table with a gleeful, conscious laugh, in the midst of which his eyes encountered my own.  Then suddenly the familiar look which had vanished from his face flickered up unmistakably; it was the boyish laugh of a boyhoods friend.  Stupid fellow that I was, I had been looking at Eugene Pickering!