The Reverberator

The Reverberator by Henry James Page A

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Authors: Henry James
Avenue de Villiers, toward the end of a sitting; and until it was finished, not to disturb the lovely model, he cultivated conversation with the elder sister: Gaston Probert was capable of that. Delia was always there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the newspaper man happily appeared to have taken himself off. The new aspirant learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the affairs of his journal had recalled him to the seat of that publication. When the young ladies had gone (and when he did not go with them—he accompanied them not rarely), the visitor wasalmost lyrical in his appreciation of his friend’s work; he had no jealousy of the insight which enabled him to reconstitute the girl on canvas with that perfection. He knew that Waterlow painted her too well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have attacked her in that fashion he would not have wanted to marry her. She bloomed there, on the easel, as brightly as in life, and the artist had caught the sweet essence of her beauty. It was exactly the way in which her lover would have chosen that she should be represented, and yet it had required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston Probert mused on this mystery and somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was as little his property, as yet, as the young lady herself.
    When, in December, he told Waterlow of his plan of campaign the latter said, “I will do anything in the world you like—anything you think will help you—but it passes me, my dear fellow why in the world you don’t go to them and say, ‘I’ve seen a girl who is as good as cake and pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I’ve taken time to think of it and I know what I want: therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you happen to like her so much the better; if you don’t be so good as to keep it to yourselves.’ That is much the most excellent way. Why, gracious heaven, all these mysteries and machinations?”
    “Oh, you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” sighed Gaston Probert, with many wrinkles on his brow. “One can’t break with one’s traditions in an hour, especially when there is so much in them that one likes. I shall not love her more if they like her, but I shall love
them
more, and I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I have everything to consider—andI am glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round.”
    There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very terminology of his friend: he hated to hear a man talk about the woman he loved being “accepted.” If one accepted her one’s self or, rather, were accepted by her, that ended the matter, and the effort to bring round those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with self-respect. Probert explained that of course he knew his relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in her; but that to know her they would first have to make her acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such people as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an oblique movement; it would never do to march straight up to it. The wedge should have a narrow end and Gaston was ready to declare that he had found it. His sister Susan was another name for it; he would break her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his favourite relation, his intimate friend—the most modern, the most Parisian and inflammable member of the family, She was not reasonable but she was perceptive; she had imagination and humour and was capable of generosity and enthusiasm and even of infatuation. She had had her own infatuations and ought to allow for those of others.

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