Eugene Pickering by Henry James


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Page 2

I had no intention of letting Pickering go without reminding him of our
old acquaintance. He had been a very singular boy, and I was curious to
see what had become of his singularity. I looked for him the next
morning at two or three of the hotels, and at last I discovered his
whereabouts. But he was out, the waiter said; he had gone to walk an
hour before. I went my way, confident that I should meet him in the
evening. It was the rule with the Homburg world to spend its evenings at
the Kursaal, and Pickering, apparently, had already discovered a good
reason for not being an exception. One of the charms of Homburg is the
fact that of a hot day you may walk about for a whole afternoon in
unbroken shade. The umbrageous gardens of the Kursaal mingle with the
charming Hardtwald, which in turn melts away into the wooded slopes of
the Taunus Mountains. To the Hardtwald I bent my steps, and strolled for
an hour through mossy glades and the still, perpendicular gloom of the
fir-woods. Suddenly, on the grassy margin of a by-path, I came upon a
young man stretched at his length in the sun-checkered shade, and kicking
his heels towards a patch of blue sky. My step was so noiseless on the
turf that, before he saw me, I had time to recognise Pickering again. He
looked as if he had been lounging there for some time; his hair was
tossed about as if he had been sleeping; on the grass near him, beside
his hat and stick, lay a sealed letter. When he perceived me he jerked
himself forward, and I stood looking at him without introducing
myself--purposely, to give him a chance to recognise me. He put on his
glasses, being awkwardly near-sighted, and stared up at me with an air of
general trustfulness, but without a sign of knowing me. So at last I
introduced myself. Then he jumped up and grasped my hands, and stared
and blushed and laughed, and began a dozen random questions, ending with
a demand as to how in the world I had known him.

"Why, you are not changed so utterly," I said; "and after all, it's but
fifteen years since you used to do my Latin exercises for me."

"Not changed, eh?" he answered, still smiling, and yet speaking with a
sort of ingenuous dismay.

Then I remembered that poor Pickering had been, in those Latin days, a
victim of juvenile irony. He used to bring a bottle of medicine to
school and take a dose in a glass of water before lunch; and every day at
two o'clock, half an hour before the rest of us were liberated, an old
nurse with bushy eyebrows came and fetched him away in a carriage. His
extremely fair complexion, his nurse, and his bottle of medicine, which
suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused
him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered
more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering
these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still
the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital
friends, you know," I went on, "then and afterwards."

"Yes, we were very good friends," he said, "and that makes it the
stranger I shouldn't have known you. For you know, as a boy, I never had
many friends, nor as a man either. You see," he added, passing his hand
over his eyes, "I am rather dazed, rather bewildered at finding myself
for the first time--alone." And he jerked back his shoulders nervously,
and threw up his head, as if to settle himself in an unwonted position. I
wondered whether the old nurse with the bushy eyebrows had remained
attached to his person up to a recent period, and discovered presently
that, virtually at least, she had. We had the whole summer day before
us, and we sat down on the grass together and overhauled our old
memories. It was as if we had stumbled upon an ancient cupboard in some
dusky corner, and rummaged out a heap of childish playthings--tin
soldiers and torn story-books, jack-knives and Chinese puzzles. This is
what we remembered between us.

He had made but a short stay at school--not because he was tormented, for
he thought it so fine to be at school at all that he held his tongue at
home about the sufferings incurred through the medicine-bottle, but
because his father thought he was learning bad manners. This he imparted
to me in confidence at the time, and I remember how it increased my
oppressive awe of Mr. Pickering, who had appeared to me in glimpses as a
sort of high priest of the proprieties. Mr. Pickering was a widower--a
fact which seemed to produce in him a sort of preternatural concentration
of parental dignity. He was a majestic man, with a hooked nose, a keen
dark eye, very large whiskers, and notions of his own as to how a boy--or
his boy, at any rate--should be brought up. First and foremost, he was
to be a "gentleman"; which seemed to mean, chiefly, that he was always to
wear a muffler and gloves, and be sent to bed, after a supper of bread
and milk, at eight o'clock. School-life, on experiment, seemed hostile
to these observances, and Eugene was taken home again, to be moulded into
urbanity beneath the parental eye. A tutor was provided for him, and a
single select companion was prescribed. The choice, mysteriously, fell
on me, born as I was under quite another star; my parents were appealed
to, and I was allowed for a few months to have my lessons with Eugene.
The tutor, I think, must have been rather a snob, for Eugene was treated
like a prince, while I got all the questions and the raps with the ruler.
And yet I remember never being jealous of my happier comrade, and
striking up, for the time, one of those friendships of childhood. He had
a watch and a pony and a great store of picture-books, but my envy of
these luxuries was tempered by a vague compassion which left me free to
be generous. I could go out to play alone, I could button my jacket
myself, and sit up till I was sleepy. Poor Pickering could never take a
step without asking leave, or spend half an hour in the garden without a
formal report of it when he came in. My parents, who had no desire to
see me inoculated with importunate virtues, sent me back to school at the
end of six months. After that I never saw Eugene. His father went to
live in the country, to protect the lad's morals, and Eugene faded, in
reminiscence, into a pale image of the depressing effects of education. I
think I vaguely supposed that he would melt into thin air, and indeed
began gradually to doubt of his existence, and to regard him as one of
the foolish things one ceased to believe in as one grew older. It seemed
natural that I should have no more news of him. Our present meeting was
my first assurance that he had really survived all that muffling and
coddling.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 29th Mar 2024, 14:18