Henry James

The Pupil Henry James

The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an effort to broach thesubject of terms, to speak of money to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening forin the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled gants deSuède through a fat jewelled hand and, at once pressing and gliding, repeated over andover everything but the thing he would have liked to hear. He would have liked to hear thefigure of his salary; but just as he was nervously about to sound that note the little boycame back-the little boy Mrs. Moreen had sent out of the room to fetch her fan. He cameback without the fan, only with the casual observation that he couldn't find it. As hedropped this cynical confession he looked straight and hard at the candidate for the honourof taking his education in hand. This personage reflected somewhat grimly that the thinghe should have to teach his little charge would be to appear to address himself to hismother when he spoke to her-especially not to make her such an improper answer asthat. When Mrs. Moreen bethought herself of this pretext for getting rid of their companionPemberton supposed it was precisely to approach the delicate subject of hisremuneration. But it had been only to say some things about her son that it was better aboy of eleven shouldn't catch. They were extravagantly to his advantage save when shelowered her voice to sigh, tapping her left side familiarly, "And all overclouded by this, youknow; all at the mercy of a weakness-!" Pemberton gathered that the weakness was inthe region of the heart. He had known the poor child was not robust: this was the basis onwhich he had been invited to treat, through an English lady, an Oxford acquaintance, thenat Nice, who happened to know both his needs and those of the amiable American familylooking out for something really superior in the way of a resident tutor.