Free The American by Henry James Page A

fury.”
    “Angry, then, or displeased.”
    “I am never angry, and it is so long since I have been displeased that I have quite forgotten it
    “I don’t believe,” said Mrs. Tristram, “that you are never angry. A man ought to be angry sometimes, and you are neither good enough nor bad enough always to keep your temper.”
    “I lose it perhaps once in five years.”
    “The time is coming round, then,” said his hostess. “Before I have known you six months I shall see you in a fine fury.”
    “Do you mean to put me into one?”
    “I should not be sorry. You take things too coolly. It exasperates me. And then you are too happy. You have what must be the most agreeable thing in the world—the consciousness of having bought your pleasure beforehand, and paid for it. You have not a day of reckoning staring you in the face. Your reckonings are over.”
    “Well, I suppose I am happy,” said Newman meditatively.
    “You have been odiously successful.”
    “Successful in copper,” said Newman, “only so-so in railroads, and a hopeless fizzle in oil.”
    “It is very disagreeable to know how Americans have made their money. Now you have the world before you. You have only to enjoy.”
    “Oh, I suppose I am very well off,” said Newman. “Only I am tired of having it thrown up at me. Besides, there are several drawbacks. I am not intellectual.”
    “One doesn’t expect it of you,” Mrs. Tristram answered. Then in a moment: “Besides, you are!”
    “Well, I mean to have a good time, whether or no,” said Newman. “I am not cultivated, I am not even educated; I know nothing about history, or art, or foreign tongues, or any other learned matters. But I am not a fool, either, and I shall undertake to know something about Europe by the time I have done with it. I feel something under my ribs here,” he added in a moment, “that I can’t explain—a sort of a mighty hankering, a desire to stretch out and haul in.”
    “Bravo!” said Mrs. Tristram, “that is very fine. You are the great Western Barbarian, stepping forth in his innocence and might, gazing awhile at this poor effete Old World, and then swooping down on it.”
    “Oh, come,” said Newman. “I am not a barbarian, by a good deal. I am very much the reverse. I have seen barbarians; I know what they are.”
    “I don’t mean that you are a Comanche chief, or that you wear a blanket and feathers. There are different shades.”
    “I am a highly civilised man,” said Newman. “I stick to that. If you don’t believe it, I should like to prove it to you.”
    Mrs. Tristram was silent awhile. “I should like to make you prove it,” she said, at last. “I should like to put you in a difficult place.”
    “Pray do,” said Newman.
    “That has a little conceited sound!” his companion rejoined.
    “Oh,” said Newman, “I have a very good opinion of myself.”
    “I wish I could put it to the test. Give me time, and I will.” And Mrs. Tristram remained silent for some time afterwards, as if she was trying to keep her pledge. It did not appear that evening that she succeeded; but as he was rising to take his leave, she passed suddenly, as she was very apt to do, from the tone of unsparing persiflage to that of almost tremulous sympathy. “Speaking seriously,” she said, “I believe in you, Mr. Newman. You flatter my patriotism.”
    “Your patriotism?” Christopher demanded.
    “Even so. It would take too long to explain, and you probably would not understand. Besides, you might take it—really, you might take it for a declaration. But it has nothing to do with you personally; it’s what you represent. Fortunately you don’t know all that, or your conceit would increase insufferably.”
    Newman stood staring and wondering what under the sun he “represented.”
    “Forgive all my meddlesome chatter, and forget my advice. It is very silly in me to undertake to tell you what to do. When you are embarrassed, do as you think best, and you