ONE MORNING in Florence, when the maid had come, and he had opened a letter from Katherine Loring about the health and general welfare of his sister Alice, he began to discuss Alice with Constance.
‘Life has been difficult for her,’ he said. ‘Life itself seems to be the root of her malady.’
‘I think it’s difficult for all of us. The gap is so wide,’ Constance said.
‘You mean between her imagination and her confines?’ Henry asked.
‘I mean between using our intelligence as women to the full and the social consequences of that,’ Constance said. ‘ Alice has done what she had to do, and I admire her.’
‘She really has done nothing except stay in bed,’ Henry said.
‘That’s precisely what I mean,’ Constance replied.
‘I do not understand,’ he said.
‘I mean that the consequences get into the marrow of your soul.’
She smiled at him softly as though she had uttered a pleasantry.
‘I’m sure she would agree with you,’ he said. ‘She is blessed in having Miss Loring.’
‘She seems to be a ministering angel,’ Constance said.
‘Yes, we all need a Miss Loring,’ Henry said.
As soon as he made the last remark, he regretted it. The very sound of the name Miss Loring suggested a spinster skilled only in the art of caring for others. He had meant it as a joke, or a sign of gratitude, or a way of reducing the intensity of their exchange, but he knew, as it hung in the air, that it had come out as a flippant expression of his own need, as though that was what he required from Constance. He turned to her now, preparing a statement which would take the harm out of what he had just said, but he observed that she did not seem to have noticed it, or taken it on board. He was sure, nonetheless, that she had heard him. She remained placid as she resumed the conversation.
BETWEEN HIS departure from Florence and her death, they continued to correspond and meet. Once when they were both staying in Geneva, living on opposite sides of the lake but meeting daily, Alice James began to detect their familiarity. Henry is somewhere on the continent, she wrote to William, flirting with Constance. When he returned, he found his sister more truculent than usual, difficult, almost angry, accusing him of neglecting her while he gallivanted with a she-novelist.
Constance left Florence, having found, or so she said, the interruptions and invasions of Florentine society too much for her. She moved to London once more where she established herself with her customary zeal, placing solitude and hard work high on her list of needs. She travelled in the east with spirit and independence and sent him regular accounts of herself, using a tone both playfully ironic and distant. When she returned to England to live in Cheltenham and subsequently in Oxford, her power of lonely industry, Henry wrote to Francis Boott, was as remarkable and admirable as ever.
They remained close, aware always of each other’s whereabouts and preoccupations. When Alice James began to die and Constance was in Oxford, Henry kept her in touch with news of his sister’s condition. Both ladies, in the early months of 1892, sent one another short, brittle, witty messages. Constance stayed in England for a year after Alice ’s death before finally deciding to return to Italy and live in Venice.
By that time, the two novelists had developed a strange, unstructured and contented way of remaining close. They became connoisseurs of the twenty-four-hour meeting in provincial English places, staying in separate small hotels, taking walks together and having supper with each other. She could, on these occasions, be brilliantly difficult and combative, begging to differ with him on books of the day or sights they had seen, and ready to tease him about his addiction to refinements. He wondered if they were to be studied by a disinterested spectator how they would emerge. They were both Americans who had been away from America for many years. Neither of them had known the compromises which marriage brought, or the cares of parenthood. Neither of them had attended to a child crying in the night. They might, he felt, be mistaken for a brother and sister. But then he watched her delighting herself with the workings of her own wit, the mistress of a hundred cases or categories into which she pigeon-holed her fellow mortals, and whole buildings and cities, and her memories and his observations. And he knew, as she smiled at him, that nobody would imagine that his friend, so darkly ebullient now and funny and charming, was in the company of her brother. Just as they were a mystery to each other, he felt, they would remain a mystery to the thin slice of society that managed to notice them.
Henry met her in Paris as she moved with her belongings from Oxford to Venice. Packing and preparing to leave had taken her months. She was tired and bewildered, and a pain in her left ear was causing her immense misery. She made clear, on her arrival, that she would not be able to see a great deal of him. He could do the city alone, she said, and perhaps she could spend some time with him in the evening. But she was not sure, she added, that she would be able to see him at all.
Despite her warnings, on the second of these evenings Constance seemed well enough to dine with him. He noticed that her movements were slow. She was forced to incline her right ear towards him when he spoke so that she could hear him.
‘I had a letter from Francis Boott,’ she said, ‘who knew you were coming to Paris, but was under the impression that you were coming alone and that we had not been in contact for some time.’
‘Oh yes,’ Henry said, ‘I wrote to him about my plans which were vague at the time.’
‘He was amused, I think,’ Constance said, ‘because I told him that we were going to meet here for a few days, and in the same group of letters came yours which stated that you were going to Paris alone. He asked me if you could be alone and in my company at the same time.’
‘Dear Francis,’ Henry said.
‘I shall tell him that being partly invisible is merely a small aspect of my charm.’
She sounded slightly bitter, almost irritated.
‘ Venice, of course,’ he said, ‘will be beautiful. Once you are established there, it will be a dream.’
She sighed and then nodded.
‘The hard part is the moving, but maybe staying can be harder,’ she said.
‘The great pity is that there are no hills aboveVenice,’ he said. ‘One has to be there, or not there. The advantage is that one can more easily find beautiful quarters than in Florence.’
‘I dread going there now. I don’t know why,’ she said.
‘I have always thought,’ he said, ‘that I would like to spend some of each winter there, the quiet times when none of our compatriots blocks one’s path, and have my own haunts there, my own routines, and not be anyone’s guest.’
‘It’s a dream,’ Constance said, ‘which everyone who goes to Venice has.’
‘Since the death of my sister,’ Henry said, ‘my financial problems have greatly decreased. So it would not be impossible.’
‘To lease a floor in Venice, a pied-à-terre?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps two pieds,’ he said.
She smiled and for the first time seemed relaxed, almost animated.
‘I don’t imagine you on the Grand Canal,’ she said.
‘No. Somewhere hidden,’ he said. ‘It does not matter quite where, as long as it is difficult to find, with many blind alleys on the way.’