Henry James - Henry James - The Complete Novels (The Greatest Novelists of All Time – Book 10)

During the second year after her return from school Roger began to imagine that she avoided his society and resented his attentions. She was fond of lonely walks, readings, reveries. She was fond of novels, and she read a great many. For works of fiction in general Roger had no great relish, though he confessed to three or four old-fashioned favorites. These were not always Nora's. One evening, in the early spring she sat down to a twentieth perusal of the classic tale of "The Heir of Redcliffe." Roger, as usual, asked her to read aloud. She began, and proceeded through a dozen pages; Looking up, at this point, she beheld Roger asleep. She smiled softly, and privately resumed her reading. At the end of an hour, Roger, having finished his nap, rather startled her by his excessive annoyance at his lapse of consciousness. He wondered whether he had snored, but the absurd fellow was ashamed to ask her. Recovering himself finally, "The fact is, Nora," he said, "all novels seem to me stupid. They are nothing to what I can fancy! I have in my heart a prettier romance than any of them."

"A romance?" said Nora, simply. "Pray let me hear it. You are quite as good a hero as this stick of a Philip. Begin!"

He stood before the fire, looking at her with almost funereal gravity. "My dénouement is not yet written," he said. "Wait till the story is finished; then you shall hear the whole."

As at this time Nora put on long dresses and began to arrange her hair as a young lady, it occurred to Roger that he might make some change in his own appearance and reinforce his waning attractions. He was now thirty three; he fancied he was growing stout. Bald, corpulent, middle-aged,—at this rate he should soon be shelved! He was seized with a mad desire to win back the lost graces of youth. He had a dozen interviews with his tailor, the result of which was that for a fortnight he appeared daily in a new garment. Suddenly, amid this restless longing to revise and embellish himself, he determined to suppress his whiskers. This would take off five years. He appeared, therefore, one morning, in the severe simplicity of a mustache. Nora started, and greeted him with a little cry of horror. "Don't you like it?" he asked. She hung her head on one side and the other. "Well, no,—to be frank."

"O, of course to be frank! It will only take five years to grow them again. What is the trouble?"

She gave a critical frown. "It makes you look too,—too fat; too much like Mr. Vose." It is sufficient to explain that Mr. Vose was the butcher, who called every day in his cart, and who recently,—Roger with horror only now remembered it,—had sacrificed his whiskers to a mysterious ideal.

"I am sorry!" said Roger. "It was for you I did it!"

"For me!" And Nora burst into a violent laugh.

"Why, my dear Nora," cried the young man with a certain angry vehemence, "don't I do everything in life for you?"

She became grave again. Then, after much meditation, "Excuse my unfeeling levity," she said. "You might cut off your nose, Roger, and I should like your face as well." But this was but half comfort. "Too fat!" Her subtler sense had spoken, and Roger never encountered Mr. Vose for three months after this without wishing to attack him with one of his own cleavers.

He made now an heroic attempt to scale the frowning battlements of the future. He pretended to be making arrangements for a tour in Europe, and for having his house completely remodelled in his absence; noting the while attentively the effect upon Nora of his cunning machinations. But she gave no sign of suspicion that his future, to the uttermost day, could be anything but her future too. One evening, nevertheless, an incident occurred which fatally confounded his calculations,—an evening of perfect mid-spring, full of warm, vague odors, of growing daylight, of the sense of bursting sap and fresh-turned earth. Roger sat on the piazza, looking out on these things with an opera-glass. Nora, who had been strolling in the garden, returned to the house and sat down on the steps of the portico. "Roger," she said, after a pause, "has it never struck you as very strange that we should be living together in this way?"

Roger's heart rose to his throat. But he was loath to concede anything, lest he should concede too much. "It is not especially strange," he said.

"Surely it is strange," she answered. "What are you? Neither my brother, nor my father, nor my uncle, nor my cousin,—nor even, by law, my guardian."

"By law! My dear child, what do you know about law?"

"I know that if I should run away and leave you now, you could not force me to return."

"That 's fine talk! Who told you that?"

"No one; I thought of it myself. As I grow older, I ought to think of such things."

"Upon my word! Of running away and leaving me?"

"That is but one side of the question. The other is that you can turn me out of your house this moment, and no one can force you to take me back. I ought to remember such things."

"Pray what good will it do you to remember them?"

Nora hesitated a moment. "There is always some good in not losing sight of the truth."

"The truth! You are very young to begin to talk about the truth."

"Not too young. I am old for my age. I ought to be!" These last words were uttered with a little sigh which roused Roger to action.

"Since we are talking about the truth," he said, "I wonder whether you know a tithe of it."

For an instant she was silent; then, rising slowly to her feet, "What do you mean?" she asked. "Is there any secret in all that you have done for me?" Suddenly she clasped her hands, end eagerly, with a smile, went on: "You said the other day you had a romance. Is it a real romance, Roger? Are you, after all, related to me,—my cousin, my brother?"

He let her stand before him, perplexed and expectant. "It is more of a romance than that."

She slid upon her knees at his feet. "Dear Roger, do tell me," she said. He began to stroke her hair. "You think so much," he answered; "do you never think about the future, the real future, ten years hence?"

"A great deal."

"What do you think?"

She blushed a little, and then he felt that she was drawing confidence from his face. "Promise not to laugh!" she said, half laughing herself. He nodded. "I think about my husband!" she proclaimed. And then, as if she had, after all, been very absurd, and to forestall his laughter, "And about your wife!" she quickly added. "I want dreadfully to see her. Why don't you marry?"

He continued to stroke her hair in silence. At last he said sententiously, "I hope to marry one of these days."

"I wish you would do it now," Nora went on. "If only she would be nice! We should be sisters, and I should take care of the children."

"You are too young to understand what you say, or what I mean. Little girls should not talk about marriage. It can mean nothing to you until you come yourself to marry,—as you will, of course. You will have to decide and choose."

"I suppose I shall. I shall refuse him."

"What do you mean?"

But, without answering his question, "Were you ever in love, Roger?" she suddenly asked. "Is that your romance?"

"Almost."

"Then it is not about me, after all?"

"It is about you, Nora; but, after all, it is not a romance. It is solid, it is real, it is truth itself; as true as your silly novels are false. Nora, I care for no one, I shall never care for any one, but you!"

He spoke in tones so deep and solemn that she was impressed. "Do you mean, Roger, that you care so much for me that you will never marry?"

He rose quickly in his chair, pressing his hand over his brow. "Ah, Nora," he cried, "you are very painful!"

If she had annoyed him she was very contrite. She took his two hands in her own. "Roger," she whispered gravely, "if you don't wish it, I promise never, never, never to marry, but to be yours alone,—yours alone!"