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

It was cousinship for Nora, certainly; but cousinship was much; more than Roger fancied, luckily for his peace of mind. To a girl who had never had anything to boast of, this late-coming kinsman seemed a sort of godsend. Nora was so proud of turning out to have a cousin as well as other people, that she treated Fenton much better than other people treat their cousins. It must be said that Fenton was not altogether unworthy of her favors. He meant no especial harm to his fellow-men save in so far as he meant uncompromising benefit to himself. The Knight of La Mancha, on the torrid flats of Spain, never urged his gaunt steed with a grimmer pressure of the knees than that with which Fenton held himself erect on the hungry hobby of success. Shrewd as he was, he had perhaps, as well, a ray of Don Quixote's divine obliquity of vision. It is at least true that success as yet had been painfully elusive, and a part of the peril to Nora's girlish heart lay in this melancholy grace of undeserved failure. The young man's imagination was eager; he had a generous need of keeping too many irons on the fire. His invention was feeling rather jaded when he made overtures to Roger. He had learned six months before of his cousin's situation, and had felt no great sentimental need of making her acquaintance; but at last, revolving many things of a certain sort, he had come to wonder whether these lucky mortals could not be induced to play into his hands. Roger's wealth (which lie largely overestimated) and Roger's obvious taste for sharing it with other people, Nora's innocence and Nora's prospects,—it would surely take a great fool not to pluck the rose from so thornless a tree. He foresaw these good things melting and trickling into the empty channel of his own fortune. Exactly what use he meant to make of Nora he would have been at a loss to say. Plain matrimony might or might not be a prize. At any rate, it could do a clever man no harm to have a rich girl foolishly in love with him. He turned, therefore, upon his charming cousin the softer side of his genius. He very soon began to see that he had never known so delightful a person, and indeed his growing sense of her sweetness bade fair to make him bungle his dishonesty. She was altogether sweet enough to be valued for herself. She represented something that he had never yet encountered. Nora was a young lady; how she had come to it was one of the outer mysteries; but there she was, consummate! He made no point of a man being a gentleman; in fact, when a man was a gentleman you had rather to be one yourself, which did n't pay; but for a woman to be a lady was plainly pure gain. He had wit enough to detect something extremely grateful in Nora's half-concessions, her reserve of freshness. Women, to him, had seemed mostly as cut flowers, blooming awhile in the waters of occasion, but yielding no second or rarer satisfaction. Nora was expanding in the sunshine of her cousin's gallantry. She had known so few young men that she had not learned to be fastidious, and Fenton represented to her fancy that great collective manhood from which Roger was excluded by his very virtues. He had an irresistible air of action, alertness, and purpose. Poor Roger held one much less in suspense. She regarded her cousin with something of the thrilled attention which one bestows on the naked arrow, poised across the bow. He had, moreover, the inestimable merit of representing her own side of her situation. He very soon became sensible of this merit, and you may be sure he entertained her to the top of her bent. He gossiped by the hour about her father, and gave her very plainly to understand that poor Mr. Lambert had been more sinned against than sinning.

Nora was not slow to perceive that Roger had no love for their guest, and she immediately conceded him his right of judgment, thinking it natural that they should quarrel about her a little. Fenton's presence was a tacit infringement of Roger's prescriptive right of property. If her cousin had only never come! This might have been, though she could not bring herself to wish it. Nora felt vaguely that here was a chance for tact, for the woman's peace-making art. To keep Roger in spirits, she put on a dozen unwonted graces; she waited on him, appealed to him, smiled at him with unwearied iteration. But the main effect of these sweet offices was to make her cousin think her the prettier. Roger's rancorous suspicion transmuted to bitterness what would otherwise have been pure delight. She was turning hypocrite; she was throwing dust in his eyes; she was plotting with that vulgar Missourian. Fenton, of course, was forced to admit that he had reckoned without his host. Roger had had the impudence not to turn out a simpleton; he was not a shepherd of the golden age; he was a dogged modern, with prosy prejudices; the wind of his favor blew as it listed. Fenton took the liberty of being extremely irritated at the other's want of ductility. "Hang the man!" he said to himself, "why can't he trust me? What is he afraid of? Why don't he take me as a friend rather than an enemy? Let him be frank, and I will be frank. I could put him up to several things. And what does he want to do with Nora, any way?" This latter question Fenton came very soon to answer, and the answer amused him not a little. It seemed to him an extremely odd use of one's time and capital, this fashioning of a wife to order. There was a long-winded patience about it, an arrogance of leisure, which excited his ire. Roger might surely have found his fit ready made! His disappointment, a certain angry impulse to break a window, as it were, in Roger's hothouse, the sense finally that what he should gain he would gain from Nora alone, though indeed she was too confoundedly innocent to appreciate his pressing necessities,—these things combined to heat the young man's humor to the fever-point, and to make him strike more random blows than belonged to plain prudence.

The autumn being well advanced, the warmth of the sun had become very grateful. Nora used to spend much of the morning in strolling about the dismantled garden with her cousin. Roger would stand at the window with his honest face more nearly disfigured by a scowl than ever before. It was the old, old story, to his mind: nothing succeeds with women like just too little deference. Fenton would lounge along by Nora's side, with his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his mouth, his shoulders raised to his ears, and a pair of tattered slippers on his absurdly diminutive feet. Not only had Nora forgiven him this last breach of decency, but she had forthwith begun to work him a new pair of slippers. "What on earth," thought Roger, "do they find to talk about?" Their conversation, meanwhile, ran in some such strain as this.

"My dear Nora," said the young man, "what on earth, week in and week out, do you and Mr. Lawrence find to talk about?"

"A great many things, George. We have lived long enough together to have a great many subjects of conversation."

"It was a most extraordinary thing, his adopting you, if you don't mind my saying so. Imagine my adopting a little girl."

"You and Roger are very different men."

"We certainly are. What in the world did he expect to do with you?"

"Very much what he has done, I suppose. He has educated me, he has made me what I am."

"You're a very nice little person; but, upon my word, I don't see that he 's to thank for it. A lovely girl can be neither made nor marred."

"Possibly! But I give you notice that I am not a lovely girl. I have it in me to be, under provocation, anything but a lovely girl. I owe everything to Roger.

You must say nothing against him. I will not allow it. What would have become of me—" She stopped, betrayed by her glance and voice.

"Mr. Lawrence is a model of all the virtues, I admit! But, Nora, I confess I am jealous of him. Does he expect to educate you forever? You seem to me to have already all the learning a pretty woman needs. What does he know about women? What does he expect to do with you two or three years hence? Two or three years hence you will be number one." And Fenton began to whistle with vehement gayety, executing with shuffling feet a momentary fandango. "Two or three years hence, when you look in the glass, remember I said so!"