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

"He means to go to Europe one of these days," said Nora, irrelevantly.

"One of these days! One would think he expects to keep you forever. Not if I can help it. And why Europe, in the name of all that's patriotic? Europe be hanged! You ought to come out to your own section of the country, and see your own people. I can introduce you to the best society in St. Louis. I 'll tell you what, my dear. You don't know it, but you're a regular Western girl."

A certain foolish gladness in being the creature thus denominated prompted Nora to a gush of momentary laughter, of which Roger, within the window, caught the soundless ripple. "You ought to know, George," she said, "you are Western enough yourself."

"Of course I am. I glory in it. It 's the only place for a man of ideas! In the West you can do something!

Round here you 're all stuck fast in ten feet of varnish. For yourself, Nora, at bottom you 're all right; but superficially you 're just a trifle overstarched. But we'll take it out of you! It comes of living with a stiff-necked—"

Nora bent for a moment her lustrous eyes on the young man, as if to recall him to order. "I beg you to understand, once for all," she said, "that I refuse to listen to disrespectful allusions to Roger."

"I 'll say it again, just to make you look at me so. If I ever fall in love with you, it will be when you are scolding me. All I have got to do is to attack your papa—"

"He is not my papa. I have had one papa; that 's enough. I say it in all respect."

"If he is not your papa, what is he? He is a dog in the manger. He must be either one thing or the other. When you are very little older, you will understand that."

"He may be whatever thing you please. I shall be but one,—his best friend."

Fenton laughed with a kind of fierce hilarity. "You are so innocent, my dear, that one does n't know where to take you. Do you expect to marry him?"

Nora stopped in the path, with her eyes on her cousin. For a moment he was half confounded by their startled severity and the flush of pain in her cheek. "Marry Roger!" she said, with great gravity.

"Why, he 's a man, after all!"

Nora was silent a moment; and then with a certain forced levity, walking on: "I had better wait till I am asked."

"He will ask you! You will see."

"If he does, I shall be surprised."

"You will pretend to be. Women always do."

"He has known me as a child," she continued, heedless of his sarcasm. "I shall always be a child, for him."

"He will like that," said Fenton. "He will like a child of twenty."

Nora, for an instant was lost in meditation. "As regards marriage," she said at last, quietly, "I will do what Roger wishes."

Fenton lost patience. "Roger be hanged!" he cried. "You are not his slave. You must choose for yourself and act for yourself. You must obey your own heart. You don't know what you are talking about. One of these days your heart will say its say. Then we shall see what becomes of Roger's wishes! If he wants to make what he pleases of you, he should have taken you younger,—or older! Don't tell me seriously that you can ever love (don't play upon words: love, I mean, in the one sense that means anything!) such a solemn little fop as that! Don't protest, my dear girl; I must have my say. I speak in your own interest; I speak, at any rate, from my own heart. I detest the man. I came here perfectly on the square, and he has treated me as if I were n't fit to touch with tongs. I am poor, I have my way to make, I ain't fashionable; but I'm an honest man, for all that, and as good as he, take me altogether. Why can't he show me a moment's frankness? Why can't he take me by the hand, and say, 'Come, young man, I've got capital, and you 've got brains; let's pull together a stroke?' Does he think I want to steal his spoons or pick his pocket? Is that hospitality? It 's a poor kind."

This passionate outbreak, prompted in about equal measure by baffled ambition and wounded conceit, made sad havoc with Nora's loyalty to her friend. Her sense of natural property in her cousin,—the instinct of free affection alternating more gratefully than she knew with the dim consciousness of measured dependence,—had become in her heart a sort of sweet excitement. It made her feel that Roger's mistrust was cruel; it was doubly cruel that George should feel it. Two angry men, at any rate, were quarrelling about her, and she must avert an explosion. She promised herself to dismiss Fenton the next day. Of course, by the very fact of this concession, Roger lost ground with her, and George acquired the grace of the persecuted. Meanwhile, Roger's jealous irritation came to a head. On the evening following the little scene I have narrated the young couple sat by the fire in the library; Fenton on a stool at his cousin's feet holding, while Nora wound them on reels, the wools which were to be applied to the manufacture of those invidious slippers. Roger, after grimly watching their mutual amenities for some time over the cover of a book, unable to master his fierce discomposure, departed with a telltale stride. They heard him afterwards walking up and down the piazza, where he was appealing from his troubled nerves to the ordered quietude of the stars.

"He hates me so," said Fenton, "that I believe if I were to go out there he would draw a knife."

"O George!" cried Nora, horrified.

"It 's a fact, my dear. I am afraid you 'll have to give me up. I wish I had never seen you!"

"At all events, we can write to each other."

"What 's writing? I don't know how to write! I will, though! I suppose he will open my letters. So much the worse for him!"

Nora, as she wound her wool, mused intently. "I can't believe he really grudges me our friendship. It must be something else."

Fenton, with a clench of his fist, arrested suddenly the outflow of the skein from his hand. "It is something else," he said. "It 's our possible—more than friendship!" And he grasped her two hands in his own. "Nora, choose! Between me and him!"

She stared a moment; then her eyes filled with tears. "O George," she cried, "you make me very unhappy." She must certainly tell him to go; and yet that very movement of his which had made it doubly needful made it doubly hard. "I will talk to Roger," she said. "No one should be condemned unheard. We may all misunderstand each other."

Fenton, half an hour later, having, as he said, letters to write, went up to his own room; shortly after which, Roger returned to the library. Half an hour's communion with the starlight and the ringing crickets had drawn the sting from his irritation. There came to him, too, a mortifying sense of his guest having outdone him in civility. This would never do. He took refuge in imperturbable good-humor, and entered the room in high indifference. But even before he had spoken, something in Nora's face caused this wholesome dose of resignation to stick in his throat. "Your cousin is gone?" he said.

"To his own room. He has some letters to write."

"Shall I hold your wools?" Roger asked, after a pause.

"Thank you. They are all wound."

"For whom are your slippers?" He knew, of course; but the question came.

"For George. Did I not tell you? Do you think them pretty?" And she held up her work.

"Prettier than he deserves."

Nora gave him a rapid glance and miscounted her stitch. "You don't like poor George," she said.

"No. Since you ask me, I don't like poor George."

Nora was silent. At last: "Well!" she said, "you 've not the same reasons as I have."

"So I am bound to believe! You must have excellent reasons."

"Excellent. He is my own, you know."

"Your own—? Ah!" And he gave a little laugh.

"My own cousin," said Nora.

"Your own grandfather!" cried Roger.

She stopped her work. "What do you mean?" she asked gravely.