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

It was the first time he had called her cousin; the word made a sweet confusion in her thoughts. But looking at him still while she collected them, "You don't care to know!" she cried. "Not when you smile so! You are laughing at me, at Roger, at every one!" Clever men had ere this been called dreadfully satirical by pretty women; but never, surely, with just that imperious naïveté. She spoke with a kind of joy in her frankness; the sense of intimacy with the young man had effaced the sense of difference.

"The scoffing fiend! That's a pretty character to give a clergyman!" said Hubert.

"Are you, at heart, a clergyman? I have been wondering."

"You have heard me preach."

"Yes, a year ago, when I was a silly little girl. I want to hear you again."

"No, I have gained my crown, I propose to keep it. I would rather not be found out. Besides, I am not preaching now; I am resting. Some people think me a clergyman, Nora," he said, lowering his voice with a hint of mock humility. "But do you know you are formidable, with your fierce friendships and your jealous suspicions? If you doubt of me, well and good. Let me walk like an Homeric god in a cloud; without my cloud, I should be sadly ungodlike. Indeed, for that matter, I doubt of myself. But I don't really undervalue Roger. I love him, I admire him, I envy him. I would give the world to be able to exchange my restless imagination for his silent, sturdy usefulness. I feel as if I were toiling in the sun, and he were sitting under green trees resting from an effort which he has never needed to make. Well, virtue, I suppose, is welcome to the shade. It 's cool, but it 's dreadfully obscure! People are free to find out the best and the worst of me! Here I stand, with all my imperfections on my head; tricked out with a surplice, baptized with a reverend , (Heaven save the mark!) equipped with platform and pulpit and text and audience,—erected into a mouthpiece of the spiritual aspirations of mankind. Well, I confess our sins; that 's good humble-minded work. And I must say, in justice, that when once I don my surplice (I insist on the surplice, I can do nothing without it) and mount into the pupit, I feel conscious of a certain power. They call it eloquence; I suppose it is. I don't know what it 's worth, but they seem to like it."

Nora sat speechless, with expanded eyes, hardly knowing whether his humility or his audacity became him best; flattered, above all, by what she deemed the recklessness of his confidence. She had removed her hat, which she held in her hand, gently curling its great black feather. Few things in a woman could be prettier than her uncovered forehead, illumined with her gentle wonder. The moment, for Hubert, was critical. He knew that a young girl's heart stood trembling on the verge of his influence; he felt, without fatuity, that a glance might beckon her forward, a word might fix her there. Should he speak his word? This mystic circle was haunted with the rustling ghosts of women who had ventured within and found no rest. But as the innermost meaning of Nora's beauty grew vivid before him, it seemed to him that she, at least, might cleanse it of its sinister memories and fill it with the sense of peace. He knew that to such as Nora he was no dispenser of peace; but as he looked at her she seemed to him as an angel knocking at his gates. He could not turn her away. Let her come, at her risk! For angels there is a special providence. "Don't think me worse than I am," he said, "but don't think me better! I shall love Roger well until I begin to fancy that you love him too well. Then,—it 's absurd, perhaps, but I feel it will be so,—I shall be jealous."

The words were lightly uttered, but his eyes and voice gave them meaning. Nora colored and rose; she went to the mirror and put on her hat. Then turning round with a laugh which, to one in the secret, might have seemed to sound the coming-of-age of her maiden's fancy, "If you mean to be jealous," she said, "now is your time! I love Roger now with all my heart. I cannot do more!" She remained but a moment longer.

Roger's illness baffled the doctors, though the doctors were clever. For a fortnight it went from bad to worse. Nora remained constantly at home, and played but a passive part to the little social drama enacted in Mrs. Keith's drawing-room. This lady had already cleared her stage and rung up her curtain. To the temporary indisposition of her young performer she resigned herself with that serene good grace which she had always at command, and which was so subtle an intermixture of kindness and shrewdness that it would have taken a wiser head than Nora's to discriminate them. She valued the young girl for her social uses; but she spared her at this trying hour, just as an impresario, with an eye to the whole season, spares a prima donna who is threatened with bronchitis. Between these two, though there was little natural sympathy, there was a wondrous exchange of caresses and civilities. They had quietly judged each other and each sat serenely encamped in her estimate as in a strategical position. Nevertheless I would have trusted neither lady's account of the other. Nora, for perfect fairness, had too much to learn, and Mrs. Keith too much to unlearn. With her companion, however, she had unlearned much of that circumspect jealousy with which, in the interest of her remnant of youth and beauty, she taxed her commerce with most of the fashionable sisterhood. She strove to repair her one notable grievance against fate by treating Nora as a daughter. She mused with real maternal ardor upon the young girl's matrimonial possibilities, and among them upon that design of which Roger had dropped her a hint of old. He held to his purpose of course; if he had fancied Nora then, he could but fancy her now.

But were his purpose and his fancy to be viewed with undiminished complacency? What might have been a great prospect for Nora as a plain homeless child, was a small prospect for a young lady who was turning out one of the beauties of the day. Roger would be the best of husbands; but in Mrs. Keith's philosophy a very good husband might represent a very indifferent marriage. She herself had married a fool, but she had married well. Her easy, opulent widowhood was there to show it. To call things by their names, would Nora, in marrying Roger, marry money? Mrs. Keith desired to appraise the worldly goods of her rejected suitor. At the time of his suit she had the matter at her fingers' ends; but she suspected that since then he had been lining his pockets. He puzzled her; he had a way of seeming neither rich nor poor. When he spent largely, he had the air of a man straining a point; yet when he abstained, it seemed rather from taste than from necessity. She had been surprised more than once, while abroad, by his copious remittances to Nora. The point was worth making sure of. The reader will agree with me that her conclusion warranted her friend either a fool or a hero; for she graciously assumed that if, financially, Roger should be found wanting, she could easily prevail upon him to make way for a millionnaire. She had several millionnaires in her eye. Never was better evidence that Roger passed for a good fellow. In any event, however, Mrs. Keith had no favor to spare for Hubert and his marked and increasing "attentions." She had determined to beware of false alarms; but meanwhile she was vigilant. Hubert presented himself daily with a report of his cousin's condition,—a report most minute and exhaustive, seemingly, as a couple of hours were needed to make it. Nora, moreover, went frequently to her friend's house, wandered about aimlessly, and talked with Lucinda; and here Hubert, coming on the same errand, was sure to be found or to find her. Roger's malady had defined itself as virulent typhus fever; strength and reason were at the lowest ebb. Of course on these occasions Hubert walked home with the young girl; and as the autumn weather made walking delightful, they chose the longest way. They might have been seen at this period perambulating in deep discourse certain outlying regions, the connection of which with the main line of travel between Mrs Keith's abode and Roger's was not immediately obvious. Apart from her prudent fears, Mrs. Keith had a scantier kindness for Hubert than for most brilliant men. "What is he, when you come to the point?" she impatiently demanded of a friend to whom she had imparted her fears. "He is neither fish nor flesh, neither a priest nor a layman. I like a clergyman to bring with him a little odor of sanctity,—something that rests you, after all your bother. Nothing is so pleasant, near the fire, at the sober end of one's drawing-room. If he does n't fill a certain place, he is in the way. The Reverend Hubert is in any place and every place. His manners are neither of this world nor, I hope, of the next. Last night he let me bring him a cup of tea and sat lounging in his chair while I put it into his hand. O, he knows what he 's about. He is pretentious, with all his nonchalance. He finds the prayer-book rather meagre fare for week-days; so he consoles himself with his pretty parishioners. To be a parishioner, you need n't go to his church."