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

The tears stood in his eyes, he stamped with the bitterness of his spite; and then, thrusting his hat on his head and giving Nora's amazement no time to reply, he darted out of the door and went up the alley. Nora saw him from the window, looking up and down the street. Suddenly, while he stood and while she looked, George came up. Mr. Franks's fury seemed suddenly to evaporate; he received his companion's hand-shake and nodded toward the office, as if to tell of Nora's being there; while, to her surprise, George hereupon, without looking toward the window, turned back into the street. In a few minutes, however, he reappeared alone, and in another moment he stood before her. "Well!" he cried; "here you are, then!"

"George," she said, "I have taken you at your word."

"My word? O yes!" cried George, bravely.

She saw that be was changed, and not for the better. He looked older, he was better dressed and more prosperous; but as Nora looked at him, she felt that she had asked too much of her imagination. He eyed her from head to foot, and in a moment he had noted her simple dress and her pale face. "What on earth has happened?" he asked, closing the door with a kick.

Nora hesitated, feeling that, with words, tears might come.

"You are sick," he said, "or you are going to be sick."

This horrible idea helped her to recall her self-control. "I have left Mr. Lawrence," she said.

"So I see!" said George, wavering between relish and disapproval. When, a few moments before, his partner had told him that a young lady was in the office, calling herself his cousin, he had straightway placed himself on his guard. The case was delicate; so that, instead of immediately advancing, he had retreated behind a green baize door twenty yards off, had "taken something," and briskly meditated. She had taken him at his word; he knew that before she told him. But confound his word if it came to this! It had been meant, not as an invitation to put herself under his care, but as a kind of speculative "feeler." Fenton, however, had a native sympathy with positive measures; and he felt, moreover, the instinct to angle in Nora's troubled waters. "What 's the matter now?" he asked. "Have you quarrelled?"

"Don't call it a quarrel, George! He is as kind, he is kinder than ever," Nora cried. "But what do you think? He has asked me to marry him."

"Eh, my dear, I told you he would."

"I did n't believe you. I ought to have believed you. But it is not only that. It is that, years ago, he adopted me with that view. He brought me up for that purpose. He has done everything for me on that condition. I was to pay my debt and be his wife. I never dreamed of it. And now at last that I have grown up and he makes his claim, I can't, I can't!"

"You can't, eh? So you have left him!"

"Of course I have left him. It was the only thing to do. It was give and take. I cannot give what he wants, and I cannot give back what I have received. But I can refuse to take more."

Fenton sat on the edge of his desk, swinging his leg. He folded his arms and whistled a lively air, looking at Nora with a brightened eye. "I see, I see," he said.

Telling her tale had deepened her color and added to her beauty. "So here I am," she went on. "I know that I am dreadfully alone, that I am homeless and helpless. But it's a heaven to living as I have lived. I have been content all these days, because I thought I could content him. But we never understood each other. He has given me immeasurable happiness; I know that; and he knows that I know it; don't you think he knows, George?" she cried, eager even in her reserve. "I would have made him a sister, a friend. But I don't expect you to understand all this. It 's enough that I am satisfied. I am satisfied," the poor girl repeated vehemently. "I have no illusions about it now; you can trust me, George. I mean to earn my own living. I can teach; I am a good musician; I want above all things to work. I shall look for some employment without delay. All this time I might have been writing to Miss Murray. But I was sick with impatience to see you. To come to you was the only thing I could do; but I shall not trouble you for long."

Fenton seemed to have but half caught the meaning of this impassioned statement, for simple admiration of her exquisite purity of purpose was fast getting the better of his caution. He gave his knee a loud slap. "Nora," he said, "you 're a wonderful young lady!"

For a moment she was silent and thoughtful. "For mercy's sake," she cried at last, "say nothing to make me feel that I have done this thing too easily, too proudly and recklessly! Really, I am anything but brave. I am full of doubts and fears."

"You're uncommonly handsome; that's one sure thing!" said Fenton. "I would rather marry you than lose you. Poor Mr. Lawrence!" Nora turned away in silence and walked to the window, which grew to her eyes, for the moment, as the "glimmering square" of the poet. "I thought you loved him so!" he added, abruptly. Nora turned back with an effort and a blush. "If he were to come to you now," he went on, "and go down on his knees and beg and plead and rave and all that sort of thing, would you still refuse him?"

She covered her face with her hands. "O George, George!" she cried.

"He will follow you, of course. He will not let you go so easily."

"Possibly; but I have begged him solemnly to let me take my way. Roger is not one to rave and rage. At all events, I shall refuse to see him now. A year hence I will think of it. His great desire will be, of course, that I don't suffer. I shall not suffer."

"By Jove, not if I can help it!" cried Fenton, with warmth. Nora answered with a faint, grave smile, and stood looking at him in appealing silence. He colored beneath her glance with the pressure of his thoughts. They resolved themselves chiefly into the recurring question, "What can be made of it?" While he was awaiting inspiration, he took refuge in a somewhat inexpensive piece of gallantry. "By the way, you must be hungry."

"No, I am not hungry," said Nora, "but I am tired. You must find me a lodging,—in some quiet hotel.'

"O, you shall be quiet enough," he answered; but he insisted that unless, meanwhile, she took some dinner, he should have her ill on his hands. They quitted the office, and he hailed a hack, which drove them over to the upper Broadway region, where they were soon established in a well-appointed restaurant. They made, however, no very hearty meal. Nora's hunger of the morning had passed away in fever, and Fenton himself was, as he would have expressed it, off his feed. Nora's head had begun to ache; she had removed her bonnet, and sat facing him at their small table, leaning wearily against the wall, her plate neglected, her arms folded, her bright expanded eyes consulting the uncertain future. He noted narrowly how much prettier she was; but more even than by her prettiness he was struck by her high spirit. This belonged to an order of things in which he felt no commission to dabble; but in a creature of another sort he was free to admire such a luxury of conscience. In man or woman the capacity then and there to act was the thing he most relished. Nora had not faltered and wavered; she had chosen, and here she sat. It was an irritation to him to feel that he was not the manner of man for whom such a girl would burn her ships; for, as he looked askance at her beautiful absent eyes, he more than suspected that there was a positive as well as a negative side to her refusal of her friend. Poor Roger had a happier counterpart. It was love, and not indifference, that had pulled the wires of her adventure. Fenton, as we have intimated, was one who, when it suited him, could ride rough-shod to his mark. "You have told me half your story," he said, "but your eyes tell the rest. You 'll not be Roger's wife, but you 'll not die an old maid."