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

"Don't talk about that! I make my living,—I know what it means! Come, let me talk to you as a friend. Don't go too far. Suppose, now, you take it all back? Six months hence, it may be too late. If you leave him lamenting too long, he 'll marry the first pretty girl he sees. They always do,—a man refused is just like a widower. They 're not so faithful as the widows! But let me tell you it 's not every girl that gets such a chance; I would have snapped at it. He 'll love you the better, you see, for your having led him a little dance. But he mustn't dance too long! Excuse the liberty I take; but Mr. Fenton and I, you see, are great friends, and I feel as if his cousin was my cousin. Take back this letter and give me just one word to post,— Come! Poor little man! You must have a high opinion of men, my dear, to play such a game with this one!"

If Roger had wished for a proof that Nora still cared for him, he would have found it in the disgust she felt at hearing Mrs. Paul undertake his case. The young girl colored with her sense of the defilement of sacred things. George, surely, for an hour, at least, might have kept her story intact. "Really, madam," she answered, "I can't discuss this matter. I am extremely obliged to you." But Mrs. Paul was not to be so easily baffled. Poor Roger, roaming helpless and hopeless, would have been amazed to hear how warmly his cause was being urged. Nora, of course, made no attempt to argue the case. She waited till the lady had exhausted her eloquence, and then, "I am a very obstinate person," she said; "you waste your words. If you go any further I shall take offence." And she rose, to signify that Mrs. Paul might do likewise. Mrs. Paul took the hint, but in an instant she had turned about the hard reverse of her fair face, in which defeated self-interest smirked horribly. "Bah! you're a silly girl!" she cried; and swept out of the room. Nora, after this, determined to avoid a second interview with George. Her bad headache furnished a sufficient pretext for escaping it. Half an hour later he knocked at her door; quite too loudly, she thought, for good taste. When she opened it, he stood there, excited, angry, ill-disposed. "I am sorry you are ill," he said; "but a night's rest will put you right. I have seen Roger."

"Roger! is he here?"

"Yes, he 's here. But he don't know where you are. Thank the Lord you left him! he 's a brute!" Nora would fain have learned more,—whether he was angry, whether he was suffering, whether he had asked to see her; but at these words she shut the door in her cousin's face. She hardly dared think of what offered impertinence this outbreak of Fenton's was the rebound. Her night's rest brought little comfort. She wondered whether Roger had supposed George to be her appointed mediator, and asked herself whether it was not her duty to see him once again and bid him a respectfully personal farewell. It was a long time after she rose before she could bring herself to leave her room. She had a vague hope that if she delayed, her companions might have gone out. But in the dining-room, in spite of the late hour, she found George gallantly awaiting her. He had apparently had the discretion to dismiss Mrs. Paul to the background, and apologized for her absence by saying that she had breakfasted long since and had left the house. He seemed to have slept off his wrath and was full of brotherly bonhomie . "I suppose you will want to know about Roger," he said, when they were seated at breakfast. "He had followed you directly, in spite of your hope that he would n't; but it was not to beg you to come back. He counts on your repentance, and he expects you to break down and come to him on your knees, to beg his pardon and promise never to do it again. Pretty terms to marry a man on, for a woman of spirit! But he does n't know his woman, does he, Nora? Do you know what he intimated? indeed, he came right out with it. That you and I want to make a match! That you 're in love with me, Miss, and ran away to marry me. That we expected him to forgive us and endow us with a pile of money. But he 'll not forgive us,—not he! We may starve, we and our brats, before he looks at us. Much obliged! We shall thrive, for many a year, as brother and sister, sha n't we, Nora, and need neither his money nor his pardon?"

In reply to this speech, Nora sat staring in pale amazement. "Roger thought," she at last found words to say, "that it was to marry you I refused him,—to marry you I came to New York?"

Fenton, with seven-and-twenty years of impudence at his back, had received in his day snubs and shocks of various shades of intensity; but he had never felt in his face so chilling a blast of reprobation as this cold disgust of Nora's. We know that the scorn of a lovely woman makes cowards brave; it may do something towards making knaves honest men. "Upon my word, my dear," he cried, "I am sorry I hurt your feelings. It may be offensive, but it is true."

Nora wished in after years she had been able to laugh at this disclosure; to pretend, at least, to an exhilaration she so little felt. But she remained almost sternly silent, with her eyes on her plate, stirring her tea. Roger, meanwhile, was walking about under this detestable deception. Let him think anything but that! "What did you reply," she asked, "to this—to this—"

"To this handsome compliment? I replied that I only wished it were true; but that I feared I had no such luck! Upon which he told me to go to the Devil,—in a tone which implied that he did n't much care if you went with me."

Nora listened to this speech in freezing silence. "Where is Roger?" she asked at last.

Fenton shot her a glance of harsh mistrust. "Where is he? What do you want to know that for?"

"Where is he, please!" she simply repeated. And then, suddenly, she wondered how and where it was the two men had happened to meet. "Where did you find him?" she went on. "How did it happen?"

Fenton drained his cup of tea at one long gulp before he answered. "My dear Nora," he said, "it 's all very well to be modest, it 's all very well to be proud; but take care you are not ungrateful! I went purposely to look him up. I was convinced he would have followed you to beg and implore you, as I supposed, to come back. I wanted to say to him, 'She 's safe, she 's happy, she 's in the best hands. Don't waste your time, your words, your hopes. Give her rope. Go quietly home and leave things to me. If she gets homesick, I will let you know.' You see I 'm frank, Nora; that 's what I meant to say. But I was received with this broadside. I found a perfect bluster of injured vanity. 'You 're her lover, she's your mistress, and be d—d to both of you!'"

That George deliberately lied Nora did not distinctly say to herself, for she lacked practice in this range of incrimination. But she as little said to herself that this could be the truth. "I am not ungrateful," she answered firmly. "But where was it?"

At this, George pushed back his chair. "Where—where? Don't you believe me? Do you want to go and ask him if it 's true? What is the matter with you, anyway? What are you up to? Have you put yourself into my hands, or not?" A certain manly indignation was now kindled in his breast; he was equally angry with Roger, with Nora, and with himself; fate had offered him an overdose of contumely, and he felt a reckless, savage impulse to wring from the occasion that compliment to his power which had been so rudely denied to his delicacy. "Are you using me simply as a vulgar tool? Don't you care for me the least little bit? Let me suggest that for a girl in your—your ambiguous position, you are several shades too proud. Don't go back to Roger in a hurry! You are not the immaculate young person you were but two short days ago. Who am I, what am I, to the people whose opinion you care for? A very low fellow, my dear; and yet, in the eyes of the world, you have certainly taken up with me. If you are not prepared to do more, you should have done less. Nora, Nora," he went on, breaking into a vein none the less revolting for being more ardent, "I confess I don't understand you! But the more you puzzle me the more you fascinate me; and the less you like me the more I love you. What has there been, anyway, between you and Lawrence? Hang me if I can understand! Are you an angel of purity, or are you the most audacious of flirts?"