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

Nora collected herself as solemnly as one on a deathbed making a will; but Roger was still in miserable doubt and dread. "I have followed you," he said, "in spite of that request in your letter."

"Have you got my letter?" Nora asked.

"It was the only thing you had left me," he said, and drew it forth, creased and crumpled.

She took it from him and thrust it into the pocket of her dress, never taking her eyes off his own. "Don't try and forget that I wrote it," she said. "I want you to see me burn it up, and to remember that."

"What does it mean, Nora?" he asked, in hardly audible tones.

"It means that I am a wiser girl to-day than then . I know myself better, I know you better. Roger!" she cried, "it means everything!"

He passed her hand through his arm and held it there against his heart, while he stood looking hard at the pavement, as if to steady himself amid this great convulsion of things. Then raising his head, "Come," he said; "come!"

But she detained him, laying her other hand on his arm. "No; you must understand first. If I am wiser now, I have learnt wisdom at my cost. I am not the girl you proposed to on Sunday. I feel—I feel dishonored! " she said, uttering the word with a vehemence that stirred his soul to its depths.

"My own poor child!" he murmured, staring.

"There is a young girl in that house," Nora went on, "who will tell you that I am shameless!"

"What house? what young girl?"

"I don't know her name. Hubert is engaged to marry her."

Roger gave a glance at the house behind them, as if to fling defiance and oblivion upon all that it suggested and contained. Then turning to Nora with a smile of exquisite tenderness: "My dear Nora, what have we to do with Hubert's young girls?"

Roger, the reader will admit, was on a level with the occasion,—as with every other occasion that subsequently presented itself.

Mrs. Keith and Mrs. Lawrence are very good friends. On being complimented on possessing the confidence of so charming a woman as Mrs. Lawrence, Mrs. Keith has been known to say, opening and shutting her fan, "The fact is, Nora is under a very peculiar obligation to me!"

Table of Contents Table of Contents Watch and Ward Watch and Ward Table of Contents Roderick Hudson Roderick Hudson Table of Contents The American The American Table of Contents The Europeans The Europeans Table of Contents Confidence Washington Square The Portrait of a Lady The Bostonians The Princess Casamassima The Reverberator The Tragic Muse The Other House The Spoils of Poynton What Maisie Knew The Awkward Age The Sacred Fount The Wings of the Dove The Ambassadors The Golden Bowl The Outcry The Ivory Tower The Sense of the Past

Table of Contents Table of Contents Watch and Ward Watch and Ward Table of Contents Roderick Hudson Roderick Hudson Table of Contents The American The American Table of Contents The Europeans The Europeans Table of Contents Confidence Washington Square The Portrait of a Lady The Bostonians The Princess Casamassima The Reverberator The Tragic Muse The Other House The Spoils of Poynton What Maisie Knew The Awkward Age The Sacred Fount The Wings of the Dove The Ambassadors The Golden Bowl The Outcry The Ivory Tower The Sense of the Past

Chapter 1. Rowland

Chapter 2. Roderick

Chapter 3. Rome

Chapter 4. Experience

Chapter 5. Christina

Chapter 6. Frascati

Chapter 7. Saint Cecilia’s

Chapter 8. Provocation

Chapter 9. Mary Garland

Chapter 10. The Cavaliere

Chapter 11. Mrs. Hudson

Chapter 12. The Princess Casamassima

Chapter 13. Switzerland

Table of Contents

Mallet had made his arrangements to sail for Europe on the first of September, and having in the interval a fortnight to spare, he determined to spend it with his cousin Cecilia, the widow of a nephew of his father. He was urged by the reflection that an affectionate farewell might help to exonerate him from the charge of neglect frequently preferred by this lady. It was not that the young man disliked her; on the contrary, he regarded her with a tender admiration, and he had not forgotten how, when his cousin had brought her home on her marriage, he had seemed to feel the upward sweep of the empty bough from which the golden fruit had been plucked, and had then and there accepted the prospect of bachelorhood. The truth was, that, as it will be part of the entertainment of this narrative to exhibit, Rowland Mallet had an uncomfortably sensitive conscience, and that, in spite of the seeming paradox, his visits to Cecilia were rare because she and her misfortunes were often uppermost in it. Her misfortunes were three in number: first, she had lost her husband; second, she had lost her money (or the greater part of it); and third, she lived at Northampton, Massachusetts. Mallet’s compassion was really wasted, because Cecilia was a very clever woman, and a most skillful counter-plotter to adversity. She had made herself a charming home, her economies were not obtrusive, and there was always a cheerful flutter in the folds of her crape. It was the consciousness of all this that puzzled Mallet whenever he felt tempted to put in his oar. He had money and he had time, but he never could decide just how to place these gifts gracefully at Cecilia’s service. He no longer felt like marrying her: in these eight years that fancy had died a natural death. And yet her extreme cleverness seemed somehow to make charity difficult and patronage impossible. He would rather chop off his hand than offer her a check, a piece of useful furniture, or a black silk dress; and yet there was some sadness in seeing such a bright, proud woman living in such a small, dull way. Cecilia had, moreover, a turn for sarcasm, and her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a lurking scratch in it. Rowland remembered that, for him, she was all smiles, and suspected, awkwardly, that he ministered not a little to her sense of the irony of things. And in truth, with his means, his leisure, and his opportunities, what had he done? He had an unaffected suspicion of his uselessness. Cecilia, meanwhile, cut out her own dresses, and was personally giving her little girl the education of a princess.

This time, however, he presented himself bravely enough; for in the way of activity it was something definite, at least, to be going to Europe and to be meaning to spend the winter in Rome. Cecilia met him in the early dusk at the gate of her little garden, amid a studied combination of floral perfumes. A rosy widow of twenty-eight, half cousin, half hostess, doing the honors of an odorous cottage on a midsummer evening, was a phenomenon to which the young man’s imagination was able to do ample justice. Cecilia was always gracious, but this evening she was almost joyous. She was in a happy mood, and Mallet imagined there was a private reason for it — a reason quite distinct from her pleasure in receiving her honored kinsman. The next day he flattered himself he was on the way to discover it.

For the present, after tea, as they sat on the rose-framed porch, while Rowland held his younger cousin between his knees, and she, enjoying her situation, listened timorously for the stroke of bedtime, Cecilia insisted on talking more about her visitor than about herself.

“What is it you mean to do in Europe?” she asked, lightly, giving a turn to the frill of her sleeve — just such a turn as seemed to Mallet to bring out all the latent difficulties of the question.

“Why, very much what I do here,” he answered. “No great harm.”

“Is it true,” Cecilia asked, “that here you do no great harm? Is not a man like you doing harm when he is not doing positive good?”