Free The Coxon Fund by Henry James Page A

and that one couldn’t entertain any plan for making merit comfortable without running the gauntlet of that terrible procession of interrogation-points which, like a young ladies’ school out for a walk, hooked their uniform noses at the tail of governess Conduct. But were we absolutely to hold that there was never, never, never an exception, never, never, never an occasion for liberal acceptance, for clever charity, for suspended pedantry—for letting one side, in short, outbalance another? When Miss Anvoy threw off this appeal I could have embraced her for so delightfully emphasising her unlikeness to Mrs. Saltram. “Why not have the courage of one’s forgiveness,” she asked, “as well as the enthusiasm of one’s adhesion?”
    “Seeing how wonderfully you’ve threshed the whole thing out,” I evasively replied, “gives me an extraordinary notion of the point your enthusiasm has reached.”
    She considered this remark an instant with her eyes on mine, and I divined that it struck her I might possibly intend it as a reference to some personal subjection to our fat philosopher, to some aberration of sensibility, some perversion of taste. At least I couldn’t interpret otherwise the sudden flash that came into her face. Such a manifestation, as the resultof any word of mine, embarrassed me; but while I was thinking how to reassure her the flush passed away in a smile of exquisite good nature. “Oh, you see, one forgets so wonderfully how one dislikes him!” she said; and if her tone simply extinguished his strange figure with the brush of its compassion, it also rings in my ear today as the purest of all our praises. But with what quick response of fine pity such a relegation of the man himself made me privately sigh, “Ah, poor Saltram!” She instantly, with this, took the measure of all I didn’t believe, and it enabled her to go on: “What can one do when a person has given such a lift to one’s interest in life?”
    “Yes, what can one do?” If I struck her as a little vague it was because I was thinking of another person. I indulged in another inarticulate murmur—“Poor George Gravener!” What had become of the lift
he
had given that interest? Later on I made up my mind that she was sore and stricken at the appearance he presented of wanting the miserable money. This was the hidden reason of her alienation. The probable sincerity, in spite of the illiberality, of his scruples about the particular use of it under discussion didn’t efface the ugliness of his demand that they should buy a good house with it. Then, as for
his
alienation, he didn’t, pardonably enough, grasp the lift Frank Saltram had given her interest in life. If a mere spectator could ask that last question, with what rage in his heart the man himself might! He wasn’t, like her, I was to see, too proud to show me why he was disappointed.

XI
    I was unable this time to stay to dinner: such at any rate was the plea on which I took leave. I desired in truth to get away from my young lady, for that obviously helped me not to pretend to satisfy her. How
could
I satisfy her? I asked myself—how could I tell her how much had been kept back? I didn’t even know and I certainly didn’t desire to know. My own policy had ever been to learn the least about poor Saltram’s weaknesses—not to learn the most. A great deal that I had in fact learned had been forced upon me by his wife. There was something even irritating in Miss Anvoy’s crude conscientiousness, and I wondered why, after all, she couldn’t have let him alone and been content to entrust George Gravener with the purchase of the good house. I was sure he would have driven a bargain, got somethingexcellent and cheap. I laughed louder even than she, I temporised, I failed her; I told her I must think over her case. I professed a horror of responsibilities and twitted her with her own extravagant passion for them. It wasn’t really that I was afraid of the scandal, the moral