The Yellow Book Volume II Part 28

"In advance--that's quite right. That's how I p.r.o.nounced when I asked her to marry me. But my story will interest you only so far as your mind is not made up." Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute and then continued: "Are you familiar with the idea of the Endowment of Research?"

"Of Research?" I was at sea for a moment.

"I give you Lady c.o.xon's phrase. She has it on the brain."

"She wishes to endow----?"

"Some earnest and disinterested seeker," Gravener said. "It was a half-baked plan of her late husband's, and he handed it on to her; setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity--the matter was left largely to her discretion--she would best honour his memory by determining the exemplary public use. This sum of money, no less than thirteen thousand pounds, was to be called the c.o.xon Fund; and poor Sir Gregory evidently proposed to himself that the c.o.xon Fund should cover his name with glory--be universally desired and admired. He left his wife a full declaration of his views; so far at least as that term may be applied to views vitiated by a vagueness really infantine. A little learning is a dangerous thing, and a good citizen who happens to have been an a.s.s is worse for a community than the small-pox. He's worst of all when he's dead, because then he can't be stopped. However, such as they were, the poor man's aspirations are now in his wife's bosom, or fermenting rather in her foolish brain: it lies with her to carry them out. But of course she must first catch her hare."

"Her earnest, disinterested seeker?"

"The man suffering most from want of means, want of the pecuniary independence necessary to cause the light that is in him to s.h.i.+ne upon the human race. The man, in a word, who, having the rest of the machinery, the spiritual, the intellectual, is most hampered in his search."

"His search for what?"

"For Moral Truth. That's what Sir Gregory calls it."

I burst out laughing. "Delightful, munificent Sir Gregory! It's a charming idea."

"So Miss Anvoy thinks."

"Has she a candidate for the Fund?"

"Not that I know of; and she's perfectly reasonable about it. But Lady c.o.xon has put the matter before her, and we've naturally had a lot of talk."

"Talk that, as you've so interestingly intimated, has landed you in a disagreement."

"She considers there's something in it," Gravener said.

"And you consider there's nothing?"

"It seems to me a puerility fraught with consequences inevitably grotesque and possibly immoral. To begin with, fancy the idea of const.i.tuting an endowment without establis.h.i.+ng a tribunal--a bench of competent people, of judges."

"The sole tribunal is Lady c.o.xon?"

"And any one she chooses to invite."

"But she has invited you."

"I'm not competent--I hate the thing. Besides, she hasn't. The real history of the matter, I take it, is that the inspiration was originally Lady c.o.xon's own, that she infected him with it, and that the flattering option left her is simply his tribute to her beautiful, her aboriginal enthusiasm. She came to England forty years ago, a thin transcendental Bostonian, and even her odd, happy, frumpy Clockborough marriage never really materialised her. She feels indeed that she has become very British--as if that, as a process, as a _Werden_, were conceivable; but it's precisely what makes her cling to the notion of the 'Fund' as to a link with the ideal."

"How can she cling if she's dying?"

"Do you mean how can she act in the matter?" my companion asked.

"That's precisely the question. She can't! As she has never yet caught her hare, never spied out her lucky impostor (how should she, with the life she has led?) her husband's intention has come very near lapsing.

His idea, to do him justice, was that it _should_ lapse if exactly the right person, the perfect mixture of genius and chill penury, should fail to turn up. Ah! Lady c.o.xon's very particular--she says there must be no mistake."

I found all this quite thrilling--I took it in with avidity. "If she dies without doing anything, what becomes of the money?" I demanded.

"It goes back to his family, if she hasn't made some other disposition of it."

"She may do that, then--she may divert it?"

"Her hands are not tied. The proof is that three months ago she offered to make it over to her niece."

"For Miss Anvoy's own use?"

"For Miss Anvoy's own use--on the occasion of her prospective marriage. She was discouraged--the earnest seeker required so earnest a search. She was afraid of making a mistake; every one she could think of seemed either not earnest enough or not poor enough. On the receipt of the first bad news about Mr. Anvoy's affairs she proposed to Ruth to make the sacrifice for her. As the situation in New York got worse she repeated her proposal."

"Which Miss Anvoy declined?"

"Except as a formal trust."

"You mean except as committing herself legally to place the money?"

"On the head of the deserving object, the great man frustrated," said Gravener. "She only consents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory's scheme."

"And you blame her for that?" I asked with an excited smile.

My tone was not harsh, but he coloured a little and there was a queer light in his eye. "My dear fellow, if I 'blamed' the young lady I'm engaged to, I shouldn't immediately say so even to so old a friend as you." I saw that some deep discomfort, some restless desire to be sided with, rea.s.suringly, becomingly reflected, had been at the bottom of his drifting so far, and I was genuinely touched by his confidence.

It was inconsistent with his habits; but being troubled about a woman was not, for him, a habit: that itself was an inconsistency. George Gravener could stand straight enough before any other combination of forces. It amused me to think that the combination he had succ.u.mbed to had an American accent, a transcendental aunt and an insolvent father; but all my old loyalty to him mustered to meet this unexpected hint that I could help him. I saw that I could from the insincere tone in which he pursued: "I've criticised her of course, I've contended with her, and it has been great fun." It clearly couldn't have been such great fun as to make it improper for me presently to ask if Miss Anvoy had nothing at all settled upon herself. To this he replied that she had only a trifle from her mother--a mere four hundred a year, which was exactly why it would be convenient to him that she shouldn't decline, in the face of this total change in her prospects, an accession of income which would distinctly help them to marry. When I inquired if there were no other way in which so rich and so affectionate an aunt could cause the weight of her benevolence to be felt, he answered that Lady c.o.xon was affectionate indeed, but was scarcely to be called rich. She could let her project of the Fund lapse for her niece's benefit, but she couldn't do anything else. She had been accustomed to regard her as tremendously provided for, and she was up to her eyes in promises to anxious c.o.xons. She was a woman of an inordinate conscience, and her conscience was now a distress to her, hovering round her bed in irreconcilable forms of resentful husbands, portionless nieces and undiscoverable philosophers.

We were by this time getting into the whirr of fleeting platforms, the multiplication of lights. "I think you'll find," I said with a laugh, "that the difficulty will disappear in the very fact that the philosopher _is_ undiscoverable."

He began to gather up his papers. "Who can set a limit to the ingenuity of an extravagant woman?"

"Yes, after all, who indeed?" I echoed as I recalled the extravagance commemorated in Mrs. Mulville's anecdote of Miss Anvoy and the thirty pounds.

IX

The thing I had been most sensible of in that talk with George Gravener was the way Saltram's name kept out of it. It seemed to me at the time that we were quite pointedly silent about him; yet afterwards I inclined to think that there had been on my companion's part no conscious avoidance. Later on I was sure of this, and for the best of reasons--the reason, namely, of my perceiving more completely that, for evil as well as for good, he left Gravener's imagination utterly cold. Gravener was not afraid of him; he was too much disgusted with him. No more was I, doubtless, and for very much the same reason. I treated my friend's story as an absolute confidence; but when before Christmas, by Mrs. Saltram, I was informed of Lady c.o.xon's death without having had news of Miss Anvoy's return, I found myself taking for granted that we should hear no more of these nuptials, in which I now recognised an element incongruous from the first. I began to ask myself how people who suited each other so little could please each other so much. The charm was some material charm, some affinity exquisite doubtless, but superficial; some surrender to youth and beauty and pa.s.sion, to force and grace and fortune, happy accidents and easy contacts. They might dote on each other's persons, but how could they know each other's souls? How could they have the same prejudices, how could they have the same horizon? Such questions, I confess, seemed quenched but not answered when, one day in February, going out to Wimbledon, I found my young lady in the house. A pa.s.sion that had brought her back across the wintry ocean was as much of a pa.s.sion as was necessary. No impulse equally strong indeed had drawn George Gravener to America; a circ.u.mstance on which, however, I reflected only long enough to remind myself that it was none of my business. Ruth Anvoy was distinctly different, and I felt that the difference was not simply that of her being in mourning. Mrs. Mulville told me soon enough what it was: it was the difference between a handsome girl with large expectations and a handsome girl with only four hundred a year. This explanation indeed didn't wholly content me, not even when I learned that her mourning had a double cause--learned that poor Mr. Anvoy, giving way altogether, buried under the ruins of his fortune and leaving next to nothing, had died a few weeks before.

"So she has come out to marry George Gravener?" I demanded. "Wouldn't it have been prettier of him to have saved her the trouble?"

"Hasn't the House just met?" said Adelaide. Then she added: "I gather that her having come is exactly a sign that the marriage is a little shaky. If it were certain, so self-respecting a girl as Ruth would have waited for him over there."

I noted that they were already Ruth and Adelaide, but what I said was: "Do you mean that she has returned to make it a certainty?"

"No, I mean that I imagine she has come out for some reason independent of it." Adelaide could only imagine as yet, and there was more, as we found, to be revealed. Mrs. Mulville, on hearing of her arrival, had brought the young lady out, in the green landau, for the Sunday. The c.o.xons were in possession of the house in the Regent's Park, and Miss Anvoy was in dreary lodgings. George Gravener was with her when Adelaide called, but he had a.s.sented graciously enough to the little visit at Wimbledon. The carriage, with Mr. Saltram in it but not mentioned, had been sent off on some errand from which it was to return and pick the ladies up. Gravener left them together, and at the end of an hour, on the Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the party of three drove out to Wimbledon. This was the girl's second glimpse of our great man, and I was interested in asking Mrs. Mulville if the impression made by the first appeared to have been confirmed. On her replying, after consideration, that of course with time and opportunity it couldn't fail to be, but that as yet she was disappointed, I was sufficiently struck with her use of this last word to question her further.

"Do you mean that you're disappointed because you judge that Miss Anvoy is?"

"Yes; I hoped for a greater effect last evening. We had two or three people, but he scarcely opened his mouth."

"He'll be all the better this evening," I added after a moment. "What particular importance do you attach to the idea of her being impressed?"

Adelaide turned her clear, pale eyes on me as if she were amazed at my levity. "Why, the importance of her being as happy as _we_ are!"