Read Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 Online

Authors: Henry James

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Henry James: Complete Stories 1864-1874 (5 page)

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bound to say I don't think that would be worth while; I haven't the courage for it.

I never thought you were a coward, said Mrs. Portico.

Well, I am not, if you will give me time. I am very patient.

I never thought that either.

Marrying changes one, said Georgina, still smiling.

It certainly seems to have had a very odd effect upon you. Why don't you make him leave the navy and arrange your life comfortably, like every one else?

I wouldn't for the world interfere with his prospectswith his promotion. That is sure to come for him, and to come immediately, he has such talents. He is devoted to his profession; it would ruin him to leave it.

My dear young woman, you are a living wonder! Mrs. Portico exclaimed, looking at her companion as if she had been in a glass case.

So poor Raymond says, Georgina answered, smiling more than ever.

Certainly, I should have been very sorry to marry a navy-man; but if I had married him I would stick to him, in the face of all the scoldings in the universe!

I don't know what your parents may have been; I know what mine are, Georgina replied, with some dignity. When he's a captain we shall come out of hiding.

And what shall you do meanwhile? What will you do with your children? Where will you hide them? What will you do with this one?

Georgina rested her eyes on her lap for a minute; then, raising them, she met those of Mrs. Portico. Somewhere in Europe, she said, in her sweet tone.

Georgina Gressie, you're a monster! the elder lady cried.

I know what I am about, and you will help me, the girl went on.

I will go and tell your father and mother the whole storythat's what I will do!

I am not in the least afraid of thatnot in the least. You will help me; I assure you that you will.

Do you mean I will support the child?

Georgina broke into a laugh. I do believe you would, if I

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were to ask you! But I won't go so far as that; I have something of my own. All I want you to do is to be with me.

At Genoa; yes, you have got it all fixed! You say Mr. Benyon is so fond of the place. That's all very well; but how will he like his baby being deposited there?

He won't like it at all. You see I tell you the whole truth, said Georgina, gently.

Much obliged; it's a pity you keep it all for me! It is in his power, then, to make you behave properly.
He
can publish your marriage, if you won't; and if he does you will have to acknowledge your child.

Publish, Mrs. Portico? How little you know my Raymond! He will never break a promise; he will go through fire first.

And what have you got him to promise?

Never to insist on a disclosure against my will; never to claim me openly as his wife till I think it is time; never to let any one know what has passed between us if I choose to keep it still a secretto keep it for yearsto keep it for ever. Never do anything in the matter himself, but to leave it to me. For this he has given me his solemn word of honour, and I know what that means!

Mrs. Portico, on the sofa, fairly bounced.

You do know what you are about! And Mr. Benyon strikes me as more demented even than yourself. I never heard of a man putting his head into such a noose. What good can it do him?

What good? The good it did him was that it gratified me. At the time he took it he would have made any promise under the sun. It was a condition I exacted just at the very last, before the marriage took place. There was nothing at that moment he would have refused me; there was nothing I couldn't have made him do. He was in love to that degreebut I don't want to boast, said Georgina, with quiet grandeur. He wantedhe wanted she added; but then she paused.

He doesn't seem to have wanted much! Mrs. Portico cried, in a tone which made Georgina turn to the window, as if it might have reached the street. Her hostess noticed the movement and went on, Oh, my dear, if I ever do tell your story I will tell it so that people will hear it!

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You never will tell it. What I mean is that Raymond wanted the sanctionof the affair at the churchbecause he saw that I would never do without it. Therefore, for him, the sooner we had it the better, and, to hurry it on, he was ready to take any pledge.

You have got it pat enough, said Mrs. Portico, in homely phrase. I don't know what you mean by sanctions, or what you wanted of 'em.

Georgina got up, holding rather higher than before that beautiful head which, in spite of the embarrassments of this interview, had not yet perceptibly abated its elevation. Would you have liked me toto not marry?

Mrs. Portico rose also, and, flushed with the agitation of unwonted knowledgeit was as if she had discovered a skeleton in her favourite cupboardfaced her young friend for a moment. Then her conflicting sentiments resolved themselves into an abrupt question, implying, for Mrs. Portico, much subtlety: Georgina Gressie, were you really in love with him?

The question suddenly dissipated the girl's strange, studied, wilful coldness; she broke out, with a quick flash of passiona passion that, for the moment, was predominately anger, Why else, in heaven's name, should I have done what I have done? Why else should I have married him? What under the sun had I to gain?

A certain quiver in Georgina's voice, a light in her eye which seemed to Mrs. Portico more spontaneous, more human, as she uttered these words, caused them to affect her hostess rather less painfully than anything she had yet said. She took the girl's hand and emitted indefinite admonitory sounds. Help me, my dear old friend, help me, Georgina continued, in a low, pleading tone; and in a moment Mrs. Portico saw that the tears were in her eyes.

You are a precious mixture, my child! she exclaimed. Go straight home to your own mother and tell her everything; that is your best help.

You are kinder than my mother. You mustn't judge her by yourself.

What can she do to you? How can she hurt you? We are not living in pagan times, said Mrs. Portico, who was seldom

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so historical. Besides, you have no reason to speak of your motherto think of her evenso! She would have liked you to marry a man of some property; but she has always been a good mother to you.

At this rebuke Georgina suddenly kindled again; she was, indeed, as Mrs. Portico had said, a precious mixture. Conscious, evidently, that she could not satisfactorily justify her present stiffness, she wheeled round upon a grievance which absolved her from self-defence. Why, then, did he make that promise, if he loved me? No man who really loved me would have made it, and no man that was a man as I understand being a man! He might have seen that I only did it to test himto see if he wanted to take advantage of being left free himself. It is a proof that he doesn't love menot as he ought to have done; and in such a case as that a woman isn't bound to make sacrifices!

Mrs. Portico was not a person of a nimble intellect; her mind moved vigorously, but heavily; yet she sometimes made happy guesses. She saw that Georgina's emotions were partly real and partly fictitious, that, as regards this last matter especially, she was trying to get up a resentment, in order to excuse herself. The pretext was absurd, and the good lady was struck with its being heartless on the part of her young visitor to reproach poor Benyon with a concession on which she had insisted, and which could only be a proof of his devotion, inasmuch as he left her free while he bound himself. Altogether, Mrs. Portico was shocked and dismayed at such a want of simplicity in the behaviour of a young person whom she had hitherto believed to be as candid as she was stylish, and her appreciation of this discovery expressed itself in the uncompromising remark, You strike me as a very bad girl, my dear; you strike me as a very bad girl!

VI.

It will doubtless seem to the reader very singular that, in spite of this reflection, which appeared to sum up her judgment of the matter, Mrs. Portico should in the course of a very few days have consented to everything that Georgina asked of her. I have thought it well to narrate at length the first conversa-

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tion that took place between them, but I shall not trace further the successive phases of the girl's appeal, or the steps by whichin the face of a hundred robust and salutary convictionsthe loud, kind, sharp, simple, sceptical, credulous woman took under her protection a damsel whose obstinacy she could not speak of without getting red with anger. It was the simple fact of Georgina's personal condition that moved her; this young lady's greatest eloquence was the seriousness of her predicament. She might be bad, and she had a splendid, careless, insolent, fair-faced way of admitting it, which at moments, incoherently, inconsistently, irresistibly, transmuted the cynical confession into tears of weakness; but Mrs. Portico had known her from her rosiest years, and when Georgina declared that she couldn't go home, that she wished to be with her and not with her mother, that she couldn't expose herselfshe absolutely couldn'tand that she must remain with her and her only till the day they should sail, the poor lady was forced to make that day a reality. She was over-mastered, she was cajoled, she was, to a certain extent, fascinated. She had to accept Georgina's rigidity (she had none of her own to oppose to itshe was only violent, she was not continuous), and once she did this it was plain, after all, that to take her young friend to Europe was to help her, and to leave her alone was not to help her. Georgina literally frightened Mrs. Portico into compliance. She was evidently capable of strange things if thrown upon her own devices. So, from one day to another, Mrs. Portico announced that she was really at last about to sail for foreign lands (her doctor having told her that if she didn't look out she would get too old to enjoy them), and that she had invited that robust Miss Gressie, who could stand so long on her feet, to accompany her. There was joy in the house of Gressie at this announcement, for, though the danger was over, it was a great general advantage to Georgina to go, and the Gressies were always elated at the prospect of an advantage. There was a danger that she might meet Mr. Benyon on the other side of the world; but it didn't seem likely that Mrs. Portico would lend herself to a plot of that kind. If she had taken it into her head to favour their love-affair she would have done it openly, and Georgina would have been married by this time. Her arrangements were made

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as quickly as her decision had beenor rather had appearedslow; for this concerned those mercurial young men down town. Georgina was perpetually at her house; it was understood in Twelfth Street that she was talking over her future travels with her kind friend. Talk there was, of course, to a considerable degree; but after it was settled they should start nothing more was said about the motive of the journey. Nothing was said, that is, till the night before they sailed; then a few plain words passed between them. Georgina had already taken leave of her relations in Twelfth Street, and was to sleep at Mrs. Portico's in order to go down to the ship at an early hour. The two ladies were sitting together in the firelight, silent with the consciousness of corded luggage, when the elder one suddenly remarked to her companion that she seemed to be taking a great deal upon herself in assuming that Raymond Benyon wouldn't force her hand. He might choose to acknowledge his child, if she didn't; there were promises and promises, and many people would consider they had been let off when circumstances were so altered. She would have to reckon with Mr. Benyon more than she thought.

I know what I am about, Georgina answered. There is only one promise for him. I don't know what you mean by circumstances being altered.

Everything seems to me to be altered, poor Mrs. Portico murmured, rather tragically.

Well, he isn't, and he never will! I am sure of him, as sure as that I sit here. Do you think I would have looked at him if I hadn't known he was a man of his word?

You have chosen him well, my dear, said Mrs. Portico, who by this time was reduced to a kind of bewildered acquiescence.

Of course I have chosen him well. In such a matter as this he will be perfectly splendid. Then suddenly, Perfectly splendid, that's why I cared for him, she repeated, with a flash of incongruous passion.

This seemed to Mrs. Portico audacious to the point of being sublime; but she had given up trying to understand anything that the girl might say or do. She understood less and less after they had disembarked in England and begun to travel southward; and she understood least of all when, in the

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