The Coxon Fund by Henry James Read Free Book Online

was free to make her his wife; only she mightn’t now be able to bring him anything like the marriage-portion of which he had begun by having the virtual promise. Mrs. Mulville let me know what was already said: she was charming, this American girl, but really these American fathers—! What was a man to do? Mr. Saltram, according to Mrs. Mulville, was of opinion that a man was never to suffer his relation to money to become a spiritual relation—he was to keep it exclusively material. “
Moi pas comprendre!
” I commented on this; in rejoinder to which Adelaide, with her beautiful sympathy, explained that she supposed he simply meant that the thing was to use it, don’t you know? but not to think too much aboutit. “To take it, but not to thank you for it?” I still more profanely enquired. For a quarter of an hour afterwards she wouldn’t look at me, but this didn’t prevent my asking her what had been the result, that afternoon in the Regent’s Park, of her taking our friend to see Miss Anvoy.
    “Oh, so charming!” she answered, brightening. “He said he recognised in her a nature he could absolutely trust.”
    “Yes, but I’m speaking of the effect on herself.”
    Mrs. Mulville had to remount the stream. “It was everything one could wish.”
    Something in her tone made me laugh. “Do you mean she gave him—a dole?”
    “Well, since you ask me!”
    “Right there on the spot?”
    Again poor Adelaide faltered. “It was to me of course she gave it.”
    I stared; somehow I couldn’t see the scene. “Do you mean a sum of money?”
    “It was very handsome.” Now at last she met my eyes, though I could see it was with an effort. “Thirty pounds.”
    “Straight out of her pocket?”
    “Out of the drawer of a table at which she had been writing. She just slipped the folded notes into my hand. He wasn’t looking; it was while he was going back to the carriage. Oh,” said Adelaide reassuringly, “I take care of it for him!” The dear practical soul thought my agitation, for I confess I was agitated, referred to theemployment of the money. Her disclosure made me for a moment muse violently, and I daresay that during that moment I wondered if anything else in the world makes people so gross as unselfishness. I uttered, I suppose, some vague synthetic cry, for she went on as if she had had a glimpse of my inward amaze at such passages. “I assure you, my dear friend, he was in one of his happy hours.”
    But I wasn’t thinking of that. “Truly indeed these Americans!” I said. “With her father in the very act, as it were, of swindling her betrothed!”
    Mrs. Mulville stared. “Oh, I suppose Mr. Anvoy has scarcely gone bankrupt—or whatever he has done—on purpose. Very likely they won’t be able to keep it up, but there it was, and it was a very beautiful impulse.”
    “You say Saltram was very fine?”
    “Beyond everything. He surprised even me.”
    “And I know what
you’ve
enjoyed.” After a moment I added: “Had he peradventure caught a glimpse of the money in the table drawer?”
    At this my companion honestly flushed. “How can you be so cruel when you know how little he calculates?”
    “Forgive me, I do know it. But you tell me things that act on my nerves. I’m sure he hadn’t caught a glimpse of anything but some splendid idea.”
    Mrs. Mulville brightly concurred. “And perhaps even of her beautiful listening face.”
    “Perhaps even! And what was it all about?”
    “His talk? It was apropos of her engagement, which I had told him about: the idea of marriage, the philosophy, the poetry, the sublimity of it.” It was impossible wholly to restrain one’s mirth at this, and some rude ripple that I emitted again caused my companion to admonish me. “It sounds a little stale, but you know his freshness.”
    “Of illustration? Indeed I do!”
    “And how he has always been right on that great question.”
    “On what great question, dear lady, hasn’t he been