The Coxon Fund by Henry James Read Free Book Online Page A

right?”
    “Of what other great men can you equally say it?—and that he has never, but
never
, had a deflection?” Mrs. Mulville exultantly demanded.
    I tried to think of some other great man, but I had to give it up. “Didn’t Miss Anvoy express her satisfaction in any less diffident way than by her charming present?” I was reduced to asking instead.
    “Oh yes, she overflowed to me on the steps while he was getting into the carriage.” These words somehow brushed up a picture of Saltram’s big shawled back as he hoisted himself into the green landau. “She said she wasn’t disappointed,” Adelaide pursued.
    I turned it over. “Did he wear his shawl?”
    “His shawl?” She hadn’t even noticed.
    “I mean yours.”
    “He looked very nice, and you know he’s really clean. Miss Anvoy used such a remarkable expression—she said his mind’s like a crystal!”
    I pricked up my ears. “A crystal?”
    “Suspended in the moral world—swinging and shining and flashing there. She’s monstrously clever, you know.”
    I thought again. “Monstrously!”

VIII
    George Gravener didn’t follow her, for late in September, after the House had risen, I met him in a railway carriage. He was coming up from Scotland and I had just quitted some relations who lived near Durham. The current of travel back to London wasn’t yet strong; at any rate on entering the compartment I found he had had it for some time to himself. We fared in company, and though he had a blue-book in his lap and the open jaws of his bag threatened me with the white teeth of confused papers, we inevitably, we even at last sociably conversed. I saw things weren’t well with him, but I asked no question till something dropped by himself made, as it had made on another occasion, an absence of curiosity invidious. He mentioned that he was worried about his good old friend Lady Coxon,who, with her niece likely to be detained some time in America, lay seriously ill at Clockborough, much on his mind and on his hands.
    “Ah, Miss Anvoy’s in America?”
    “Her father has got into horrid straits—has lost no end of money.”
    I waited, after expressing due concern, but I eventually said: “I hope that raises no objection to your marriage.”
    “None whatever; moreover it’s my trade to meet objections. But it may create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite on his back. I’m afraid he’s really in for some big reverse. Lady Coxon’s worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and she sends me word that she
must
have Ruth. How can I supply her with Ruth? I haven’t got Ruth myself!”
    “Surely you haven’t lost her?” I returned.
    “She’s everything to her wretched father. She writes me every post—telling me to smooth her aunt’s pillow. I’ve other things to smooth; but the old lady, save for her servants, is really alone. She won’t receive her Coxon relations—she’s angry at so much of her money going to them. Besides, she’s hopelessly mad,” said Gravener very frankly.
    I don’t remember whether it was this, or what it was, that made me ask if she hadn’t such an appreciation of Mrs. Saltram as might render that active person of some use.
    He gave me a cold glance, wanting to know what had put Mrs. Saltram into my head, and I replied that she was unfortunately never out of it. I happened to remember the wonderful accounts she had given me of the kindness Lady Coxon had shown her. Gravener declared this to be false; Lady Coxon, who didn’t care for her, hadn’t seen her three times. The only foundation for it was that Miss Anvoy, who used, poor girl, to chuck money about in a manner she must now regret, had for an hour seen in the miserable woman—you could never know what she’d see in people—an interesting pretext for the liberality with which her