Read Online Wings of the Dove (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Henry James - Free Book Online
Authors: Henry James
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much, and he met it sharply. “Well?”
“Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it, there’s a good you can do me and a help you can render.”
“Isn’t it then exactly what I’ve been trying to make yon feel?”
“Yes,” she answered patiently, “but so in the wrong way. I’m perfectly honest in what I say, and I know what I’m talking about, It isn’t that I’ll pretend I could have believed a month ago in anything to call aid or support from you. The case is changed—that’s what has happened; my difficulty is a new one. But even now it’s not a question of anything I should ask you in a way to ‘do.’ It’s simply a question of your not turning me away—taking yourself out of my life. II’s simply a question of your saying: ‘Yes then, since you will, we’ll stand together. We won’t worry in advance about how or where; we’ll have a faith and find a way.’ That’s all- that would be the good you’d do me. I should have you, and it would be for my benefit. Do you see?”
If he didn’t it wasn’t for want of looking at her hard. “The matter with you is that you’re in love, and that your aunt knows and—for reasons, I’m sure, perfect—hates and opposes it. Well she may! It’s a matter in which I trust her with my eyes shut. Go, please.” Though he spoke not in anger—rather in infinite sadness—he fairly turned her out. Before she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what he felt, opened the door of the room. He had fairly, in his deep disapproval, a generous compassion to spare. “I’m sorry for her; deluded woman, if she builds on you.”
Kate stood a moment in the draught. “She’s not the person I pity most, for, deluded in many ways though she may be, she’s not the person who’s most so. I mean,” she explained, “if it’s a question of what you call building on me.”
He took it as if what she meant might be other than her description c)f it. “You’re deceiving two persons then, Mrs. Lowder and somebody else?”
She shook her head with detachment. “I’ve no intention of that sort with respect to any one now—to Mrs. Lowder least of all. If you fail me”—she seemed to make it out for herself—“that has the merit at least that it simplifies. I shall go my way—as I see my way.”
“Your way, you mean then, will be to marry some blackguard without a penny?”
“You demand a great deal of satisfaction,” she observed, “for the little you give.”
It brought him up again before her as with a sense that she was not to be hustled, and though he glared at her a little this had long been the practical limit to his general power of objection. “If you’re base enough to incur your aunt’s reprobation you’re base enough for my argument. What, if you’re not thinking of an utterly improper person, do your speeches to me signify? Who is the beggarly sneak?” he went on as her response failed.
Her response, when it came, was cold but distinct. “He has every disposition to make the best of you. He only wants in fact to be kind to you.”
“Then he must be an ass! And how in the world can you consider it to improve him for me,” her father pursued, “that he’s also destitute and impossible? There are boobies and boobies even-the right and the wrong—and you appear to have carefully picked out one of the wrong. Your aunt knows them, by good fortune; I perfectly trust, as I tell you, her judgement for them; and you may take it from me once for all that I won’t hear of any one of whom she won’t.” Which led up to his last word. “If you should really defy us both—!”
“Well, papa?”
“Well, my sweet child, I think that—reduced to insignificance as you may fondly believe me—I should still not be quite without some way of making you regret it.”
She had a pause, a grave one, but not, as appeared, that she might measure this danger. “If I shouldn’t do it, you know, it wouldn’t be because I’m afraid of
“Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it, there’s a good you can do me and a help you can render.”
“Isn’t it then exactly what I’ve been trying to make yon feel?”
“Yes,” she answered patiently, “but so in the wrong way. I’m perfectly honest in what I say, and I know what I’m talking about, It isn’t that I’ll pretend I could have believed a month ago in anything to call aid or support from you. The case is changed—that’s what has happened; my difficulty is a new one. But even now it’s not a question of anything I should ask you in a way to ‘do.’ It’s simply a question of your not turning me away—taking yourself out of my life. II’s simply a question of your saying: ‘Yes then, since you will, we’ll stand together. We won’t worry in advance about how or where; we’ll have a faith and find a way.’ That’s all- that would be the good you’d do me. I should have you, and it would be for my benefit. Do you see?”
If he didn’t it wasn’t for want of looking at her hard. “The matter with you is that you’re in love, and that your aunt knows and—for reasons, I’m sure, perfect—hates and opposes it. Well she may! It’s a matter in which I trust her with my eyes shut. Go, please.” Though he spoke not in anger—rather in infinite sadness—he fairly turned her out. Before she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what he felt, opened the door of the room. He had fairly, in his deep disapproval, a generous compassion to spare. “I’m sorry for her; deluded woman, if she builds on you.”
Kate stood a moment in the draught. “She’s not the person I pity most, for, deluded in many ways though she may be, she’s not the person who’s most so. I mean,” she explained, “if it’s a question of what you call building on me.”
He took it as if what she meant might be other than her description c)f it. “You’re deceiving two persons then, Mrs. Lowder and somebody else?”
She shook her head with detachment. “I’ve no intention of that sort with respect to any one now—to Mrs. Lowder least of all. If you fail me”—she seemed to make it out for herself—“that has the merit at least that it simplifies. I shall go my way—as I see my way.”
“Your way, you mean then, will be to marry some blackguard without a penny?”
“You demand a great deal of satisfaction,” she observed, “for the little you give.”
It brought him up again before her as with a sense that she was not to be hustled, and though he glared at her a little this had long been the practical limit to his general power of objection. “If you’re base enough to incur your aunt’s reprobation you’re base enough for my argument. What, if you’re not thinking of an utterly improper person, do your speeches to me signify? Who is the beggarly sneak?” he went on as her response failed.
Her response, when it came, was cold but distinct. “He has every disposition to make the best of you. He only wants in fact to be kind to you.”
“Then he must be an ass! And how in the world can you consider it to improve him for me,” her father pursued, “that he’s also destitute and impossible? There are boobies and boobies even-the right and the wrong—and you appear to have carefully picked out one of the wrong. Your aunt knows them, by good fortune; I perfectly trust, as I tell you, her judgement for them; and you may take it from me once for all that I won’t hear of any one of whom she won’t.” Which led up to his last word. “If you should really defy us both—!”
“Well, papa?”
“Well, my sweet child, I think that—reduced to insignificance as you may fondly believe me—I should still not be quite without some way of making you regret it.”
She had a pause, a grave one, but not, as appeared, that she might measure this danger. “If I shouldn’t do it, you know, it wouldn’t be because I’m afraid of
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