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Georgina's Reasons By: Henry James (1843-1916) |
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By Henry James 1885
PART I.
I. She was certainly a singular girl, and if he felt at the end that he
did n't know her nor understand her, it is not surprising that he should
have felt it at the beginning. But he felt at the beginning what he
did not feel at the end, that her singularity took the form of a charm
which once circumstances had made them so intimate it was impossible
to resist or conjure away. He had a strange impression (it amounted
at times to a positive distress, and shot through the sense of
pleasure morally speaking with the acuteness of a sudden twinge of
neuralgia) that it would be better for each of them that they should
break off short and never see each other again. In later years he called
this feeling a foreboding, and remembered two or three occasions when he
had been on the point of expressing it to Georgina. Of course, in fact,
he never expressed it; there were plenty of good reasons for that. Happy
love is not disposed to assume disagreeable duties, and Raymond Benyon's
love was happy, in spite of grave presentiments, in spite of the
singularity of his mistress and the insufferable rudeness of her
parents. She was a tall, fair girl, with a beautiful cold eye and a
smile of which the perfect sweetness, proceeding from the lips, was full
of compensation; she had auburn hair of a hue that could be qualified as
nothing less than gorgeous, and she seemed to move through life with a
stately grace, as she would have walked through an old fashioned minuet.
Gentlemen connected with the navy have the advantage of seeing many
types of women; they are able to compare the ladies of New York with
those of Valparaiso, and those of Halifax with those of the Cape of Good
Hope. Eaymond Benyon had had these advantages, and being very fond
of women he had learnt his lesson; he was in a position to appreciate
Georgina Gressie's fine points. She looked like a duchess, I don't mean
that in foreign ports Benyon had associated with duchesses, and she
took everything so seriously. That was flattering for the young man,
who was only a lieutenant, detailed for duty at the Brooklyn navy yard,
without a penny in the world but his pay, with a set of plain, numerous,
seafaring, God fearing relations in New Hampshire, a considerable
appearance of talent, a feverish, disguised ambition, and a slight
impediment in his speech. He was a spare, tough young man, his dark hair was straight and
fine, and his face, a trifle pale, was smooth and carefully drawn.
He stammered a little, blushing when he did so, at long intervals.
I scarcely know how he appeared on shipboard, but on shore, in his
civilian's garb, which was of the neatest, he had as little as possible
an aroma of winds and waves. He was neither salt nor brown, nor red, nor
particularly "hearty." He never twitched up his trousers, nor, so far as
one could see, did he, with his modest, attentive manner, carry himself
as one accustomed to command. Of course, as a subaltern, he had more
to do in the way of obeying. He looked as if he followed some sedentary
calling, and was, indeed, supposed to be decidedly intellectual. He
was a lamb with women, to whose charms he was, as I have hinted,
susceptible; but with men he was different, and, I believe, as much of a
wolf as was necessary. He had a manner of adoring the handsome, insolent
queen of his affections (I will explain in a moment why I call
her insolent); indeed, he looked up to her literally as well as
sentimentally; for she was the least bit the taller of the two. He had
met her the summer before, on the piazza of a hotel at Fort Hamilton, to
which, with a brother officer, in a dusty buggy, he had driven over from
Brooklyn to spend a tremendously hot Sunday, the kind of day when the
navy yard was loathsome; and the acquaintance had been renewed by his
calling in Twelfth Street on New Year's Day, a considerable time
to wait for a pretext, but which proved the impression had not been
transitory... Continue reading book >>
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