Georginas Reasons

Georgina's Reasons, by Henry
James

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Title: Georgina's Reasons
Author: Henry James
Release Date: June 8, 2007 [EBook #21771]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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GEORGINA'S REASONS ***

Produced by David Widger

GEORGINA'S REASONS
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