Georginas Reasons | Page 6

manage, to cultivate opportunities and reap the
fruits of a waiting game.
"Leave it to me. Leave it to me. You are only a blundering man,"
Georgina said. "I shall know much better than you the right moment for
saying, 'Well, you may as well make the best of it, because we have
already done it!'"
That might very well be, but Benyon did n't quite understand, and he
was awkwardly anxious (for a lover) till it came over him afresh that
there was one thing at any rate in his favor, which was simply that the
loveliest girl he had ever seen was ready to throw herself into his arms.
When he said to her, "There is one thing I hate in this plan of
yours,--that, for ever so few weeks, so few days, your father should

support my wife,"--when he made this homely remark, with a little
flush of sincerity in his face, she gave him a specimen of that
unanswerable laugh of hers, and declared that it would serve Mr.
Gressie right for being so barbarous and so horrid. It was Benyon's
view that from the moment she disobeyed her father, she ought to cease
to avail herself of his protection; but I am bound to add that he was not
particularly surprised at finding this a kind of honor in which her
feminine nature was little versed. To make her his wife first--at the
earliest moment--whenever she would, and trust to fortune, and the new
influence he should have, to give him, as soon thereafter as possible,
complete possession of her,--this rather promptly presented itself to the
young man as the course most worthy of a person of spirit. He would
be only a pedant who would take nothing because he could not get
everything at once. They wandered further than usual this afternoon,
and the dusk was thick by the time he brought her back to her father's
door. It was not his habit to como so near it, but to-day they had so
much to talk about that he actually stood with her for ten minutes at the
foot of the steps. He was keeping her hand in his, and she let it rest
there while she said,--by way of a remark that should sum up all their
reasons and reconcile their differences,--
"There's one great thing it will do, you know; it will make me safe."
"Safe from what?"
"From marrying any one else."
"Ah, my girl, if you were to do that--!" Benyon exclaimed; but he did
n't mention the other branch of the contingency. Instead of this, he
looked up at the blind face of the house--there were only dim lights in
two or three windows, and no apparent eyes--and up and down the
empty street, vague in the friendly twilight; after which he drew
Georgina Gressie to his breast and gave her a long, passionate kiss. Yes,
decidedly, he felt, they had better be married. She had run quickly up
the steps, and while she stood there, with her hand on the bell, she
almost hissed at him, under her breath, "Go away, go away; Amanda's
coming!" Amanda was the parlor-maid, and it was in those terms that
the Twelfth Street Juliet dismissed her Brooklyn Romeo. As he

wandered back into the Fifth Avenue, where the evening air was
conscious of a vernal fragrance from the shrubs in the little precinct of
the pretty Gothic church ornamenting that charming part of the street,
he was too absorbed in the impression of the delightful contact from
which the girl had violently released herself to reflect that the great
reason she had mentioned a moment before was a reason for their
marrying, of course, but not in the least a reason for their not making it
public. But, as I said in the opening lines of this chapter, if he did not
understand his mistress's motives at the end, he cannot be expected to
have understood them at the beginning.

II.
Mrs. Portico, as we know, was always talking about going to Europe;
but she had not yet--I mean a year after the incident I have just
related--put her hand upon a youthful cicerone. Petticoats, of course,
were required; it was necessary that her companion should be of the sex
which sinks most naturally upon benches, in galleries and cathredrals,
and pauses most frequently upon staircases that ascend to celebrated
views. She was a widow, with a good fortune and several sons, all of
whom were in Wall Street, and none of them capable of the relaxed
pace at which she expected to take her foreign tour. They were all in a
state of tension. They went through life standing. She was a short,
broad, high-colored woman, with a loud voice, and superabundant