Chapter 11

I was unable this time to stay to dinner: such at any rate was the
plea on which I took leave. I desired in truth to get away from my
young lady, for that obviously helped me not to pretend to satisfy
her. How COULD I satisfy her? I asked myself--how could I tell
her how much had been kept back? I didn't even know and I
certainly didn't desire to know. My own policy had ever been to
learn the least about poor Saltram's weaknesses--not to learn the
most. A great deal that I had in fact learned had been forced upon
me by his wife. There was something even irritating in Miss
Anvoy's crude conscientiousness, and I wondered why, after all, she
couldn't have let him alone and been content to entrust George
Gravener with the purchase of the good house. I was sure he would
have driven a bargain, got something excellent and cheap. I
laughed louder even than she, I temporised, I failed her; I told
her I must think over her case. I professed a horror of
responsibilities and twitted her with her own extravagant passion
for them. It wasn't really that I was afraid of the scandal, the
moral discredit for the Fund; what troubled me most was a feeling
of a different order. Of course, as the beneficiary of the Fund
was to enjoy a simple life-interest, as it was hoped that new
beneficiaries would arise and come up to new standards, it wouldn't
be a trifle that the first of these worthies shouldn't have been a
striking example of the domestic virtues. The Fund would start
badly, as it were, and the laurel would, in some respects at least,
scarcely be greener from the brows of the original wearer. That
idea, however, was at that hour, as I have hinted, not the source
of solicitude it ought perhaps to have been, for I felt less the
irregularity of Saltram's getting the money than that of this
exalted young woman's giving it up. I wanted her to have it for
herself, and I told her so before I went away. She looked graver
at this than she had looked at all, saying she hoped such a
preference wouldn't make me dishonest.

It made me, to begin with, very restless--made me, instead of going
straight to the station, fidget a little about that many-coloured
Common which gives Wimbledon horizons. There was a worry for me to
work off, or rather keep at a distance, for I declined even to
admit to myself that I had, in Miss Anvoy's phrase, been saddled
with it. What could have been clearer indeed than the attitude of
recognising perfectly what a world of trouble The Coxon Fund would
in future save us, and of yet liking better to face a continuance
of that trouble than see, and in fact contribute to, a deviation
from attainable bliss in the life of two other persons in whom I
was deeply interested? Suddenly, at the end of twenty