FullReads

“And you want me to decide between you? I decide in advance for Miss Anvoy.”

“In advance–that’s quite right. That’s how I decided when I proposed to her. But my story will interest you only so far as your mind isn’t made up.” Gravener puffed his cigarette a minute and then continued: “Are you familiar with the idea of the Endowment of Research?”

“Of Research?” I was at sea a moment.

“I give you Lady Coxon’s phrase. She has it on the brain.”

“She wishes to endow–?”

“Some earnest and ‘loyal’ seeker,” Gravener said. “It was a sketchy design of her late husband’s, and he handed it on to her; setting apart in his will a sum of money of which she was to enjoy the interest for life, but of which, should she eventually see her opportunity–the matter was left largely to her discretion–she would best honour his memory by determining the exemplary public use. This sum of money, no less than thirteen thousand pounds, was to be called The Coxon Fund; and poor Sir Gregory evidently proposed to himself that The Coxon Fund should cover his name with glory–be universally desired and admired. He left his wife a full declaration of his views, so far at least as that term may be applied to views vitiated by a vagueness really infantine. A little learning’s a dangerous thing, and a good citizen who happens to have been an ass is worse for a community than bad sewerage. He’s worst of all when he’s dead, because then he can’t be stopped. However, such as they were, the poor man’s aspirations are now in his wife’s bosom, or fermenting rather in her foolish brain: it lies with her to carry them out. But of course she must first catch her hare.”

“Her earnest loyal seeker?”

“The flower that blushes unseen for want of such a pecuniary independence as may aid the light that’s in it to shine upon the human race. The individual, in a word, who, having the rest of the machinery, the spiritual, the intellectual, is most hampered in his search.”

“His search for what?”

“For Moral Truth. That’s what Sir Gregory calls it.”

I burst out laughing. “Delightful munificent Sir Gregory! It’s a charming idea.”

“So Miss Anvoy thinks.”

“Has she a candidate for the Fund?”

“Not that I know of–and she’s perfectly reasonable about it. But Lady Coxon has put the matter before her, and we’ve naturally had a lot of talk.”

“Talk that, as you’ve so interestingly intimated, has landed you in a disagreement.”

“She considers there’s something in it,” Gravener said.

“And you consider there’s nothing?”

“It seems to me a piece of solemn twaddle–which can’t fail to be attended with consequences certainly grotesque and possibly immoral. To begin with, fancy constituting an endowment without establishing a tribunal–a bench of competent people, of judges.”

“The sole tribunal is Lady Coxon?”

“And any one she chooses to invite.”

“But she has invited you,” I noted.

“I’m not competent–I hate the thing. Besides, she hasn’t,” my friend went on. “The real history of the matter, I take it, is that the inspiration was originally Lady Coxon’s own, that she infected him with it, and that the flattering option left her is simply his tribute to her beautiful, her aboriginal enthusiasm. She came to England forty years ago, a thin transcendental Bostonian, and even her odd happy frumpy Clockborough marriage never really materialised her. She feels indeed that she has become very British–as if that, as a process, as a ‘Werden,’ as anything but an original sign of grace, were conceivable; but it’s precisely what makes her cling to the notion of the ‘Fund’–cling to it as to a link with the ideal.”

“How can she cling if she’s dying?”

“Do you mean how can she act in the matter?” Gravener asked. “That’s precisely the question. She can’t! As she has never yet caught her hare, never spied out her lucky impostor–how should she, with the life she has led?–her husband’s intention has come very near lapsing. His idea, to do him justice, was that it SHOULD lapse if exactly the right person, the perfect mixture of genius and chill penury, should fail to turn up. Ah the poor dear woman’s very particular–she says there must be no mistake.”