The Coxon Fund by Henry James

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 anyone 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 butan 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.”
    I found all this quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity. “And if she dies without doing anything, what becomes of the money?” I demanded.
    “It goes back to his family, if she hasn’t made some other disposition of it.”
    “She may do that then—she may divert it?”
    “Her hands are not tied. She has a grand discretion. The proof is that three months ago she offered to make the proceeds over to her niece.”
    “For Miss Anvoy’s own use?”
    “For Miss Anvoy’s own use—on the occasion of her prospective marriage. She was discouraged—the earnest seeker required so earnest a search. She was afraid of making a mistake; everyone she could think of seemed either not earnest enough or not poor enough. On the receipt of the first bad news about Mr. Anvoy’saffairs she proposed to Ruth to make the sacrifice for her. As the situation in New York got worse she repeated her proposal.”
    “Which Miss Anvoy declined?”
    “Except as a formal trust.”
    “You mean except as committing herself legally to place the money?”
    “On the head of the deserving object, the great man frustrated,” said Gravener. “She only consents to act in the spirit of Sir Gregory’s scheme.”
    “And you blame her for that?” I asked with some intensity.
    My tone couldn’t have been harsh, but he coloured a little and there was a queer light in his eye. “My dear fellow, if I ‘blamed’ the young lady I’m engaged to I shouldn’t immediately say it even to so old a friend as you.” I saw that some deep discomfort, some restless desire to be sided with, reassuringly, approvingly mirrored, had been at the bottom of his drifting so far, and I was genuinely touched by his confidence. It was inconsistent