Ralph, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling;after which he had found himself perched on a high stool in his father's bank.The responsibility and honour of such positions is not, I believe, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon other considerations: Ralph, indeed, who had very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walking about, at his work.To this exercise, however, he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for at the end of some eighteen months he had become aware of his being seriously out of health.He had caught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs and threw them into dire confusion.He had to give up work and apply, to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself.At first he slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common.This person, however, improved on acquaintance, and Ralph grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him.Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter- it usually struck him as his reputation for ordinary wit-devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of which note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of keeping the poor fellow alive.One of his lungs began to heal, the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather a dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which consumptives chiefly congregate.As he had grown extremely fond of London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that he cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ grateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand.He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when it had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.
A secret hoard of indifference- like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his first school outfit- came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught but that arduous game.As he said to himself, there was really nothing he had wanted very much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the field of valour.At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action.
Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation- a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist.He had good winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery.But this vision was dispelled some three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this history opens: he had on that occasion remained later than usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers.He arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between life and death.His convalescence was a miracle, but the first use he made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once.He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation.With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had never been sounded.He was far from the time when he had found it hard that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing himself; an idea none the less importunate for being vague and none the less delightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts of inspiring self-criticism.
His friends at present judged him more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their heads knowingly, that he would recover his health.His serenity was but the array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.
It was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the observed thing in itself that was mainly concerned in Ralph's quickly-stirred interest in the advent of a young lady who was evidently not insipid.If he was consideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough for a succession of days.It may be added, in summary fashion, that the imagination of loving- as distinguished from that of being loved- had still a place in his reduced sketch.He had only forbidden himself the riot of expression.However, he shouldn't inspire his cousin with a passion, nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one."And now tell me about the young lady," he said to his mother."What do you mean to do with her?"Mrs.Touchett was prompt."I mean to ask your father to invite her to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.""You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that," said Ralph."My father will ask her as a matter of course.""I don't know about that.She's my niece; she's not his.""Good Lord, dear mother; what a sense of property! That's all the more reason for his asking her.But after that- I mean after three months (for it's absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four paltry weeks)- what do you mean to do with her?""I mean to take her to Paris.I mean to get her clothing.""Ah yes, that's of course.But independently of that?""I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.""You don't rise above detail, dear mother," said Ralph."I should like to know what you mean to do with her in a general way.""My duty!" Mrs.Touchett declared."I suppose you pity her very much," she added.
