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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:23 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1032-h/1032-h.htm b/1032-h/1032-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c4b80c --- /dev/null +++ b/1032-h/1032-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2396 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Pupil, by Henry James</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 30%; } + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Pupil, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Pupil + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: December 24, 2010 [eBook #1032] +First released: July 27, 1997 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PUPIL*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1916 Le Roy Phillips edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>THE PUPIL</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY HENRY JAMES</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LE ROY PHILLIPS<br /> +BOSTON</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">This edition first published +1916</p> +<p style="text-align: center">The text follows that of the<br /> +Definitive Edition</p> +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed in Great Britain</i></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p>The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him +such an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money +to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the +aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating +his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance +in that direction than he could find an opening for in the manner +of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled +gants de Suède through a fat jewelled hand and, at once +pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the +thing he would have liked to hear. He would have liked to +hear the figure of his salary; but just as he was nervously about +to sound that note the little boy came back—the little boy +Mrs. Moreen had sent out of the room to fetch her fan. He +came back without the fan, only with the casual observation that +he couldn’t find it. As he dropped this cynical +confession he looked straight and hard at the candidate for the +honour of taking his education in hand. This personage +reflected somewhat grimly that the thing he should have to teach +his little charge would be to appear to address himself to his +mother when he spoke to her—especially not to make her such +an improper answer as that.</p> +<p>When Mrs. Moreen bethought herself of this pretext for getting +rid of their companion Pemberton supposed it was precisely to +approach the delicate subject of his remuneration. But it +had been only to say some things about her son that it was better +a boy of eleven shouldn’t catch. They were +extravagantly to his advantage save when she lowered her voice to +sigh, tapping her left side familiarly, “And all +overclouded by <i>this</i>, you know; all at the mercy of a +weakness—!” Pemberton gathered that the +weakness was in the region of the heart. He had known the +poor child was not robust: this was the basis on which he had +been invited to treat, through an English lady, an Oxford +acquaintance, then at Nice, who happened to know both his needs +and those of the amiable American family looking out for +something really superior in the way of a resident tutor.</p> +<p>The young man’s impression of his prospective pupil, who +had come into the room as if to see for himself the moment +Pemberton was admitted, was not quite the soft solicitation the +visitor had taken for granted. Morgan Moreen was somehow +sickly without being “delicate,” and that he looked +intelligent—it is true Pemberton wouldn’t have +enjoyed his being stupid—only added to the suggestion that, +as with his big mouth and big ears he really couldn’t be +called pretty, he might too utterly fail to please. +Pemberton was modest, was even timid; and the chance that his +small scholar might prove cleverer than himself had quite +figured, to his anxiety, among the dangers of an untried +experiment. He reflected, however, that these were risks +one had to run when one accepted a position, as it was called, in +a private family; when as yet one’s university honours had, +pecuniarily speaking, remained barren. At any rate when +Mrs. Moreen got up as to intimate that, since it was understood +he would enter upon his duties within the week she would let him +off now, he succeeded, in spite of the presence of the child, in +squeezing out a phrase about the rate of payment. It was +not the fault of the conscious smile which seemed a reference to +the lady’s expensive identity, it was not the fault of this +demonstration, which had, in a sort, both vagueness and point, if +the allusion didn’t sound rather vulgar. This was +exactly because she became still more gracious to reply: +“Oh I can assure you that all that will be quite +regular.”</p> +<p>Pemberton only wondered, while he took up his hat, what +“all that” was to amount to—people had such +different ideas. Mrs. Moreen’s words, however, seemed +to commit the family to a pledge definite enough to elicit from +the child a strange little comment in the shape of the mocking +foreign ejaculation “Oh la-la!”</p> +<p>Pemberton, in some confusion, glanced at him as he walked +slowly to the window with his back turned, his hands in his +pockets and the air in his elderly shoulders of a boy who +didn’t play. The young man wondered if he should be +able to teach him to play, though his mother had said it would +never do and that this was why school was impossible. Mrs. +Moreen exhibited no discomfiture; she only continued blandly: +“Mr. Moreen will be delighted to meet your wishes. As +I told you, he has been called to London for a week. As +soon as he comes back you shall have it out with him.”</p> +<p>This was so frank and friendly that the young man could only +reply, laughing as his hostess laughed: “Oh I don’t +imagine we shall have much of a battle.”</p> +<p>“They’ll give you anything you like,” the +boy remarked unexpectedly, returning from the window. +“We don’t mind what anything costs—we live +awfully well.”</p> +<p>“My darling, you’re too quaint!” his mother +exclaimed, putting out to caress him a practised but ineffectual +hand. He slipped out of it, but looked with intelligent +innocent eyes at Pemberton, who had already had time to notice +that from one moment to the other his small satiric face seemed +to change its time of life. At this moment it was +infantine, yet it appeared also to be under the influence of +curious intuitions and knowledges. Pemberton rather +disliked precocity and was disappointed to find gleams of it in a +disciple not yet in his teens. Nevertheless he divined on +the spot that Morgan wouldn’t prove a bore. He would +prove on the contrary a source of agitation. This idea held +the young man, in spite of a certain repulsion.</p> +<p>“You pompous little person! We’re not +extravagant!” Mrs. Moreen gaily protested, making +another unsuccessful attempt to draw the boy to her side. +“You must know what to expect,” she went on to +Pemberton.</p> +<p>“The less you expect the better!” her companion +interposed. “But we <i>are</i> people of +fashion.”</p> +<p>“Only so far as <i>you</i> make us so!” Mrs. +Moreen tenderly mocked. “Well then, on +Friday—don’t tell me you’re +superstitious—and mind you don’t fail us. Then +you’ll see us all. I’m so sorry the girls are +out. I guess you’ll like the girls. And, you +know, I’ve another son, quite different from this +one.”</p> +<p>“He tries to imitate me,” Morgan said to their +friend.</p> +<p>“He tries? Why he’s twenty years old!” +cried Mrs. Moreen.</p> +<p>“You’re very witty,” Pemberton remarked to +the child—a proposition his mother echoed with enthusiasm, +declaring Morgan’s sallies to be the delight of the +house.</p> +<p>The boy paid no heed to this; he only enquired abruptly of the +visitor, who was surprised afterwards that he hadn’t struck +him as offensively forward: “Do you <i>want</i> very much +to come?”</p> +<p>“Can you doubt it after such a description of what I +shall hear?” Pemberton replied. Yet he didn’t +want to come at all; he was coming because he had to go +somewhere, thanks to the collapse of his fortune at the end of a +year abroad spent on the system of putting his scant patrimony +into a single full wave of experience. He had had his full +wave but couldn’t pay the score at his inn. Moreover +he had caught in the boy’s eyes the glimpse of a far-off +appeal.</p> +<p>“Well, I’ll do the best I can for you,” said +Morgan; with which he turned away again. He passed out of +one of the long windows; Pemberton saw him go and lean on the +parapet of the terrace. He remained there while the young +man took leave of his mother, who, on Pemberton’s looking +as if he expected a farewell from him, interposed with: +“Leave him, leave him; he’s so strange!” +Pemberton supposed her to fear something he might say. +“He’s a genius—you’ll love him,” +she added. “He’s much the most interesting +person in the family.” And before he could invent +some civility to oppose to this she wound up with: “But +we’re all good, you know!”</p> +<p>“He’s a genius—you’ll love him!” +were words that recurred to our aspirant before the Friday, +suggesting among many things that geniuses were not invariably +loveable. However, it was all the better if there was an +element that would make tutorship absorbing: he had perhaps taken +too much for granted it would only disgust him. As he left +the villa after his interview he looked up at the balcony and saw +the child leaning over it. “We shall have great +larks!” he called up.</p> +<p>Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned: “By +the time you come back I shall have thought of something +witty!”</p> +<p>This made Pemberton say to himself “After all he’s +rather nice.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p>On the Friday he saw them all, as Mrs. Moreen had promised, +for her husband had come back and the girls and the other son +were at home. Mr. Moreen had a white moustache, a confiding +manner and, in his buttonhole, the ribbon of a foreign +order—bestowed, as Pemberton eventually learned, for +services. For what services he never clearly ascertained: +this was a point—one of a large number—that Mr. +Moreen’s manner never confided. What it emphatically +did confide was that he was even more a man of the world than you +might first make out. Ulick, the firstborn, was in visible +training for the same profession—under the disadvantage as +yet, however, of a buttonhole but feebly floral and a moustache +with no pretensions to type. The girls had hair and figures +and manners and small fat feet, but had never been out +alone. As for Mrs. Moreen Pemberton saw on a nearer view +that her elegance was intermittent and her parts didn’t +always match. Her husband, as she had promised, met with +enthusiasm Pemberton’s ideas in regard to a salary. +The young man had endeavoured to keep these stammerings modest, +and Mr. Moreen made it no secret that <i>he</i> found them +wanting in “style.” He further mentioned that +he aspired to be intimate with his children, to be their best +friend, and that he was always looking out for them. That +was what he went off for, to London and other places—to +look out; and this vigilance was the theory of life, as well as +the real occupation, of the whole family. They all looked +out, for they were very frank on the subject of its being +necessary. They desired it to be understood that they were +earnest people, and also that their fortune, though quite +adequate for earnest people, required the most careful +administration. Mr. Moreen, as the parent bird, sought +sustenance for the nest. Ulick invoked support mainly at +the club, where Pemberton guessed that it was usually served on +green cloth. The girls used to do up their hair and their +frocks themselves, and our young man felt appealed to to be glad, +in regard to Morgan’s education, that, though it must +naturally be of the best, it didn’t cost too much. +After a little he <i>was</i> glad, forgetting at times his own +needs in the interest inspired by the child’s character and +culture and the pleasure of making easy terms for him.</p> +<p>During the first weeks of their acquaintance Morgan had been +as puzzling as a page in an unknown language—altogether +different from the obvious little Anglo-Saxons who had +misrepresented childhood to Pemberton. Indeed the whole +mystic volume in which the boy had been amateurishly bound +demanded some practice in translation. To-day, after a +considerable interval, there is something phantasmagoria, like a +prismatic reflexion or a serial novel, in Pemberton’s +memory of the queerness of the Moreens. If it were not for +a few tangible tokens—a lock of Morgan’s hair cut by +his own hand, and the half-dozen letters received from him when +they were disjoined—the whole episode and the figures +peopling it would seem too inconsequent for anything but +dreamland. Their supreme quaintness was their +success—as it appeared to him for a while at the time; +since he had never seen a family so brilliantly equipped for +failure. Wasn’t it success to have kept him so +hatefully long? Wasn’t it success to have drawn him +in that first morning at déjeuner, the Friday he +came—it was enough to <i>make</i> one +superstitious—so that he utterly committed himself, and +this not by calculation or on a signal, but from a happy instinct +which made them, like a band of gipsies, work so neatly +together? They amused him as much as if they had really +been a band of gipsies. He was still young and had not seen +much of the world—his English years had been properly arid; +therefore the reversed conventions of the Moreens—for they +had <i>their</i> desperate proprieties—struck him as +topsy-turvy. He had encountered nothing like them at +Oxford; still less had any such note been struck to his younger +American ear during the four years at Yale in which he had richly +supposed himself to be reacting against a Puritan strain. +The reaction of the Moreens, at any rate, went ever so much +further. He had thought himself very sharp that first day +in hitting them all off in his mind with the +“cosmopolite” label. Later it seemed feeble and +colourless—confessedly helplessly provisional.</p> +<p>He yet when he first applied it felt a glow of joy—for +an instructor he was still empirical—rise from the +apprehension that living with them would really be to see +life. Their sociable strangeness was an intimation of +that—their chatter of tongues, their gaiety and good +humour, their infinite dawdling (they were always getting +themselves up, but it took forever, and Pemberton had once found +Mr. Moreen shaving in the drawing-room), their French, their +Italian and, cropping up in the foreign fluencies, their cold +tough slices of American. They lived on macaroni and +coffee—they had these articles prepared in +perfection—but they knew recipes for a hundred other +dishes. They overflowed with music and song, were always +humming and catching each other up, and had a sort of +professional acquaintance with Continental cities. They +talked of “good places” as if they had been +pickpockets or strolling players. They had at Nice a villa, +a carriage, a piano and a banjo, and they went to official +parties. They were a perfect calendar of the +“days” of their friends, which Pemberton knew them, +when they were indisposed, to get out of bed to go to, and which +made the week larger than life when Mrs. Moreen talked of them +with Paula and Amy. Their initiations gave their new inmate +at first an almost dazzling sense of culture. Mrs. Moreen +had translated something at some former period—an author +whom it made Pemberton feel borné never to have heard +of. They could imitate Venetian and sing Neapolitan, and +when they wanted to say something very particular communicated +with each other in an ingenious dialect of their own, an elastic +spoken cipher which Pemberton at first took for some patois of +one of their countries, but which he “caught on to” +as he would not have grasped provincial development of Spanish or +German.</p> +<p>“It’s the family +language—Ultramoreen,” Morgan explained to him drolly +enough; but the boy rarely condescended to use it himself, though +he dealt in colloquial Latin as if he had been a little +prelate.</p> +<p>Among all the “days” with which Mrs. +Moreen’s memory was taxed she managed to squeeze in one of +her own, which her friends sometimes forgot. But the house +drew a frequented air from the number of fine people who were +freely named there and from several mysterious men with foreign +titles and English clothes whom Morgan called the princes and +who, on sofas with the girls, talked French very +loud—though sometimes with some oddity of accent—as +if to show they were saying nothing improper. Pemberton +wondered how the princes could ever propose in that tone and so +publicly: he took for granted cynically that this was what was +desired of them. Then he recognised that even for the +chance of such an advantage Mrs. Moreen would never allow Paula +and Amy to receive alone. These young ladies were not at +all timid, but it was just the safeguards that made them so +candidly free. It was a houseful of Bohemians who wanted +tremendously to be Philistines.</p> +<p>In one respect, however, certainly they achieved no +rigour—they were wonderfully amiable and ecstatic about +Morgan. It was a genuine tenderness, an artless admiration, +equally strong in each. They even praised his beauty, which +was small, and were as afraid of him as if they felt him of finer +clay. They spoke of him as a little angel and a +prodigy—they touched on his want of health with long vague +faces. Pemberton feared at first an extravagance that might +make him hate the boy, but before this happened he had become +extravagant himself. Later, when he had grown rather to +hate the others, it was a bribe to patience for him that they +were at any rate nice about Morgan, going on tiptoe if they +fancied he was showing symptoms, and even giving up +somebody’s “day” to procure him a +pleasure. Mixed with this too was the oddest wish to make +him independent, as if they had felt themselves not good enough +for him. They passed him over to the new members of their +circle very much as if wishing to force some charity of adoption +on so free an agent and get rid of their own charge. They +were delighted when they saw Morgan take so to his kind +playfellow, and could think of no higher praise for the young +man. It was strange how they contrived to reconcile the +appearance, and indeed the essential fact, of adoring the child +with their eagerness to wash their hands of him. Did they +want to get rid of him before he should find them out? +Pemberton was finding them out month by month. The +boy’s fond family, however this might be, turned their +backs with exaggerated delicacy, as if to avoid the reproach of +interfering. Seeing in time how little he had in common +with them—it was by <i>them</i> he first observed it; they +proclaimed it with complete humility—his companion was +moved to speculate on the mysteries of transmission, the far +jumps of heredity. Where his detachment from most of the +things they represented had come from was more than an observer +could say—it certainly had burrowed under two or three +generations.</p> +<p>As for Pemberton’s own estimate of his pupil, it was a +good while before he got the point of view, so little had he been +prepared for it by the smug young barbarians to whom the +tradition of tutorship, as hitherto revealed to him, had been +adjusted. Morgan was scrappy and surprising, deficient in +many properties supposed common to the genus and abounding in +others that were the portion only of the supernaturally +clever. One day his friend made a great stride: it cleared +up the question to perceive that Morgan <i>was</i> supernaturally +clever and that, though the formula was temporarily meagre, this +would be the only assumption on which one could successfully deal +with him. He had the general quality of a child for whom +life had not been simplified by school, a kind of homebred +sensibility which might have been as bad for himself but was +charming for others, and a whole range of refinement and +perception—little musical vibrations as taking as picked-up +airs—begotten by wandering about Europe at the tail of his +migratory tribe. This might not have been an education to +recommend in advance, but its results with so special a subject +were as appreciable as the marks on a piece of fine +porcelain. There was at the same time in him a small strain +of stoicism, doubtless the fruit of having had to begin early to +bear pain, which counted for pluck and made it of less +consequence that he might have been thought at school rather a +polyglot little beast. Pemberton indeed quickly found +himself rejoicing that school was out of the question: in any +million of boys it was probably good for all but one, and Morgan +was that millionth. It would have made him comparative and +superior—it might have made him really require +kicking. Pemberton would try to be school himself—a +bigger seminary than five hundred grazing donkeys, so that, +winning no prizes, the boy would remain unconscious and +irresponsible and amusing—amusing, because, though life was +already intense in his childish nature, freshness still made +there a strong draught for jokes. It turned out that even +in the still air of Morgan’s various disabilities jokes +flourished greatly. He was a pale lean acute undeveloped +little cosmopolite, who liked intellectual gymnastics and who +also, as regards the behaviour of mankind, had noticed more +things than you might suppose, but who nevertheless had his +proper playroom of superstitions, where he smashed a dozen toys a +day.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p>At Nice once, toward evening, as the pair rested in the open +air after a walk, and looked over the sea at the pink western +lights, he said suddenly to his comrade: “Do you like it, +you know—being with us all in this intimate way?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, why should I stay if I +didn’t?”</p> +<p>“How do I know you’ll stay? I’m almost +sure you won’t, very long.”</p> +<p>“I hope you don’t mean to dismiss me,” said +Pemberton.</p> +<p>Morgan debated, looking at the sunset. “I think if +I did right I ought to.”</p> +<p>“Well, I know I’m supposed to instruct you in +virtue; but in that case don’t do right.”</p> +<p>“’You’re very +young—fortunately,” Morgan went on, turning to him +again.</p> +<p>“Oh yes, compared with you!”</p> +<p>“Therefore it won’t matter so much if you do lose +a lot of time.”</p> +<p>“That’s the way to look at it,” said +Pemberton accommodatingly.</p> +<p>They were silent a minute; after which the boy asked: +“Do you like my father and my mother very much?”</p> +<p>“Dear me, yes. They’re charming +people.”</p> +<p>Morgan received this with another silence; then unexpectedly, +familiarly, but at the same time affectionately, he remarked: +“You’re a jolly old humbug!”</p> +<p>For a particular reason the words made our young man change +colour. The boy noticed in an instant that he had turned +red, whereupon he turned red himself and pupil and master +exchanged a longish glance in which there was a consciousness of +many more things than are usually touched upon, even tacitly, in +such a relation. It produced for Pemberton an +embarrassment; it raised in a shadowy form a question—this +was the first glimpse of it—destined to play a singular +and, as he imagined, owing to the altogether peculiar conditions, +an unprecedented part in his intercourse with his little +companion. Later, when he found himself talking with the +youngster in a way in which few youngsters could ever have been +talked with, he thought of that clumsy moment on the bench at +Nice as the dawn of an understanding that had broadened. +What had added to the clumsiness then was that he thought it his +duty to declare to Morgan that he might abuse him, Pemberton, as +much as he liked, but must never abuse his parents. To this +Morgan had the easy retort that he hadn’t dreamed of +abusing them; which appeared to be true: it put Pemberton in the +wrong.</p> +<p>“Then why am I a humbug for saying <i>I</i> think them +charming?” the young man asked, conscious of a certain +rashness.</p> +<p>“Well—they’re not your parents.”</p> +<p>“They love you better than anything in the +world—never forget that,” said Pemberton.</p> +<p>“Is that why you like them so much?”</p> +<p>“They’re very kind to me,” Pemberton replied +evasively.</p> +<p>“You <i>are</i> a humbug!” laughed Morgan, passing +an arm into his tutor’s. He leaned against him +looking oft at the sea again and swinging his long thin legs.</p> +<p>“Don’t kick my shins,” said Pemberton while +he reflected “Hang it, I can’t complain of them to +the child!”</p> +<p>“There’s another reason, too,” Morgan went +on, keeping his legs still.</p> +<p>“Another reason for what?”</p> +<p>“Besides their not being your parents.”</p> +<p>“I don’t understand you,” said +Pemberton.</p> +<p>“Well, you will before long. All right!”</p> +<p>He did understand fully before long, but he made a fight even +with himself before he confessed it. He thought it the +oddest thing to have a struggle with the child about. He +wondered he didn’t hate the hope of the Moreens for +bringing the struggle on. But by the time it began any such +sentiment for that scion was closed to him. Morgan was a +special case, and to know him was to accept him on his own odd +terms. Pemberton had spent his aversion to special cases +before arriving at knowledge. When at last he did arrive +his quandary was great. Against every interest he had +attached himself. They would have to meet things +together. Before they went home that evening at Nice the +boy had said, clinging to his arm:</p> +<p>“Well, at any rate you’ll hang on to the +last.”</p> +<p>“To the last?”</p> +<p>“Till you’re fairly beaten.”</p> +<p>“<i>You</i> ought to be fairly beaten!” cried the +young man, drawing him closer.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p>A year after he had come to live with them Mr. and Mrs. Moreen +suddenly gave up the villa at Nice. Pemberton had got used +to suddenness, having seen it practised on a considerable scale +during two jerky little tours—one in Switzerland the first +summer, and the other late in the winter, when they all ran down +to Florence and then, at the end of ten days, liking it much less +than they had intended, straggled back in mysterious +depression. They had returned to Nice “for +ever,” as they said; but this didn’t prevent their +squeezing, one rainy muggy May night, into a second-class +railway-carriage—you could never tell by which class they +would travel—where Pemberton helped them to stow away a +wonderful collection of bundles and bags. The explanation +of this manœuvre was that they had determined to spend the +summer “in some bracing place”; but in Paris they +dropped into a small furnished apartment—a fourth floor in +a third-rate avenue, where there was a smell on the staircase and +the portier was hateful—and passed the next four months in +blank indigence.</p> +<p>The better part of this baffled sojourn was for the preceptor +and his pupil, who, visiting the Invalides and Notre Dame, the +Conciergerie and all the museums, took a hundred remunerative +rambles. They learned to know their Paris, which was +useful, for they came back another year for a longer stay, the +general character of which in Pemberton’s memory to-day +mixes pitiably and confusedly with that of the first. He +sees Morgan’s shabby knickerbockers—the everlasting +pair that didn’t match his blouse and that as he grew +longer could only grow faded. He remembers the particular +holes in his three or four pair of coloured stockings.</p> +<p>Morgan was dear to his mother, but he never was better dressed +than was absolutely necessary—partly, no doubt, by his own +fault, for he was as indifferent to his appearance as a German +philosopher. “My dear fellow, you <i>are</i> coming +to pieces,” Pemberton would say to him in sceptical +remonstrance; to which the child would reply, looking at him +serenely up and down: “My dear fellow, so are you! I +don’t want to cast you in the shade.” Pemberton +could have no rejoinder for this—the assertion so closely +represented the fact. If however the deficiencies of his +own wardrobe were a chapter by themselves he didn’t like +his little charge to look too poor. Later he used to say +“Well, if we’re poor, why, after all, shouldn’t +we look it?” and he consoled himself with thinking there +was something rather elderly and gentlemanly in Morgan’s +disrepair—it differed from the untidiness of the urchin who +plays and spoils his things. He could trace perfectly the +degrees by which, in proportion as her little son confined +himself to his tutor for society, Mrs. Moreen shrewdly forbore to +renew his garments. She did nothing that didn’t show, +neglected him because he escaped notice, and then, as he +illustrated this clever policy, discouraged at home his public +appearances. Her position was logical enough—those +members of her family who did show had to be showy.</p> +<p>During this period and several others Pemberton was quite +aware of how he and his comrade might strike people; wandering +languidly through the Jardin des Plantes as if they had nowhere +to go, sitting on the winter days in the galleries of the Louvre, +so splendidly ironical to the homeless, as if for the advantage +of the calorifère. They joked about it sometimes: it +was the sort of joke that was perfectly within the boy’s +compass. They figured themselves as part of the vast vague +hand-to-mouth multitude of the enormous city and pretended they +were proud of their position in it—it showed them +“such a lot of life” and made them conscious of a +democratic brotherhood. If Pemberton couldn’t feel a +sympathy in destitution with his small companion—for after +all Morgan’s fond parents would never have let him really +suffer—the boy would at least feel it with him, so it came +to the same thing. He used sometimes to wonder what people +would think they were—to fancy they were looked askance at, +as if it might be a suspected case of kidnapping. Morgan +wouldn’t be taken for a young patrician with a +preceptor—he wasn’t smart enough; though he might +pass for his companion’s sickly little brother. Now +and then he had a five-franc piece, and except once, when they +bought a couple of lovely neckties, one of which he made +Pemberton accept, they laid it out scientifically in old +books. This was sure to be a great day, always spent on the +quays, in a rummage of the dusty boxes that garnish the +parapets. Such occasions helped them to live, for their +books ran low very soon after the beginning of their +acquaintance. Pemberton had a good many in England, but he +was obliged to write to a friend and ask him kindly to get some +fellow to give him something for them.</p> +<p>If they had to relinquish that summer the advantage of the +bracing climate the young man couldn’t but suspect this +failure of the cup when at their very lips to have been the +effect of a rude jostle of his own. This had represented +his first blow-out, as he called it, with his patrons; his first +successful attempt—though there was little other success +about it—to bring them to a consideration of his impossible +position. As the ostensible eve of a costly journey the +moment had struck him as favourable to an earnest protest, the +presentation of an ultimatum. Ridiculous as it sounded, he +had never yet been able to compass an uninterrupted private +interview with the elder pair or with either of them +singly. They were always flanked by their elder children, +and poor Pemberton usually had his own little charge at his +side. He was conscious of its being a house in which the +surface of one’s delicacy got rather smudged; nevertheless +he had preserved the bloom of his scruple against announcing to +Mr. and Mrs. Moreen with publicity that he shouldn’t be +able to go on longer without a little money. He was still +simple enough to suppose Ulick and Paula and Amy might not know +that since his arrival he had only had a hundred and forty +francs; and he was magnanimous enough to wish not to compromise +their parents in their eyes. Mr. Moreen now listened to +him, as he listened to every one and to every thing, like a man +of the world, and seemed to appeal to him—though not of +course too grossly—to try and be a little more of one +himself. Pemberton recognised in fact the importance of the +character—from the advantage it gave Mr. Moreen. He +was not even confused or embarrassed, whereas the young man in +his service was more so than there was any reason for. +Neither was he surprised—at least any more than a gentleman +had to be who freely confessed himself a little +shocked—though not perhaps strictly at Pemberton.</p> +<p>“We must go into this, mustn’t we, dear?” he +said to his wife. He assured his young friend that the +matter should have his very best attention; and he melted into +space as elusively as if, at the door, he were taking an +inevitable but deprecatory precedence. When, the next +moment, Pemberton found himself alone with Mrs. Moreen it was to +hear her say “I see, I see”—stroking the +roundness of her chin and looking as if she were only hesitating +between a dozen easy remedies. If they didn’t make +their push Mr. Moreen could at least disappear for several +days. During his absence his wife took up the subject again +spontaneously, but her contribution to it was merely that she had +thought all the while they were getting on so beautifully. +Pemberton’s reply to this revelation was that unless they +immediately put down something on account he would leave them on +the spot and for ever. He knew she would wonder how he +would get away, and for a moment expected her to enquire. +She didn’t, for which he was almost grateful to her, so +little was he in a position to tell.</p> +<p>“You won’t, you <i>know</i> you +won’t—you’re too interested,” she +said. “You are interested, you know you are, you dear +kind man!” She laughed with almost condemnatory +archness, as if it were a reproach—though she +wouldn’t insist; and flirted a soiled pocket-handkerchief +at him.</p> +<p>Pemberton’s mind was fully made up to take his step the +following week. This would give him time to get an answer +to a letter he had despatched to England. If he did in the +event nothing of the sort—that is if he stayed another year +and then went away only for three months—it was not merely +because before the answer to his letter came (most unsatisfactory +when it did arrive) Mr. Moreen generously counted out to him, and +again with the sacrifice to “form” of a marked man of +the world, three hundred francs in elegant ringing gold. He +was irritated to find that Mrs. Moreen was right, that he +couldn’t at the pinch bear to leave the child. This +stood out clearer for the very reason that, the night of his +desperate appeal to his patrons, he had seen fully for the first +time where he was. Wasn’t it another proof of the +success with which those patrons practised their arts that they +had managed to avert for so long the illuminating flash? It +descended on our friend with a breadth of effect which perhaps +would have struck a spectator as comical, after he had returned +to his little servile room, which looked into a close court where +a bare dirty opposite wall took, with the sound of shrill +clatter, the reflexion of lighted back windows. He had +simply given himself away to a band of adventurers. The +idea, the word itself, wore a romantic horror for him—he +had always lived on such safe lines. Later it assumed a +more interesting, almost a soothing, sense: it pointed a moral, +and Pemberton could enjoy a moral. The Moreens were +adventurers not merely because they didn’t pay their debts, +because they lived on society, but because their whole view of +life, dim and confused and instinctive, like that of clever +colour-blind animals, was speculative and rapacious and +mean. Oh they were “respectable,” and that only +made them more immondes. The young man’s analysis, +while he brooded, put it at last very simply—they were +adventurers because they were toadies and snobs. That was +the completest account of them—it was the law of their +being. Even when this truth became vivid to their ingenious +inmate he remained unconscious of how much his mind had been +prepared for it by the extraordinary little boy who had now +become such a complication in his life. Much less could he +then calculate on the information he was still to owe the +extraordinary little boy.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p>But it was during the ensuing time that the real problem came +up—the problem of how far it was excusable to discuss the +turpitude of parents with a child of twelve, of thirteen, of +fourteen. Absolutely inexcusable and quite impossible it of +course at first appeared; and indeed the question didn’t +press for some time after Pemberton had received his three +hundred francs. They produced a temporary lull, a relief +from the sharpest pressure. The young man frugally amended +his wardrobe and even had a few francs in his pocket. He +thought the Moreens looked at him as if he were almost too smart, +as if they ought to take care not to spoil him. If Mr. +Moreen hadn’t been such a man of the world he would perhaps +have spoken of the freedom of such neckties on the part of a +subordinate. But Mr. Moreen was always enough a man of the +world to let things pass—he had certainly shown that. +It was singular how Pemberton guessed that Morgan, though saying +nothing about it, knew something had happened. But three +hundred francs, especially when one owed money, couldn’t +last for ever; and when the treasure was gone—the boy knew +when it had failed—Morgan did break ground. The party +had returned to Nice at the beginning of the winter, but not to +the charming villa. They went to an hotel, where they +stayed three months, and then moved to another establishment, +explaining that they had left the first because, after waiting +and waiting, they couldn’t get the rooms they wanted. +These apartments, the rooms they wanted, were generally very +splendid; but fortunately they never <i>could</i> get +them—fortunately, I mean, for Pemberton, who reflected +always that if they had got them there would have been a still +scantier educational fund. What Morgan said at last was +said suddenly, irrelevantly, when the moment came, in the middle +of a lesson, and consisted of the apparently unfeeling words: +“You ought to filer, you know—you really +ought.”</p> +<p>Pemberton stared. He had learnt enough French slang from +Morgan to know that to filer meant to cut sticks. “Ah +my dear fellow, don’t turn me off!”</p> +<p>Morgan pulled a Greek lexicon toward him—he used a +Greek-German—to look out a word, instead of asking it of +Pemberton. “You can’t go on like this, you +know.”</p> +<p>“Like what, my boy?”</p> +<p>“You know they don’t pay you up,” said +Morgan, blushing and turning his leaves.</p> +<p>“Don’t pay me?” Pemberton stared again and +feigned amazement. “What on earth put that into your +head?”</p> +<p>“It has been there a long time,” the boy replied +rummaging his book.</p> +<p>Pemberton was silent, then he went on: “I say, what are +you hunting for? They pay me beautifully.”</p> +<p>“I’m hunting for the Greek for awful +whopper,” Morgan dropped.</p> +<p>“Find that rather for gross impertinence and disabuse +your mind. What do I want of money?”</p> +<p>“Oh that’s another question!”</p> +<p>Pemberton wavered—he was drawn in different ways. +The severely correct thing would have been to tell the boy that +such a matter was none of his business and bid him go on with his +lines. But they were really too intimate for that; it was +not the way he was in the habit of treating him; there had been +no reason it should be. On the other hand Morgan had quite +lighted on the truth—he really shouldn’t be able to +keep it up much longer; therefore why not let him know +one’s real motive for forsaking him? At the same time +it wasn’t decent to abuse to one’s pupil the family +of one’s pupil; it was better to misrepresent than to do +that. So in reply to his comrade’s last exclamation +he just declared, to dismiss the subject, that he had received +several payments.</p> +<p>“I say—I say!” the boy ejaculated, +laughing.</p> +<p>“That’s all right,” Pemberton +insisted. “Give me your written rendering.”</p> +<p>Morgan pushed a copybook across the table, and he began to +read the page, but with something running in his head that made +it no sense. Looking up after a minute or two he found the +child’s eyes fixed on him and felt in them something +strange. Then Morgan said: “I’m not afraid of +the stern reality.”</p> +<p>“I haven’t yet seen the thing you <i>are</i> +afraid of—I’ll do you that justice!”</p> +<p>This came out with a jump—it was perfectly +true—and evidently gave Morgan pleasure. +“I’ve thought of it a long time,” he presently +resumed.</p> +<p>“Well, don’t think of it any more.”</p> +<p>The boy appeared to comply, and they had a comfortable and +even an amusing hour. They had a theory that they were very +thorough, and yet they seemed always to be in the amusing part of +lessons, the intervals between the dull dark tunnels, where there +were waysides and jolly views. Yet the morning was brought +to a violent as end by Morgan’s suddenly leaning his arms +on the table, burying his head in them and bursting into tears: +at which Pemberton was the more startled that, as it then came +over him, it was the first time he had ever seen the boy cry and +that the impression was consequently quite awful.</p> +<p>The next day, after much thought, he took a decision and, +believing it to be just, immediately acted on it. He +cornered Mr. and Mrs. Moreen again and let them know that if on +the spot they didn’t pay him all they owed him he +wouldn’t only leave their house but would tell Morgan +exactly what had brought him to it.</p> +<p>“Oh you <i>haven’t</i> told him?” cried Mrs. +Moreen with a pacifying hand on her well-dressed bosom.</p> +<p>“Without warning you? For what do you take +me?” the young man returned.</p> +<p>Mr. and Mrs. Moreen looked at each other; he could see that +they appreciated, as tending to their security, his superstition +of delicacy, and yet that there was a certain alarm in their +relief. “My dear fellow,” Mr. Moreen demanded, +“what use can you have, leading the quiet life we all do, +for such a lot of money?”—a question to which +Pemberton made no answer, occupied as he was in noting that what +passed in the mind of his patrons was something like: “Oh +then, if we’ve felt that the child, dear little angel, has +judged us and how he regards us, and we haven’t been +betrayed, he must have guessed—and in short it’s +<i>general</i>!” an inference that rather stirred up Mr. +and Mrs. Moreen, as Pemberton had desired it should. At the +same time, if he had supposed his threat would do something +towards bringing them round, he was disappointed to find them +taking for granted—how vulgar their perception <i>had</i> +been!—that he had already given them away. There was +a mystic uneasiness in their parental breasts, and that had been +the inferior sense of it. None the less however, his threat +did touch them; for if they had escaped it was only to meet a new +danger. Mr. Moreen appealed to him, on every precedent, as +a man of the world; but his wife had recourse, for the first time +since his domestication with them, to a fine hauteur, reminding +him that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts that +protected her against gross misrepresentation.</p> +<p>“I should misrepresent you grossly if I accused you of +common honesty!” our friend replied; but as he closed the +door behind him sharply, thinking he had not done himself much +good, while Mr. Moreen lighted another cigarette, he heard his +hostess shout after him more touchingly:</p> +<p>“Oh you do, you <i>do</i>, put the knife to one’s +throat!”</p> +<p>The next morning, very early, she came to his room. He +recognised her knock, but had no hope she brought him money; as +to which he was wrong, for she had fifty francs in her +hand. She squeezed forward in her dressing-gown, and he +received her in his own, between his bath-tub and his bed. +He had been tolerably schooled by this time to the “foreign +ways” of his hosts. Mrs. Moreen was ardent, and when +she was ardent she didn’t care what she did; so she now sat +down on his bed, his clothes being on the chairs, and, in her +preoccupation, forgot, as she glanced round, to be ashamed of +giving him such a horrid room. What Mrs. Moreen’s +ardour now bore upon was the design of persuading him that in the +first place she was very good-natured to bring him fifty francs, +and that in the second, if he would only see it, he was really +too absurd to expect to be paid. Wasn’t he paid +enough without perpetual money—wasn’t he paid by the +comfortable luxurious home he enjoyed with them all, without a +care, an anxiety, a solitary want? Wasn’t he sure of +his position, and wasn’t that everything to a young man +like him, quite unknown, with singularly little to show, the +ground of whose exorbitant pretensions it had never been easy to +discover? Wasn’t he paid above all by the sweet +relation he had established with Morgan—quite ideal as from +master to pupil—and by the simple privilege of knowing and +living with so amazingly gifted a child; than whom really (and +she meant literally what she said) there was no better company in +Europe? Mrs. Moreen herself took to appealing to him as a +man of the world; she said “Voyons, mon cher,” and +“My dear man, look here now”; and urged him to be +reasonable, putting it before him that it was truly a chance for +him. She spoke as if, according as he <i>should</i> be +reasonable, he would prove himself worthy to be her son’s +tutor and of the extraordinary confidence they had placed in +him.</p> +<p>After all, Pemberton reflected, it was only a difference of +theory and the theory didn’t matter much. They had +hitherto gone on that of remunerated, as now they would go on +that of gratuitous, service; but why should they have so many +words about it? Mrs. Moreen at all events continued to be +convincing; sitting there with her fifty francs she talked and +reiterated, as women reiterate, and bored and irritated him, +while he leaned against the wall with his hands in the pockets of +his wrapper, drawing it together round his legs and looking over +the head of his visitor at the grey negations of his +window. She wound up with saying: “You see I bring +you a definite proposal.”</p> +<p>“A definite proposal?”</p> +<p>“To make our relations regular, as it were—to put +them on a comfortable footing.”</p> +<p>“I see—it’s a system,” said +Pemberton. “A kind of organised blackmail.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen bounded up, which was exactly what he +wanted. “What do you mean by that?”</p> +<p>“You practise on one’s fears—one’s +fears about the child if one should go away.”</p> +<p>“And pray what would happen to him in that event?” +she demanded, with majesty.</p> +<p>“Why he’d be alone with <i>you</i>.”</p> +<p>“And pray with whom <i>should</i> a child be but with +those whom he loves most?”</p> +<p>“If you think that, why don’t you dismiss +me?”</p> +<p>“Do you pretend he loves you more than he loves +<i>us</i>?” cried Mrs. Moreen.</p> +<p>“I think he ought to. I make sacrifices for +him. Though I’ve heard of those <i>you</i> make I +don’t see them.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen stared a moment; then with emotion she grasped her +inmate’s hand. “<i>Will</i> you make +it—the sacrifice?”</p> +<p>He burst out laughing. “I’ll see. +I’ll do what I can. I’ll stay a little +longer. Your calculation’s just—I <i>do</i> +hate intensely to give him up; I’m fond of him and he +thoroughly interests me, in spite of the inconvenience I +suffer. You know my situation perfectly. I +haven’t a penny in the world and, occupied as you see me +with Morgan, am unable to earn money.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen tapped her undressed arm with her folded +bank-note. “Can’t you write articles? +Can’t you translate as <i>I</i> do?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know about translating; it’s +wretchedly paid.”</p> +<p>“I’m glad to earn what I can,” said Mrs. +Moreen with prodigious virtue.</p> +<p>“You ought to tell me who you do it for.” +Pemberton paused a moment, and she said nothing; so he added: +“I’ve tried to turn off some little sketches, but the +magazines won’t have them—they’re declined with +thanks.”</p> +<p>“You see then you’re not such a +phœnix,” his visitor pointedly smiled—“to +pretend to abilities you’re sacrificing for our +sake.”</p> +<p>“I haven’t time to do things properly,” he +ruefully went on. Then as it came over him that he was +almost abjectly good-natured to give these explanations he added: +“If I stay on longer it must be on one condition—that +Morgan shall know distinctly on what footing I am.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen demurred. “Surely you don’t want +to show off to a child?”</p> +<p>“To show <i>you</i> off, do you mean?”</p> +<p>Again she cast about, but this time it was to produce a still +finer flower. “And <i>you</i> talk of +blackmail!”</p> +<p>“You can easily prevent it,” said Pemberton.</p> +<p>“And <i>you</i> talk of practising on fears,” she +bravely pushed on.</p> +<p>“Yes, there’s no doubt I’m a great +scoundrel.”</p> +<p>His patroness met his eyes—it was clear she was in +straits. Then she thrust out her money at him. +“Mr. Moreen desired me to give you this on +account.”</p> +<p>“I’m much obliged to Mr. Moreen, but we +<i>have</i> no account.”</p> +<p>“You won’t take it?”</p> +<p>“That leaves me more free,” said Pemberton.</p> +<p>“To poison my darling’s mind?” groaned Mrs. +Moreen.</p> +<p>“Oh your darling’s mind—!” the young +man laughed.</p> +<p>She fixed him a moment, and he thought she was going to break +out tormentedly, pleadingly: “For God’s sake, tell me +what <i>is</i> in it!” But she checked this +impulse—another was stronger. She pocketed the +money—the crudity of the alternative was comical—and +swept out of the room with the desperate concession: “You +may tell him any horror you like!”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p>A couple of days after this, during which he had failed to +profit by so free a permission, he had been for a quarter of an +hour walking with his charge in silence when the boy became +sociable again with the remark: “I’ll tell you how I +know it; I know it through Zénobie.”</p> +<p>“Zénobie? Who in the world is +<i>she</i>?”</p> +<p>“A nurse I used to have—ever so many years +ago. A charming woman. I liked her awfully, and she +liked me.”</p> +<p>“There’s no accounting for tastes. What is +it you know through her?”</p> +<p>“Why what their idea is. She went away because +they didn’t fork out. She did like me awfully, and +she stayed two years. She told me all about it—that +at last she could never get her wages. As soon as they saw +how much she liked me they stopped giving her anything. +They thought she’d stay for nothing—just +<i>because</i>, don’t you know?” And Morgan had +a queer little conscious lucid look. “She did stay +ever so long—as long an she could. She was only a +poor girl. She used to send money to her mother. At +last she couldn’t afford it any longer, and went away in a +fearful rage one night—I mean of course in a rage against +<i>them</i>. She cried over me tremendously, she hugged me +nearly to death. She told me all about it,” the boy +repeated. “She told me it was their idea. So I +guessed, ever so long ago, that they have had the same idea with +you.”</p> +<p>“Zénobie was very sharp,” said +Pemberton. “And she made you so.”</p> +<p>“Oh that wasn’t Zénobie; that was +nature. And experience!” Morgan laughed.</p> +<p>“Well, Zénobie was a part of your +experience.”</p> +<p>“Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!” the +boy wisely sighed. “And I’m part of +yours.”</p> +<p>“A very important part. But I don’t see how +you know that I’ve been treated like +Zénobie.”</p> +<p>“Do you take me for the biggest dunce you’ve +known?” Morgan asked. “Haven’t I been +conscious of what we’ve been through together?”</p> +<p>“What we’ve been through?”</p> +<p>“Our privations—our dark days.”</p> +<p>“Oh our days have been bright enough.”</p> +<p>Morgan went on in silence for a moment. Then he said: +“My dear chap, you’re a hero!”</p> +<p>“Well, you’re another!” Pemberton +retorted.</p> +<p>“No I’m not, but I ain’t a baby. I +won’t stand it any longer. You must get some +occupation that pays. I’m ashamed, I’m +ashamed!” quavered the boy with a ring of passion, like +some high silver note from a small cathedral cloister, that +deeply touched his friend.</p> +<p>“We ought to go off and live somewhere together,” +the young man said.</p> +<p>“I’ll go like a shot if you’ll take +me.”</p> +<p>“I’d get some work that would keep us both +afloat,” Pemberton continued.</p> +<p>“So would I. Why shouldn’t I work? I +ain’t such a beastly little muff as that comes +to.”</p> +<p>“The difficulty is that your parents wouldn’t hear +of it. They’d never part with you; they worship the +ground you tread on. Don’t you see the proof of +it?” Pemberton developed. “They don’t +dislike me; they wish me no harm; they’re very amiable +people; but they’re perfectly ready to expose me to any +awkwardness in life for your sake.”</p> +<p>The silence in which Morgan received his fond sophistry struck +Pemberton somehow as expressive. After a moment the child +repeated: “You are a hero!” Then he added: +“They leave me with you altogether. You’ve all +the responsibility. They put me off on you from morning +till night. Why then should they object to my taking up +with you completely? I’d help you.”</p> +<p>“They’re not particularly keen about my being +helped, and they delight in thinking of you as +<i>theirs</i>. They’re tremendously proud of +you.”</p> +<p>“I’m not proud of <i>them</i>. But you know +that,” Morgan returned.</p> +<p>“Except for the little matter we speak of they’re +charming people,” said Pemberton, not taking up the point +made for his intelligence, but wondering greatly at the +boy’s own, and especially at this fresh reminder of +something he had been conscious of from the first—the +strangest thing in his friend’s large little composition, a +temper, a sensibility, even a private ideal, which made him as +privately disown the stuff his people were made of. Morgan +had in secret a small loftiness which made him acute about +betrayed meanness; as well as a critical sense for the manners +immediately surrounding him that was quite without precedent in a +juvenile nature, especially when one noted that it had not made +this nature “old-fashioned,” as the word is of +children—quaint or wizened or offensive. It was as if +he had been a little gentleman and had paid the penalty by +discovering that he was the only such person in his family. +This comparison didn’t make him vain, but it could make him +melancholy and a trifle austere. While Pemberton guessed at +these dim young things, shadows of shadows, he was partly drawn +on and partly checked, as for a scruple, by the charm of +attempting to sound the little cool shallows that were so quickly +growing deeper. When he tried to figure to himself the +morning twilight of childhood, so as to deal with it safely, he +saw it was never fixed, never arrested, that ignorance, at the +instant he touched it, was already flushing faintly into +knowledge, that there was nothing that at a given moment you +could say an intelligent child didn’t know. It seemed +to him that he himself knew too much to imagine Morgan’s +simplicity and too little to disembroil his tangle.</p> +<p>The boy paid no heed to his last remark; he only went on: +“I’d have spoken to them about their idea, as I call +it, long ago, if I hadn’t been sure what they’d +say.”</p> +<p>“And what would they say?”</p> +<p>“Just what they said about what poor Zénobie told +me—that it was a horrid dreadful story, that they had paid +her every penny they owed her.”</p> +<p>“Well, perhaps they had,” said Pemberton.</p> +<p>“Perhaps they’ve paid you!”</p> +<p>“Let us pretend they have, and n’en parlons +plus.”</p> +<p>“They accused her of lying and +cheating”—Morgan stuck to historic truth. +“That’s why I don’t want to speak to +them.”</p> +<p>“Lest they should accuse me, too?” To this +Morgan made no answer, and his companion, looking down at +him—the boy turned away his eyes, which had +filled—saw what he couldn’t have trusted himself to +utter. “You’re right. Don’t worry +them,” Pemberton pursued. “Except for that, +they <i>are</i> charming people.”</p> +<p>“Except for <i>their</i> lying and <i>their</i> +cheating?”</p> +<p>“I say—I say!” cried Pemberton, imitating a +little tone of the lad’s which was itself an imitation.</p> +<p>“We must be frank, at the last; we <i>must</i> come to +an understanding,” said Morgan with the importance of the +small boy who lets himself think he is arranging great +affairs—almost playing at shipwreck or at Indians. +“I know all about everything.”</p> +<p>“I dare say your father has his reasons,” +Pemberton replied, but too vaguely, as he was aware.</p> +<p>“For lying and cheating?”</p> +<p>“For saving and managing and turning his means to the +best account. He has plenty to do with his money. +You’re an expensive family.”</p> +<p>“Yes, I’m very expensive,” Morgan concurred +in a manner that made his preceptor burst out laughing.</p> +<p>“He’s saving for <i>you</i>,” said +Pemberton. “They think of you in everything they +do.”</p> +<p>“He might, while he’s about it, save a +little—” The boy paused, and his friend waited +to hear what. Then Morgan brought out oddly: “A +little reputation.”</p> +<p>“Oh there’s plenty of that. That’s all +right!”</p> +<p>“Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. +The people they know are awful.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean the princes? We mustn’t abuse +the princes.”</p> +<p>“Why not? They haven’t married +Paula—they haven’t married Amy. They only clean +out Ulick.”</p> +<p>“You <i>do</i> know everything!” Pemberton +declared.</p> +<p>“No, I don’t, after all. I don’t know +what they live on, or how they live, or <i>why</i> they +live! What have they got and how did they get it? Are +they rich, are they poor, or have they a modeste aisance? +Why are they always chiveying me about—living one year like +ambassadors and the next like paupers? Who are they, any +way, and what are they? I’ve thought of all +that—I’ve thought of a lot of things. +They’re so beastly worldly. That’s what I hate +most—oh, I’ve <i>seen</i> it! All they care +about is to make an appearance and to pass for something or +other. What the dickens do they want to pass for? +What <i>do</i> they, Mr. Pemberton?”</p> +<p>“You pause for a reply,” said Pemberton, treating +the question as a joke, yet wondering too and greatly struck with +his mate’s intense if imperfect vision. “I +haven’t the least idea.”</p> +<p>“And what good does it do? Haven’t I seen +the way people treat them—the ‘nice’ people, +the ones they want to know? They’ll take anything +from them—they’ll lie down and be trampled on. +The nice ones hate that—they just sicken them. +You’re the only really nice person we know.”</p> +<p>“Are you sure? They don’t lie down for +me!”</p> +<p>“Well, you shan’t lie down for them. +You’ve got to go—that’s what you’ve got +to do,” said Morgan.</p> +<p>“And what will become of you?”</p> +<p>“Oh I’m growing up. I shall get off before +long. I’ll see you later.”</p> +<p>“You had better let me finish you,” Pemberton +urged, lending himself to the child’s strange +superiority.</p> +<p>Morgan stopped in their walk, looking up at him. He had +to look up much less than a couple of years before—he had +grown, in his loose leanness, so long and high. +“Finish me?” he echoed.</p> +<p>“There are such a lot of jolly things we can do together +yet. I want to turn you out—I want you to do me +credit.”</p> +<p>Morgan continued to look at him. “To give you +credit—do you mean?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, you’re too clever to +live.”</p> +<p>“That’s just what I’m afraid you +think. No, no; it isn’t fair—I can’t +endure it. We’ll separate next week. The sooner +it’s over the sooner to sleep.”</p> +<p>“If I hear of anything—any other chance—I +promise to go,” Pemberton said.</p> +<p>Morgan consented to consider this. “But +you’ll be honest,” he demanded; “you +won’t pretend you haven’t heard?”</p> +<p>“I’m much more likely to pretend I +have.”</p> +<p>“But what can you hear of, this way, stuck in a hole +with us? You ought to be on the spot, to go to +England—you ought to go to America.”</p> +<p>“One would think you were <i>my</i> tutor!” said +Pemberton.</p> +<p>Morgan walked on and after a little had begun again: +“Well, now that you know I know and that we look at the +facts and keep nothing back—it’s much more +comfortable, isn’t it?”</p> +<p>“My dear boy, it’s so amusing, so interesting, +that it will surely be quite impossible for me to forego such +hours as these.”</p> +<p>This made Morgan stop once more. “You <i>do</i> +keep something back. Oh you’re not +straight—<i>I</i> am!”</p> +<p>“How am I not straight?”</p> +<p>“Oh you’ve got your idea!”</p> +<p>“My idea?”</p> +<p>“Why that I probably shan’t make old—make +older—bones, and that you can stick it out till I’m +removed.”</p> +<p>“You <i>are</i> too clever to live!” Pemberton +repeated.</p> +<p>“I call it a mean idea,” Morgan pursued. +“But I shall punish you by the way I hang on.”</p> +<p>“Look out or I’ll poison you!” Pemberton +laughed.</p> +<p>“I’m stronger and better every year. +Haven’t you noticed that there hasn’t been a doctor +near me since you came?”</p> +<p>“<i>I’m</i> your doctor,” said the young +man, taking his arm and drawing him tenderly on again.</p> +<p>Morgan proceeded and after a few steps gave a sigh of mingled +weariness and relief. “Ah now that we look at the +facts it’s all right!”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p>They looked at the facts a good deal after this and one of the +first consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck it +out, in his friend’s parlance, for the purpose. +Morgan made the facts so vivid and so droll, and at the same time +so bald and so ugly, that there was fascination in talking them +over with him, just as there would have been heartlessness in +leaving him alone with them. Now that the pair had such +perceptions in common it was useless for them to pretend they +didn’t judge such people; but the very judgement and the +exchange of perceptions created another tie. Morgan had +never been so interesting as now that he himself was made plainer +by the sidelight of these confidences. What came out in it +most was the small fine passion of his pride. He had plenty +of that, Pemberton felt—so much that one might perhaps +wisely wish for it some early bruises. He would have liked +his people to have a spirit and had waked up to the sense of +their perpetually eating humble-pie. His mother would +consume any amount, and his father would consume even more than +his mother. He had a theory that Ulick had wriggled out of +an “affair” at Nice: there had once been a flurry at +home, a regular panic, after which they all went to bed and took +medicine, not to be accounted for on any other supposition. +Morgan had a romantic imagination, led by poetry and history, and +he would have liked those who “bore his +name”—as he used to say to Pemberton with the humour +that made his queer delicacies manly—to carry themselves +with an air. But their one idea was to get in with people +who didn’t want them and to take snubs as it they were +honourable scars. Why people didn’t want them more he +didn’t know—that was people’s own affair; after +all they weren’t superficially repulsive, they were a +hundred times cleverer than most of the dreary grandees, the +“poor swells” they rushed about Europe to catch up +with. “After all they <i>are</i> amusing—they +are!” he used to pronounce with the wisdom of the +ages. To which Pemberton always replied: +“Amusing—the great Moreen troupe? Why +they’re altogether delightful; and if it weren’t for +the hitch that you and I (feeble performers!) make in the +ensemble they’d carry everything before them.”</p> +<p>What the boy couldn’t get over was the fact that this +particular blight seemed, in a tradition of self-respect, so +undeserved and so arbitrary. No doubt people had a right to +take the line they liked; but why should his people have liked +the line of pushing and toadying and lying and cheating? +What had their forefathers—all decent folk, so far as he +knew—done to them, or what had he done to them? Who +had poisoned their blood with the fifth-rate social ideal, the +fixed idea of making smart acquaintances and getting into the +monde chic, especially when it was foredoomed to failure and +exposure? They showed so what they were after; that was +what made the people they wanted not want <i>them</i>. And +never a wince for dignity, never a throb of shame at looking each +other in the face, never any independence or resentment or +disgust. If his father or his brother would only knock some +one down once or twice a year! Clever as they were they +never guessed the impression they made. They were +good-natured, yes—as good-natured as Jews at the doors of +clothing-shops! But was that the model one wanted +one’s family to follow? Morgan had dim memories of an +old grandfather, the maternal, in New York, whom he had been +taken across the ocean at the age of five to see: a gentleman +with a high neck-cloth and a good deal of pronunciation, who wore +a dress-coat in the morning, which made one wonder what he wore +in the evening, and had, or was supposed to have +“property” and something to do with the Bible +Society. It couldn’t have been but that he was a good +type. Pemberton himself remembered Mrs. Clancy, a widowed +sister of Mr. Moreen’s, who was as irritating as a moral +tale and had paid a fortnight’s visit to the family at Nice +shortly after he came to live with them. She was +“pure and refined,” as Amy said over the banjo, and +had the air of not knowing what they meant when they talked, and +of keeping something rather important back. Pemberton +judged that what she kept back was an approval of many of their +ways; therefore it was to be supposed that she too was of a good +type, and that Mr. and Mrs. Moreen and Ulick and Paula and Amy +might easily have been of a better one if they would.</p> +<p>But that they wouldn’t was more and more perceptible +from day to day. They continued to “chivey,” as +Morgan called it, and in due time became aware of a variety of +reasons for proceeding to Venice. They mentioned a great +many of them—they were always strikingly frank and had the +brightest friendly chatter, at the late foreign breakfast in +especial, before the ladies had made up their faces, when they +leaned their arms on the table, had something to follow the +demitasse, and, in the heat of familiar discussion as to what +they “really ought” to do, fell inevitably into the +languages in which they could tutoyer. Even Pemberton liked +them then; he could endure even Ulick when he heard him give his +little flat voice for the “sweet sea-city.” +That was what made him have a sneaking kindness for +them—that they were so out of the workaday world and kept +him so out of it. The summer had waned when, with cries of +ecstasy, they all passed out on the balcony that overhung the +Grand Canal. The sunsets then were splendid and the +Dorringtons had arrived. The Dorringtons were the only +reason they hadn’t talked of at breakfast; but the reasons +they didn’t talk of at breakfast always came out in the +end. The Dorringtons on the other hand came out very +little; or else when they did they stayed—as was +natural—for hours, during which periods Mrs. Moreen and the +girls sometimes called at their hotel (to see if they had +returned) as many as three times running. The gondola was +for the ladies, as in Venice too there were “days,” +which Mrs. Moreen knew in their order an hour after she +arrived. She immediately took one herself, to which the +Dorringtons never came, though on a certain occasion when +Pemberton and his pupil were together at St. +Mark’s—where, taking the best walks they had ever had +and haunting a hundred churches, they spent a great deal of +time—they saw the old lord turn up with Mr. Moreen and +Ulick, who showed him the dim basilica as if it belonged to +them. Pemberton noted how much less, among its curiosities, +Lord Dorrington carried himself as a man of the world; wondering +too whether, for such services, his companions took a fee from +him. The autumn at any rate waned, the Dorringtons +departed, and Lord Verschoyle, the eldest son, had proposed +neither for Amy nor for Paula.</p> +<p>One sad November day, while the wind roared round the old +palace and the rain lashed the lagoon, Pemberton, for exercise +and even somewhat for warmth—the Moreens were horribly +frugal about fires; it was a cause of suffering to their +inmate—walked up and down the big bare sala with his +pupil. The scagliola floor was cold, the high battered +casements shook in the storm, and the stately decay of the place +was unrelieved by a particle of furniture. +Pemberton’s spirits were low, and it came over him that the +fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of +desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to draw +through the comfortless hall. Mr. Moreen and Ulick were in +the Piazza, looking out for something, strolling drearily, in +mackintoshes, under the arcades; but still, in spite of +mackintoshes, unmistakeable men of the world. Paula and Amy +were in bed—it might have been thought they were staying +there to keep warm. Pemberton looked askance at the boy at +his side, to see to what extent he was conscious of these dark +omens. But Morgan, luckily for him, was now mainly +conscious of growing taller and stronger and indeed of being in +his fifteenth year. This fact was intensely interesting to +him and the basis of a private theory—which, however, he +had imparted to his tutor—that in a little while he should +stand on his own feet. He considered that the situation +would change—that in short he should be +“finished,” grown up, producible in the world of +affairs and ready to prove himself of sterling ability. +Sharply as he was capable at times of analysing, as he called it, +his life, there were happy hours when he remained, as he also +called it—and as the name, really, of their right +ideal—“jolly” superficial; the proof of which +was his fundamental assumption that he should presently go to +Oxford, to Pemberton’s college, and, aided and abetted by +Pemberton, do the most wonderful things. It depressed the +young man to see how little in such a project he took account of +ways and means: in other connexions he mostly kept to the +measure. Pemberton tried to imagine the Moreens at Oxford +and fortunately failed; yet unless they were to adopt it as a +residence there would be no modus vivendi for Morgan. How +could he live without an allowance, and where was the allowance +to come from? He, Pemberton, might live on Morgan; but how +could Morgan live on <i>him</i>? What was to become of him +anyhow? Somehow the fact that he was a big boy now, with +better prospects of health, made the question of his future more +difficult. So long as he was markedly frail the great +consideration he inspired seemed enough of an answer to it. +But at the bottom of Pemberton’s heart was the recognition +of his probably being strong enough to live and not yet strong +enough to struggle or to thrive. Morgan himself at any rate +was in the first flush of the rosiest consciousness of +adolescence, so that the beating of the tempest seemed to him +after all but the voice of life and the challenge of fate. +He had on his shabby little overcoat, with the collar up, but was +enjoying his walk.</p> +<p>It was interrupted at last by the appearance of his mother at +the end of the sala. She beckoned him to come to her, and +while Pemberton saw him, complaisant, pass down the long vista +and over the damp false marble, he wondered what was in the +air. Mrs. Moreen said a word to the boy and made him go +into the room she had quitted. Then, having closed the door +after him, she directed her steps swiftly to Pemberton. +There was something in the air, but his wildest flight of fancy +wouldn’t have suggested what it proved to be. She +signified that she had made a pretext to get Morgan out of the +way, and then she enquired—without hesitation—if the +young man could favour her with the loan of three louis. +While, before bursting into a laugh, he stared at her with +surprise, she declared that she was awfully pressed for the +money; she was desperate for it—it would save her life.</p> +<p>“Dear lady, c’est trop fort!” +Pemberton laughed in the manner and with the borrowed grace of +idiom that marked the best colloquial, the best anecdotic, +moments of his friends themselves. “Where in the +world do you suppose I should get three louis, du train dont vous +allez?”</p> +<p>“I thought you worked—wrote things. +Don’t they pay you?”</p> +<p>“Not a penny.”</p> +<p>“Are you such a fool as to work for nothing?”</p> +<p>“You ought surely to know that.”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen stared, then she coloured a little. +Pemberton saw she had quite forgotten the terms—if +“terms” they could be called—that he had ended +by accepting from herself; they had burdened her memory as little +as her conscience. “Oh yes, I see what you +mean—you’ve been very nice about that; but why drag +it in so often?” She had been perfectly urbane with +him ever since the rough scene of explanation in his room the +morning he made her accept <i>his</i> +“terms”—the necessity of his making his case +known to Morgan. She had felt no resentment after seeing +there was no danger Morgan would take the matter up with +her. Indeed, attributing this immunity to the good taste of +his influence with the boy, she had once said to Pemberton +“My dear fellow, it’s an immense comfort you’re +a gentleman.” She repeated this in substance +now. “Of course you’re a +gentleman—that’s a bother the less!” +Pemberton reminded her that he had not “dragged in” +anything that wasn’t already in as much as his foot was in +his shoe; and she also repeated her prayer that, somewhere and +somehow, he would find her sixty francs. He took the +liberty of hinting that if he could find them it wouldn’t +be to lend them to <i>her</i>—as to which he consciously +did himself injustice, knowing that if he had them he would +certainly put them at her disposal. He accused himself, at +bottom and not unveraciously, of a fantastic, a demoralised +sympathy with her. If misery made strange bedfellows it +also made strange sympathies. It was moreover a part of the +abasement of living with such people that one had to make vulgar +retorts, quite out of one’s own tradition of good +manners. “Morgan, Morgan, to what pass have I come +for you?” he groaned while Mrs. Moreen floated voluminously +down the sala again to liberate the boy, wailing as she went that +everything was too odious.</p> +<p>Before their young friend was liberated there came a thump at +the door communicating with the staircase, followed by the +apparition of a dripping youth who poked in his head. +Pemberton recognised him as the bearer of a telegram and +recognised the telegram as addressed to himself. Morgan +came back as, after glancing at the signature—that of a +relative in London—he was reading the words: “Found a +jolly job for you, engagement to coach opulent youth on own +terms. Come at once.” The answer happily was +paid and the messenger waited. Morgan, who had drawn near, +waited too and looked hard at Pemberton; and Pemberton, after a +moment, having met his look, handed him the telegram. It +was really by wise looks—they knew each other so well +now—that, while the telegraph-boy, in his waterproof cape, +made a great puddle on the floor, the thing was settled between +them. Pemberton wrote the answer with a pencil against the +frescoed wall, and the messenger departed. When he had gone +the young man explained himself.</p> +<p>“I’ll make a tremendous charge; I’ll earn a +lot of money in a short time, and we’ll live on +it.”</p> +<p>“Well, I hope the opulent youth will be a dismal +dunce—he probably will—” Morgan +parenthesised—“and keep you a long time a-hammering +of it in.”</p> +<p>“Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall have +for our old age.”</p> +<p>“But suppose <i>they</i> don’t pay you!” +Morgan awfully suggested.</p> +<p>“Oh there are not two such—!” But +Pemberton pulled up; he had been on the point of using too +invidious a term. Instead of this he said “Two such +fatalities.”</p> +<p>Morgan flushed—the tears came to his eyes. +“Dites toujours two such rascally crews!” Then +in a different tone he added: “Happy opulent +youth!”</p> +<p>“Not if he’s a dismal dunce.”</p> +<p>“Oh they’re happier then. But you +can’t have everything, can you?” the boy smiled.</p> +<p>Pemberton held him fast, hands on his shoulders—he had +never loved him so. “What will become of you, what +will you do?” He thought of Mrs. Moreen, desperate +for sixty francs.</p> +<p>“I shall become an homme fait.” And then as +if he recognised all the bearings of Pemberton’s allusion: +“I shall get on with them better when you’re not +here.”</p> +<p>“Ah don’t say that—it sounds as if I set you +against them!”</p> +<p>“You do—the sight of you. It’s all +right; you know what I mean. I shall be beautiful. +I’ll take their affairs in hand; I’ll marry my +sisters.”</p> +<p>“You’ll marry yourself!” joked Pemberton; as +high, rather tense pleasantry would evidently be the right, or +the safest, tone for their separation.</p> +<p>It was, however, not purely in this strain that Morgan +suddenly asked: “But I say—how will you get to your +jolly job? You’ll have to telegraph to the opulent +youth for money to come on.”</p> +<p>Pemberton bethought himself. “They won’t +like that, will they?”</p> +<p>“Oh look out for them!”</p> +<p>Then Pemberton brought out his remedy. “I’ll +go to the American Consul; I’ll borrow some money of +him—just for the few days, on the strength of the +telegram.”</p> +<p>Morgan was hilarious. “Show him the +telegram—then collar the money and stay!”</p> +<p>Pemberton entered into the joke sufficiently to reply that for +Morgan he was really capable of that; but the boy, growing more +serious, and to prove he hadn’t meant what he said, not +only hurried him off to the Consulate—since he was to start +that evening, as he had wired to his friend—but made sure +of their affair by going with him. They splashed through +the tortuous perforations and over the humpbacked bridges, and +they passed through the Piazza, where they saw Mr. Moreen and +Ulick go into a jeweller’s shop. The Consul proved +accommodating—Pemberton said it wasn’t the letter, +but Morgan’s grand air—and on their way back they +went into Saint Mark’s for a hushed ten minutes. +Later they took up and kept up the fun of it to the very end; and +it seemed to Pemberton a part of that fun that Mrs. Moreen, who +was very angry when he had announced her his intention, should +charge him, grotesquely and vulgarly and in reference to the loan +she had vainly endeavoured to effect, with bolting lest they +should “get something out” of him. On the other +hand he had to do Mr. Moreen and Ulick the justice to recognise +that when on coming in they heard the cruel news they took it +like perfect men of the world.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<p>When he got at work with the opulent youth, who was to be +taken in hand for Balliol, he found himself unable to say if this +aspirant had really such poor parts or if the appearance were +only begotten of his own long association with an intensely +living little mind. From Morgan he heard half a dozen +times: the boy wrote charming young letters, a patchwork of +tongues, with indulgent postscripts in the family Volapuk and, in +little squares and rounds and crannies of the text, the drollest +illustrations—letters that he was divided between the +impulse to show his present charge as a vain, a wasted incentive, +and the sense of something in them that publicity would +profane. The opulent youth went up in due course and failed +to pass; but it seemed to add to the presumption that brilliancy +was not expected of him all at once that his parents, condoning +the lapse, which they good-naturedly treated as little as +possible as if it were Pemberton’s, should have sounded the +rally again, begged the young coach to renew the siege.</p> +<p>The young coach was now in a position to lend Mrs. Moreen +three louis, and he sent her a post-office order even for a +larger amount. In return for this favour he received a +frantic scribbled line from her: “Implore you to come back +instantly—Morgan dreadfully ill.” They were on +there rebound, once more in Paris—often as Pemberton had +seen them depressed he had never seen them crushed—and +communication was therefore rapid. He wrote to the boy to +ascertain the state of his health, but awaited the answer in +vain. He accordingly, after three days, took an abrupt +leave of the opulent youth and, crossing the Channel, alighted at +the small hotel, in the quarter of the Champs Elysées, of +which Mrs. Moreen had given him the address. A deep if dumb +dissatisfaction with this lady and her companions bore him +company: they couldn’t be vulgarly honest, but they could +live at hotels, in velvety entresols, amid a smell of burnt +pastilles, surrounded by the most expensive city in Europe. +When he had left them in Venice it was with an irrepressible +suspicion that something was going to happen; but the only thing +that could have taken place was again their masterly +retreat. “How is he? where is he?” he asked of +Mrs. Moreen; but before she could speak these questions were +answered by the pressure round hid neck of a pair of arms, in +shrunken sleeves, which still were perfectly capable of an +effusive young foreign squeeze.</p> +<p>“Dreadfully ill—I don’t see it!” the +young man cried. And then to Morgan: “Why on earth +didn’t you relieve me? Why didn’t you answer my +letter?”</p> +<p>Mrs. Moreen declared that when she wrote he was very bad, and +Pemberton learned at the same time from the boy that he had +answered every letter he had received. This led to the +clear inference that Pemberton’s note had been kept from +him so that the game practised should not be interfered +with. Mrs. Moreen was prepared to see the fact exposed, as +Pemberton saw the moment he faced her that she was prepared for a +good many other things. She was prepared above all to +maintain that she had acted from a sense of duty, that she was +enchanted she had got him over, whatever they might say, and that +it was useless of him to pretend he didn’t know in all his +bones that his place at such a time was with Morgan. He had +taken the boy away from them and now had no right to abandon +him. He had created for himself the gravest +responsibilities and must at least abide by what he had done.</p> +<p>“Taken him away from you?” Pemberton exclaimed +indignantly.</p> +<p>“Do it—do it for pity’s sake; that’s +just what I want. I can’t stand <i>this</i>—and +such scenes. They’re awful frauds—poor +dears!” These words broke from Morgan, who had +intermitted his embrace, in a key which made Pemberton turn +quickly to him and see that he had suddenly seated himself, was +breathing in great pain, and was very pale.</p> +<p>“<i>Now</i> do you say he’s not in a state, my +precious pet?” shouted his mother, dropping on her knees +before him with clasped hands, but touching him no more than if +he had been a gilded idol. “It will +pass—it’s only for an instant; but don’t say +such dreadful things!”</p> +<p>“I’m all right—all right,” Morgan +panted to Pemberton, whom he sat looking up at with a strange +smile, his hands resting on either side of the sofa.</p> +<p>“Now do you pretend I’ve been dishonest, that +I’ve deceived?” Mrs. Moreen flashed at Pemberton as +she got up.</p> +<p>“It isn’t <i>he</i> says it, it’s I!” +the boy returned, apparently easier, but sinking back against the +wall; while his restored friend, who had sat down beside him, +took his hand and bent over him.</p> +<p>“Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many +things to consider,” urged Mrs. Moreen. +“It’s his <i>place</i>—his only place. +You see <i>you</i> think it is now.”</p> +<p>“Take me away—take me away,” Morgan went on, +smiling to Pemberton with his white face.</p> +<p>“Where shall I take you, and how—oh <i>how</i>, my +boy?” the young man stammered, thinking of the rude way in +which his friends in London held that, for his convenience, with +no assurance of prompt return, he had thrown them over; of the +just resentment with which they would already have called in a +successor, and of the scant help to finding fresh employment that +resided for him in the grossness of his having failed to pass his +pupil.</p> +<p>“Oh we’ll settle that. You used to talk +about it,” said Morgan. “If we can only go all +the rest’s a detail.”</p> +<p>“Talk about it as much as you like, but don’t +think you can attempt it. Mr. Moreen would never +consent—it would be so <i>very</i> hand-to-mouth,” +Pemberton’s hostess beautifully explained to him. +Then to Morgan she made it clearer: “It would destroy our +peace, it would break our hearts. Now that he’s back +it will be all the same again. You’ll have your life, +your work and your freedom, and we’ll all be happy as we +used to be. You’ll bloom and grow perfectly well, and +we won’t have any more silly experiments, will we? +They’re too absurd. It’s Mr. Pemberton’s +place—every one in his place. You in yours, your papa +in his, me in mine—n’est-ce pas, chéri? +We’ll all forget how foolish we’ve been and have +lovely times.”</p> +<p>She continued to talk and to surge vaguely about the little +draped stuffy salon while Pemberton sat with the boy, whose +colour gradually came back; and she mixed up her reasons, hinting +that there were going to be changes, that the other children +might scatter (who knew?—Paula had her ideas) and that then +it might be fancied how much the poor old parent-birds would want +the little nestling. Morgan looked at Pemberton, who +wouldn’t let him move; and Pemberton knew exactly how he +felt at hearing himself called a little nestling. He +admitted that he had had one or two bad days, but he protested +afresh against the wrong of his mother’s having made them +the ground of an appeal to poor Pemberton. Poor Pemberton +could laugh now, apart from the comicality of Mrs. Moreen’s +mustering so much philosophy for her defence—she seemed to +shake it out of her agitated petticoats, which knocked over the +light gilt chairs—so little did their young companion, +<i>marked</i>, unmistakeably marked at the best, strike him as +qualified to repudiate any advantage.</p> +<p>He himself was in for it at any rate. He should have +Morgan on his hands again indefinitely; though indeed he saw the +lad had a private theory to produce which would be intended to +smooth this down. He was obliged to him for it in advance; +but the suggested amendment didn’t keep his heart rather +from sinking, any more than it prevented him from accepting the +prospect on the spot, with some confidence moreover that he +should do so even better if he could have a little supper. +Mrs. Moreen threw out more hints about the changes that were to +be looked for, but she was such a mixture of smiles and +shudders—she confessed she was very nervous—that he +couldn’t tell if she were in high feather or only in +hysterics. If the family was really at last going to pieces +why shouldn’t she recognise the necessity of pitching +Morgan into some sort of lifeboat? This presumption was +fostered by the fact that they were established in luxurious +quarters in the capital of pleasure; that was exactly where they +naturally <i>would</i> be established in view of going to +pieces. Moreover didn’t she mention that Mr. Moreen +and the others were enjoying themselves at the opera with Mr. +Granger, and wasn’t <i>that</i> also precisely where one +would look for them on the eve of a smash? Pemberton +gathered that Mr. Granger was a rich vacant American—a big +bill with a flourishy heading and no items; so that one of +Paula’s “ideas” was probably that this time she +hadn’t missed fire—by which straight shot indeed she +would have shattered the general cohesion. And if the +cohesion was to crumble what would become of poor +Pemberton? He felt quite enough bound up with them to +figure to his alarm as a dislodged block in the edifice.</p> +<p>It was Morgan who eventually asked if no supper had been +ordered for him; sitting with him below, later, at the dim +delayed meal, in the presence of a great deal of corded green +plush, a plate of ornamental biscuit and an aloofness marked on +the part of the waiter. Mrs. Moreen had explained that they +had been obliged to secure a room for the visitor out of the +house; and Morgan’s consolation—he offered it while +Pemberton reflected on the nastiness of lukewarm +sauces—proved to be, largely, that his circumstance would +facilitate their escape. He talked of their +escape—recurring to it often afterwards—as if they +were making up a “boy’s book” together. +But he likewise expressed his sense that there was something in +the air, that the Moreens couldn’t keep it up much +longer. In point of fact, as Pemberton was to see, they +kept it up for five or six months. All the while, however, +Morgan’s contention was designed to cheer him. Mr. +Moreen and Ulick, whom he had met the day after his return, +accepted that return like perfect men of the world. If +Paula and Amy treated it even with less formality an allowance +was to be made for them, inasmuch as Mr. Granger hadn’t +come to the opera after all. He had only placed his box at +their service, with a bouquet for each of the party; there was +even one apiece, embittering the thought of his profusion, for +Mr. Moreen and Ulick. “They’re all like +that,” was Morgan’s comment; “at the very last, +just when we think we’ve landed them they’re back in +the deep sea!”</p> +<p>Morgan’s comments in these days were more and more free; +they even included a large recognition of the extraordinary +tenderness with which he had been treated while Pemberton was +away. Oh yes, they couldn’t do enough to be nice to +him, to show him they had him on their mind and make up for his +loss. That was just what made the whole thing so sad and +caused him to rejoice after all in Pemberton’s +return—he had to keep thinking of their affection less, had +less sense of obligation. Pemberton laughed out at this +last reason, and Morgan blushed and said: “Well, dash it, +you know what I mean.” Pemberton knew perfectly what +he meant; but there were a good many things that—dash it +too!—it didn’t make any clearer. This episode +of his second sojourn in Paris stretched itself out wearily, with +their resumed readings and wanderings and maunderings, their +potterings on the quays, their hauntings of the museums, their +occasional lingerings in the Palais Royal when the first sharp +weather came on and there was a comfort in warm emanations, +before Chevet’s wonderful succulent window. Morgan +wanted to hear all about the opulent youth—he took an +immense interest in him. Some of the details of his +opulence—Pemberton could spare him none of +them—evidently fed the boy’s appreciation of all his +friend had given up to come back to him; but in addition to the +greater reciprocity established by that heroism he had always his +little brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous gaiety +too, that their long probation was drawing to a close. +Morgan’s conviction that the Moreens couldn’t go on +much longer kept pace with the unexpended impetus with which, +from month to month, they did go on. Three weeks after +Pemberton had rejoined them they went on to another hotel, a +dingier one than the first; but Morgan rejoiced that his tutor +had at least still not sacrificed the advantage of a room +outside. He clung to the romantic utility of this when the +day, or rather the night, should arrive for their escape.</p> +<p>For the first time, in this complicated connexion, our friend +felt his collar gall him. It was, as he had said to Mrs. +Moreen in Venice, trop fort—everything was trop fort. +He could neither really throw off his blighting burden nor find +in it the benefit of a pacified conscience or of a rewarded +affection. He had spent all the money accruing to him in +England, and he saw his youth going and that he was getting +nothing back for it. It was all very well of Morgan to +count it for reparation that he should now settle on him +permanently—there was an irritating flaw in such a +view. He saw what the boy had in his mind; the conception +that as his friend had had the generosity to come back he must +show his gratitude by giving him his life. But the poor +friend didn’t desire the gift—what could he do with +Morgan’s dreadful little life? Of course at the same +time that Pemberton was irritated he remembered the reason, which +was very honourable to Morgan and which dwelt simply in his +making one so forget that he was no more than a patched +urchin. If one dealt with him on a different basis +one’s misadventures were one’s own fault. So +Pemberton waited in a queer confusion of yearning and alarm for +the catastrophe which was held to hang over the house of Moreen, +of which he certainly at moments felt the symptoms brush his +cheek and as to which he wondered much in what form it would find +its liveliest effect.</p> +<p>Perhaps it would take the form of sudden dispersal—a +frightened sauve qui peut, a scuttling into selfish +corners. Certainly they were less elastic than of yore; +they were evidently looking for something they didn’t +find. The Dorringtons hadn’t re-appeared, the princes +had scattered; wasn’t that the beginning of the end? +Mrs. Moreen had lost her reckoning of the famous +“days”; her social calendar was blurred—it had +turned its face to the wall. Pemberton suspected that the +great, the cruel discomfiture had been the unspeakable behaviour +of Mr. Granger, who seemed not to know what he wanted, or, what +was much worse, what they wanted. He kept sending flowers, +as if to bestrew the path of his retreat, which was never the +path of a return. Flowers were all very well, +but—Pemberton could complete the proposition. It was +now positively conspicuous that in the long run the Moreens were +a social failure; so that the young man was almost grateful the +run had not been short. Mr. Moreen indeed was still +occasionally able to get away on business and, what was more +surprising, was likewise able to get back. Ulick had no +club but you couldn’t have discovered it from his +appearance, which was as much as ever that of a person looking at +life from the window of such an institution; therefore Pemberton +was doubly surprised at an answer he once heard him make his +mother in the desperate tone of a man familiar with the worst +privations. Her question Pemberton had not quite caught; it +appeared to be an appeal for a suggestion as to whom they might +get to take Amy. “Let the Devil take her!” +Ulick snapped; so that Pemberton could see that they had not only +lost their amiability but had ceased to believe in +themselves. He could also see that if Mrs. Moreen was +trying to get people to take her children she might be regarded +as closing the hatches for the storm. But Morgan would be +the last she would part with.</p> +<p>One winter afternoon—it was a Sunday—he and the +boy walked far together in the Bois de Boulogne. The +evening was so splendid, the cold lemon-coloured sunset so clear, +the stream of carriages and pedestrians so amusing and the +fascination of Paris so great, that they stayed out later than +usual and became aware that they should have to hurry home to +arrive in time for dinner. They hurried accordingly, +arm-in-arm, good-humoured and hungry, agreeing that there was +nothing like Paris after all and that after everything too that +had come and gone they were not yet sated with innocent +pleasures. When they reached the hotel they found that, +though scandalously late, they were in time for all the dinner +they were likely to sit down to. Confusion reigned in the +apartments of the Moreens—very shabby ones this time, but +the best in the house—and before the interrupted service of +the table, with objects displaced almost as if there had been a +scuffle and a great wine-stain from an overturned bottle, +Pemberton couldn’t blink the fact that there had been a +scene of the last proprietary firmness. The storm had +come—they were all seeking refuge. The hatches were +down, Paula and Amy were invisible—they had never tried the +most casual art upon Pemberton, but he felt they had enough of an +eye to him not to wish to meet him as young ladies whose frocks +had been confiscated—and Ulick appeared to have jumped +overboard. The host and his staff, in a word, had ceased to +“go on” at the pace of their guests, and the air of +embarrassed detention, thanks to a pile of gaping trunks in the +passage, was strangely commingled with the air of indignant +withdrawal. When Morgan took all this in—and he took +it in very quickly—he coloured to the roots of his +hair. He had walked from his infancy among difficulties and +dangers, but he had never seen a public exposure. Pemberton +noticed in a second glance at him that the tears had rushed into +his eyes and that they were tears of a new and untasted +bitterness. He wondered an instant, for the boy’s +sake, whether he might successfully pretend not to +understand. Not successfully, he felt, as Mr. and Mrs. +Moreen, dinnerless by their extinguished hearth, rose before him +in their little dishonoured salon, casting about with glassy eyes +for the nearest port in such a storm. They were not +prostrate but were horribly white, and Mrs. Moreen had evidently +been crying. Pemberton quickly learned however that her +grief was not for the loss of her dinner, much as she usually +enjoyed it, but the fruit of a blow that struck even deeper, as +she made all haste to explain. He would see for himself, so +far as that went, how the great change had come, the dreadful +bolt had fallen, and how they would now all have to turn +themselves about. Therefore cruel as it was to them to part +with their darling she must look to him to carry a little further +the influence he had so fortunately acquired with the +boy—to induce his young charge to follow him into some +modest retreat. They depended on him—that was the +fact—to take their delightful child temporarily under his +protection; it would leave Mr. Moreen and herself so much more +free to give the proper attention (too little, alas! had been +given) to the readjustment of their affairs.</p> +<p>“We trust you—we feel we <i>can</i>,” said +Mrs. Moreen, slowly rubbing her plump white hands and looking +with compunction hard at Morgan, whose chin, not to take +liberties, her husband stroked with a paternal forefinger.</p> +<p>“Oh yes—we feel that we <i>can</i>. We trust +Mr. Pemberton fully, Morgan,” Mr. Moreen pursued.</p> +<p>Pemberton wondered again if he might pretend not to +understand; but everything good gave way to the intensity of +Morgan’s understanding. “Do you mean he may +take me to live with him for ever and ever?” cried the +boy. “May take me away, away, anywhere he +likes?”</p> +<p>“For ever and ever? Comme vous-y-allez!” Mr. +Moreen laughed indulgently. “For as long as Mr. +Pemberton may be so good.”</p> +<p>“We’ve struggled, we’ve suffered,” his +wife went on; “but you’ve made him so your own that +we’ve already been through the worst of the +sacrifice.”</p> +<p>Morgan had turned away from his father—he stood looking +at Pemberton with a light in his face. His sense of shame +for their common humiliated state had dropped; the case had +another side—the thing was to clutch at <i>that</i>. +He had a moment of boyish joy, scarcely mitigated by the +reflexion that with this unexpected consecration of his +hope—too sudden and too violent; the turn taken was away +from a <i>good</i> boy’s book—the +“escape” was left on their hands. The boyish +joy was there an instant, and Pemberton was almost scared at the +rush of gratitude and affection that broke through his first +abasement. When he stammered “My dear fellow, what do +you say to <i>that</i>?” how could one not say something +enthusiastic? But there was more need for courage at +something else that immediately followed and that made the lad +sit down quietly on the nearest chair. He had turned quite +livid and had raised his hand to his left side. They were +all three looking at him, but Mrs. Moreen suddenly bounded +forward. “Ah his darling little heart!” she +broke out; and this time, on her knees before him and without +respect for the idol, she caught him ardently in her arms. +“You walked him too far, you hurried him too fast!” +she hurled over her shoulder at Pemberton. Her son made no +protest, and the next instant, still holding him, she sprang up +with her face convulsed and with the terrified cry “Help, +help! he’s going, he’s gone!” Pemberton +saw with equal horror, by Morgan’s own stricken face, that +he was beyond their wildest recall. He pulled him half out +of his mother’s hands, and for a moment, while they held +him together, they looked all their dismay into each +other’s eyes, “He couldn’t stand it with his +weak organ,” said Pemberton—“the shock, the +whole scene, the violent emotion.”</p> +<p>“But I thought he <i>wanted</i> to go to you!”, +wailed Mrs. Moreen.</p> +<p>“I <i>told</i> you he didn’t, my dear,” her +husband made answer. Mr. Moreen was trembling all over and +was in his way as deeply affected as his wife. But after +the very first he took his bereavement as a man of the world.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PUPIL***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1032-h.htm or 1032-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/3/1032 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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