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diff --git a/1032.txt b/1032.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f008b2f --- /dev/null +++ b/1032.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2238 @@ +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*** + + +Transcribed from the 1916 Le Roy Phillips edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + + THE PUPIL + + + BY HENRY JAMES + + * * * * * + + LE ROY PHILLIPS + BOSTON + + * * * * * + + This edition first published 1916 + + The text follows that of the + Definitive Edition + + * * * * * + + _Printed in Great Britain_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +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 Suede 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. + +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 +_this_, 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. + +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." + +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!" + +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." + +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." + +"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." + +"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. + +"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. + +"The less you expect the better!" her companion interposed. "But we +_are_ people of fashion." + +"Only so far as _you_ 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." + +"He tries to imitate me," Morgan said to their friend. + +"He tries? Why he's twenty years old!" cried Mrs. Moreen. + +"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. + +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 _want_ very much to come?" + +"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. + +"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!" + +"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. + +Morgan hung fire a moment and then gaily returned: "By the time you come +back I shall have thought of something witty!" + +This made Pemberton say to himself "After all he's rather nice." + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +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 _he_ 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 _was_ 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. + +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 dejeuner, the Friday he came--it was enough to _make_ 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 _their_ +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. + +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 borne 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. + +"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. + +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. + +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 _them_ 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. + +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 _was_ 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. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +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?" + +"My dear fellow, why should I stay if I didn't?" + +"How do I know you'll stay? I'm almost sure you won't, very long." + +"I hope you don't mean to dismiss me," said Pemberton. + +Morgan debated, looking at the sunset. "I think if I did right I ought +to." + +"Well, I know I'm supposed to instruct you in virtue; but in that case +don't do right." + +"'You're very young--fortunately," Morgan went on, turning to him again. + +"Oh yes, compared with you!" + +"Therefore it won't matter so much if you do lose a lot of time." + +"That's the way to look at it," said Pemberton accommodatingly. + +They were silent a minute; after which the boy asked: "Do you like my +father and my mother very much?" + +"Dear me, yes. They're charming people." + +Morgan received this with another silence; then unexpectedly, familiarly, +but at the same time affectionately, he remarked: "You're a jolly old +humbug!" + +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. + +"Then why am I a humbug for saying _I_ think them charming?" the young +man asked, conscious of a certain rashness. + +"Well--they're not your parents." + +"They love you better than anything in the world--never forget that," +said Pemberton. + +"Is that why you like them so much?" + +"They're very kind to me," Pemberton replied evasively. + +"You _are_ 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. + +"Don't kick my shins," said Pemberton while he reflected "Hang it, I +can't complain of them to the child!" + +"There's another reason, too," Morgan went on, keeping his legs still. + +"Another reason for what?" + +"Besides their not being your parents." + +"I don't understand you," said Pemberton. + +"Well, you will before long. All right!" + +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: + +"Well, at any rate you'll hang on to the last." + +"To the last?" + +"Till you're fairly beaten." + +"_You_ ought to be fairly beaten!" cried the young man, drawing him +closer. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +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 manoeuvre 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. + +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. + +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 _are_ 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. + +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 calorifere. 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. + +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. + +"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. + +"You won't, you _know_ 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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +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 _could_ 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." + +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!" + +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." + +"Like what, my boy?" + +"You know they don't pay you up," said Morgan, blushing and turning his +leaves. + +"Don't pay me?" Pemberton stared again and feigned amazement. "What on +earth put that into your head?" + +"It has been there a long time," the boy replied rummaging his book. + +Pemberton was silent, then he went on: "I say, what are you hunting for? +They pay me beautifully." + +"I'm hunting for the Greek for awful whopper," Morgan dropped. + +"Find that rather for gross impertinence and disabuse your mind. What do +I want of money?" + +"Oh that's another question!" + +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. + +"I say--I say!" the boy ejaculated, laughing. + +"That's all right," Pemberton insisted. "Give me your written +rendering." + +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." + +"I haven't yet seen the thing you _are_ afraid of--I'll do you that +justice!" + +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. + +"Well, don't think of it any more." + +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. + +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. + +"Oh you _haven't_ told him?" cried Mrs. Moreen with a pacifying hand on +her well-dressed bosom. + +"Without warning you? For what do you take me?" the young man returned. + +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 +_general_!" 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 +_had_ 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. + +"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: + +"Oh you do, you _do_, put the knife to one's throat!" + +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 _should_ be reasonable, he would prove +himself worthy to be her son's tutor and of the extraordinary confidence +they had placed in him. + +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." + +"A definite proposal?" + +"To make our relations regular, as it were--to put them on a comfortable +footing." + +"I see--it's a system," said Pemberton. "A kind of organised blackmail." + +Mrs. Moreen bounded up, which was exactly what he wanted. "What do you +mean by that?" + +"You practise on one's fears--one's fears about the child if one should +go away." + +"And pray what would happen to him in that event?" she demanded, with +majesty. + +"Why he'd be alone with _you_." + +"And pray with whom _should_ a child be but with those whom he loves +most?" + +"If you think that, why don't you dismiss me?" + +"Do you pretend he loves you more than he loves _us_?" cried Mrs. Moreen. + +"I think he ought to. I make sacrifices for him. Though I've heard of +those _you_ make I don't see them." + +Mrs. Moreen stared a moment; then with emotion she grasped her inmate's +hand. "_Will_ you make it--the sacrifice?" + +He burst out laughing. "I'll see. I'll do what I can. I'll stay a +little longer. Your calculation's just--I _do_ 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." + +Mrs. Moreen tapped her undressed arm with her folded bank-note. "Can't +you write articles? Can't you translate as _I_ do?" + +"I don't know about translating; it's wretchedly paid." + +"I'm glad to earn what I can," said Mrs. Moreen with prodigious virtue. + +"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." + +"You see then you're not such a phoenix," his visitor pointedly +smiled--"to pretend to abilities you're sacrificing for our sake." + +"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." + +Mrs. Moreen demurred. "Surely you don't want to show off to a child?" + +"To show _you_ off, do you mean?" + +Again she cast about, but this time it was to produce a still finer +flower. "And _you_ talk of blackmail!" + +"You can easily prevent it," said Pemberton. + +"And _you_ talk of practising on fears," she bravely pushed on. + +"Yes, there's no doubt I'm a great scoundrel." + +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." + +"I'm much obliged to Mr. Moreen, but we _have_ no account." + +"You won't take it?" + +"That leaves me more free," said Pemberton. + +"To poison my darling's mind?" groaned Mrs. Moreen. + +"Oh your darling's mind--!" the young man laughed. + +She fixed him a moment, and he thought she was going to break out +tormentedly, pleadingly: "For God's sake, tell me what _is_ 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!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +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 Zenobie." + +"Zenobie? Who in the world is _she_?" + +"A nurse I used to have--ever so many years ago. A charming woman. I +liked her awfully, and she liked me." + +"There's no accounting for tastes. What is it you know through her?" + +"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 _because_, 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 _them_. 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." + +"Zenobie was very sharp," said Pemberton. "And she made you so." + +"Oh that wasn't Zenobie; that was nature. And experience!" Morgan +laughed. + +"Well, Zenobie was a part of your experience." + +"Certainly I was a part of hers, poor dear!" the boy wisely sighed. "And +I'm part of yours." + +"A very important part. But I don't see how you know that I've been +treated like Zenobie." + +"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?" + +"What we've been through?" + +"Our privations--our dark days." + +"Oh our days have been bright enough." + +Morgan went on in silence for a moment. Then he said: "My dear chap, +you're a hero!" + +"Well, you're another!" Pemberton retorted. + +"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. + +"We ought to go off and live somewhere together," the young man said. + +"I'll go like a shot if you'll take me." + +"I'd get some work that would keep us both afloat," Pemberton continued. + +"So would I. Why shouldn't I work? I ain't such a beastly little muff +as that comes to." + +"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." + +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." + +"They're not particularly keen about my being helped, and they delight in +thinking of you as _theirs_. They're tremendously proud of you." + +"I'm not proud of _them_. But you know that," Morgan returned. + +"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. + +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." + +"And what would they say?" + +"Just what they said about what poor Zenobie told me--that it was a +horrid dreadful story, that they had paid her every penny they owed her." + +"Well, perhaps they had," said Pemberton. + +"Perhaps they've paid you!" + +"Let us pretend they have, and n'en parlons plus." + +"They accused her of lying and cheating"--Morgan stuck to historic truth. +"That's why I don't want to speak to them." + +"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 +_are_ charming people." + +"Except for _their_ lying and _their_ cheating?" + +"I say--I say!" cried Pemberton, imitating a little tone of the lad's +which was itself an imitation. + +"We must be frank, at the last; we _must_ 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." + +"I dare say your father has his reasons," Pemberton replied, but too +vaguely, as he was aware. + +"For lying and cheating?" + +"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." + +"Yes, I'm very expensive," Morgan concurred in a manner that made his +preceptor burst out laughing. + +"He's saving for _you_," said Pemberton. "They think of you in +everything they do." + +"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." + +"Oh there's plenty of that. That's all right!" + +"Enough of it for the people they know, no doubt. The people they know +are awful." + +"Do you mean the princes? We mustn't abuse the princes." + +"Why not? They haven't married Paula--they haven't married Amy. They +only clean out Ulick." + +"You _do_ know everything!" Pemberton declared. + +"No, I don't, after all. I don't know what they live on, or how they +live, or _why_ 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 _seen_ 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 _do_ they, Mr. Pemberton?" + +"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." + +"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." + +"Are you sure? They don't lie down for me!" + +"Well, you shan't lie down for them. You've got to go--that's what +you've got to do," said Morgan. + +"And what will become of you?" + +"Oh I'm growing up. I shall get off before long. I'll see you later." + +"You had better let me finish you," Pemberton urged, lending himself to +the child's strange superiority. + +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. + +"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." + +Morgan continued to look at him. "To give you credit--do you mean?" + +"My dear fellow, you're too clever to live." + +"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." + +"If I hear of anything--any other chance--I promise to go," Pemberton +said. + +Morgan consented to consider this. "But you'll be honest," he demanded; +"you won't pretend you haven't heard?" + +"I'm much more likely to pretend I have." + +"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." + +"One would think you were _my_ tutor!" said Pemberton. + +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?" + +"My dear boy, it's so amusing, so interesting, that it will surely be +quite impossible for me to forego such hours as these." + +This made Morgan stop once more. "You _do_ keep something back. Oh +you're not straight--_I_ am!" + +"How am I not straight?" + +"Oh you've got your idea!" + +"My idea?" + +"Why that I probably shan't make old--make older--bones, and that you can +stick it out till I'm removed." + +"You _are_ too clever to live!" Pemberton repeated. + +"I call it a mean idea," Morgan pursued. "But I shall punish you by the +way I hang on." + +"Look out or I'll poison you!" Pemberton laughed. + +"I'm stronger and better every year. Haven't you noticed that there +hasn't been a doctor near me since you came?" + +"_I'm_ your doctor," said the young man, taking his arm and drawing him +tenderly on again. + +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!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +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 _are_ 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." + +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 _them_. 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. + +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. + +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 _him_? +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. + +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. + +"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?" + +"I thought you worked--wrote things. Don't they pay you?" + +"Not a penny." + +"Are you such a fool as to work for nothing?" + +"You ought surely to know that." + +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 _his_ "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 _her_--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. + +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. + +"I'll make a tremendous charge; I'll earn a lot of money in a short time, +and we'll live on it." + +"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." + +"Of course the longer he keeps me the more we shall have for our old +age." + +"But suppose _they_ don't pay you!" Morgan awfully suggested. + +"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." + +Morgan flushed--the tears came to his eyes. "Dites toujours two such +rascally crews!" Then in a different tone he added: "Happy opulent +youth!" + +"Not if he's a dismal dunce." + +"Oh they're happier then. But you can't have everything, can you?" the +boy smiled. + +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. + +"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." + +"Ah don't say that--it sounds as if I set you against them!" + +"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." + +"You'll marry yourself!" joked Pemberton; as high, rather tense +pleasantry would evidently be the right, or the safest, tone for their +separation. + +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." + +Pemberton bethought himself. "They won't like that, will they?" + +"Oh look out for them!" + +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." + +Morgan was hilarious. "Show him the telegram--then collar the money and +stay!" + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +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. + +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 Elysees, 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. + +"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?" + +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. + +"Taken him away from you?" Pemberton exclaimed indignantly. + +"Do it--do it for pity's sake; that's just what I want. I can't stand +_this_--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. + +"_Now_ 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!" + +"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. + +"Now do you pretend I've been dishonest, that I've deceived?" Mrs. Moreen +flashed at Pemberton as she got up. + +"It isn't _he_ 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. + +"Darling child, one does what one can; there are so many things to +consider," urged Mrs. Moreen. "It's his _place_--his only place. You +see _you_ think it is now." + +"Take me away--take me away," Morgan went on, smiling to Pemberton with +his white face. + +"Where shall I take you, and how--oh _how_, 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. + +"Oh we'll settle that. You used to talk about it," said Morgan. "If we +can only go all the rest's a detail." + +"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 _very_ 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, cheri? We'll all forget how foolish we've been and +have lovely times." + +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, _marked_, unmistakeably +marked at the best, strike him as qualified to repudiate any advantage. + +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 _would_ 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 _that_ 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. + +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!" + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +"We trust you--we feel we _can_," 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. + +"Oh yes--we feel that we _can_. We trust Mr. Pemberton fully, Morgan," +Mr. Moreen pursued. + +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?" + +"For ever and ever? Comme vous-y-allez!" Mr. Moreen laughed indulgently. +"For as long as Mr. Pemberton may be so good." + +"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." + +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 +_that_. 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 _good_ 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 _that_?" 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." + +"But I thought he _wanted_ to go to you!", wailed Mrs. Moreen. + +"I _told_ 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. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PUPIL*** + + +******* This file should be named 1032.txt or 1032.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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