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diff --git a/old/pupil10.txt b/old/pupil10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d86cfd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pupil10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2219 @@ +****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Pupil by Henry James***** +#14 in our series by Henry James + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +The Pupil + + + + +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 he 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 dread +fully 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 Etext of The Pupil by Henry James + diff --git a/old/pupil10.zip b/old/pupil10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9abd9cf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/pupil10.zip |