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diff --git a/21968-h/21968-h.htm b/21968-h/21968-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..598e14a --- /dev/null +++ b/21968-h/21968-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6224 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Finer Grain, by Henry James + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Finer Grain, by Henry James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Finer Grain + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21968] +Last Updated: September 18, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINER GRAIN *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h1> + THE FINER GRAIN + </h1> + <h2> + By Henry James <br /> <br /> <br /> 1910 + </h2> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + [Transcriber’s Note: After posting it was discovered that there were + several missing pages from the section titled “Mora Montravers”. This + section has been removed and will be replaced as soon as possible.] + </p> + <blockquote> + <p class="toc"> + <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big> + </p> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>"THE VELVET GLOVE"</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> <b>A ROUND OF VISITS</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> VI </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> VII </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> <b>CRAPY CORNELIA</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> <b>THE BENCH OF DESOLATION</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> I </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> II </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> III </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> IV </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> V </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> VI </a> + </p> + </blockquote> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + “THE VELVET GLOVE” + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + HE thought he had already, poor John Berridge, tasted in their fulness the + sweets of success; but nothing yet had been more charming to him than when + the young Lord, as he irresistibly and, for greater certitude, quite + correctly figured him, fairly sought out, in Paris, the new literary star + that had begun to hang, with a fresh red light, over the vast, even though + rather confused, Anglo-Saxon horizon; positively approaching that + celebrity with a shy and artless appeal. The young Lord invoked on this + occasion the celebrity’s prized judgment of a special literary case; and + Berridge could take the whole manner of it for one of the “quaintest” + little acts displayed to his amused eyes, up to now, on the stage of + European society—albeit these eyes were quite aware, in general, of + missing everywhere no more of the human scene than possible, and of having + of late been particularly awake to the large extensions of it spread + before him (since so he could but fondly read his fate) under the omen of + his prodigious “hit.” It was because of his hit that he was having rare + opportunities—of which he was so honestly and humbly proposing, as + he would have said, to make the most: it was because every one in the + world (so far had the thing gone) was reading “The Heart of Gold” as just + a slightly too fat volume, or sitting out the same as just a fifth-act too + long play, that he found himself floated on a tide he would scarce have + dared to show his favourite hero sustained by, found a hundred agreeable + and interesting things happen to him which were all, one way or another, + affluents of the golden stream. + </p> + <p> + The great renewed resonance—renewed by the incredible luck of the + play—was always in his ears without so much as a conscious turn of + his head to listen; so that the queer world of his fame was not the mere + usual field of the Anglo-Saxon boom, but positively the bottom of the + whole theatric sea, unplumbed source of the wave that had borne him in the + course of a year or two over German, French, Italian, Russian, + Scandinavian foot-lights. Paris itself really appeared for the hour the + centre of his cyclone, with reports and “returns,” to say nothing of + agents and emissaries, converging from the minor capitals; though his + impatience was scarce the less keen to get back to London, where his work + had had no such critical excoriation to survive, no such lesson of anguish + to learn, as it had received at the hand of supreme authority, of that + French authority which was in such a matter the only one to be + artistically reckoned with. If his spirit indeed had had to reckon with it + his fourth act practically hadn’t: it continued to make him blush every + night for the public more even than the inimitable <i>feuilleton</i> had + made him blush for himself. + </p> + <p> + This had figured, however, after all, the one bad drop in his cup; so + that, for the rest, his high-water mark might well have been, that evening + at Gloriani’s studio, the approach of his odd and charming applicant, + vaguely introduced at the latter’s very own request by their hostess, who, + with an honest, helpless, genial gesture, washed her fat begemmed hands of + the name and identity of either, but left the fresh, fair, ever so + habitually assured, yet ever so easily awkward Englishman with his plea to + put forth. There was that in this pleasant personage which could still + make Berridge wonder what conception of profit from him might have, all + incalculably, taken form in such a head—these being truly the last + intrenchments of our hero’s modesty. He wondered, the splendid young man, + he wondered awfully, he wondered (it was unmistakable) quite nervously, he + wondered, to John’s ardent and acute imagination, quite beautifully, if + the author of “The Heart of Gold” would mind just looking at a book by a + friend of his, a great friend, which he himself believed rather clever, + and had in fact found very charming, but as to which—if it really + wouldn’t bore Mr. Berridge—he should so like the verdict of some one + who knew. His friend was awfully ambitious, and he thought there was + something in it—with all of which might he send the book to any + address? + </p> + <p> + Berridge thought of many things while the young Lord thus charged upon + him, and it was odd that no one of them was any question of the possible + worth of the offered achievement—which, for that matter, was certain + to be of the quality of <i>all</i> the books, to say nothing of the plays, + and the projects for plays, with which, for some time past, he had seen + his daily post-bag distended. He had made out, on looking at these things, + no difference at all from one to the other. Here, however, was something + more—something that made his fellow-guest’s overture <i>independently</i> + interesting and, as he might imagine, important. He smiled, he was + friendly and vague; said “A work of fiction, I suppose?” and that he + didn’t pretend ever to pronounce, that he in fact quite hated, always, to + have to, not “knowing,” as he felt, any better than any one else; but + would gladly look at anything, under that demur, if it would give any + pleasure. Perhaps the very brightest and most diamond-like twinkle he had + yet seen the star of his renown emit was just the light brought into his + young Lord’s eyes by this so easy consent to oblige. It was easy because + the presence before him was from moment to moment, referring itself back + to some recent observation or memory; something caught somewhere, within a + few weeks or months, as he had moved about, and that seemed to flutter + forth at this stir of the folded leaves of his recent experience very much + as a gathered, faded flower, placed there for “pressing,” might drop from + between the pages of a volume opened at hazard. + </p> + <p> + He had seen him before, this splendid and sympathetic person—whose + flattering appeal was by no means <i>all</i> that made him sympathetic; he + had met him, had noted, had wondered about him, had in fact imaginatively, + intellectually, so to speak, quite yearned over him, in some conjunction + lately, though ever so fleet-ingly, apprehended: which circumstance + constituted precisely an association as tormenting, for the few minutes, + as it was vague, and set him to sounding, intensely and vainly, the face + that itself figured everything agreeable except recognition. He couldn’t + remember, and the young man didn’t; distinctly, yes, they had been in + presence, during the previous winter, by some chance of travel, through + Sicily, through Italy, through the south of France, but his <i>Seigneurie</i>—so + Berridge liked exotically to phrase it—had then (in ignorance of the + present reasons) not noticed <i>him</i>. It was positive for the man of + established identity, all the while too, and through the perfect lucidity + of his sense of achievement in an air “conducting” nothing but the loudest + bang, that this was fundamentally much less remarkable than the fact of + his being made up to in such a quarter now. That was the disservice, in a + manner, of one’s having so much imagination: the mysterious values of + other types kept looming larger before you than the doubtless often higher + but comparatively familiar ones of your own, and if you had anything of + the artist’s real feeling for life the attraction and amusement of + possibilities so projected were worth more to you, in nineteen moods out + of twenty, than the sufficiency, the serenity, the felicity, whatever it + might be, of your stale personal certitudes. You were intellectually, you + were “artistically” rather abject, in fine, if your curiosity (in the + grand sense of the term) wasn’t worth more to you than your dignity. What + was your dignity, “anyway,” but just the consistency of your curiosity, + and what moments were ever so ignoble for you as, under the blighting + breath of the false gods, stupid conventions, traditions, examples, your + lapses from that consistency? His <i>Seigneurie</i>, at all events, + delightfully, hadn’t the least real idea of what any John Berridge was + talking about, and the latter felt that if he had been less beautifully + witless, and thereby less true to his right figure, it might scarce have + been forgiven him. + </p> + <p> + His right figure was that of life in irreflective joy and at the highest + thinkable level of prepared security and unconscious insolence. What was + the pale page of fiction compared with the intimately personal adventure + that, in almost any direction, he would have been all so stupidly, all so + gallantly, all so instinctively and, by every presumption, so prevailingly + ready for? Berridge would have given six months’ “royalties” for even an + hour of his looser dormant consciousness—since one was oneself, + after all, no worm, but an heir of all the ages too—and yet without + being able to supply chapter and verse for the felt, the huge difference. + His <i>Seigneurie</i> was tall and straight, but so, thank goodness, was + the author of “The Heart of Gold,” who had no such vulgar “mug” either; + and there was no intrinsic inferiority in being a bit inordinately, and so + it might have seemed a bit strikingly, black-browed instead of being fair + as the morning. Again while his new friend delivered himself our own tried + in vain to place him; he indulged in plenty of pleasant, if rather + restlessly headlong sound, the confessed incoherence of a happy mortal who + had always many things “on,” and who, while waiting at any moment for + connections and consummations, had fallen into the way of talking, as they + said, all artlessly, and a trifle more betrayingly, against time. He would + always be having appointments, and somehow of a high “romantic” order, to + keep, and the imperfect punctualities of others to wait for—though + who would be of a quality to make such a pampered personage wait very much + our young analyst could only enjoy asking himself. There were women who + might be of a quality—half a dozen of those perhaps, of those alone, + about the world; our friend was as sure of this, by the end of four + minutes, as if he knew all about it. + </p> + <p> + After saying he would send him the book the young Lord indeed dropped that + subject; he had asked where he might send it, and had had an “Oh, I shall + remember!” on John’s mention of an hotel; but he had made no further dash + into literature, and it was ten to one that this would be the last the + distinguished author might hear of the volume. Such again was a note of + these high existences—that made one content to ask of them no whit + of other consistency than that of carrying off the particular occasion, + whatever it might be, in a dazzle of amiability and felicity and leaving + <i>that</i> as a sufficient trace of their passage. Sought and achieved + consistency was but an angular, a secondary motion; compared with the air + of complete freedom it might have an effect of deformity. There was no + placing this figure of radiant ease, for Berridge, in any relation that + didn’t appear not good enough—that is among the relations that + hadn’t been too good for Berridge himself. He was all right where he was; + the great Gloriani somehow made that law; his house, with his supreme + artistic position, was good enough for any one, and to-night in especial + there were charming people, more charming than our friend could recall + from any other scene, as the natural train or circle, as he might say, of + such a presence. For an instant he thought he had got the face as a + specimen of imperturbability watched, with wonder, across the hushed + rattle of roulette at Monte-Carlo; but this quickly became as improbable + as any question of a vulgar <i>table d’hote</i>, or a steam-boat deck, or + a herd of fellow-pilgrims cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, + during a performance, for frame of a type observed from the stalls. One + placed young gods and goddesses only when one placed them on Olympus, and + it met the case, always, that they were of Olympian race, and that they + glimmered for one, at the best, through their silver cloud, like the + visiting apparitions in an epic. + </p> + <p> + This was brief and beautiful indeed till something happened that gave it, + for Berridge, on the spot, a prodigious extension—an extension + really as prodigious, after a little, as if he had suddenly seen the + silver clouds multiply and then the whole of Olympus presently open. + Music, breaking upon the large air, enjoined immediate attention, and in a + moment he was listening, with the rest of the company, to an eminent + tenor, who stood by the piano; and was aware, with it, that his Englishman + had turned away and that in the vast, rich, tapestried room where, in + spite of figures and objects so numerous, clear spaces, wide vistas, and, + as they might be called, becoming situations abounded, there had been from + elsewhere, at the signal of unmistakable song, a rapid accession of + guests. At first he but took this in, and the way that several young + women, for whom seats had been found, looked charming in the rapt + attitude; while even the men, mostly standing and grouped, “composed,” in + their stillness, scarce less impressively, under the sway of the divine + voice. It ruled the scene, to the last intensity, and yet our young man’s + fine sense found still a resource in the range of the eyes, without sound + or motion, while all the rest of consciousness was held down as by a hand + mailed in silver. It was better, in this way, than the opera—John + alertly thought of that: the composition sung might be Wagnerian, but no + Tristram, no Iseult, no Parsifal and, no Kundry of them all could ever + show, could ever “act” to the music, as our friend had thus the power of + seeing his dear contemporaries of either sex (armoured <i>they</i> so + otherwise than in cheap Teutonic tinsel!) just continuously and + inscrutably sit to it. + </p> + <p> + It made, the whole thing together, an enchantment amid which he had in + truth, at a given moment, ceased to distinguish parts—so that he was + himself certainly at last soaring as high as the singer’s voice and + forgetting, in a lost gaze at the splendid ceiling, everything of the + occasion but what his intelligence poured into it. This, as happened, was + a flight so sublime that by the time he had dropped his eyes again a + cluster of persons near the main door had just parted to give way to a + belated lady who slipped in, through the gap made for her, and stood for + some minutes full in his view. It was a proof of the perfect hush that no + one stirred to offer her a seat, and her entrance, in her high grace, had + yet been so noiseless that she could remain at once immensely exposed and + completely unabashed. For Berridge, once more, if the scenic show before + him so melted into the music, here precisely might have been the heroine + herself advancing to the foot-lights at her cue. The interest deepened to + a thrill, and everything, at the touch of his recognition of this + personage, absolutely the most beautiful woman now present, fell + exquisitely together and gave him what he had been wanting from the moment + of his taking in his young Englishman. + </p> + <p> + It was there, the missing connection: her arrival had on the instant + lighted it by a flash. Olympian herself, supremely, divinely Olympian, she + had arrived, could <i>only</i> have arrived, for the one person present of + really equal race, our young man’s late converser, whose flattering + demonstration might now stand for one of the odd extravagant forms taken + by nervous impatience. This charming, this dazzling woman had been one + member of the couple disturbed, to his intimate conviction, the autumn + previous, on his being pushed by the officials, at the last moment, into a + compartment of the train that was to take him from Cremona to Mantua—where, + failing a stop, he had had to keep his place. The other member, by whose + felt but unseized identity he had been haunted, was the unconsciously + insolent form of guaranteed happiness he had just been engaged with. The + sense of the admirable intimacy that, having taken its precautions, had + not reckoned with his irruption—this image had remained with him; to + say nothing of the interest of aspect of the associated figures, so + stamped somehow with rarity, so beautifully distinct from the common + occupants of padded corners, and yet on the subject of whom, for the + romantic structure he was immediately to raise, he had not had a scrap of + evidence. + </p> + <p> + If he had imputed to them conditions it was all his own doing: it came + from his inveterate habit of abysmal imputation, the snatching of the ell + wherever the inch peeped out, without which where would have been the + tolerability of life? It didn’t matter now what he had imputed—and + he always held that his expenses of imputation were, at the worst, a + compliment to those inspiring them. It only mattered that each of the pair + had been then what he really saw each now—full, that is, of the + pride of their youth and beauty and fortune and freedom, though at the + same time particularly preoccupied: preoccupied, that is, with the + affairs, and above all with the passions, of Olympus. Who had they been, + and what? Whence had they come, whither were they bound, what tie united + them, what adventure engaged, what felicity, tempered by what peril, + magnificently, dramatically attended? These had been his questions, all so + inevitable and so impertinent, at the time, and to the exclusion of any + scruples over his not postulating an inane honeymoon, his not taking the + “tie,” as he should doubtless properly have done, for the mere blest + matrimonial; and he now retracted not one of them, flushing as they did + before him again with their old momentary life. To feel his two friends + renewedly in presence—friends of the fleeting hour though they had + but been, and with whom he had exchanged no sign save the vaguest of + salutes on finally relieving them of his company—was only to be + conscious that he hadn’t, on the spot, done them, so to speak, half + justice, and that, for his superior entertainment, there would be ever so + much more of them to come. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + It might already have been coming indeed, with an immense stride, when, + scarce more than ten minutes later, he was aware that the distinguished + stranger had brought the Princess straight across the room to speak to + him. He had failed in the interval of any glimpse of their closer meeting; + for the great tenor had sung another song and then stopped, immediately on + which Madame Gloriani had made his pulse quicken to a different, if not to + a finer, throb by hovering before him once more with the man in the world + he most admired, as it were, looking at him over her shoulder. The man in + the world he most admired, the greatest then of contemporary Dramatists—and + bearing, independently, the name inscribed if not in deepest incision at + least in thickest gilding on the rich recreative roll—this + prodigious personage was actually to suffer “presentation” to him at the + good lady’s generous but ineffectual hands, and had in fact the next + instant, left alone with him, bowed, in formal salutation, the massive, + curly, witty head, so “romantic” yet so modern, so “artistic” and ironic + yet somehow so civic, so Gallic yet somehow so cosmic, his personal vision + of which had not hitherto transcended that of the possessor of a signed + and framed photograph in a consecrated quarter of a writing-table. + </p> + <p> + It was positive, however, that poor John was afterward to remember of this + conjunction nothing whatever but the fact of the great man’s looking at + him very hard, straight in the eyes, and of his not having himself + scrupled to do as much, and with a confessed intensity of appetite. It was + improbable, he was to recognise, that they had, for the few minutes, only + stared and grimaced, like pitted boxers or wrestlers; but what had abode + with him later on, none the less, was just the cherished memory of his not + having so lost presence of mind as to fail of feeding on his impression. + It was precious and precarious, that was perhaps all there would be of it; + and his subsequent consciousness was quite to cherish this queer view of + the silence, neither awkward nor empty nor harsh, but on the contrary + quite charged and brimming, that represented for him his use, his + unforgettable enjoyment in fact, of his opportunity. Had nothing passed in + words? Well, no misery of murmured “homage,” thank goodness; though + something must have been said, certainly, to lead up, as they put it at + the theatre, to John’s having asked the head of the profession, before + they separated, if he by chance knew who the so radiantly handsome young + woman might be, the one who had so lately come in and who wore the pale + yellow dress, of the strange tone, and the magnificent pearls. They must + have separated soon, it was further to have been noted; since it was + before the advance of the pair, their wonderful dazzling charge upon him, + that he had distinctly seen the great man, at a distance again, block out + from his sight the harmony of the faded gold and the pearls—to speak + only of that—and plant himself there (the mere high Atlas-back of + renown to Berridge now) as for communion with them. He had blocked + everything out, to this tune, effectually; with nothing of the matter left + for our friend meanwhile but that, as he had said, the beautiful lady was + the Princess. What Princess, or the Princess of what?—our young man + had afterward wondered; his companion’s reply having lost itself in the + prelude of an outburst by another vocalist who had approached the piano. + </p> + <p> + It was after these things that she so incredibly came to him, attended by + her adorer—since he took it for absolute that the young Lord was her + adorer, as who indeed mightn’t be?—and scarce waiting, in her bright + simplicity, for any form of introduction. It may thus be said in a word + that this was the manner in which she made our hero’s acquaintance, a + satisfaction that she on the spot described to him as really wanting of + late to her felicity. “I’ve read everything, you know, and ‘The Heart of + Gold’ three times”: she put it all immediately on that ground, while the + young Lord now smiled, beside her, as if it were quite the sort of thing + he had done too; and while, further, the author of the work yielded to the + consciousness that whereas in general he had come at last scarce to be + able to bear the iteration of those words, which affected him as a mere + vain vocal convulsion, so not a breath of this association now attended + them, so such a person as the Princess could make of them what she would. + </p> + <p> + Unless it was to be really what <i>he</i> would!—this occurred to + him in the very thick of the prodigy, no single shade of possibility of + which was less prodigious than any other. It was a declaration, simply, + the admirable young woman was treating him to, a profession of “artistic + sympathy”—for she was in a moment to use this very term that made + for them a large, clear, common ether, an element all uplifted and rare, + of which they could equally partake. + </p> + <p> + If she was Olympian—as in her rich and regular young beauty, that of + some divine Greek mask over-painted say by Titian, she more and more + appeared to him—this offered air was that of the gods themselves: + she might have been, with her long rustle across the room, Artemis + decorated, hung with pearls, for her worshippers, yet disconcerting them + by having, under an impulse just faintly fierce, snatched the cup of gold + from Hebe. It was to him, John Berridge, she thus publicly offered it; and + it was his over-topping <i>confrere</i> of shortly before who was the + worshipper most disconcerted. John had happened to catch, even at its + distance, after these friends had joined him, the momentary deep, grave + estimate, in the great Dramatist’s salient watching eyes, of the + Princess’s so singular performance: the touch perhaps this, in the whole + business, that made Berridge’s sense of it most sharp. The sense of it as + <i>prodigy</i> didn’t in the least entail his feeling abject—any + more, that is, than in the due dazzled degree; for surely there would have + been supreme wonder in the eagerness of her exchange of mature glory for + thin notoriety, hadn’t it still exceeded everything that an Olympian of + such race should have found herself bothered, as they said, to “read” at + all—and most of all to read three times! + </p> + <p> + With the turn the matter took as an effect of this meeting, Berridge was + more than once to find himself almost ashamed for her—since it + seemed never to occur to her to be so for herself: he was jealous of the + type where she might have been taken as insolently careless of it; his + advantage (unless indeed it had been his ruin) being that he could + inordinately reflect upon it, could wander off thereby into kinds of + licence of which she was incapable. He hadn’t, for himself, waited till + now to be sure of what he would do were <i>he</i> an Olympian: he would + leave his own stuff snugly unread, to begin with; that would be a + beautiful start for an Olympian career. He should have been as unable to + write those works in short as to make anything else of them; and he should + have had no more arithmetic for computing fingers than any perfect-headed + marble Apollo mutilated at the wrists. He should have consented to know + but the grand personal adventure on the grand personal basis: nothing + short of this, no poor cognisance of confusable, pettifogging things, the + sphere of earth-grubbing questions and two-penny issues, would begin to + be, on any side, Olympian enough. + </p> + <p> + Even the great Dramatist, with his tempered and tested steel and his + immense “assured” position, even he was not Olympian: the look, full of + the torment of earth, with which he had seen the Princess turn her back, + and for such a purpose, on the prized privilege of his notice, testified + sufficiently to that. Still, comparatively, it was to be said, the + question of a personal relation with an authority so eminent on the + subject of the passions—to say nothing of the rest of his charm—might + have had for an ardent young woman (and the Princess was unmistakably + ardent) the absolute attraction of romance: unless, again, prodigy of + prodigies, she were looking for her romance very particularly elsewhere. + Yet where could she have been looking for it, Berridge was to ask himself + with private intensity, in a manner to leave her so at her ease for + appearing to offer <i>him</i> everything?—so free to be quite + divinely gentle with him, to hover there before him in all her mild, + bright, smooth sublimity and to say: “I should be so very grateful if + you’d come to see me.” + </p> + <p> + There succeeded this a space of time of which he was afterward to lose all + account, was never to recover the history; his only coherent view of it + being that an interruption, some incident that kept them a while separate, + had then taken place, yet that during their separation, of half an hour or + whatever, they had still somehow not lost sight of each other, but had + found their eyes meeting, in deep communion, all across the great peopled + room; meeting and wanting to meet, wanting—it was the most + extraordinary thing in the world for the suppression of stages, for + confessed precipitate intensity—to use together every instant of the + hour that might be left them. Yet to use it for what?—unless, like + beautiful fabulous figures in some old-world legend, for the frankest and + almost the crudest avowal of the impression they had made on each other. + He couldn’t have named, later on, any other person she had during this + space been engaged with, any more than he was to remember in the least + what he had himself ostensibly done, who had spoken to him, whom he had + spoken to, or whether he hadn’t just stood and publicly gaped or + languished. + </p> + <p> + Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was a part of their + high bravery and privilege; but what it also appeared to attest in this + wondrous manner was that they could communicate to their chosen in three + minutes, by the mere light of their eyes, the same shining cynicism. He + was to wonder of course, tinglingly enough, whether he had really made an + ass of himself, and there was this amount of evidence for it that there + certainly <i>had</i> been a series of moments each one of which glowed + with the lucid sense that, as she couldn’t like him as much as <i>that</i> + either for his acted clap-trap or for his printed verbiage, what it must + come to was that she liked him, and to such a tune, just for himself and + quite after no other fashion than that in which every goddess in the + calendar had, when you came to look, sooner or later liked some + prepossessing young shepherd. The question would thus have been, for him, + with a still sharper eventual ache, of whether he positively <i>had</i>, + as an effect of the miracle, been petrified, before fifty pair of eyes, to + the posture of a prepossessing shepherd—and would perhaps have left + him under the shadow of some such imputable fatuity if his consciousness + hadn’t, at a given moment, cleared up to still stranger things. + </p> + <p> + The agent of the change was, as quite congruously happened, none other + than the shining youth whom he now seemed to himself to have been thinking + of for ever so long, for a much longer time than he had ever in his life + spent at an evening party, as the young Lord: which personage suddenly + stood before him again, holding him up an odd object and smiling, as if in + reference to it, with a gladness that at once struck our friend as almost + too absurd for belief. The object was incongruous by reason of its being, + to a second and less preoccupied glance, a book; and what had befallen + Berridge within twenty minutes was that they—the Princess and he, + that is—had got such millions of miles, or at least such thousands + of years, away from <i>those</i> platitudes. The book, he found himself + assuming, could only be <i>his</i> book (it seemed also to have a tawdry + red cover); and there came to him memories, dreadfully false notes sounded + so straight again by his new acquaintance, of certain altogether different + persons who at certain altogether different parties had flourished volumes + before him very much with that insinuating gesture, that arch expression, + and that fell intention. The meaning of these things—of all possible + breaks of the charm at such an hour!—was that he should “signature” + the ugly thing, and with a characteristic quotation or sentiment: that was + the way people simpered and squirmed, the way they mouthed and beckoned, + when animated by such purposes; and it already, on the spot, almost broke + his heart to see such a type as that of the young Lord brought, by the + vulgarest of fashions, so low. This state of quick displeasure in + Berridge, however, was founded on a deeper question—the question of + how in the world he was to remain for himself a prepossessing shepherd if + he should consent to come back to these base actualities. It was true that + even while this wonderment held him, his aggressor’s perfect good + conscience had placed the matter in a slightly different light. + </p> + <p> + “By an extraordinary chance I’ve found a copy of my friend’s novel on one + of the tables here—I see by the inscription that she has presented + it to Gloriani. So if you’d like to glance at it—!” And the young + Lord, in the pride of his association with the eminent thing, held it out + to Berridge as artlessly as if it had been a striking natural specimen of + some sort, a rosy round apple grown in his own orchard, or an exceptional + precious stone, to be admired for its weight and lustre. Berridge accepted + the offer mechanically—relieved at the prompt fading of his worst + fear, yet feeling in himself a tell-tale facial blankness for the still + absolutely anomalous character of his friend’s appeal. He was even tempted + for a moment to lay the volume down without looking at it—only with + some extemporised promise to borrow it of their host and take it home, to + give himself to it at an easier moment. Then the very expression of his + fellow-guests own countenance determined in him a different and a still + more dreadful view; in fact an immediate collapse of the dream in which he + had for the splendid previous space of time been living. The young Lord + himself, in his radiant costly barbarism, figured far better than John + Berridge could do the prepossessing shepherd, the beautiful mythological + mortal “distinguished” by a goddess; for our hero now saw that his whole + manner of dealing with his ridiculous tribute was marked exactly by the + grand simplicity, the prehistoric good faith, as one might call it, of + far-off romantic and “plastic” creatures, figures of exquisite Arcadian + stamp, glorified rustics like those of the train of peasants in “A + Winter’s Tale,” who thought nothing of such treasure-trove, on a Claude + Lorrain sea-strand, as a royal infant wrapped in purple: something in that + fabulous style of exhibition appearing exactly what his present + demonstration might have been prompted by. “The Top of the Tree, by Amy + Evans”—scarce credible words floating before Berridge after he had + with an anguish of effort dropped his eyes on the importunate title-page—represented + an object as alien to the careless grace of goddess-haunted Arcady as a + washed-up “kodak” from a wrecked ship might have been to the appreciation + of some islander of wholly unvisited seas. Nothing could have been more in + the tone of an islander deplorably diverted from his native interests and + dignities than the glibness with which John’s own child of nature went on. + “It’s her pen-name, Amy Evans”—he couldn’t have said it otherwise + had he been a blue-chinned penny-a-liner; yet marking it with a + disconnectedness of intelligence that kept up all the poetry of his own + situation and only crashed into that of other persons. The reference put + the author of “The Heart of Gold” quite into <i>his</i> place, but left + the speaker absolutely free of Arcady. “Thanks awfully”—Berridge + somehow clutched at that, to keep everything from swimming. “Yes, I should + like to look at it,” he managed, horribly grimacing now, he believed, to + say; and there was in fact a strange short interlude after this in which + he scarce knew what had become of any one or of anything; in which he only + seemed to himself to stand alone in a desolate place where even its + desolation didn’t save him from having to stare at the greyest of printed + pages. Nothing here helped anything else, since the stamped greyness + didn’t even in itself make it impossible his eyes should follow such + sentences as: “The loveliness of the face, which was that of the glorious + period in which Pheidias reigned supreme, and which owed its most + exquisite note to that shell-like curl of the upper lip which always + somehow recalls for us the smile with which windblown Astarte must have + risen from the salt sea to which she owed her birth and her terrible + moods; or it was too much for all the passionate woman in her, and she let + herself go, over the flowering land that had been, but was no longer their + love, with an effect of blighting desolation that might have proceeded + from one of the more physical, though not more awful, convulsions of + nature.” + </p> + <p> + He seemed to know later on that other and much more natural things had + occurred; as that, for instance, with now at last a definite intermission + of the rare music that for a long time past, save at the briefest + intervals, had kept all participants ostensibly attentive and motionless, + and that in spite of its high quality and the supposed privilege of + listening to it he had allowed himself not to catch a note of, there was a + great rustling and shifting and vociferous drop to a lower plane, more + marked still with the quick clearance of a way to supper and a lively + dispersal of most of the guests. Hadn’t he made out, through the queer + glare of appearances, though they yet somehow all came to him as confused + and unreal, that the Princess was no longer there, wasn’t even only + crowded out of his range by the immediate multiplication of her court, the + obsequious court that the change of pitch had at once permitted to close + round her; that Gloriani had offered her his arm, in a gallant official + way, as to the greatest lady present, and that he was left with half a + dozen persons more knowing than the others, who had promptly taken, singly + or in couples, to a closer inspection of the fine small scattered + treasures of the studio? + </p> + <p> + He himself stood there, rueful and stricken, nursing a silly red-bound + book under his arm very much as if he might have been holding on tight to + an upright stake, or to the nearest piece of furniture, during some + impression of a sharp earthquake-shock or of an attack of dyspeptic + dizziness; albeit indeed that he wasn’t conscious of this absurd, this + instinctive nervous clutch till the thing that was to be more wonderful + than any yet suddenly flared up for him—the sight of the Princess + again on the threshold of the room, poised there an instant, in her + exquisite grace, for recovery of some one or of something, and then, at + recognition of him, coming straight to him across the empty place as if he + alone, and nobody and nothing else, were what she incredibly wanted. She + was there, she was radiantly <i>at</i> him, as if she had known and loved + him for ten years—ten years during which, however, she had never + quite been able, in spite of undiscouraged attempts, to cure him, as + goddesses <i>had</i> to cure shepherds, of his mere mortal shyness. + </p> + <p> + “Ah no, not <i>that</i> one!” she said at once, with her divine + familiarity; for she had in the flash of an eye “spotted” the particular + literary production he seemed so very fondly to have possessed himself of + and against which all the Amy Evans in her, as she would doubtless have + put it, clearly wished on the spot to discriminate. She pulled it away + from him; he let it go; he scarce knew what was happening—only made + out that she distinguished the right one, the one that should have been + shown him, as blue or green or purple, and intimated that her other + friend, her fellow-Olympian, as Berridge had thought of him from the + first, really did too clumsily bungle matters, poor dear, with his + officiousness over the red one! She went on really as if she had come for + that, some such rectification, some such eagerness of reunion with dear + Mr. Berridge, some talk, after all the tiresome music, of questions really + urgent; while, thanks to the supreme strangeness of it, the high tide of + golden fable floated him afresh, and her pretext and her plea, the + queerness of her offered motive, melted away after the fashion of the + enveloping clouds that do their office in epics and idylls. “You didn’t + perhaps know I’m Amy Evans,” she smiled, “or even perhaps that I write in + English—which I love, I assure you, as much as you can yourself do, + and which gives one (doesn’t it? for who should know if not you?) the + biggest of publics. I ‘just love’—don’t they say?—your + American millions; and all the more that they really <i>take</i> me for + Amy Evans, as I’ve just wanted to be taken, to be loved too for myself, + don’t you know?—that they haven’t seemed to try at all to ‘go + behind’ (don’t you say?) my poor dear little <i>nom de guerre</i>. But + it’s the new one, my last, ‘The Velvet Glove,’ that I should like you to + judge me by—if such a <i>corvee</i> isn’t too horrible for you to + think of; though I admit it’s a move straight in the romantic direction—since + after all (for I might as well make a clean breast of it) it’s dear old + discredited romance that I’m most in sympathy with. I’ll send you ‘The + Velvet Glove’ to-morrow, if you <i>can</i> find half an hour for it; and + then—and <i>then</i>—!” She paused as for the positive bright + glory of her meaning. + </p> + <p> + It could only be so extraordinary, her meaning, whatever it was, that the + need in him that would—whatever it was again!—meet it most + absolutely formed the syllables on his lips as: “Will you be very, <i>very</i> + kind to me?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah ‘kind,’ dear Mr. Berridge? ‘Kind,’” she splendidly laughed, “is + nothing to what—!” But she pulled herself up again an instant. + “Well, to what I want to be! Just <i>see</i>,” she said, “how I want to + be!” It was exactly, he felt, what he couldn’t <i>but</i> see—in + spite of books and publics and pen-names, in spite of the really + “decadent” perversity, recalling that of the most irresponsibly insolent + of the old Romans and Byzantines, that could lead a creature so formed for + living and breathing her Romance, and so committed, up to the eyes, to the + constant fact of her personal immersion in it and genius for it, the + dreadful amateurish dance of ungrammatically scribbling it, with editions + and advertisements and reviews and royalties and every other futile item: + since what was more of the deep essence of throbbing intercourse itself + than this very act of her having broken away from people, in the other + room, to whom he was as nought, of her having, with her <i>crânerie</i> of + audacity and indifference, just turned her back on them all as soon as she + had begun to miss him? What was more of it than her having forbidden them, + by a sufficient curt ring of her own supremely silver tone, to attempt to + check or criticise her freedom, than her having looked him up, at his + distance, under all the noses he had put out of joint, so as to let them + think whatever they might—not of herself (much she troubled to + care!) but of the new champion to be reckoned with, the invincible young + lion of the day? What was more of it in short than her having perhaps even + positively snubbed for him the great mystified Sculptor and the great + bewildered Dramatist, treated to this queer experience for the first time + of their lives? + </p> + <p> + It all came back again to the really great ease of really great ladies, + and to the perfect facility of everything when once they were great + enough. <i>That</i> might become the delicious thing to him, he more and + more felt, as soon as it should be supremely attested; it was ground he + had ventured on, scenically, representation-ally, in the artistic sphere, + but without ever dreaming he should “realise” it thus in the social. + Handsomely, gallantly just now, moreover, he didn’t so much as let it + occur to him that the social experience would perhaps on some future + occasion richly profit further scenic efforts; he only lost himself in the + consciousness of all she invited him to believe. It took licence, this + consciousness, the next moment, for a tremendous further throb, from what + she had gone on to say to him in so many words—though indeed the + words were nothing and it was all a matter but of the implication that + glimmered through them: “Do you <i>want</i> very much your supper here?” + And then while he felt himself glare, for charmed response, almost to the + point of his tears rising with it: “Because if you don’t——!” + </p> + <p> + “Because if I don’t—?” She had paused, not from the faintest shade + of timidity, but clearly for the pleasure of making him press. + </p> + <p> + “Why shouldn’t we go together, letting me drive you home?” + </p> + <p> + “You’ll come home with me?” gasped John Berridge while the perspiration on + his brow might have been the morning dew on a high lawn of Mount Ida. + </p> + <p> + “No—you had better come with <i>me</i>. That’s what I mean; but I + certainly will come to you with pleasure some time if you’ll let me.” + </p> + <p> + She made no more than that of the most fatuous of freedoms, as he felt + directly he had spoken that it might have seemed to her; and before he had + even time to welcome the relief of not having then himself, for beastly + contrition, to make more of it, she had simply mentioned, with her + affectionate ease, that she wanted to get away, that of the bores there + she might easily, after a little, have too much, and that if he’d but say + the word they’d nip straight out together by an independent door and be + sure to find her motor in the court. What word he had found to say, he was + afterward to reflect, must have little enough mattered; for he was to have + kept, of what then occurred, but a single other impression, that of her + great fragrant rustle beside him over the rest of the ample room and + toward their nearest and friendliest resource, the door by which he had + come in and which gave directly upon a staircase. This independent image + was just that of the only other of his fellow-guests with whom he had been + closely concerned; he had thought of him rather indeed, up to that moment, + as the Princess’s fellow-Olympian—but a new momentary vision of him + seemed now to qualify it. + </p> + <p> + The young Lord had reappeared within a minute on the threshold, that of + the passage from the supper-room, lately crossed by the Princess herself, + and Berridge felt him there, saw him there, wondered about him there, all, + for the first minute, without so much as a straight look at him. He would + have come to learn the reason of his friend’s extraordinary public + demonstration—having more right to his curiosity, or his anxiety or + whatever, than any one else; he would be taking in the remarkable + appearances that thus completed it, and would perhaps be showing quite a + different face for them, at the point they had reached, than any that + would have hitherto consorted with the beautiful security of his own + position. So much, on our own young man’s part, for this first flush of a + presumption that he might have stirred the germs of ire in a celestial + breast; so much for the moment during which nothing would have induced him + to betray, to a possibly rueful member of an old aristocracy, a vulgar + elation or a tickled, unaccustomed glee. His inevitable second thought + was, however, it has to be confessed, another matter, which took a + different turn—for, frankly, all the conscious conqueror in him, as + Amy Evans would again have said, couldn’t forego a probably supreme + consecration. He treated himself to no prolonged reach of vision, but + there was something he nevertheless fully measured for five seconds—the + sharp truth of the fact, namely, of how the interested observer in the + doorway must really have felt about him. Rather disconcertingly, hereupon, + the sharp truth proved to be that the most amused, quite the most + encouraging and the least invidious of smiles graced the young Lord’s + handsome countenance—forming, in short, his final contribution to a + display of high social candour unprecedented in our hero’s experience. No, + he wasn’t jealous, didn’t do John Berridge the honour to be, to the extent + of the least glimmer of a spark of it, but was so happy to see his + immortal mistress do what she liked that he could positively beam at the + odd circumstance of her almost lavishing public caresses on a gentleman + not, after all, of negligible importance. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + Well, it was all confounding enough, but this indication in particular + would have jostled our friend’s grasp of the presented cup had he had, + during the next ten minutes, more independence of thought. That, however, + was out of the question when one positively felt, as with a pang somewhere + deep within, or even with a smothered cry for alarm, one’s whole sense of + proportion shattered at a blow and ceasing to serve. “Not <i>straight</i>, + and not too fast, shall we?” was the ineffable young woman’s appeal to + him, a few minutes later, beneath the wide glass porch-cover that + sheltered their brief wait for their chariot of fire. It was there even as + she spoke; the capped charioteer, with a great clean curve, drew up at the + steps of the porch, and the Princess’s footman, before rejoining him in + front, held open the door of the car. She got in, and Berridge was the + next instant beside her; he could only say: “As you like, Princess—where + you will; certainly let us prolong it; let us prolong everything; don’t + let us have it over—strange and beautiful as it can only be!—a + moment sooner than we must.” So he spoke, in the security of their + intimate English, while the perpendicular imperturbable <i>valet-de-pied</i>, + white-faced in the electric light, closed them in and then took his place + on the box where the rigid liveried backs of the two men, presented + through the glass, were like a protecting wall; such a guarantee of + privacy as might come—it occurred to Berridge’s inexpugnable fancy—from + a vision of tall guards erect round Eastern seraglios. + </p> + <p> + His companion had said something, by the time they started, about their + taking a turn, their looking out for a few of the night-views of Paris + that were so wonderful; and after that, in spite of his constantly prized + sense of knowing his enchanted city and his way about, he ceased to follow + or measure their course, content as he was with the particular exquisite + assurance it gave him. <i>That</i> was knowing Paris, of a wondrous bland + April night; that was hanging over it from vague consecrated lamp-studded + heights and taking in, spread below and afar, the great scroll of all its + irresistible story, pricked out, across river and bridge and radiant <i>place</i>, + and along quays and boulevards and avenues, and around monumental circles + and squares, in syllables of fire, and sketched and summarised, further + and further, in the dim fire-dust of endless avenues; that was all of the + essence of fond and thrilled and throbbing recognition, with a thousand + things understood and a flood of response conveyed, a whole familiar + possessive feeling appealed to and attested. + </p> + <p> + “From you, you know, it <i>would</i> be such a pleasure, and I think—in + fact I’m sure—it would do so much for the thing in America.” Had she + gone on as they went, or had there been pauses of easy and of charmed and + of natural silence, breaks and drops from talk, but only into greater + confidence and sweetness?—such as her very gesture now seemed a part + of; her laying her gloved hand, for emphasis, on the back of his own, + which rested on his knee and which took in from the act he scarce knew + what melting assurance. The emphasis, it was true—this came to him + even while for a minute he held his breath—seemed rather that of Amy + Evans; and if her talk, while they rolled, had been in the sense of these + words (he had really but felt that they were shut intimately in together, + all his consciousness, all his discrimination of meanings and indications + being so deeply and so exquisitely merged in that) the case wasn’t as + surely and sublimely, as extravagantly, as fabulously romantic for him as + his excited pulses had been seeming to certify. Her hand was there on his + own, in precious living proof, and splendid Paris hung over them, as a + consecrating canopy, her purple night embroidered with gold; yet he + waited, something stranger still having glimmered for him, waited though + she left her hand, which expressed emphasis and homage and tenderness, and + anything else she liked indeed—since it was all then a matter of + what he next heard and what he slowly grew cold as he took from her. + </p> + <p> + “You know they do it here so charmingly—it’s a compliment a clever + man is always so glad to pay a literary friend, and sometimes, in the case + of a great name like yours, it renders such a service to a poor little + book like mine!” She spoke ever so humbly and yet ever so gaily—and + still more than before with this confidence of the sincere admirer and the + comrade. That, yes, through his sudden sharpening chill, was what first + became distinct for him; she was mentioning somehow her explanation and + her conditions—her motive, in fine, disconcerting, deplorable, + dreadful, in respect to the experience, otherwise so boundless, that he + had taken her as having opened to him; and she was doing it, above all, + with the clearest coolness of her general privilege. What in particular + she was talking about he as yet, still holding his breath, wondered; it + was something she wanted him to do for her—which was exactly what he + had hoped, but something of what trivial and, heaven forgive them both, of + what dismal order? Most of all, meanwhile, he felt the dire penetration of + two or three of the words she had used; so that after a painful minute the + quaver with which he repeated them resembled his-drawing, slowly, + carefully, timidly, some barbed dart out of his flesh. + </p> + <p> + “A ‘literary friend’?” he echoed as he turned his face more to her; so + that, as they sat, the whites of her eyes, near to his own, gleamed in the + dusk like some silver setting of deep sapphires. + </p> + <p> + It made her smile—which in their relation now was like the breaking + of a cool air-wave over the conscious sore flush that maintained itself + through his general chill. “Ah, of course you don’t allow that I <i>am</i> + literary—and of course if you’re awfully cruel and critical and + incorruptible you won’t let it say for me what I so want it should!” + </p> + <p> + “Where are we, where, in the name of all that’s damnably, of all that’s + grotesquely delusive, are we?” he said, without a sign, to himself; which + was the form of his really being quite at sea as to what she was talking + about. That uncertainty indeed he could but frankly betray by taking her + up, as he cast about him, on the particular ambiguity that his voice + perhaps already showed him to find most irritating. “Let it show? ‘It,’ + dear Princess——?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, my dear man, let your Preface show, the lovely, friendly, + irresistible log-rolling Preface that I’ve been asking you if you wouldn’t + be an angel and write for me.” + </p> + <p> + He took it in with a deep long gulp—he had never, it seemed to him, + had to swallow anything so bitter. “You’ve been asking me if I wouldn’t + write you a Preface?” + </p> + <p> + “To ‘The Velvet Glove’—after I’ve sent it to you and you’ve judged + if you really can. Of course I don’t want you to perjure yourself; but”—and + she fairly brushed him again, at their close quarters, with her fresh + fragrant smile—“I do want you so to like me, and to say it all out + beautifully and publicly.” “You want me to like you, Princess?” “But, + heaven help us, haven’t you understood?” Nothing stranger could + conceivably have been, it struck him—if he was right now—than + this exquisite intimacy of her manner of setting him down on the other + side of an abyss. It was as if she had lifted him first in her beautiful + arms, had raised him up high, high, high, to do it, pressing him to her + immortal young breast while he let himself go, and then, by some + extraordinary effect of her native force and her alien quality, setting + him down exactly where she wanted him to be—which was a thousand + miles away from her. Once more, so preposterously face to face with her + for these base issues, he took it all in; after which he felt his eyes + close, for amazement, despair and shame, and his head, which he had some + time before, baring his brow to the mild night, eased of its crush-hat, + sink to confounded rest on the upholstered back of the seat. The act, the + ceasing to see, and if possible to hear, was for the moment a retreat, an + escape from a state that he felt himself fairly flatter by thinking of it + as “awkward”; the state of really wishing that his humiliation might end, + and of wondering in fact if the most decent course open to him mightn’t be + to ask her to stop the motor and let him down. + </p> + <p> + He spoke no word for a long minute, or for considerably more than that; + during which time the motor went and went, now even somewhat faster, and + he knew, through his closed eyes, that the outer lights had begun to + multiply and that they were getting back somewhere into the spacious and + decorative quarters. He knew this, and also that his retreat, for all his + attitude as of accommodating thought, his air—<i>that</i> presently + and quickly came to him—of having perhaps gathered himself in, for + an instant, at her behest, to turn over, in his high ingenuity, some + humbugging “rotten” phrase or formula that he might place at her service + and make the note of such an effort; he became aware, I say, that his + lapse was but a half-retreat, with her strenuous presence and her earnest + pressure and the close cool respiration of her good faith absolutely + timing the moments of his stillness and the progress of the car. Yes, it + was wondrous well, he had all but made the biggest of all fools of + himself, almost as big a one as <i>she</i> was still, to every appearance, + in her perfect serenity, trying to make of him; and the one straight + answer to it <i>would</i> be that he should reach forward and touch the + footman’s shoulder and demand that the vehicle itself should make an end. + </p> + <p> + That would be an answer, however, he continued intensely to see, only to + inanely importunate, to utterly superfluous Amy Evans—not a bit to + his at last exquisitely patient companion, who was clearly now quite + taking it from him that what kept him in his attitude was the spring of + the quick desire to oblige her, the charming loyal impulse to consider a + little what he could do for her, say “handsomely yet conscientiously” (oh + the loveliness!) before he should commit himself. She was enchanted—<i>that</i> + seemed to breathe upon him; she waited, she hung there, she quite bent + over him, as Diana over the sleeping Endymion, while all the conscientious + man of letters in him, as she might so supremely have phrased it, + struggled with the more peccable, the more muddled and “squared,” though, + for her own ideal, the so much more <i>banal</i> comrade. Yes, he could + keep it up now—that is he could hold out for his real reply, could + meet the rather marked tension of the rest of their passage as well as + she; he should be able somehow or other to make his wordless detachment, + the tribute of his ostensibly deep consideration of her request, a retreat + in good order. She <i>was</i>, for herself, to the last point of her + guileless fatuity, Amy Evans and an asker for “lifts,” a conceiver of + twaddle both in herself and in him; or at least, so far as she fell short + of all this platitude, it was no fault of the really affecting folly of + her attempt to become a mere magazine mortal after the only fashion she + had made out, to the intensification of her self-complacency, that she + might. + </p> + <p> + Nothing might thus have touched him more—if to be touched, beyond a + certain point, hadn’t been to be squared—than the way she failed to + divine the bearing of his thoughts; so that she had probably at no one + small crisis of her life felt so much a promise in the flutter of her own + as on the occasion of the beautiful act she indulged in at the very + moment, he was afterward to recognise, of their sweeping into her great + smooth, empty, costly street—a desert, at that hour, of lavish + lamplight and sculptured stone. She raised to her lips the hand she had + never yet released and kept it there a moment pressed close against them; + he himself closing his eyes to the deepest detachment he was capable of + while he took in with a smothered sound of pain that this was the + conferred bounty by which Amy Evans sought most expressively to encourage, + to sustain and to reward. The motor had slackened and in a moment would + stop; and meanwhile even after lowering his hand again she hadn’t let it + go. This enabled it, while he after a further moment roused himself to a + more confessed consciousness, to form with his friend’s a more active + relation, to possess him of hers, in turn, and with an intention the + straighter that her glove had by this time somehow come off. Bending over + it without hinderance, he returned as firmly and fully as the application + of all his recovered wholeness of feeling, under his moustache, might + express, the consecration the bareness of his own knuckles had received; + only after which it was that, still thus drawing out his grasp of her, and + having let down their front glass by his free hand, he signified to the + footman his view of their stopping short. + </p> + <p> + They had arrived; the high, closed <i>porte-cochere</i>, in its crested + stretch of wall, awaited their approach; but his gesture took effect, the + car pulled up at the edge of the pavement, the man, in an instant, was at + the door and had opened it; quickly moving across the walk, the next + moment, to press the bell at the gate. Berridge, as his hand now broke + away, felt he had cut his cable; with which, after he had stepped out, he + raised again the glass he had lowered and closed, its own being already + down, the door that had released him. During these motions he had the + sense of his companion, still radiant and splendid, but somehow + momentarily suppressed, suspended, silvered over and celestially blurred, + even as a summer moon by the loose veil of a cloud. So it was he saw her + while he leaned for farewell on the open window-ledge; he took her in as + her visible intensity of bright vagueness filled the circle that the + interior of the car made for her. It was such a state as she would have + been reduced to—he felt this, was certain of it—for the first + time in her life; and it was he, poor John Berridge, after all, who would + have created the condition. + </p> + <p> + “Good-night, Princess. I sha’n’t see you again.” + </p> + <p> + Vague was indeed no word for it—shine though she might, in her + screened narrow niche, as with the liquefaction of her pearls, the glimmer + of her tears, the freshness of her surprise. “You won’t come in—when + you’ve had no supper?” + </p> + <p> + He smiled at her with a purpose of kindness that could never in his life + have been greater; and at first but smiled without a word. He presently + shook his head, however—doubtless also with as great a sadness. “I + seem to have supped to my fill, Princess. Thank you, I won’t come in.” + </p> + <p> + It drew from her, while she looked at him, a long low anxious wail. “And + you won’t do my Preface?” + </p> + <p> + “No, Princess, I won’t do your Preface. Nothing would induce me to say a + word in print about you. I’m in fact not sure I shall ever mention you in + any manner at all as long as ever I live.” + </p> + <p> + He had felt for an instant as if he were speaking to some miraculously + humanised idol, all sacred, all jewelled, all votively hung about, but + made mysterious, in the recess of its shrine, by the very thickness of the + accumulated lustre. And “Then you don’t like me—?” was the + marvellous sound from the image. + </p> + <p> + “Princess,” was in response the sound of the worshipper, “Princess, I + adore you. But I’m ashamed for you.” + </p> + <p> + “Ashamed——?” + </p> + <p> + “You <i>are</i> Romance—as everything, and by what I make out every + one, about you is; so what more do you want? Your Preface—the only + one worth speaking of—was written long ages ago by the most + beautiful imagination of man.” + </p> + <p> + Humanised at least for these moments, she could understand enough to + declare that she didn’t. “I don’t, I don’t!” + </p> + <p> + “You don’t need to understand. Don’t attempt such base things. Leave those + to us. Only live. Only be. <i>We’ll</i> do the rest.” + </p> + <p> + She moved over—she had come close to the window. “Ah, but Mr. + Berridge——!” + </p> + <p> + He raised both hands; he shook them at her gently, in deep and soft + deprecation. “Don’t sound my dreadful name. Fortunately, however, you + can’t help yourself.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, <i>voyons!</i> I so want——-!” + </p> + <p> + He repeated his gesture, and when he brought down his hands they closed + together on both of hers, which now quite convulsively grasped the + window-ledge. “Don’t speak, because when you speak you really say things—!” + “You <i>are</i> Romance,” he pronounced afresh and with the last intensity + of conviction and persuasion. “That’s all you have to do with it,” he + continued while his hands, for emphasis, pressed hard on her own. + </p> + <p> + Their faces, in this way, were nearer together than ever, but with the + effect of only adding to the vividness of that dire non-intelligence from + which, all perversely and incalculably, her very beauty now appeared to + gain relief. This made for him a pang and almost an anguish; the fear of + her saying something yet again that would wretchedly prove how little he + moved her perception. So his eyes, of remonstrant, of suppliant intention, + met hers close, at the same time that these, so far from shrinking, but + with their quite other swimming plea all bedimmed now, seemed almost to + wash him with the tears of her failure. He soothed, he stroked, he + reassured her hands, for tender conveyance of his meaning, quite as she + had just before dealt with his own for brave demonstration of hers. It was + during these instants as if the question had been which of them <i>could</i> + most candidly and fraternally plead. Full but of that she kept it up. “Ah, + if you’d only think, if you’d only try——!” + </p> + <p> + He couldn’t stand it—she was capable of believing he had edged away, + excusing himself and trumping up a factitious theory, because he hadn’t + the wit, hadn’t the hand, to knock off the few pleasant pages she asked + him for and that any proper Frenchman, master of the <i>metier</i>, would + so easily and gallantly have promised. Should she so begin to commit + herself he’d, by the immortal gods, anticipate it in the manner most + admirably effective—in fact he’d even thus make her further + derogation impossible. Their faces were so close that he could practise + any rich freedom—even though for an instant, while the back of the + chauffeur guarded them on that side and his own presented breadth, + amplified by his loose mantle, filled the whole window-space, leaving him + no observation from any quarter to heed, he uttered, in a deep-drawn final + groan, an irrepressible echo of his pang for what might have been, the + muffled cry of his insistence. “You <i>are</i> Romance!”—he drove it + intimately, inordinately home, his lips, for a long moment, sealing it, + with the fullest force of authority, on her own; after which, as he broke + away and the car, starting again, turned powerfully across the pavement, + he had no further sound from her than if, all divinely indulgent but all + humanly defeated, she had given the question up, falling back to infinite + wonder. He too fell back, but could still wave his hat for her as she + passed to disappearance in the great floridly framed aperture whose wings + at once came together behind her. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + A ROUND OF VISITS + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + HE had been out but once since his arrival, Mark Monteith; that was the + next day after—he had disembarked by night on the previous; then + everything had come at once, as he would have said, everything had + changed. He had got in on Tuesday; he had spent Wednesday for the most + part down town, looking into the dismal subject of his anxiety—the + anxiety that, under a sudden decision, had brought him across the + unfriendly sea at mid-winter, and it was through information reaching him + on Wednesday evening that he had measured his loss, measured above all his + pain. These were two distinct things, he felt, and, though both bad, one + much worse than the other. It wasn’t till the next three days had pretty + well ebbed, in fact, that he knew himself for so badly wounded. He had + waked up on Thursday morning, so far as he had slept at all, with the + sense, together, of a blinding New York blizzard and of a deep sore inward + ache. The great white savage storm would have kept him at the best within + doors, but his stricken state was by itself quite reason enough. + </p> + <p> + He so felt the blow indeed, so gasped, before what had happened to him, at + the ugliness, the bitterness, and, beyond these things, the sinister + strangeness, that, the matter of his dismay little by little detaching and + projecting itself, settling there face to face with him as something he + must now live with always, he might have been in charge of some horrid + alien thing, some violent, scared, unhappy creature whom there was small + joy, of a truth, in remaining with, but whose behaviour wouldn’t perhaps + bring him under notice, nor otherwise compromise him, so long as he should + stay to watch it. A young jibbering ape of one of the more formidable + sorts, or an ominous infant panther, smuggled into the great gaudy hotel + and whom it might yet be important he shouldn’t advertise, couldn’t have + affected him as needing more domestic attention. The great gaudy hotel—The + Pocahontas, but carried out largely on “Du Barry” lines—made all + about him, beside, behind, below, above, in blocks and tiers and + superpositions, a sufficient defensive hugeness; so that, between the + massive labyrinth and the New York weather, life in a lighthouse during a + gale would scarce have kept him more apart. Even when in the course of + that worse Thursday it had occurred to him for vague relief that the + odious certified facts couldn’t be all his misery, and that, with his + throat and a probable temperature, a brush of the epidemic, which was for + ever brushing him, accounted for something, even then he couldn’t resign + himself to bed and broth and dimness, but only circled and prowled the + more within his high cage, only watched the more from his tenth story the + rage of the elements. + </p> + <p> + In the afternoon he had a doctor—the caravanserai, which supplied + everything in quantities, had one for each group of so many rooms—just + in order to be assured that he was <i>grippé</i> enough for anything. What + his visitor, making light of his attack, perversely told him was that he + was, much rather, “blue” enough, and from causes doubtless known to + himself—which didn’t come to the same thing; but he “gave him + something,” prescribed him warmth and quiet and broth and courage, and + came back the next day as to readminister this last dose. He then + pronounced him better, and on Saturday pronounced him well—all the + more that the storm had abated and the snow had been dealt with as New + York, at a push, knew how to deal with things. Oh, how New York knew how + to deal—to deal, that is, with other accumulations lying passive to + its hand—was exactly what Mark now ached with his impression of; so + that, still threshing about in this consciousness, he had on the Saturday + come near to breaking out as to what was the matter with him. The Doctor + brought in somehow the air of the hotel—which, cheerfully and + conscientiously, by his simple philosophy, the good man wished to diffuse; + breathing forth all the echoes of other woes and worries and pointing the + honest moral that, especially with such a thermometer, there were enough + of these to go round. + </p> + <p> + Our sufferer, by that time, would have liked to tell some one; extracting, + to the last acid strain of it, the full strength of his sorrow, taking it + all in as he could only do by himself and with the conditions favourable + at least to this, had been his natural first need. But now, he supposed, + he <i>must</i> be better; there was something of his heart’s heaviness he + wanted so to give out. He had rummaged forth on the Thursday night half a + dozen old photographs stuck into a leather frame, a small show-case that + formed part of his usual equipage of travel—he mostly set it up on a + table when he stayed anywhere long enough; and in one of the neat + gilt-edged squares of this convenient portable array, as familiar as his + shaving-glass or the hair-brushes, of backs and monograms now so + beautifully toned and wasted, long ago given him by his mother, Phil + Blood-good handsomely faced him. Not contemporaneous, and a little faded, + but so saying what it said only the more dreadfully, the image seemed to + sit there, at an immemorial window, like some long effective and only at + last exposed “decoy” of fate. It was <i>because</i> he was so beautifully + good-looking, because he was so charming and clever and frank—besides + being one’s third cousin, or whatever it was, one’s early schoolfellow and + one’s later college classmate—that one had abjectly trusted him. To + live thus with his unremoved, undestroyed, engaging, treacherous face, had + been, as our traveller desired, to live with all of the felt pang; had + been to consume it in such a single hot, sore mouthful as would so far as + possible dispose of it and leave but cold dregs. Thus, if the Doctor, + casting about for pleasantness, had happened to notice him there, salient + since he was, and possibly by the same stroke even to know him, as New + York—and more or less to its cost now, mightn’t one say?—so + abundantly and agreeable had, the cup would have overflowed and Monteith, + for all he could be sure of the contrary, would have relieved himself + positively in tears. + </p> + <p> + “Oh <i>he’s</i> what’s the matter with me—that, looking after some + of my poor dividends, as he for the ten years of my absence had served me + by doing, he has simply jockeyed me out of the whole little collection, + such as it was, and taken the opportunity of my return, inevitably at last + bewildered and uneasy, to ‘sail,’ ten days ago, for parts unknown and as + yet unguessable. It isn’t the beastly values themselves, however; that’s + only awkward and I can still live, though I don’t quite know how I shall + turn round; it’s the horror of <i>his</i> having done it, and done it to + <i>me</i>—without a mitigation or, so to speak, a warning or an + excuse.” That, at a hint or a jog, is what he would have brought out—only + to feel afterward, no doubt, that he had wasted his impulse and profaned + even a little his sincerity. The Doctor didn’t in the event so much as + glance at his cluster of portraits—which fact quite put before our + friend the essentially more vivid range of imagery that a pair of eyes + transferred from room to room and from one queer case to another, in such + a place as that, would mainly be adjusted to. It wasn’t for <i>him</i> to + relieve himself touchingly, strikingly or whatever, to such a man: such a + man might much more pertinently—save for professional discretion—have + emptied out there his own bag of wonders; prodigies of observation, + flowers of oddity, flowers of misery, flowers of the monstrous, gathered + in current hotel practice. Countless possibilities, making doctors + perfunctory, Mark felt, swarmed and seethed at their doors; it showed for + an incalculable world, and at last, on Sunday, he decided to leave his + room. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + Everything, as he passed through the place, went on—all the offices + of life, the whole bustle of the market, and withal, surprisingly, scarce + less that of the nursery and the playground; the whole sprawl in especial + of the great gregarious fireside: it was a complete social scene in + itself, on which types might figure and passions rage and plots thicken + and dramas develop, without reference to any other sphere, or perhaps even + to anything at all outside. The signs of this met him at every turn as he + threaded the labyrinth, passing from one extraordinary masquerade of + expensive objects, one portentous “period” of decoration, one violent + phase of publicity, to another: the heavy heat, the luxuriance, the + extravagance, the quantity, the colour, gave the impression of some + wondrous tropical forest, where vociferous, bright-eyed, and feathered + creatures, of every variety of size and hue, were half smothered between + undergrowths of velvet and tapestry and ramifications of marble and + bronze. The fauna and the flora startled him alike, and among them his + bruised spirit drew in and folded its wings. But he roamed and rested, + exploring and in a manner enjoying the vast rankness—in the depth of + which he suddenly encountered Mrs. Folliott, whom he had last seen, six + months before, in London, and who had spoken to him then, precisely, of + Phil Bloodgood, for several years previous her confidential American agent + and factotum too, as she might say, but at that time so little in her good + books, for the extraordinary things he seemed to be doing, that she was + just hurrying home, she had made no scruple of mentioning, to take + everything out of his hands. + </p> + <p> + Mark remembered how uneasy she had made him—how that very talk with + her had wound him up to fear, as so acute and intent a little person she + affected him; though he had affirmed with all emphasis and flourish his + own confidence and defended, to iteration, his old friend. This passage + had remained with him for a certain pleasant heat of intimacy, his + partner, of the charming appearance, being what she was; he liked to think + how they had fraternised over their difference and called each other + idiots, or almost, without offence. It was always a link to have scuffled, + failing a real scratch, with such a character; and he had at present the + flutter of feeling that something of this would abide. <i>He</i> hadn’t + been hurrying home, at the London time, in any case; he was doing nothing + then, and had continued to do it; he would want, before showing suspicion—that + had been his attitude—to have more, after all, to go upon. Mrs. + Folliott also, and with a great actual profession of it, remembered and + rejoiced; and, also staying in the house as she was, sat with him, under a + spreading palm, in a wondrous rococo salon, surrounded by the pinkest, + that is the fleshiest, imitation Boucher panels, and wanted to know if he + <i>now</i> stood up for his swindler. She would herself have tumbled on a + cloud, very passably, in a fleshy Boucher manner, hadn’t she been + over-dressed for such an exercise; but she was quite realistically aware + of what had so naturally happened—she was prompt about Bloodgood’s + “flight.” + </p> + <p> + She had acted with energy, on getting back—she had saved what she + could; which hadn’t, however, prevented her losing all disgustedly some + ten thousand dollars. She was lovely, lively, friendly, interested, she + connected Monteith perfectly with their discussion that day during the + water-party on the Thames; but, sitting here with him half an hour, she + talked only of her peculiar, her cruel sacrifice—since she should + never get a penny back. He had felt himself, on their meeting, quite + yearningly reach out to her—so decidedly, by the morning’s end, and + that of his scattered sombre stations, had he been sated with meaningless + contacts, with the sense of people all about him intensely, though + harmlessly, animated, yet at the same time raspingly indifferent. <i>They</i> + would have, he and she at least, their common pang—through which + fact, somehow, he should feel less stranded. It wasn’t that he wanted to + be pitied—he fairly didn’t pity himself; he winced, rather, and even + to vicarious anguish, as it rose again, for poor shamed Bloodgood’s + doom-ridden figure. But he wanted, as with a desperate charity, to give + some easier turn to the mere ugliness of the main facts; to work off his + obsession from them by mixing with it some other blame, some other pity, + it scarce mattered what—if it might be some other experience; as an + effect of which larger ventilation it would have, after a fashion and for + a man of free sensibility, a diluted and less poisonous taste. + </p> + <p> + By the end of five minutes of Mrs. Folliott, however, he felt his dry lips + seal themselves to a makeshift simper. She could <i>take</i> nothing—no + better, no broader perception of anything than fitted her own small + faculty; so that though she must have recalled or imagined that he had + still, up to lately, had interests at stake, the rapid result of her + egotistical little chatter was to make him wish he might rather have + conversed with the French waiter dangling in the long vista that showed + the oriental café as a climax, or with the policeman, outside, the top of + whose helmet peeped above the ledge of a window. She bewailed her wretched + money to excess—she who, he was sure, had quantities more; she pawed + and tossed her bare bone, with her little extraordinarily gemmed and + manicured hands, till it acted on his nerves; she rang all the changes on + the story, the dire fatality, of her having wavered and muddled, thought + of this and but done that, of her stupid failure to have pounced, when she + had first meant to, in season. She abused the author of their wrongs—recognising + thus too Monteith’s right to loathe him—for the desperado he + assuredly had proved, but with a vulgarity of analysis and an incapacity + for the higher criticism, as her listener felt it to be, which made him + determine resentfully, almost grimly, that she shouldn’t have the benefit + of a grain of <i>his</i> vision or <i>his</i> version of what had befallen + them, and of how, in particular, it had come; and should never dream + thereby (though much would she suffer from that!) of how interesting he + might have been. She had, in a finer sense, no manners, and to be + concerned with her in any retrospect was—since their discourse was + of losses—to feel the dignity of history incur the very gravest. It + was true that such fantasies, or that any shade of inward irony, would be + Greek to Mrs. Folliott. It was also true, however, and not much more + strange, when she had presently the comparatively happy thought of “Lunch + with <i>us</i>, you poor dear!” and mentioned three or four of her “crowd”—a + new crowd, rather, for her, all great Sunday lunchers there and immense + fun, who would in a moment be turning up—that this seemed to him as + easy as anything else; so that after a little, deeper in the jungle and + while, under the temperature as of high noon, with the crowd complete and + “ordering,” he wiped the perspiration from his brow, he felt he was + letting himself go. He did that certainly to the extent of leaving far + behind any question of Mrs. Folliott’s manners. They didn’t matter there—nobody’s + did; and if she ceased to lament her ten thousand it was only because, + among higher voices, she couldn’t make herself heard. Poor Blood-good + didn’t have a show, as they might have said, didn’t get through at any + point; the crowd was so new that—there either having been no hue and + cry for him, or having been too many others, for other absconders, in the + intervals—they had never so much as heard of him and would have no + more of Mrs. Folliott’s true inwardness, on that subject at least, than + she had lately cared to have of Monteith’s. + </p> + <p> + There was nothing like a crowd, this unfortunate knew, for making one feel + lonely, and he felt so increasingly during the meal; but he got thus at + least in a measure away from the terrible little lady; after which, and + before the end of the hour, he wanted still more to get away from every + one else. He was in fact about to perform this manoeuvre when he was + checked by the jolly young woman he had been having on his left and who + had more to say about the Hotels, up and down the town, than he had ever + known a young woman to have to say on any subject at all; she expressed + herself in hotel terms exclusively, the names of those establishments + playing through her speech as the <i>leit-motif</i> might have recurrently + flashed and romped through a piece of profane modern music. She wanted to + present him to the pretty girl she had brought with her, and who had + apparently signified to her that she must do so. + </p> + <p> + “I think you know my brother-in-law, Mr. Newton Winch,” the pretty girl + had immediately said; she moved her head and shoulders together, as by a + common spring, the effect of a stiff neck or of something loosened in her + back hair; but becoming, queerly enough, all the prettier for doing so. He + had seen in the papers, her brother-in-law, Mr. Monteith’s arrival—Mr. + Mark P. Monteith, wasn’t it?—and where he was, and she had been with + him, three days before, at the time; whereupon he had said “Hullo, what + can have brought old Mark back?” He seemed to have believed—Newton + had seemed—that that shirker, as he called him, never <i>would</i> + come; and she guessed that if she had known she was going to meet such a + former friend (“Which he claims you are, sir,” said the pretty girl) he + would have asked her to find out what the trouble could be. But the real + satisfaction would just be, she went on, if his former friend would + himself go and see him and tell him; he had appeared of late so down. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I remember him”—Mark didn’t repudiate the friendship, placing + him easily; only then he wasn’t married and the pretty girl’s sister must + have come in later: which showed, his not knowing such things, how they + had lost touch. The pretty girl was sorry to have to say in return to this + that her sister wasn’t living—had died two years after marrying; so + that Newton was up there in Fiftieth Street alone; where (in explanation + of his being “down”) he had been shut up for days with bad <i>grippe</i>; + though now on the mend, or she wouldn’t have gone to him, not she, who had + had it nineteen times and didn’t want to have it again. But the horrid + poison just seemed to have entered into poor Newton’s soul. + </p> + <p> + “That’s the way it <i>can</i> take you, don’t you know?” And then as, with + her single twist, she just charmingly hunched her eyes at our friend, + “Don’t you want to go to see him?” + </p> + <p> + Mark bethought himself: “Well, I’m going to see a lady——-” + </p> + <p> + She took the words from his mouth. “Of course you’re going to see a lady—every + man in New York is. But Newton isn’t a lady, unfortunately for him, + to-day; and Sunday afternoon in this place, in this weather, alone——-!” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, isn’t it awful?”—he was quite drawn to her. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, <i>you’ve</i> got your lady!” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I’ve got my lady, thank goodness!” The fervour of which was his + sincere tribute to the note he had had on Friday morning from Mrs. Ash, + the only thing that had a little tempered his gloom. + </p> + <p> + “Well then, feel for others. Fit him in. Tell him why!” + </p> + <p> + “Why I’ve come back? I’m glad I <i>have</i>—since it was to see <i>you</i>!” + Monteith made brave enough answer, promising to do what he could. He liked + the pretty girl, with her straight attack and her free awkwardness—also + with her difference from the others through something of a sense and a + distinction given her by so clearly having Newton on her mind. Yet it was + odd to him, and it showed the lapse of the years, that Winch—as he + had known him of old—could <i>be</i> to that degree on any one’s + mind. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + Outside in the intensity of the cold—it was a jump from the Tropics + to the Pole—he felt afresh the force of what he had just been + saying; that if it weren’t for the fact of Mrs. Ash’s good letter of + welcome, despatched, characteristically, as soon as she had, like the + faithful sufferer in Fiftieth Street, observed his name, in a newspaper, + on one of the hotel-lists, he should verily, for want of a connection and + an abutment, have scarce dared to face the void and the chill together, + but have sneaked back into the jungle and there tried to lose himself. He + made, as it was, the opposite effort, resolute to walk, though hovering + now and then at vague crossways, radiations of roads to nothing, or taking + cold counsel of the long but still sketchy vista, as it struck him, of the + northward Avenue, bright and bleak, fresh and harsh, rich and evident + somehow, a perspective like a page of florid modern platitudes. He didn’t + quite know what he had expected for his return—not certainly + serenades and deputations; but without Mrs. Ash his mail would have quite + lacked geniality, and it was as if Phil Blood-good had gone off not only + with so large a slice of his small <i>peculium</i>, but with all the + broken bits of the past, the loose ends of old relationships, that he had + supposed he might pick up again. Well, perhaps he should still pick up a + few—by the sweat of his brow; no motion of their own at least, he by + this time judged, would send them fluttering into his hand. + </p> + <p> + Which reflections but quickened his forecast of this charm of the old + Paris inveteracy renewed—the so-prized custom of nine years before, + when he still believed in results from his fond frequentation of the Beaux + Arts; that of walking over the river to the Rue de Marignan, precisely, + every Sunday without exception, and sitting at her fireside, and often all + offensively, no doubt, outstaying every one. How he had used to want those + hours then, and how again, after a little, at present, the Rue de Marignan + might have been before him! He had gone to her there at that time with his + troubles, such as they were, and they had always worked for her amusement—which + had been her happy, her clever way of taking them: she couldn’t have done + anything better for them in that phase, poor innocent things compared with + what they might have been, than be amused by them. Perhaps that was what + she would still be—with those of his present hour; now too they + might inspire her with the touch she best applied and was most instinctive + mistress of: this didn’t at all events strike him as what he should most + resent. It wasn’t as if Mrs. Folliott, to make up for boring him with her + own plaint, for example, had had so much as a gleam of conscious diversion + over his. + </p> + <p> + “I’m <i>so</i> delighted to see you, I’ve such immensities to tell you!”—it + began with the highest animation twenty minutes later, the very moment he + stood there, the sense of the Rue de Marignan in the charming room and in + the things about all reconstituted, regrouped, wonderfully preserved, down + to the very sitting-places in the same relations, and down to the faint + sweet mustiness of generations of cigarettes; but everything else + different, and even vaguely alien, and by a measure still other than that + of their own stretched interval and of the dear delightful woman’s just a + little pathetic alteration of face. He had allowed for the nine years, and + so, it was to be hoped, had she; but the last thing, otherwise, that would + have been touched, he immediately felt, was the quality, the intensity, of + her care to see him. She cared, oh so visibly and touchingly and almost + radiantly—save for her being, yes, distinctly, a little <i>more</i> + battered than from even a good nine years’ worth; nothing could in fact + have perched with so crowning an impatience on the heap of what she had to + “tell” as that special shade of revived consciousness of having him in + particular to tell it to. It wasn’t perhaps much to matter how soon she + brought out and caused to ring, as it were, on the little recognised + marqueterie table between them (such an anciently envied treasure), the + heaviest gold-piece of current history she was to pay him with for having + just so felicitously come back: he knew already, without the telling, that + intimate domestic tension must lately, within those walls, have reached a + climax and that he could serve supremely—oh how he was going to + serve!—as the most sympathetic of all pairs of ears. + </p> + <p> + The whole thing was upon him, in any case, with the minimum of delay: Bob + had had it from her, definitely, the first of the week, and it was + absolutely final now, that they must set up avowedly separate lives—without + horrible “proceedings” of any sort, but with her own situation, her + independence, secured to her once for all. She had been coming to it, + taking her time, and she had gone through—well, so old a friend + would guess enough what; but she was at the point, oh blessedly now, where + she meant to stay, he’d see if she didn’t; with which, in this wonderful + way, he himself had arrived for the cream of it and she was just selfishly + glad. Bob had gone to Washington—ostensibly on business, but really + to recover breath; she had, speaking vulgarly, knocked the wind out of him + and was allowing him time to turn round. Mrs. Folliott moreover, she was + sure, would have gone—was certainly believed to have been seen there + five days ago; and of course his first necessity, for public use, would be + to patch up something with Mrs. Folliott. Mark knew about Mrs. Folliott?—who + was only, for that matter, one of a regular “bevy.” Not that it signified, + however, if he didn’t: she would tell him about <i>her</i> later. + </p> + <p> + He took occasion from the first fraction of a break not quite to know what + he knew about Mrs. Folliott—though perhaps he could imagine a + little; and it was probably at this minute that, having definitely settled + to a position, and precisely in his very own tapestry <i>bergère</i>, the + one with the delicious little spectral “subjects” on the back and seat, he + partly exhaled, and yet managed partly to keep to himself, the deep + resigned sigh of a general comprehension. He knew what he was “in” for, he + heard her go on—she said it again and again, seemed constantly to be + saying it while she smiled at him with her peculiar fine charm, her + positive gaiety of sensibility, scarce dimmed: “I’m just selfishly glad, + just selfishly glad!” Well, she was going to have reason to be; she was + going to put the whole case to him, all her troubles and plans, and each + act of the tragi-comedy of her recent existence, as to the dearest and + safest sympathiser in all the world. There would be no chance for <i>his</i> + case, though it was so much for his case he had come; yet there took place + within him but a mild, dumb convulsion, the momentary strain of his + substituting, by the turn of a hand, one prospect of interest for another. + </p> + <p> + Squaring himself in his old <i>bergère</i>, and with his lips, during the + effort, compressed to the same passive grimace that had an hour or two + before operated for the encouragement of Mrs. Folliott—just as it + was to clear the stage completely for the present more prolonged + performance—he shut straight down, as he even in the act called it + to himself, on any personal claim for social consideration and rendered a + perfect little agony of justice to the grounds of his friend’s vividness. + For it was all the justice that could be expected of him that, though, + secretly, he wasn’t going to be interested in her being interesting, she + was yet going to be so, all the same, by the very force of her lovely + material (Bob Ash <i>was</i> such a pure pearl of a donkey!) and he was + going to keep on knowing she was—yes, to the very end. When after + the lapse of an hour he rose to go, the rich fact that she <i>had</i> been + was there between them, and with an effect of the frankly, fearlessly, + harmlessly intimate fireside passage for it that went beyond even the best + memories of the pleasant past. He hadn’t “amused” her, no, in quite the + same way as in the Rue de Marignan time—it had then been he who for + the most part took frequent turns, emphatic, explosive, elocutionary, over + that wonderful waxed parquet while she laughed as for the young perversity + of him from the depths of the second, the matching <i>bergère</i>. To-day + she herself held and swept the floor, putting him merely to the trouble of + his perpetual “Brava!” But that was all through the change of basis—the + amusement, another name only for the thrilled absorption, having been + inevitably for <i>him</i>; as how could it have failed to be with such a + regular “treat” to his curiosity? With the tea-hour now other callers were + turning up, and he got away on the plea of his wanting so to think it all + over. He hoped again he hadn’t too queer a grin with his assurance to her, + as if she would quite know what he meant, that he had been thrilled to the + core. But she returned, quite radiantly, that he had carried <i>her</i> + completely away; and her sincerity was proved by the final frankness of + their temporary parting. “My pleasure of you is selfish, horribly, I + admit; so that if <i>that</i> doesn’t suit you—!” Her faded beauty + flushed again as she said it. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> + <p> + In the street again, as he resumed his walk, he saw how perfectly it would + <i>have</i> to suit him and how he probably for a long time wouldn’t be + suited otherwise. Between them and that time, however, what mightn’t, for + him, poor devil, on his new basis, have happened? She wasn’t at any rate + within any calculable period going to care so much for anything as for the + so quaintly droll terms in which her rearrangement with her husband—thanks + to that gentleman’s inimitable fatuity—would have to be made. This + was what it was to own, exactly, her special grace—the brightest + gaiety in the finest sensibility; <i>such</i> a display of which + combination, Mark felt as he went (if he could but have done it still more + justice) she must have regaled him with! That exquisite last flush of her + fadedness could only remain with him; yet while he presently stopped at a + street-corner in a district redeemed from desolation but by the passage + just then of a choked trolley-car that howled, as he paused for it, + beneath the weight of its human accretions, he seemed to know the inward + “sinking” that had been determined in a hungry man by some extravagant + sight of the preparation of somebody else’s dinner. Florence Ash was + dining, so to speak, off the feast of appreciation, appreciation of what + she had to “tell” him, that he had left her seated at; and she was + welcome, assuredly—welcome, welcome, welcome, he musingly, he + wistfully, and yet at the same time a trifle mechanically, repeated, + stayed as he was a moment longer by the suffering shriek of another public + vehicle and a sudden odd automatic return of his mind to the pretty girl, + the flower of Mrs. Folliott’s crowd, who had spoken to him of Newton + Winch. It was extraordinarily as if, on the instant, she reminded him, + from across the town, that she had offered him dinner: it was really quite + strangely, while he stood there, as if she had told him where he could go + and get it. With which, none the less, it was apparently where he wouldn’t + find her—and what was there, after all, of nutritive in the image of + Newton Winch? He made up his mind in a moment that it owed that property, + which the pretty girl had somehow made imputable, to the fact of its + simply being just then the one image of anything known to him that the + terrible place had to offer. Nothing, he a minute later reflected, could + have been so “rum” as that, sick and sore, of a bleak New York eventide, + he should have had nowhere to turn if not to the said Fiftieth Street. + </p> + <p> + That was the direction he accordingly took, for when he found the number + given him by the same remarkable agent of fate also present to his memory + he recognised the direct intervention of Providence and how it absolutely + required a miracle to explain his so precipitately embracing this loosest + of connections. The miracle indeed soon grew clearer: Providence had, on + some obscure system, chosen this very ridiculous hour to save him from + cultivation of the sin of selfishness, the obsession of egotism, and was + breaking him to its will by constantly directing his attention to the + claims of others. Who could say what at that critical moment mightn’t have + become of Mrs. Folliott (otherwise too then so sadly embroiled!) if she + hadn’t been enabled to air to him her grievance and her rage?—just + as who could deny that it must have done Florence Ash a world of good to + have put her thoughts about Bob in order by the aid of a person to whom + the vision of Bob in the light of those thoughts (or in other words to + whom <i>her</i> vision of Bob and nothing else) would mean so delightfully + much? It was on the same general lines that poor Newton Winch, bereft, + alone, ill, perhaps dying, and with the drawback of a not very sympathetic + personality—as Mark remembered it at least—to contend against + in almost any conceivable appeal to human furtherance, it was on these + lines, very much, that the luckless case in Fiftieth Street was offered + him as a source of salutary discipline. The moment for such a lesson might + strike him as strange, in view of the quite special and independent + opportunity for exercise that his spirit had during the last three days + enjoyed there in his hotel bedroom; but evidently his languor of charity + needed some admonition finer than any it might trust to chance for, and by + the time he at last, Winch’s residence recognised, was duly elevated to + his level and had pressed the electric button at his door, he felt himself + acting indeed as under stimulus of a sharp poke in the side. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> + <p> + Within the apartment to which he had been admitted, moreover, the fine + intelligence we have imputed to him was in the course of three minutes + confirmed; since it took him no longer than that to say to himself, facing + his old acquaintance, that he had never seen any one so improved. The + place, which had the semblance of a high studio light as well as a general + air of other profusions and amplitudes, might have put him off a little by + its several rather glaringly false accents, those of contemporary domestic + “art” striking a little wild. The scene was smaller, but the rich confused + complexion of the Pocahontas, showing through Du Barry paint and patches, + might have set the example—which had been followed with the + costliest candour—so that, clearly, Winch was in these days rich, as + most people in New York seemed rich; as, in spite of Bob’s depredations, + Florence Ash was, as even Mrs. Folliott was in spite of Phil Bloodgood’s, + as even Phil Bloodgood himself must have been for reasons too obvious; as + in fine every one had a secret for being, or for feeling, or for looking, + every one at least but Mark Monteith. + </p> + <p> + These facts were as nothing, however, in presence of his quick and strong + impression that his pale, nervous, smiling, clean-shaven host had + undergone since their last meeting some extraordinary process of + refinement. He had been ill, unmistakably, and the effects of a plunge + into plain clean living, where any fineness had remained, were often + startling, sometimes almost charming. But independently of this, and for a + much longer time, some principle of intelligence, some art of life, would + discernibly have worked in him. Remembered from college years and from + those two or three luckless and faithless ones of the Law School as + constitutionally common, as consistently and thereby doubtless even rather + powerfully coarse, clever only for uncouth and questionable things, he yet + presented himself now as if he had suddenly and mysteriously been + educated. There was a charm in his wide, “drawn,” convalescent smile, in + the way his fine fingers—had he anything like fine fingers of old?—played, + and just fidgeted, over the prompt and perhaps a trifle incoherent offer + of cigars, cordials, ashtrays, over the question of his visitor’s hat, + stick, fur coat, general best accommodation and ease; and how the deuce, + accordingly, had charm, for coming out so on top, Mark wondered, “squared” + the other old elements? For the short interval so to have dealt with him + what force had it turned on, what patented process, of the portentous New + York order in which there were so many, had it skilfully applied? Were + these the things New York did when you just gave her all her head, and + that he himself then had perhaps too complacently missed? Strange almost + to the point of putting him positively off at first—quite as an + exhibition of the uncanny—this sense of Newton’s having all the + while neither missed nor muffed anything, and having, as with an eye to + the <i>coup de théâtre</i> to come, lowered one’s expectations, at the + start, to that abject pitch. It might have been taken verily for an act of + bad faith—really for such a rare stroke of subtlety as could scarce + have been achieved by a straight or natural aim. + </p> + <p> + So much as this at least came and went in Monteith’s agitated mind; the + oddest intensity of apprehension, admiration, mystification, which the + high north-light of the March afternoon and the quite splendidly vulgar + appeal of fifty overdone decorative effects somehow fostered and + sharpened. Everything had already gone, however, the next moment, for + wasn’t the man he had come so much too intelligently himself to patronise + absolutely bowling him over with the extraordinary speech: “See here, you + know—you must be ill, or have had a bad shock, or some beastly + upset: are you very sure you ought to have come out?” Yes, he after an + instant believed his ears; coarse common Newton Winch, whom he had called + on because he could, as a gentleman, after all afford to, coarse common + Newton Winch, who had had troubles and been epidemically poisoned, + lamentably sick, who bore in his face and in the very tension, quite + exactly the “charm,” of his manner, the traces of his late ordeal, and, + for that matter, of scarce completed gallant emergence—this + astonishing ex-comrade was simply writing himself at a stroke (into our + friend’s excited imagination at all events) the most distinguished of men. + Oh, <i>he</i> was going to be interesting, if Florence Ash had been going + to be; but Mark felt how, under the law of a lively present difference, + that would be as an effect of one’s having one’s self thoroughly rallied. + He knew within the minute that the tears stood in his eyes; he stared + through them at his friend with a sharp “Why, how do you know? How <i>can</i> + you?” To which he added before Winch could speak: “I met your charming + sister-in-law a couple of hours since—at luncheon, at the + Pocahontas; and heard from her that you were badly laid up and had spoken + of me. So I came to minister to you.” + </p> + <p> + The object of this design hovered there again, considerably restless, + shifting from foot to foot, changing his place, beginning and giving up + motions, striking matches for a fresh cigarette, offering them again, + redundantly, to his guest and then not lighting himself—but all the + while with the smile of another creature than the creature known to Mark; + all the while with the history of something that had happened to him ever + so handsomely shining out. Mark was conscious within himself from this + time on of two quite distinct processes of notation—that of his + practically instant surrender to the consequences of the act of perception + in his host of which the two women trained suppos-ably in the art of + pleasing had been altogether incapable; and that of some other condition + on Newton’s part that left his own poor power of divination nothing less + than shamed. This last was signally the case on the former’s saying, ever + so responsively, almost radiantly, in answer to his account of how he + happened to come: “Oh then it’s very interesting!” <i>That</i> was the + astonishing note, after what he had been through: neither Mrs. Folliott + nor Florence Ash had so much as hinted or breathed to him that <i>he</i> + might have incurred that praise. No wonder therefore he was now taken—with + this fresh party’s instant suspicion and imputation of it; though it was + indeed for some minutes next as if each tried to see which could accuse + the other of the greater miracle of penetration. Mark was so struck, in a + word, with the extraordinarily straight guess Winch had had there in + reserve for him that, other quick impressions helping, there was nothing + for him but to bring out, himself: “There must be, my dear man, something + rather wonderful the matter with you!” The quite more intensely and more + irresistibly drawn grin, the quite unmistakably deeper consciousness in + the dark, wide eye, that accompanied the not quite immediate answer to + which remark he was afterward to remember. “How do you know that—or + why do you think it?” “Because there <i>must</i> be—for you to see! + I shouldn’t have expected it.” + </p> + <p> + “Then you take me for a damned fool?” laughed wonderful Newton Winch. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI + </h2> + <p> + He could say nothing that, whether as to the sense of it or as to the way + of it, didn’t so enrich Mark’s vision of him that our friend, after a + little, as this effect proceeded, caught himself in the act of almost too + curiously gaping. Everything, from moment to moment, fed his curiosity; + such a question, for instance, as whether the quite ordinary peepers of + the Newton Winch of their earlier youth could have looked, under any + provocation, either dark or wide; such a question, above all, as how <i>this</i> + incalculable apparition came by the whole startling power of play of its + extravagantly sensitive labial connections—exposed, so to its + advantage (he now jumped at one explanation) by the removal of what had + probably been one of the vulgar-est of moustaches. With this, at the same + time, the oddity of that particular consequence was vivid to him; the + glare of his curiosity fairly lasting while he remembered how he had once + noted the very opposite turn of the experiment for Phil Bloodgood. He + would have said in advance that poor Winch couldn’t have afforded to risk + showing his “real” mouth; just as he would have said that in spite of the + fine ornament that so considerably muffled it Phil could only have gained + by showing his. But to have seen Phil shorn—as he once had done—was + earnestly to pray that he might promptly again bristle; beneath Phil’s + moustache lurked nothing to “make up” for it in case of removal. While he + thought of which things the line of grimace, as he could only have called + it, the mobile, interesting, ironic line the great double curve of which + connected, in the face before him, the strong nostril with the lower + cheek, became the very key to his first idea of Newton’s capture of + refinement. He had shaved and was happily transfigured. Phil Bloodgood had + shaved and been wellnigh lost; though why should he just now too + precipitately drag the reminiscence in? + </p> + <p> + That question too, at the queer touch of association, played up for Mark + even under so much proof that the state of his own soul was being with the + lapse of every instant registered. Phil Bloodgood had brought about the + state of his soul—there was accordingly that amount of connection; + only it became further remarkable that from the moment his companion had + sounded him, and sounded him, he knew, down to the last truth of things, + his disposition, his necessity to talk, the desire that had in the morning + broken the spell of his confinement, the impulse that had thrown him so + defeatedly into Mrs. Folliott’s arms and into Florence Ash’s, these forces + seemed to feel their impatience ebb and their discretion suddenly grow. + His companion was talking again, but just then, incongruously, made his + need to communicate lose itself. It was as if his personal case had + already been touched by some tender hand—and that, after all, was + the modest limit of its greed. “I know now why you came back—did + Lottie mention how I had wondered? But sit down, sit down—only let + me, nervous beast as I am, take it standing!—and believe me when I + tell you that I’ve now ceased to wonder. My dear chap, I <i>have</i> it! + It can’t but have been for poor Phil Blood-good. He sticks out of you, the + brute—as how, with what he has done to you, shouldn’t he? There was + a man to see me yesterday—Tim Slater, whom I don’t think you know, + but who’s ‘on’ everything within about two minutes of its happening (I + never saw such a fellow!) and who confirmed my supposition, all my own, + however, mind you, at first, that you’re one of the sufferers. So how the + devil can you <i>not</i> feel knocked? Why <i>should</i> you look as if + you were having the time of your life? What a hog to have played it on <i>you</i>, + on <i>you</i>, of all his friends!” So Newton Winch continued, and so the + air between the two men might have been, for a momentary watcher—which + is indeed what I can but invite the reader to become—that of a + nervously displayed, but all considerate, as well as most acute, curiosity + on the one side, and that on the other, after a little, of an eventually + fascinated acceptance of so much free and in especial of so much right + attention. “Do you <i>mind</i> my asking you? Because if you do I won’t + press; but as a man whose own responsibilities, some of ‘em at least, + don’t differ much, I gather, from some of his, one would like to know how + he was ever allowed to get to the point—! But I <i>do</i> plough you + up?” + </p> + <p> + Mark sat back in his chair, moved but holding himself, his elbows squared + on each arm, his hands a bit convulsively interlocked across him—very + much in fact as he had appeared an hour ago in the old tapestry <i>bergère</i>; + but as his rigour was all then that of the grinding effort to profess and + to give, so it was considerably now for the fear of too hysterically + gushing. Somehow too—since his wound was to that extent open—he + winced at hearing the author of it branded. He hadn’t so much minded the + epithets Mrs. Folliott had applied, for they were to the appropriator of + <i>her</i> securities. As the appropriator of his own he didn’t so much + want to brand him as—just more “amusingly” even, if one would.—to + make out, perhaps, with intelligent help, how such a man, in such a + relation, <i>could</i> come to tread such a path: which was exactly the + interesting light that Winch’s curiosity and sympathy were there to assist + him to. He pleaded at any rate immediately his advertising no grievance. + “I feel sore, I admit, and it’s a horrid sort of thing to have had happen; + but when you call him a brute and a hog I rather squirm, for brutes and + hogs never live, I guess, in the sort of hell in which he now must be.” + </p> + <p> + Newton Winch, before the fireplace, his hands deep in his pockets, where + his guest could see his long fingers beat a tattoo on his thighs, Newton + Winch dangled and swung himself, and threw back his head and laughed. + “Well, I must say you take it amazingly!—all the more that to see + you again this way is to feel that if, all along, there was a man whose + delicacy and confidence and general attitude might have marked him for a + particular consideration, you’d have been the man.” And they were more + directly face to face again; with Newton smiling and smiling <i>so</i> + appreciatively; making our friend in fact almost ask himself when before a + man had ever grinned from ear to ear to the effect of its so becoming him. + What he replied, however, was that Newton described in those flattering + terms a client temptingly fatuous; after which, and the exchange of + another protest or two in the interest of justice and decency, and another + plea or two in that of the still finer contention that even the basest + misdeeds had always somewhere or other, could one get at it, their + propitiatory side, our hero found himself on his feet again, under the + influence of a sudden failure of everything but horror—a horror + determined by some turn of their talk and indeed by the very fact of the + freedom of it. It was as if a far-borne sound of the hue and cry, a vision + of his old friend hunted and at bay, had suddenly broken in—this + other friend’s, this irresistibly intelligent other companion’s, + practically vivid projection of that making the worst ugliness real. “Oh, + it’s just making my wry face to somebody, and your letting me and caring + and wanting to know: that,” Mark said, “is what does me good; not any + other hideous question. I mean I don’t take any interest in <i>my</i> case—what + one wonders about, you see, is what can be done for him. I mean, that is”—for + he floundered a little, not knowing at last quite what he did mean, a + great rush of mere memories, a great humming sound as of thick, thick + echoes, rising now to an assault that he met with his face indeed + contorted. If he didn’t take care he should howl; so he more or less + successfully took care—yet with his host vividly watching him while + he shook the danger temporarily off. “I don’t mind—though it’s + rather <i>that</i>; my having felt this morning, after three dismal dumb + bad days, that one’s friends perhaps would be thinking of one. All I’m + conscious of now—I give you my word—is that I’d like to see + him.” + </p> + <p> + “You’d like to see him?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I don’t say,” Mark ruefully smiled, “that I should like him to see <i>me</i>—!” + </p> + <p> + Newton Winch, from where he stood—and they were together now, on the + great hearth-rug that was a triumph of modern orientalism—put out + one of the noted fine hands and, with an expressive headshake, laid it on + his shoulder. “Don’t wish him that, Monteith—don’t wish him that!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, but,”—and Mark raised his eyebrows still higher—“he’d + see I bear up; pretty well!” + </p> + <p> + “God forbid he should see, my dear fellow!” Newton cried as for the pang + of it. + </p> + <p> + Mark had for his idea, at any rate, the oddest sense of an exaltation that + grew by this use of frankness. “I’d go to him. Hanged if I wouldn’t—anywhere!” + </p> + <p> + His companion’s hand still rested on him. “You’d go to him?” + </p> + <p> + Mark stood up to it—though trying to sink solemnity as pretentious. + “I’d go like a shot.” And then he added: “And it’s probably what—when + we’ve turned round—I <i>shall</i> do.” + </p> + <p> + “When ‘we’ have turned round?” + </p> + <p> + “Well”—he was a trifle disconcerted at the tone—“I say that + because you’ll have helped me.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I do nothing but want to help you!” Winch replied—which made it + right again; especially as our friend still felt himself reassuringly and + sustainingly grasped. But Winch went on: “You <i>would</i> go to him—in + kindness?” + </p> + <p> + “Well—to understand.” + </p> + <p> + “To understand how he could swindle you?” + </p> + <p> + “Well,” Mark kept on, “to try and make out with him how, after such things—!” + But he stopped; he couldn’t name them. + </p> + <p> + It was as if his companion knew. “Such things as you’ve done for him of + course—such services as you’ve rendered him.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, from far back. If I could tell you,” our friend vainly wailed—“if + I could tell you!” + </p> + <p> + Newton Winch patted his shoulder. “Tell me—tell me!” + </p> + <p> + “The sort of relation, I mean; ever so many things of a kind—!” + Again, however, he pulled up; he felt the tremor of his voice. + </p> + <p> + “Tell me, tell me,” Winch repeated with the same movement. + </p> + <p> + The tone in it now made their eyes meet again, and with this presentation + of the altered face Mark measured as not before, for some reason, the + extent of the recent ravage. “You must have been ill indeed.” + </p> + <p> + “Pretty bad. But I’m better. And you do me good”—with which the + light of convalescence came back. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t awfully bore you?” + </p> + <p> + Winch shook his head. “You keep me up—and you see how no one else + comes near me.” + </p> + <p> + Mark’s eyes made out that he was better—though it wasn’t yet that + nothing was the matter with him. If there was ever a man with whom there + was still something the matter—! Yet one couldn’t insist on that, + and meanwhile he clearly did want company. “Then there we are. I myself + had no one to go to.” + </p> + <p> + “You save my life,” Newton renewedly grinned. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VII + </h2> + <p> + “Well, it’s your own fault,” Mark replied to that, “if you make me take + advantage of you.” Winch had withdrawn his hand, which was back, violently + shaking keys or money, in his trousers pocket; and in this position he had + abruptly a pause, a sensible, absence, that might have represented either + some odd drop of attention, some turn-off to another thought, or just + simply the sudden act of listening. His guest had indeed himself—under + suggestion—the impression of a sound. “Mayn’t you perhaps—if + you hear something—have a call?” + </p> + <p> + Mark had said it so lightly, however, that he was the more struck with his + host’s appearing to turn just paler; and, with it, the latter now <i>was</i> + listening. “You hear something?” + </p> + <p> + “I thought <i>you</i> did.” Winch himself, on Mark’s own pressure of the + outside bell, had opened the door of the apartment—an indication + then, it sufficiently appeared, that Sunday afternoons were servants’, or + attendants’, or even trained nurses’ holidays. It had also marked the + stage of his convalescence, and to that extent—after his first flush + of surprise—had but smoothed Monteith’s way. At present he barely + gave further attention; detaching himself as under some odd cross-impulse, + he had quitted the spot and then taken, in the wide room, a restless turn—only, + however, to revert in a moment to his friend’s just-uttered deprecation of + the danger of boring him. “If I make you take advantage of me—that + is blessedly talk to me—it’s exactly what I want to do. Talk to me—talk + to me!” He positively waved it on; pulling up again, however, in his own + talk, to say with a certain urgency: “Hadn’t you better sit down?” + </p> + <p> + Mark, who stayed before the fire, couldn’t but excuse himself. “Thanks—I’m + very well so. I think of things and I fidget.” + </p> + <p> + Winch stood a moment with his eyes on the ground. “Are you very sure?” + </p> + <p> + “Quite—I’m all right if you don’t mind.” + </p> + <p> + “Then as you like!” With which, shaking to extravagance again his long + legs, Newton had swung off—only with a movement that, now his back + was turned, affected his visitor as the most whimsical of all the forms of + his rather unnatural manner. He was curiously different with his back + turned, as Mark now for the first time saw it—dangling and somewhat + wavering, as from an excess of uncertainty of gait; and this impression + was so strange, it created in our friend, uneasily and on the spot, such a + need of explanation, that his speech was stayed long enough to give Winch + time to turn round again. The latter had indeed by this moment reached one + of the limits of the place, the wide studio bay, where he paused, his back + to the light and his face afresh presented, to let his just passingly + depressed and quickened eyes take in as much as possible of the large + floor, range over it with such brief freedom of search as the disposition + of the furniture permitted. He was looking for something, though the + betrayed reach of vision was but of an instant. Mark caught it, however, + and with his own sensibility all in vibration, found himself feeling at + once that it meant something and that what it meant was connected with his + entertainer’s slightly marked appeal to him, the appeal of a moment + before, not to remain standing. Winch knew by this time quite easily + enough that he was hanging fire; which meant that they were suddenly + facing each other across the wide space with a new consciousness. + </p> + <p> + Everything had changed—changed extraordinarily with the mere turning + of that gentleman’s back, the treacherous aspect of which its owner + couldn’t surely have suspected. If the question was of the pitch of their + sensibility, at all events, it wouldn’t be Mark’s that should vibrate to + least purpose. Visibly it had come to his host that something had within + the few instants remarkably happened, but there glimmered on him an + induction that still made him keep his own manner. Newton himself might + now resort to any manner he liked. His eyes had raked the floor to recover + the position of something dropped or misplaced, and something, above all, + awkward or compromising; and he had wanted his companion not to command + this scene from the hearth-rug, the hearthrug where he had been just + before holding him, hypnotising him to blindness, <i>because</i> the + object in question would there be most exposed to sight Mark embraced this + with a further drop—while the apprehension penetrated—of his + power to go on, and with an immense desire at the same time that his eyes + should seem only to look at his friend; who broke out now, for that + matter, with a fresh appeal. “Aren’t you going to take advantage of me, + man—aren’t you going to <i>take</i> it?” + </p> + <p> + Everything had changed, we have noted, and nothing could more have proved + it than the fact that, by the same turn, sincerity of desire had dropped + out of Winch’s chords, while irritation, sharp and almost imperious, had + come in. “That’s because he sees I see something!” Mark said to himself; + but he had no need to add that it shouldn’t prevent his seeing more—for + the simple reason that, in a miraculous fashion, this was exactly what he + did do in glaring out the harder. It was beyond explanation, but the very + act of blinking thus in an attempt at showy steadiness became one and the + same thing with an optical excursion lasting the millionth of a minute and + making him aware that the edge of a rug, at the point where an arm-chair, + pushed a little out of position, over-straddled it, happened just not + wholly to have covered in something small and queer, neat and bright, + crooked and compact, in spite of the strong toe-tip surreptitiously + applied to giving it the right lift Our gentleman, from where he hovered, + and while looking straight at the master of the scene, yet saw, as by the + tiny flash of a reflection from fine metal, <i>under</i> the chair. What + he recognised, or at least guessed at, as sinister, made him for a moment + turn cold, and that chill was on him while Winch again addressed him—as + differently as possible from any manner yet used. “I beg of you in God’s + name to talk to me—to <i>talk</i> to me!” + </p> + <p> + It had the ring of pure alarm and anguish, but was by this turn at least + more human than the dazzling glitter of intelligence to which the poor man + had up to now been treating him. “It’s you, my good friend, who are in + deep trouble,” Mark was accordingly quick to reply, “and I ask your pardon + for being so taken up with my own sorry business.” + </p> + <p> + “Of course I’m in deep trouble”—with which Winch came nearer again; + “but turning you on was exactly what I wanted.” + </p> + <p> + Mark Monteith, at this, couldn’t, for all his rising dismay, but laugh + out; his sense of the ridiculous so swallowed up, for that brief + convulsion, his sense of the sinister. Of such conivence in pain, it + seemed, was the fact of another’s pain, and of so much worth again + disinterested sympathy! “Your interest was then——?” + </p> + <p> + “My interest was in your being interesting. For you <i>are!</i> And my + nerves—!” said Newton Winch with a face from which the mystifying + smile had vanished, yet in which distinction, as Mark so persistently + appreciated it, still sat in the midst of ravage. + </p> + <p> + Mark wondered and wondered—he made strange things out. “Your nerves + have needed company.” He could lay his hand on him now, even as shortly + before he had felt Winch’s own pressure of possession and detention. “As + good for you yourself, that—or still better,” he went on—“than + I and my grievance were to have found you. Talk to we, talk to we, Newton + Winch!” he added with an immense inspiration of charity. + </p> + <p> + “That’s a different matter—that others but too much can do! But I’ll + say this. If you want to go to Phil Bloodgood——!” + </p> + <p> + “Well?” said Mark as he stopped. He stopped, and Mark had now a hand on + each of his shoulders and held him at arm’s-length, held him with a fine + idea that was not disconnected from the sight of the small neat weapon he + had been fingering in the low luxurious morocco chair—it was of the + finest orange colour—and then had laid beside him on the carpet; + where, after he had admitted his visitor, his presence of mind coming back + to it and suggesting that he couldn’t pick it up without making it more + conspicuous, he had thought, by some swing of the foot or other casual + manoeuvre, to dissimulate its visibility. + </p> + <p> + They were at close quarters now as not before and Winch perfectly passive, + with eyes that somehow had no shadow of a secret left and with the + betrayal to the sentient hands that grasped him of an intense, an + extraordinary general tremor. To Mark’s challenge he opposed afresh a + brief silence, but the very quality of it, with his face speaking, was + that of a gaping wound. “Well, you needn’t take <i>that</i> trouble. You + see I’m such another.” + </p> + <p> + “Such another as Phil——-?” + </p> + <p> + He didn’t blink. “I don’t know for sure, but I guess I’m worse.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean you’re guilty——-?” + </p> + <p> + “I mean I shall be wanted. Only I’ve stayed to take it.” + </p> + <p> + Mark threw back his head, but only tightened his hands. He inexpressibly + understood, and nothing in life had ever been so strange and dreadful to + him as his thus helping himself by a longer and straighter stretch, as it + were, to the monstrous sense of his friend’s “education.” It had been, in + its immeasurable action, the education of business, of which the fruits + were all around them. Yet prodigious was the interest, for prodigious + truly—it seemed to loom before Mark—must have been the system. + “To ‘take’ it?” he echoed; and then, though faltering a little, “To take + what?” + </p> + <p> + He had scarce spoken when a long sharp sound shrilled in from the outer + door, seeming of so high and peremptory a pitch that with the start it + gave him his grasp of his host’s shoulders relaxed an instant, though to + the effect of no movement in <i>them</i> but what came from just a + sensibly intenser vibration of the whole man. “For <i>that</i>!” said + Newton Winch. + </p> + <p> + “Then you’ve known——-?” + </p> + <p> + “I’ve expected. You’ve helped me to wait.” And then as Mark gave an ironic + wail: “You’ve tided me over. My condition has <i>wanted</i> somebody or + something. Therefore, to complete this service, will you be so good as to + open the door?” + </p> + <p> + Deep in the eyes Mark looked him, and still to the detection of no glimmer + of the earlier man in the depths. The earlier man had been what he + invidiously remembered—yet would <i>he</i> had been the whole + simpler story! Then he moved his own eyes straight to the chair under + which the revolver lay and which was but a couple of yards away. He felt + his companion take this consciousness in, and it determined in them + another long, mute exchange. “What do you mean to do?” + </p> + <p> + “Nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “On your honour?” + </p> + <p> + “<i>My</i> ‘honour’?” his host returned with an accent that he felt even + as it sounded he should never forget. + </p> + <p> + It brought to his own face a crimson flush—he dropped his guarding + hands. Then as for a last look at him: “You’re wonderful!” + </p> + <p> + “We <i>are</i> wonderful,” said Newton Winch, while, simultaneously with + the words, the pressed electric bell again and for a longer time pierced + the warm cigaretted air. + </p> + <p> + Mark turned, threw up his arms, and it was only when he had passed through + the vestibule and laid his hand on the door-knob that the horrible noise + dropped. The next moment he was face to face with two visitors, a + nondescript personage in a high hat and an astrakhan collar and cuffs, and + a great belted constable, a splendid massive New York “officer” of the + type he had had occasion to wonder at much again in the course of his + walk, the type so by itself—his wide observation quite suggested—among + those of the peacemakers of the earth. The pair stepped straight in—no + word was said; but as he closed the door behind them Mark heard the + infallible crack of a discharged pistol and, so nearly with it as to make + all one violence, the sound of a great fall; things the effect of which + was to lift him, as it were, with his company, across the threshold of the + room in a shorter time than that taken by this record of the fact. But + their rush availed little; Newton was stretched on his back before the + fire; he had held the weapon horribly to his temple, and his upturned face + was disfigured. The emissaries of the law, looking down at him, exhaled + simultaneously a gruff imprecation, and then while the worthy in the high + hat bent over the subject of their visit the one in the helmet raised a + severe pair of eyes to Mark. “Don’t you think, sir, you might have + prevented it?” + </p> + <p> + Mark took a hundred things in, it seemed to him—things of the scene, + of the moment, and of all the strange moments before; but one appearance + more vividly even than the others stared out at him. “I really think I + must practically have caused it.” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CRAPY CORNELIA + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + THREE times within a quarter of an hour—shifting the while his + posture on his chair of contemplation—had he looked at his watch as + for its final sharp hint that he should decide, that he should get up. His + seat was one of a group fairly sequestered, unoccupied save for his own + presence, and from where he lingered he looked off at a stretch of lawn + freshened by recent April showers and on which sundry small children were + at play. The trees, the shrubs, the plants, every stem and twig just + ruffled as by the first touch of the light finger of the relenting year, + struck him as standing still in the blest hope of more of the same caress; + the quarter about him held its breath after the fashion of the child who + waits with the rigour of an open mouth and shut eyes for the promised + sensible effect of his having been good. So, in the windless, sun-warmed + air of the beautiful afternoon, the Park of the winter’s end had struck + White-Mason as waiting; even New York, under such an impression, was + “good,” good enough—for <i>him</i>; its very sounds were faint, were + almost sweet, as they reached him from so seemingly far beyond the wooded + horizon that formed the remoter limit of his large shallow glade. The + tones of the frolic infants ceased to be nondescript and harsh—were + in fact almost as fresh and decent as the frilled and puckered and + ribboned garb of the little girls, which had always a way, in those parts, + of so portentously flaunting the daughters of the strange native—that + is of the overwhelmingly alien—populace at him. + </p> + <p> + Not that these things in particular were his matter of meditation now; he + had wanted, at the end of his walk, to sit apart a little and think—and + had been doing that for twenty minutes, even though as yet to no break in + the charm of procrastination. But he had looked without seeing and + listened without hearing: all that had been positive for him was that he + hadn’t failed vaguely to feel. He had felt in the first place, and he + continued to feel—yes, at forty-eight quite as much as at any point + of the supposed reign of younger intensities—the great spirit of the + air, the fine sense of the season, the supreme appeal of Nature, he might + have said, to his time of life; quite as if she, easy, indulgent, + indifferent, cynical Power, were offering him the last chance it would + rest with his wit or his blood to embrace. Then with that he had been + entertaining, to the point and with the prolonged consequence of accepted + immobilization, the certitude that if he did call on Mrs. Worthingham and + find her at home he couldn’t in justice to himself not put to her the + question that had lapsed the other time, the last time, through the + irritating and persistent, even if accidental, presence of others. What + friends she had—the people who so stupidly, so wantonly stuck! If + they <i>should</i>, he and she, come to an understanding, that would + presumably have to include certain members of her singularly ill-composed + circle, in whom it was incredible to him that he should ever take an + interest. This defeat, to do himself justice—he had bent rather + predominantly on <i>that</i>, you see; ideal justice to <i>her</i>, with + her possible conception of what it should consist of, being another and + quite a different matter—he had had the fact of the Sunday afternoon + to thank for; she didn’t “keep” that day for him, since they hadn’t, up to + now, quite begun to cultivate the appointment or assignation founded on + explicit sacrifices. He might at any rate look to find this pleasant + practical Wednesday—should he indeed, at his actual rate, stay it + before it ebbed—more liberally and intendingly given him. + </p> + <p> + The sound he at last most wittingly distinguished in his nook was the + single deep note of half-past five borne to him from some high-perched + public clock. He finally got up with the sense that the time from then on + <i>ought</i> at least to be felt as sacred to him. At this juncture it was—while + he stood there shaking his garments, settling his hat, his necktie, his + shirt-cuffs, fixing the high polish of his fine shoes as if for some + reflection in it of his straight and spare and grizzled, his refined and + trimmed and dressed, his altogether distinguished person, that of a + gentleman abundantly settled, but of a bachelor markedly nervous—at + this crisis it was, doubtless, that he at once most measured and least + resented his predicament. If he should go he would almost to a certainty + find her, and if he should find her he would almost to a certainty come to + the point. He wouldn’t put it off again—there was that high + consideration for him of justice at least to himself. He had never yet + denied himself anything so apparently fraught with possibilities as the + idea of proposing to Mrs. Worthingham—never yet, in other words, + denied himself anything he had so distinctly wanted to do; and the results + of that wisdom had remained for him precisely the precious parts of + experience. Counting only the offers of his honourable hand, these had + been on three remembered occasions at least the consequence of an impulse + as sharp and a self-respect as reasoned; a self-respect that hadn’t in the + least suffered, moreover, from the failure of each appeal. He had been met + in the three cases—the only ones he at all compared with his present + case—by the frank confession that he didn’t somehow, charming as he + was, cause himself to be superstitiously believed in; and the lapse of + life, afterward, had cleared up many doubts. + </p> + <p> + It <i>wouldn’t</i> have done, he eventually, he lucidly saw, each time he + had been refused; and the candour of his nature was such that he could + live to think of these very passages as a proof of how right he had been—right, + that is, to have put himself forward always, by the happiest instinct, + only in impossible conditions. He had the happy consciousness of having + exposed the important question to the crucial test, and of having escaped, + by that persistent logic, a grave mistake. What better proof of his escape + than the fact that he was now free to renew the all-interesting inquiry, + and should be exactly, about to do so in different and better conditions? + The conditions were better by as much more—as much more of his + career and character, of his situation, his reputation he could even have + called it, of his knowledge of life, of his somewhat extended means, of + his possibly augmented charm, of his certainly improved mind and temper—as + was involved in the actual impending settlement. Once he had got into + motion, once he had crossed the Park and passed out of it, entering, with + very little space to traverse, one of the short new streets that abutted + on its east side, his step became that of a man young enough to find + confidence, quite to find felicity, in the sense, in almost any sense, of + action. He could still enjoy almost anything, absolutely an unpleasant + thing, in default of a better, that might still remind him he wasn’t so + old. The standing newness of everything about him would, it was true, have + weakened this cheer by too much presuming on it; Mrs. Worthingham’s house, + before which he stopped, had that gloss of new money, that glare of a + piece fresh from the mint and ringing for the first time on any counter, + which seems to claim for it, in any transaction, something more than the + “face” value. + </p> + <p> + This could but be yet more the case for the impression of the observer + introduced and committed. On our friend’s part I mean, after his admission + and while still in the hall, the sense of the general shining immediacy, + of the still unhushed clamour of the shock, was perhaps stronger than he + had ever known it. That broke out from every corner as the high pitch of + interest, and with a candour that—no, certainly—he had never + seen equalled; every particular expensive object shrieking at him in its + artless pride that it had just “come home.” He met the whole vision with + something of the grimace produced on persons without goggles by the + passage from a shelter to a blinding light; and if he had—by a + perfectly possible chance—been “snap-shotted” on the spot, would + have struck you as showing for his first tribute to the temple of Mrs. + Worthingham’s charming presence a scowl almost of anguish. He wasn’t + constitutionally, it may at once be explained for him, a goggled person; + and he was condemned, in New York, to this frequent violence of transition—having + to reckon with it whenever he went out, as who should say, from himself. + The high pitch of interest, to his taste, was the pitch of history, the + pitch of acquired and earned suggestion, the pitch of association, in a + word; so that he lived by preference, incontestably, if not in a rich + gloom, which would have been beyond his means and spirits, at least amid + objects and images that confessed to the tone of time. + </p> + <p> + He had ever felt that an indispensable presence—with a need of it + moreover that interfered at no point with his gentle habit, not to say his + subtle art, of drawing out what was left him of his youth, of thinly and + thriftily spreading the rest of that choicest jam-pot of the cupboard of + consciousness over the remainder of a slice of life still possibly thick + enough to bear it; or in other words of moving the melancholy limits, the + significant signs, constantly a little further on, very much as + property-marks or staked boundaries are sometimes stealthily shifted at + night. He positively cherished in fact, as against the too inveterate + gesture of distressfully guarding his eyeballs—so many New York + aspects seemed to keep him at it—an ideal of adjusted appreciation, + of courageous curiosity, of fairly letting the world about him, a world of + constant breathless renewals and merciless substitutions, make its flaring + assault on its own inordinate terms. Newness was value in the piece—for + the acquisitor, or at least sometimes might be, even though the act of + “blowing” hard, the act marking a heated freshness of arrival, or other + form of irruption, could never minister to the peace of those already and + long on the field; and this if only because maturer tone was after all + most appreciable and most consoling when one staggered back to it, + wounded, bleeding, blinded, from the riot of the raw—or, to put the + whole experience more prettily, no doubt, from excesses of light. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + If he went in, however, with something of his more or less inevitable + scowl, there were really, at the moment, two rather valid reasons for + screened observation; the first of these being that the whole place seemed + to reflect as never before the lustre of Mrs. Worthingham’s own polished + and prosperous little person—to smile, it struck him, with her + smile, to twinkle not only with the gleam of her lovely teeth, but with + that of all her rings and brooches and bangles and other gewgaws, to curl + and spasmodically cluster as in emulation of her charming complicated + yellow tresses, to surround the most animated of pink-and-white, of + ruffled and ribboned, of frilled and festooned Dresden china shepherdesses + with exactly the right system of rococo curves and convolutions and other + flourishes, a perfect bower of painted and gilded and moulded conceits. + The second ground of this immediate impression of scenic extravagance, + almost as if the curtain rose for him to the first act of some small and + expensively mounted comic opera, was that she hadn’t, after all, awaited + him in fond singleness, but had again just a trifle inconsiderately + exposed him to the drawback of having to reckon, for whatever design he + might amiably entertain, with the presence of a third and quite + superfluous person, a small black insignificant but none the less + oppressive stranger. It was odd how, on the instant, the little lady + engaged with her did affect him as comparatively black—very much as + if that had absolutely, in such a medium, to be the graceless appearance + of any item not positively of some fresh shade of a light colour or of + some pretty pretension to a charming twist. Any witness of their meeting, + his hostess should surely have felt, would have been a false note in the + whole rosy glow; but what note so false as that of the dingy little + presence that she might actually, by a refinement of her perhaps always + too visible study of effect, have provided as a positive contrast or foil? + whose name and intervention, moreover, she appeared to be no more moved to + mention and account for than she might have been to “present”—whether + as stretched at her feet or erect upon disciplined haunches—some + shaggy old domesticated terrier or poodle. + </p> + <p> + Extraordinarily, after he had been in the room five minutes—a space + of time during which his fellow-visitor had neither budged nor uttered a + sound—he had made Mrs. Worthingham out as all at once perfectly + pleased to see him, completely aware of what he had most in mind, and + singularly serene in face of his sense of their impediment. It was as if + for all the world she didn’t take it for one, the immobility, to say + nothing of the seeming equanimity, of their tactless companion; at whom + meanwhile indeed our friend himself, after his first ruffled perception, + no more adventured a look than if advised by his constitutional kindness + that to notice her in any degree would perforce be ungraciously to glower. + He talked after a fashion with the woman as to whose power to please and + amuse and serve him, as to whose really quite organised and indicated + fitness for lighting up his autumn afternoon of life his conviction had + lately strained itself so clear; but he was all the while carrying on an + intenser exchange with his own spirit and trying to read into the charming + creature’s behaviour, as he could only call it, some confirmation of his + theory that she also had her inward flutter and anxiously counted on him. + He found support, happily for the conviction just named, in the idea, at + no moment as yet really repugnant to him, the idea bound up in fact with + the finer essence of her appeal, that she had her own vision too of her + quality and her price, and that the last appearance she would have liked + to bristle with was that of being forewarned and eager. + </p> + <p> + He had, if he came to think of it, scarce definitely warned her, and he + probably wouldn’t have taken to her so consciously in the first instance + without an appreciative sense that, as she was a little person of twenty + superficial graces, so she was also a little person with her secret pride. + She might just have planted her mangy lion—not to say her muzzled + house-dog—there in his path as a symbol that she wasn’t cheap and + easy; which would be a thing he couldn’t possibly wish his future wife to + have shown herself in advance, even if to him alone. That she could make + him put himself such questions was precisely part of the attaching play of + her iridescent surface, the shimmering interfusion of her various aspects; + that of her youth with her independence—her pecuniary perhaps in + particular, that of her vivacity with her beauty, that of her facility + above all with her odd novelty; the high modernity, as people appeared to + have come to call it, that made her so much more “knowing” in some + directions than even he, man of the world as he certainly was, could + pretend to be, though all on a basis of the most unconscious and + instinctive and luxurious assumption. She was “up” to everything, aware of + everything—if one counted from a short enough time back (from week + before last, say, and as if quantities of history had burst upon the world + within the fortnight); she was likewise surprised at nothing, and in that + direction one might reckon as far ahead as the rest of her lifetime, or at + any rate as the rest of his, which was all that would concern him: it was + as if the suitability of the future to her personal and rather pampered + tastes was what she most took for granted, so that he could see her, for + all her Dresden-china shoes and her flutter of wondrous befrilled + contemporary skirts, skip by the side of the coming age as over the floor + of a ball-room, keeping step with its monstrous stride and prepared for + every figure of the dance. Her outlook took form to him suddenly as a + great square sunny window that hung in assured fashion over the immensity + of life. There rose toward it as from a vast swarming <i>plaza</i> a high + tide of emotion and sound; yet it was at the same time as if even while he + looked her light gemmed hand, flashing on him in addition to those other + things the perfect polish of the prettiest pink finger-nails in the world, + had touched a spring, the most ingenious of ecent devices for instant + ease, which dropped half across the scene a soft-coloured mechanical + blind, a fluttered, fringed awning of charmingly toned silk, such as would + make a bath of cool shade for the favoured friend leaning with her there—that + is for the happy couple itself—on the balcony. The great view would + be the prospect and privilege of the very state he coveted—since + didn’t he covet it?—the state of being so securely at her side; + while the wash of privacy, as one might count it, the broad fine brush + dipped into clear umber and passed, full and wet, straight across the + strong scheme of colour, would represent the security itself, all the + uplifted inner elegance, the condition, so ideal, of being shut out from + nothing and yet of having, so gaily and breezily aloft, none of the burden + or worry of anything. Thus, as I say, for our friend, the place itself, + while his vivid impression lasted, portentously opened and spread, and + what was before him took, to his vision, though indeed at so other a + crisis, the form of the “glimmering square” of the poet; yet, for a still + more remarkable fact, with an incongruous object usurping at a given + instant the privilege of the frame and seeming, even as he looked, to + block the view. + </p> + <p> + The incongruous object was a woman’s head, crowned with a little sparsely + feathered black hat, an ornament quite unlike those the women mostly + noticed by White-Mason were now “wearing,” and that grew and grew, that + came nearer and nearer, while it met his eyes, after the manner of images + in the kinematograph. It had presently loomed so large that he saw nothing + else—not only among the things at a considerable distance, the + things Mrs. Worthingham would eventually, yet unmistakably, introduce him + to, but among those of this lady’s various attributes and appurtenances as + to which he had been in the very act of cultivating his consciousness. It + was in the course of another minute the most extraordinary thing in the + world: everything had altered, dropped, darkened, disappeared; his + imagination had spread its wings only to feel them flop all grotesquely at + its sides as he recognised in his hostess’s quiet companion, the + oppressive alien who hadn’t indeed interfered with his fanciful flight, + though she had prevented his immediate declaration and brought about the + thud, not to say the felt violent shock, of his fall to earth, the + perfectly plain identity of Cornelia Rasch. It was she who had remained + there at attention; it was she their companion hadn’t introduced; it was + she he had forborne to face with his fear of incivility. He stared at her—everything + else went. + </p> + <p> + “Why it has been <i>you</i> all this time?” + </p> + <p> + Miss Rasch fairly turned pale. “I was waiting to see if you’d know me.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, my dear Cornelia”—he came straight out with it—“rather!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it isn’t,” she returned with a quick change to red now, “from + having taken much time to look at me!” + </p> + <p> + She smiled, she even laughed, but he could see how she had felt his + unconsciousness, poor thing; the acquaintance, quite the friend of his + youth, as she had been, the associate of his childhood, of his early + manhood, of his middle age in fact, up to a few years back, not more than + ten at the most; the associate too of so many of his associates and of + almost all of his relations, those of the other time, those who had mainly + gone for ever; the person in short whose noted disappearance, though it + might have seemed final, had been only of recent seasons. She was present + again now, all unexpectedly—he had heard of her having at last, left + alone after successive deaths and with scant resources, sought economic + salvation in Europe, the promised land of American thrift—she was + present as this almost ancient and this oddly unassertive little rotund + figure whom one seemed no more obliged to address than if she had been a + black satin ottoman “treated” with buttons and gimp; a class of object as + to which the policy of blindness was imperative. He felt the need of some + explanatory plea, and before he could think had uttered one at Mrs. + Worthingham’s expense. “Why, you see we weren’t introduced——!” + </p> + <p> + “No—but I didn’t suppose I should have to be named to you.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, my dear woman, you haven’t—do me that justice!” He could at + least make this point. “I felt all the while—!” However, it would + have taken him long to say what he had been feeling; and he was aware now + of the pretty projected light of Mrs. Worthingham’s wonder. She looked as + if, out for a walk with her, he had put her to the inconvenience of his + stopping to speak to a strange woman in the street. + </p> + <p> + “I never supposed you knew her!”—it was to him his hostess excused + herself. + </p> + <p> + This made Miss Rasch spring up, distinctly flushed, distinctly strange to + behold, but not vulgarly nettled—Cornelia was incapable of that; + only rather funnily bridling and laughing, only showing that this was all + she had waited for, only saying just the right thing, the thing she could + make so clearly a jest. “Of course if you <i>had</i> you’d have presented + him.” + </p> + <p> + Mrs. Worthingham looked while answering at White-Mason. “I didn’t want you + to go—which you see you do as soon as he speaks to you. But I never + dreamed——!” + </p> + <p> + “That there was anything between us? Ah, there are no end of things!” He, + on his side, though addressing the younger and prettier woman, looked at + his fellow-guest; to whom he even continued: “When did you get back? May I + come and see you the very first thing?” + </p> + <p> + Cornelia gasped and wriggled—she practically giggled; she had lost + every atom of her little old, her little young, though always + unaccountable prettiness, which used to peep so, on the bare chance of a + shot, from behind indefensible features, that it almost made watching her + a form of sport. He had heard vaguely of her, it came back to him (for + there had been no letters; their later acquaintance, thank goodness, + hadn’t involved that) as experimenting, for economy, and then as settling, + to the same rather dismal end, somewhere in England, “at one of those + intensely English places, St. Leonards, Cheltenham, Bognor, Dawlish—which, + awfully, <i>was</i> it?”—and she now affected him for all the world + as some small squirming, exclaiming, genteelly conversing old maid of a + type vaguely associated with the three-volume novels he used to feed on + (besides his so often encountering it in “real life,”) during a far-away + stay of his own at Brighton. Odder than any element of his ex-gossip’s + identity itself, however, was the fact that she somehow, with it all, + rejoiced his sight. Indeed the supreme oddity was that the manner of her + reply to his request for leave to call should have absolutely charmed his + attention. She didn’t look at him; she only, from under her frumpy, crapy, + curiously exotic hat, and with her good little near-sighted insinuating + glare, expressed to Mrs. Worthingham, while she answered him, wonderful + arch things, the overdone things of a shy woman. “Yes, you may call—but + only when this dear lovely lady has done with you!” The moment after which + she had gone. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + Forty minutes later he was taking his way back from the queer miscarriage + of his adventure; taking it, with no conscious positive felicity, through + the very spaces that had witnessed shortly before the considerable + serenity of his assurance. He had said to himself then, or had as good as + said it, that, since he might do perfectly as he liked, it couldn’t fail + for him that he must soon retrace those steps, humming, to all intents, + the first bars of a wedding-march; so beautifully had it cleared up that + he was “going to like” letting Mrs. Worthingham accept him. He was to have + hummed no wedding-march, as it seemed to be turning out—he had none, + up to now, to hum; and yet, extraordinarily, it wasn’t in the least + because she had refused him. Why then hadn’t he liked as much as he had + intended to like it putting the pleasant act, the act of not refusing him, + in her power? Could it all have come from the awkward minute of his + failure to decide sharply, on Cornelia’s departure, whether or no he would + attend her to the door? He hadn’t decided at all—what the deuce had + been in him?—but had danced to and fro in the room, thinking better + of each impulse and then thinking worse. He had hesitated like an ass + erect on absurd hind legs between two bundles of hay; the upshot of which + must have been his giving the falsest impression. In what way that was to + be for an instant considered had their common past committed him to crapy + Cornelia? He repudiated with a whack on the gravel any ghost of an + obligation. + </p> + <p> + What he could get rid of with scanter success, unfortunately, was the + peculiar sharpness of his sense that, though mystified by his visible + flurry—and yet not mystified enough for a sympathetic question + either—his hostess had been, on the whole, even more frankly + diverted: which was precisely an example of that newest, freshest, finest + freedom in her, the air and the candour of assuming, not “heartlessly,” + not viciously, not even very consciously, but with a bright pampered + confidence which would probably end by affecting one’s nerves as the most + impertinent stroke in the world, that every blest thing coming up for her + in any connection was somehow matter for her general recreation. There she + was again with the innocent egotism, the gilded and overflowing anarchism, + really, of her doubtless quite unwitting but none the less rabid modern + note. Her grace of ease was perfect, but it was all grace of ease, not a + single shred of it grace of uncertainty or of difficulty—which + meant, when you came to see, that, for its happy working, not a grain of + provision was left by it to mere manners. This was clearly going to be the + music of the future—that if people were but rich enough and + furnished enough and fed enough, exercised and sanitated and manicured and + generally advised and advertised and made “knowing” enough, <i>avertis</i> + enough, as the term appeared to be nowadays in Paris, all they had to do + for civility was to take the amused ironic view of those who might be less + initiated. In <i>his</i> time, when he was young or even when he was only + but a little less middle-aged, the best manners had been the best + kindness, and the best kindness had mostly been some art of not insisting + on one’s luxurious differences, of concealing rather, for common humanity, + if not for common decency, a part at least of the intensity or the + ferocity with which one might be “in the know.” + </p> + <p> + Oh, the “know”—Mrs. Worthingham was in it, all instinctively, + inevitably, and as a matter of course, up to her eyes; which didn’t, + however, the least little bit prevent her being as ignorant as a fish of + everything that really and intimately and fundamentally concerned <i>him</i>, + poor dear old White-Mason. She didn’t, in the first place, so much as know + who he was—by which he meant know who and what it was to <i>be</i> a + White-Mason, even a poor and a dear and old one, “anyway.” That indeed—he + did her perfect justice—was of the very essence of the newness and + freshness and beautiful, brave, social irresponsibility by which she had + originally dazzled him: just exactly that circumstance of her having no + instinct for any old quality or quantity or identity, a single historic or + social value, as he might say, of the New York of his already almost + legendary past; and that additional one of his, on his side, having, so + far as this went, cultivated blankness, cultivated positive prudence, as + to her own personal background—the vagueness, at the best, with + which all honest gentlefolk, the New Yorkers of his approved stock and + conservative generation, were content, as for the most part they were + indubitably wise, to surround the origins and antecedents and queer + unimaginable early influences of persons swimming into their ken from + those parts of the country that quite necessarily and naturally figured to + their view as “Godforsaken” and generally impossible. + </p> + <p> + The few scattered surviving representatives of a society once “good”—<i>rari + nantes in gurgite vasto</i>—were liable, at the pass things had come + to, to meet, and even amid old shades once sacred, or what was left of + such, every form of social impossibility, and, more irresistibly still, to + find these apparitions often carry themselves (often at least in the case + of the women) with a wondrous wild gallantry, equally imperturbable and + inimitable, the sort of thing that reached its maximum in Mrs. + Worthingham. Beyond that who ever wanted to look up their annals, to + reconstruct their steps and stages, to dot their i’s in fine, or to “go + behind” anything that was theirs? One wouldn’t do that for the world—a + rudimentary discretion forbade it; and yet this check from elementary + undiscussable taste quite consorted with a due respect for them, or at any + rate with a due respect for oneself in connection with them; as was just + exemplified in what would be his own, what would be poor dear old + White-Mason’s, insurmountable aversion to having, on any pretext, the + doubtless very queer spectre of the late Mr. Worthingham presented to him. + No question had he asked, or would he ever ask, should his life—that + is should the success of his courtship—even intimately depend on it, + either about that obscure agent of his mistress’s actual affluence or + about the happy head-spring itself, and the apparently copious + tributaries, of the golden stream. + </p> + <p> + From all which marked anomalies, at any rate, what was the moral to draw? + He dropped into a Park chair again with that question, he lost himself in + the wonder of why he had come away with his homage so very much unpaid. + Yet it didn’t seem at all, actually, as if he could say or conclude, as if + he could do anything but keep on worrying—just in conformity with + his being a person who, whether or no familiar with the need to make his + conduct square with his conscience and his taste, was never wholly exempt + from that of making his taste and his conscience square with his conduct. + To this latter occupation he further abandoned himself, and it didn’t + release him from his second brooding session till the sweet spring sunset + had begun to gather and he had more or less cleared up, in the deepening + dusk, the effective relation between the various parts of his ridiculously + agitating experience. There were vital facts he seemed thus to catch, to + seize, with a nervous hand, and the twilight helping, by their vaguely + whisked tails; unquiet truths that swarmed out after the fashion of + creatures bold only at eventide, creatures that hovered and circled, that + verily brushed his nose, in spite of their shyness. Yes, he had + practically just sat on with his “mistress”—heaven save the mark!—as + if not to come to the point; as if it had absolutely come up that there + would be something rather vulgar and awful in doing so. The whole stretch + of his stay after Cornelia’s withdrawal had been consumed by his almost + ostentatiously treating himself to the opportunity of which he was to make + nothing. It was as if he had sat and watched himself—that came back + to him: Shall I now or sha’n’t I? Will I now or won’t I? “Say within the + next three minutes, say by a quarter past six, or by twenty minutes past, + at the furthest—always if nothing more comes up to prevent.” + </p> + <p> + What had already come up to prevent was, in the strangest and drollest, or + at least in the most preposterous, way in the world, that not Cornelia’s + presence, but her very absence, with its distraction of his thoughts, the + thoughts that lumbered after her, had made the difference; and without his + being the least able to tell why and how. He put it to himself after a + fashion by the image that, this distraction once created, his working + round to his hostess again, his reverting to the matter of his errand, + began suddenly to represent a return from so far. That was simply all—or + rather a little less than all; for something else had contributed. “I + never dreamed you knew her,” and “I never dreamed <i>you</i> did,” were + inevitably what had been exchanged between them—supplemented by Mrs. + Worthingham’s mere scrap of an explanation: “Oh yes—to the small + extent you see. Two years ago in Switzerland when I was at a high place + for an ‘aftercure,’ during twenty days of incessant rain, she was the only + person in an hotel full of roaring, gorging, smoking Germans with whom I + could have a word of talk. She and I were the only speakers of English, + and were thrown together like castaways on a desert island and in a raging + storm. She was ill besides, and she had no maid, and mine looked after + her, and she was very grateful—writing to me later on and saying she + should certainly come to see me if she ever returned to New York. She has + returned, you see—and there she was, poor little creature!” Such was + Mrs. Worthingham’s tribute—to which even his asking her if Miss + Rasch had ever happened to speak of him caused her practically to add + nothing. Visibly she had never thought again of any one Miss Rasch had + spoken of or anything Miss Rasch had said; right as she was, naturally, + about her being a little clever queer creature. This was perfectly true, + and yet it was probably—by being <i>all</i> she could dream of about + her—what had paralysed his proper gallantry. Its effect had been not + in what it simply stated, but in what, under his secretly disintegrating + criticism, it almost luridly symbolised. + </p> + <p> + He had quitted his seat in the Louis Quinze drawing-room without having, + as he would have described it, done anything but give the lady of the + scene a superior chance not to betray a defeated hope—not, that is, + to fail of the famous “pride” mostly supposed to prop even the most + infatuated women at such junctures; by which chance, to do her justice, + she had thoroughly seemed to profit. But he finally rose from his later + station with a feeling of better success. He had by a happy turn of his + hand got hold of the most precious, the least obscure of the flitting, + circling things that brushed his ears. What he wanted—as justifying + for him a little further consideration—was there before him from the + moment he could put it that Mrs. Worthingham had no data. He almost hugged + that word,—it suddenly came to mean so much to him. No data, he + felt, for a conception of the sort of thing the New York of “his time” had + been in his personal life—the New York so unexpectedly, so vividly + and, as he might say, so perversely called back to all his senses by its + identity with that of poor Cornelia’s time: since even she had had a time, + small show as it was likely to make now, and his time and hers had been + the same. Cornelia figured to him while he walked away as, by contrast and + opposition, a massive little bundle of data; his impatience to go to see + her sharpened as he thought of this: so certainly should he find out that + wherever he might touch her, with a gentle though firm pressure, he would, + as the fond visitor of old houses taps and fingers a disfeatured, + overpapered wall with the conviction of a wainscot-edge beneath, recognise + some small extrusion of history. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> + <p> + There would have been a wonder for us meanwhile in his continued use, as + it were, of his happy formula—brought out to Cornelia Rasch within + ten minutes, or perhaps only within twenty, of his having settled into the + quite comfortable chair that, two days later, she indicated to him by her + fireside. He had arrived at her address through the fortunate chance of + his having noticed her card, as he went out, deposited, in the good old + New York fashion, on one of the rococo tables of Mrs. Worthingham’s hall. + His eye had been caught by the pencilled indication that was to affect + him, the next instant, as fairly placed there for his sake. This had + really been his luck, for he shouldn’t have liked to write to Mrs. + Worthingham for guidance—<i>that</i> he felt, though too impatient + just now to analyze the reluctance. There was nobody else he could have + approached for a clue, and with this reflection he was already aware of + how it testified to their rare little position, his and Cornelia’s—position + as conscious, ironic, pathetic survivors together of a dead and buried + society—that there would have been, in all the town, under such + stress, not a member of their old circle left to turn to. Mrs. Worthingham + had practically, even if accidentally, helped him to knowledge; the last + nail in the coffin of the poor dear extinct past had been planted for him + by his having thus to reach his antique contemporary through perforation + of the newest newness. The note of this particular recognition was in fact + the more prescribed to him that the ground of Cornelia’s return to a scene + swept so bare of the associational charm was certainly inconspicuous. What + had she then come back for?—he had asked himself that; with the + effect of deciding that it probably would have been, a little, to “look + after” her remnant of property. Perhaps she had come to save what little + might still remain of that shrivelled interest; perhaps she had been, by + those who took care of it for her, further swindled and despoiled, so that + she wished to get at the facts. Perhaps on the other hand—it was a + more cheerful chance—her investments, decently administered, were + making larger returns, so that the rigorous thrift of Bognor could be + finally relaxed. + </p> + <p> + He had little to learn about the attraction of Europe, and rather expected + that in the event of his union with Mrs Worthingham he should find himself + pleading for it with the competence of one more in the “know” about Paris + and Rome, about Venice and Florence, than even she could be. He could have + lived on in <i>his</i> New York, that is in the sentimental, the + spiritual, the more or less romantic visitation of it; but had it been + positive for him that he could live on in hers?—unless indeed the + possibility of this had been just (like the famous <i>vertige de l’abîme</i>, + like the solicitation of danger, or otherwise of the dreadful) the very + hinge of his whole dream. However that might be, his curiosity was + occupied rather with the conceivable hinge of poor Cornelia’s: it was + perhaps thinkable that even Mrs. Worthingham’s New York, once it should + have become possible again at all, might have put forth to this lone exile + a plea that wouldn’t be in the chords of Bognor. For himself, after all, + too, the attraction had been much more of the Europe over which one might + move at one’s ease, and which therefore could but cost, and cost much, + right and left, than of the Europe adapted to scrimping. He saw himself on + the whole scrimping with more zest even in Mrs. Worthingham’s New York + than under the inspiration of Bognor. Apart from which it was yet again + odd, not to say perceptibly pleasing to him, to note where the emphasis of + his interest fell in this fumble of fancy over such felt oppositions as + the new, the latest, the luridest power of money and the ancient reserves + and moderations and mediocrities. These last struck him as showing by + contrast the old brown surface and tone as of velvet rubbed and worn, + shabby, and even a bit dingy, but all soft and subtle and still velvety—which + meant still dignified; whereas the angular facts of current finance were + as harsh and metallic and bewildering as some stacked “exhibit” of ugly + patented inventions, things his mediaeval mind forbade his taking in. He + had for instance the sense of knowing the pleasant little old Rasch + fortune—pleasant as far as it went; blurred memories and impressions + of what it had been and what it hadn’t, of how it had grown and how + languished and how melted; they came back to him and put on such vividness + that he could almost have figured himself testify for them before a bland + and encouraging Board. The idea of taking the field in any manner on the + subject of Mrs. Worthingham’s resources would have affected him on the + other hand as an odious ordeal, some glare of embarrassment and exposure + in a circle of hard unhelpful attention, of converging, derisive, + unsuggestive eyes. + </p> + <p> + In Cornelia’s small and quite cynically modern flat—the house had a + grotesque name, “The Gainsborough,” but at least wasn’t an awful + boarding-house, as he had feared, and she could receive him quite + honourably, which was so much to the good—he would have been ready + to use at once to her the greatest freedom of friendly allusion: “Have you + still your old ‘family interest’ in those two houses in Seventh Avenue?—one + of which was next to a corner grocery, don’t you know? and was occupied as + to its lower part by a candy-shop where the proportion of the stock of + suspectedly stale popcorn to that of rarer and stickier joys betrayed + perhaps a modest capital on the part of your father’s, your grandfather’s, + or whoever’s tenant, but out of which I nevertheless remember once to have + come as out of a bath of sweets, with my very garments, and even the + separate hairs of my head, glued together. The other of the pair, a + tobacconist’s, further down, had before it a wonderful huge Indian who + thrust out wooden cigars at an indifferent world—you could buy candy + cigars too, at the pop-corn shop, and I greatly preferred them to the + wooden; I remember well how I used to gape in fascination at the Indian + and wonder if the last of the Mohicans was like him; besides admiring so + the resources of a family whose ‘property’ was in such forms. I haven’t + been round there lately—we must go round together; but don’t tell me + the forms have utterly perished!” It was after <i>that</i> fashion he + might easily have been moved, and with almost no transition, to break out + to Cornelia—quite as if taking up some old talk, some old community + of gossip, just where they had left it; even with the consciousness + perhaps of overdoing a little, of putting at its maximum, for the present + harmony, recovery, recapture (what should he call it?) the pitch and + quantity of what the past had held for them. + </p> + <p> + He didn’t in fact, no doubt, dart straight off to Seventh Avenue, there + being too many other old things and much nearer and long subsequent; the + point was only that for everything they spoke of after he had fairly begun + to lean back and stretch his legs, and after she had let him, above all, + light the first of a succession of cigarettes—for everything they + spoke of he positively cultivated extravagance and excess, piling up the + crackling twigs as on the very altar of memory; and that by the end of + half an hour she had lent herself, all gallantly, to their game. It was + the game of feeding the beautiful iridescent flame, ruddy and green and + gold, blue and pink and amber and silver, with anything they could pick + up, anything that would burn and flicker. Thick-strown with such gleanings + the occasion seemed indeed, in spite of the truth that they perhaps + wouldn’t have proved, under cross-examination, to have rubbed shoulders in + the other life so very hard. Casual contacts, qualified communities + enough, there had doubtless been, but not particular “passages,” nothing + that counted, as he might think of it, for their “very own” together, for + nobody’s else at all. These shades of historic exactitude didn’t signify; + the more and the less that there had been made perfect terms—and + just by his being there and by her rejoicing in it—with their + present need to have <i>had</i> all their past could be made to appear to + have given them. It was to this tune they proceeded, the least little bit + as if they knowingly pretended—he giving her the example and setting + her the pace of it, and she, poor dear, after a first inevitable shyness, + an uncertainty of wonder, a breathlessness of courage, falling into step + and going whatever length he would. + </p> + <p> + She showed herself ready for it, grasping gladly at the perception of what + he must mean; and if she didn’t immediately and completely fall in—not + in the first half-hour, not even in the three or four others that his + visit, even whenever he consulted his watch, still made nothing of—she + yet understood enough as soon as she understood that, if their finer + economy hadn’t so beautifully served, he might have been conveying this, + that, and the other incoherent and easy thing by the comparatively clumsy + method of sound and statement. “No, I never made love to you; it would in + fact have been absurd, and I don’t care—though I almost know, in the + sense of almost remembering!—who did and who didn’t; but you were + always about, and so was I, and, little as you may yourself care who I did + it to, I dare say you remember (in the sense of having known of it!) any + old appearances that told. But we can’t afford at this time of day not to + help each other to have had—well, everything there was, since + there’s no more of it now, nor any way of coming by it except so; and + therefore let us make together, let us make over and recreate, our lost + world; for which we have after all and at the worst such a lot of + material. You were in particular my poor dear sisters’ friend—they + thought you the funniest little brown thing possible; so isn’t that again + to the good? You were mine only to the extent that you were so much in and + out of the house—as how much, if we come to that, wasn’t one in and + out, south of Thirtieth Street and north of Washington Square, in those + days, those spacious, sociable, Arcadian days, that we flattered ourselves + we filled with the modern fever, but that were so different from any of + these arrangements of pretended hourly Time that dash themselves forever + to pieces as from the fiftieth floors of sky-scrapers.” + </p> + <p> + This was the kind of thing that was in the air, whether he said it or not, + and that could hang there even with such quite other things as more + crudely came out; came in spite of its being perhaps calculated to strike + us that these last would have been rather and most the unspoken and the + indirect. They were Cornelia’s contribution, and as soon as she had begun + to talk of Mrs. Worthingham—<i>he</i> didn’t begin it!—they + had taken their place bravely in the centre of the circle. There they + made, the while, their considerable little figure, but all within the ring + formed by fifty other allusions, fitful but really intenser irruptions + that hovered and wavered and came and went, joining hands at moments and + whirling round as in chorus, only then again to dash at the slightly + huddled centre with a free twitch or peck or push or other taken liberty, + after the fashion of irregular frolic motions in a country dance or a + Christmas game. + </p> + <p> + “You’re so in love with her and want to marry her!”—she said it all + sympathetically and yearningly, poor crapy Cornelia; as if it were to be + quite taken for granted that she knew all about it. And then when he had + asked how she knew—why she took so informed a tone about it; all on + the wonder of her seeming so much more “in” it just at that hour than he + himself quite felt he could figure for: “Ah, how but from the dear lovely + thing herself? Don’t you suppose <i>she</i> knows it?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, she absolutely ‘knows’ it, does she?”—he fairly heard himself + ask that; and with the oddest sense at once of sharply wanting the + certitude and yet of seeing the question, of hearing himself say the + words, through several thicknesses of some wrong medium. He came back to + it from a distance; as he would have had to come back (this was again + vivid to him) should he have got round again to his ripe intention three + days before—after his now present but then absent friend, that is, + had left him planted before his now absent but then present one for the + purpose. “Do you mean she—at all confidently!—expects?” he + went on, not much minding if it couldn’t but sound foolish; the time being + given it for him meanwhile by the sigh, the wondering gasp, all charged + with the unutterable, that the tone of his appeal set in motion. He saw + his companion look at him, but it might have been with the eyes of thirty + years ago; when—very likely.—he had put her some such question + about some girl long since dead. Dimly at first, then more distinctly, + didn’t it surge back on him for the very strangeness that there had been + some such passage as this between them—yes, about Mary Cardew!—in + the autumn of ‘68? + </p> + <p> + “Why, don’t you realise your situation?” Miss Rasch struck him as quite + beautifully wailing—above all to such an effect of deep interest, + that is, on her own part and in him. + </p> + <p> + “My situation?”—he echoed, he considered; but reminded afresh, by + the note of the detached, the far-projected in it, of what he had last + remembered of his sentient state on his once taking ether at the + dentist’s. + </p> + <p> + “Yours and hers—the situation of her adoring you. I suppose you at + least know it,” Cornelia smiled. + </p> + <p> + Yes, it was like the other time and yet it wasn’t. She was like—poor + Cornelia was—everything that used to be; that somehow was most + definite to him. Still he could quite reply “Do you call it—her + adoring me—<i>my</i> situation?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, it’s a part of yours, surely—if you’re in love with her.” + </p> + <p> + “Am I, ridiculous old person! in love with her?” White-Mason asked. + </p> + <p> + “I may be a ridiculous old person,” Cornelia returned—“and, for that + matter, of course I am! But she’s young and lovely and rich and clever: so + what could be more natural?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I was applying that opprobrious epithet—!” He didn’t finish, + though he meant he had applied it to himself. He had got up from his seat; + he turned about and, taking in, as his eyes also roamed, several objects + in the room, serene and sturdy, not a bit cheap-looking, little old New + York objects of ‘68, he made, with an inner art, as if to recognise them—made + so, that is, for himself; had quite the sense for the moment of asking + them, of imploring them, to recognise <i>him</i>, to be for him things of + his own past. Which they truly were, he could have the next instant cried + out; for it meant that if three or four of them, small sallow + carte-de-visite photographs, faithfully framed but spectrally faded, + hadn’t in every particular, frames and balloon skirts and false “property” + balustrades of unimaginable terraces and all, the tone of time, the secret + for warding and easing off the perpetual imminent ache of one’s protective + scowl, one would verily but have to let the scowl stiffen, or to take up + seriously the question of blue goggles, during what might remain of life. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> + <p> + What he actually took up from a little old Twelfth-Street table that + piously preserved the plain mahogany circle, with never a curl nor a crook + nor a hint of a brazen flourish, what he paused there a moment for + commerce with, his back presented to crapy Cornelia, who sat taking that + view of him, during this opportunity, very protrusively and frankly and + fondly, was one of the wasted mementos just mentioned, over which he both + uttered and suppressed a small comprehensive cry. He stood there another + minute to look at it, and when he turned about still kept it in his hand, + only holding it now a litde behind him. “You <i>must</i> have come back to + stay—with all your beautiful things. What else does it mean?” + </p> + <p> + “‘Beautiful’?” his old friend commented with her brow all wrinkled and her + lips thrust out in expressive dispraise. They might at that rate have been + scarce more beautiful than she herself. “Oh, don’t talk so—after + Mrs. Worthingham’s! <i>They’re</i> wonderful, if you will: such things, + such things! But one’s own poor relics and odds and ends are one’s own at + least; and one <i>has</i>—yes—come back to them. They’re all I + have in the world to come back to. They were stored, and what I was paying—!” + Miss Rasch wofully added. + </p> + <p> + He had possession of the small old picture; he hovered there; he put his + eyes again to it intently; then again held it a little behind him as if it + might have been snatched away or the very feel of it, pressed against him, + was good to his palm. “Mrs. Worthingham’s things? You think them + beautiful?” + </p> + <p> + Cornelia did now, if ever, show an odd face. “Why certainly prodigious, or + whatever. Isn’t that conceded?” + </p> + <p> + “No doubt every horror, at the pass we’ve come to, is conceded. That’s + just what I complain of.” + </p> + <p> + “Do you <i>complain?</i>”—she drew it out as for surprise: she + couldn’t have imagined such a thing. + </p> + <p> + “To me her things are awful. They’re the newest of the new.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, but the old forms!” + </p> + <p> + “Those are the most blatant. I mean the swaggering reproductions.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh but,” she pleaded, “we can’t all be <i>really</i> old.” + </p> + <p> + “No, we can’t, Cornelia. But <i>you</i> can—!” said White-Mason with + the frankest appreciation. + </p> + <p> + She looked up at him from where she sat as he could imagine her looking up + at the curate at Bognor. “Thank you, sir! If that’s all you want——!” + </p> + <p> + “It <i>is</i>” he said, “all I want—or almost.” + </p> + <p> + “Then no wonder such a creature as that,” she lightly moralised, “won’t + suit you!” + </p> + <p> + He bent upon her, for all the weight of his question, his smoothest stare. + “You hold she certainly won’t suit me?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, what can I tell about it? Haven’t you by this time found out?” + </p> + <p> + “No, but I think I’m finding.” With which he began again to explore. + </p> + <p> + Miss Rasch immensely wondered. “You mean you don’t expect to come to an + understanding with her?” And then as even to this straight challenge he + made at first no answer: “Do you mean you give it up?” + </p> + <p> + He waited some instants more, but not meeting her eyes—only looking + again about the room. “What do you think of my chance?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh,” his companion cried, “what has what I think to do with it? How can I + think anything but that she must like you?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes—of course. But how much?” + </p> + <p> + “Then don’t you really know?” Cornelia asked. + </p> + <p> + He kept up his walk, oddly preoccupied and still not looking at her. “Do + you, my dear?” + </p> + <p> + She waited a little. “If you haven’t really put it to her I don’t suppose + she knows.” + </p> + <p> + This at last arrested him again. “My dear Cornelia, she doesn’t know——!” + </p> + <p> + He had paused as for the desperate tone, or at least the large emphasis of + it, so that she took him up. “The more reason then to help her to find it + out.” + </p> + <p> + “I mean,” he explained, “that she doesn’t know anything.” + </p> + <p> + “Anything?” + </p> + <p> + “Anything else, I mean—even if she does know <i>that</i>.” + </p> + <p> + Cornelia considered of it. “But what else need she—in particular—know? + Isn’t that the principal thing?” + </p> + <p> + “Well”—and he resumed his circuit—“she doesn’t know anything + that we know. But nothing,” he re-emphasised—“nothing whatever!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, can’t she do without that?” + </p> + <p> + “Evidently she can—and evidently she does, beautifully. But the + question is whether <i>I</i> can!” + </p> + <p> + He had paused once more with his point—but she glared, poor + Cornelia, with her wonder. “Surely if you know for yourself——!” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, it doesn’t seem enough for me to know for myself! One wants a woman,” + he argued—but still, in his prolonged tour, quite without his scowl—“to + know <i>for</i> one, to know <i>with</i> one. That’s what you do now,” he + candidly put to her. + </p> + <p> + It made her again gape. “Do you mean you want to marry <i>me?</i>” + </p> + <p> + He was so full of what he did mean, however, that he failed even to notice + it. “She doesn’t in the least know, for instance, how old I am.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s because you’re so young!” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, there you are!”—and he turned off afresh and as if almost in + disgust. It left her visibly perplexed—though even the perplexed + Cornelia was still the exceedingly pointed; but he had come to her aid + after another turn. “Remember, please, that I’m pretty well as old as + you.” + </p> + <p> + She had all her point at least, while she bridled and blinked, for this. + “You’re exactly a year and ten months older.” + </p> + <p> + It checked him there for delight. “You remember my birthday?” + </p> + <p> + She twinkled indeed like some far-off light of home. “I remember every + one’s. It’s a little way I’ve always had—and that I’ve never lost.” + </p> + <p> + He looked at her accomplishment, across the room, as at some striking, + some charming phenomenon. “Well, <i>that’s</i> the sort of thing I want!” + All the ripe candour of his eyes confirmed it. + </p> + <p> + What could she do therefore, she seemed to ask him, but repeat her + question of a moment before?—which indeed presently she made up her + mind to. “Do you want to marry <i>me?</i>” + </p> + <p> + It had this time better success—if the term may be felt in any + degree to apply. All his candour, or more of it at least, was in his slow, + mild, kind, considering head-shake. “No, Cornelia—not to <i>marry</i> + you.” + </p> + <p> + His discrimination was a wonder; but since she was clearly treating him + now as if everything about him was, so she could as exquisitely meet it. + “Not at least,” she convulsively smiled, “until you’ve honourably tried + Mrs. Worthingham. Don’t you really <i>mean</i> to?” she gallantly + insisted. + </p> + <p> + He waited again a little; then he brought out: “I’ll tell you presently.” + He came back, and as by still another mere glance over the room, to what + seemed to him so much nearer. “That table was old Twelfth-Street?” + </p> + <p> + “Everything here was.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, the pure blessings! With you, ah, with you, I haven’t to wear a green + shade.” And he had retained meanwhile his small photograph, which he again + showed himself. “Didn’t we talk of Mary Cardew?” + </p> + <p> + “Why, do you remember it?” She marvelled to extravagance. + </p> + <p> + “You make me. You connect me with it. You connect it with we.” He liked to + display to her this excellent use she thus had, the service she rendered. + “There are so many connections—there will be so many. I feel how, + with you, they must all come up again for me: in fact you’re bringing them + out already, just while I look at you, as fast as ever you can. The fact + that you knew every one—!” he went on; yet as if there were more in + that too than he could quite trust himself about. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I knew every one,” said Cornelia Rasch; but this time with perfect + simplicity. “I knew, I imagine, more than you do—or more than you + did.” + </p> + <p> + It kept him there, it made him wonder with his eyes on her. “Things about + <i>them</i>—our people?” + </p> + <p> + “Our people. Ours only now.” + </p> + <p> + Ah, such an interest as he felt in this—taking from her while, so + far from scowling, he almost gaped, all it might mean! “Ours indeed—and + it’s awfully good they are; or that we’re still here for them! Nobody else + is—nobody but you: not a cat!” + </p> + <p> + “Well, I <i>am</i> a cat!” Cornelia grinned. + </p> + <p> + “Do you mean you can tell me things—?” It was too beautiful to + believe. + </p> + <p> + “About what really <i>was?</i>” she artfully considered, holding him + immensely now. “Well, unless they’ve come to you with time; unless you’ve + learned—or found out.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh,” he reassuringly cried—reassuringly, it most seemed, for + himself—“nothing has come to me with time, everything has gone from + me. How can I find out now! What creature has an idea——?” + </p> + <p> + She threw up her hands with the shrug of old days—the sharp little + shrug his sisters used to imitate and that she hadn’t had to go to Europe + for. The only thing was that he blessed her for bringing it back. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, the ideas of people now——!” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, their ideas are certainly not about us” But he ruefully faced it. + “We’ve none the less, however, to live with them.” + </p> + <p> + “With their ideas—?” Cornelia questioned. + </p> + <p> + “With <i>them</i>—these modern wonders; such as they are!” Then he + went on: “It must have been to help me you’ve come back.” + </p> + <p> + She said nothing for an instant about that, only nodding instead at his + photograph. “What has become of yours? I mean of <i>her</i>.” + </p> + <p> + This time it made him turn pale. “You remember I <i>have</i> one?” + </p> + <p> + She kept her eyes on him. “In a ‘pork-pie’ hat, with her hair in a long + net. That was so ‘smart’ then; especially with one’s skirt looped up, over + one’s hooped magenta petticoat, in little festoons, and a row of very big + onyx beads over one’s braided velveteen sack—braided quite plain and + very broad, don’t you know?” + </p> + <p> + He smiled for her extraordinary possession of these things—she was + as prompt as if she had had them before her. “Oh, rather—‘don’t I + know?’ You wore brown velveteen, and, on those remarkably small hands, + funny gauntlets—like mine.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, do <i>you</i> remember? But like yours?” she wondered. + </p> + <p> + “I mean like hers in my photograph.” But he came back to the present + picture. “This is better, however, for really showing her lovely head.” + </p> + <p> + “Mary’s head was a perfection!” Cornelia testified. + </p> + <p> + “Yes—it was better than her heart.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, don’t say that!” she pleaded. “You weren’t fair.” + </p> + <p> + “Don’t you think I was fair?” It interested him immensely—and the + more that he indeed mightn’t have been; which he seemed somehow almost to + hope. + </p> + <p> + “She didn’t think so—to the very end.” + </p> + <p> + “She didn’t?”—ah the right things Cornelia said to him! But before + she could answer he was studying again closely the small faded face. “No, + she doesn’t, she doesn’t. Oh, her charming sad eyes and the way they say + that, across the years, straight into mine! But I don’t know, I don’t + know!” White-Mason quite comfortably sighed. + </p> + <p> + His companion appeared to appreciate this effect. “That’s just the way you + used to flirt with her, poor thing. Wouldn’t you like to have it?” she + asked. + </p> + <p> + “This—for my very own?” He looked up delighted. “I really may?” + </p> + <p> + “Well, if you’ll give me yours. We’ll exchange.” + </p> + <p> + “That’s a charming idea. We’ll exchange. But you must come and get it at + my rooms—where you’ll see my things.” + </p> + <p> + For a little she made no answer—as if for some feeling. Then she + said: “You asked me just now why I’ve come back.” + </p> + <p> + He stared as for the connection; after which with a smile: “Not to do <i>that</i>——?” + </p> + <p> + She waited briefly again, but with a queer little look. “I can do those + things now; and—yes!—that’s in a manner why. I came,” she then + said, “because I knew of a sudden one day—knew as never before—that + I was old.” + </p> + <p> + “I see. I see.” He quite understood—she had notes that so struck + him. “And how did you like it?” + </p> + <p> + She hesitated—she decided. “Well, if I liked it, it was on the + principle perhaps on which some people like high game!” + </p> + <p> + “High game—that’s good!” he laughed. “Ah, my dear, we’re ‘high’!” + </p> + <p> + She shook her head. “No, not you—yet. I at any rate didn’t want any + more adventures,” Cornelia said. + </p> + <p> + He showed their small relic again with assurance. “You wanted <i>us</i>. + Then here we are. Oh how we can talk!—with all those things you + know! You are an invention. And you’ll see there are things J know. I + shall turn up here—well, daily.” + </p> + <p> + She took it in, but only after a moment answered. “There was something you + said just now you’d tell me. Don’t you mean to try——?” + </p> + <p> + “Mrs. Worthingham?” He drew from within his coat his pocket-book and + carefully found a place in it for Mary Cardew’s carte-de-visite, folding + it together with deliberation over which he put it back. Finally he spoke. + “No—I’ve decided. I can’t—I don’t want to.” + </p> + <p> + Cornelia marvelled—or looked as if she did. “Not for all she has?” + </p> + <p> + “Yes—I know all she has. But I also know all she hasn’t. And, as I + told you, she herself doesn’t—hasn’t a glimmer of a suspicion of it; + and never will have.” + </p> + <p> + Cornelia magnanimously thought “No—but she knows other things.” + </p> + <p> + He shook his head as at the portentous heap of them. “Too many—too + many. And other indeed—<i>so</i> other! Do you know,” he went on, + “that it’s as if <i>you</i>—by turning up for me—had brought + that home to me?” + </p> + <p> + “‘For you,’” she candidly considered. “But what—since you can’t + marry me!—can you do with me?” + </p> + <p> + Well, he seemed to have it all. “Everything. I can live with you—just + this way.” To illustrate which he dropped into the other chair by her + fire; where, leaning back, he gazed at the flame. “I can’t give you up. + It’s very curious. It has come over me as it did over you when you + renounced Bognor. That’s it—I know it at last, and I see one can + like it. I’m ‘high.’ You needn’t deny it. That’s my taste. I’m old.” And + in spite of the considerable glow there of her little household altar he + said it without the scowl. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + THE BENCH OF DESOLATION + </h2> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I + </h2> + <p> + SHE had practically, he believed, conveyed the intimation, the horrid, + brutal, vulgar menace, in the course of their last dreadful conversation, + when, for whatever was left him of pluck or confidence—confidence in + what he would fain have called a little more aggressively the strength of + his position—he had judged best not to take it up. But this time + there was no question of not understanding, or of pretending he didn’t; + the ugly, the awful words, ruthlessly formed by her lips, were like the + fingers of a hand that she might have thrust into her pocket for + extraction of the monstrous object that would serve best for—what + should he call it?—a gage of battle. + </p> + <p> + “If I haven’t a very different answer from you within the next three days + I shall put the matter into the hands of my solicitor, whom it may + interest you to know I’ve already seen. I shall bring an action for + ‘breach’ against you, Herbert Dodd, as sure as my name’s Kate Cookham.” + </p> + <p> + There it was, straight and strong—yet he felt he could say for + himself, when once it had come, or even, already, just as it was coming, + that it turned on, as if she had moved an electric switch, the very + brightest light of his own very reasons. There <i>she</i> was, in all the + grossness of her native indelicacy, in all her essential excess of will + and destitution of scruple; and it was the woman capable of that ignoble + threat who, his sharper sense of her quality having become so quite + deterrent, was now making for him a crime of it that he shouldn’t wish to + tie himself to her for life. The vivid, lurid thing was the reality, all + unmistakable, of her purpose; she had thought her case well out; had + measured its odious, specious presentability; had taken, he might be sure, + the very best advice obtainable at Properley, where there was always a + first-rate promptitude of everything fourth-rate; it was disgustingly + certain, in short, that she’d proceed. She was sharp and adroit, moreover—distinctly + in certain ways a master-hand; how otherwise, with her so limited mere + attractiveness, should she have entangled him? He couldn’t shut his eyes + to the very probable truth that if she should try it she’d pull it off. + She <i>knew</i> she would—precisely; and her assurance was thus the + very proof of her cruelty. That she had pretended she loved him was + comparatively nothing; other women had pretended it, and other women too + had really done it; but that she had pretended he could possibly have been + right and safe and blest in loving <i>her</i>, a creature of the kind who + could sniff that squalor of the law-court, of claimed damages and brazen + lies and published kisses, of love-letters read amid obscene guffaws, as a + positive tonic to resentment, as a high incentive to her course—this + was what put him so beautifully in the right It was what might signify in + a woman all through, he said to himself, the mere imagination of such + machinery. Truly what a devilish conception and what an appalling nature! + </p> + <p> + But there was no doubt, luckily, either, that he <i>could</i> plant his + feet the firmer for his now intensified sense of these things. He was to + live, it appeared, abominably worried, he was to live consciously rueful, + he was to live perhaps even what a scoffing world would call abjectly + exposed; but at least he was to live saved. In spite of his clutch of + which steadying truth, however, and in spite of his declaring to her, with + many other angry protests and pleas, that the line of conduct she + announced was worthy of a vindictive barmaid, a lurking fear in him, too + deep to counsel mere defiance, made him appear to keep open a little, till + he could somehow turn round again, the door of possible composition. He + had scoffed at her claim, at her threat, at her thinking she could hustle + and bully him—“Such a way, my eye, to call back to life a dead + love!”—yet his instinct was ever, prudentially but helplessly, for + gaining time, even if time only more wofully to quake, and he gained it + now by not absolutely giving for his ultimatum that he wouldn’t think of + coming round. He didn’t in the smallest degree mean to come round, but it + was characteristic of him that he could for three or four days breathe a + little easier by having left her under the impression that he perhaps + might. At the same time he couldn’t not have said—what had conduced + to bring out, in retort, her own last word, the word on which they had + parted—“Do you mean to say you yourself would now be <i>willing</i> + to marry and live with a man of whom you could feel, the thing done, that + he’d be all the while thinking of you in the light of a hideous coercion?” + “Never you mind about <i>my</i> willingness,” Kate had answered; “you’ve + known what that has been for the last six months. Leave that to me, my + willingness—I’ll take care of it all right; and just see what + conclusion you can come to about your own.” + </p> + <p> + He was to remember afterward how he had wondered whether, turned upon her + in silence while her odious lucidity reigned unchecked, his face had shown + her anything like the quantity of hate he felt. Probably not at all; no + man’s face <i>could</i> express that immense amount; especially the fair, + refined, intellectual, gentlemanlike face which had had—and by her + own more than once repeated avowal—so much to do with the enormous + fancy she had originally taken to him. “Which—frankly now—would + you personally <i>rather</i> I should do,” he had at any rate asked her + with an intention of supreme irony: “just sordidly marry you on top of + this, or leave you the pleasure of your lovely appearance in court and of + your so assured (since that’s how you feel it) big haul of damages? + Sha’n’t you be awfully disappointed, in fact, if I don’t let you get + something better out of me than a poor plain ten-shilling gold ring and + the rest of the blasphemous rubbish, as we should make it between us, + pronounced at the altar? I take it of course,” he had swaggered on, “that + your pretension wouldn’t be for a moment that I should—after the act + of profanity—take up my life with you.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s just as much my dream as it ever was, Herbert Dodd, to take up mine + with <i>you!</i> Remember for me that I can do with it, my dear, that my + idea is for even as much as that of you!” she had cried; “remember that + for me, Herbert Dodd; remember, remember!” + </p> + <p> + It was on this she had left him—left him frankly under a mortal + chill. There might have been the last ring of an appeal or a show of + persistent and perverse tenderness in it, however preposterous any such + matter; but in point of fact her large, clean, plain, brown face—so + much too big for her head, he now more than ever felt it to be, just as + her head was so much too big for her body, and just as her hats had an + irritating way of appearing to decline choice and conformity in respect to + <i>any</i> of her dimensions—presented itself with about as much + expression as his own shop-window when the broad, blank, sallow blind was + down. He was fond of his shop-window with some good show on; he had a + fancy for a good show and was master of twenty different schemes of taking + arrangement for the old books and prints, “high-class rarities” his modest + catalogue called them, in which he dealt and which his maternal uncle, + David Geddes, had, as he liked to say, “handed down” to him. His widowed + mother had screwed the whole thing, the stock and the connection and the + rather bad little house in the rather bad little street, out of the + ancient worthy, shortly before his death, in the name of the youngest and + most interesting, the “delicate” one and the literary, of her five + scattered and struggling children. He could enjoy his happiest + collocations and contrasts and effects, his harmonies and varieties of + toned and faded leather and cloth, his sought color-notes and the high + clearnesses, here and there, of his white and beautifully figured + price-labels, which pleased him enough in themselves almost to console him + for not oftener having to break, on a customer’s insistence, into the + balanced composition. But the dropped expanse of time-soiled canvas, the + thing of Sundays and holidays, with just his name, “Herbert Dodd, + Successor,” painted on below his uncle’s antique style, the feeble penlike + flourishes already quite archaic—this ugly vacant mask, which might + so easily be taken for the mask of failure, somehow always gave him a + chill. + </p> + <p> + That had been just the sort of chill—the analogy was complete—of + Kate Cookham’s last look. He supposed people doing an awfully good and + sure and steady business, in whatever line, could see a whole front turned + to vacancy that way and merely think of the hours off represented by it. + Only for this—nervously to bear it, in other words, and Herbert + Dodd, quite with the literary temperament himself, was capable of that + amount of play of fancy, or even of morbid analysis—you had to be on + some footing, you had to feel some confidence, pretty different from his + own up to now. He had never <i>not</i> enjoyed passing his show on the + other side of the street and taking it in thence with a casual obliquity; + but he had never held optical commerce with the drawn blind for a moment + longer than he could help. It <i>always</i> looked horribly final and as + if it never would come up again. Big and bare, with his name staring at + him from the middle, it thus offered in its grimness a turn of comparison + for Miss Cookham’s ominous visage. She never wore pretty, dotty, + transparent veils, as Nan Drury did, and the words “Herbert Dodd”—save + that she had sounded them at him there two or three times more like a Meg + Merrilies or the bold bad woman in one of the melodramas of high life + given during the fine season in the pavilion at the end of Properley Pier—were + dreadfully, were permanently, seated on her lips. <i>She</i> was grim, no + mistake. + </p> + <p> + That evening, alone in the back room above the shop, he saw so little what + he could do that, consciously demoralised for the hour, he gave way to + tears about it. Her taking a stand so incredibly “low,” that was what he + couldn’t get over. The particular bitterness of his cup was his having let + himself in for a struggle on such terms—the use, on her side, of the + vulgarest process known to the law: the vulgarest, the vulgarest, he kept + repeating that, clinging to the help rendered him by this imputation to + his terrorist of the vice he sincerely believed he had ever, among + difficulties (for oh he recognised the difficulties!) sought to keep most + alien to him. He knew what he was, in a dismal, down-trodden sphere enough—the + lean young proprietor of an old business that had itself rather shrivelled + with age than ever grown fat, the purchase and sale of second-hand books + and prints, with the back street of a long-fronted south-coast + watering-place (Old Town by good luck) for the dusky field of his life. + But he had gone in for all the education he could get—his educated + customers would often hang about for more talk by the half-hour at a time, + he actually feeling himself, and almost with a scruple, hold them there; + which meant that he had had (he couldn’t be blind to that) natural taste + and had lovingly cultivated and formed it. Thus, from as far back as he + could remember, there had been things all round him that he suffered from + when other people didn’t; and he had kept most of his suffering to himself—which + had taught him, in a manner, <i>how</i> to suffer, and how almost to like + to. + </p> + <p> + So, at any rate, he had never let go his sense of certain differences, he + had done everything he could to keep it up—whereby everything that + was vulgar was on the wrong side of his line. He had believed, for a + series of strange, oppressed months, that Kate Cookham’s manners and tone + were on the right side; she had been governess—for young children—in + two very good private families, and now had classes in literature and + history for bigger girls who were sometimes brought by their mammas; in + fact, coming in one day to look over his collection of students’ manuals, + and drawing it out, as so many did, for the evident sake of his + conversation, she had appealed to him that very first time by her + apparently pronounced intellectual side—goodness knew she didn’t + even then by the physical!—which she had artfully kept in view till + she had entangled him past undoing. And it had all been but the cheapest + of traps—when he came to take the pieces apart a bit—laid over + a brazen avidity. What he now collapsed for, none the less—what he + sank down on a chair at a table and nursed his weak, scared sobs in his + resting arms for—was the fact that, whatever the trap, it held him + as with the grip of sharp murderous steel. There he was, there he was; + alone in the brown summer dusk—brown through <i>his</i> windows—he + cried and he cried. He shouldn’t get out without losing a limb. The only + question was which of his limbs it should be. + </p> + <p> + Before he went out, later on—for he at last felt the need to—he + could, however, but seek to remove from his face and his betraying eyes, + over his washing-stand, the traces of his want of fortitude. He brushed + himself up; with which, catching his stricken image a bit spectrally in an + old dim toilet-glass, he knew again, in a flash, the glow of righteous + resentment. Who should be assured against coarse usage if a man of his + really elegant, perhaps in fact a trifle over-refined or “effete” + appearance, his absolutely gentlemanlike type, couldn’t be? He never went + so far as to rate himself, with exaggeration, a gentleman; but he would + have maintained against all comers, with perfect candour and as claiming a + high advantage, that he was, in spite of that liability to blubber, “like” + one; which he <i>was</i> no doubt, for that matter, at several points. + Like what lady then, who could ever possibly have been taken for one, was + Kate Cookham, and therefore how could one have anything—anything of + the intimate and private order—out with her fairly and on the plane, + the only possible one, of common equality? He might find himself crippled + for life; he believed verily, the more he thought, that that was what was + before him. But be ended by seeing this doom in the almost redeeming light + of the fact that it would all have been because he was, comparatively, too + aristocratic. Yes, a man in his station couldn’t afford to carry that so + far—it must sooner or later, in one way or another, spell ruin. + Never mind—it was the only thing he could be. Of course he should + exquisitely suffer—but when hadn’t he exquisitely suffered? How was + he going to get through life by <i>any</i> arrangement without that? No + wonder such a woman as Kate Cookham had been keen to annex so rare a + value. The right thing would have been that the highest price should be + paid for it—by such a different sort of logic from this nightmare of + <i>his</i> having to pay. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II + </h2> + <p> + Which was the way, of course, he talked to Nan Drury—as he had felt + the immediate wild need to do; for he should perhaps be able to bear it + all somehow or other with <i>her</i>—while they sat together, when + time and freedom served, on one of the very last, the far westward, + benches of the interminable sea-front. It wasn’t every one who walked so + far, especially at that flat season—the only ghost of a bustle now, + save for the gregarious, the obstreperous haunters of the fluttering, + far-shining Pier, being reserved for the sunny Parade of midwinter. It + wasn’t every one who cared for the sunsets (which you got awfully well + from there and which were a particular strong point of the lower, the more + “sympathetic,” as Herbert Dodd liked to call it, Properley horizon) as he + had always intensely cared, and as he had found Nan Drury care; to say + nothing of his having also observed how little they directly spoke to Miss + Cookham. He had taught this oppressive companion to notice them a bit, as + he had taught her plenty of other things, but that was a different matter; + for the reason that the “land’s end” (stretching a point it carried off + that name) had been, and had had to be, by their lack of more sequestered + resorts and conveniences, the scene of so much of what she styled their + wooing-time—or, to put it more properly, of the time during which + she had made the straightest and most unabashed love to <i>him</i>: just + as it could henceforth but render possible, under an equal rigour, that he + should enjoy there periods of consolation from beautiful, gentle, + tender-souled Nan, to whom he was now at last, after the wonderful way + they had helped each other to behave, going to make love, absolutely + unreserved and abandoned, absolutely reckless and romantic love, a refuge + from poisonous reality, as hard as ever he might. + </p> + <p> + The league-long, paved, lighted, garden-plotted, seated and refuged Marina + renounced its more or less celebrated attractions to break off short here; + and an inward curve of the kindly westward shore almost made a wide-armed + bay, with all the ugliness between town and country, and the further + casual fringe of the coast, turning, as the day waned, to rich afternoon + blooms of grey and brown and distant—it might fairly have been + beautiful Hampshire—blue. Here it was that, all that blighted + summer, with Nan—from the dreadful May-day on—he gave himself + up to the reaction of intimacy with the <i>kind</i> of woman, at least, + that he liked; even if of everything else that might make life possible he + was to be, by what he could make out, forever starved. Here it was that—as + well as on whatever other scraps of occasions they could manage—Nan + began to take off and fold up and put away in her pocket her pretty, + dotty, becoming veil; as under the logic of his having so tremendously + ceased, in the shake of his dark storm-gust, to be engaged to another + woman. Her removal of that obstacle to a trusted friend’s assuring himself + whether the peachlike bloom’ of her finer facial curves bore the test of + such further inquiry into their cool sweetness as might reinforce a mere + baffled gaze—her momentous, complete surrender of so much of her + charm, let us say, both marked the change in the situation of the pair and + established the record of their perfect observance of every propriety for + so long before. They afterward in fact could have dated it, their full + clutch of their freedom and the bliss of their having so little henceforth + to consider save their impotence, their poverty, their ruin; dated it from + the hour of his recital to her of the—at the first blush—quite + appalling upshot of his second and conclusive “scene of violence” with the + mistress of his fortune, when the dire terms of his release had had to be + formally, and oh! so abjectly, acceded to. She “compromised,” the cruel + brute, for Four Hundred Pounds down—for not a farthing less would + she stay her strength from “proceedings.” No jury in the land but would + give her six, on the nail (“Oh she knew quite where she was, thank you!”) + and he might feel lucky to get off with so whole a skin. This was the sum, + then, for which he had grovellingly compounded—under an agreement + sealed by a supreme exchange of remarks. + </p> + <p> + “‘Where in the name of lifelong ruin are you to <i>find</i> Four + Hundred?’” Miss Cookham had mockingly repeated after him while he gasped + as from the twist of her grip on his collar. “That’s <i>your</i> look-out, + and I should have thought you’d have made sure you knew before you decided + on your base perfidy.” And then she had mouthed and minced, with ever so + false a gentility, her consistent, her sickening conclusion. “Of course—I + may mention again—if you too distinctly object to the trouble of + looking, you know where to find <i>me</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “I had rather starve to death than ever go within a mile of you!” Herbert + described himself as having sweetly answered; and that was accordingly + where <i>they</i> devotedly but desperately were—he and she, + penniless Nan Drury. Her father, of Drury & Dean, was, like so far too + many other of the anxious characters who peered through the dull + window-glass of dusty offices at Properley, an Estate and House Agent, + Surveyor, Valuer and Auctioneer; she was the prettiest of six, with two + brothers, neither of the least use, but, thanks to the manner in which + their main natural protector appeared to languish under the accumulation + of his attributes, they couldn’t be said very particularly or positively + to live. Their continued collective existence was a good deal of a miracle + even to themselves, though they had fallen into the way of not + unnecessarily, or too nervously, exchanging remarks upon it, and had even + in a sort, from year to year, got used to it. Nan’s brooding pinkness when + he talked to her, her so very parted lips, considering her pretty teeth, + her so very parted eyelids, considering her pretty eyes, all of which + might have been those of some waxen image of uncritical faith, cooled the + heat of his helplessness very much as if he were laying his head on a + tense silk pillow. She had, it was true, forms of speech, familiar + watchwords, that affected him as small scratchy perforations of the smooth + surface from within; but his pleasure in her and need of her were + independent of such things and really almost altogether determined by the + fact of the happy, even if all so lonely, forms and instincts in her which + claimed kinship with his own. With her natural elegance stamped on her as + by a die, with her dim and disinherited individual refinement of grace, + which would have made any one wonder who she was anywhere—hat and + veil and feather-boa and smart umbrella-knob and all—with her + regular God-given distinction of type, in fine, she couldn’t abide + vulgarity much more than he could. + </p> + <p> + Therefore it didn’t seem to him, under his stress, to matter particularly, + for instance, if she <i>would</i> keep on referring so many things to the + time, as she called it, when she came into his life—his own great + insistence and contention being that she hadn’t in the least entered there + till his mind was wholly made up to eliminate his other friend. What that + methodical fury was so fierce to bring home to him was the falsity to + herself involved in the later acquaintance; whereas just his precious + right to hold up his head to everything—before himself at least—sprang + from the fact that she couldn’t make dates fit anyhow. He hadn’t so much + as heard of his true beauty’s existence (she had come back but a few weeks + before from her two years with her terribly trying deceased aunt at + Swindon, previous to which absence she had been an unnoticeable chit) till + days and days, ever so many, upon his honour, after he had struck for + freedom by his great first backing-out letter—the precious document, + the treat for a British jury, in which, by itself, Miss Cookham’s firm + instructed her to recognise the prospect of a fortune. The way the + ruffians had been “her” ruffians—it appeared as if she had posted + them behind her from the first of her beginning her game!—and the + way “instructions” bounced out, with it, at a touch, larger than life, as + if she had arrived with her pocket full of them! The date of the letter, + taken with its other connections, and the date of <i>her</i> first + give-away for himself, his seeing her get out of the Brighton train with + Bill Frankle that day he had gone to make the row at the Station parcels’ + office about the miscarriage of the box from Wales—those were the + facts it sufficed him to point to, as he had pointed to them for Nan + Drury’s benefit, goodness knew, often and often enough. If he didn’t seek + occasion to do so for any one else’s—in open court as they said—that + was his own affair, or at least his and Nan’s. + </p> + <p> + It little mattered, meanwhile, if on their bench of desolation, all that + summer—and it may be added for summers and summers, to say nothing + of winters, there and elsewhere, to come—she did give way to her + artless habit of not contradicting him enough, which led to her often + trailing up and down before him, too complacently, the untimely shreds and + patches of his own glooms and desperations. “Well, I’m glad I <i>am</i> in + your life, terrible as it is, however or whenever I did come in!” and “<i>Of + course</i> you’d rather have starved—and it seems pretty well as if + we shall, doesn’t it?—than have bought her off by a false, abhorrent + love, wouldn’t you?” and “It isn’t as if she hadn’t made up to you the way + she did before you had so much as looked at her, is it? or as if you + hadn’t shown her what you felt her really to be before you had so much as + looked at <i>me</i>, is it either?” and “Yes, how on earth, pawning the + shoes on your feet, you’re going to raise another shilling—<i>that’s</i> + what you want to know, poor darling, don’t you?” + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III + </h2> + <p> + His creditor, at the hour it suited her, transferred her base of + operations to town, to which impenetrable scene she had also herself + retired; and his raising of the first Two Hundred, during five exasperated + and miserable months, and then of another Seventy piecemeal, bleedingly, + after long delays and under the epistolary whiplash cracked by the London + solicitor in his wretched ear even to an effect of the very report of Miss + Cookham’s tongue—these melancholy efforts formed a scramble up an + arduous steep where steps were planted and missed, and bared knees were + excoriated, and clutches at wayside tufts succeeded and failed, on a + system to which poor Nan could have intelligently entered only if she had + been somehow less ladylike. She kept putting into his mouth the sick + quaver of where he should find the rest, the always inextinguishable rest, + long after he had in silent rage fallen away from any further payment at + all—at first, he had but too blackly felt, for himself, to the still + quite possible non-exclusion of some penetrating ray of “exposure.” He + didn’t care a tuppenny damn now, and in point of fact, after he had by + hook and by crook succeeded in being able to unload to the tune of + Two-Hundred-and-Seventy, and then simply returned the newest reminder of + his outstanding obligation unopened, this latter belated but real sign of + fight, the first he had risked, remarkably caused nothing at all to + happen; nothing at least but his being moved to quite tragically rueful + wonder as to whether exactly some such demonstration mightn’t have served + his turn at an earlier stage. + </p> + <p> + He could by this time at any rate measure his ruin—with three + fantastic mortgages on his house, his shop, his stock, and a burden of + interest to carry under which his business simply stretched itself + inanimate, without strength for a protesting kick, without breath for an + appealing groan. Customers lingering for further enjoyment of the tasteful + remarks he had cultivated the unobstrusive art of throwing in, would at + this crisis have found plenty to repay them, might his wit have strayed a + little more widely still, toward a circuitous egotistical outbreak, from + the immediate question of the merits of this and that author or of the + condition of this and that volume. He had come to be conscious through it + all of strangely glaring at people when they tried to haggle—and + not, as formerly, with the glare of derisive comment on their overdone + humour, but with that of fairly idiotised surrender—as if they were + much mistaken in supposing, for the sake of conversation, that he might + take himself for saveable by the difference between sevenpence and + ninepence. He watched everything impossible and deplorable happen as in an + endless prolongation of his nightmare; watched himself proceed, that is, + with the finest, richest incoherence, to the due preparation of his + catastrophe. Everything came to seem <i>equally</i> part of this—in + complete defiance of proportion; even his final command of detachment, on + the bench of desolation (where each successive fact of his dire case + regularly cut itself out black, yet of senseless silhouette, against the + red west) in respect to poor Nan’s flat infelicities, which for the most + part kept no pace with the years or with change, but only shook like hard + peas in a child’s rattle, the same peas a ways, of course, so long as the + rattle didn’t split open with usage or from somebody’s act of irritation. + They represented, or they had long done so, her contribution to the more + superficial of the two branches of intimacy—the intellectual + alternative, the one that didn’t merely consist of her preparing herself + for his putting his arm round her waist. + </p> + <p> + There were to have been moments, nevertheless, all the first couple of + years, when she did touch in him, though to his actively dissimulating it, + a more or less sensitive nerve—moments as they were too, to do her + justice, when she treated him not to his own wisdom, or even folly, served + up cold, but to a certain small bitter fruit of her personal, her + unnatural, plucking. “I wonder that since <i>she</i> took legal advice so + freely, to come down on you, you didn’t take it yourself, a little, before + being so sure you stood no chance. Perhaps <i>your</i> people would have + been sure of something quite different—<i>perhaps</i>, I only say, + you know.” She “only” said it, but she said it, none the less, in the + early time, about once a fortnight. In the later, and especially after + their marriage, it had a way of coming up again to the exclusion, as it + seemed to him, of almost everything else; in fact during the most dismal + years, the three of the loss of their two children, the long stretch of + sordid embarrassment ending in her death, he was afterward to think of her + as having generally said it several times a day. He was then also to + remember that his answer, before she had learnt to discount it, had been + inveterately at hand: “What would any solicitor have done or wanted to do + but drag me just into the hideous public arena”—he had always so put + it—“that it has been at any rate my pride and my honour, the one rag + of self-respect covering my nakedness, to have loathed and avoided from + every point of view?” + </p> + <p> + That had disposed of it so long as he cared, and by the time he had ceased + to care for anything it had also lost itself in the rest of the vain + babble of home. After his wife’s death, during his year of mortal + solitude, it awoke again as an echo of far-off things—far-off, very + far-off, because he felt then not ten but twenty years older. That was by + reason simply of the dead weight with which his load of debt had settled—the + persistence of his misery dragging itself out. With all that had come and + gone the bench of desolation was still there, just as the immortal flush + of the westward sky kept hanging its indestructible curtain. He had never + got away—everything had left him, but he himself had been able to + turn his back on nothing—and now, his day’s labour before a dirty + desk at the Gas Works ended, he more often than not, almost any season at + temperate Properley serving his turn, took his slow straight way to the + Land’s End and, collapsing there to rest, sat often for an hour at a time + staring before him. He might in these sessions, with his eyes on the + grey-green sea, have been counting again and still recounting the beads, + almost all worn smooth, of his rosary of pain—which had for the + fingers of memory and the recurrences of wonder the same felt break of the + smaller ones by the larger that would have aided a pious mumble in some + dusky altar-chapel. + </p> + <p> + If it has been said of him that when once full submersion, as from far + back, had visibly begun to await him, he watched himself, in a cold + lucidity, <i>do</i> punctually and necessarily each of the deplorable + things that were inconsistent with his keeping afloat, so at present again + he might have been held agaze just by the presented grotesqueness of that + vigil. Such ghosts of dead seasons were all he <i>had</i> now to watch—such + a recaptured sense for instance as that of the dismal unavailing awareness + that had attended his act of marriage. He had let submersion final and + absolute become the signal for it—a mere minor determinant having + been the more or less contemporaneously unfavourable effect on the + business of Drury & Dean of the sudden disappearance of Mr. Dean with + the single small tin box into which the certificates of the firm’s credit + had been found to be compressible. That had been his only form—or + had at any rate seemed his only one. He couldn’t not have married, no + doubt, just as he couldn’t not have suffered the last degree of + humiliation and almost of want, or just as his wife and children couldn’t + not have died of the little he was able, under dire reiterated pinches, to + do for them; but it was “rum,” for final solitary brooding, that he hadn’t + appeared to see his way definitely to undertake the support of a family + till the last scrap of his little low-browed, high-toned business, and the + last figment of “property” in the old tiled and timbered shell that housed + it, had been sacrificed to creditors mustering six rows deep. + </p> + <p> + Of course what had counted too in the odd order was that even at the end + of the two or three years he had “allowed” her, Kate Cookham, gorged with + his unholy tribute, had become the subject of no successful siege on the + part either of Bill Frankle or, by what he could make out, of any one + else. She had judged decent—he could do her that justice—to + take herself personally out of his world, as he called it, for good and + all, as soon as he had begun regularly to bleed; and, to whatever + lucrative practice she might be devoting her great talents in London or + elsewhere, he felt his conscious curiosity about her as cold, with time, + as the passion of vain protest that she had originally left him to. He + could recall but two direct echoes of her in all the bitter years—both + communicated by Bill Frankle, disappointed and exposed and at last quite + remarkably ingenuous sneak, who had also, from far back, taken to roaming + the world, but who, during a period, used fitfully and ruefully to + reappear. Herbert Dodd had quickly seen, at their first meeting—every + one met every one sooner or later at Properley, if meeting it could always + be called, either in the glare or the gloom of the explodedly attractive + Embankment—that no silver stream of which he himself had been the + remoter source could have played over the career of this all but + repudiated acquaintance. That hadn’t fitted with his first, his quite + primitive raw vision of the probabilities, and he had further been puzzled + when, much later on, it had come to him in a roundabout way that Miss + Cookham was supposed to be, or to have been, among them for a few days “on + the quiet,” and that Frankle, who had seen her and who claimed to know + more about it than he said, was cited as authority for the fact. But he + hadn’t himself at this juncture seen Frankle; he had only wondered, and a + degree of mystification had even remained. + </p> + <p> + That memory referred itself to the dark days of old Drury’s smash, the few + weeks between his partner’s dastardly flight and Herbert’s own comment on + it in the form of his standing up with Nan for the nuptial benediction of + the Vicar of St. Bernard’s on a very cold, bleak December morning and amid + a circle of seven or eight long-faced, red-nosed and altogether dowdy + persons. Poor Nan herself had come to affect him as scarce other than + red-nosed and dowdy by that time, but this only added, in his then, and + indeed in his lasting view, to his general and his particular morbid + bravery. He had cultivated ignorance, there were small inward immaterial + luxuries he could scrap-pily cherish even among other, and the harshest, + destitutions; and one of them was represented by this easy refusal of his + mind to render to certain passages of his experience, to various ugly + images, names, associations, the homage of continued attention. That + served him, that helped him; but what happened when, a dozen dismal years + having worn themselves away, he sat single and scraped bare again, as if + his long wave of misfortune had washed him far beyond everything and then + conspicuously retreated, was that, thus stranded by tidal action, + deposited in the lonely hollow of his fate, he felt even sustaining pride + turn to nought and heard no challenge from it when old mystifications, + stealing forth in the dusk of the day’s work done, scratched at the door + of speculation and hung about, through the idle hours, for irritated + notice. + </p> + <p> + The evenings of his squalid clerkship were all leisure now, but there was + nothing at all near home on the other hand, for his imagination, numb and + stiff from its long chill, to begin to play with. Voices from far off + would quaver to him therefore in the stillness; where he knew for the most + recurrent, little by little, the faint wail of his wife. He had become + deaf to it in life, but at present, after so great an interval, he + listened again, listened and listened, and seemed to hear it sound as by + the pressure of some weak broken spring. It phrased for his ear her + perpetual question, the one she had come to at the last as under the + obsession of a discovered and resented wrong, a wrong withal that had its + source much more in his own action than anywhere else. “That you didn’t + make <i>sure</i> she could have done anything, that you didn’t make sure + and that you were too afraid!”—this commemoration had ended by + playing such a part of Nan’s finally quite contracted consciousness as to + exclude everything else. + </p> + <p> + At the time, somehow, he had made his terms with it; he had then more + urgent questions to meet than that of the poor creature’s taste in + worrying pain; but actually it struck him—not the question, but the + fact itself of the taste—as the one thing left over from all that + had come and gone. So it was; nothing remained to him in the world, on the + bench of desolation, but the option of taking up that echo—together + with an abundance of free time for doing so. That he hadn’t made sure of + what might and what mightn’t have been done to him, that he had been too + afraid—had the proposition a possible bearing on his present + apprehension of things? To reply indeed he would have had to be able to + say what his present apprehension of things, left to itself, amounted to; + an uninspiring effort indeed he judged it, sunk to so poor a pitch was his + material of thought—though it might at last have been the feat he + sought to perform as he stared at the grey-green sea. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + IV + </h2> + <p> + It was seldom he was disturbed in any form of sequestered speculation, or + that at his times of predilection, especially that of the long autumn + blankness between the season of trippers and the season of Bath-chairs, + there were westward stragglers enough to jar upon his settled sense of + priority. For himself his seat, the term of his walk, was consecrated; it + had figured to him for years as the last (though there were others, not + immediately near it, and differently disposed, that might have aspired to + the title); so that he could invidiously distinguish as he approached, + make out from a distance any accident of occupation, and never draw nearer + while that unpleasantness lasted. What he disliked was to compromise on + his tradition, whether for a man, a woman or a connoodling couple; it was + to idiots of this last composition he most objected, he having sat there, + in the past, alone, having sat there interminably with Nan, having sat + there with—well, with other women when women, at hours of ease, + could still care or count for him, but having never shared the place with + any shuffling or snuffling stranger. It was a world of fidgets and starts, + however, the world of his present dreariness—he alone possessed in + it, he seemed to make out, of the secret, of the dignity of sitting still + with one’s fate; so that if he took a turn about or rested briefly + elsewhere even foolish philanderers—though this would never have + been his and Nan’s way—ended soon by some adjournment as visibly + pointless as their sprawl. Then, their backs turned, he would drop down on + it, the bench of desolation—which was what he, and he only, made it + by sad adoption; where, for that matter, moreover, once he had settled at + his end, it was marked that nobody else ever came to sit. He saw people, + along the Marina, take this liberty with other resting presences; but his + own struck them perhaps in general as either of too grim or just of too + dingy a vicinage. He might have affected the fellow-lounger as a man evil, + unsociable, possibly engaged in working out the idea of a crime; or + otherwise, more probably—for on the whole he surely looked harmless—devoted + to the worship of some absolutely unpractical remorse. + </p> + <p> + On a certain October Saturday he had got off, as usual, early; but the + afternoon light, his pilgrimage drawing to its aim, could still show him, + at long range, the rare case of an established usurper. His impulse was + then, as by custom, to deviate a little and wait, all the more that the + occupant of the bench was a lady, and that ladies, when alone, were—at + that austere end of the varied frontal stretch—markedly + discontinuous; but he kept on at sight of this person’s rising, while he + was still fifty yards off, and proceeding, her back turned, to the edge of + the broad terrace, the outer line of which followed the interspaced + succession of seats and was guarded by an iron rail from the abruptly + lower level of the beach. Here she stood before the sea, while our friend + on his side, recognising no reason to the contrary, sank into the place + she had quitted. There were other benches, eastward and off by the course + of the drive, for vague ladies. The lady indeed thus thrust upon Herbert’s + vision might have struck an observer either as not quite vague or as vague + with a perverse intensity suggesting design. + </p> + <p> + Not that our own observer at once thought of these things; he only took + in, and with no great interest, that the obtruded presence was a “real” + lady; that she was dressed—he noticed such matters—with a + certain elegance of propriety or intention of harmony; and that she + remained perfectly still for a good many minutes; so many in fact that he + presently ceased to heed her, and that as she wasn’t straight before him, + but as far to the left as was consistent with his missing her profile, he + had turned himself to one of his sunsets again (though it wasn’t quite one + of his best) and let it hold him for a time that enabled her to alter her + attitude and present a fuller view. Without other movement, but her back + now to the sea and her face to the odd person who had appropriated her + corner, she had taken a sustained look at him before he was aware she had + stirred. On that apprehension, however, he became also promptly aware of + her direct, her applied observation. As his sense of this quickly + increased he wondered who she was and what she wanted—what, as it + were, was the matter with her; it suggested to him, the next thing, that + she had, under some strange idea, actually been waiting for him. Any idea + about him to-day on the part of any one could only be strange. + </p> + <p> + Yes, she stood there with the ample width of the Marina between them, but + turned to him, for all the world, as to show frankly that she was + concerned with him. And she <i>was</i>—oh yes—a real lady: a + middle-aged person, of good appearance and of the best condition, in quiet + but “handsome” black, save for very fresh white kid gloves, and with a + pretty, dotty, becoming veil, predominantly white, adjusted to her + countenance; which through it somehow, even to his imperfect sight, showed + strong fine black brows and what he would have called on the spot + character. But she was pale; her black brows were the blacker behind the + flattering tissue; she still kept a hand, for support, on the + terrace-rail, while the other, at the end of an extended arm that had an + effect of rigidity, clearly pressed hard on the knob of a small and + shining umbrella, the lower extremity of whose stick was equally, was + sustainingly, firm on the walk. So this mature, qualified, important + person stood and looked at the limp, undistinguished—oh his values + of aspect now!—shabby man on the bench. + </p> + <p> + It was extraordinary, but the fact of her interest, by immensely + surprising, by immediately agitating him, blinded him at first to her + identity and, for the space of his long stare, diverted him from it; with + which even then, when recognition did break, the sense of the shock, + striking inward, simply consumed itself in gaping stillness. He sat there + motionless and weak, fairly faint with surprise, and there was no instant, + in all the succession of so many, at which Kate Cookham could have caught + the special sign of his intelligence. Yet that she did catch something he + saw—for he saw her steady herself, by her two supported hands, to + meet it; while, after she had done so, a very wonderful thing happened, of + which he could scarce, later on, have made a clear statement, though he + was to think it over again and again. She moved toward him, she reached + him, she stood there, she sat down near him, he merely passive and + wonderstruck, unresentfully “impressed,” gaping and taking it in—and + all as with an open allowance on the part of each, so that they positively + and quite intimately met in it, o the impertinence for their case, this + case that brought them again, after horrible years, face to face, of the + vanity, the profanity, the impossibility, of anything between them but + silence. + </p> + <p> + Nearer to him, beside him at a considerable interval (oh she was immensely + considerate!) she presented him, in the sharp terms of her transformed + state—but thus the more amply, formally, ceremoniously—with + the reasons that would serve him best for not having precipitately known + her. She was simply another and a totally different person, and the + exhibition of it to which she had proceeded with this solemn anxiety was + all, obviously, for his benefit—once he had, as he appeared to be + doing, provisionally accepted her approach. He had remembered her as + inclined to the massive and disowned by the graceful; but this was a + spare, fine, worn, almost wasted lady—who had repaired waste, it was + true, however, with something he could only appreciate as a rich + accumulation of manner. She was strangely older, so far as that went—marked + by experience and as if many things had happened to her; her face had + suffered, to its improvement, contraction and concentration; and if he had + granted, of old and from the first, that her eyes were remarkable, had + they yet ever had for him this sombre glow? Withal, something said, she + had flourished—he felt it, wincing at it, as that; she had had a + life, a career, a history—something that her present waiting air and + nervous consciousness couldn’t prevent his noting there as a deeply latent + assurance. She had flourished, she had flourished—though to learn it + after this fashion was somehow at the same time not to feel she flaunted + it. It wasn’t thus execration that she revived in him; she made in fact, + exhibitively, as he could only have put it, the matter of long ago + irrelevant, and these extraordinary minutes of their reconstituted + relation—how many? how few?—addressed themselves altogether to + new possibilities. + </p> + <p> + Still it after a little awoke in him as with the throb of a touched nerve + that his own very attitude was supplying a connection; he knew presently + that he wouldn’t have had her go, <i>couldn’t</i> have made a sign to her + for it—which was what she had been uncertain of—without + speaking to him; and that therefore he was, as at the other, the hideous + time, passive to whatever she might do. She was even yet, she was always, + in possession of him; she had known how and where to find him and had + appointed that he should see her, and, though he had never dreamed it was + again to happen to him, he was meeting it already as if it might have been + the only thing that the least humanly <i>could</i>. Yes, he had come back + there to flop, by long custom, upon the bench of desolation <i>as</i> the + man in the whole place, precisely, to whom nothing worth more than + tuppence could happen; whereupon, in the grey desert of his consciousness, + the very earth had suddenly opened and flamed. With this, further, it came + over him that he hadn’t been prepared and that his wretched appearance + must show it. He wasn’t fit to receive a visit—any visit; a flush + for his felt misery, in the light of her opulence, broke out in his lean + cheeks. But if he coloured he sat as he was—she should at least, as + a visitor, be satisfied. His eyes only, at last, turned from her and + resumed a little their gaze at the sea. That, however, didn’t relieve him, + and he perpetrated in the course of another moment the odd desperate + gesture of raising both his hands to his face and letting them, while he + pressed it to them, cover and guard it. It was as he held them there that + she at last spoke. + </p> + <p> + “I’ll go away if you wish me to.” And then she waited a moment. “I mean + now—now that you’ve seen I’m here. I wanted you to know it, and I + thought of writing—I was afraid of our meeting accidentally. Then I + was afraid that if I wrote you might refuse. So I thought of this way—as + I knew you must come out here.” She went on with pauses, giving him a + chance to make a sign. “I’ve waited several days. But I’ll do what you + wish. Only I should like in that case to come back.” Again she stopped; + but strange was it to him that he wouldn’t have made her break off. She + held him in boundless wonder. “I came down—I mean I came from town—on + purpose. I’m staying on still, and I’ve a great patience and will give you + time. Only may I say it’s important? Now that I do see you,” she brought + out in the same way, “I see how inevitable it was—I mean that I + should have wanted to come. But you must feel about it as you can,” she + wound up—“till you get used to the idea.” + </p> + <p> + She spoke so for accommodation, for discretion, for some ulterior view + already expressed in her manner, that, after taking well in, from behind + his hands, that this was her very voice—oh ladylike!—heard, + and heard in deprecation of displeasure, after long years again, he + uncovered his face and freshly met her eyes. More than ever he couldn’t + have known her. Less and less remained of the figure all the facts of + which had long ago so hardened for him. She was a handsome, grave, + authoritative, but refined and, as it were, physically rearranged person—she, + the outrageous vulgarity of whose prime assault had kept him shuddering so + long as a shudder was in him. That atrocity in her was what everything had + been built on, but somehow, all strangely, it was slipping from him; so + that, after the oddest fashion conceivable, when he felt he mustn’t let + her go, it was as if he were putting out his hand to save the past, the + hideous real unalterable past, exactly as she had been the cause of its + being and the cause of his undergoing it. He should have been too awfully + “sold” if he wasn’t going to have been right about her. + </p> + <p> + “I don’t mind,” he heard himself at last say. Not to mind had seemed for + the instant the length he was prepared to go; but he was afterward aware + of how soon he must have added: “You’ve come on purpose to see me?” He was + on the point of putting to her further: “What then do you want of me?” But + he would keep—yes, in time—from appearing to show he cared. If + he showed he cared, where then would be his revenge? So he was already, + within five minutes, thinking his revenge uncomfortably over instead of + just comfortably knowing it. What came to him, at any rate, as they + actually fell to talk, was that, with such precautions, considerations, + reduplications of consciousness, almost avowed feelings of her way on her + own part, and light fingerings of his chords of sensibility, she was + understanding, she <i>had</i> understood, more things than all the years, + up to this strange eventide, had given him an inkling of. They talked, + they went on—he hadn’t let her retreat, to whatever it committed him + and however abjectly it did so; yet keeping off and off, dealing with such + surface facts as involved ancient acquaintance but held abominations at + bay. The recognition, the attestation that she <i>had</i> come down for + him, that there would be reasons, that she had even hovered and watched, + assured herself a little of his habits (which she managed to speak of as + if, on their present ampler development, they were much to be deferred + to), detained them enough to make vivid how, listen as stiffly or as + serenely as he might, she sat there in fear, just as she had so stood + there at first, and that her fear had really to do with her calculation of + some sort of chance with him. What chance could it possibly be? Whatever + it might have done, on this prodigious showing, with Kate Cookham, it made + the present witness to the state of his fortunes simply exquisite: he + ground his teeth secretly together as he saw he should have to take <i>that</i>. + For what did it mean but that she would have liked to pity him if she + could have done it with safety? Ah, however, he must give her no measure + of safety! + </p> + <p> + By the time he had remarked, with that idea, that she probably saw few + changes about them there that weren’t for the worse—the place was + going down, down and down, so fast that goodness knew where it would stop—and + had also mentioned that in spite of this he himself remained faithful, + with all its faults loving it still; by the time he had, after that + fashion, superficially indulged her, adding a few further light and just + sufficiently dry reflections on local matters, the disappearance of + landmarks and important persons, the frequency of gales, the low policy of + the town-council in playing down to cheap excursionists: by the time he + had so acquitted himself, and she had observed, of her own motion, that + she was staying at the Royal, which he knew for the time-honoured, the + conservative and exclusive hotel, he had made out for himself one thing at + least, the amazing fact that he had been landed by his troubles, at the + end of time, in a “social relation,” of all things in the world, and how + of that luxury he was now having unprecedented experience. He had but once + in his life had his nose in the Royal, on the occasion of his himself + delivering a parcel during some hiatus in his succession of impossible + small boys and meeting in the hall the lady who had bought of him, in the + morning, a set of Crabbe, largely, he flattered himself, under the artful + persuasion of his acute remarks on that author, gracefully associated by + him, in this colloquy, he remembered, with a glance at Charles Lamb as + well, and who went off in a day or two without settling, though he + received her cheque from London three or four months later. + </p> + <p> + <i>That</i> hadn’t been a social relation; and truly, deep within his + appeal to himself to be remarkable, to be imperturbable and impenetrable, + to be in fact quite incomparable now, throbbed the intense vision of his + drawing out and draining dry the sensation he had begun to taste. He would + do it, moreover—that would be the refinement of his art—not + only without the betraying anxiety of a single question, but just even by + seeing her flounder (since she must, in a vagueness deeply disconcerting + to her) as to her real effect on him. She was distinctly floundering by + the time he had brought her—it had taken ten minutes—down to a + consciousness of absurd and twaddling topics, to the reported precarious + state, for instance, of the syndicate running the Bijou Theatre at the + Pierhead—all as an admonition that she might want him to want to + know why she was thus waiting on him, might want it for all she was worth, + before he had ceased to be so remarkable as not to ask her. He didn’t—and + this assuredly was wondrous enough—want to do anything worse to her + than let her flounder; but he was willing to do that so long as it + mightn’t prevent his seeing at least where <i>he</i> was. He seemed still + to see where he was even at the minute that followed her final break-off, + clearly intended to be resolute, from make-believe talk. + </p> + <p> + “I wonder if I might prevail on you to come to tea with me to-morrow at + five.” + </p> + <p> + He didn’t so much as answer it—though he could scarcely believe his + ears. To-morrow was Sunday, and the proposal referred, clearly, to the + custom of “five-o’clock” tea, known to him only by the contemporary novel + of manners and the catchy advertisement of table-linen. He had never in + his life been present at any such luxurious rite, but he was offering + practical indifference to it as a false mark of his sense that his social + relation had already risen to his chin. “I gave up my very modest, but + rather interesting little old book business, perhaps you know, ever so + long ago.” + </p> + <p> + She floundered so that she could say nothing—meet <i>that</i> with + no possible word; all the less too that his tone, casual and colourless, + wholly defied any apprehension of it as a reverse. Silence only came; but + after a moment she returned to her effort. “If you <i>can</i> come I shall + be at home. To see you otherwise than thus was in fact what, as I tell + you, I came down for. But I leave it,” she returned, “to your feeling.” + </p> + <p> + He had at this, it struck him, an inspiration; which he required however a + minute or two to decide to carry out; a minute or two during which the + shake of his foot over his knee became an intensity of fidget. “Of course + I know I still owe you a large sum of money. If it’s about <i>that</i> you + wish to see me,” he went on, “I may as well tell you just here that I + shall be able to meet my full obligation in the future as little as I’ve + met it in the past. I can never,” said Herbert Dodd, “pay up that + balance.” + </p> + <p> + He had looked at her while he spoke, but on finishing looked off at the + sea again and continued to agitate his foot. He knew now what he had done + and why; and the sense of her fixed dark eyes on him during his speech and + after didn’t alter his small contentment. Yet even when she still said + nothing he didn’t turn round; he simply kept his corner as if <i>that</i> + were his point made, should it even be the last word between them. It + might have been, for that matter, from the way in which she presently + rose, gathering herself, her fine umbrella and her very small smart + reticule, in the construction of which shining gilt much figured, well + together, and, after standing another instant, moved across to the rail of + the terrace as she had done before and remained, as before, with her back + to him, though this time, it well might be, under a different fear. A + quarter of an hour ago she hadn’t tried him, and had had that anxiety; now + that she had tried him it wasn’t easier—but she was thinking what + she still could do. He left her to think—nothing in fact more + interesting than the way she might decide had ever happened to him; but it + was a part of this also that as she turned round and came nearer again he + didn’t rise, he gave her no help. If she got any, at least, from his + looking up at her only, meeting her fixed eyes once more in silence, that + was her own affair. “You must think,” she said—“you must take all + your time, but I shall be at home.” She left it to him thus—she + insisted, with her idea, on leaving him something too. And on her side as + well she showed an art—which resulted, after another instant, in his + having to rise to his feet. He flushed afresh as he did it—it + exposed him so shabbily the more; and now if she took him in, with each of + his seedy items, from head to foot, he didn’t and couldn’t and wouldn’t + know it, attaching his eyes hard and straight to something quite away from + them. + </p> + <p> + It stuck in his throat to say he’d come, but she had so curious a way with + her that he still less could say he wouldn’t, and in a moment had taken + refuge in something that was neither. “Are you married?”—he put it + to her with that plainness, though it had seemed before he said it to do + more for him than while she waited before replying. + </p> + <p> + “No, I’m not married,” she said; and then had another wait that might have + amounted to a question of what this had to do with it. + </p> + <p> + He surely couldn’t have told her; so that he had recourse, a little poorly + as he felt, but to an “Oh!” that still left them opposed. He turned away + for it—that is for the poorness, which, lingering in the air, had + almost a vulgar platitude; and when he presently again wheeled about she + had fallen off as for quitting him, only with a pause, once more, for a + last look. It was all a bit awkward, but he had another happy thought, + which consisted in his silently raising his hat as for a sign of dignified + dismissal. He had cultivated of old, for the occasions of life, the right, + the discriminated bow, and now, out of the grey limbo of the time when he + could care for such things, this flicker of propriety leaped and worked + She might, for that matter, herself have liked it; since, receding + further, only with her white face toward him, she paid it the homage of + submission. He remained dignified, and she almost humbly went. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + V + </h2> + <p> + Nothing in the world, on the Sunday afternoon, could have prevented him + from going; he was not after all destitute of three or four such articles + of clothing as, if they wouldn’t particularly grace the occasion, wouldn’t + positively dishonour it. That deficiency might have kept him away, but no + voice of the spirit, no consideration of pride. It sweetened his + impatience in fact—for he fairly felt it a long time to wait—that + his pride would really most find its account in his acceptance of these + conciliatory steps. From the moment he could put it in that way—that + he couldn’t refuse to hear what she might have, so very elaborately, to + say for herself—he ought certainly to be at his ease; in + illustration of which he whistled odd snatches to himself as he hung about + on that cloud-dappled autumn Sunday, a mild private minstrelsy that his + lips hadn’t known since when? The interval of the twenty-four hours, made + longer by a night of many more revivals than oblivions, had in fact + dragged not a little; in spite of which, however, our extremely brushed-up + and trimmed and polished friend knew an unprecedented flutter as he was + ushered, at the Royal Hotel, into Miss Cookham’s sitting-room. Yes, it was + an adventure, and he had never had an adventure in his life; the term, for + him, was essentially a term of high appreciation—such as + disqualified for that figure, under due criticism, every single passage of + his past career. + </p> + <p> + What struck him at the moment as qualifying in the highest degree this + actual passage was the fact that at no great distance from his hostess in + the luxurious room, as he apprehended it, in which the close of day had + begun to hang a few shadows, sat a gentleman who rose as she rose, and + whose name she at once mentioned to him. He had for Herbert Dodd all the + air of a swell, the gentleman—rather red-faced and bald-headed, but + moustachioed, waistcoated, necktied to the highest pitch, with an effect + of chains and rings, of shining teeth in a glassily monocular smile; a + wondrous apparition to have been asked to “meet” him, as in contemporary + fiction, or for him to have been asked to meet. “Captain Roper, Mr. + Herbert Dodd”—their entertainer introduced them, yes; but with a + sequel immediately afterward more disconcerting apparently to Captain + Roper himself even than to her second and more breathless visitor; a “Well + then, good-bye till the next time,” with a hand thrust straight out, which + allowed the personage so addressed no alternative but to lay aside his + teacup, even though Herbert saw there was a good deal left in it, and + glare about him for his hat. Miss Cookham had had her tea-tray on a small + table before her, she had served Captain Roper while waiting for Mr. Dodd; + but she simply dismissed him now, with a high sweet unmistakable decision, + a knowledge of what she was about, as our hero would have called it, which + enlarged at a stroke the latter’s view of the number of different things + and sorts of things, in the sphere of the manners and ways of those living + at their ease, that a social relation would put before one. Captain Roper + would have liked to remain, would have liked more tea, but Kate signified + in this direct fashion that she had had enough of him. Herbert had seen + things, in his walk of life—rough things, plenty; but never things + smoothed with that especial smoothness, carried out as it were by the fine + form of Captain Roper’s own retreat, which included even a bright + convulsed leave-taking cognisance of the plain, vague individual, of no + lustre at all and with the very low-class guard of an old silver watch + buttoned away under an ill-made coat, to whom he was sacrificed. + </p> + <p> + It came to Herbert as he left the place a shade less remarkable—though + there was still wonder enough and to spare—that he had been even + publicly and designedly sacrificed; exactly so that, as the door closed + behind him, Kate Cookham, standing there to wait for it, could seem to + say, across the room, to the friend of her youth, only by the expression + of her fine eyes: “There—see what I do for you!” “For” him—that + was the extraordinary thing, and not less so that he was already, within + three minutes, after this fashion, taking it in as by the intensity of a + new light; a light that was one somehow with this rich inner air of the + plush-draped and much-mirrored hotel, where the fire-glow and the approach + of evening confirmed together the privacy, and the loose curtains at the + wide window were parted for a command of his old lifelong Parade—the + field of life so familiar to him from below and in the wind and the wet, + but which he had never in all the long years hung over at this vantage. + </p> + <p> + “He’s an acquaintance, but a bore,” his hostess explained in respect to + Captain Roper. “He turned up yesterday, but I didn’t invite him, and I had + said to him before you came in that I was expecting a gentleman with whom + I should wish to be alone. I go quite straight at my idea that way, as a + rule; but you know,” she now strikingly went on, “how straight I go. And + he had had,” she added, “his tea.” + </p> + <p> + Dodd had been looking all round—had taken in, with the rest, the + brightness, the distinguished elegance, as he supposed it, of the + tea-service with which she was dealing and the variously tinted appeal of + certain savoury edibles on plates. “Oh but he <i>hadn’t</i> had his tea!” + he heard himself the next moment earnestly reply; which speech had at once + betrayed, he was then quickly aware, the candour of his interest, the + unsophisticated state that had survived so many troubles. If he was so + interested how could he be proud, and if he was proud how could he be so + interested? + </p> + <p> + He had made her at any rate laugh outright, and was further conscious, for + this, both that it was the first time of that since their new meeting, and + that it didn’t affect him as harsh. It affected him, however, as free, for + she replied at once, still smiling and as a part of it: “Oh, I think we + shall get on!” + </p> + <p> + This told him he had made some difference for her, shown her the way, or + something like it, that she hadn’t been sure of yesterday; which moreover + wasn’t what he had intended—he had come armed for showing her + nothing; so that after she had gone on with the same gain of gaiety, “You + must at any rate comfortably have yours,” there was but one answer for him + to make. + </p> + <p> + His eyes played again over the tea-things—they seemed strangely to + help him; but he didn’t sit down. + </p> + <p> + “I’ve come, as you see—but I’ve come, please, to understand; and if + you require to be alone with me, and if I break bread with you, it seems + to me I should first know exactly where I am and to what you suppose I so + commit myself.” He had thought it out and over and over, particularly the + turn about breaking bread; though perhaps he didn’t give it, in her + presence—this was impossible, her presence altered so many things—quite + the full sound or the weight he had planned. + </p> + <p> + But it had none the less come to his aid—it had made her perfectly + grave. “You commit yourself to nothing. You’re perfectly free. It’s only I + who commit myself.” + </p> + <p> + On which, while she stood there as if all handsomely and deferentially + waiting for him to consider and decide, he would have been naturally moved + to ask her what she committed herself then <i>to</i>—so moved, that + is, if he hadn’t, before saying it, thought more sharply still of + something better. “Oh, that’s another thing.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, that’s another thing,” Kate Cookham returned. To which she added, + “So <i>now</i> won’t you sit down?” He sank with deliberation into the + seat from which Captain Roper had risen; she went back to her own and + while she did so spoke again. “I’m <i>not</i> free. At least,” she said + over her tea-tray, “I’m free only for this.” + </p> + <p> + Everything was there before them and around them, everything massive and + shining, so that he had instinctively fallen back in his chair as for the + wondering, the resigned acceptance of it; where her last words stirred in + him a sense of odd deprecation. Only for “that”? “That” was everything, at + this moment, to his long inanition, and the effect, as if she had suddenly + and perversely mocked him, was to press the spring of a protest. “Isn’t + ‘this’ then riches?” + </p> + <p> + “Riches?” she smiled over, handing him his cup—for she had triumphed + in having struck from him a question. + </p> + <p> + “I mean haven’t you a lot of money?” He didn’t care now that it was out; + his cup was in his hand, and what was that but proved interest? He had + succumbed to the social relation. + </p> + <p> + “Yes, I’ve money. Of course you wonder—but I’ve wanted you to + wonder. It was to make you take that in that I came. So now you know,” she + said, leaning back where she faced him, but in a straighter chair and with + her arms closely folded, after a fashion characteristic of her, as for + some control of her nerves. + </p> + <p> + “You came to show you’ve money?” + </p> + <p> + “That’s one of the things. Not a lot—not even very much. But + enough,” said Kate Cookham. + </p> + <p> + “Enough? I should think so!” he again couldn’t help a bit crudely + exhaling. + </p> + <p> + “Enough for what I wanted. I don’t always live like this—not at all. + But I came to the best hotel on purpose. I wanted to show you I could. + Now,” she asked, “do you understand?” + </p> + <p> + “Understand?” He only gaped. + </p> + <p> + She threw up her loosed arms, which dropped again beside her. “I did it <i>for</i> + you—I did it <i>for</i> you!” + </p> + <p> + “‘For’ me——?” + </p> + <p> + “What I did—what I did here of old.” + </p> + <p> + He stared, trying to see it. “When you made me pay you?” + </p> + <p> + “The Two Hundred and Seventy—all I could get from you, as you + reminded me yesterday, so that I had to give up the rest It was my idea,” + she went on—“it was my idea.” + </p> + <p> + “To bleed me quite to death?” Oh, his ice was broken now! + </p> + <p> + “To make you raise money—since you could, you <i>could</i>. You did, + you did—so what better proof?” + </p> + <p> + His hands fell from what he had touched; he could only stare—her own + manner for it was different now too. “I did. I did indeed—!” And the + woful weak simplicity of it, which seemed somehow all that was left him, + fell even on his own ear. + </p> + <p> + “Well then, here it is—it isn’t lost!” she returned with a graver + face. + </p> + <p> + “‘Here’ it is,” he gasped, “my poor agonised old money—my blood?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, it’s <i>my</i> blood too, you must know now!” She held up her head as + not before—as for her right to speak of the thing to-day most + precious to her. “I took it, but this—my being here this way—is + what I’ve made of it! That was the idea I had!” + </p> + <p> + Her “ideas,” as things to boast of, staggered him. “To have everything in + the world, like this, at my wretched expense?” + </p> + <p> + She had folded her arms back again—grasping each elbow she sat firm; + she knew he could see, and had known well from the first, what she had + wanted to say, difficult, monstrous though it might be. “No more than at + my own—but to do something with your money that you’d never do + yourself.” + </p> + <p> + “Myself, myself?” he wonderingly wailed. “Do you know—or don’t you?—what + my life has been?” + </p> + <p> + She waited, and for an instant, though the light in the room had failed a + little more and would soon be mainly that of the flaring lamps on the + windy Parade, he caught from her dark eye a silver gleam of impatience. + “You’ve suffered and you’ve worked—which, God knows, is what I’ve + done! <i>Of course</i> you’ve suffered,” she said—“you inevitably + had to! We have to,” she went on, “to do or to be or to get anything.” + </p> + <p> + “And pray what have I done or been or got?” Herbert Dodd found it almost + desolately natural to demand. + </p> + <p> + It made her cover him again as with all she was thinking of. “Can you + imagine nothing, or can’t you conceive—?” And then as her challenge + struck deeper in, deeper down than it had yet reached, and with the effect + of a rush of the blood to his face, “It was <i>for</i> you, it was <i>for</i> + you!” she again broke out—“and for what or whom else could it have + been?” + </p> + <p> + He saw things to a tune now that made him answer straight: “I thought at + one time it might be for Bill Frankle.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes—that was the way you treated me,” Miss Cookham as plainly + replied. + </p> + <p> + But he let this pass; his thought had already got away from it. “What good + then—its having been for me—has that ever done me?” + </p> + <p> + “Doesn’t it do you any good <i>now?</i>” his friend returned. To which she + added, with another dim play of her tormented brightness, before he could + speak: “But if you won’t even have your tea——!” + </p> + <p> + He had in fact touched nothing and, if he could have explained, would have + pleaded very veraciously that his appetite, keen when he came in, had + somehow suddenly failed. It was beyond eating or drinking, what she seemed + to want him to take from her. So if he looked, before him, over the array, + it was to say, very grave and graceless: “Am I to understand that you + offer to repay me?” + </p> + <p> + “I offer to repay you with interest, Herbert Dodd”—and her emphasis + of the great word was wonderful. + </p> + <p> + It held him in his place a minute, and held his eyes upon her; after + which, agitated too sharply to sit still, he pushed back his chair and + stood up. It was as if mere distress or dismay at first worked in him, and + was in fact a wave of deep and irresistible emotion which made him, on his + feet, sway as in a great trouble and then, to correct it, throw himself + stiffly toward the window, where he stood and looked out unseeing. The + road, the wide terrace beyond, the seats, the eternal sea beyond that, the + lighted lamps now flaring in the October night-wind, with the few + dispersed people abroad at the tea-hour; these things, meeting and melting + into the firelit hospitality at his elbow—or was it that portentous + amenity that melted into <i>them?</i>—seemed to form round him and + to put before him, all together, the strangest of circles and the newest + of experiences, in which the unforgettable and the unimaginable were + confoundingly mixed. “Oh, oh, oh!”—he could only almost howl for it. + </p> + <p> + And then, while a thick blur for some moments mantled everything, he knew + she had got up, that she stood watching him, allowing for everything, + again all “cleverly” patient with him, and he heard her speak again as + with studied quietness and clearness. “I wanted to take care of you—it + was what I first wanted—and what you first consented to. I’d have + done it, oh I’d have done it, I’d have loved you and helped you and + guarded you, and you’d have had no trouble, no bad blighting ruin, in all + your easy, yes, just your quite jolly and comfortable life. I showed you + and proved to you this—I brought it home to you, as I fondly + fancied, and it made me briefly happy. You swore you cared for me, you + wrote it and made me believe it—you pledged me your honour and your + faith. Then you turned and changed suddenly from one day to another; + everything altered, you broke your vows, you as good as told me you only + wanted it off. You faced me with dislike, and in fact tried not to face me + at all; you behaved as if you hated me—you had seen a girl, of great + beauty, I admit, who made me a fright and a bore.” + </p> + <p> + This brought him straight round. “No, Kate Cookham.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, Herbert Dodd.” She but shook her head, calmly and nobly, in the now + gathered dusk, and her memories and her cause and her character—or + was it only her arch-subtlety, her line and her “idea”?—gave her an + extraordinary large assurance. + </p> + <p> + She had touched, however, the treasure of his own case—his terrible + own case that began to live again at once by the force of her talking of + hers, and which could always all cluster about his great asseveration. + “No, no, never, never; I had never seen her then and didn’t dream of her; + so that when you yourself began to be harsh and sharp with me, and to seem + to want to quarrel, I could have but one idea—which was an + appearance you didn’t in the least, as I saw it then, account for or + disprove.” + </p> + <p> + “An appearance—?” Kate desired, as with high astonishment, to know + which one. + </p> + <p> + “How <i>shouldn’t</i> I have supposed you really to care for Bill Frankle?—as + thoroughly believing the motive of your claim for my money to be its help + to your marrying him, since you couldn’t marry me. I was only surprised + when, time passing, I made out that that hadn’t happened; and perhaps,” he + added the next instant with something of a conscious lapse from the finer + style, “hadn’t been in question.” + </p> + <p> + She had listened to this only staring, and she was silent after he had + said it, so silent for some instants that while he considered her + something seemed to fail him, much as if he had thrown out his foot for a + step and not found the place to rest it. He jerked round to the window + again, and then she answered, but without passion unless it was that of + her weariness for something stupid and forgiven in him, “Oh, the blind, + the pitiful folly!”—to which, as it might perfectly have applied to + her own behaviour, he returned nothing. She had moreover at once gone on. + “Have it then that there wasn’t much to do—between your finding that + you loathed me for another woman or discovering only, when it came to the + point, that you loathed me quite enough for myself.” + </p> + <p> + Which, as she put it in that immensely effective fashion, he recognised + that he must just unprotestingly and not so very awkwardly—not so <i>very!</i>—take + from her; since, whatever he had thus come to her for, it wasn’t to + perjure himself with any pretence that, “another woman” or no other woman, + he hadn’t, for years and years, abhorred her. Now he was taking tea with + her—or rather, literally, seemed not to be; but this made no + difference, and he let her express it as she would while he distinguished + a man he knew, Charley Coote, outside on the Parade, under favour of the + empty hour and one of the flaring lamps, making up to a young woman with + whom (it stuck out grotesquely in his manner) he had never before + conversed. Dodd’s own position was that of acquiescing in this recall of + what had so bitterly been—but he hadn’t come back to her, of + himself, to stir up, to recall or to recriminate, and for <i>her</i> it + could but be the very lesson of her whole present act that if she touched + anything she touched everything. Soon enough she <i>was</i> indeed, and + all overwhelmingly, touching everything—with a hand of which the + boldness grew. + </p> + <p> + “But I didn’t let <i>that</i>, even, make a difference in what I wanted—which + was all,” she said, “and had only and passionately been, to take care of + you. I had <i>no</i> money whatever—nothing then of my own, not a + penny to come by anyhow; so it wasn’t with mine I could do it. But I could + do it with yours,” she amazingly wound up—“if I could once get yours + out of you.” + </p> + <p> + He faced straight about again—his eyebrows higher than they had ever + been in his life. “Mine? What penny of it was mine? What scrap beyond a + bare, mean little living had I ever pretended to have?” + </p> + <p> + She held herself still a minute, visibly with force; only her eyes + consciously attached to the seat of a chair the back of which her hands, + making it tilt toward her a little, grasped as for support. “You pretended + to have enough to marry me—and that was all I afterward claimed of + you when you wouldn’t.” + </p> + <p> + He was on the point of retorting that he had absolutely pretended to + nothing—least of all to the primary desire that such a way of + stating it fastened on him; he was on the point for ten seconds of giving + her full in the face: “I never <i>had</i> any such dream till you yourself—infatuated + with me as, frankly, you on the whole appeared to be—got round me + and muddled me up and made me behave as if in a way that went against the + evidence of my senses.” But he was to feel as quickly that, whatever the + ugly, the spent, the irrecoverable truth, he might better have bitten his + tongue off: there beat on him there this strange and other, this so + prodigiously different beautiful and dreadful truth that no far + remembrance and no abiding ache of his own could wholly falsify, and that + was indeed all out with her next words. “That—<i>using</i> it for + you and using you yourself for your own future—was my motive. I’ve + led my life, which has been an affair, I assure you; and, as I’ve told you + without your quite seeming to understand, I’ve brought everything fivefold + back to you.” + </p> + <p> + The perspiration broke out on his forehead. “Everything’s mine?” he + quavered as for the deep piercing pain of it. + </p> + <p> + “Everything!” said Kate Cookham. + </p> + <p> + So it told him how she had loved him—but with the tremendous effect + at once of its only glaring out at him from the whole thing that it was + verily she, a thousand times over, who, in the exposure of his youth and + his vanity, had, on the bench of desolation, the scene of yesterday’s own + renewal, left for him no forward steps to take. It hung there for him + tragically vivid again, the hour she had first found him sequestered and + accessible after making his acquaintance at his shop. And from this, by a + succession of links that fairly clicked to his ear as with their perfect + fitting, the fate and the pain and the payment of others stood together in + a great grim order. Everything there then was <i>his</i>—to make him + ask what had been Nan’s, poor Nan’s of the constant question of whether he + need have collapsed. She was before him, she was between them, his little + dead dissatisfied wife; across all whose final woe and whose lowly grave + he was to reach out, it appeared, to take gifts. He saw them too, the + gifts; saw them—she bristled with them—in his actual + companion’s brave and sincere and authoritative figure, her strangest of + demonstrations. But the other appearance was intenser, as if their ghost + had waved wild arms; so that half a minute hadn’t passed before the one + poor thing that remained of Nan, and that yet thus became a quite mighty + and momentous poor thing, was sitting on his lips as for its sole + opportunity. + </p> + <p> + “Can you give me your word of honour that I mightn’t, under decent advice, + have defied you?” + </p> + <p> + It made her turn very white; but now that she had said what she <i>had</i> + said she could still hold up her head. “Certainly you might have defied + me, Herbert Dodd.” + </p> + <p> + “They would have told me you had no legal case?” + </p> + <p> + Well, if she was pale she was bold. “You talk of decent advice—!” + She broke off, there was too much to say, and all needless. What she said + instead was: “They would have told you I had nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “I didn’t so much as ask,” her sad visitor remarked. + </p> + <p> + “Of course you didn’t so much as ask.” + </p> + <p> + “I couldn’t be so outrageously vulgar,” he went on. + </p> + <p> + “<i>I</i> could, by God’s help!” said Kate Cookham. + </p> + <p> + “Thank you.” He had found at his command a tone that made him feel more + gentlemanlike than he had ever felt in his life or should doubtless ever + feel again. It might have been enough—but somehow as they stood + there with this immense clearance between them it wasn’t. The clearance + was like a sudden gap or great bleak opening through which there blew upon + them a deadly chill. Too many things had fallen away, too many new rolled + up and over him, and they made something within shake him to his base. It + upset the full vessel, and though she kept her eyes on him he let that + consequence come, bursting into tears, weakly crying there before her even + as he had cried to himself in the hour of his youth when she had made him + groundlessly fear. She turned away then—<i>that</i> she couldn’t + watch, and had presently flung herself on the sofa and, all responsively + wailing, buried her own face on the cushioned arm. So for a minute their + smothered sobs only filled the room. But he made out, through this + disorder, where he had put down his hat; his stick and his new + tan-coloured gloves—they had cost two-and-thruppence and would have + represented sacrifices—were on the chair beside it He picked these + articles up and all silently and softly—gasping, that is, but quite + on tiptoe—reached the door and let himself out. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + VI + </h2> + <p> + Off there on the bench of desolation a week later she made him a more + particular statement, which it had taken the remarkably tense interval to + render possible. After leaving her at the hotel that last Sunday he had + gone forth in his reaggravated trouble and walked straight before him, in + the teeth of the west wind, close to the iron rails of the stretched + Marina and with his telltale face turned from persons occasionally met, + and toward the surging sea. At the Land’s End, even in the confirmed + darkness and the perhaps imminent big blow, his immemorial nook, small + shelter as it yielded, had again received him; and it was in the course of + this heedless session, no doubt, where the agitated air had nothing to add + to the commotion within him, that he began to look his extraordinary + fortune a bit straighter in the face and see it confess itself at once a + fairy-tale and a nightmare That, visibly, confoundingly, she was still + attached to him (attached in fact was a mild word!) and that the + unquestionable proof of it was in this offered pecuniary salve, of the + thickest composition, for his wounds and sores and shames—these + things were the fantastic fable, the tale of money in handfuls, that he + seemed to have only to stand there and swallow and digest and feel himself + full-fed by; but the whole of the rest was nightmare, and most of all + nightmare his having thus to thank one through whom Nan and his little + girls had known torture. + </p> + <p> + He didn’t care for himself now, and this unextinguished and apparently + inextinguishable charm by which he had held her was a fact incredibly + romantic; but he gazed with a longer face than he had ever had for + anything in the world at his potential acceptance of a great bouncing + benefit from the person he intimately, if even in a manner indirectly, + associated with the conditions to which his lovely wife and his children + (who would have been so lovely too) had pitifully succumbed. He had + accepted the social relation—which meant he had taken even that on + trial—without knowing what it so dazzlingly masked; for a social + relation it had become with a vengeance when it drove him about the place + as now at his hours of freedom (and he actually and recklessly took, all + demoralised and unstrung and unfit either for work or for anything else, + other liberties that would get him into trouble) under this queer torment + of irreconcilable things, a bewildered consciousness of tenderness and + patience and cruelty, of great evident mystifying facts that were as + little to be questioned as to be conceived or explained, and that were yet + least, withal, to be lost sight of. + </p> + <p> + On that Sunday night he had wandered wild, incoherently ranging and + throbbing, but this became the law of his next days as well, since he + lacked more than ever all other resort or refuge and had nowhere to carry, + to deposit, or contractedly let loose and lock up, as it were, his swollen + consciousness, which fairly split in twain the raw shell of his sordid + little boarding-place. The arch of the sky and the spread of sea and shore + alone gave him space; he could roam with himself anywhere, in short, far + or near—he could only never take himself back. That certitude—that + this was impossible to him even should she wait there among her plushes + and bronzes ten years—was the thing he kept closest clutch of; it + did wonders for what he would have called his self-respect. Exactly as he + had left her so he would stand off—even though at moments when he + pulled up sharp somewhere to put himself an intensest question his heart + almost stood still. The days of the week went by, and as he had left her + she stayed; to the extent, that is, of his having neither sight nor sound + of her, and of the failure of every sign. It took nerve, he said, not to + return to her, even for curiosity—since how, after all, in the name + of wonder, had she invested the fruits of her extortion to such advantage, + there being no chapter of all the obscurity of the years to beat that for + queer-ness? But he dropped, tired to death, on benches, half a dozen times + an evening—exactly on purpose to recognise that the nerve required + was just the nerve he had. + </p> + <p> + As the days without a token from her multiplied he came in as well for + hours—and these indeed mainly on the bench of desolation—of + sitting stiff and stark in presence of the probability that he had lost + everything for ever. When he passed the Royal he never turned an eyelash, + and when he met Captain Roper on the Front, three days after having been + introduced to him, he “cut him dead”—another privileged consequence + of a social relation—rather than seem to himself to make the + remotest approach to the question of whether Miss Cookham had left + Properley. He had cut people in the days of his life before, just as he + had come to being himself cut—since there had been no time for him + wholly without one or other face of that necessity—but had never + effected such a severance as of this rare connection, which helped to give + him thus the measure of his really precious sincerity. If he had lost what + had hovered before him he had lost it, his only tribute to which + proposition was to grind his teeth with one of those “scrunches,” as he + would have said, of which the violence fairly reached his ear. It wouldn’t + make him lift a finger, and in fact if Kate had simply taken herself off + on the Tuesday or the Wednesday she would have been reabsorbed again into + the darkness from which she had emerged—and no lifting of fingers, + the unspeakable chapter closed, would evermore avail. That at any rate was + the kind of man he still was—even after all that had come and gone, + and even if for a few dazed hours certain things had seemed pleasant. The + dazed hours had passed, the surge of the old bitterness had dished him + (shouldn’t he have been shamed if it hadn’t?), and he might sit there as + before, as always, with nothing at all on earth to look to. He had + therefore wrongfully believed himself to be degraded; and the last word + about him would be that he <i>couldn’t</i> then, it appeared, sink to + vulgarity as he had tried to let his miseries make him. + </p> + <p> + And yet on the next Sunday morning, face to face with him again at the + Land’s End, what she very soon came to was: “As if I believed you didn’t + <i>know</i> by what cord you hold me!” Absolutely too, and just that + morning in fact, above all, he wouldn’t, he quite couldn’t have taken his + solemn oath that he hadn’t a sneaking remnant, as he might have put it to + himself—a remnant of faith in tremendous things still to come of + their interview. The day was sunny and breezy, the sea of a cold purple; + he wouldn’t go to church as he mostly went of Sunday mornings, that being + in its way too a social relation—and not least when + two-and-thruppenny tan-coloured gloves were new; which indeed he had the + art of keeping them for ages. Yet he would dress himself as he scarce + mustered resources for even to figure on the fringe of Society, local and + transient, at St. Bernard’s, and in this trim he took his way westward; + occupied largely, as he went, it might have seemed to any person pursuing + the same course and happening to observe him, in a fascinated study of the + motions of his shadow, the more or less grotesque shape projected, in + front of him and mostly a bit to the right, over the blanched asphalt of + the Parade and dandling and dancing at such a rate, shooting out and then + contracting, that, viewed in themselves, its eccentricities might have + formed the basis of an interesting challenge: “Find the state of mind, + guess the nature of the agitation, possessing the person so remarkably + represented!” Herbert Dodd, for that matter, might have been himself + attempting to make by the sun’s sharp aid some approach to his immediate + horoscope. + </p> + <p> + It had at any rate been thus put before him that the dandling and dancing + of his image occasionally gave way to perfect immobility, when he stopped + and kept his eyes on it. “Suppose she should come, suppose she <i>should!</i>” + it is revealed at least to ourselves that he had at these moments audibly + breathed—breathed with the intensity of an arrest between hope and + fear. It had glimmered upon him from early, with the look of the day, + that, given all else that could happen, this would be rather, as he put + it, in her line; and the possibility lived for him, as he proceeded, to + the tune of a suspense almost sickening. It was, from one small stage of + his pilgrimage to another, the “For ever, never!” of the sentimental case + the playmates of his youth used to pretend to settle by plucking the + petals of a daisy. But it came to his truly turning faint—so “queer” + he felt—when, at the gained point of the long stretch from which he + could always tell, he arrived within positive sight of his immemorial + goal. His seat was taken and she was keeping it for him—it could + only be <i>she</i> there in possession; whereby it shone out for Herbert + Dodd that if he hadn’t been quite sure of her recurrence she had at least + been quite sure of his. <i>That</i> pulled him up to some purpose, where + recognition began for them—or to the effect, in other words, of his + pausing to judge if he could bear, for the sharpest note of their + intercourse, this inveterate demonstration of her making him do what she + liked. What settled the question for him then—and just while they + avowedly watched each other, over the long interval, before closing, as + if, on either side, for the major advantage—what settled it was this + very fact that what she liked she liked so terribly. If it were simply to + “use” him, as she had said the last time, and no matter to the profit of + which of them she called it, one might let it go for that; since it could + make her wait over, day after day, in that fashion, and with such a + spending of money, on the hazard of their meeting again. How could she be + the least sure he would ever again consent to it after the proved action + on him, a week ago, of her last monstrous honesty? It was indeed + positively as if he were now himself putting this influence—and for + their common edification—to the supreme, to the finest test. He had + a sublime, an ideal flight, which lasted about a minute. “Suppose, now + that I see her there and what she has taken so characteristically for + granted, suppose I just show her that she <i>hasn’t</i> only confidently + to wait or whistle for me, and that the length of my leash is greater than + she measures, and that everything’s impossible always?—show it by + turning my back on her now and walking straight away. She won’t be able + not to understand <i>that!</i>” + </p> + <p> + Nothing had passed, across their distance, but the mute apprehension of + each on the part of each; the whole expanse, at the church hour, was void + of other life (he had scarce met a creature on his way from end to end), + and the sun-seasoned gusts kept brushing the air and all the larger + prospect clean. It was through this beautiful lucidity that he watched her + watch him, as it were—watch him for what he would do. Neither moved + at this high tension; Kate Cookham, her face fixed on him, only waited + with a stiff appearance of leaving him, not for dignity but—to an + effect of even deeper perversity—for kindness, free to choose. It + yet somehow affected him at present, this attitude, as a gage of her <i>knowing + too</i>—knowing, that is, that he wasn’t really free, that this was + the thinnest of vain parades, the poorest of hollow heroics, that his + need, his solitude, his suffered wrong, his exhausted rancour, his + foredoomed submission to any shown interest, all hung together too heavy + on him to let the weak wings of his pride do more than vaguely tremble. + They couldn’t, they didn’t carry him a single beat further away; according + to which he stood rooted, neither retreating nor advancing, but presently + correcting his own share of the bleak exchange by looking off at the sea. + Deeply conscious of the awkwardness this posture gave him, he yet clung to + it as the last shred of his honour, to the clear argument that it was one + thing for him to have felt beneath all others, the previous days, that she + was to be counted on, but quite a different for her to have felt that <i>he</i> + was. His checked approach, arriving thus at no term, could in these odd + conditions have established that he wasn’t only if Kate Cookham had, as + either of them might have said, taken it so—if she had given up the + game at last by rising, by walking away and adding to the distance between + them, and he had then definitely let her vanish into space. It became a + fact that when she did finally rise—though after how long our record + scarce takes on itself to say—it was not to confirm their separation + but to put an end to it; and this by slowly approaching him till she had + come within earshot He had wondered, once aware of it in spite of his + averted face, what she would say and on what note, as it were, she would + break their week’s silence; so that he had to recognise anew, her voice + reaching him, that remarkable quality in her which again and again came up + for him as her art. + </p> + <p> + “There are twelve hundred and sixty pounds, to be definite, but I have it + all down for you—and you’ve only to draw.” + </p> + <p> + They lost themselves, these words, rare and exquisite, in the wide bright + genial medium and the Sunday stillness, but even while that occurred and + he was gaping for it she was herself there, in her battered ladylike + truth, to answer for them, to represent them, and, if a further grace than + their simple syllabled beauty were conceivable, almost embarrassingly to + cause them to materialise. Yes, she let her smart and tight little + reticule hang as if it bulged, beneath its clasp, with the whole + portentous sum, and he felt himself glare again at this vividest of her + attested claims. She might have been ready, on the spot, to open the store + to the plunge of his hand, or, with the situation otherwise conceived, to + impose on his pauperised state an acceptance of alms on a scale + unprecedented in the annals of street charity. Nothing so much counted for + him, however, neither grave numeral nor elegant fraction, as the short, + rich, rounded word that the breeze had picked up as it dropped and seemed + now to blow about between them. “To draw—to draw?” Yes, he gaped it + as if it had no sense; the fact being that even while he did so he was + reading into her use of the term more romance than any word in the + language had ever had for him. He, Herbert Dodd, was to live to “draw,” + like people, scarce hampered by the conditions of earth, whom he had + remotely and circuitously heard about, and in fact when he walked back + with her to where she had been sitting it was very much, for his strained + nerves, as if the very bench of desolation itself were to be the scene of + that exploit and he mightn’t really live till he reached it. + </p> + <p> + When they had sat down together she did press the spring of her reticule, + from which she took, not a handful of gold nor a packet of crisp notes, + but an oblong sealed letter, which she had thus waited on him, she + remarked, on purpose to deliver, and which would certify, with sundry + particulars, to the credit she had opened for him at a London bank. He + received it without looking at it—he held it, in the same manner, + conspicuous and unassimilated, for most of the rest of the immediate time, + appearing embarrassed with it, nervously twisting and flapping it, yet + thus publicly retaining it even while aware, beneath everything, of the + strange, the quite dreadful, wouldn’t it be? engagement that such inaction + practically stood for. He could accept money to that amount, yes—but + not for nothing in return. For what then in return? He kept asking himself + for what, while she said other things and made above all, in her high, + shrewd, successful way the point that, no, he needn’t pretend that his + conviction of her continued personal interest in him wouldn’t have tided + him oyer any question besetting him since their separation. She put it to + him that the deep instinct of where he should at last find her must + confidently have worked for him, since she confessed to her instinct of + where she should find <i>him</i>; which meant—oh it came home to him + as he fingered his sealed treasure!—neither more nor less than that + she had now created between them an equality of experience. He wasn’t to + have done all the suffering, <i>she</i> was to have “been through” things + he couldn’t even guess at; and, since he was bargaining away his right + ever again to allude to the unforgettable, so much there was of it, what + her tacit proposition came to was that they were “square” and might start + afresh. + </p> + <p> + He didn’t take up her charge, as his so compromised “pride” yet in a + manner prompted him, that he had enjoyed all the week all those elements + of ease about her; the most he achieved for that was to declare, with an + ingenuity contributing to float him no small distance further, that of + course he had turned up at their old place of tryst, which had been, + through the years, the haunt of his solitude and the goal of his walk any + Sunday morning that seemed too beautiful for church; but that he hadn’t in + the least built on her presence there—since that supposition gave + him, she would understand, wouldn’t she? the air, disagreeable to him, of + having come in search of her. Her quest of himself, once he had been + seated there, would have been another matter—but in short “Of course + after all you did come to me, just now, didn’t you?” He felt himself, too, + lamely and gracelessly grin, as for the final kick of his honour, in + confirmation of the record that he had then yielded but to her humility. + Her humility became for him at this hour and to this tune, on the bench of + desolation, a quantity more prodigious and even more mysterious than that + other guaranteed quantity the finger-tips of his left hand could feel the + tap by the action of his right; though what was in especial extraordinary + was the manner in which she could keep making him such allowances and yet + meet him again, at some turn, as with her residuum for her clever self so + great. + </p> + <p> + “Come to you, Herbert Dodd?” she imperturbably echoed. “I’ve been coming + to you for the last ten years!” + </p> + <p> + There had been for him just before this sixty supreme seconds of intensest + aspiration—a minute of his keeping his certificate poised for a + sharp thrust back at her, the thrust of the wild freedom of his saying: + “No, no, I <i>can’t</i> give them up; I can’t simply sink them deep down + in my soul forever, with no cross in all my future to mark <i>that</i> + burial; so that if this is what our arrangement means I must decline to + have anything to do with it.” The words none the less hadn’t come, and + when she had herself, a couple of minutes later, spoken those others, the + blood rose to his face as if, given his stiffness and her extravagance, he + had just indeed saved himself. + </p> + <p> + Everything in fact stopped, even his fidget with his paper; she imposed a + hush, she imposed at any rate the conscious decent form of one, and he + couldn’t afterward have told how long, at this juncture, he must have sat + simply gazing before him. It was so long, at any rate, that Kate herself + got up—and quite indeed, presently, as if her own forms were now at + an end. He had returned her nothing—so what was she waiting for? She + had been on the two other occasions momentarily at a loss, but never so + much so, no doubt, as was thus testified to by her leaving the bench and + moving over once more to the rail of the terrace. She could carry it off, + in a manner, with her resources, that she was waiting with so little to + wait for; she could face him again, after looking off at the sea, as if + this slightly stiff delay, not wholly exempt from awkwardness, had been + but a fine scruple of her courtesy. She had gathered herself in; after + giving him time to appeal she could take it that he had decided and that + nothing was left for her to do. “Well then,” she clearly launched at him + across the broad walk—“well then, good-bye.” + </p> + <p> + She had come nearer with it, as if he might rise for some show of express + separation; but he only leaned back motionless, his eyes on her now—he + kept her a moment before him. “Do you mean that we don’t—that we + don’t—?” But he broke down. + </p> + <p> + “Do I ‘mean’—?” She remained as for questions he might ask, but it + was wellnigh as if there played through her dotty veil an irrepressible + irony for that particular one. “I’ve meant, for long years, I think, all + I’m capable of meaning. I’ve meant so much that I can’t mean more. So + there it is.” + </p> + <p> + “But if you go,” he appealed—and with a sense as of final flatness, + however he arranged it, for his own attitude—“but if you go sha’n’t + I see you again?” + </p> + <p> + She waited a little, and it was strangely for him now as if—though + at last so much more gorged with her tribute than she had ever been with + his—something still depended on her. “Do you <i>like</i> to see me?” + she very simply asked. + </p> + <p> + At this he did get up; that was easier than to say—at least with + responsive simplicity; and again for a little he looked hard and in + silence at his letter; which at last, however, raising his eyes to her own + for the act, while he masked their conscious ruefulness, to his utmost, in + some air of assurance, he slipped into the inner pocket of his coat, + letting it settle there securely. “You’re too wonderful.” But he frowned + at her with it as never in his life. “Where does it all come from?” + </p> + <p> + “The wonder of poor me?” Kate Cookham said. “It comes from <i>you</i>.” + </p> + <p> + He shook his head slowly—feeling, with his letter there against his + heart, such a new agility, almost such a new range of interest. “I mean so + <i>much</i> money—so extraordinarily much.” + </p> + <p> + Well, she held him a while blank. “Does it seem to you extraordinarily + much—twelve-hundred-and-sixty? Because, you know,” she added, “it’s + all.” + </p> + <p> + “It’s enough!” he returned with a slight thoughtful droop of his head to + the right and his eyes attached to the far horizon as through a shade of + shyness for what he was saying. He felt all her own lingering nearness + somehow on his cheek. + </p> + <p> + “It’s enough? Thank you then!” she rather oddly went on. + </p> + <p> + He shifted a little his posture. “It was more than a hundred a year—for + you to get together.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” she assented, “that was what year by year I tried for.” + </p> + <p> + “But that you could live all the while and save that—!” Yes, he was + at liberty, as he hadn’t been, quite pleasantly to marvel. All his + wonderments in life had been hitherto unanswered—and didn’t the + change mean that here again was the social relation? + </p> + <p> + “Ah, I didn’t live as you saw me the other day.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes,” he answered—and didn’t he the next instant feel he must + fairly have smiled with it?—“the other day you <i>were</i> going + it!” + </p> + <p> + “For once in my life,” said Kate Cookham. “I’ve left the hotel,” she after + a moment added. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, you’re in—a—lodgings?” he found himself inquiring as for + positive sociability. + </p> + <p> + She had apparently a slight shade of hesitation, but in an instant it was + all right; as what he showed he wanted to know she seemed mostly to give + him. “Yes—but far of course from here. Up on the hill.” To which, + after another instant, “At The Mount, Castle Terrace,” she subjoined. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, I <i>know</i> The Mount. And Castle Terrace is awfully sunny and + nice.” + </p> + <p> + “Awfully sunny and nice,” Kate Cookham took from him. + </p> + <p> + “So that if it isn’t,” he pursued, “like the Royal, why you’re at least + comfortable.” + </p> + <p> + “I shall be comfortable anywhere now,” she replied with a certain dryness. + </p> + <p> + It was astonishing, however, what had become of his own. “Because I’ve + accepted——?” + </p> + <p> + “Call it that!” she dimly smiled. + </p> + <p> + “I hope then at any rate,” he returned, “you can now thoroughly rest” He + spoke as for a cheerful conclusion and moved again also to smile, though + as with a poor grimace, no doubt; since what he seemed most clearly to + feel was that since he “accepted” he mustn’t, for his last note, have + accepted in sulkiness or gloom. With that, at the same time, he couldn’t + but know, in all his fibres, that with such a still-watching face as the + dotty veil didn’t disguise for him there was no possible concluding, at + least on his part On hers, on hers it was—as he had so often for a + week had reflectively to pronounce things—another affair. Ah, + somehow, both formidably and helpfully, her face concluded—yet in a + sense so strangely enshrouded in things she didn’t tell him. What <i>must</i> + she, what mustn’t she, have done? What she had said—and she had + really told him nothing—was no account of her life; in the midst of + which conflict of opposed recognitions, at any rate, it was as if, for all + he could do, he himself now considerably floundered. “But I can’t think—I + can’t think——!” + </p> + <p> + “You can’t think I can have made so much money in the time and been + honest?” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, you’ve been <i>honest!</i>” Herbert Dodd distinctly allowed. + </p> + <p> + It moved her stillness to a gesture—which, however, she had as + promptly checked; and she went on the next instant as for further + generosity to his failure of thought. “Everything was possible, under my + stress, with my hatred.” + </p> + <p> + “Your hatred—?” For she had paused as if it were after all too + difficult. + </p> + <p> + “Of what I should for so long have been doing to you.” + </p> + <p> + With this, for all his failures, a greater light than any yet shone upon + him. “It made you think of ways——?” + </p> + <p> + “It made me think of everything. It made me work,” said Kate Cookham. She + added, however, the next moment: “But that’s my story.” + </p> + <p> + “And I mayn’t hear it?” + </p> + <p> + “No—because I mayn’t hear yours.” + </p> + <p> + “Oh, mine—!” he said with the strangest, saddest, yet after all most + resigned sense of surrender of it; which he tried to make sound as if he + couldn’t have told it, for its splendor of sacrifice and of misery, even + if he would. + </p> + <p> + It seemed to move in her a little, exactly, that sense of the invidious. + “Ah, mine too, I assure you——!” + </p> + <p> + He rallied at once to the interest. “Oh, we <i>can</i> talk then?” + </p> + <p> + “Never,” she all oddly replied. “Never,” said Kate Cookham. + </p> + <p> + They remained so, face to face; the effect of which for him was that he + had after a little understood why. That was fundamental. “Well, I see.” + </p> + <p> + Thus confronted they stayed; and then, as he saw with a contentment that + came up from deeper still, it was indeed she who, with her worn fine face, + would conclude. “But I can take care of you.” + </p> + <p> + “You <i>have!</i>” he said as with nothing left of him but a beautiful + appreciative candour. + </p> + <p> + “Oh, but you’ll want it now in a way—!” she responsibly answered. + </p> + <p> + He waited a moment, dropping again on the seat. So, while she still stood, + he looked up at her; with the sense somehow that there were too many + things and that they were all together, terribly, irresistibly, doubtless + blessedly, in her eyes and her whole person; which thus affected him for + the moment as more than he could bear. He leaned forward, dropping his + elbows to his knees and pressing his head on his hands. So he stayed, + saying nothing; only, with the sense of her own sustained, renewed and + wonderful action, knowing that an arm had passed round him and that he was + held. She was beside him on the bench of desolation. + </p> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Finer Grain, by Henry James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FINER GRAIN *** + +***** This file should be named 21968-h.htm or 21968-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/9/6/21968/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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