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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e87d609 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64396 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64396) diff --git a/old/64396-0.txt b/old/64396-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0f3d739..0000000 --- a/old/64396-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8958 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Private Life, by Henry James - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Private Life - The wheel of time, Lord Beaupré, The visits, Collaboration, Owen - Wingrave. - -Author: Henry James - -Release Date: January 26, 2021 [eBook #64396] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Dagny and Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images - generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIVATE LIFE *** - -THE PRIVATE LIFE - - THE WHEEL OF TIME LORD BEAUPRÉ - - THE VISITS COLLABORATION - - -OWEN WINGRAVE - - -BY - -HENRY JAMES - - -LONDON -JAMES R. OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO. -45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. - - -1893 - - - - -CONTENTS - -The Private Life -The Wheel of Time -Lord Beaupré -The Visits -Collaboration -Owen Wingrave - - - - -THE PRIVATE LIFE - - -We talked of London, face to face with a great bristling, primeval -glacier. The hour and the scene were one of those impressions which make -up a little, in Switzerland, for the modern indignity of travel--the -promiscuities and vulgarities, the station and the hotel, the gregarious -patience, the struggle for a scrappy attention, the reduction to a -numbered state. The high valley was pink with the mountain rose, the -cool air as fresh as if the world were young. There was a faint flush of -afternoon on undiminished snows, and the fraternizing tinkle of the -unseen cattle came to us with a cropped and sun-warmed odour. The -balconied inn stood on the very neck of the sweetest pass in the -Oberland, and for a week we had had company and weather. This was felt -to be great luck, for one would have made up for the other had either -been bad. - -The weather certainly would have made up for the company; but it was not -subjected to this tax, for we had by a happy chance the _fleur des -pois_: Lord and Lady Mellifont, Clare Vawdrey, the greatest (in the -opinion of many) of our literary glories, and Blanche Adney, the -greatest (in the opinion of all) of our theatrical. I mention these -first, because they were just the people whom in London, at that time, -people tried to "get." People endeavoured to "book" them six weeks -ahead, yet on this occasion we had come in for them, we had all come in -for each other, without the least wire-pulling. A turn of the game had -pitched us together, the last of August, and we recognized our luck by -remaining so, under protection of the barometer. When the golden days -were over--that would come soon enough--we should wind down opposite -sides of the pass and disappear over the crest of surrounding heights. -We were of the same general communion, we participated in the same -miscellaneous publicity. We met, in London, with irregular frequency; we -were more or less governed by the laws and the language, the traditions -and the shibboleths of the same dense social state. I think all of us, -even the ladies, "did" something, though we pretended we didn't when it -was mentioned. Such things are not mentioned indeed in London, but it -was our innocent pleasure to be different here. There had to be some way -to show the difference, inasmuch as we were under the impression that -this was our annual holiday. We felt at any rate that the conditions -were more human than in London, or that at least we ourselves were. We -were frank about this, we talked about it: it was what we were talking -about as we looked at the flushing glacier, just as some one called -attention to the prolonged absence of Lord Mellifont and Mrs. Adney. We -were seated on the terrace of the inn, where there were benches and -little tables, and those of us who were most bent on proving that we had -returned to nature were, in the queer Germanic fashion, having coffee -before meat. - -The remark about the absence of our two companions was not taken up, not -even by Lady Mellifont, not even by little Adney, the fond composer; for -it had been dropped only in the briefest intermission of Clare Vawdrey's -talk. (This celebrity was "Clarence" only on the title-page.) It was -just that revelation of our being after all human that was his theme. He -asked the company whether, candidly, every one hadn't been tempted to -say to every one else: "I had no idea you were really so nice." I had -had, for my part, an idea that he was, and even a good deal nicer, but -that was too complicated to go into then; besides it is exactly my -story. There was a general understanding among us that when Vawdrey -talked we should be silent, and not, oddly enough, because he at all -expected it. He didn't, for of all abundant talkers he was the most -unconscious, the least greedy and professional. It was rather the -religion of the host, of the hostess, that prevailed among us: it was -their own idea, but they always looked for a listening circle when the -great novelist dined with them. On the occasion I allude to there was -probably no one present with whom, in London, he had not dined, and we -felt the force of this habit. He had dined even with me; and on the -evening of that dinner, as on this Alpine afternoon, I had been at no -pains to hold my tongue, absorbed as I inveterately was in a study of -the question which always rose before me, to such a height, in his fair, -square, strong stature. - -This question was all the more tormenting that he never suspected -himself (I am sure) of imposing it, any more than he had ever observed -that every day of his life every one listened to him at dinner. He used -to be called "subjective" in the weekly papers, but in society no -distinguished man could have been less so. He never talked about -himself; and this was a topic on which, though it would have been -tremendously worthy of him, he apparently never even reflected. He had -his hours and his habits, his tailor and his hatter, his hygiene and his -particular wine, but all these things together never made up an -attitude. Yet they constituted the only attitude he ever adopted, and it -was easy for him to refer to our being "nicer" abroad than at home. _He_ -was exempt from variations, and not a shade either less or more nice in -one place than in another. He differed from other people, but never from -himself (save in the extraordinary sense which I will presently -explain), and struck me as having neither moods nor sensibilities nor -preferences. He might have been always in the same company, so far as he -recognized any influence from age or condition or sex: he addressed -himself to women exactly as he addressed himself to men, and gossiped -with all men alike, talking no better to clever folk than to dull. I -used to feel a despair at his way of liking one subject--so far as I -could tell--precisely as much as another: there were some I hated so -myself. I never found him anything but loud and cheerful and copious, -and I never heard him utter a paradox or express a shade or play with an -idea. That fancy about our being "human" was, in his conversation, quite -an exceptional flight. His opinions were sound and second-rate, and of -his perceptions it was too mystifying to think. I envied him his -magnificent health. - -Vawdrey had marched, with his even pace and his perfectly good -conscience, into the flat country of anecdote, where stories are visible -from afar like windmills and signposts; but I observed after a little -that Lady Mellifont's attention wandered. I happened to be sitting next -her. I noticed that her eyes rambled a little anxiously over the lower -slopes of the mountains. At last, after looking at her watch, she said -to me: "Do you know where they went?" - -"Do you mean Mrs. Adney and Lord Mellifont?" - -"Lord Mellifont and Mrs. Adney." Her ladyship's speech -seemed--unconsciously indeed--to correct me, but it didn't occur to me -that this was because she was jealous. I imputed to her no such vulgar -sentiment: in the first place, because I liked her, and in the second -because it would always occur to one quickly that it was right, in any -connection, to put Lord Mellifont first. He _was_ first--extraordinarily -first. I don't say greatest or wisest or most renowned, but essentially -at the top of the list and the head of the table. That is a position by -itself, and his wife was naturally accustomed to see him in it. My -phrase had sounded as if Mrs. Adney had taken him; but it was not -possible for him to be taken--he only took. No one, in the nature of -things, could know this better than Lady Mellifont. I had originally -been rather afraid of her, thinking her, with her stiff silences and the -extreme blackness of almost everything that made up her person, somewhat -hard, even a little saturnine. Her paleness seemed slightly grey, and -her glossy black hair metallic, like the brooches and bands and combs -with which it was inveterately adorned. She was in perpetual mourning, -and wore numberless ornaments of jet and onyx, a thousand clicking -chains and bugles and beads. I had heard Mrs. Adney call her the queen -of night, and the term was descriptive if you understood that the night -was cloudy. She had a secret, and if you didn't find it out as you knew -her better you at least perceived that she was gentle and unaffected and -limited, and also rather submissively sad. She was like a woman with a -painless malady. I told her that I had merely seen her husband and his -companion stroll down the glen together about an hour before, and -suggested that Mr. Adney would perhaps know something of their -intentions. - -Vincent Adney, who, though he was fifty years old, looked like a good -little boy on whom it had been impressed that children should not talk -before company, acquitted himself with remarkable simplicity and taste -of the position of husband of a great exponent of comedy. When all was -said about her making it easy for him, one couldn't help admiring the -charmed affection with which he took everything for granted. It is -difficult for a husband who is not on the stage, or at least in the -theatre, to be graceful about a wife who is; but Adney was more than -graceful--he was exquisite, he was inspired. He set his beloved to -music; and you remember how genuine his music could be--the only English -compositions I ever saw a foreigner take an interest in. His wife was in -them, somewhere, always; they were like a free, rich translation of the -impression she produced. She seemed, as one listened, to pass laughing, -with loosened hair, across the scene. He had been only a little fiddler -at her theatre, always in his place during the acts; but she had made -him something rare and misunderstood. Their superiority had become a -kind of partnership, and their happiness was a part of the happiness of -their friends. Adney's one discomfort was that he couldn't write a play -for his wife, and the only way he meddled with her affairs was by asking -impossible people if _they_ couldn't. - -Lady Mellifont, after looking across at him a moment, remarked to me -that she would rather not put any question to him. She added the next -minute: "I had rather people shouldn't see I'm nervous." - -"_Are_ you nervous?" - -"I always become so if my husband is away from me for any time." - -"Do you imagine something has happened to him?" - -"Yes, always. Of course I'm used to it." - -"Do you mean his tumbling over precipices--that sort of thing?" - -"I don't know exactly what it is: it's the general sense that he'll -never come back." - -She said so much and kept back so much that the only way to treat the -condition she referred to seemed the jocular. "Surely he'll never -forsake you!" I laughed. - -She looked at the ground a moment. "Oh, at bottom I'm easy." - -"Nothing can ever happen to a man so accomplished, so infallible, so -armed at all points," I went on, encouragingly. - -"Oh, you don't know how he's armed!" she exclaimed, with such an odd -quaver that I could account for it only by her being nervous. This idea -was confirmed by her moving just afterwards, changing her seat rather -pointlessly, not as if to cut our conversation short, but because she -was in a fidget. I couldn't know what was the matter with her, but I was -presently relieved to see Mrs. Adney come toward us. She had in her hand -a big bunch of wild flowers, but she was not closely attended by Lord -Mellifont. I quickly saw, however, that she had no disaster to announce; -yet as I knew there was a question Lady Mellifont would like to hear -answered, but did not wish to ask, I expressed to her immediately the -hope that his lordship had not remained in a crevasse. - -"Oh, no; he left me but three minutes ago. He has gone into the house." -Blanche Adney rested her eyes on mine an instant--a mode of intercourse -to which no man, for himself, could ever object. The interest, on this -occasion, was quickened by the particular thing the eyes happened to -say. What they usually said was only: "Oh, yes, I'm charming, I know, -but don't make a fuss about it. I only want a new part--I do, I do!" At -present they added, dimly, surreptitiously, and of course sweetly--for -that was the way they did everything: "It's all right, but something did -happen. Perhaps I'll tell you later." She turned to Lady Mellifont, and -the transition to simple gaiety suggested her mastery of her profession. -"I've brought him safe. We had a charming walk." - -"I'm so very glad," returned Lady Mellifont, with her faint smile; -continuing vaguely, as she got up: "He must have gone to dress for -dinner. Isn't it rather near?" She moved away, to the hotel, in her -leave-taking, simplifying fashion, and the rest of us, at the mention of -dinner, looked at each other's watches, as if to shift the -responsibility of such grossness. The head-waiter, essentially, like all -head-waiters, a man of the world, allowed us hours and places of our -own, so that in the evening, apart under the lamp, we formed a compact, -an indulged little circle. But it was only the Mellifonts who "dressed" -and as to whom it was recognized that they naturally _would_ dress: she -in exactly the same manner as on any other evening of her ceremonious -existence (she was not a woman whose habits could take account of -anything so mutable as fitness); and he, on the other hand, with -remarkable adjustment and suitability. He was almost as much a man of -the world as the head-waiter, and spoke almost as many languages; but he -abstained from courting a comparison of dress-coats and white -waistcoats, analyzing the occasion in a much finer way--into black -velvet and blue velvet and brown velvet, for instance, into delicate -harmonies of necktie and subtle informalities of shirt. He had a costume -for every function and a moral for every costume; and his functions and -costumes and morals were ever a part of the amusement of life--a part at -any rate of its beauty and romance--for an immense circle of spectators. -For his particular friends indeed these things were more than an -amusement; they were a topic, a social support and of course, in -addition, a subject of perpetual suspense. If his wife had not been -present before dinner they were what the rest of us probably would have -been putting our heads together about. - -Clare Vawdrey had a fund of anecdote on the whole question: he had known -Lord Mellifont almost from the beginning. It was a peculiarity of this -nobleman that there could be no conversation about him that didn't -instantly take the form of anecdote, and a still further distinction -that there could apparently be no anecdote that was not on the whole to -his honour. If he had come into a room at any moment, people might have -said frankly: "Of course we were telling stories about you!" As -consciences go, in London, the general conscience would have been good. -Moreover it would have been impossible to imagine his taking such a -tribute otherwise than amiably, for he was always as unperturbed as an -actor with the right cue. He had never in his life needed the -prompter--his very embarrassments had been rehearsed. For myself, when -he was talked about I always had an odd impression that we were speaking -of the dead--it was with that peculiar accumulation of relish. His -reputation was a kind of gilded obelisk, as if he had been buried -beneath it; the body of legend and reminiscence of which he was to be -the subject had crystallized in advance. - -This ambiguity sprang, I suppose, from the fact that the mere sound of -his name and air of his person, the general expectation he created, -were, somehow, too exalted to be verified. The experience of his -urbanity always came later; the prefigurement, the legend paled before -the reality. I remember that on the evening I refer to the reality was -particularly operative. The handsomest man of his period could never -have looked better, and he sat among us like a bland conductor -controlling by an harmonious play of arm an orchestra still a little -rough. He directed the conversation by gestures as irresistible as they -were vague; one felt as if without him it wouldn't have had anything to -call a tone. This was essentially what he contributed to any -occasion--what he contributed above all to English public life. He -pervaded it, he coloured it, he embellished it, and without him it would -scarcely have had a vocabulary. Certainly it would not have had a style; -for a style was what it had in having Lord Mellifont. He _was_ a style. -I was freshly struck with it as, in the _salle à manger_ of the little -Swiss inn, we resigned ourselves to inevitable veal. Confronted with his -form (I must parenthesize that it was not confronted much), Clare -Vawdrey's talk suggested the reporter contrasted with the bard. It was -interesting to watch the shock of characters from which, of an evening, -so much would be expected. There was however no concussion--it was all -muffled and minimized in Lord Mellifont's tact. It was rudimentary with -him to find the solution of such a problem in playing the host, assuming -responsibilities which carried with them their sacrifice. He had indeed -never been a guest in his life; he was the host, the patron, the -moderator at every board. If there was a defect in his manner (and I -suggest it under my breath), it was that he had a little more art than -any conjunction--even the most complicated--could possibly require. At -any rate one made one's reflections in noticing how the accomplished -peer handled the situation and how the sturdy man of letters was -unconscious that the situation (and least of all he himself as part of -it), was handled. Lord Mellifont poured forth treasures of tact, and -Clare Vawdrey never dreamed he was doing it. - -Vawdrey had no suspicion of any such precaution even when Blanche Adney -asked him if he saw yet their third act--an inquiry into which she -introduced a subtlety of her own. She had a theory that he was to write -her a play and that the heroine, if he would only do his duty, would be -the part for which she had immemorially longed. She was forty years old -(this could be no secret to those who had admired her from the first), -and she could now reach out her hand and touch her uttermost goal. This -gave a kind of tragic passion--perfect actress of comedy as she was--to -her desire not to miss the great thing. The years had passed, and still -she had missed it; none of the things she had done was the thing she had -dreamed of, so that at present there was no more time to lose. This was -the canker in the rose, the ache beneath the smile. It made her -touching--made her sadness even sweeter than her laughter. She had done -the old English and the new French, and had charmed her generation; but -she was haunted by the vision of a bigger chance, of something truer to -the conditions that lay near her. She was tired of Sheridan and she -hated Bowdler; she called for a canvas of a finer grain. The worst of -it, to my sense, was that she would never extract her modern comedy from -the great mature novelist, who was as incapable of producing it as he -was of threading a needle. She coddled him, she talked to him, she made -love to him, as she frankly proclaimed; but she dwelt in illusions--she -would have to live and die with Bowdler. - -It is difficult to be cursory over this charming woman, who was -beautiful without beauty and complete with a dozen deficiencies. The -perspective of the stage made her over, and in society she was like the -model off the pedestal. She was the picture walking about, which to the -artless social mind was a perpetual surprise--a miracle. People thought -she told them the secrets of the pictorial nature, in return for which -they gave her relaxation and tea. She told them nothing and she drank -the tea; but they had, all the same, the best of the bargain. Vawdrey -was really at work on a play; but if he had begun it because he liked -her I think he let it drag for the same reason. He secretly felt the -atrocious difficulty--knew that from his hand the finished piece would -have received no active life. At the same time nothing could be more -agreeable than to have such a question open with Blanche Adney, and from -time to time he put something very good into the play. If he deceived -Mrs. Adney it was only because in her despair she was determined to be -deceived. To her question about their third act he replied that, before -dinner, he had written a magnificent passage. - -"Before dinner?" I said. "Why, _cher maître_, before dinner you were -holding us all spellbound on the terrace." - -My words were a joke, because I thought his had been; but for the first -time that I could remember I perceived a certain confusion in his face. -He looked at me hard, throwing back his head quickly, the least bit like -a horse who has been pulled up short. "Oh, it was before that," he -replied, naturally enough. - -"Before that you were playing billiards with _me,_" Lord Mellifont -intimated. - -"Then it must have been yesterday," said Vawdrey. - -But he was in a tight place. "You told me this morning you did nothing -yesterday," the actress objected. - -"I don't think I really know when I do things." Vawdrey looked vaguely, -without helping himself, at a dish that was offered him. - -"It's enough if _we_ know," smiled Lord Mellifont. - -"I don't believe you've written a line," said Blanche Adney. - -"I think I could repeat you the scene." Vawdrey helped himself to -_haricots verts._ - -"Oh, do--oh, do!" two or three of us cried. - -"After dinner, in the salon; it will be an immense _régal_," Lord -Mellifont declared. - -"I'm not sure, but I'll try," Vawdrey went on. - -"Oh, you lovely man!" exclaimed the actress, who was practising -Americanisms, being resigned even to an American comedy. - -"But there must be this condition," said Vawdrey: "you must make your -husband play." - -"Play while you're reading? Never!" - -"I've too much vanity," said Adney. - -Lord Mellifont distinguished him. "You must give us the overture, before -the curtain rises. That's a peculiarly delightful moment." - -"I sha'n't read--I shall just speak," said Vawdrey. - -"Better still, let me go and get your manuscript," the actress -suggested. - -Vawdrey replied that the manuscript didn't matter; but an hour later, in -the salon, we wished he might have had it. We sat expectant, still under -the spell of Adney's violin. His wife, in the foreground, on an ottoman, -was all impatience and profile, and Lord Mellifont, in the chair--it was -always _the_ chair, Lord Mellifont's--made our grateful little group -feel like a social science congress or a distribution of prizes. -Suddenly, instead of beginning, our tame lion began to roar out of -tune--he had clean forgotten every word. He was very sorry, but the -lines absolutely wouldn't come to him; he was utterly ashamed, but his -memory was a blank. He didn't look in the least ashamed--Vawdrey had -never looked ashamed in his life; he was only imperturbably and merrily -natural. He protested that he had never expected to make such a fool of -himself, but we felt that this wouldn't prevent the incident from taking -its place among his jolliest reminiscences. It was only _we_ who were -humiliated, as if he had played us a premeditated trick. This was an -occasion, if ever, for Lord Mellifont's tact, which descended on us all -like balm: he told us, in his charming artistic way, his way of bridging -over arid intervals (he had a _débit_--there was nothing to approach it -in England--like the actors of the Comédie Française), of his own -collapse on a momentous occasion, the delivery of an address to a mighty -multitude, when, finding he had forgotten his memoranda, he fumbled, on -the terrible platform, the cynosure of every eye, fumbled vainly in -irreproachable pockets for indispensable notes. But the point of his -story was finer than that of Vawdrey's pleasantry; for he sketched with -a few light gestures the brilliancy of a performance which had risen -superior to embarrassment, had resolved itself, we were left to divine, -into an effort recognised at the moment as not absolutely a blot on what -the public was so good as to call his reputation. - -"Play up--play up!" cried Blanche Adney, tapping her husband and -remembering how, on the stage, a _contretemps_ is always drowned in -music. Adney threw himself upon his fiddle, and I said to Clare Vawdrey -that his mistake could easily be corrected by his sending for the -manuscript. If he would tell me where it was I would immediately fetch -it from his room. To this he replied: "My dear fellow, I'm afraid there -_is_ no manuscript." - -"Then you've not written anything?" - -"I'll write it to-morrow." - -"Ah, you trifle with us," I said, in much mystification. - -Vawdrey hesitated an instant. "If there _is_ anything, -you'll find it on my table." - -At this moment one of the others spoke to him, and Lady Mellifont -remarked audibly, as if to correct gently our want of consideration, -that Mr. Adney was playing something very beautiful. I had noticed -before that she appeared extremely fond of music; she always listened to -it in a hushed transport. Vawdrey's attention was drawn away, but it -didn't seem to me that the words he had just dropped constituted a -definite permission to go to his room. Moreover I wanted to speak to -Blanche Adney; I had something to ask her. I had to await my chance, -however, as we remained silent awhile for her husband, after which the -conversation became general. It was our habit to go to bed early, but -there was still a little of the evening left. Before it quite waned I -found an opportunity to tell the actress that Vawdrey had given me leave -to put my hand on his manuscript. She adjured me, by all I held sacred, -to bring it immediately, to give it to her; and her insistence was proof -against my suggestion that it would now be too late for him to begin to -read: besides which the charm was broken--the others wouldn't care. It -was not too late for _her_ to begin; therefore I was to possess myself, -without more delay, of the precious pages. I told her she should be -obeyed in a moment, but I wanted her first to satisfy my just curiosity. -What had happened before dinner, while she was on the hills with Lord -Mellifont? - -"How do you know anything happened?" - -"I saw it in your face when you came back." - -"And they call me an actress!" cried Mrs. Adney. - -"What do they call _me_?" I inquired. - -"You're a searcher of hearts--that frivolous thing an observer." - -"I wish you'd let an observer write you a play!" I broke out. - -"People don't care for what you write: you'd break any run of luck." - -"Well, I see plays all round me," I declared; "the air is full of them -to-night." - -"The air? Thank you for nothing! I only wish my table-drawers were." - -"Did he make love to you on the glacier?" I went on. - -She stared; then broke into the graduated ecstasy of her laugh. "Lord -Mellifont, poor dear? What a funny place! It would indeed be the place -for _our_ love!" - -"Did he fall into a crevasse?" I continued. - -Blanche Adney looked at me again as she had done for an instant when she -came up, before dinner, with her hands full of flowers. "I don't know -into what he fell. I'll tell you to-morrow." - -"He did come down, then?" - -"Perhaps he went up," she laughed. "It's really strange." - -"All the more reason you should tell me to-night." - -"I must think it over; I must puzzle it out." - -"Oh, if you want conundrums I'll throw in another," I said. "What's the -matter with the master?" - -"The master of what?" - -"Of every form of dissimulation. Vawdrey hasn't written a line." - -"Go and get his papers and we'll see." - -"I don't like to expose him," I said. - -"Why not, if I expose Lord Mellifont?" - -"Oh, I'd do anything for that," I conceded. "But why should Vawdrey have -made a false statement? It's very curious." - -"It's very curious," Blanche Adney repeated, with a musing air and her -eyes on Lord Mellifont. Then, rousing herself, she added: "Go and look -in his room." - -"In Lord Mellifont's?" - -She turned to me quickly. "_That_ would be a way!" - -"A way to what?" - -"To find out--to find out!" She spoke gaily and excitedly, but suddenly -checked herself. "We're talking nonsense," she said. - -"We're mixing things up, but I'm struck with your idea. Get Lady -Mellifont to let you." - -"Oh, _she_ has looked!" Mrs. Adney murmured, with the oddest dramatic -expression. Then, after a movement of her beautiful uplifted hand, as if -to brush away a fantastic vision, she exclaimed imperiously: "Bring me -the scene--bring me the scene!" - -"I go for it," I answered; "but don't tell me I can't write a play." - -She left me, but my errand was arrested by the approach of a lady who -had produced a birthday-book--we had been threatened with it for several -evenings--and who did me the honour to solicit my autograph. She had -been asking the others, and she couldn't decently leave me out. I could -usually remember my name, but it always took me some time to recall my -date, and even when I had done so I was never very sure. I hesitated -between two days and I remarked to my petitioner that I would sign on -both if it would give her any satisfaction. She said that surely I had -been born only once; and I replied of course that on the day I made her -acquaintance I had been born again. I mention the feeble joke only to -show that, with the obligatory inspection of the other autographs, we -gave some minutes to this transaction. The lady departed with her book, -and then I became aware that the company had dispersed. I was alone in -the little salon that had been appropriated to our use. My first -impression was one of disappointment: if Vawdrey had gone to bed I -didn't wish to disturb him. While I hesitated, however. I recognised -that Vawdrey had not gone to bed. A window was open, and the sound of -voices outside came in to me: Blanche was on the terrace with her -dramatist, and they were talking about the stars. I went to the window -for a glimpse--the Alpine night was splendid. My friends had stepped out -together; the actress had picked up a cloak; she looked as I had seen -her look in the wing of the theatre. They were silent awhile, and I -heard the roar of a neighbouring torrent. I turned back into the room, -and its quiet lamplight gave me an idea. Our companions had -dispersed--it was late for a pastoral country--and we three should have -the place to ourselves. Clare Vawdrey had written his scene--it was -magnificent; and his reading it to us there, at such an hour, would be -an episode intensely memorable. I would bring down his manuscript and -meet the two with it as they came in. - -I quitted the salon for this purpose; I had been in Vawdrey's room and -knew it was on the second floor, the last in a long corridor. A minute -later my hand was on the knob of his door, which I naturally pushed open -without knocking. It was equally natural that in the absence of its -occupant the room should be dark; the more so as, the end of the -corridor being at that hour unlighted, the obscurity was not immediately -diminished by the opening of the door. I was only aware at first that I -had made no mistake and that, the window-curtains not being drawn, I was -confronted with a couple of vague starlighted apertures. Their aid, -however, was not sufficient to enable me to find what I had come for, -and my hand, in my pocket, was already on the little box of matches that -I always carried for cigarettes. Suddenly I withdrew it with a start, -uttering an ejaculation, an apology. I had entered the wrong room; a -glance prolonged for three seconds showed me a figure seated at a table -near one of the windows--a figure I had at first taken for a -travelling-rug thrown over a chair. I retreated, with a sense of -intrusion; but as I did so I became aware, more rapidly than it takes me -to express it, in the first place that this was Vawdrey's room and in -the second that, most singularly, Vawdrey himself sat before me. -Checking myself on the threshold I had a momentary feeling of -bewilderment, but before I knew it I had exclaimed: "Hullo! is that you, -Vawdrey?" - -He neither turned nor answered me, but my question received an immediate -and practical reply in the opening of a door on the other side of the -passage. A servant, with a candle, had come out of the opposite room, -and in this flitting illumination I definitely recognised the man whom, -an instant before, I had to the best of my belief left below in -conversation with Mrs. Adney. His back was half turned to me, and he -bent over the table in the attitude of writing, but I was conscious that -I was in no sort of error about his identity. "I beg your pardon--I -thought you were downstairs," I said; and as the personage gave no sign -of hearing me I added: "If you're busy I won't disturb you." I backed -out, closing the door--I had been in the place, I suppose, less than a -minute. I had a sense of mystification, which however deepened -infinitely the next instant. I stood there with my hand still on the -knob of the door, overtaken by the oddest impression of my life. Vawdrey -was at his table, writing, and it was a very natural place for him to -be; but why was he writing in the dark and why hadn't he answered me? I -waited a few seconds for the sound of some movement, to see if he -wouldn't rouse himself from his abstraction--a fit conceivable in a -great writer--and call out: "Oh, my dear fellow, is it you?" But I heard -only the stillness, I felt only the starlighted dusk of the room, with -the unexpected presence it enclosed. I turned away, slowly retracing my -steps, and came confusedly downstairs. The lamp was still burning in the -salon, but the room was empty. I passed round to the door of the hotel -and stepped out. Empty too was the terrace. Blanche Adney and the -gentleman with her had apparently come in. I hung about five minutes; -then I went to bed. - -I slept badly, for I was agitated. On looking back at these queer -occurrences (you will see presently that they were queer), I perhaps -suppose myself more agitated than I was; for great anomalies are never -so great at first as after we have reflected upon them. It takes us some -time to exhaust explanations. I was vaguely nervous--I had been sharply -startled; but there was nothing I could not clear up by asking Blanche -Adney, the first thing in the morning, who had been with her on the -terrace. Oddly enough, however, when the morning dawned--it dawned -admirably--I felt less desire to satisfy myself on this point than to -escape, to brush away the shadow of my stupefaction. I saw the day would -be splendid, and the fancy took me to spend it, as I had spent happy -days of youth, in a lonely mountain ramble. I dressed early, partook of -conventional coffee, put a big roll into one pocket and a small flask -into the other, and, with a stout stick in my hand, went forth into the -high places. My story is not closely concerned with the charming hours I -passed there--hours of the kind that make intense memories. If I roamed -away half of them on the shoulders of the hills, I lay on the sloping -grass for the other half and, with my cap pulled over my eyes (save a -peep for immensities of view), listened, in the bright stillness, to the -mountain bee and felt most things sink and dwindle. Clare Vawdrey grew -small, Blanche Adney grew dim, Lord Mellifont grew old, and before the -day was over I forgot that I had ever been puzzled. When in the late -afternoon I made my way down to the inn there was nothing I wanted so -much to find out as whether dinner would not soon be ready. To-night I -dressed, in a manner, and by the time I was presentable they were all at -table. - -In their company again my little problem came back to me, so that I was -curious to see if Vawdrey wouldn't look at me the least bit queerly. But -he didn't look at me at all; which gave me a chance both to be patient -and to wonder why I should hesitate to ask him my question across the -table. I did hesitate, and with the consciousness of doing so came back -a little of the agitation I had left behind me, or below me, during the -day. I wasn't ashamed of my scruple, however: it was only a fine -discretion. What I vaguely felt was that a public inquiry wouldn't have -been fair. Lord Mellifont was there, of course, to mitigate with his -perfect manner all consequences; but I think it was present to me that -with these particular elements his lordship would not be at home. The -moment we got up, therefore, I approached Mrs. Adney, asking her -whether, as the evening was lovely, she wouldn't take a turn with me -outside. - -"You've walked a hundred miles; had you not better be quiet?" she -replied. - -"I'd walk a hundred miles more to get you to tell me something." - -She looked at me an instant, with a little of the queerness that I had -sought, but had not found, in Clare Vawdrey's eyes. "Do you mean what -became of Lord Mellifont?" - -"Of Lord Mellifont?" With my new speculation I had lost that thread. - -"Where's your memory, foolish man? We talked of it last evening." - -"Ah, yes!" I cried, recalling; "we shall have lots to discuss." I drew -her out to the terrace, and before we had gone three steps I said to -her: "Who was with you here last night?" - -"Last night?" she repeated, as wide of the mark as I had been. - -"At ten o'clock--just after our company broke up. You came out here with -a gentleman; you talked about the stars." - -She stared a moment; then she gave her laugh. "Are you jealous of dear -Vawdrey?" - -"Then it was he?" - -"Certainly it was." - -"And how long did he stay?" - -"You have it badly. He stayed about a quarter of an hour--perhaps rather -more. We walked some distance; he talked about his play. There you have -it all; that is the only witchcraft I have used." - -"And what did Vawdrey do afterwards?" - -"I haven't the least idea. I left him and went to bed." - -"At what time did you go to bed?" - -"At what time did _you_? I happen to remember that I parted from Mr. -Vawdrey at ten twenty-five," said Mrs. Adney. "I came back into the -salon to pick up a book, and I noticed the clock." - -"In other words you and Vawdrey distinctly lingered here from about five -minutes past ten till the hour you mention?" - -"I don't know how distinct we were, but we were very jolly. _Où -voulez-vous en venir_?" Blanche Adney asked. - -"Simply to this, dear lady: that at the time your companion was occupied -in the manner you describe, he was also engaged in literary composition -in his own room." - -She stopped short at this, and her eyes had an expression in the -darkness. She wanted to know if I challenged her veracity; and I replied -that, on the contrary, I backed it up--it made the case so interesting. -She returned that this would only be if she should back up mine; which, -however, I had no difficulty in persuading her to do, after I had -related to her circumstantially the incident of my quest of the -manuscript--the manuscript which, at the time, for a reason I could now -understand, appeared to have passed so completely out of her own head. - -"His talk made me forget it--I forgot I sent you for it. He made up for -his fiasco in the salon: he declaimed me the scene," said my companion. -She had dropped on a bench to listen to me and, as we sat there, had -briefly cross-examined me. Then she broke out into fresh laughter. "Oh, -the eccentricities of genius!" - -"They seem greater even than I supposed." - -"Oh, the mysteries of greatness!" - -"You ought to know all about them, but they take me by surprise." - -"Are you absolutely certain it was Mr. Vawdrey?" my companion asked. - -"If it wasn't he, who in the world was it? That a strange gentleman, -looking exactly like him, should be sitting in his room at that hour of -the night and writing at his table _in the dark_," I insisted, "would be -practically as wonderful as my own contention." - -"Yes, why in the dark?" mused Mrs. Adney. - -"Cats can see in the dark," I said. - -She smiled at me dimly. "Did it look like a cat?" - -"No, dear lady, but I'll tell you what it did look like--it looked like -the author of Vawdrey's admirable works. It looked infinitely more like -him than our friend does himself," I declared. - -"Do you mean it was somebody he gets to do them?" - -"Yes, while he dines out and disappoints you." - -"Disappoints me?" murmured Mrs. Adney artlessly. - -"Disappoints _me_--disappoints every one who looks in him for the genius -that created the pages they adore. Where is it in his talk?" - -"Ah, last night he was splendid," said the actress. - -"He's always splendid, as your morning bath is splendid, or a sirloin of -beef, or the railway service to Brighton. But he's never rare." - -"I see what you mean." - -"That's what makes you such a comfort to talk to. I've often -wondered--now I know. There are two of them." - -"What a delightful idea!" - -"One goes out, the other stays at home. One is the genius, the other's -the bourgeois, and it's only the bourgeois whom we personally know. He -talks, he circulates, he's awfully popular, he flirts with you--" - -"Whereas it's the genius _you_ are privileged to see!" Mrs. Adney broke -in. "I'm much obliged to you for the distinction." - -I laid my hand on her arm. "See him yourself. Try it, test it, go to his -room." - -"Go to his room? It wouldn't be proper!" she exclaimed, in the tone of -her best comedy. - -"Anything is proper in such an inquiry. If you see him, it settles it." - -"How charming--to settle it!" She thought a moment, then she sprang up. -"Do you mean _now_?" - -"Whenever you like." - -"But suppose I should find the wrong one?" said Blanche Adney, with an -exquisite effect. - -"The wrong one? Which one do you call the right?" - -"The wrong one for a lady to go and see. Suppose I shouldn't find--the -genius?" - -"Oh, I'll look after the other," I replied. Then, as I had happened to -glance about me, I added: "Take care--here comes Lord Mellifont." - -"I wish you'd look after _him_," my interlocutress murmured. - -"What's the matter with him?" - -"That's just what I was going to tell you." - -"Tell me now; he's not coming." - -Blanche Adney looked a moment. Lord Mellifont, who appeared to have -emerged from the hotel to smoke a meditative cigar, had paused, at a -distance from us, and stood admiring the wonders of the prospect, -discernible even in the dusk. We strolled slowly in another direction, -and she presently said: "My idea is almost as droll as yours." - -"I don't call mine droll: it's beautiful." - -"There's nothing so beautiful as the droll," Mrs. Adney declared. - -"You take a professional view. But I'm all ears." My curiosity was -indeed alive again. - -"Well then, my dear friend, if Clare Vawdrey is double (and I'm bound to -say I think that the more of him the better), his lordship there has the -opposite complaint: he isn't even whole." - -We stopped once more, simultaneously. "I don't understand." - -"No more do I. But I have a fancy that if there are two of Mr. Vawdrey, -there isn't so much as one, all told, of Lord Mellifont." - -I considered a moment, then I laughed out. "I think I see what you -mean!" - -"That's what makes _you_ a comfort. Did you ever see him alone?" - -I tried to remember. "Oh, yes; he has been to see me." - -"Ah, then he wasn't alone." - -"And I've been to see him, in his study." - -"Did he know you were there?" - -"Naturally--I was announced." - -Blanche Adney glanced at me like a lovely conspirator. "You mustn't be -announced!" With this she walked on. - -I rejoined her, breathless. "Do you mean one must come upon him when he -doesn't know it?" - -"You must take him unawares. You must go to his room--that's what you -must do." - -If I was elated by the way our mystery opened out, I was also, -pardonably, a little confused. "When I know he's not there?" - -"When you know he _is_." - -"And what shall I see?" - -"You won't see anything!" Mrs. Adney cried as we turned round. - -We had reached the end of the terrace, and our movement brought us face -to face with Lord Mellifont, who, resuming his walk, had now, without -indiscretion, overtaken us. The sight of him at that moment was -illuminating, and it kindled a great backward train, connecting itself -with one's general impression of the personage. As he stood there -smiling at us and waving a practised hand into the transparent night (he -introduced the view as if it had been a candidate and "supported" the -very Alps), as he rose before us in the delicate fragrance of his cigar -and all his other delicacies and fragrances, with more perfections, -somehow, heaped upon his handsome head than one had ever seen -accumulated before, he struck me as so essentially, so conspicuously and -uniformly the public character that I read in a flash the answer to -Blanche Adney's riddle. He was all public and had no corresponding -private life, just as Clare Vawdrey was all private and had no -corresponding public one. I had heard only half my companion's story, -yet as we joined Lord Mellifont (he had followed us--he liked Mrs. -Adney; but it was always to be conceived of him that he accepted society -rather than sought it), as we participated for half an hour in the -distributed wealth of his conversation, I felt with unabashed duplicity -that we had, as it were, found him out. I was even more deeply diverted -by that whisk of the curtain to which the actress had just treated me -than I had been by my own discovery; and if I was not ashamed of my -share of her secret any more than of having divided my own with her -(though my own was, of the two mysteries, the more glorious for the -personage involved), this was because there was no cruelty in my -advantage, but on the contrary an extreme tenderness and a positive -compassion. Oh, he was safe with me, and I felt moreover rich and -enlightened, as if I had suddenly put the universe into my pocket. I had -learned what an affair of the spot and the moment a great appearance may -be. It would doubtless be too much to say that I had always suspected -the possibility, in the background of his lordship's being, of some such -beautiful instance; but it is at least a fact that, patronising as it -sounds, I had been conscious of a certain reserve of indulgence for him. -I had secretly pitied him for the perfection of his performance, had -wondered what blank face such a mask had to cover, what was left to him -for the immitigable hours in which a man sits down with himself, or, -more serious still, with that intenser self, his lawful wife. How was he -at home and what did he do when he was alone? There was something in -Lady Mellifont that gave a point to these researches--something that -suggested that even to her he was still the public character and that -she was haunted by similar questionings. She had never cleared them up: -that was her eternal trouble. We therefore knew more than she did, -Blanche Adney and I; but we wouldn't tell her for the world, nor would -she probably thank us for doing so. She preferred the relative grandeur -of uncertainty. She was not at home with him, so she couldn't say; and -with her he was not alone, so he couldn't show her. He represented to -his wife and he was a hero to his servants, and what one wanted to -arrive at was what really became of him when no eye could see. He -rested, presumably; but what form of rest could repair such a plenitude -of presence? Lady Mellifont was too proud to pry, and as she had never -looked through a keyhole she remained dignified and unassuaged. - -It may have been a fancy of mine that Blanche Adney drew out our -companion, or it may be that the practical irony of our relation to him -at such a moment made me see him more vividly: at any rate he never had -struck me as so dissimilar from what he would have been if we had not -offered him a reflection of his image. We were only a concourse of two, -but he had never been more public. His perfect manner had never been -more perfect, his remarkable tact had never been more remarkable. I had -a tacit sense that it would all be in the morning papers, with a leader, -and also a secretly exhilarating one that I knew something that wouldn't -be, that never could be, though any enterprising journal would give one -a fortune for it. I must add, however, that in spite of my enjoyment--it -was almost sensual, like that of a consummate dish--I was eager to be -alone again with Mrs. Adney, who owed me an anecdote. It proved -impossible, that evening, for some of the others came out to see what we -found so absorbing; and then Lord Mellifont bespoke a little music from -the fiddler, who produced his violin and played to us divinely, on our -platform of echoes, face to face with the ghosts of the mountains. -Before the concert was over I missed our actress and, glancing into the -window of the salon, saw that she was established with Vawdrey, who was -reading to her from a manuscript. The great scene had apparently been -achieved and was doubtless the more interesting to Blanche from the new -lights she had gathered about its author. I judged it discreet not to -disturb them, and I went to bed without seeing her again. I looked out -for her betimes the next morning and, as the promise of the day was -fair, proposed to her that we should take to the hills, reminding her of -the high obligation she had incurred. She recognised the obligation and -gratified me with her company; but before we had strolled ten yards up -the pass she broke out with intensity: "My dear friend, you've no idea -how it works in me! I can think of nothing else." - -"Than your theory about Lord Mellifont?" - -"Oh, bother Lord Mellifont! I allude to yours about Mr. Vawdrey, who is -much the more interesting person of the two. I'm fascinated by that -vision of his--what-do-you-call-it?" - -"His alternative identity?" - -"His other self: that's easier to say." - -"You accept it, then, you adopt it?" - -"Adopt it? I rejoice in it! It became tremendously vivid to me last -evening." - -"While he read to you there?" - -"Yes, as I listened to him, watched him. It simplified everything, -explained everything." - -"That's indeed the blessing of it. Is the scene very fine?" - -"Magnificent, and he reads beautifully." - -"Almost as well as the other one writes!" I laughed. - -This made my companion stop a moment, laying her hand on my arm. "You -utter my very impression. I felt that he was reading me the work of -another man." - -"What a service to the other man!" - -"Such a totally different person," said Mrs. Adney. We talked of this -difference as we went on, and of what a wealth it constituted, what a -resource for life, such a duplication of character. - -"It ought to make him live twice as long as other people," I observed. - -"Ought to make which of them?" - -"Well, both; for after all they're members of a firm, and one of them -couldn't carry on the business without the other. Moreover mere survival -would be dreadful for either." - -Blanche Adney was silent a little; then she exclaimed: "I don't know--I -wish he _would_ survive!" - -"May I, on my side, inquire which?" - -"If you can't guess I won't tell you." - -"I know the heart of woman. You always prefer the other." - -She halted again, looking round her. "Off here, away from my husband, I -_can_ tell you. I'm in love with him!" - -"Unhappy woman, he has no passions," I answered. - -"That's exactly why I adore him. Doesn't a woman with my history know -that the passions of others are insupportable? An actress, poor thing, -can't care for any love that's not all on _her_ side; she can't afford -to be repaid. My marriage proves that: marriage is ruinous. Do you know -what was in my mind last night, all the while Mr. Vawdrey was reading me -those beautiful speeches? An insane desire to see the author." And -dramatically, as if to hide her shame, Blanche Adney passed on. - -"We'll manage that," I returned. "I want another glimpse of him myself. -But meanwhile please remember that I've been waiting more than -forty-eight hours for the evidence that supports your sketch, intensely -suggestive and plausible, of Lord Mellifont's private life." - -"Oh, Lord Mellifont doesn't interest me." - -"He did yesterday," I said. - -"Yes, but that was before I fell in love. You blotted him out with your -story." - -"You'll make me sorry I told it. Come," I pleaded, "if you don't let me -know how your idea came into your head I shall imagine you simply made -it up." - -"Let me recollect then, while we wander in this grassy valley." - -We stood at the entrance of a charming crooked gorge, a portion of whose -level floor formed the bed of a stream that was smooth with swiftness. -We turned into it, and the soft walk beside the clear torrent drew us on -and on; till suddenly, as we continued and I waited for my companion to -remember, a bend of the valley showed us Lady Mellifont coming toward -us. She was alone, under the canopy of her parasol, drawing her sable -train over the turf; and in this form, on the devious ways, she was a -sufficiently rare apparition. She usually took a footman, who marched -behind her on the highroads and whose livery was strange to the -mountaineers. She blushed on seeing us, as if she ought somehow to -justify herself; she laughed vaguely and said she had come out for a -little early stroll. We stood together a moment, exchanging platitudes, -and then she remarked that she had thought she might find her husband. - -"Is he in this quarter?" I inquired. - -"I supposed he would be. He came out an hour ago to sketch." - -"Have you been looking for him?" Mrs. Adney asked. - -"A little; not very much," said Lady Mellifont. - -Each of the women rested her eyes with some intensity, as it seemed to -me, on the eyes of the other. - -"We'll look for him _for_ you, if you like," said Mrs. Adney. - -"Oh, it doesn't matter. I thought I'd join him." - -"He won't make his sketch if you don't," my companion hinted. - -"Perhaps he will if _you_ do," said Lady Mellifont. - -"Oh, I dare say he'll turn up," I interposed. - -"He certainly will if he knows we're here!" Blanche Adney retorted. - -"Will you wait while we search?" I asked of Lady Mellifont. - -She repeated that it was of no consequence; upon which Mrs. Adney went -on: "We'll go into the matter for our own pleasure." - -"I wish you a pleasant expedition," said her ladyship, and was turning -away when I sought to know if we should inform her husband that she had -followed him. She hesitated a moment; then she jerked out oddly: "I -think you had better not." With this she took leave of us, floating a -little stiffly down the gorge. - -My companion and I watched her retreat, then we exchanged a stare, while -a light ghost of a laugh rippled from the actress's lips. "She might be -walking in the shrubberies at Mellifont!" - -"She suspects it, you know," I replied. - -"And she doesn't want him to know it. There won't be any sketch." - -"Unless we overtake him," I subjoined. "In that case we shall find him -producing one, in the most graceful attitude, and the queer thing is -that it will be brilliant." - -"Let us leave him alone--he'll have to come home without it." - -"He'd rather never come home. Oh, he'll find a public!" - -"Perhaps he'll do it for the cows," Blanche Adney suggested; and as I -was on the point of rebuking her profanity she went on: "That's simply -what I happened to discover." - -"What are you speaking of?" - -"The incident of day before yesterday." - -"Ah, let's have it at last!" - -"That's all it was--that I was like Lady Mellifont: I couldn't find -him." - -"Did you lose him?" - -"He lost _me_--that appears to be the way of it. He thought I was gone." - -"But you did find him, since you came home with him." - -"It was he who found _me_. That again is what must happen. He's there -from the moment he knows somebody else is." - -"I understand his intermissions," I said after a short reflection, "but -I don't quite seize the law that governs them." - -"Oh, it's a fine shade, but I caught it at that moment. I had started to -come home. I was tired, and I had insisted on his not coming back with -me. We had found some rare flowers--those I brought home--and it was he -who had discovered almost all of them. It amused him very much, and I -knew he wanted to get more; but I was weary and I quitted him. He let me -go--where else would have been his tact?--and I was too stupid then to -have guessed that from the moment I was not there no flower would be -gathered. I started homeward, but at the end of three minutes I found I -had brought away his penknife--he had lent it to me to trim a -branch--and I knew he would need it. I turned back a few steps, to call -him, but before I spoke I looked about for him. You can't understand -what happened then without having the place before you." - -"You must take me there," I said. - -"We may see the wonder here. The place was simply one that offered no -chance for concealment--a great gradual hillside, without obstructions -or trees. There were some rocks below me, behind which I myself had -disappeared, but from which on coming back I immediately emerged again." - -"Then he must have seen you." - -"He was too utterly gone, for some reason best known to himself. It was -probably some moment of fatigue--he's getting on, you know, so that, -with the sense of returning solitude, the reaction had been -proportionately great, the extinction proportionately complete. At any -rate the stage was as bare as your hand." - -"Could he have been somewhere else?" - -"He couldn't have been, in the time, anywhere but where I had left him. -Yet the place was utterly empty--as empty as this stretch of valley -before us. He had vanished--he had ceased to be. But as soon as my voice -rang out (I uttered his name), he rose before me like the rising sun." - -"And where did the sun rise?" - -"Just where it ought to--just where he would have been and where I -should have seen him had he been like other people." - -I had listened with the deepest interest, but it was my duty to think of -objections. "How long a time elapsed between the moment you perceived -his absence and the moment you called?" - -"Oh, only an instant. I don't pretend it was long." - -"Long enough for you to be sure?" I said. - -"Sure he wasn't there?" - -"Yes, and that you were not mistaken, not the victim of some hocus-pocus -of your eyesight." - -"I may have been mistaken, but I don't believe it. At any rate, that's -just why I want you to look in his room." - -I thought a moment. "How _can_ I, when even his wife doesn't dare to?" - -"She _wants_ to; propose it to her. It wouldn't take much to make her. -She does suspect." - -I thought another moment. "Did he seem to know?" - -"That I had missed him? So it struck me, but he thought he had been -quick enough." - -"Did you speak of his disappearance?" - -"Heaven forbid! It seemed to me too strange." - -"Quite right. And how did he look?" - -Trying to think it out again and reconstitute her miracle, Blanche Adney -gazed abstractedly up the valley. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Just as he -looks now!" and I saw Lord Mellifont stand before us with his -sketch-block. I perceived, as we met him, that he looked neither -suspicious nor blank: he looked simply, as he did always, everywhere, -the principal feature of the scene. Naturally he had no sketch to show -us, but nothing could better have rounded off our actual conception of -him than the way he fell into position as we approached. He had been -selecting his point of view; he took possession of it with a flourish of -the pencil. He leaned against a rock; his beautiful little box of -water-colours reposed on a natural table beside him, a ledge of the bank -which showed how inveterately nature ministered to his convenience. He -painted while he talked and he talked while he painted; and if the -painting was as miscellaneous as the talk, the talk would equally have -graced an album. We waited while the exhibition went on, and it seemed -indeed as if the conscious profiles of the peaks were interested in his -success. They grew as black as silhouettes in paper, sharp against a -livid sky from which, however, there would be nothing to fear till Lord -Mellifont's sketch should be finished. Blanche Adney communed with me -dumbly, and I could read the language of her eyes: "Oh, if _we_ could -only do it as well as that! He fills the stage in a way that beats us." -We could no more have left him than we could have quitted the theatre -till the play was over; but in due time we turned round with him and -strolled back to the inn, before the door of which his lordship, -glancing again at his picture, tore the fresh leaf from the block and -presented it with a few happy words to Mrs. Adney. Then he went into the -house; and a moment later, looking up from where we stood, we saw him, -above, at the window of his sitting-room (he had the best apartments), -watching the signs of the weather. - -"He'll have to rest after this," Blanche said, dropping her eyes on her -water-colour. - -"Indeed he will!" I raised mine to the window: Lord Mellifont had -vanished. "He's already reabsorbed." - -"Reabsorbed?" I could see the actress was now thinking of something -else. - -"Into the immensity of things. He has lapsed again; there's an -_entr'acte_." - -"It ought to be long." Mrs. Adney looked up and down the terrace, and at -that moment the head-waiter appeared in the doorway. Suddenly she turned -to this functionary with the question: "Have you seen Mr. Vawdrey -lately?" - -The man immediately approached. "He left the house five minutes ago--for -a walk, I think. He went down the pass; he had a book." - -I was watching the ominous clouds. "He had better have had an umbrella." - -The waiter smiled. "I recommended him to take one." - -"Thank you," said Mrs. Adney; and the Oberkellner withdrew. Then she -went on, abruptly: "Will you do me a favour?" - -"Yes, if you'll do _me_ one. Let me see if your picture is signed." - -She glanced at the sketch before giving it to me. "For a wonder it -isn't." - -"It ought to be, for full value. May I keep it awhile?" - -"Yes, if you'll do what I ask. Take an umbrella and go after Mr. -Vawdrey." - -"To bring him to Mrs. Adney?" - -"To keep him out--as long as you can." - -"I'll keep him as long as the rain holds off." - -"Oh, never mind the rain!" my companion exclaimed. - -"Would you have us drenched?" - -"Without remorse." Then with a strange light in her eyes she added: "I'm -going to try." - -"To try?" - -"To see the real one. Oh, if I can get at him!" she broke out with -passion. - -"Try, try!" I replied. "I'll keep our friend all day." - -"If I can get at the one who does it"--and she paused, with shining -eyes--"if I can have it out with him I shall get my part!" - -"I'll keep Vawdrey for ever!" I called after her as she passed quickly -into the house. - -Her audacity was communicative, and I stood there in a glow of -excitement. I looked at Lord Mellifont's water-colour and I looked at -the gathering storm; I turned my eyes again to his lordship's windows -and then I bent them on my watch. Vawdrey had so little the start of me -that I should have time to overtake him--time even if I should take five -minutes to go up to Lord Mellifont's sitting-room (where we had all been -hospitably received), and say to him, as a messenger, that Mrs. Adney -begged he would bestow upon his sketch the high consecration of his -signature. As I again considered this work of art I perceived there was -something it certainly did lack: what else then but so noble an -autograph? It was my duty to supply the deficiency without delay, and in -accordance with this conviction I instantly re-entered the hotel. I went -up to Lord Mellifont's apartments; I reached the door of his salon. -Here, however, I was met by a difficulty of which my extravagance had -not taken account. If I were to knock I should spoil everything; yet was -I prepared to dispense with this ceremony? I asked myself the question, -and it embarrassed me; I turned my little picture round and round, but -it didn't give me the answer I wanted. I wanted it to say: "Open the -door gently, gently, without a sound, yet very quickly: then you will -see what you will see." I had gone so far as to lay my hand, upon the -knob when I became aware (having my wits so about me), that exactly in -the manner I was thinking of--gently, gently, without a sound--another -door had moved, on the opposite side of the hall. At the same instant I -found myself smiling rather constrainedly upon Lady Mellifont, who, on -seeing me, had checked herself on the threshold of her room. For a -moment, as she stood there, we exchanged two or three ideas that were -the more singular for being unspoken. We had caught each other hovering, -and we understood each other; but as I stepped over to her (so that we -were separated from the sitting-room by the width of the hall), her lips -formed the almost soundless entreaty: "Don't!" I could see in her -conscious eyes everything that the word expressed--the confession of her -own curiosity and the dread of the consequences of mine. "_Don't!_" she -repeated, as I stood before her. From the moment my experiment could -strike her as an act of violence I was ready to renounce it; yet I -thought I detected in her frightened face a still deeper betrayal--a -possibility of disappointment if I should give way. It was as if she had -said: "I'll let you do it if you'll take the responsibility. Yes, with -some one else I'd surprise him. But it would never do for him to think -it was I." - -"We soon found Lord Mellifont," I observed, in allusion to our encounter -with her an hour before, "and he was so good as to give this lovely -sketch to Mrs. Adney, who has asked me to come up and beg him to put in -the omitted signature." - -Lady Mellifont took the drawing from me, and I could guess the struggle -that went on in her while she looked at it. She was silent for some -time; then I felt that all her delicacies and dignities, all her old -timidities and pieties were fighting against her opportunity. She turned -away from me and, with the drawing, went back to her room. She was -absent for a couple of minutes, and when she reappeared I could see that -she had vanquished her temptation; that even, with a kind of resurgent -horror, she had shrunk from it. She had deposited the sketch in the -room. "If you will kindly leave the picture with me, I will see that -Mrs. Adney's request is attended to," she said, with great courtesy and -sweetness, but in a manner that put an end to our colloquy. - -I assented, with a somewhat artificial enthusiasm perhaps, and then, to -ease off our separation, remarked that we were going to have a change of -weather. - -"In that case we shall go--we shall go immediately," said Lady -Mellifont. I was amused at the eagerness with which she made this -declaration: it appeared to represent a coveted flight into safety, an -escape with her threatened secret. I was the more surprised therefore -when, as I was turning away, she put out her hand to take mine. She had -the pretext of bidding me farewell, but as I shook hands with her on -this supposition I felt that what the movement really conveyed was: "I -thank you for the help you would have given me, but it's better as it -is. If I should know, who would help me then?" As I went to my room to -get my umbrella I said to myself: "She's sure, but she won't put it to -the proof." - -A quarter of an hour later I had overtaken Clare Vawdrey in the pass, -and shortly after this we found ourselves looking for refuge. The storm -had not only completely gathered, but it had broken at the last with -extraordinary rapidity. We scrambled up a hillside to an empty cabin, a -rough structure that was hardly more than a shed for the protection of -cattle. It was a tolerable shelter however, and it had fissures through -which we could watch the splendid spectacle of the tempest. This -entertainment lasted an hour--an hour that has remained with me as full -of odd disparities. While the lightning played with the thunder and the -rain gushed in on our umbrellas, I said to myself that Clare Vawdrey was -disappointing. I don't know exactly what I should have predicated of a -great author exposed to the fury of the elements, I can't say what -particular Manfred attitude I should have expected my companion to -assume, but it seemed to me somehow that I shouldn't have looked to him -to regale me in such a situation with stories (which I had already -heard), about the celebrated Lady Ringrose. Her ladyship formed the -subject of Vawdrey's conversation during this prodigious scene, though -before it was quite over he had launched out on Mr. Chafer, the scarcely -less notorious reviewer. It broke my heart to hear a man like Vawdrey -talk of reviewers. The lightning projected a hard clearness upon the -truth, familiar to me for years, to which the last day or two had added -transcendent support--the irritating certitude that for personal -relations this admirable genius thought his second-best good enough. It -was, no doubt, as society was made, but there was a contempt in the -distinction which could not fail to be galling to an admirer. The world -was vulgar and stupid, and the real man would have been a fool to come -out for it when he could gossip and dine by deputy. None the less my -heart sank as I felt my companion practice this economy. I don't know -exactly what I wanted; I suppose I wanted him to make an exception for -_me_. I almost believed he would, if he had known how I worshipped his -talent. But I had never been able to translate this to him, and his -application of his principle was relentless. At any rate I was more than -ever sure that at such an hour his chair at home was not empty: _there_ -was the Manfred attitude, _there_ were the responsive flashes. I could -only envy Mrs. Adney her presumable enjoyment of them. - -The weather drew off at last, and the rain abated sufficiently to allow -us to emerge from our asylum and make our way back to the inn, where we -found on our arrival that our prolonged absence had produced some -agitation. It was judged apparently that the fury of the elements might -have placed us in a predicament. Several of our friends were at the -door, and they seemed a little disconcerted when it was perceived that -we were only drenched. Clare Vawdrey, for some reason, was wetter than -I, and he took his course to his room. Blanche Adney was among the -persons collected to look out for us, but as Vawdrey came toward her she -shrank from him, without a greeting; with a movement that I observed as -almost one of estrangement she turned her back on him and went quickly -into the salon. Wet as I was I went in after her; on which she -immediately flung round and faced me. The first thing I saw was that she -had never been so beautiful. There was a light of inspiration in her -face, and she broke out to me in the quickest whisper, which was at the -same time the loudest cry, I have ever heard: "I've got my _part!_" - -"You went to his room--I was right?" - -"Right?" Blanche Adney repeated. "Ah, my dear fellow!" she murmured. - -"He was there--you saw him?" - -"He saw me. It was the hour of my life!" - -"It must have been the hour of his, if you were half as lovely as you -are at this moment." - -"He's splendid," she pursued, as if she didn't hear me. "He _is_ the one -who does it!" I listened, immensely impressed, and she added: "We -understood each other." - -"By flashes of lightning?" - -"Oh, I didn't see the lightning then!" - -"How long were you there?" I asked with admiration. - -"Long enough to tell him I adore him." - -"Ah, that's what I've never been able to tell him!" I exclaimed -ruefully. - -"I shall have my part--I shall have my part!" she continued, with -triumphant indifference; and she flung round the room with the joy of a -girl, only checking herself to say: "Go and change your clothes." - -"You shall have Lord Mellifont's signature," I said. - -"Oh, bother Lord Mellifont's signature! He's far nicer than Mr. -Vawdrey," she went on irrelevantly. - -"Lord Mellifont?" I pretended to inquire. - -"Confound Lord Mellifont!" And Blanche Adney, in her elation, brushed by -me, whisking again through the open door. Just outside of it she came -upon her husband; whereupon, with a charming cry of "We're talking of -you, my love!" she threw herself upon him and kissed him. - -I went to my room and changed my clothes, but I remained there till the -evening. The violence of the storm had passed over us, but the rain had -settled down to a drizzle. On descending to dinner I found that the -change in the weather had already broken up our party. The Mellifonts -had departed in a carriage and four, they had been followed by others, -and several vehicles had been bespoken for the morning. Blanche Adney's -was one of them, and on the pretext that she had preparations to make -she quitted us directly after dinner. Clare Vawdrey asked me what was -the matter with her--she suddenly appeared to dislike him. I forget what -answer I gave, but I did my best to comfort him by driving away with him -the next day. Mrs. Adney had vanished when we came down; but they made -up their quarrel in London, for he finished his play, which she -produced. I must add that she is still, nevertheless, in want of the -great part. I have a beautiful one in my head, but she doesn't come to -see me to stir me up about it. Lady Mellifont always drops me a kind -word when we meet, but that doesn't console me. - - - - -THE WHEEL OF TIME - - -I - - -"And your daughter?" said Lady Greyswood; "tell me about her. She must -be nice." - -"Oh, yes, she's nice enough. She's a great comfort." - -Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment, then she went on: "Unfortunately she's -not good-looking--not a bit." - -"That doesn't matter, when they're not ill-natured," rejoined, -insincerely, Lady Greyswood, who had the remains of great beauty. - -"Oh, but poor Fanny is quite extraordinarily plain. I assure you it does -matter. She knows it herself; she suffers from it. It's the sort of -thing that makes a great difference in a girl's life." - -"But if she's charming, if she's clever!" said Lady Greyswood, with more -benevolence than logic. "I've known plain women who were liked." - -"Do you mean _me_, my dear?" her old friend straightforwardly inquired. -"But I'm not so awfully liked!" - -"You?" Lady Greyswood exclaimed. "Why, you're grand!" - -"I'm not so repulsive as I was when I was young perhaps, but that's not -saying much." - -"As when you were young!" laughed Lady Greyswood. "You sweet thing, you -_are_ young. I thought India dried people up." - -"Oh, when you're a mummy to begin with!" Mrs. Knocker returned, with her -trick of self-abasement. "Of course I've not been such a fool as to keep -my children there. My girl _is_ clever," she continued, "but she's -afraid to show it. Therefore you may judge whether, with her unfortunate -appearance, she's charming." - -"She shall show it to _me!_ You must let me do everything for her." - -"Does that include finding her a husband? I should like her to show it -to someone who'll marry her." - -"_I_'ll marry her!" said Lady Greyswood, who was handsomer than ever -when she laughed and looked capable. - -"What a blessing to meet you this way on the threshold of home! I give -you notice that I shall cling to you. But that's what I meant; that's -the thing the want of beauty makes so difficult--as if it were not -difficult enough at the best." - -"My dear child, one meets plenty of ugly women with husbands," Lady -Greyswood argued, "and often with very nice ones." - -"Yes, mine is very nice. There are men who don't mind one's face, for -whom beauty isn't indispensable, but they are rare. I don't understand -them. If I'd been a man about to marry I should have gone in for looks. -However, the poor child will _have_ something," Mrs. Knocker continued. - -Lady Greyswood rested thoughtful eyes on her. "Do you mean she'll be -well off?" - -"We shall do everything we can for her. We're not in such misery as we -used to be. We've managed to save in India, strange to say, and six -months ago my husband came into money (more than we had ever dreamed -of), by the death of his poor brother. We feel quite opulent (it's -rather nice!) and we should expect to do something decent for our -daughter. I don't mind it's being known." - -"It _shall_ be known!" said Lady Greyswood, getting up. "Leave the dear -child to me!" The old friends embraced, for the porter of the hotel had -come in to say that the carriage ordered for her ladyship was at the -door. They had met in Paris by the merest chance, in the court of an -inn, after a separation of years, just as Lady Greyswood was going home. -She had been to Aix-les-Bains early in the season and was resting on her -way back to England. Mrs. Knocker and the General, bringing their -eastern exile to a close, had arrived only the night before from -Marseilles and were to wait in Paris for their children, a tall girl and -two younger boys, who, inevitably dissociated from their parents, had -been for the past two years with a devoted aunt, their father's maiden -sister, at Heidelberg. The reunion of the family was to take place with -jollity in Paris, whither this good lady was now hurrying with her -drilled and demoralized charges. Mrs. Knocker had come to England to see -them two years before, and the period at Heidelberg had been planned -during this visit. With the termination of her husband's service a new -life opened before them all, and they had plans of comprehensive -rejoicing for the summer--plans involving however a continuance, for a -few months, of useful foreign opportunities, during which various -questions connected with the organization of a final home in England -were practically to be dealt with. There was to be a salubrious house on -the continent, taken in some neighbourhood that would both yield a -stimulus to plain Fanny's French (her German was much commended), and -permit of frequent "running over" for the General. With these -preoccupations Mrs. Knocker, after her delightful encounter with Lady -Greyswood, was less keenly conscious of the variations of destiny than -she had been when, at the age of twenty, that intimate friend of her -youth, beautiful, loveable and about to be united to a nobleman of -ancient name, was brightly, almost insolently alienated. The less -attractive of the two girls had married only several years later, and -her marriage had perhaps emphasised the divergence of their ways. To-day -however the inequality, as Mrs. Knocker would have phrased it, rather -dropped out of the impression produced by the somewhat wasted and faded -dowager, exquisite still, but unexpectedly appealing, who made no secret -(an attempt that in an age of such publicity would have been useless), -of what she had had, in vulgar parlance, to put up with, or of her -having been left badly off. She had spoken of her children--she had had -no less than six--but she had evidently thought it better not to speak -of her husband. That somehow made up, on Mrs. Knocker's part, for some -ancient aches. - -It was not till a year after this incident that, one day in London, in -her little house in Queen Street, Lady Greyswood said to her third son, -Maurice--the one she was fondest of, the one who on his own side had -given her most signs of affection: - -"I don't see what there is for you but to marry a girl of a certain -fortune." - -"Oh, that's not my line! I may be an idiot, but I'm not mercenary," the -young man declared. He was not an idiot, but there was an examination, -rather stiff indeed, to which, without success, he had gone up twice. -The diplomatic service was closed to him by this catastrophe; nothing -else appeared particularly open; he was terribly at leisure. There had -been a theory none the less that he was the ablest of the family. Two of -his brothers had been squeezed into the army and had declared rather -crudely that they would do their best to keep Maurice out. They were not -put to any trouble in this respect however, as he professed a complete -indifference to the trade of arms. His mother, who was vague about -everything except the idea that people ought to like him, if only for -his extraordinary good looks, thought it strange there shouldn't be some -opening for him in political life, or something to be picked up even in -the City. But no bustling borough solicited the advantage of his -protection, no eminent statesman in want of a secretary took him by the -hand, no great commercial house had been keeping a stool for him. -Maurice, in a word, was not "approached" from any quarter, and meanwhile -he was as irritating as the intending traveller who allows you the -pleasure of looking out his railway-connections. Poor Lady Greyswood -fumbled the social Bradshaw in vain. The young man had only one marked -taste, with which his mother saw no way to deal--an invincible passion -for photography. He was perpetually taking shots at his friends, but she -couldn't open premises for him in Baker Street. He smoked endless -cigarettes--she was sure they made him languid. She would have been more -displeased with him if she had not felt so vividly that someone ought to -do something for him; nevertheless she almost lost patience at his -remark about not being mercenary. She was on the point of asking him -what he called it to live on his relations, but she checked the words as -she remembered that she herself was the only one who did much for him. -Nevertheless, as she hated open professions of disinterestedness, she -replied that that was a nonsensical tone. Whatever one should get in -such a way one would give quite as much, even if it didn't happen to be -money; and when he inquired in return what it was (beyond the disgrace -of his failures) that she judged a fellow like him would bring to his -bride, she replied that he would bring himself, his personal qualities -(she didn't like to be more definite about his appearance), his name, -his descent, his connections--good honest commodities all, for which any -girl of proper feeling would be glad to pay. Such a name as that of the -Glanvils was surely worth something, and she appealed to him to try what -he could do with it. - -"Surely I can do something better with it than sell it," said Maurice. - -"I should like then very much to hear what," she replied very calmly, -waiting reasonably for his answer. She waited to no purpose; the -question baffled him, like those of his examinations. She explained that -she meant of course that he should care for the girl, who might easily -have a worse fault than the command of bread and butter. To humour her, -for he was always good-natured, he said after a moment, smiling: - -"Dear mother, is she pretty?" - -"Is who pretty?" - -"The young lady you have in your eye. Of course I see you've picked her -out." - -She coloured slightly at this--she had planned a more gradual -revelation. For an instant she thought of saying that she had only had a -general idea, for the form of his question embarrassed her; but on -reflection she determined to be frank and practical. "Well, I confess I -_am_ thinking of a girl--a very nice one. But she hasn't great beauty." - -"Oh, then it's of no use." - -"But she's delightful, and she'll have thirty thousand pounds down, to -say nothing of expectations." - -Maurice Glanvil looked at his mother. "She must be hideous--for you to -admit it. Therefore if she's rich she becomes quite impossible; for how -can a fellow have the air of having been bribed with gold to marry a -monster?" - -"Fanny Knocker isn't the least a monster, and I can see that she'll -improve. She's tall, and she's quite strong, and there's nothing at all -disagreeable about her. Remember that you can't have everything." - -"I thought you contended that I could!" said Maurice, amused at his -mother's description of her young friend's charms. He had never heard -anyone damned, as regards that sort of thing, with fainter praise. He -declared that he would be perfectly capable of marrying a poor girl, but -that the prime necessity in any young person he should think of would be -the possession of a face--to put it at the least--that it would give him -positive pleasure to look at. "I don't ask for much, but I do ask for -beauty," he went on. "My eye must be gratified--I must have a wife I can -photograph." - -Lady Greyswood was tempted to answer that he himself had good looks -enough to make a handsome couple, but she withheld the remark as -injudicious, though effective, for it was a part of her son's amiability -that he appeared to have no conception of his plastic side. He would -have been disgusted if she had put it forward; if he had the ideal he -had just described it was not because his own profile was his standard. -What she herself saw in it was a force for coercing heiresses. She had -however to be patient, and she promised herself to be adroit; which was -all the easier as she really liked Fanny Knocker. - -The girl's parents had at last taken a house in Ennismore Gardens, and -the friend of her mother's youth had been confronted with the question -of redeeming the pledges uttered in Paris. This unsophisticated and -united family, with relations to visit and schoolboys' holidays to -outlive, had spent the winter in the country and had but lately begun to -talk of itself, extravagantly of course, through Mrs. Knocker's droll -lips, as open to social attentions. Lady Greyswood had not been false to -her vows; she had on the contrary recognised from the first that, if he -could only be made to see it, Fanny Knocker would be just the person to -fill out poor Maurice's blanks. She had kept this confidence to herself, -but it had made her very kind to the young lady. One of the forms of -this kindness had been an ingenuity in keeping her from coming to Queen -Street until Maurice should have been prepared. Was he to be regarded as -prepared now that he asserted he would have nothing to do with Miss -Knocker? This was a question that worried Lady Greyswood, who at any -rate said to herself that she had told him the worst. Her idea had been -to sound her old friend only after the young people should have met and -Fanny should have fallen in love. Such a catastrophe for Fanny belonged -for Lady Greyswood to that order of convenience that she could always -take for granted. - -She had found the girl, as she expected, ugly and awkward, but had also -discovered a charm of character in her intelligent timidity. No one knew -better than this observant woman how thankless a task in general it was -in London to "take out" a plain girl; she had seen the nicest creatures, -in the brutality of balls, participate only through wistful, almost -tearful eyes; her little drawing-room, at intimate hours, had been -shaken by the confidences of desperate mothers. None the less she felt -sure that Fanny's path would not be rugged; thirty thousand pounds were -a fine set of features, and her anxiety was rather on the score of the -expectations of the young lady's parents. Mrs. Knocker had dropped -remarks suggestive of a high imagination, of the conviction that there -might be a real efficacy in what they were doing for their daughter. The -danger, in other words, might well be that no younger son need apply--a -possibility that made Lady Greyswood take all her precautions. The -acceptability of her favourite child was consistent with the rejection -of those of other people--on which indeed it even directly depended. She -remembered on the other hand the proverb about taking your horse to the -water; the crystalline spring of her young friend's homage might -overflow, but she couldn't compel her boy to drink. The clever way was -to break down his prejudice--to get him to consent to give poor Fanny a -chance. Therefore if she was careful not to worry him she let him see -her project as something patient and deeply wise; she had the air of -waiting resignedly for the day on which, in the absence of other -solutions, he would say to her: "Well, let me have a look at my fate!" -Meanwhile moreover she was nothing if not conscientious, and as she had -made up her mind about the girl's susceptibility she had a scruple -against exposing her. This exposure would not be justified so long as -Maurice's theoretic rigour should remain unabated. - -She felt virtuous in carrying her scruple to the point of rudeness; she -knew that Jane Knocker wondered why, though so attentive in a hundred -ways, she had never definitely included the poor child in any invitation -to Queen Street. There came a moment when it gave her pleasure to -suspect that her old friend had begun to explain this omission by the -idea of a positive exaggeration of good faith--an honest recognition of -the detrimental character of the young man in ambush there. As Maurice, -though much addicted to kissing his mother at home, never dangled about -her in public, he had remained a mythical figure to Mrs. Knocker: he had -been absent (culpably--there was a touch of the inevitable incivility in -it), on each of the occasions on which, after their arrival in London, -she and her husband dined with Lady Greyswood. This astute woman knew -that her delightful Jane was whimsical enough to be excited -good-humouredly by a mystery: she might very well want to make Maurice's -acquaintance in just the degree in which she guessed that his mother's -high sense of honour kept him out of the way. Moreover she desired -intensely that her daughter should have the sort of experience that -would help her to take confidence. Lady Greyswood knew that no one had -as yet asked the girl to dinner and that this particular attention was -the one for which her mother would be most grateful. No sooner had she -arrived at these illuminations than, with deep diplomacy, she requested -the pleasure of the company of her dear Jane and the General. Mrs. -Knocker accepted with delight--she always accepted with delight--so that -nothing remained for Lady Greyswood but to make sure of Maurice in -advance. After this was done she had only to wait. When the dinner, on a -day very near at hand, took place (she had jumped at the first evening -on which the Knockers were free), she had the gratification of seeing -her prevision exactly fulfilled. Her whimsical Jane had thrown the game -into her hands, had been taken at the very last moment with one of her -Indian headaches and, infinitely apologetic and explanatory, had hustled -poor Fanny off with the General. The girl, flurried and frightened by -her responsibility, sat at dinner next to Maurice, who behaved -beautifully--not in the least as the victim of a trick; and when a -fortnight later Lady Greyswood was able to divine that her mind from -that evening had been filled with a virginal ecstasy, she was also -fortunately able to feel serenely, delightfully guiltless. - - - - -II - - -She knew this fact about Fanny's mind, she believed, some time before -Jane Knocker knew it; but she also had reason to think that Jane Knocker -had known it for some time before she spoke of it. It was not till the -middle of June, after a succession of encounters between the young -people, that her old friend came one morning to discuss the -circumstance. Mrs. Knocker asked her if she suspected it, and she -promptly replied that it had never occurred to her. She added that she -was extremely sorry and that it had probably in the first instance been -the fault of that injudicious dinner. - -"Ah, the day of my headache--my miserable headache?" said her visitor. -"Yes, very likely that did it. He's so dreadfully good-looking." - -"Poor child, he can't help that. Neither can I!" Lady Greyswood ventured -to add. - -"He comes by it honestly. He seems very nice." - -"He's nice enough, but he hasn't a farthing, you know, and his -expectations are _nil._" They considered, they turned the matter about, -they wondered what they had better do. In the first place there was no -room for doubt; of course Mrs. Knocker hadn't sounded the girl, but a -mother, a true mother was never reduced to that. If Fanny was in every -relation of life so painfully, so constitutionally awkward, the still -depths of her shyness, of her dissimulation even, in such a predicament -as this, might easily be imagined. She would give no sign that she could -possibly smother, she would say nothing and do nothing, watching -herself, poor child, with trepidation; but she would suffer, and some -day when the question of her future should really come up--it might -after all in the form of some good proposal--they would find themselves -beating against a closed door. That was what they had to think of; that -was why Mrs. Knocker had come over. Her old friend cross-examined her -with a troubled face, but she was very impressive with her reasons, her -intuitions. - -"I'll send him away in a moment, if you'd like that," Lady Greyswood -said at last. "I'll try and get him to go abroad." - -Her visitor made no direct reply to this, and no reply at all for some -moments. "What does he expect to do--what does he want to do?" she -asked. - -"Oh, poor boy, he's looking--he's trying to decide. He asks nothing of -anyone. If he would only knock at a few doors! But he's too proud." - -"Do you call him _very_ clever?" Fanny's mother demanded. - -"Yes, decidedly--and good and kind and true. But he has been unlucky." - -"Of course he can't bear her!" said Mrs. Knocker with a little dry -laugh. - -Lady Greyswood stared; then she broke out: "Do you mean you'd be -willing?----" - -"He's very charming." - -"Ah, but you must have great ideas." - -"He's very well connected," said Mrs. Knocker, snapping the tight -elastic on her umbrella. - -"Oh, my dear Jane--'connected'!" Lady Greyswood gave a sigh of the -sweetest irony. - -"He's connected with you, to begin with." - -Lady Greyswood put out her hand and held her visitor's for a moment. "Of -course it isn't as if he were a different sort of person. Of course I -should like it!" she added. - -"Does he dislike her _very_ much?" - -Lady Greyswood looked at her friend with a smile. "He resembles -Fanny--he doesn't tell. But what would her father say?" she went on. - -"He doesn't know it." - -"You've not talked with him?" - -Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment. "He thinks she's all right." Both the -ladies laughed a little at the density of men; then the visitor said: "I -wanted to see you first." - -This circumstance gave Lady Greyswood food for thought; it suggested -comprehensively that in spite of a probable deficiency of zeal on the -General's part the worthy man would not be the great obstacle. She had -begun so quickly to turn over in her mind the various ways in which this -new phase of the business might make it possible the real obstacle -should be surmounted that she scarcely heard her companion say next: -"The General will only want his daughter to be happy. He has no definite -ambitions for her. I dare say Maurice could make him like him." It was -something more said by her companion about Maurice that sounded sharply -through her reverie. "But unless the idea appeals to _him_ a bit there's -no use talking about it." - -At this Lady Greyswood spoke with decision. "It _shall_ appeal to him. -Leave it to me! Kiss your dear child for me," she added as the ladies -embraced and separated. - -In the course of the day she made up her mind, and when she again -broached the question to her son (it befell that very evening) she felt -that she stood on firmer ground. She began by mentioning to him that her -dear old friend had the same charming dream--for the girl--that _she_ -had; she sketched with a light hand a picture of their preconcerted -happiness in the union of their children. When he replied that he -couldn't for the life of him imagine what the Knockers could see in a -poor beggar of a younger son who had publicly come a cropper, she took -pains to prove that he was as good as anyone else and much better than -many of the young men to whom persons of sense were often willing to -confide their daughters. She had been in much tribulation over the -circumstance announced to her in the morning, not knowing whether, in -her present enterprise, to keep it back or put it forward. If Maurice -should happen not to take it in the right way it was the sort of thing -that might dish the whole experiment. He might be bored, he might be -annoyed, he might be horrified--there was no limit, in such cases, to -the perversity, to the possible brutality of even the most amiable man. -On the other hand he might be pleased, touched, flattered--if he didn't -dislike the girl too much. Lady Greyswood could indeed imagine that it -might be unpleasant to know that a person who was disagreeable to you -was in love with you; so that there was just that risk to run. She -determined to run it only if there should be absolutely no other card to -play. Meanwhile she said: "Don't you see, now, how intelligent she is, -in her quiet way, and how perfect she is at home--without any nonsense -or affectation or ill-nature? She's not a bit stupid, she's remarkably -clever. She can do a lot of things; she has no end of talents. Many -girls with a quarter of her abilities would make five times the show." - -"My dear mother, she's a great swell, I freely admit it. She's far too -good for me. What in the world puts it into your two heads that she -would look at me?" - -At this Lady Greyswood was tempted to speak; but after an instant she -said instead: "She _has_ looked at you, and you've seen how. You've seen -her several times now, and she has been remarkably nice to you." - -"Nice? Ah, poor girl, she's frightened to death!" - -"Believe me--I read her," Lady Greyswood replied. - -"She knows she has money and she thinks I'm after it. She thinks I'm a -ravening wolf and she's scared." - -"I happen to know as a fact that she's in love with you!" Before she -could check herself Lady Greyswood had played her card, and though she -held her breath a little after doing so she felt that it had been a good -moment. "If I hadn't known it," she hastened further to declare, "I -should never have said another word." Maurice burst out laughing--how in -the world _did_ she know it? When she put the evidence before him she -had the pleasure of seeing that he listened without irritation; and this -emboldened her to say: "Don't you think you could _try_ to like her?" - -Maurice was lounging on a sofa opposite to her; jocose but embarrassed, -he had thrown back his head, and while he stretched himself his eyes -wandered over the upper expanse of the room. "It's very kind of her and -of her mother, and I'm much obliged and all that, though a fellow feels -rather an ass in talking about such a thing. Of course also I don't -pretend--before such a proof of wisdom--that I think her in the least a -fool. But, oh, dear----!" And the young man broke off with laughing -impatience, as if he had too much to say. His mother waited an instant, -then she uttered a persuasive, interrogative sound, and he went on: -"It's only a pity she's so awful!" - -"So awful?" murmured Lady Greyswood. - -"Dear mother, she's about as ugly a woman as ever turned round on you. -If there were only just a touch or two less of it!" - -Lady Greyswood got up: she stood looking in silence at the tinted shade -of the lamp. She remained in this position so long that he glanced at -her--he was struck with the sadness in her face. He would have been in -error however if he had suspected that this sadness was assumed for the -purpose of showing him that she was wounded by his resistance, for the -reflection that his last words caused her to make was as disinterested -as it was melancholy. Here was an excellent, a charming girl--a girl, -she was sure, with a rare capacity for devotion--whose future was -reduced to nothing by the mere accident, in her face, of a certain want -of drawing. A man could settle her fate with a laugh, could give her -away with a snap of his fingers. She seemed to see Maurice administer to -poor Fanny's image the little displeased shove with which he would have -disposed of an ill-seasoned dish. Moreover he greatly exaggerated. Her -heart grew heavy with a sense of the hardness of the lot of women, and -when she looked again at her son there were tears in her eyes that -startled him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" she simply sighed, in a tone that -was to reverberate in his mind and to constitute in doing so a real -appeal to his imagination. After a moment she added: "We'll talk no more -about her--no, no!" - -All the same she went three days later to see Mrs. Knocker and say to -her: "My dear creature, I think it's all right." - -"Do you mean he'll take us up?" - -"He'll come and see you, and you must give him plenty of chances." What -Lady Greyswood would have liked to be able to say, crudely and -comfortably, was: "He'll try to manage it--he promises to do what he -can." What she did say, however, was: "He's greatly prepossessed in the -dear child's favour." - -"Then I dare say he'll be very nice." - -"If I didn't think he'd behave like a gentleman I wouldn't raise a -finger. The more he sees of her the more he'll be sure to like her." - -"Of course with poor Fanny that's the only thing one can build on," said -Mrs. Knocker. "There's so much to get over." - -Lady Greyswood hesitated a moment. "Maurice _has_ got over it. But I -should tell you that at first he doesn't want it known." - -"Doesn't want what known?" - -"Why, the footing on which he comes. You see it's just the least bit -experimental." - -"For what do you take me?" asked Mrs. Knocker. "The child shall never -dream that anything has passed between us. No more of course shall her -father." - -"It's too delightful of you to leave it that way," Lady Greyswood -replied. "We must surround her happiness with every safeguard." - -Mrs. Knocker sat pensive for some moments. "So that if nothing comes of -it there's no harm done? That idea--that nothing may come of it--makes -one a little nervous," she added. - -"Of course I can't absolutely answer for my poor boy!" said Lady -Greyswood, with just the faintest ring of impatience. "But he's much -affected by what he knows--I told him. That's what moves him." - -"He must of course be perfectly free." - -"The great thing is for her not to know." - -Mrs. Knocker considered. "Are you very sure?" She had apparently had a -profounder second thought. - -"Why, my dear--with the risk!" - -"Isn't the risk, after all, greater the other way? Mayn't it help the -matter on, mayn't it do the poor child a certain degree of good, the -idea that, as you say, he's prepossessed in her favour? It would perhaps -cheer her up, as it were, and encourage her, so that by the very fact of -being happier about herself she may make a better impression. That's -what she wants, poor thing--to be helped to hold up her head, to take -herself more seriously, to believe that people can like her. And fancy, -when it's a case of such a beautiful young man who's all ready to!" - -"Yes, he's all ready to," Lady Greyswood conceded. "Of course it's a -question for your own discretion. I can't advise you, for you know your -child. But it seems to me a case for tremendous caution." - -"Oh, trust me for that!" said Mrs. Knocker. "We shall be very kind to -him," she smiled, as her visitor got up. - -"He'll appreciate that. But it's too nice of you to leave it so." - -Mrs. Knocker gave a hopeful shrug. "He has only to be civil to Blake!" - -"Ah, he isn't a brute!" Lady Greyswood exclaimed, caressing her. - -After this she passed a month of no little anxiety. She asked her son no -question, and for two or three weeks he offered her no other information -than to say two or three times that Miss Knocker really could ride; but -she learned from her old friend everything she wanted to know. -Immediately after the conference of the two ladies Maurice, in the Row, -had taken an opportunity of making up to the girl. She rode every day -with her father, and Maurice rode, though possessed of nothing in life -to put a leg across; and he had been so well received that this proved -the beginning of a custom. He had a canter with the young lady most days -in the week, and when they parted it was usually to meet again in the -evening. His relations with the household in Ennismore Gardens were -indeed not left greatly to his initiative; he became on the spot the -subject of perpetual invitations and arrangements, the centre of the -friendliest manœuvres; so that Lady Greyswood was struck with Jane -Knocker's feverish energy in the good cause--the ingenuity, the bribery, -the cunning that an exemplary mother might be inspired to practise. She -herself did nothing, she left it all to poor Jane, and this perhaps gave -her for the moment a sense of contemplative superiority. She wondered if -_she_ would in any circumstances have plotted so almost fiercely for one -of her children. She was glad her old friend's design had her full -approbation; she held her breath a little when she said to herself: -"Suppose I hadn't liked it--suppose it had been for Chumleigh!" -Chumleigh was the present Lord Greyswood, whom his mother still called -by his earlier designation. Fanny Knocker's thirty thousand would have -been by no means enough for Chumleigh. Lady Greyswood, in spite of her -suspense, was detached enough to be amused when her accomplice told her -that "Blake" had said that Maurice really could ride. The two mothers -thanked God for the riding--the riding would see them through. Lady -Greyswood had watched Fanny narrowly in the Park, where, in the saddle, -she looked no worse than lots of girls. She had no idea how Maurice got -his mounts--she knew Chumleigh had none to give him; but there were -directions in which she would have encouraged him to incur almost any -liability. He was evidently amused and beguiled; he fell into -comfortable attitudes on the soft cushions that were laid for him and -partook with relish of the dainties that were served; he had his fill of -the theatres, of the opera--entertainments of which he was fond. She -could see he didn't care for the sort of people he met in Ennismore -Gardens, but this didn't matter: so much as that she didn't ask of him. -She knew that when he should have something to tell her he would speak; -and meanwhile she pretended to be a thousand miles away. The only thing -that worried her was that he had dropped photography. She said to Mrs. -Knocker more than once: "Does he make love?--that's what I want to -know!" to which this lady replied with her incongruous drollery: "My -dear, how can I make out? He's so little like Blake!" But she added that -she believed Fanny was intensely happy. Lady Greyswood had been struck -with the girl's looking so, and she rejoiced to be able to declare in -perfectly good faith that she thought her greatly improved. "Didn't I -tell you?" returned Mrs. Knocker to this with a certain accent of -triumph. It made Lady Greyswood nervous, for she took it to mean that -Fanny had had a hint from her mother of Maurice's possible intentions. -She was afraid to ask her old friend directly if this were definitely -true: poor Fanny's improvement was after all not a gain sufficient to -make up for the cruelty that would reside in the sense of being -rejected. - -One day, in Queen Street, Maurice said in an abrupt, conscientious way: -"You were right about Fanny Knocker--she's a remarkably clever and a -thoroughly nice girl; a fellow can really talk with her. But oh mother!" - -"Well, my dear?" - -The young man's face wore a strange smile. "Oh mother!" he expressively, -quite tragically repeated. "But it's all right!" he presently added in a -different tone, and Lady Greyswood was reassured. This confidence, -however, received a shock a little later, on the evening of a day that -had been intensely hot. A torrid wave had passed over London, and in the -suffocating air the pleasures of the season had put on a purple face. -Lady Greyswood, whose own fine lowness of tone no temperature could -affect, knew, in her bedimmed drawing-room, exactly the detail of her -son's engagements. She pitied him--_she_ had managed to keep clear; she -had in particular a vision of a distribution of prizes, by one of the -princesses, at a big horticultural show; she saw the sweltering starers -(and at what, after all?) under a huge glass roof, while there passed -before her, in a blur of crimson, the glimpse of uncomfortable cheeks -under an erratic white bonnet, together also with the sense that some of -Jane Knocker's ideas of pleasure were of the oddest (she had such -_lacunes_), and some of the ordeals to which she exposed poor Fanny -singularly ill-chosen. Maurice came in, perspiring but pale (nothing -could make _him_ ugly!) to dress for dinner, and though he was in a -great hurry he found time to pant: "Oh mother, what I'm going through -for you!" - -"Do you mean rushing about so--in this weather? We shall have a change -to-night." - -"I hope so! There are people for whom it doesn't do at all; ah, not a -bit!" said Maurice with a laugh that she didn't fancy. But he went -upstairs before she could think of anything to reply, and after he had -dressed he passed out without speaking to her again. The next morning, -on entering her room, her maid mentioned as a delicate duty that Mr. -Glanvil, whose door stood wide open and whose bed was untouched, had -apparently not yet come in. While, however, her ladyship was in the -first freshness of meditation on this singular fact the morning's -letters were brought up, and as it happened that the second envelope she -glanced at was addressed in Maurice's hand she was quickly in possession -of an explanation still more startling than his absence. He wrote from a -club, at nine o'clock the previous evening, to announce that he was -taking the night train for the continent. He hadn't dressed for dinner, -he had dressed otherwise, and having stuffed a few things with -surreptitious haste into a Gladstone bag, had slipped unperceived out of -the house and into a hansom. He had sent to Ennismore Gardens, from his -club, an apology--a request he should not be waited for; and now he -should just have time to get to Charing Cross. He was off he didn't know -where, but he was off he did know why. "You'll know why, dear mother -too, I think," this wonderful communication continued; "you'll know why, -because I haven't deceived you. I've done what I could, but I've broken -down. I felt to-day that it was no use; there was a moment, at that -beastly exhibition, when I saw it, when the question was settled. The -truth rolled over me in a stifling wave. After that I made up my mind -there was nothing to do but to bolt. I meant to put it off till -to-morrow, and to tell you first, but while I was dressing to-day it -struck me irresistibly that my true course is to break now--never to -enter the house or go near her again. I was afraid of a scene with you -about this. I haven't uttered a word of 'love' to her (heaven save us!) -but my position this afternoon became definitely false, and that fact -prescribes the course I am taking. You shall hear from me again in a day -or two. I have the greatest regard for her, but I can't bear to look at -her. I don't care a bit for money, but, hang it, I _must_ have beauty! -Please send me twenty pounds, _poste restante_, Boulogne." - -"What I want, Jane, is to get at this," Lady Greyswood said, later in -the day, with an austerity that was sensible even through her tears. -"Does the child know, or doesn't she, what was at stake?" - -"She hasn't an inkling of it--how should she? I recognised that it was -best not to tell her--and I didn't." - -On this, as Mrs. Knocker's tears had also flowed, Lady Greyswood kissed -her. But she didn't believe her. Fanny herself, however, for the rest of -the season, proved inscrutable. "She's a character!" Lady Greyswood -reflected with admiration. In September, in Yorkshire, the girl was -taken seriously ill. - - - - -III - - -After luncheon at the Crisfords'--the big Sunday banquets of twenty -people and a dozen courses--the men, lingering a little in the -dining-room, dawdling among displaced chairs and dropped napkins while -the ladies rustled away, ended by shuffling in casual pairs up to the -studio, where coffee was served and where, presently, before the -cigarettes were smoked out, Mrs. Crisford always reappeared to usher in -her contingent. The studio was high and handsome, and luncheon at the -Crisfords' was, in the common esteem, more amusing than almost anything -else in London except dinner. It was Bohemia with excellent -service--Bohemia not debtor but creditor. Upstairs the pictures, -finished or nearly finished, and arranged in a shining row, gave an -obviousness of topic, so that conversation could easily touch bottom. -Maurice Glanvil, who had never been in the house before, looked about -and wondered; he was struck with the march of civilization--the rise of -the social tide. There were new notes in English life, which he caught -quickly with his fresh sense; during his long absence--twenty years of -France and Italy--all sorts of things had happened. In his youth, in -England, artists and authors and actors--people of that general -kind--were not nearly so "smart." Maurice Glanvil was forty-nine to-day, -and he thought a great deal of his youth. He regretted it, he missed it, -he tried to beckon it back; but the differences in London made him feel -that it had gone forever. There might perhaps be some sudden -compensation in being fifty, some turn of the dim telescope, some view -from the brow of the hill; it was a round, gross, stupid number, which -probably would make one pompous, make one think one's self venerable. -Meanwhile at any rate it was odious to be forty-nine. Maurice observed -the young now more than he had ever done; observed them, that is, as the -young. He wished he could have had a son, to be twenty with again; his -daughter was only eighteen, but fond as he was of her he couldn't live -instinctively into her girlishness. It was not that there was not plenty -of it, for she was simple, sweet, indefinite, without the gifts that the -boy would have had, the gifts--what had become of them now?--that he -himself used to have. - -The youngest person present, before the ladies came in, was the young -man who had sat next to Vera and whom, being on the same side of the -long table, he had not had under his eye. Maurice noticed him now, -noticed that he was very good-looking, fair and fresh and clean, -impeccable in his straight smoothness; also that apparently knowing none -of the other guests and moving by himself about the studio with visible -interest in the charming things, he had the modesty of his age and of -his position. He had however something more besides, which had begun to -prompt this observer to speak to him in order to hear the sound of his -voice--a strange, elusive resemblance, lost in the profile but -flickering straight out of the full face, to someone Maurice had known. -For a minute Glanvil was worried by it--he had a sense that a name would -suddenly come to him if he should see the lips in motion; but as he was -on the point of laying the ghost by an experiment Mrs. Crisford led in -her companions. His daughter was among them, and in company, as he was -constantly anxious about her appearance and her attitude, she had at -moments the faculty of drawing his attention from everything else. The -poor child, the only fruit of his odd, romantic union, the _coup de -foudre_ of his youth, with her strangely beautiful mother, whose own -mother had been a Russian and who had died in giving birth to her--his -short, colourless, insignificant Vera was excessively, incorrigibly -plain. She had been the disappointment of his life, but he greatly -pitied her. Her want of beauty, with her antecedents, had been one of -the strangest tricks of fate; she was acutely conscious of it and, being -good and docile, would have liked to please. She did sometimes, to her -father's delight, in spite of everything; she had been educated abroad, -on foreign lines, near her mother's people. He had brought her to -England to take her out, to do what he could for her; but he was not -unaware that in England her manners, which had been thought very pretty -on the continent, would strike some persons as artificial. They were -exactly what her mother's had been; they made up to a certain extent for -the want of other resemblance. An extreme solicitude at any rate as to -the impression they might make was the source of his habit, in London, -of watching her covertly. He tried to see at a given moment how she -looked, if she were happy; it was always with an intention of -encouragement, and there was a frequent exchange between them of little -invisible affectionate signs. She wore charming clothes, but she was -terribly short; in England the girls were gigantic and it was only the -tallest who were noticed. Their manners, alas, had nothing to do with -it--many of them indeed hadn't any manners. As soon as he had got near -Vera he said to her, scanning her through his single glass from head to -foot: - -"Who is the young man who sat next you? the one at the other end of the -room." - -"I don't know his name, papa--I didn't catch it." - -"Was he civil--did he talk to you?" - -"Oh, a great deal, papa--about all sorts of things." - -Something in the tone of her voice made him look with greater intensity -and even with greater tenderness than usual into her little dim green -eyes. "Then you're all right--you're getting on?" - -She gave her effusive smile--the one that perhaps wouldn't do in -England. "Oh beautifully, papa--everyone's so kind." - -She never complained, was a brave little optimist, full of sweet -resources; but he had detected to-day as soon as he looked at her the -particular shade of her content. It made him continue, after an -hesitation: "He didn't say anything about his relations--anything that -could give you a clue?" - -Vera thought a moment. "Not that I can remember--unless that Mr. -Crisford is painting the portrait of his mother. Ah, there it is!" the -girl exclaimed, looking across the room at a large picture on an easel, -which the young man had just approached and from which their host had -removed the drapery that covered it. Maurice Glanvil had observed this -drapery, and as the artist unveiled the canvas with a flourish he saw -that he had been waiting for the ladies to show it, to produce a -surprise, a grand effect. Everyone moved toward it, and Maurice, with -his daughter beside him, recognised that the production, a portrait, was -striking, a great success for Crisford--the figure, down to the knees, -with an extraordinary look of life, of a tall, handsome woman of middle -age, in full dress, in black. Yet he saw it for the moment vaguely, -through a preoccupation, that of a discovery which he had just made and -which had recalled to him an incident of his youth--his juxtaposition, -in London, at a dinner, to a girl, insurmountably charmless to him, who -had fallen in love with him (so that she was nearly to die of it), -within the first five minutes, before he had even spoken; as he had -subsequently learned from a communication made him by his poor mother--a -reminder uttered with a pointless bitterness that he had failed to -understand and accompanied with unsuspected details, much later--too -late, long after his marriage and shortly before her death. He said to -himself that he must look out, and he wondered if poor Vera would also -be insurmountably charmless to the good-looking young man. "But what a -likeness, papa--what a likeness!" he heard her murmur at his elbow with -suppressed excitement. - -"How can you tell, my dear, if you haven't seen her?" - -"I mean to the gentleman--the son." - -Everyone was exclaiming "How wonderfully clever--how beautiful!" and -under cover of the agitation and applause Maurice Glanvil had drawn -nearer the picture. The movement had brought him close to the young man -of whom he had been talking with Vera and who, with his happy eyes on -the painted figure, seemed to smile in acknowledgment of the artist's -talent and of the sitter's charm. - -"Do you know who the lady is?" Maurice said to him. - -He turned his bright face to his interlocutor. "She's my mother--Mrs. -Tregent. Isn't it wonderful?" - -His eyes, his lips, his voice flashed a light into Glanvil's -uncertainty--the tormenting resemblance was simply a prolonged echo of -Fanny Knocker, in whose later name, precisely, he recognised the name -pronounced by the young man. Maurice Glanvil stared in some -bewilderment; this stately, splendid lady, with a face so vivid that it -was handsome, was what that unfortunate girl had become? The eyes, as if -they picked him out, looked at him strangely from the canvas; the face, -with all its difference, asserted itself, and he felt himself turning as -red as if he had been in the presence of the original. Young Tregent, -pleased and proud, had given way to the pressing spectators, placing -himself at Vera's other side; and Maurice heard the girl exclaim to him -in one of her pretty effusions: "How beautiful she must be, and how -amiable!" - -"She is indeed--it's not a bit flattered." And while Maurice still -stared, more and more mystified--for "flattered, flattered!" was the -unspoken solution in which he had instantly taken refuge--his neighbour -continued: "I wish you could know her--you must; she's delightful. She -couldn't come here to-day--they asked her: she has people lunching at -home." - -"I should be so glad; perhaps we may meet her somewhere," said Vera. - -"If I ask her and if you'll let her I'm sure she'll come to see you," -the young man responded. Maurice had glanced at him while the face of -the portrait watched them with the oddest, the grimmest effect. He was -filled with a confusion of feelings, asking himself half-a-dozen -questions at once. Was young Tregent, with his attentive manner, "making -up" to Vera? was he going out of his way in answering for his mother's -civility? Little did he know what he was taking on himself! Above all -was Fanny Knocker to-day this extraordinary figure--extraordinary in the -light of the early plainness that had made him bolt? He became conscious -of an extreme curiosity, an irresistible desire to see her. - -"Oh, papa," said Vera, "Mr. Tregent's so kind; he's so good as to -promise us a visit from his mother." - -The young man's friendly eyes were still on the child's face. "I'll tell -her all about you. Oh, if I ask her she'll come!" he repeated. - -"Does she do everything you ask her?" the girl inquired. - -"She likes to know my friends!" - -Maurice hesitated, wondering if he were in the presence of a smooth -young humbug to whom compliments cost nothing, or in that of an -impression really made--made by his little fluttered, unpopular Vera. He -had a horror of exposing his child to risks, but his curiosity was -greater than his caution. "Your mother mustn't come to us--it's our duty -to go to her," he said to Mr. Tregent; "I had the honour of knowing -her--a long time ago. Her mother and mine were intimate friends. Be so -good as to mention my name to her, that of Maurice Glanvil, and to tell -her how glad I have been to make your acquaintance. And now, my dear -child," he added to Vera, "we must take leave." - -During the rest of that day it never occurred to him that there might be -an awkwardness in his presenting himself, even after many years, before -a person with whom he had broken as he had broken with Fanny Knocker. -This was partly because he held, justly enough, that he had never -committed himself, and partly because the intensity of his desire to -measure with his own eyes the change represented--misrepresented -perhaps--by the picture was a force greater than any embarrassment. His -mother had told him that the poor girl had cruelly suffered, but there -was no present intensity in that idea. With her expensive portrait, her -grand air, her handsome son, she somehow embodied success, whereas he -himself, standing for mere bereavement and disappointment, was a failure -not to be surpassed. With Vera that evening he was very silent; she saw -him smoke endless cigarettes and wondered what he was thinking of. She -guessed indeed, but she was too subtle a little person to attempt to -fall in with his thoughts or to be willing to betray her own by asking -him random questions about Mrs. Tregent. She had expressed as they came -away from their luncheon-party a natural surprise at the coincidence of -his having known the mother of her amusing neighbour, but the only other -words that dropped from her on the subject were contained in a question -that, before she went to bed, she put to him with abrupt gaiety, while -she carefully placed a marker in a book she had not been reading. - -"When is it then that we're to call upon this wonderful old friend?" - -He looked at her through the smoke of his cigarette. "I don't know. We -must wait a little, to allow her time to give some sign." - -"Oh, I see!" And Vera took leave of him with one of her sincere little -kisses. - - - - -IV - - -He had not long to wait for the sign from Mrs. Tregent; it arrived the -very next morning in the shape of an invitation to dinner. This -invitation was immediately accepted, but a fortnight was still to -intervene--a trial to Maurice Glanvil's patience. The promptitude of the -demonstration gave him pleasure--it showed him no bitterness had -survived. What place was there indeed for resentment, since she had -married and given birth to children and thought so well of the face God -had conferred on her as to wish to hand it on to her posterity? Her -husband was in Parliament, or had been--that came back to him from his -mother's story. He caught himself reverting to her with a frequency that -surprised him; he was haunted by the image of that bright, strong woman -on Crisford's canvas, in whom there was just enough of Fanny Knocker to -put a sort of defiance into the difference. He wanted to see it again, -and his opportunity was at hand in the form of a visit to Mrs. Crisford. -He called on this lady, without his daughter, four days after he had -lunched with her, and, finding her at home, he presently led the -conversation to the portrait and to his ardent desire for another -glimpse of it. Mrs. Crisford gratified this eagerness--perhaps he struck -her as a possible sitter; it was late in the afternoon and her husband -was out: she led him into the studio. Mrs. Tregent, splendid and serene, -stood there as if she had been watching for him. There was no doubt the -picture was a masterpiece. Maurice had mentioned that he had known the -original years before and then had lost sight of her. He questioned his -hostess with artful detachment. - -"What sort of a person has she become--agreeable, popular?" - -"Everyone adores her--she's so clever." - -"Really--remarkably?" - -"Extraordinarily--one of the cleverest women I've ever known, and quite -one of the most charming." - -Maurice looked at the portrait--at the super-subtle smile which seemed -to tell him Mrs. Tregent knew they were talking about her; a kind of -smile he had never expected to live to see in Fanny Knocker's eyes. Then -he asked: "Has she literally become as handsome as that?" - -Mrs. Crisford hesitated. "She's beautiful." - -"Beautiful?" Maurice echoed. - -"What shall I say? It's a peculiar charm! It's her spirit. One sees that -her life has been beautiful in spite of her sorrows!" Mrs. Crisford -added. - -"What sorrows has she had?" Maurice coloured a little as soon as he had -spoken. - -"Oh, lots of deaths. She has lost her husband; she has lost several -children." - -"Ah, that's new to me. Was her marriage happy?" - -"It must have been for Mr. Tregent. If it wasn't for her, no one ever -knew." - -"But she has a son," said Maurice. - -"Yes, the only one--such a dear. She thinks all the world of him." - -At this moment a message was brought to Mrs. Crisford, and she asked to -be excused while she went to say a word to someone who was waiting. -Maurice Glanvil in this way was left alone for five minutes with the -intensity of the presence evoked by the artist. He found himself -agitated, excited by it: the face of the portrait was so intelligent and -conscious that as he stood there he felt as if some strange -communication had taken place between his being and Mrs. Tregent's. The -idea made him nervous: he moved about the room and ended by turning his -back. Mrs. Crisford reappeared, but he soon took leave of her; and when -he had got home (he had settled himself in South Kensington, in a little -undiscriminated house which he had hated from the first), he learned -from his daughter that she had had a visit from young Tregent. He had -asked first for Mr. Glanvil and then, in the second instance, for -herself, telling her when admitted, as if to attenuate his possible -indiscretion, that his mother had charged him to try to see her even if -he should not find her father. Vera had never before received a -gentleman alone, and the incident had left traces of emotion. "Poor -little thing!" Maurice said to himself: he always took a melancholy view -of any happiness of his daughter's, tending to believe, in his -pessimism, that it could only lead to some refinement of humiliation. He -encouraged her however to talk about young Tregent, who, according to -her account, had been extravagantly amusing. He had said moreover that -his mother was tremendously impatient to renew such an old acquaintance. -"Why in the world doesn't she, then?" Maurice asked himself; "why -doesn't she come and see Vera?" He reflected afterwards that such an -expectation was unreasonable, but it represented at the moment a kind of -rebellion of his conscience. Then, as he had begun to be a little -ashamed of his curiosity, he liked to think that Mrs. Tregent would have -quite as much. On the morrow he knocked at her door--she lived in a -"commodious" house in Manchester Square--and had the satisfaction, as he -had chosen his time carefully, of learning that she had just come in. - -Upstairs, in a high, quiet, old-fashioned drawing-room, she was before -him. What he saw was a tall woman in black, in her bonnet, with a white -face, smiling intensely--smiling and smiling before she spoke. He -quickly perceived that she was agitated and was making an heroic effort, -which would presently be successful, not to show it. But it was above -all clear to him that she wasn't Fanny Knocker--was simply another -person altogether. She had nothing in common with Fanny Knocker--it was -impossible to meet her on the ground of any former acquaintance. What -acquaintance had he ever had with this graceful, harmonious, expressive -English matron, whose smile had a singular radiance? That rascal of a -Crisford had done her such perfect justice that he felt as if he had -before him the portrait of which the image in the studio had been the -original. There were nevertheless things to be said, and they said them -on either side, sinking together, with friendly exclamations and -exaggerated laughs, on the sofa, where her nearness seemed the span of -all the distance that separated her from the past. The phrase that -hummed through everything, to his sense, was his own inarticulate "How -could I have known? how could I have known?" How could he have foreseen -that time and life and happiness (it was probably more than anything -happiness), would transpose her into such a different key? Her whole -personality revealed itself from moment to moment as something so -agreeable that even after all these years he felt himself blushing for -the crass stupidity of his mistake. Yes, he was turning red, and she -could see it and would know why: a perception that could only constitute -for her a magnificent triumph, a revenge. All his natural and acquired -coolness, his experience of life, his habit of society, everything that -contributed to make him a man of the world, were of no avail to cover -his confusion. He took refuge from it almost angrily in trying to prove -to himself that she had on a second look a likeness to the ugly girl he -had not thought good enough--in trying to trace Fanny Knocker in her -fair, ripe bloom, the fine irregularity of her features. To put his -finger on the identity would make him feel better. Some of the facts of -the girl's crooked face were still there--conventional beauty was -absent; but the proportions and relations had changed, and the -expression and the spirit: she had accepted herself or ceased to -care--had found oblivion and activity and appreciation. What Maurice -mainly discovered however in this intenser observation was an attitude -of hospitality toward himself which immediately effaced the presumption -of "triumph." Vulgar vanity was far from her, and the grossness of -watching her effect upon him: she was watching only the lost vision that -had come back, the joy that, if for a single hour, she had found again. -She herself had no measure of the alteration that struck him, and there -was no substitution for her in the face that her deep eyes seemed to -brush with their hovering. Presently they were talking like old friends, -and before long each was in possession of the principal facts concerning -the other. Many things had come and gone and the common fate had pressed -them hard. Her parents were dead, and her husband and her first-born -children. He, on his side, had lost his mother and his wife. They -matched bereavements and compared bruises, and in the way she expressed -herself there was a charm which forced him, as he wondered, to remember -that Fanny Knocker had at least been intelligent. - -"I wish I could have seen your wife--you must tell me all about her," -she said. "Haven't you some portraits?" - -"Some poor little photographs. I'll show them to you. She was very -pretty and very gentle; she was also very un-English. But she only lived -a year. She wasn't clever and accomplished--like you." - -"Ah, me; you don't know _me!_" - -"No, but I want to--oh particularly. I'm prepared to give a good deal of -time to the study." - -"We must be friends," said Mrs. Tregent. "I shall take an extraordinary -interest in your daughter." - -"She'll be grateful for it. She's a good little reasonable thing, -without a scrap of beauty." - -"You care greatly for that," said Mrs. Tregent. - -He hesitated a moment. "Don't you?" - -She smiled at him with her basking candour. "I used to. That's my -husband," she added, with an odd, though evidently accidental, -inconsequence. She had reached out to a table for a photograph in a -silver frame. "He was very good to me." - -Maurice saw that Mr. Tregent had been many years older than his wife--a -prosperous, prosaic, parliamentary person whom she couldn't impose on a -man of the world. He sat an hour, and they talked of the mutilated -season of their youth: he wondered at the things she remembered. In this -little hour he felt his situation change--something strange and -important take place: he seemed to see why he had come back to England. -But there was an implication that worried him--it was in the very air, a -reverberation of that old assurance of his mother's. He wished to clear -the question up--it would matter for the beginning of a new friendship. -Had she had any sense of injury when he took to his heels, any glimpse -of the understanding on which he had begun to come to Ennismore Gardens? -He couldn't find out to-day except by asking her, which, at their time -of life, after so many years and consolations, would be legitimate and -even amusing. When he took leave of her he held her hand a moment, -hesitating; then he brought out: - -"Did they ever tell you--a hundred years ago--that between your mother -and mine there was a great question of our marrying?" - -She stared--she broke into a laugh. "_Was_ there?" - -"Did you ever know it? Did you ever suspect it?" - -She hesitated and, for the first time since he had been in the room, -ceased for an instant to look straight at him. She only answered, still -laughing however: "Poor dears--they were altogether too deep!" - -She evidently wished to convey that she had never known. Maurice was a -little disappointed: at present he would have preferred her knowledge. -But as he walked home across the park, through Kensington Gardens, he -felt it impossible to believe in her ignorance. - - - - -V - - -At the end of a month he broke out to her. "I can't get over it, it's so -extraordinary--the difference between your youth and your maturity!" - -"Did you expect me to be an eternal child?" Mrs. Tregent asked -composedly. - -"No, it isn't that." He stopped--it would be difficult to explain. - -"What is it then?" she inquired, with her systematic refusal to -acknowledge a complication. There was always, to Maurice Glanvil's ear, -in her impenetrability to allusion, the faintest, softest glee, and it -gave her on this occasion the appearance of recognising his difficulty -and being amused at it. She would be excusable to be a little -cold-blooded. He really knew however that the penalty was all in his own -reflections, for it had not taken him even a month to perceive that she -was supremely, almost strangely indulgent. There was nothing he was -ready to say that she might not hear, and her absence of coquetry was a -remarkable rest to him. - -"It isn't what I expected--it's what I didn't expect. To say exactly -what I mean, it's the way you've improved." - -"I've improved? I'm so glad!" - -"Surely you've been aware of it--you've been conscious of the -transformation." - -"As an improvement? I don't know. I've been conscious of changes -enough--of all the stages and strains and lessons of life. I've been -aware of growing old, and I hold, in dissent from the usual belief, that -there's no fool like a young fool. One is never, I suppose, such a fool -as one _has_ been, and that may count perhaps as amelioration. But I -can't flatter myself that I've had two different identities. I've had to -make one, such as it is, do for everything. I think I've been happier -than I originally supposed I should be--and yet I had my happiness too -as a girl. At all events if you were to scratch me, as they say, you'd -still find----" She paused a moment, and he really hung upon her lips: -there was such a charm of tone in whatever she said. "You'd still find, -underneath, the blowsy girl----" With this she again checked herself -and, slightly to his surprise, gave a nervous laugh. - -"The blowsy girl?" he repeated, with an artlessness of interrogation -that made her laugh again. - -"Whom you went with that hot day to see the princess give the prizes." - -"Oh yes--that dreadful day!" he answered gravely, musingly, with the -whole scene pictured by her words and without contesting the manner in -which she qualified herself. It was the nearest allusion that had passed -between them to that crudest conception of his boyhood, his flight from -Ennismore Gardens. Almost every day for a month he had come to see her, -and they had talked of a thousand things; never yet however had they -made any explicit mention of this remote instance of premature wisdom. -Moreover if he now felt the need of going back it was not to be -apologetic, to do penance; he had nothing to explain, for his behaviour, -as he considered it, still struck him, given the circumstances, as -natural. It was to himself indeed that explanations were owing, for he -had been the one who had been most deceived. He liked Mrs. Tregent -better than he had ever liked a woman--that is he liked her for more -reasons. He had liked his poor little wife only for one, which was after -all no reason at all: he had been in love with her. In spite of the -charm that the renewal of acquaintance with his old friend had so -unexpectedly added to his life there was a vague torment in his relation -with her, the sense of a revenge (oh a very kind one!) to take, a -haunting idea that he couldn't pacify. He could still feel sore at the -trick that had been played him. Even after a month the curiosity with -which he had approached her was not assuaged; in a manner indeed it had -only borrowed force from all she had insisted on doing for him. She was -literally doing everything now; gently, gaily, with a touch so familiar -that protestations on his part would have been pedantic, she had taken -his life in hand. Rich as she was she had known how to give him lessons -in economy; she had taught him how to manage in London on his means. A -month ago his servants had been horrid--to-day they were the best he had -ever known. For Vera she was plainly a providence--her behaviour to Vera -was transcendent. - -He had privately made up his mind that Vera had in truth had her _coup -de foudre_--that if she had had a chance she would have laid down her -little life for Arthur Tregent; yet two circumstances, he could -perceive, had helped to postpone, to attenuate even somewhat, her full -consciousness of what had befallen her. One of these influences had been -the prompt departure of the young man from London; the other was simply -the diversion produced by Mrs. Tregent's encompassing art. It had had -immediate consequences for the child: it was like a drama in perpetual -climaxes. This surprising benefactress rejoiced in her society, took her -"out," treated her as if there were mysterious injustices to repair. -Vera was agitated not a little by such a change in her life; she had -English kindred enough, uncles and aunts and cousins; but she had felt -herself lost in her father's family and was principally aware, among -them, of their strangeness and their indifference. They affected her -mainly as mere number and stature. Mrs. Tregent's was a performance -unpromised and uninterrupted, and the girl desired to know if all -English people took so generous a view of friendship. Maurice laughed at -this question and, without meeting his daughter's eyes, answered in the -negative. Vera guessed so many things that he didn't know what she would -be guessing next. He saw her caught up to the blue like Ganymede, and -surrendered her contentedly. She had been the occupation of his life, -yet to Mrs. Tregent he was willing to part with her; this lady was the -only person of whom he would not have been jealous. Even in the young -man's absence moreover Vera lived with the son of the house and breathed -his air; Manchester Square was full of him, his photograph was on every -table. How often she spoke of him to his mother Maurice had no means of -knowing, nor whether Mrs. Tregent encouraged such a topic; he had reason -to believe indeed that there were reserves on either side, and he felt -that he could trust his old friend's prudence as much as her liberality. -The attitude of forbearance from rash allusions, which was Maurice's -own, could not at any rate keep Arthur from being a presence in the -little drama which had begun for them all, as the older man was more and -more to recognise with nervous prefigurements, on that occasion at the -Crisfords'. - -Arthur Tregent had gone to Ireland to spend a few weeks with an old -university friend--the gentleman indeed, at Cambridge, had been his -tutor--who had lately, in a district classified as "disturbed," come -into a bewildering heritage. He had chosen in short for a study of the -agrarian question on the spot the moment of the year when London was -most absorbing. Maurice Glanvil made no remark to his mother on this -anomaly, and she offered him no explanation of it; they talked in fact -of almost everything except Arthur. Mrs. Tregent had to her constant -visitor the air of feeling that she owed him in relation to her son an -apology which she had not the materials for making. It was certainly a -high standard of courtesy that would suggest to her that he ought to -have put himself out for these social specimens; but it was obvious that -her standard was high. Maurice Glanvil smiled when he thought to what -bare civility the young man would have deemed himself held had he known -of a certain passage of private history. But he knew nothing--Maurice -was sure of that; his reason for going away had been quite another -matter. That Vera's brooding parent should have had such an insight into -the young man's motives is a proof of the amount of reflection that he -devoted to him. He had not seen much of him and in truth he found him -provoking, but he was haunted by the odd analogy of which he had had a -glimpse on their first encounter. The late Mr. Tregent had had -"interests in the north," and the care of them had naturally devolved -upon his son, who by the mother's account had shown an admirable -capacity for business. The late Mr. Tregent had also been actively -political, and it was fondly hoped, in Manchester Square at least, that -the day was not distant when his heir would, in turn and as a -representative of the same respectabilities, speak reported words in -debate. Maurice himself, vague about the House of Commons, had nothing -to say against his making a figure there. Accordingly if these natural -gifts continued to remind him of his own fastidiously clever youth, it -was with the difference that Arthur Tregent's cleverness struck him as -much the greater of the two. If the changes in England were marked this -indeed was in general one of them, that the sharp young men were still -sharper than of yore. When they had ability at any rate they showed it -all; Maurice would never have pretended that he had shown all his. He -had not cared whether anyone knew it. It was not however this superior -intensity which provoked him, and poor young Tregent could not be held -responsible for his irritation. If the circumstance in which they most -resembled each other was the disposition to escape from plain girls who -aspired to them, such a characteristic, as embodied in the object of -Vera's admiration, was purely interesting, was even amusing, to Vera's -father; but it would have gratified him to be able to ascertain from -Mrs. Tregent whether, to her knowledge, her son thought his child really -repulsive, and what annoyed him was the fact that such an inquiry was -practically impossible. Arthur was provoking in short because he had an -advantage--an advantage residing in the fact that his mother's friend -couldn't ask questions about him without appearing to indulge in hints -and overtures. The idea of this officiousness was odious to Maurice -Glanvil; so that he confined himself to meditating in silence on the -happiness it would be for poor Vera to marry a beautiful young man with -a fortune and a future. - -Though the opportunity for this recreation--it engaged much of his -time--should be counted as one of the pleasant results of his intimacy -with Mrs. Tregent, yet the sense, perverse enough, that he had a ground -of complaint against her subsisted even to the point of finally -steadying him while he expressed his grievance. This happened in the -course of one of those afternoon hours that had now become indispensable -to him--hours of belated tea and egotistical talk in the long summer -light and the chastened roar of London. - -"No, it wasn't fair," he said, "and I wasn't well used--a hundred years -ago. I'm sore about it now; you ought to have notified me, to have -instructed me. Why didn't you, in common honesty? Why didn't my poor -mother, who was so eager and shrewd? Why didn't yours? She used to talk -to me. Heaven forgive me for saying it, but our mothers weren't up to -the mark! You may tell me they didn't know; to which I reply that mine -was universally supposed, and by me in particular, to know everything -that could be known. No, it wasn't well managed, and the consequence has -been this odious discovery, an awful shock to a man of my time of life -and under the effect of which I now speak to you, that for a quarter of -a century I've been a fool." - -"What would you have wished us to do?" Mrs. Tregent asked as she gave -him another cup of tea. - -"Why, to have said 'Wait, wait--at any price; have patience and hold -on!' They ought to have told me, _you_ ought to have told me, that your -conditions at that time were a temporary phase and that you would -infallibly break your shell. You ought to have warned me, they ought to -have warned me, that there would be wizardry in the case, that you were -to be the subject, at a given moment, of a transformation absolutely -miraculous. I couldn't know it by inspiration; I measured you by the -common law--how could I do anything else? But it wasn't kind to leave me -in error." - -Maurice Glanvil treated himself without scruple to this fine ironic -flight, this sophistry which eased his nerves, because though it brought -him nearer than he had yet come to putting his finger, visibly to Mrs. -Tregent, on the fact that he had once tried to believe he could marry -her and had found her too ugly, their present relation was so -extraordinary and his present appreciation so liberal as to make almost -any freedom excusable, especially as his companion had the advantage of -being to all intents and purposes a different person from the one he -talked of, while he suffered the ignominy of being the same. - -"There has been no miracle," said Mrs. Tregent after a moment. "I've -never known anything but the common, ah the very common, law, and -anything that I may have become only the common things have made me." - -He shook his head. "You wore a disfiguring mask, a veil, a disguise. One -fine day you dropped them all and showed the world the real creature." - -"It wasn't one fine day--it was little by little." - -"Well, one fine day I saw the result; the process doesn't matter. To -arrive at a goal invisible from the starting-point is no doubt an -incident in the life of a certain number of women. But what is -absolutely unprecedented is to have traversed such a distance." - -"Hadn't I a single redeeming point?" Mrs. Tregent demanded. - -He hesitated a little, and while he hesitated she looked at him. Her -look was but of an instant, but it told him everything, told him, in one -misty moonbeam, all she had known of old. She had known perfectly--she -had been as conscious of the conditions of his experiment as of the -invincibility of his repugnance. Whether her mother had betrayed him -didn't matter; she had read everything clear and had had to accept the -cruel truth. He was touched as he had never been by that moment's -communication; he was, unexpectedly, almost awestruck, for there was -something still more in it than he had guessed. "I was letting my fancy -play just now," he answered, apologetically. "It was I who was -wanting--it was I who was the idiot!" - -"Don't say that. You were so kind." And hereupon Mrs. Tregent startled -her visitor by bursting into tears. - -She recovered herself indeed, and they forbore on that occasion, in the -interest of the decorum expected of persons of their age and in their -circumstances, to rake over these smouldering ashes; but such a -conversation had made a difference, and from that day onward Maurice -Glanvil was awake to the fact that he had been the passion of this -extraordinary woman's life. He felt humiliated for an hour, but after -that his pleasure was almost as great as his wonder. For wonder there -was plenty of room, but little by little he saw how things had come to -pass. She was not subjected to the ordeal of telling him or to the -abasement of any confession, but day by day he sounded, with a purity of -gratitude that renewed, in his spirit, the sources of youth, the depths -of everything that her behaviour implied. Of such a studied tenderness -as she showed him the roots could only be in some unspeakably sacred -past. She had not to explain, she had not to clear up inconsistencies, -she had only to let him be with her. She had striven, she had accepted, -she had conformed, but she had thought of him every day of her life. She -had taken up duties and performed them, she had banished every weakness -and practised every virtue, but the still, hidden flame had never been -quenched. His image had interposed, his reality had remained, and she -had never denied herself the sweetness of hoping that she should see him -again and that she should know him. She had never raised a little finger -for it, but fortune had answered her prayer. Women were capable of these -mysteries of sentiment, these intensities of fidelity and there were -moments in which Maurice Glanvil's heart beat strangely before a vision -really so sublime. He seemed to understand now by what miracle Fanny -Knocker had been beautified--the miracle of heroic docilities and -accepted pangs and vanquished egotisms. It had never come in a night, -but it had come by living for others. She was living for others still; -it was impossible for him to see anything else at last than that she was -living for him. The time of passion was over, but the time of service -was long. When all this became vivid to him he felt that he couldn't -recognise it enough and yet that recognition might only be tacit and, as -it were, circuitous. He couldn't say to her even humorously "It's very -kind of you to be in love with such a donkey," for these words would -have implied somehow that he had rights--an attitude from which his -renovated delicacy shrank. He bowed his head before such charity and -seemed to see moreover that Mrs. Tregent's desire to befriend him was a -feeling independent of any prospect of gain and indifferent to any -chance of reward. It would be described vulgarly, after so much had come -and gone, as the state of being "in love"--the state of the instinctive -and the simple, which they both had left far behind; so that there was a -certain sort of reciprocity which would almost constitute an insult to -it. - - - - -VI - - -He soared on these high thoughts till, toward the end of July (Mrs. -Tregent stayed late in town--she was awaiting her son's return) he made -the discovery that to some persons, perhaps indeed to many, he had all -the air of being in love. This image was flashed back to him from the -irreverent lips of a lady who knew and admired Mrs. Tregent and who -professed amusement at his surprise, at his artless declaration that he -had no idea he had made himself conspicuous. She assured him that -everyone was talking about him--though people after all had a tenderness -for elderly romance; and she left him divided between the acute sense -that he was comical (he had a horror of that) and the pale perception of -something that he could "help" still less. At the end of a few hours of -reflection he had sacrificed the penalty to the privilege; he was about -to be fifty, and he knew Fanny Knocker's age--no one better; but he -cared no straw for vulgar judgments and moreover could think of plenty -of examples of unions admired even after longer delays. For three days -he enjoyed the luxury of admitting to himself without reserve how -indispensable she had become to him; as the third drew to a close he was -more nervous than really he had ever been in his life, for this was the -evening on which, after many hindrances, Mrs. Tregent had agreed to dine -with him. He had planned the occasion for a month--he wanted to show her -how well he had learned from her how to live on his income. Her -occupations had always interposed--she was teaching him new lessons; but -at last she gave him the joy of sitting at his table. At the evening's -end he begged her to remain after the others, and he asked one of the -ladies who had been present, and who was going to a pair of parties, to -be so good as to take Vera away. This indeed had been arranged in -advance, and when, in the discomposed drawing-room, of which the windows -stood open to the summer night, he was alone with his old friend, he saw -in her face that she knew it had been arranged. He saw more than -this--that she knew what he was waiting to say and that if, after a -visible reluctance, she had consented to come, it was in order to meet -him, with whatever effort, on the ground he had chosen--meet him once -and then leave it forever. This was why, without interrupting him, but -before he had finished, putting out her hand to his own, with a strange -clasp of refusal, she was ready to show him, in a woeful but beautiful -headshake to which nothing could add, that it was impossible at this -time of day for them to marry. She stayed only a moment, but in that -moment he had to accept the knowledge that by as much as it might have -been of old, by so much might it never be again. After she had gone he -walked up and down the drawing-room half the night. He sent the servants -to bed, he blew out the candles; the forsaken place was lighted only by -the lamps in the street. He gave himself the motive of waiting for Vera -to come back, but in reality he threshed about in the darkness because -his cheeks had begun to burn. There was a sting for him in Mrs. -Tregent's refusal, and this sting was sharper even than the -disappointment of his desire. It was a reproach to his delicacy; it made -him feel as if he had been an ass for the second time. When she was -young and free his faith had been too poor and his perceptions too -dense; he had waited to show her that he only bargained for certainties -and only recognised success. He dropped into a chair at last and sat -there a long time, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, -trying to cover up his humiliation, waiting for it to ebb. As the sounds -of the night died away it began to come back to him that she had given -him a promise to which a rich meaning could be attached. What was it -that before going away she had said about Vera, in words he had been at -the moment too disconcerted to take in? Little by little he -reconstructed these words with comfort; finally, when after hearing a -carriage stop at the door he hastily pulled himself together and went -down to admit his daughter, the sight of the child on his threshold, as -the brougham that had restored her drove away, brought them all back in -their generosity. - -"Have you danced?" he asked. - -She hesitated. "A little, papa." - -He knew what that meant--she had danced once. He followed her upstairs -in silence; she had not wasted her time--she had had her humiliation. -Ah, clearly she was too short! Yet on the landing above, where her -bedroom candle stood, she tried to be gay with him, asking him about his -own party and whether the people had stayed late. - -"Mrs. Tregent stayed after the others. She spoke very kindly of you." - -The girl looked at her father with an anxiety that showed through her -smile. "What did she say?" - -He hesitated, as Vera had done a moment before. "That you must be our -compensation." - -His daughter's eyes, still wondering, turned away. "What did she mean?" - -"That it's all right, darling!" And he supplied the deficiencies of this -explanation with a long kiss for good-night. - -The next day he went to see Mrs. Tregent, who wore the air of being glad -to have something at once positive and pleasant to say. She announced -immediately that Arthur was coming back. - -"I congratulate you." Then, as they exchanged one of their looks of -unreserved recognition, Maurice added: "Now it's for Vera and me to go." - -"To go?" - -"Without more delay. It's high time we should take ourselves off." - -Mrs. Tregent was silent a moment. "Where shall you go?" - -"To our old haunts, abroad. We must see some of our old friends. We -shall spend six months away." - -"Then what becomes of _my_ months?" - -"Your months?" - -"Those it's all arranged she's to spend at Blankley." Blankley was Mrs. -Tregent's house in Derbyshire, and she laughed as she went on: "Those -that I spoke of last evening. Don't look as if we had never discussed it -and settled it!" - -"What shall I do without her?" Maurice Glanvil presently demanded. - -"What will you do _with_ her?" his hostess replied, with a world of -triumphant meaning. He was not prepared to say, in the sense of her -question, and he took refuge in remarking that he noted her avoidance of -any suggestion that he too would be welcome in Derbyshire; which led her -to continue, with unshrinking frankness: "Certainly, I don't want you a -bit. Leave us alone." - -"Is it safe?" - -"Of course I can't absolutely answer for anything, but at least it will -be safer than with _you_," said Mrs. Tregent. - -Maurice Glanvil turned this over. "Does he dislike me?" - -"What an idea!" - -But the question had brought the colour to her face, and the sight of -this, with her evasive answer, kindled in Maurice's heart a sudden -relief, a delight almost, that was strange enough. Arthur was in -opposition, plainly, and that was why he had so promptly quitted London, -that was why Mrs. Tregent had refused Mr. Glanvil. The idea was an -instant balm. "He'd be quite right, poor fellow!" Maurice declared. -"I'll go abroad alone." - -"Let me keep her six months," said Mrs. Tregent. "I'll try it--I'll try -it!" - -"I wouldn't interfere for the world." - -"It's an immense responsibility; but I should like so to succeed." - -"She's an angel!" Maurice said. - -"That's what gives me courage." - -"But she mustn't dream of any plot," he added. - -"For what do you take me?" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed with a smile which -lightened up for him intensely that far-away troubled past as to which -she had originally baffled his inquiry. - -The joy of perceiving in an aversion to himself a possible motive for -Arthur's absence was so great in him that before he took leave of her he -ventured to say to his old friend: "Does he like her at all?" - -"He likes her very much." - -Maurice remembered how much he had liked Fanny Knocker and been willing -to admit it to his mother; but he presently observed: "Of course he -can't think her in the least pretty." - -"As you say, she's an angel," Mrs. Tregent rejoined. - -"She would pass for one better if she were a few inches taller." - -"It doesn't matter," said Mrs. Tregent. - -"One must remember that in that respect, at her age, she won't change," -Maurice pursued, wondering after he had spoken whether he had pressed -upon the second pronoun. - -"No, she won't change. But she's a darling!" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed; and -it was in these meagre words, which were only half however of what -passed between them, that an extraordinary offer was made and accepted. -They were so ready to understand each other that no insistence and no -professions now were necessary, and that Maurice Glanvil had not even -broken into a murmur of gratitude at this quick revelation of his old -friend's beautiful conception of a nobler remedy--the endeavour to place -their union outside themselves, to make their children know the -happiness they had missed. They had not needed to teach each other what -they saw, what they guessed, what moved them with pity and hope, and -there were transitions enough safely skipped in the simple conversation -I have preserved. But what Mrs. Tregent was ready to do for him filled -Maurice Glanvil, for days after this, with an even greater wonder, and -it seemed to him that not till then had she fully shown him that she had -forgiven him. - -Six months, however, proved much more than sufficient for her attempt to -test the plasticity of her son. Maurice Glanvil went abroad, but was -nervous and restless, wandering from place to place, revisiting old -scenes and old friends, reverting, with a conscious, an even amused -incongruity, and yet with an effect that was momentarily soothing, to -places at which he had stayed with his wife, but feeling all the while -that he was really staking his child's happiness. It only half reassured -him to feel that Vera would never know what poor Fanny Knocker had been -condemned to know, for the daily contact was cruel from the moment the -issue was uncertain; and it only half helped him to reflect that she was -not so plain as Fanny, for had not Arthur Tregent given him the -impression that the young man of the present was intrinsically even more -difficult to please than the young man of the past? The letters he -received from Blankley conveyed no information about Arthur beyond the -fact that he was at home; only once Vera mentioned that he was -"remarkably good" to her. Toward the end of November he found himself in -Paris, submitting reluctantly to social accidents which put off from day -to day his return to London, when, one morning in the Rue de Rivoli, he -had to stop short to permit the passage of a vehicle which had emerged -from the court of an hotel. It was an open cab--the day was mild and -bright--with a small quantity of neat, leathery luggage, which Maurice -vaguely recognised as English, stowed in the place beside the -driver--luggage from which his eyes shifted straight to the occupant of -the carriage, a young man with his face turned to the allurements of -travel and the urbanity of farewell to bowing waiters still visible in -it. The young man was so bright and so on his way, as it were, that -Maurice, standing there to make room for him, felt for the instant that -he too had taken a tip. The feeling became acute as he recognised that -this humiliating obligation was to no less a person than Arthur Tregent. -It was Arthur who was so much on his way--it was Arthur who was catching -a train. He noticed his mother's friend as the cab passed into the -street, and, with a quick demonstration, caused the driver to pull up. -He jumped out, and under the arcade the two men met with every -appearance of cordiality, but with conscious confusion. Each of them -coloured perceptibly, and Maurice was angry with himself for blushing -before a boy. Long afterwards he remembered how cold, and even how hard, -was the handsome clearness of the young eyes that met his own in an -artificial smile. - -"You here? I thought you were at Blankley." - -"I left Blankley yesterday; I'm on my way to Spain." - -"To Spain? How charming!" - -"To join a friend there--just for a month or two." - -"Interesting country--well worth seeing. Your mother's all right?" - -"Oh, yes, all right. And Miss Glanvil----" Arthur Tregent went on, -cheerfully. - -"Vera's all right?" interrupted Maurice, with a still gayer tone. - -"Everyone, everything's all right!" Arthur laughed. - -"Well, I mustn't keep you. Bon voyage!" - -Maurice Glanvil, after the young man had driven on, flattered himself -that in this brief interview he had suppressed every indication of -surprise; but that evening he crossed the Channel, and on the morrow he -went down to Blankley. "To Spain--to Spain!" the words kept repeating -themselves in his ears. He, when he had taken flight in a similar -conjunction, had only got, for the time, as far as Boulogne; and he was -reminded afresh of the progress of the species. When he was introduced -into the drawing-room at Blankley--a chintzy, flowery, friendly -expanse--Mrs. Tregent rose before him alone and offered him a face that -she had never shown before. She was white and she looked scared; she -faltered in her movement to meet him. - -"I met Arthur in Paris, so I thought I might come." - -Oh, yes; there was pain in her face, and a kind of fear of him that -frightened him, but their hands found each other's hands while she -replied: "He went off--I didn't know it." - -"But you had a letter the next morning," Maurice said. - -She stared. "How did you know that?" - -"Who should know better than I? He wrote from London, explaining." - -"I did what I could--I believed in it!" said Mrs Tregent. "He was -charming, for a while." - -"But he broke down. She's too short, eh?" Maurice asked. - -"Don't laugh; she's ill." - -"What's the matter with her?" - -Mrs. Tregent gave the visitor a look in which there was almost a -reproach for the question. "She has had a chill; she's in bed. You must -see her." - -She took him upstairs and he saw his child. He remembered what his -mother had told him of the grievous illness of Fanny Knocker. Poor -little Vera lay there in the flush of a feverish cold which had come on -the evening before. She grew worse from the effect of a complication, -and for three days he was anxious about her; but even more than with his -alarm he held his breath before the distress, the disappointment, the -humility of his old friend. Up to this hour he had not fully measured -the strength of her desire to do something for him, or the intensity of -passion with which she had wished to do it in the particular way that -had now broken down. She had counted on her influence with her son, on -his affection and on the maternal art, and there was anguish in her -compunction for her failure, for her false estimate of the possible. -Maurice Glanvil reminded her in vain of the consoling fact that Vera had -known nothing of any plan, and he guessed indeed the reason why this -theory had no comfort. No one could be better aware than Fanny Tregent -of how much girls knew who knew nothing. It was doubtless this same sad -wisdom that kept her sombre when he expressed a confidence that his -child would promptly recover. She herself had had a terrible fight--and -yet with the physical victory, had she recovered? Her apprehension for -Vera was justified, for the poor girl was destined finally to forfeit -even the physical victory. She got better, she got up, she quitted -Blankley, she quitted England with her father, but her health had failed -and a year later it gave way. Overtaken in Rome by a second illness, she -succumbed; unlike Fanny Knocker she was never to have her revenge. - - - - -LORD BEAUPRÉ - - -I - - -Some reference had been made to Northerley, which was within an easy -drive, and Firminger described how he had dined there the night before -and had found a lot of people. Mrs. Ashbury, one of the two visitors, -inquired who these people might be, and he mentioned half-a-dozen names, -among which was that of young Raddle, which had been a good deal on -people's lips, and even in the newspapers, on the occasion, still -recent, of his stepping into the fortune, exceptionally vast even as the -product of a patent-glue, left him by a father whose ugly name on all -the vacant spaces of the world had exasperated generations of men. - -"Oh, is he there?" asked Mrs. Ashbury, in a tone which might have been -taken as a vocal rendering of the act of pricking up one's ears. She -didn't hand on the information to her daughter, who was talking--if a -beauty of so few phrases could have been said to talk--with Mary -Gosselin, but in the course of a few moments she put down her teacup -with a failure of suavity and, getting up, gave the girl a poke with her -parasol. "Come, Maud, we must be stirring." - -"You pay us a very short visit," said Mrs. Gosselin, intensely demure -over the fine web of her knitting. Mrs. Ashbury looked hard for an -instant into her bland eyes, then she gave poor Maud another poke. She -alluded to a reason and expressed regrets; but she got her daughter into -motion, and Guy Firminger passed through the garden with the two ladies -to put them into their carriage. Mrs. Ashbury protested particularly -against any further escort. While he was absent the other parent and -child, sitting together on their pretty lawn in the yellow light of the -August afternoon, talked of the frightful way Maud Ashbury had "gone -off," and of something else as to which there was more to say when their -third visitor came back. - -"Don't think me grossly inquisitive if I ask you where they told the -coachman to drive," said Mary Gosselin as the young man dropped, near -her, into a low wicker chair, stretching his long legs as if he had been -one of the family. - -Firminger stared. "Upon my word I didn't particularly notice, but I -think the old lady said 'Home'." - -"There, mamma dear!" the girl exclaimed triumphantly. - -But Mrs. Gosselin only knitted on, persisting in profundity. She replied -that "Home" was a feint, that Mrs. Ashbury would already have given -another order, and that it was her wish to hurry off to Northerley that -had made her keep them from going with her to the carriage, in which -they would have seen her take a suspected direction. Mary explained to -Guy Firminger that her mother had perceived poor Mrs. Ashbury to be -frantic to reach the house at which she had heard that Mr. Raddle was -staying. The young man stared again and wanted to know what she desired -to do with Mr. Raddle. Mary replied that her mother would tell him what -Mrs. Ashbury desired to do with poor Maud. - -"What all Christian mothers desire," said Mrs. Gosselin. "Only she -doesn't know how." - -"To marry the dear child to Mr. Raddle," Mary added, smiling. - -Firminger's vagueness expanded with the subject. "Do you mean you want -to marry _your_ dear child to that little cad?" he asked of the elder -lady. - -"I speak of the general duty--not of the particular case," said Mrs. -Gosselin. - -"Mamma _does_ know how," Mary went on. - -"Then why ain't you married?" - -"Because we're not acting, like the Ashburys, with injudicious -precipitation. Is that correct?" the girl demanded, laughing, of her -mother. - -"Laugh at me, my dear, as much as you like--it's very lucky you've got -me," Mrs. Gosselin declared. - -"She means I can't manage for myself," said Mary to the visitor. - -"What nonsense you talk!" Mrs. Gosselin murmured, counting stitches. - -"I can't, mamma, I can't; I admit it," Mary continued. - -"But injudicious precipitation and--what's the other thing?--creeping -prudence, seem to come out in very much the same place," the young man -objected. - -"Do you mean since I too wither on the tree?" - -"It only comes back to saying how hard it is nowadays to marry one's -daughters," said the lucid Mrs. Gosselin, saving Firminger, however, the -trouble of an ingenious answer. "I don't contend that, at the best, it's -easy." - -But Guy Firminger would not have struck you as capable of much -conversational effort as he lounged there in the summer softness, with -ironic familiarities, like one of the old friends who rarely deviate -into sincerity. He was a robust but loose-limbed young man, with a -well-shaped head and a face smooth, fair and kind. He was in -knickerbockers, and his clothes, which had seen service, were composed -of articles that didn't match. His laced boots were dusty--he had -evidently walked a certain distance; an indication confirmed by the -lingering, sociable way in which, in his basket-seat, he tilted himself -towards Mary Gosselin. It pointed to a pleasant reason for a long walk. -This young lady, of five-and-twenty, had black hair and blue eyes; a -combination often associated with the effect of beauty. The beauty in -this case, however, was dim and latent, not vulgarly obvious; and if her -height and slenderness gave that impression of length of line which, as -we know, is the fashion, Mary Gosselin had on the other hand too much -expression to be generally admired. Every one thought her intellectual; -a few of the most simple-minded even thought her plain. What Guy -Firminger thought--or rather what he took for granted, for he was not -built up on depths of reflection--will probably appear from this -narrative. - -"Yes indeed; things have come to a pass that's awful for _us_" the girl -announced. - -"For _us_, you mean," said Firminger. "We're hunted like the ostrich; -we're trapped and stalked and run to earth. We go in fear--I assure you -we do." - -"Are _you_ hunted, Guy?" Mrs. Gosselin asked with an inflection of her -own. - -"Yes, Mrs. Gosselin, even _moi qui vous parle_, the ordinary male of -commerce, inconceivable as it may appear. I know something about it." - -"And of whom do you go in fear?" Mary Gosselin took up an uncut book and -a paper-knife which she had laid down on the advent of the other -visitors. - -"My dear child, of Diana and her nymphs, of the spinster at large. She's -always out with her rifle. And it isn't only that; you know there's -always a second gun, a walking arsenal, at her heels. I forget, for the -moment, who Diana's mother was, and the genealogy of the nymphs; but not -only do the old ladies know the younger ones are out, they distinctly go -_with_ them." - -"Who was Diana's mother, my dear?" Mrs. Gosselin inquired of her -daughter. - -"She was a beautiful old lady with pink ribbons in her cap and a genius -for knitting," the girl replied, cutting her book. - -"Oh, I'm not speaking of you two dears; you're not like anyone else; -you're an immense comfort," said Guy Firminger. "But they've reduced it -to a science, and I assure you that if one were any one in particular, -if one were not protected by one's obscurity, one's life would be a -burden. Upon my honour one wouldn't escape. I've seen it, I've watched -them. Look at poor Beaupré--look at little Raddle over there. I object -to him, but I bleed for him." - -"Lord Beaupré won't marry again," said Mrs. Gosselin with an air of -conviction. - -"So much the worse for him!" - -"Come--that's a concession to our charms!" Mary laughed. - -But the ruthless young man explained away his concession. "I mean that -to be married's the only protection--or else to be engaged." - -"To be permanently engaged,--wouldn't that do?" Mary Gosselin asked. - -"Beautifully--I would try it if I were a _parti_." - -"And how's the little boy?" Mrs. Gosselin presently inquired. - -"What little boy?" - -"Your little cousin--Lord Beaupré's child: isn't it a boy?" - -"Oh, poor little beggar, he isn't up to much. He was awfully cut up by -scarlet fever." - -"You're not the rose indeed, but you're tolerably near it," the elder -lady presently continued. - -"What do you call near it? Not even in the same garden--not in any -garden at all, alas!" - -"There are three lives--but after all!" - -"Dear lady, don't be homicidal!" - -"What do you call the 'rose'?" Mary asked of her mother. - -"The title," said Mrs. Gosselin, promptly but softly. - -Something in her tone made Firminger laugh aloud. "You don't mention the -property." - -"Oh, I mean the whole thing." - -"Is the property very large?" said Mary Gosselin. - -"Fifty thousand a year," her mother responded; at which the young man -laughed out again. - -"Take care, mamma, or we shall be thought to be out with our guns!" the -girl interposed; a recommendation that drew from Guy Firminger the just -remark that there would be time enough for this when his prospects -should be worth speaking of. He leaned over to pick up his hat and -stick, as if it were his time to go, but he didn't go for another -quarter of an hour, and during these minutes his prospects received some -frank consideration. He was Lord Beaupré's first cousin, and the three -intervening lives were his lordship's own, that of his little sickly -son, and that of his uncle the Major, who was also Guy's uncle and with -whom the young man was at present staying. It was from homely Trist, the -Major's house, that he had walked over to Mrs. Gosselin's. Frank -Firminger, who had married in youth a woman with something of her own -and eventually left the army, had nothing but girls, but he was only of -middle age and might possibly still have a son. At any rate his life was -a very good one. Beaupré might marry again, and, marry or not, he was -barely thirty-three and might live to a great age. The child moreover, -poor little devil, would doubtless, with the growing consciousness of an -incentive (there was none like feeling you were in people's way), -develop a capacity for duration; so that altogether Guy professed -himself, with the best will in the world, unable to take a rosy view of -the disappearance of obstacles. He treated the subject with a jocularity -that, in view of the remoteness of his chance, was not wholly tasteless, -and the discussion, between old friends and in the light of this -extravagance, was less crude than perhaps it sounds. The young man quite -declined to see any latent brilliancy in his future. They had all been -lashing him up, his poor dear mother, his uncle Frank, and Beaupré as -well, to make that future political; but even if he should get in (he -was nursing--oh, so languidly!--a possible opening), it would only be -into the shallow edge of the stream. He would stand there like a tall -idiot with the water up to his ankles. He didn't know how to swim--in -that element; he didn't know how to do anything. - -"I think you're very perverse, my dear," said Mrs. Gosselin. "I'm sure -you have great dispositions." - -"For what--except for sitting here and talking with you and Mary? I -revel in this sort of thing, but I scarcely like anything else." - -"You'd do very well if you weren't so lazy," Mary said. "I believe -you're the very laziest person in the world." - -"So do I--the very laziest in the world," the young man contentedly -replied. "But how can I regret it, when it keeps me so quiet, when (I -might even say) it makes me so amiable?" - -"You'll have, one of these days, to get over your quietness, and perhaps -even a little over your amiability," Mrs. Gosselin sagaciously stated. - -"I devoutly hope not." - -"You'll have to perform the duties of your position." - -"Do you mean keep my stump of a broom in order and my crossing -irreproachable?" - -"You may say what you like; you will be a _parti_," Mrs. Gosselin -continued. - -"Well, then, if the worst comes to the worst I shall do what I said just -now: I shall get some good plausible girl to see me through." - -"The proper way to 'get' her will be to marry her. After you're married -you won't be a _parti_." - -"Dear mamma, he'll think you're already levelling your rifle!" Mary -Gosselin laughingly wailed. - -Guy Firminger looked at her a moment. "I say, Mary, wouldn't _you_ do?" - -"For the good plausible girl? Should I be plausible enough?" - -"Surely--what could be more natural? Everything would seem to contribute -to the suitability of our alliance. I should be known to have known you -for years--from childhood's sunny hour; I should be known to have -bullied you, and even to have been bullied _by_ you, in the period of -pinafores. My relations from a tender age with your brother, which led -to our schoolroom romps in holidays and to the happy footing on which -your mother has always been so good as to receive me here, would add to -all the presumptions of intimacy. People would accept such a conclusion -as inevitable." - -"Among all your reasons you don't mention the young lady's attractions," -said Mary Gosselin. - -Firminger stared a moment, his clear eye lighted by his happy thought. -"I don't mention the young man's. They would be so obvious, on one side -and the other, as to be taken for granted." - -"And is it your idea that one should pretend to be engaged to you all -one's life?" - -"Oh no, simply till I should have had time to look round. I'm determined -not to be hustled and bewildered into matrimony--to be dragged to the -shambles before I know where I am. With such an arrangement as the one I -speak of I should be able to take my time, to keep my head, to make my -choice." - -"And how would the young lady make hers?" - -"How do you mean, hers?" - -"The selfishness of men is something exquisite. Suppose the young -lady--if it's conceivable that you should find one idiotic enough to be -a party to such a transaction--suppose the poor girl herself should -happen to wish to be _really_ engaged?" - -Guy Firminger thought a moment, with his slow but not stupid smile. "Do -you mean to _me_?" - -"To you--or to some one else." - -"Oh, if she'd give me notice I'd let her off." - -"Let her off till you could find a substitute?" - -"Yes--but I confess it would be a great inconvenience. People wouldn't -take the second one so seriously." - -"She would have to make a sacrifice; she would have to wait till you -should know where you were," Mrs. Gosselin suggested. - -"Yes, but where would _her_ advantage come in?" Mary persisted. - -"Only in the pleasure of charity; the moral satisfaction of doing a -fellow a good turn," said Firminger. - -"You must think people are keen to oblige you!" - -"Ah, but surely I could count on _you_, couldn't I?" the young man -asked. - -Mary had finished cutting her book; she got up and flung it down on the -tea-table. "What a preposterous conversation!" she exclaimed with force, -tossing the words from her as she tossed her book; and, looking round -her vaguely a moment, without meeting Guy Firminger's eye, she walked -away to the house. - -Firminger sat watching her; then he said serenely to her mother: "Why -has our Mary left us?" - -"She has gone to get something, I suppose." - -"What has she gone to get?" - -"A little stick to beat you perhaps." - -"You don't mean I've been objectionable?" - -"Dear, no--I'm joking. One thing is very certain," pursued Mrs. -Gosselin; "that you ought to work--to try to get on exactly as if -nothing could ever happen. Oughtn't you?" She threw off the question -mechanically as her visitor continued silent. - -"I'm sure she doesn't like it!" he exclaimed, without heeding her -appeal. - -"Doesn't like what?" - -"My free play of mind. It's perhaps too much in the key of our old -romps." - -"You're very clever; she always likes _that_," said Mrs. Gosselin. "You -ought to go in for something serious, for something honourable," she -continued, "just as much as if you had nothing at all to look to." - -"Words of wisdom, dear Mrs. Gosselin," Firminger replied, rising slowly -from his relaxed attitude. "But what _have_ I to look to." - -She raised her mild, deep eyes to him as he stood before her--she might -have been a fairy godmother. "Everything!" - -"But you know I can't poison them!" - -"That won't be necessary." - -He looked at her an instant; then with a laugh: "One might think _you_ -would undertake it!" - -"I almost would--for _you_. Good-bye." - -"Take care,--if they _should_ be carried off!" But Mrs. Gosselin only -repeated her good-bye, and the young man departed before Mary had come -back. - - - - -II - - -Nearly two years after Guy Firminger had spent that friendly hour in -Mrs. Gosselin's little garden in Hampshire this far-seeing woman was -enabled (by the return of her son, who at New York, in an English bank, -occupied a position they all rejoiced over--to such great things might -it duly lead), to resume possession, for the season, of the little -London house which her husband had left her to inhabit, but which her -native thrift, in determining her to let it for a term, had converted -into a source of income. Hugh Gosselin, who was thirty years old and at -twenty-three, before his father's death, had been dispatched to America -to exert himself, was understood to be doing very well--so well that his -devotion to the interests of his employers had been rewarded, for the -first time, with a real holiday. He was to remain in England from May to -August, undertaking, as he said, to make it all right if during this -time his mother should occupy (to contribute to his entertainment), the -habitation in Chester Street. He was a small, preoccupied young man, -with a sharpness as acquired as a new hat; he struck his mother and -sister as intensely American. For the first few days after his arrival -they were startled by his intonations, though they admitted that they -had had an escape when he reminded them that he might have brought with -him an accent embodied in a wife. - -"When you do take one," said Mrs. Gosselin, who regarded such an -accident, over there, as inevitable, "you must charge her high for it." - -It was not with this question, however, that the little family in -Chester Street was mainly engaged, but with the last incident in the -extraordinary succession of events which, like a chapter of romance, had -in the course of a few months converted their vague and impecunious -friend into a personage envied and honoured. It was as if a blight had -been cast on all Guy Firminger's hindrances. On the day Hugh Gosselin -sailed from New York the delicate little boy at Bosco had succumbed to -an attack of diphtheria. His father had died of typhoid the previous -winter at Naples; his uncle, a few weeks later, had had a fatal accident -in the hunting-field. So strangely, so rapidly had the situation cleared -up, had his fate and theirs worked for him. Guy had opened his eyes one -morning to an earldom which carried with it a fortune not alone -nominally but really great. Mrs. Gosselin and Mary had not written to -him, but they knew he was at Bosco; he had remained there after the -funeral of the late little lord. Mrs. Gosselin, who heard everything, -had heard somehow that he was behaving with the greatest consideration, -giving the guardians, the trustees, whatever they were called, plenty of -time to do everything. Everything was comparatively simple; in the -absence of collaterals there were so few other people concerned. The -principal relatives were poor Frank Firminger's widow and her girls, who -had seen themselves so near to new honours and comforts. Probably the -girls would expect their cousin Guy to marry one of them, and think it -the least he could decently do; a view the young man himself (if he were -very magnanimous) might possibly embrace. The question would be whether -he would be very magnanimous. These young ladies exhausted in their -three persons the numerous varieties of plainness. On the other hand Guy -Firminger--or Lord Beaupré, as one would have to begin to call him -now--was unmistakably kind. Mrs. Gosselin appealed to her son as to -whether their noble friend were not unmistakably kind. - -"Of course I've known him always, and that time he came out to -America--when was it? four years ago--I saw him every day. I like him -awfully and all that, but since you push me, you know," said Hugh -Gosselin, "I'm bound to say that the first thing to mention in any -description of him would be--if you wanted to be quite correct--that -he's unmistakably selfish." - -"I see--I see," Mrs. Gosselin unblushingly replied. "Of course I know -what you mean," she added in a moment. "But is he any more so than any -one else? Every one's unmistakably selfish." - -"Every one but you and Mary," said the young man. - -"And _you_, dear!" his mother smiled. "But a person may be kind, you -know--mayn't he?--at the same time that he _is_ selfish. There are -different sorts." - -"Different sorts of kindness?" Hugh Gosselin asked with a laugh; and the -inquiry undertaken by his mother occupied them for the moment, demanding -a subtlety of treatment from which they were not conscious of shrinking, -of which rather they had an idea that they were perhaps exceptionally -capable. They came back to the temperate view that Guy would never put -himself out, would probably never do anything great, but might show -himself all the same a delightful member of society. Yes, he was -probably selfish, like other people; but unlike most of them he was, -somehow, amiably, attachingly, sociably, almost lovably selfish. Without -doing anything great he would yet be a great success--a big, pleasant, -gossiping, lounging and, in its way doubtless very splendid, presence. -He would have no ambition, and it was ambition that made selfishness -ugly. Hugh and his mother were sure of this last point until Mary, -before whom the discussion, when it reached this stage, happened to be -carried on, checked them by asking whether that, on the contrary, were -not just what was supposed to make it fine. - -"Oh, he only wants to be comfortable," said her brother; "but he _does_ -want it!" - -"There'll be a tremendous rush for him," Mrs. Gosselin prophesied to her -son. - -"Oh, he'll never marry. It will be too much trouble." - -"It's done here without any trouble--for the men. One sees how long -you've been out of the country." - -"There was a girl in New York whom he might have married--he really -liked her. But he wouldn't turn round for her." - -"Perhaps she wouldn't turn round for _him_," said Mary. - -"I daresay she'll turn round _now_," Mrs. Gosselin rejoined; on which -Hugh mentioned that there was nothing to be feared from her, all her -revolutions had been accomplished. He added that nothing would make any -difference--so intimate was his conviction that Beaupré would preserve -his independence. - -"Then I think he's not so selfish as you say," Mary declared; "or at any -rate one will never know whether he is. Isn't married life the great -chance to show it?" - -"Your father never showed it," said Mrs. Gosselin; and as her children -were silent in presence of this tribute to the departed she added, -smiling: "Perhaps you think that _I_ did!" They embraced her, to -indicate what they thought, and the conversation ended, when she had -remarked that Lord Beaupré was a man who would be perfectly easy to -manage _after_ marriage, with Hugh's exclaiming that this was doubtless -exactly why he wished to keep out of it. - -Such was evidently his wish, as they were able to judge in Chester -Street when he came up to town. He appeared there oftener than was to -have been expected, not taking himself in his new character at all too -seriously to find stray half-hours for old friends. It was plain that he -was going to do just as he liked, that he was not a bit excited or -uplifted by his change of fortune. Mary Gosselin observed that he had no -imagination--she even reproached him with the deficiency to his face; an -incident which showed indeed how little seriously _she_ took him. He had -no idea of playing a part, and yet he would have been clever enough. He -wasn't even systematic about being simple; his simplicity was a series -of accidents and indifferences. Never was a man more conscientiously -superficial. There were matters on which he valued Mrs. Gosselin's -judgment and asked her advice--without, as usually appeared later, ever -taking it; such questions, mainly, as the claims of a predecessor's -servants, and those, in respect to social intercourse, of the -clergyman's family. He didn't like his parson--what was a fellow to do -when he didn't like his parson? What he did like was to talk with Hugh -about American investments, and it was amusing to Hugh, though he tried -not to show his amusement, to find himself looking at Guy Firminger in -the light of capital. To Mary he addressed from the first the oddest -snatches of confidential discourse, rendered in fact, however, by the -levity of his tone, considerably less confidential than in intention. He -had something to tell her that he joked about, yet without admitting -that it was any less important for being laughable. It was neither more -nor less than that Charlotte Firminger, the eldest of his late uncle's -four girls, had designated to him in the clearest manner the person she -considered he ought to marry. She appealed to his sense of justice, she -spoke and wrote, or at any rate she looked and moved, she sighed and -sang, in the name of common honesty. He had had four letters from her -that week, and to his knowledge there were a series of people in London, -people she could bully, whom she had got to promise to take her in for -the season. She was going to be on the spot, she was going to follow him -up. He took his stand on common honesty, but he had a mortal horror of -Charlotte. At the same time, when a girl had a jaw like that and had -marked you--really _marked_ you, mind, you felt your safety oozing away. -He had given them during the past three months, all those terrible -girls, every sort of present that Bond Street could supply: but these -demonstrations had only been held to constitute another pledge. -Therefore what was a fellow to do? Besides, there were other portents; -the air was thick with them, as the sky over battlefields was darkened -by the flight of vultures. They were flocking, the birds of prey, from -every quarter, and every girl in England, by Jove! was going to be -thrown at his head. What had he done to deserve such a fate? He wanted -to stop in England and see all sorts of things through; but how could he -stand there and face such a charge? Yet what good would it do to bolt? -Wherever he should go there would be fifty of them there first. On his -honour he could say that he didn't deserve it; he had never, to his own -sense, been a flirt, such a flirt at least as to have given anyone a -handle. He appealed candidly to Mary Gosselin to know whether his past -conduct justified such penalties. "_Have_ I been a flirt?--have I given -anyone a handle?" he inquired with pathetic intensity. - -She met his appeal by declaring that he had been awful, committing -himself right and left; and this manner of treating his affliction -contributed to the sarcastic publicity (as regarded the little house in -Chester Street) which presently became its natural element. Lord -Beaupré's comical and yet thoroughly grounded view of his danger was -soon a frequent theme among the Gosselins, who however had their own -reasons for not communicating the alarm. They had no motive for -concealing their interest in their old friend, but their allusions to -him among their other friends may be said on the whole to have been -studied. His state of mind recalled of course to Mary and her mother the -queer talk about his prospects that they had had, in the country, that -afternoon on which Mrs. Gosselin had been so strangely prophetic (she -confessed that she had had a flash of divination: the future had been -mysteriously revealed to her), and poor Guy too had seen himself quite -as he was to be. He had seen his nervousness, under inevitable pressure, -deepen to a panic, and he now, in intimate hours, made no attempt to -disguise that a panic had become his portion. It was a fixed idea with -him that he should fall a victim to woven toils, be caught in a trap -constructed with superior science. The science evolved in an -enterprising age by this branch of industry, the manufacture of the trap -matrimonial, he had terrible anecdotes to illustrate; and what had he on -his lips but a scientific term when he declared, as he perpetually did, -that it was his fate to be hypnotised? - -Mary Gosselin reminded him, they each in turn reminded him that his -safeguard was to fall in love: were he once to put himself under that -protection all the mothers and maids in Mayfair would not prevail -against him. He replied that this was just the impossibility; it took -leisure and calmness and opportunity and a free mind to fall in love, -and never was a man less open to such experiences. He was literally -fighting his way. He reminded the girl of his old fancy for pretending -already to have disposed of his hand if he could put that hand on a -young person who should like him well enough to be willing to -participate in the fraud. She would have to place herself in rather a -false position of course--have to take a certain amount of trouble; but -there would after all be a good deal of fun in it (there was always fun -in duping the world,) between the pair themselves, the two happy -comedians. - -"Why should they both be happy?" Mary Gosselin asked. "I understand why -you should; but, frankly, I don't quite grasp the reason of _her_ -pleasure." - -Lord Beaupré, with his sunny human eyes, thought a moment. "Why, for -the lark, as they say, and that sort of thing. I should be awfully nice -to her." - -"She would require indeed to be in want of recreation!" - -"Ah, but I should want a good sort--a quiet, reasonable one, you know!" -he somewhat eagerly interposed. - -"You're too delightful!" Mary Gosselin exclaimed, continuing to laugh. -He thanked her for this appreciation, and she returned to her -point--that she didn't really see the advantage his accomplice could -hope to enjoy as her compensation for extreme disturbance. - -Guy Firminger stared. "But what extreme disturbance?" - -"Why, it would take a lot of time; it might become intolerable." - -"You mean I ought to pay her--to hire her for the season?" - -Mary Gosselin considered him a moment. "Wouldn't marriage come cheaper -at once?" she asked with a quieter smile. - -"You _are_ chaffing me!" he sighed forgivingly. "Of course she would -have to be good-natured enough to pity me." - -"Pity's akin to love. If she were good-natured enough to want so to help -you she'd be good-natured enough to want to marry you. That would be -_her_ idea of help." - -"Would it be _yours_?" Lord Beaupré asked rather eagerly. - -"You're too absurd! You must sail your own boat!" the girl answered, -turning away. - -That evening at dinner she stated to her companions that she had never -seen a fatuity so dense, so serene, so preposterous as his lordship's. - -"Fatuity, my dear! what do you mean?" her mother inquired. - -"Oh, mamma, you know perfectly." Mary Gosselin spoke with a certain -impatience. - -"If you mean he's conceited I'm bound to say I don't agree with you," -her brother observed. "He's too indifferent to everyone's opinion for -that." - -"He's not vain, he's not proud, he's not pompous," said Mrs. Gosselin. - -Mary was silent a moment. "He takes more things for granted than anyone -I ever saw." - -"What sort of things?" - -"Well, one's interest in his affairs." - -"With old friends surely a gentleman may." - -"Of course," said Hugh Gosselin, "old friends have in turn the right to -take for granted a corresponding interest on _his_ part." - -"Well, who could be nicer to us than he is or come to see us oftener?" -his mother asked. - -"He comes exactly for the purpose I speak of--to talk about himself," -said Mary. - -"There are thousands of girls who would be delighted with his talk," -Mrs. Gosselin returned. - -"We agreed long ago that he's intensely selfish," the girl went on; "and -if I speak of it to-day it's not because that in itself is anything of a -novelty. What I'm freshly struck with is simply that he more shamelessly -shows it." - -"He shows it, exactly," said Hugh; "he shows all there is. There it is, -on the surface; there are not depths of it underneath." - -"He's not hard," Mrs. Gosselin contended; "he's not impervious." - -"Do you mean he's soft?" Mary asked. - -"I mean he's yielding." And Mrs. Gosselin, with considerable expression, -looked across at her daughter. She added, before they rose from dinner, -that poor Beaupré had plenty of difficulties and that she thought, for -her part, they ought in common loyalty to do what they could to assist -him. - -For a week nothing more passed between the two ladies on the subject of -their noble friend, and in the course of this week they had the -amusement of receiving in Chester Street a member of Hugh's American -circle, Mr. Bolton-Brown, a young man from New York. He was a person -engaged in large affairs, for whom Hugh Gosselin professed the highest -regard, from whom in New York he had received much hospitality, and for -whose advent he had from the first prepared his companions. Mrs. -Gosselin begged the amiable stranger to stay with them, and if she -failed to overcome his hesitation it was because his hotel was near at -hand and he should be able to see them often. It became evident that he -would do so, and, to the two ladies, as the days went by, equally -evident that no objection to such a relation was likely to arise. Mr. -Bolton-Brown was delightfully fresh; the most usual expressions acquired -on his lips a wellnigh comical novelty, the most superficial sentiments, -in the look with which he accompanied them, a really touching sincerity. -He was unmarried and good-looking, clever and natural, and if he was not -very rich was at least very free-handed. He literally strewed the path -of the ladies in Chester Street with flowers, he choked them with French -confectionery. Hugh, however, who was often rather mysterious on -monetary questions, placed in a light sufficiently clear the fact that -his friend had in Wall Street (they knew all about Wall Street), -improved each shining hour. They introduced him to Lord Beaupré, who -thought him "tremendous fun," as Hugh said, and who immediately declared -that the four must spend a Sunday at Bosco a week or two later. The date -of this visit was fixed--Mrs. Gosselin had uttered a comprehensive -acceptance; but after Guy Firminger had taken leave of them (this had -been his first appearance since the odd conversation with Mary), our -young lady confided to her mother that she should not be able to join -the little party. She expressed the conviction that it would be all that -was essential if Mrs. Gosselin should go with the two others. On being -pressed to communicate the reason of this aloofness Mary was able to -give no better one than that she never had cared for Bosco. - -"What makes you hate him so?" her mother presently broke out in a tone -which brought the red to the girl's cheek. Mary denied that she -entertained for Lord Beaupré any sentiment so intense; to which Mrs. -Gosselin rejoined with some sternness and, no doubt, considerable -wisdom: "Look out what you do then, or you'll be thought by everyone to -be in love with him!" - - - - -III - - -I know not whether it was this danger--that of appearing to be moved to -extremes--that weighed with Mary Gosselin; at any rate when the day -arrived she had decided to be perfectly colourless and take her share of -Lord Beaupré's hospitality. On perceiving that the house, when with her -companions she reached it, was full of visitors, she consoled herself -with the sense that such a share would be of the smallest. She even -wondered whether its smallness might not be caused in some degree by the -sufficiently startling presence, in this stronghold of the single life, -of Maud Ashbury and her mother. It was true that during the Saturday -evening she never saw their host address an observation to them; but she -was struck, as she had been struck before, with the girl's cold and -magnificent beauty. It was very well to say she had "gone off"; she was -still handsomer than anyone else. She had failed in everything she had -tried; the campaign undertaken with so much energy against young Raddle -had been conspicuously disastrous. Young Raddle had married his -grandmother, or a person who might have filled such an office, and Maud -was a year older, a year more disappointed and a year more ridiculous. -Nevertheless one could scarcely believe that a creature with such -advantages would always fail, though indeed the poor girl was stupid -enough to be a warning. Perhaps it would be at Bosco, or with the master -of Bosco, that fate had appointed her to succeed. Except Mary herself -she was the only young unmarried woman on the scene, and Mary glowed -with the generous sense of not being a competitor. She felt as much out -of the question as the blooming wives, the heavy matrons, who formed the -rest of the female contingent. Before the evening closed, however, her -host, who, she saw, was delightful in his own house, mentioned to her -that he had a couple of guests who had not been invited. - -"Not invited?" - -"They drove up to my door as they might have done to an inn. They asked -for rooms and complained of those that were given them. Don't pretend -not to know who they are." - -"Do you mean the Ashburys? How amusing!" - -"Don't laugh; it freezes my blood." - -"Do you really mean you're afraid of them?" - -"I tremble like a leaf. Some monstrous ineluctable fate seems to look at -me out of their eyes." - -"That's because you secretly admire Maud. How can you help it? She's -extremely good-looking, and if you get rid of her mother she'll become -a very nice girl." - -"It's an odious thing, no doubt, to say about a young person under one's -own roof, but I don't think I ever saw any one who happened to be less -to my taste," said Guy Firminger. "I don't know why I don't turn them -out even now." - -Mary persisted in sarcasm. "Perhaps you can make her have a worse time -by letting her stay." - -"_Please_ don't laugh," her interlocutor repeated. "Such a fact as I -have mentioned to you seems to me to speak volumes--to show you what my -life is." - -"Oh, your life, your life!" Mary Gosselin murmured, with her mocking -note. - -"Don't you agree that at such a rate it may easily become impossible?" - -"Many people would change with you. I don't see what there is for you to -do but to bear your cross!" - -"That's easy talk!" Lord Beaupré sighed. - -"Especially from me, do you mean? How do you know I don't bear mine?" - -"Yours?" he asked vaguely. - -"How do you know that _I_'m not persecuted, that _my_ footsteps are not -dogged, that _my_ life isn't a burden?" - -They were walking in the old gardens, the proprietor of which, at this, -stopped short. "Do you mean by fellows who want to marry you?" - -His tone produced on his companion's part an irrepressible peal of -hilarity; but she walked on as she exclaimed: "You speak as if there -couldn't _be_ such madmen!" - -"Of course such a charming girl must be made up to," Guy Firminger -conceded as he overtook her. - -"I don't speak of it; I keep quiet about it." - -"You realise then, at any rate, that it's all horrid when you don't care -for them." - -"I suffer in silence, because I know there are worse tribulations. It -seems to me you ought to remember that," Mary continued. "Your cross is -small compared with your crown. You've everything in the world that most -people most desire, and I'm bound to say I think your life is made very -comfortable for you. If you're oppressed by the quantity of interest and -affection you inspire you ought simply to make up your mind to bear up -and be cheerful under it." - -Lord Beaupré received this admonition with perfect good humour; he -professed himself able to do it full justice. He remarked that he would -gladly give up some of his material advantages to be a little less -badgered, and that he had been quite content with his former -insignificance. No doubt, however, such annoyances were the essential -drawbacks of ponderous promotions; one had to pay for everything. Mary -was quite right to rebuke him; her own attitude, as a young woman much -admired, was a lesson to his irritability. She cut this appreciation -short, speaking of something else; but a few minutes later he broke out -irrelevantly: "Why, if you are hunted as well as I, that dodge I -proposed to you would be just the thing for us _both_!" He had evidently -been reasoning it out. - -Mary Gosselin was silent at first; she only paused gradually in their -walk at a point where four long alleys met. In the centre of the circle, -on a massive pedestal, rose in Italian bronze a florid, complicated -image, so that the place made a charming old-world picture. The grounds -of Bosco were stately without stiffness and full of marble terraces and -misty avenues. The fountains in particular were royal. The girl had told -her mother in London that she disliked this fine residence, but she now -looked round her with a vague pleased sigh, holding up her glass (she -had been condemned to wear one, with a long handle, since she was -fifteen), to consider the weather-stained garden group. "What a perfect -place of its kind!" she musingly exclaimed. - -"Wouldn't it really be just the thing?" Lord Beaupré went on, with the -eagerness of his idea. - -"Wouldn't what be just the thing?" - -"Why, the defensive alliance we've already talked of. You wanted to know -the good it would do _you_. Now you see the good it would do you!" - -"I don't like practical jokes," said Mary. "The remedy's worse than the -disease," she added; and she began to follow one of the paths that took -the direction of the house. - -Poor Lord Beaupré was absurdly in love with his invention; he had all -an inventor's importunity. He kept up his attempt to place his "dodge" -in a favourable light, in spite of a further objection from his -companion, who assured him that it was one of those contrivances which -break down in practice in just the proportion in which they make a -figure in theory. At last she said: "I was not sincere just now when I -told you I'm worried. I'm not worried!" - -"They _don't_ buzz about you?" Guy Firminger asked. - -She hesitated an instant. "They buzz about me; but at bottom it's -flattering and I don't mind it. Now please drop the subject." - -He dropped the subject, though not without congratulating her on the -fact that, unlike his infirm self, she could keep her head and her -temper. His infirmity found a trap laid for it before they had proceeded -twenty yards, as was proved by his sudden exclamation of horror. "Good -Heavens--if there isn't Lottie!" - -Mary perceived, in effect, in the distance a female figure coming -towards them over a stretch of lawn, and she simultaneously saw, as a -gentleman passed from behind a clump of shrubbery, that it was not -unattended. She recognized Charlotte Firminger, and she also -distinguished the gentleman. She was moved to larger mirth at the dismay -expressed by poor Firminger, but she was able to articulate: "Walking -with Mr. Brown." - -Lord Beaupré stopped again before they were joined by the pair. "Does -_he_ buzz about you?" - -"Mercy, what questions you ask!" his companion exclaimed. - -"Does he--_please_?" the young man repeated with odd intensity. - -Mary looked at him an instant; she was puzzled by the deep annoyance -that had flushed through the essential good-humour of his face. Then she -saw that this annoyance had exclusive reference to poor Charlotte; so -that it left her free to reply, with another laugh: "Well, yes--he does. -But you know I like it!" - -"I don't, then!" Before she could have asked him, even had she wished -to, in what manner such a circumstance concerned him, he added with his -droll agitation: "I never invited _her_, either! Don't let her get at -me!" - -"What can I do?" Mary demanded as the others advanced. - -"Please take her away; keep her yourself! I'll take the American, I'll -keep _him_," he murmured, inconsequently, as a bribe. - -"But I don't object to him." - -"Do you like him so much?" - -"Very much indeed," the girl replied. - -The reply was perhaps lost upon her interlocutor, whose eye now fixed -itself gloomily on the dauntless Charlotte. As Miss Firminger came -nearer he exclaimed almost loud enough for her to hear: "I think I shall -_murder_ her some day!" - -Mary Gosselin's first impression had been that, in his panic, under the -empire of that fixed idea to which he confessed himself subject, he -attributed to his kinswoman machinations and aggressions of which she -was incapable; an impression that might have been confirmed by this -young lady's decorous placidity, her passionless eyes, her -expressionless cheeks and colourless tones. She was ugly, yet she was -orthodox; she was not what writers of books called intense. But after -Mary, to oblige their host, had tried, successfully enough, to be -crafty, had drawn her on to stroll a little in advance of the two -gentlemen, she became promptly aware, by the mystical influence of -propinquity, that Miss Firminger was indeed full of views, of a purpose -single, simple and strong, which gave her the effect of a person -carrying with a stiff, steady hand, with eyes fixed and lips compressed, -a cup charged to the brim. She had driven over to lunch, driven from -somewhere in the neighbourhood; she had picked up some weak woman as an -escort. Mary, though she knew the neighbourhood, failed to recognize her -base of operations, and, as Charlotte was not specific, ended by -suspecting that, far from being entertained by friends, she had put up -at an inn and hired a fly. This suspicion startled her; it gave her for -the first time something of the measure of the passions engaged, and she -wondered to what the insecurity complained of by Guy might lead. -Charlotte, on arriving, had gone through a part of the house in quest of -its master (the servants being unable to tell her where he was), and she -had finally come upon Mr. Bolton-Brown, who was looking at old books in -the library. He had placed himself at her service, as if he had been -trained immediately to recognize in such a case his duty, and informing -her that he believed Lord Beaupré to be in the grounds, had come out -with her to help to find him. Lottie Firminger questioned her companion -about this accommodating person; she intimated that he was rather odd -but rather nice. Mary mentioned to her that Lord Beaupré thought highly -of him; she believed they were going somewhere together. At this Miss -Firminger turned round to look for them, but they had already -disappeared, and the girl became ominously dumb. - -Mary wondered afterwards what profit she could hope to derive from such -proceedings; they struck her own sense, naturally, as disreputable and -desperate. She was equally unable to discover the compensation they -offered, in another variety, to poor Maud Ashbury, whom Lord Beaupré, -the greater part of the day, neglected as conscientiously as he -neglected his cousin. She asked herself if he should be blamed, and -replied that the others should be blamed first. He got rid of Charlotte -somehow after tea; she had to fall back to her mysterious lines. Mary -knew this method would have been detestable to him--he hated to force -his friendly nature; she was sorry for him and wished to lose sight of -him. She wished not to be mixed up even indirectly with his -tribulations, and the fevered faces of the Ashburys were particularly -dreadful to her. She spent as much of the long summer afternoon as -possible out of the house, which indeed on such an occasion emptied -itself of most of its inmates. Mary Gosselin asked her brother to join -her in a devious ramble; she might have had other society, but she was -in a mood to prefer his. These two were "great chums," and they had been -separated so long that they had arrears of talk to make up. They had -been at Bosco more than once, and though Hugh Gosselin said that the -land of the free (which he had assured his sister was even more enslaved -than dear old England) made one forget there were such spots on earth, -they both remembered, a couple of miles away, a little ancient church to -which the walk across the fields would be the right thing. They talked -of other things as they went, and among them they talked of Mr. -Bolton-Brown, in regard to whom Hugh, as scantily addicted to enthusiasm -as to bursts of song (he was determined not to be taken in), became, in -commendation, almost lyrical. Mary asked what he had done with his -paragon, and he replied that he believed him to have gone out stealthily -to sketch: they might come across him. He was extraordinarily clever at -water-colours, but haunted with the fear that the public practice of -such an art on Sunday was viewed with disfavour in England. Mary -exclaimed that this was the respectable fact, and when her brother -ridiculed the idea she told him she had already noticed he had lost all -sense of things at home, so that Mr. Bolton-Brown was apparently a -better Englishman than he. "He is indeed--he's awfully artificial!" Hugh -returned; but it must be added that in spite of this rigour their -American friend, when they reached the goal of their walk, was to be -perceived in an irregular attitude in the very churchyard. He was -perched on an old flat tomb, with a box of colours beside him and a -sketch half completed. Hugh asserted that this exercise was the only -thing that Mr. Bolton-Brown really cared for, but the young man -protested against the imputation in the face of an achievement so -modest. He showed his sketch to Mary however, and it consoled her for -not having kept up her own experiments; she never could make her trees -so leafy. He had found a lovely bit on the other side of the hill, a bit -he should like to come back to, and he offered to show it to his -friends. They were on the point of starting with him to look at it when -Hugh Gosselin, taking out his watch, remembered the hour at which he had -promised to be at the house again to give his mother, who wanted a -little mild exercise, his arm. His sister, at this, said she would go -back with him; but Bolton-Brown interposed an earnest inquiry. Mightn't -she let Hugh keep his appointment and let _him_ take her over the hill -and bring her home? - -"Happy thought--_do_ that!" said Hugh, with a crudity that showed the -girl how completely he had lost his English sense. He perceived however -in an instant that she was embarrassed, whereupon he went on: "My dear -child, I've walked with girls so often in America that we really ought -to let poor Brown walk with one in England." I know not if it was the -effect of this plea or that of some further eloquence of their friend; -at any rate Mary Gosselin in the course of another minute had accepted -the accident of Hugh's secession, had seen him depart with an injunction -to her to render it clear to poor Brown that he had made quite a -monstrous request. As she went over the hill with her companion she -reflected that since she had granted the request it was not in her -interest to pretend she had gone out of her way. She wondered moreover -whether her brother had wished to throw them together: it suddenly -occurred to her that the whole incident might have been prearranged. The -idea made her a little angry with Hugh; it led her however to entertain -no resentment against the other party (if party Mr. Brown had been) to -the transaction. He told her all the delight that certain sweet old -corners of rural England excited in his mind, and she liked him for -hovering near some of her own secrets. - -Hugh Gosselin meanwhile, at Bosco, strolling on the terrace with his -mother, who preferred walks that were as slow as conspiracies and had -had much to say to him about his extraordinary indiscretion, repeated -over and over (it ended by irritating her), that as he himself had been -out for hours with American girls it was only fair to let their friend -have a turn with an English one. - -"Pay as much as you like, but don't pay with your sister!" Mrs. Gosselin -replied; while Hugh submitted that it was just his sister who was -required to make the payment _his_. She turned his logic to easy scorn -and she waited on the terrace till she had seen the two explorers -reappear. When the ladies went to dress for dinner she expressed to her -daughter her extreme disapproval of such conduct, and Mary did nothing -more to justify herself than to exclaim at first "Poor dear man!" and -then to say "I was afraid you wouldn't like it." There were reservations -in her silence that made Mrs. Gosselin uneasy, and she was glad that at -dinner Mr. Bolton-Brown had to take in Mrs. Ashbury: it served him so -right. This arrangement had in Mrs. Gosselin's eyes the added merit of -serving Mrs. Ashbury right. She was more uneasy than ever when after -dinner, in the drawing-room, she saw Mary sit for a period on the same -small sofa with the culpable American. This young couple leaned back -together familiarly, and their conversation had the air of being -desultory without being in the least difficult. At last she quitted her -place and went over to them, remarking to Mr. Bolton-Brown that she -wanted him to come and talk a bit to _her_. She conducted him to another -part of the room, which was vast and animated by scattered groups, and -held him there very persuasively, quite maternally, till the approach of -the hour at which the ladies would exchange looks and murmur -good-nights. She made him talk about America, though he wanted to talk -about England, and she judged that she gave him an impression of the -kindest attention, though she was really thinking, in alternation, of -three important things. One of these was a circumstance of which she had -become conscious only just after sitting down with him--the prolonged -absence of Lord Beaupré from the drawing-room; the second was the -absence, equally marked (to her imagination) of Maud Ashbury; the third -was a matter different altogether. "England gives one such a sense of -immemorial continuity, something that drops like a plummet-line into the -past," said the young American, ingeniously exerting himself while Mrs. -Gosselin, rigidly contemporaneous, strayed into deserts of conjecture. -Had the fact that their host was out of the room any connection with the -fact that the most beautiful, even though the most suicidal, of his -satellites had quitted it? Yet if poor Guy was taking a turn by -starlight on the terrace with the misguided girl, what had he done with -his resentment at her invasion and by what inspiration of despair had -Maud achieved such a triumph? The good lady studied Mrs. Ashbury's face -across the room; she decided that triumph, accompanied perhaps with a -shade of nervousness, looked out of her insincere eyes. An intelligent -consciousness of ridicule was at any rate less present in them than -ever. While Mrs. Gosselin had her infallible finger on the pulse of the -occasion one of the doors opened to readmit Lord Beaupré, who struck -her as pale and who immediately approached Mrs. Ashbury with a remark -evidently intended for herself alone. It led this lady to rise with a -movement of dismay and, after a question or two, leave the room. Lord -Beaupré left it again in her company. Mr. Bolton-Brown had also noticed -the incident; his conversation languished and he asked Mrs. Gosselin if -she supposed anything had happened. She turned it over a moment and then -she said: "Yes, something will have happened to Miss Ashbury." - -"What do you suppose? Is she ill?" - -"I don't know; we shall see. They're capable of anything." - -"Capable of anything?" - -"I've guessed it,--she wants to have a grievance." - -"A grievance?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was mystified. - -"Of course you don't understand; how should you? Moreover it doesn't -signify. But I'm so vexed with them (he's a very old friend of ours) -that really, though I dare say I'm indiscreet, I can't speak civilly of -them." - -"Miss Ashbury's a wonderful type," said the young American. - -This remark appeared to irritate his companion. "I see perfectly what -has happened; she has made a scene." - -"A scene?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was terribly out of it. - -"She has tried to be injured--to provoke him, I mean, to some act of -impatience, to some failure of temper, of courtesy. She has asked him if -he wishes her to leave the house at midnight, and he may have -answered----But no, he wouldn't!" Mrs. Gosselin suppressed the wild -supposition. - -"How you read it! She looks so quiet." - -"Her mother has coached her, and (I won't pretend to say _exactly_ what -has happened) they've done, somehow, what they wanted; they've got him -to do something to them that he'll have to make up for." - -"What an evolution of ingenuity!" the young man laughed. - -"It often answers." - -"Will it in this case?" - -Mrs. Gosselin was silent a moment. "It _may_." - -"Really, you think?" - -"I mean it might if it weren't for something else." - -"I'm too judicious to ask what that is." - -"I'll tell you when we're back in town," said Mrs. Gosselin, getting up. - -Lord Beaupré was restored to them, and the ladies prepared to withdraw. -Before she went to bed Mrs. Gosselin asked him if there had been -anything the matter with Maud; to which he replied with abysmal -blankness (she had never seen him wear just that face) that he was -afraid Miss Ashbury was ill. She proved in fact in the morning too -unwell to return to London: a piece of news communicated to Mrs. -Gosselin at breakfast. - -"She'll have to stay; I can't turn her out of the house," said Guy -Firminger. - -"Very well; let her stay her fill!" - -"I wish you would stay too," the young man went on. - -"Do you mean to nurse her?" - -"No, her mother must do that. I mean to keep me company." - -"_You_? You're not going up?" - -"I think I had better wait over to-day, or long enough to see what's the -matter." - -"Don't you _know_ what's the matter?" - -He was silent a moment. "I may have been nasty last night." - -"You have compunctions? You're too good-natured." - -"I dare say I hit rather wild. It will look better for me to stop over -twenty-four hours." - -Mrs. Gosselin fixed her eyes on a distant object. "Let no one ever say -you're selfish!" - -"_Does_ anyone ever say it?" - -"You're too generous, you're too soft, you're too foolish. But if it -will give you any pleasure Mary and I will wait till to-morrow." - -"And Hugh, too, won't he, and Bolton-Brown?" - -"Hugh will do as he pleases. But don't keep the American." - -"Why not? He's all right." - -"That's why I want him to go," said Mrs. Gosselin, who could treat a -matter with candour, just as she could treat it with humour, at the -right moment. - -The party at Bosco broke up and there was a general retreat to town. -Hugh Gosselin pleaded pressing business, he accompanied the young -American to London. His mother and sister came back on the morrow, and -Bolton-Brown went in to see them, as he often did, at tea-time. He found -Mrs. Gosselin alone in the drawing-room, and she took such a convenient -occasion to mention to him, what she had withheld on the eve of their -departure from Bosco, the reason why poor Maud Ashbury's frantic assault -on the master of that property would be vain. He was greatly surprised, -the more so that Hugh hadn't told him. Mrs. Gosselin replied that Hugh -didn't know: she had not seen him all day and it had only just come out. -Hugh's friend at any rate was deeply interested, and his interest took -for several minutes the form of throbbing silence. At last Mrs. Gosselin -heard a sound below, on which she said quickly: "That's Hugh--I'll tell -him now!" She left the room with the request that their visitor would -wait for Mary, who would be down in a moment. During the instants that -he spent alone the visitor lurched, as if he had been on a deck in a -blow, to the window, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, -staring vacantly into Chester Street; then, turning away, he gave -himself, with an odd ejaculation, an impatient shake which had the -effect of enabling him to meet Mary Gosselin composedly enough when she -came in. It took her mother apparently some time to communicate the news -to Hugh, so that Bolton-Brown had a considerable margin for nervousness -and hesitation before he could say to the girl, abruptly, but with an -attempt at a voice properly gay: "You must let me very heartily -congratulate you!" - -Mary stared. "On what?" - -"On your engagement." - -"My engagement?" - -"To Lord Beaupré." - -Mary Gosselin looked strange; she coloured. "Who told you I'm engaged?" - -"Your mother--just now." - -"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, turning away. She went and rang the bell for -fresh tea, rang it with noticeable force. But she said "Thank you very -much!" before the servant came. - - - - -IV - - -Bolton-Brown did something that evening toward disseminating the news: -he told it to the first people he met socially after leaving Chester -Street; and this although he had to do himself a certain violence in -speaking. He would have preferred to hold his peace; therefore if he -resisted his inclination it was for an urgent purpose. This purpose was -to prove to himself that he didn't mind. A perfect indifference could be -for him the only result of any understanding Mary Gosselin might arrive -at with anyone, and he wanted to be more and more conscious of his -indifference. He was aware indeed that it required demonstration, and -this was why he was almost feverishly active. He could mentally concede -at least that he had been surprised, for he had suspected nothing at -Bosco. When a fellow was attentive in America everyone knew it, and -judged by this standard Lord Beaupré made no show: how otherwise should -_he_ have achieved that sweet accompanied ramble? Everything at any rate -was lucid now, except perhaps a certain ambiguity in Hugh Gosselin, who -on coming into the drawing-room with his mother had looked flushed and -grave and had stayed only long enough to kiss Mary and go out again. -There had been nothing effusive in the scene; but then there was nothing -effusive in any English scene. This helped to explain why Miss Gosselin -had been so blank during the minutes she spent with him before her -mother came back. - -He himself wanted to cultivate tranquillity, and he felt that he did so -the next day in not going again to Chester Street. He went instead to -the British Museum, where he sat quite like an elderly gentleman, with -his hands crossed on the top of his stick and his eyes fixed on an -Assyrian bull. When he came away, however, it was with the resolution to -move briskly; so that he walked westward the whole length of Oxford -Street and arrived at the Marble Arch. He stared for some minutes at -this monument, as in the national collection he had stared at even less -intelligible ones; then brushing away the apprehension that he should -meet two persons riding together, he passed into the park. He didn't -care a straw whom he met. He got upon the grass and made his way to the -southern expanse, and when he reached the Row he dropped into a chair, -rather tired, to watch the capering procession of riders. He watched it -with a lustreless eye, for what he seemed mainly to extract from it was -a vivification of his disappointment. He had had a hope that he should -not be forced to leave London without inducing Mary Gosselin to ride -with him; but that prospect failed, for what he had accomplished in the -British Museum was the determination to go to Paris. He tried to think -of the attractions supposed to be evoked by that name, and while he was -so engaged he recognised that a gentleman on horseback, close to the -barrier of the Row, was making a sign to him. The gentleman was Lord -Beaupré, who had pulled up his horse and whose sign the young American -lost no time in obeying. He went forward to speak to his late host, but -during the instant of the transit he was able both to observe that Mary -Gosselin was not in sight and to ask himself why she was not. She rode -with her brother; why then didn't she ride with her future husband? It -was singular at such a moment to see her future husband disporting -himself alone. This personage conversed a few moments with Bolton-Brown, -said it was too hot to ride, but that he ought to be mounted (_he_ would -give him a mount if he liked) and was on the point of turning away when -his interlocutor succumbed to the temptation to put his modesty to the -test. - -"Good-bye, but let me congratulate you first," said Bolton-Brown. - -"Congratulate me? On what?" His look, his tone were very much what Mary -Gosselin's had been. - -"Why, on your engagement. Haven't you heard of it?" - -Lord Beaupré stared a moment while his horse shifted uneasily. Then he -laughed and said: "Which of them do you mean?" - -"There's only one I know anything about. To Miss Gosselin," Brown added, -after a puzzled pause. - -"Oh yes, I see--thanks so much!" With this, letting his horse go, Lord -Beaupré broke off, while Bolton-Brown stood looking after him and -saying to himself that perhaps he _didn't_ know! The chapter of English -oddities was long. - -But on the morrow the announcement was in "The Morning Post," and that -surely made it authentic. It was doubtless only superficially singular -that Guy Firminger should have found himself unable to achieve a call in -Chester Street until this journal had been for several hours in -circulation. He appeared there just before luncheon, and the first -person who received him was Mrs. Gosselin. He had always liked her, -finding her infallible on the question of behaviour; but he was on this -occasion more than ever struck with her ripe astuteness, her independent -wisdom. - -"I knew what you wanted, I knew what you needed, I knew the subject on -which you had pressed her," the good lady said; "and after Sunday I -found myself really haunted with your dangers. There was danger in the -air at Bosco, in your own defended house; it seemed to me too monstrous. -I said to myself 'We _can_ help him, poor dear, and we _must_. It's the -least one can do for so old and so good a friend.' I decided what to do: -I simply put this other story about. In London that always answers. I -knew that Mary pitied you really as much as I do, and that what she saw -at Bosco had been a revelation--had at any rate brought your situation -home to her. Yet of course she would be shy about saying out for -herself: 'Here I am--I'll do what you want.' The thing was for me to say -it _for_ her; so I said it first to that chattering American. He -repeated it to several others, and there you are! I just forced her hand -a little, but it's all right. All she has to do is not to contradict it. -It won't be any trouble and you'll be comfortable. That will be our -reward!" smiled Mrs. Gosselin. - -"Yes, all she has to do is not to contradict it," Lord Beaupré replied, -musing a moment. "It _won't_ be any trouble," he added, "and I _hope_ I -shall be comfortable." He thanked Mrs. Gosselin formally and liberally, -and expressed all his impatience to assure Mary herself of his deep -obligation to her; upon which his hostess promised to send her daughter -to him on the instant: she would go and call her, so that they might be -alone. Before Mrs. Gosselin left him however she touched on one or two -points that had their little importance. Guy Firminger had asked for -Hugh, but Hugh had gone to the City, and his mother mentioned candidly -that he didn't take part in the game. She even disclosed his reason: he -thought there was a want of dignity in it. Lord Beaupré stared at this -and after a moment exclaimed: "Dignity? Dignity be hanged! One must save -one's life!" - -"Yes, but the point poor Hugh makes is that one must save it by the use -of one's _own_ wits, or one's _own_ arms and legs. But do you know what -I said to him?" Mrs. Gosselin continued. - -"Something very clever, I daresay." - -"That if _we_ were drowning you'd be the very first to jump in. And we -may fall overboard yet!" Fidgeting there with his hands in his pockets -Lord Beaupré gave a laugh at this, but assured her that there was -nothing in the world for which they mightn't count upon him. None the -less she just permitted herself another warning, a warning, it is true, -that was in his own interest, a reminder of a peril that he ought -beforehand to look in the face. Wasn't there always the chance--just the -bare chance--that a girl in Mary's position would, in the event, decline -to let him off, decline to release him even on the day he should wish to -marry? She wasn't speaking of Mary, but there were of course girls who -would play him that trick. Guy Firminger considered this contingency; -then he declared that it wasn't a question of 'girls,' it was simply a -question of dear old Mary! If _she_ should wish to hold him, so much the -better: he would do anything in the world that she wanted. "Don't let us -dwell on such vulgarities; but I had it on my conscience!" Mrs. Gosselin -wound up. - -She left him, but at the end of three minutes Mary came in, and the -first thing she said was: "Before you speak a word, please understand -this, that it's wholly mamma's doing. I hadn't dreamed of it, but she -suddenly began to tell people." - -"It was charming of her, and it's charming of you!" the visitor cried. - -"It's not charming of any one, I think," said Mary Gosselin, looking at -the carpet. "It's simply idiotic." - -"Don't be nasty about it. It will be tremendous fun." - -"I've only consented because mamma says we owe it to you," the girl went -on. - -"Never mind your reason--the end justifies the means. I can never -thank you enough nor tell you what a weight it lifts off my shoulders. -Do you know I feel the difference already?--a peace that passeth -understanding!" Mary replied that this was childish; how could such a -feeble fiction last? At the very best it could live but an hour, and -then he would be no better off than before. It would bristle moreover -with difficulties and absurdities; it would be so much more trouble than -it was worth. She reminded him that so ridiculous a service had never -been asked of any girl, and at this he seemed a little struck; he said: -"Ah, well, if it's positively disagreeable to you we'll instantly drop -the idea. But I--I thought you really liked me enough----!" She turned -away impatiently, and he went on to argue imperturbably that she had -always treated him in the kindest way in the world. He added that the -worst was over, the start, they were off: the thing would be in all the -evening papers. Wasn't it much simpler to accept it? That was all they -would have to do; and all _she_ would have to do would be not to gainsay -it and to smile and thank people when she was congratulated. She would -have to _act_ a little, but that would just be part of the fun. Oh, he -hadn't the shadow of a scruple about taking the world in; the world -deserved it richly, and she couldn't deny that this was what she had -felt for him, that she had really been moved to compassion. He grew -eloquent and charged her with having recognised in his predicament a -genuine motive for charity. Their little plot would last what it -could--it would be a part of their amusement to _make_ it last. Even if -it should be but a thing of a day there would have been always so much -gained. But they would be ingenious, they would find ways, they would -have no end of sport. - -"_You_ must be ingenious; I can't," said Mary. "If people scarcely ever -see us together they'll guess we're trying to humbug them." - -"But they _will_ see us together. We _are_ together. We've been -together--I mean we've seen a lot of each other--all our lives." - -"Ah, not _that_ way!" - -"Oh, trust me to work it right!" cried the young man, whose imagination -had now evidently begun to glow in the air of their pious fraud. - -"You'll find it a dreadful bore," said Mary Gosselin. - -"Then I'll drop it, don't you see? And _you_'ll drop it, of course, the -moment _you_'ve had enough," Lord Beaupré punctually added. "But as -soon as you begin to realise what a lot of good you do me you won't -_want_ to drop it. That is if you're what I take you for!" laughed his -lordship. - -If a third person had been present at this conversation--and there was -nothing in it surely that might not have been spoken before a trusty -listener--that person would perhaps have thought, from the immediate -expression of Mary Gosselin's face, that she was on the point of -exclaiming "You take me for too big a fool!" No such ungracious words in -fact however passed her lips; she only said after an instant: "What -reason do you propose to give, on the day you need one, for our -rupture?" - -Her interlocutor stared. "To you, do you mean?" - -"_I_ sha'n't ask you for one. I mean to other people." - -"Oh, I'll tell them you're sick of me. I'll put everything on you, and -you'll put everything on me." - -"You _have_ worked it out!" Mary exclaimed. - -"Oh, I shall be intensely considerate." - -"Do you call that being considerate--publicly accusing me?" - -Guy Firminger stared again. "Why, isn't that the reason _you_'ll give?" - -She looked at him an instant. "I won't tell you the reason I shall -give." - -"Oh, I shall learn it from others." - -"I hope you'll like it when you do!" said Mary, with sudden gaiety; and -she added frankly though kindly the hope that he might soon light upon -some young person who would really meet his requirements. He replied -that he shouldn't be in a hurry--that was now just the comfort; and she, -as if thinking over to the end the list of arguments against his clumsy -contrivance, broke out: "And of course you mustn't dream of giving me -anything--any tokens or presents." - -"Then it won't look natural." - -"That's exactly what I say. You can't make it deceive anybody." - -"I _must_ give you something--something that people can see. There must -be some evidence! You can simply put my offerings away after a little -and give them back." But about this Mary was visibly serious; she -declared that she wouldn't touch anything that came from his hand, and -she spoke in such a tone that he coloured a little and hastened to say: -"Oh, all right, I shall be thoroughly careful!" This appeared to -complete their understanding; so that after it was settled that for the -deluded world they were engaged, there was obviously nothing for him to -do but to go. He therefore shook hands with her very gratefully and -departed. - - - - -V - - -He was able promptly to assure his accomplice that their little plot was -working to a charm; it already made such a difference for the better. -Only a week had elapsed, but he felt quite another man; his life was no -longer spent in springing to arms and he had ceased to sleep in his -boots. The ghost of his great fear was laid, he could follow out his -inclinations and attend to his neglected affairs. The news had been a -bomb in the enemy's camp, and there were plenty of blank faces to -testify to the confusion it had wrought. Every one was "sold" and every -one made haste to clap him on the back. Lottie Firminger only had -written in terms of which no notice could be taken, though of course he -expected, every time he came in, to find her waiting in his hall. Her -mother was coming up to town and he should have the family at his ears; -but, taking them as a single body, he could manage them, and that was a -detail. The Ashburys had remained at Bosco till that establishment was -favoured with the tidings that so nearly concerned it (they were -communicated to Maud's mother by the housekeeper), and then the -beautiful sufferer had found in her defeat strength to seek another -asylum. The two ladies had departed for a destination unknown; he didn't -think they had turned up in London. Guy Firminger averred that there -were precious portable objects which he was sure he should miss on -returning to his country home. - -He came every day to Chester Street, and was evidently much less bored -than Mary had prefigured by this regular tribute to verisimilitude. It -was amusement enough to see the progress of their comedy and to invent -new touches for some of its scenes. The girl herself was amused; it was -an opportunity like another for cleverness such as hers and had much in -common with private theatricals, especially with the rehearsals, the -most amusing part. Moreover she was good-natured enough to be really -pleased at the service it was impossible for her not to acknowledge that -she had rendered. Each of the parties to this queer contract had -anecdotes and suggestions for the other, and each reminded the other -duly that they must at every step keep their story straight. Except for -the exercise of this care Mary Gosselin found her duties less onerous -than she had feared and her part in general much more passive than -active. It consisted indeed largely of murmuring thanks and smiling and -looking happy and handsome; as well as perhaps also in saying in answer -to many questions that nothing as yet was fixed and of trying to remain -humble when people expressed without ceremony that such a match was a -wonder for such a girl. Her mother on the other hand was devotedly -active. She treated the situation with private humour but with public -zeal and, making it both real and ideal, told so many fibs about it that -there were none left for Mary. The girl had failed to understand Mrs. -Gosselin's interest in this elaborate pleasantry; the good lady had seen -in it from the first more than she herself had been able to see. Mary -performed her task mechanically, sceptically, but Mrs. Gosselin attacked -hers with conviction and had really the air at moments of thinking that -their fable had crystallised into fact. Mary allowed her as little of -this attitude as possible and was ironical about her duplicity; warnings -which the elder lady received with gaiety until one day when repetition -had made them act on her nerves. Then she begged her daughter, with -sudden asperity, not to talk to her as if she were a fool. She had -already had words with Hugh about some aspects of the affair--so much as -this was evident in Chester Street; a smothered discussion which at the -moment had determined the poor boy to go to Paris with Bolton-Brown. The -young men came back together after Mary had been "engaged" three weeks, -but she remained in ignorance of what passed between Hugh and his mother -the night of his return. She had gone to the opera with Lady Whiteroy, -after one of her invariable comments on Mrs. Gosselin's invariable -remark that of course Guy Firminger would spend his evening in their -box. The remedy for his trouble, Lord Beaupré's prospective bride had -said, was surely worse than the disease; she was in perfect good faith -when she wondered that his lordship's sacrifices, his laborious -cultivation of appearances should "pay." - -Hugh Gosselin dined with his mother and at dinner talked of Paris and of -what he had seen and done there; he kept the conversation superficial -and after he had heard how his sister, at the moment, was occupied, -asked no question that might have seemed to denote an interest in the -success of the experiment for which in going abroad he had declined -responsibility. His mother could not help observing that he never -mentioned Guy Firminger by either of his names, and it struck her as a -part of the same detachment that later, up stairs (she sat with him -while he smoked), he should suddenly say as he finished a cigar: - -"I return to New York next week." - -"Before your time? What for?" Mrs. Gosselin was horrified. - -"Oh, mamma, you know what for!" - -"Because you still resent poor Mary's good-nature?" - -"I don't understand it, and I don't like things I don't understand; -therefore I'd rather not be here to see it. Besides I really can't tell -a pack of lies." - -Mrs. Gosselin exclaimed and protested; she had arguments to prove that -there was no call at present for the least deflection from the truth; -all that any one had to reply to any question (and there could be none -that was embarrassing save the ostensible determination of the date of -the marriage) was that nothing was settled as yet--a form of words in -which for the life of her she couldn't see any perjury. "Why, then, go -in for anything in such bad taste, to culminate only in something so -absurd?" Hugh demanded. "If the essential part of the matter can't be -spoken of as fixed nothing is fixed, the deception becomes transparent -and they give the whole idea away. It's child's play." - -"That's why it's so innocent. All I can tell you is that practically -their attitude answers; he's delighted with its success. Those dreadful -women have given him up; they've already found some other victim." - -"And how is it all to end, please?" - -Mrs. Gosselin was silent a moment. "Perhaps it won't end." - -"Do you mean that the engagement will become real?" - -Again the good lady said nothing until she broke out: "My dear boy, -can't you trust your poor old mummy?" - -"Is _that_ your speculation? Is that Mary's? I never heard of anything -so odious!" Hugh Gosselin cried. But she defended his sister with -eagerness, with a gloss of coaxing, maternal indignation, declaring that -Mary's disinterestedness was complete--she had the perfect proof of it. -Hugh was conscious as he lighted another cigar that the conversation was -more fundamental than any that he had ever had with his mother, who -however hung fire but for an instant when he asked her what this -"perfect proof" might be. He didn't doubt of his sister, he admitted -that; but the perfect proof would make the whole thing more luminous. It -took finally the form of a confession from Mrs. Gosselin that the girl -evidently liked--well, greatly liked--Mr. Bolton-Brown. Yes, the good -lady had seen for herself at Bosco that the smooth young American was -making up to her and that, time and opportunity aiding, something might -very well happen which could not be regarded as satisfactory. She had -been very frank with Mary, had besought her not to commit herself to a -suitor who in the very nature of the case couldn't meet the most -legitimate of their views. Mary, who pretended not to know what their -"views" were, had denied that she was in danger; but Mrs. Gosselin had -assured her that she had all the air of it and had said triumphantly: -"Agree to what Lord Beaupré asks of you, and I'll _believe_ you." Mary -had wished to be believed--so she had agreed. That was all the -witchcraft any one had used. - -Mrs. Gosselin out-talked her son, but there were two or three plain -questions that he came back to; and the first of these bore upon the -ground of her aversion to poor Bolton-Brown. He told her again, as he -had told her before, that his friend was that rare bird a maker of money -who was also a man of culture. He was a gentleman to his finger-tips, -accomplished, capable, kind, with a charming mother and two lovely -sisters (she should see them!) the sort of fellow in short whom it was -stupid not to appreciate. - -"I believe it all, and if I had three daughters he should be very -welcome to one of them." - -"You might easily have had three daughters who wouldn't attract him at -all! You've had the good fortune to have one who does, and I think you -do wrong to interfere with it." - -"My eggs are in one basket then, and that's a reason the more for -preferring Lord Beaupré," said Mrs. Gosselin. - -"Then it _is_ your calculation--?" stammered Hugh in dismay; on which -she coloured and requested that he would be a little less rough with his -mother. She would rather part with him immediately, sad as that would -be, than that he should attempt to undo what she had done. When Hugh -replied that it was not to Mary but to Beaupré himself that he judged -it important he should speak, she informed him that a rash remonstrance -might do his sister a cruel wrong. Dear Guy was _most_ attentive. - -"If you mean that he really cares for her there's the less excuse for -his taking such a liberty with her. He's either in love with her or he -isn't. If he is, let him make her a serious offer; if he isn't, let him -leave her alone." - -Mrs. Gosselin looked at her son with a kind of patient joy. "He's in -love with her, but he doesn't know it." - -"He ought to know it, and if he's so idiotic I don't see that we ought -to consider him." - -"Don't worry--he _shall_ know it!" Mrs. Gosselin cried; and, continuing -to struggle with Hugh, she insisted on the delicacy of the situation. -She made a certain impression on him, though on confused grounds; she -spoke at one moment as if he was to forbear because the matter was a -make-believe that happened to contain a convenience for a distressed -friend, and at another as if one ought to strain a point because there -were great possibilities at stake. She was most lucid when she pictured -the social position and other advantages of a peer of the realm. What -had those of an American stockbroker, however amiable and with whatever -shrill belongings in the background, to compare with them? She was -inconsistent, but she was diplomatic, and the result of the discussion -was that Hugh Gosselin became conscious of a dread of "injuring" his -sister. He became conscious at the same time of a still greater -apprehension, that of seeing her arrive at the agreeable in a tortuous, -a second-rate manner. He might keep the peace to please his mother, but -he couldn't enjoy it, and he actually took his departure, travelling in -company with Bolton-Brown, who of course before going waited on the -ladies in Chester Street to thank them for the kindness they had shown -him. It couldn't be kept from Guy Firminger that Hugh was not happy, -though when they met, which was only once or twice before he quitted -London, Mary Gosselin's brother flattered himself that he was too proud -to show it. He had always liked old loafing Guy and it was disagreeable -to him not to like him now; but he was aware that he must either quarrel -with him definitely or not at all and that he had passed his word to his -mother. Therefore his attitude was strictly negative; he took with the -parties to it no notice whatever of the "engagement," and he couldn't -help it if to other people he had the air of not being initiated. They -doubtless thought him strangely fastidious. Perhaps he was; the tone of -London struck him in some respects as very horrid; he had grown in a -manner away from it. Mary was impenetrable; tender, gay, charming, but -with no patience, as she said, for his premature flight. Except when -Lord Beaupré was present you would not have dreamed that he existed for -her. In his company--he had to be present more or less of course--she -was simply like any other English girl who disliked effusiveness. They -had each the same manner, that of persons of rather a shy tradition who -were on their guard against public "spooning." They practised their -fraud with good taste, a good taste mystifying to Bolton-Brown, who -thought their precautions excessive. When he took leave of Mary Gosselin -her eyes consented for a moment to look deep down into his. He had been -from the first of the opinion that they were beautiful, and he was more -mystified than ever. - -If Guy Firminger had failed to ask Hugh Gosselin whether he had a fault -to find with what they were doing, this was, in spite of old friendship, -simply because he was too happy now to care much whom he didn't please, -to care at any rate for criticism. He had ceased to be critical himself, -and his high prosperity could take his blamelessness for granted. His -happiness would have been offensive if people generally hadn't liked -him, for it consisted of a kind of monstrous candid comfort. To take all -sorts of things for granted was still his great, his delightful -characteristic; but it didn't prevent his showing imagination and tact -and taste in particular circumstances. He made, in their little comedy, -all the right jokes and none of the wrong ones: the girl had an acute -sense that there were some jokes that would have been detestable. She -gathered that it was universally supposed she was having an -unprecedented season, and something of the glory of an enviable future -seemed indeed to hang about her. People no doubt thought it odd that she -didn't go about more with her future husband; but those who knew -anything about her knew that she had never done exactly as other girls -did. She had her own ways, her own freedoms and her own scruples. -Certainly he made the London weeks much richer than they had ever been -for a subordinate young person; he put more things into them, so that -they grew dense and complicated. This frightened her at moments, -especially when she thought with compunction that she was deceiving her -very friends. She didn't mind taking the vulgar world in, but there were -people she hated not to enlighten, to reassure. She could undeceive no -one now, and indeed she would have been ashamed. There were hours when -she wanted to stop--she had such a dread of doing too much; hours when -she thought with dismay that the fiction of the rupture was still to -come, with its horrid train of new untrue things. She spoke of it -repeatedly to her confederate, who only postponed and postponed, told -her she would never dream of forsaking him if she measured the good she -was doing him. She did measure it however when she met him in the great -world; she was of course always meeting him: that was the only way -appearances were kept up. There was a certain attitude she could allow -him to take on these occasions; it covered and carried off their -subterfuge. He could talk to her unmolested; for herself she never spoke -of anything but the charming girls, everywhere present, among whom he -could freely choose. He didn't protest, because to choose freely was -what he wanted, and they discussed these young ladies one by one. Some -she recommended, some she disparaged, but it was almost the only subject -she tolerated. It was her system in short, and she wondered he didn't -get tired of it; she was so tired of it herself. - -She tried other things that she thought he might find wearisome, but his -good-humour was magnificent. He was now really for the first time -enjoying his promotion, his wealth, his insight into the terms on which -the world offered itself to the happy few, and these terms made a -mixture healing to irritation. Once, at some glittering ball, he asked -her if she should be jealous if he were to dance again with Lady -Whiteroy, with whom he had danced already, and this was the only -occasion on which he had come near making a joke of the wrong sort. She -showed him what she thought of it and made him feel that the way to be -forgiven was to spend the rest of the evening with that lovely creature. -Now that the phalanx of the pressingly nubile was held in check there -was accordingly nothing to prevent his passing his time pleasantly. -Before he had taken this effective way the diplomatic mother, when she -spied him flirting with a married woman, felt that in urging a virgin -daughter's superior claims she worked for righteousness as well as for -the poor girl. But Mary Gosselin protected these scandals practically by -the still greater scandal of her indifference; so that he was in the odd -position of having waited to be confined to know what it was to be at -large. He had in other words the maximum of security with the minimum of -privation. The lovely creatures of Lady Whiteroy's order thought Mary -Gosselin charming, but they were the first to see through her falsity. - -All this carried our precious pair to the middle of July; but nearly a -month before that, one night under the summer stars, on the deck of the -steamer that was to reach New York on the morrow, something had passed -between Hugh Gosselin and his brooding American friend. The night was -warm and splendid; these were their last hours at sea, and Hugh, who had -been playing whist in the cabin, came up very late to take an -observation before turning in. It was in this way that he chanced on his -companion, who was leaning over the stern of the ship and gazing off, -beyond its phosphorescent track, at the muffled, moaning ocean, the -backward darkness, everything he had relinquished. Hugh stood by him for -a moment and then asked him what he was thinking about. Bolton-Brown -gave at first no answer; after which he turned round and, with his back -against the guard of the deck, looked up at the multiplied stars. "He -has it badly," Hugh Gosselin mentally commented. At last his friend -replied: "About something you said yesterday." - -"I forget what I said yesterday." - -"You spoke of your sister's intended marriage; it was the only time you -had spoken of it. You seemed to intimate that it might not after all -take place." - -Hugh hesitated a little. "Well, it _won't_ take place. They're not -engaged, not really. This is a secret, a preposterous secret. I wouldn't -tell any one else, but I'm willing to tell you. It may make a difference -to you." - -Bolton-Brown turned his head; he looked at Hugh a minute through the -fresh darkness. "It does make a difference to me. But I don't -understand," he added. - -"Neither do I. I don't like it. It's a pretence, a temporary -make-believe, to help Beaupré through." - -"Through what?" - -"He's so run after." - -The young American stared, ejaculated, mused. "Oh, yes--your mother told -me." - -"It's a sort of invention of my mother's and a notion of his own (very -absurd, I think) till he can see his way. Mary serves as a kind of -escort for these first exposed months. It's ridiculous, but I don't know -that it hurts her." - -"Oh!" said Bolton-Brown. - -"I don't know either that it does her any good." - -"No!" said Bolton-Brown. Then he added: "It's certainly very kind of -her." - -"It's a case of old friends," Hugh explained, inadequately as he felt. -"He has always been in and out of our house." - -"But how will it end?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Bolton-Brown was silent; he faced about to the stern again and stared at -the rush of the ship. Then shifting his position once more: "Won't the -engagement, before they've done, develop into the regular thing?" - -Hugh felt as if his mother were listening. "I daresay not. If there were -even a remote chance of that, Mary wouldn't have consented." - -"But mayn't _he_ easily find that--charming as she is--he's in love with -her?" - -"He's too much taken up with himself." - -"That's just a reason," said Bolton-Brown. "Love is selfish." He -considered a moment longer, then he went on: "And mayn't _she_ find--?" - -"Find what?" said Hugh, as he hesitated. - -"Why, that she likes him." - -"She likes him of course, else she wouldn't have come to his assistance. -But her certainty about herself must have been just what made her not -object to lending herself to the arrangement. She could do it decently -because she doesn't seriously care for him. If she did--!" Hugh suddenly -stopped. - -"If she did?" his friend repeated. - -"It would have been odious." - -"I see," said Bolton-Brown gently. "But how will they break off?" - -"It will be Mary who'll break off." - -"Perhaps she'll find it difficult." - -"She'll require a pretext." - -"I see," mused Bolton-Brown, shifting his position again. - -"She'll find one," Hugh declared. - -"I hope so," his companion responded. - -For some minutes neither of them spoke; then Hugh asked: "Are you in -love with her?" - -"Oh, my dear fellow!" Bolton-Brown wailed. He instantly added: "Will it -be any use for me to go back?" - -Again Hugh felt as if his mother were listening. But he answered: "_Do_ -go back." - -"It's awfully strange," said Bolton-Brown. "I'll go back." - -"You had better wait a couple of months, you know." - -"Mayn't I lose her then?" - -"No--they'll drop it all." - -"I'll go back!" the American repeated, as if he hadn't heard. He was -restless, agitated; he had evidently been much affected. He fidgeted -away dimly, moved up the level length of the deck. Hugh Gosselin -lingered longer at the stern; he fell into the attitude in which he had -found the other, leaning over it and looking back at the great vague -distance they had come. He thought of his mother. - - - - -VI - - -To remind her fond parent of the vanity of certain expectations which -she more than suspected her of entertaining, Mary Gosselin, while she -felt herself intensely watched (it had all brought about a horrid new -situation at home) produced every day some fresh illustration of the -fact that people were no longer imposed upon. Moreover these -illustrations were not invented; the girl believed in them, and when -once she had begun to note them she saw them multiply fast. Lady -Whiteroy, for one, was distinctly suspicious; she had taken the liberty -more than once of asking the future Lady Beaupré what in the world was -the matter with her. Brilliant figure as she was and occupied with her -own pleasures, which were of a very independent nature, she had -nevertheless constituted herself Miss Gosselin's social sponsor: she -took a particular interest in her marriage, an interest all the greater -as it rested not only on a freely-professed regard for her, but on a -keen sympathy with the other party to the transaction. Lady Whiteroy, -who was very pretty and very clever and whom Mary secretly but -profoundly mistrusted, delighted in them both in short; so much so that -Mary judged herself happy to be in a false position, so certain should -she have been to be jealous had she been in a true one. This charming -woman threw out inquiries that made the girl not care to meet her eyes; -and Mary ended by forming a theory of the sort of marriage for Lord -Beaupré that Lady Whiteroy really would have appreciated. It would have -been a marriage to a fool, a marriage to Maud Ashbury or to Charlotte -Firminger. She would have her reasons for preferring that; and, as -regarded the actual prospect, she had only discovered that Mary was even -more astute than herself. - -It will be understood how much our young lady was on the crest of the -wave when I mention that in spite of this complicated consciousness she -was one of the ornaments (Guy Firminger was of course another) of the -party entertained by her zealous friend and Lord Whiteroy during the -Goodwood week. She came back to town with the firm intention of putting -an end to a comedy which had more than ever become odious to her; in -consequence of which she had on this subject with her fellow-comedian a -scene--the scene she had dreaded--half-pathetic, half-ridiculous. He -appealed to her, wrestled with her, took his usual ground that she was -saving his life without really lifting a finger. He denied that the -public was not satisfied with their pretexts for postponement, their -explanations of delay; what else was expected of a man who would wish to -celebrate his nuptials on a suitable scale, but who had the misfortune -to have had, one after another, three grievous bereavements? He promised -not to molest her for the next three months, to go away till his -"mourning" was over, to go abroad, to let her do as she liked. He -wouldn't come near her, he wouldn't even write (no one would know it), -if she would let him keep up the mere form of their fiction; and he -would let her off the very first instant he definitely perceived that -this expedient had ceased to be effective. She couldn't judge of -that--she must let _him_ judge; and it was a matter in which she could -surely trust to his honour. - -Mary Gosselin trusted to it, but she insisted on his going away. When he -took such a tone as that she couldn't help being moved; he breathed with -such frank, generous lips on the irritation she had stored up against -him. Guy Firminger went to Homburg, and if his confederate consented not -to clip the slender thread by which this particular engagement still -hung, she made very short work with every other. A dozen invitations, -for Cowes, for the country, for Scotland, shimmered there before her, -made a pathway of flowers, but she sent barbarous excuses. When her -mother, aghast, said to her "What then will you do?" she replied in a -very conclusive manner "I'll go home!" Mrs. Gosselin was wise enough not -to struggle; she saw that the thread was delicate, that it must dangle -in quiet air. She therefore travelled back with her daughter to homely -Hampshire, feeling that they were people of less importance than they -had been for many a week. On the August afternoons they sat again on the -little lawn on which Guy Firminger had found them the day he first -became eloquent about the perils of the desirable young bachelor; and it -was on this very spot that, toward the end of the month, and with some -surprise, they beheld Mr. Bolton-Brown once more approach. He had come -back from America; he had arrived but a few days before; he was staying, -of all places in the world, at the inn in the village. - -His explanation of this caprice was of all explanations the oddest: he -had come three thousand miles for the love of water-colour. There was -nothing more sketchable than the sketchability of Hampshire--wasn't it -celebrated, classic? and he was so good as to include Mrs. Gosselin's -charming premises, and even their charming occupants, in his view of the -field. He fell to work with speed, with a sort of feverish eagerness; he -seemed possessed indeed by the frenzy of the brush. He sketched -everything on the place, and when he had represented an object once he -went straight at it again. His advent was soothing to Mary Gosselin, in -spite of his nervous activity; it must be admitted indeed that at the -moment he arrived she had already felt herself in quieter waters. The -August afternoons, the relinquishment of London, the simplified life, -had rendered her a service which, if she had freely qualified it, she -would have described as a restoration of her self-respect. If poor Guy -found any profit in such conditions as these there was no great reason -to repudiate him. She had so completely shaken off responsibility that -she took scarcely more than a languid interest in the fact, communicated -to her by Lady Whiteroy, that Charlotte Firminger had also, as the -newspapers said, "proceeded" to Homburg. Lady Whiteroy knew, for Lady -Whiteroy had "proceeded" as well; her physician had discovered in her -constitution a pressing need for the comfort imbibed in dripping -matutinal tumblers. She chronicled Charlotte's presence, and even to -some extent her behaviour, among the haunters of the spring, but it was -not till some time afterwards that Mary learned how Miss Firminger's -pilgrimage had been made under her ladyship's protection. This was a -further sign that, like Mrs. Gosselin, Lady Whiteroy had ceased to -struggle; she had, in town, only shrugged her shoulders ambiguously on -being informed that Lord Beaupré's intended was going down to her -stupid home. - -The fulness of Mrs. Gosselin's renunciation was apparent during the stay -of the young American in the neighbourhood of that retreat. She occupied -herself with her knitting, her garden and the cares of a punctilious -hospitality, but she had no appearance of any other occupation. When -people came to tea Bolton-Brown was always there, and she had the -self-control to attempt to say nothing that could assuage their natural -surprise. Mrs. Ashbury came one day with poor Maud, and the two elder -ladies, as they had done more than once before, looked for some moments -into each other's eyes. This time it was not a look of defiance, it was -rather--or it would have been for an observer completely in the -secret--a look of reciprocity, of fraternity, a look of arrangement. -There was however no one completely in the secret save perhaps Mary, and -Mary didn't heed. The arrangement at any rate was ineffectual; Mrs. -Gosselin might mutely say, over the young American's eager, talkative -shoulders, "Yes, you may have him if you can get him:" the most -rudimentary experiments demonstrated that he was not to be got. Nothing -passed on this subject between Mary and her mother, whom the girl none -the less knew to be holding her breath and continuing to watch. She -counted it more and more as one unpleasant result of her conspiracy with -Guy Firminger that it almost poisoned a relation that had always been -sweet. It was to show that she was independent of it that she did as she -liked now, which was almost always as Bolton-Brown liked. When in the -first days of September--it was in the warm, clear twilight, and they -happened, amid the scent of fresh hay, to be leaning side by side on a -stile--he gave her a view of the fundamental and esoteric, as -distinguished from the convenient and superficial motive of his having -come back to England, she of course made no allusion to a prior tie. On -the other hand she insisted on his going up to London by the first train -the next day. He was to wait--that was distinctly understood--for his -satisfaction. - -She desired meanwhile to write immediately to Guy Firminger, but as he -had kept his promise of not complicating their contract with letters she -was uncertain as to his actual whereabouts: she was only sure he would -have left Homburg. Lady Whiteroy had become silent, so there were no -more sidelights, and she was on the point of telegraphing to London for -an address when she received a telegram from Bosco. The proprietor of -that seat had arrived there the day before, and he found he could make -trains fit if she would on the morrow allow him to come over and see her -for a day or two. He had returned sooner than their agreement allowed, -but she answered "Come" and she showed his missive to her mother, who at -the sight of it wept with strange passion. Mary said to her "For -heaven's sake, don't let him see you!" She lost no time; she told him on -the morrow as soon as he entered the house that she couldn't keep it up -another hour. - -"All right--it _is_ no use," he conceded; "they're at it again!" - -"You see you've gained nothing!" she replied triumphantly. She had -instantly recognised that he was different, how much had happened. - -"I've gained some of the happiest days of my life." - -"Oh, that was not what you tried for!" - -"Indeed it was, and I got exactly what I wanted," said Guy Firminger. -They were in the cool little drawing-room where the morning light was -dim. Guy Firminger had a sunburnt appearance, as in England people -returning from other countries are apt to have, and Mary thought he had -never looked so well. It was odd, but it was noticeable, that he had -grown much handsomer since he had become a personage. He paused a -moment, smiling at her while her mysterious eyes rested on him, and then -he added: "Nothing ever worked better. It's no use now--people see. But -I've got a start. I wanted to turn round and look about, and I _have_ -turned round and looked about. There are things I've escaped. I'm afraid -you'll never understand how deeply I'm indebted to you." - -"Oh, it's all right!" said Mary Gosselin. - -There was another short silence, after which he went on: "I've come back -sooner than I promised, but only to be strictly fair. I began to see -that we couldn't hold out and that it was my duty to let you off. From -that moment I was bound to put an end to your situation. I might have -done so by letter, but that seemed scarcely decent. It's all I came back -for, you know, and it's why I wired to you yesterday." - -Mary hesitated an instant, she reflected intensely. What had happened, -what would happen, was that if she didn't take care the signal for the -end of their little arrangement would not have appeared to come from -herself. She particularly wished it not to come from anyone else, she -had even a horror of that; so that after an instant she hastened to say: -"I was on the very point of wiring to _you_--I was only waiting for your -address." - -"Wiring to me?" He seemed rather blank. - -"To tell you that our absurd affair really, this time, can't go on -another day--to put a complete stop to it." - -"Oh!" said Guy Firminger. - -"So it's all right." - -"You've always hated it!" Guy laughed; and his laugh sounded slightly -foolish to the girl. - -"I found yesterday that I hated it more than ever." - -Lord Beaupré showed a quickened attention. "For what -reason--yesterday?" - -"I would rather not tell you, please. Perhaps some time you'll find it -out." - -He continued to look at her brightly and fixedly with his confused -cheerfulness. Then he said with a vague, courteous alacrity: "I see, I -see!" She had an impression that he didn't see; but it didn't matter, -she was nervous and quite preferred that he shouldn't. They both got up, -and in a moment he exclaimed: "Well, I'm intensely sorry it's over! It -has been so charming." - -"You've been very good about it; I mean very reasonable," Mary said, to -say something. Then she felt in her nervousness that this was just what -she ought not to have said: it sounded ironical and provoking, whereas -she had meant it as pure good-nature. "Of course you'll stay to -luncheon?" she continued. She was bound in common hospitality to speak -of that, and he answered that it would give him the greatest pleasure. -After this her apprehension increased, and it was confirmed in -particular by the manner in which he suddenly asked: - -"By the way, what reason shall we give?" - -"What reason?" - -"For our rupture. Don't let us seem to have quarrelled." - -"We can't help that," said Mary. "Nothing else will account for our -behaviour." - -"Well, I sha'n't say anything about _you_." - -"Do you mean you'll let people think it was yourself who were tired of -it?" - -"I mean I sha'n't _blame_ you." - -"You ought to behave as if you cared!" said Mary. - -Guy Firminger laughed, but he looked worried and he evidently was -puzzled. "You must act as if you had jilted me." - -"You're not the sort of person unfortunately that people jilt." - -Lord Beaupré appeared to accept this statement as incontestable; not -with elation however, but with candid regret, the slightly embarrassed -recognition of a fundamental obstacle. "Well, it's no one's business, at -any rate, is it?" - -"No one's, and that's what I shall say if people question me. Besides," -Mary added, "they'll see for themselves." - -"What will they see?" - -"I mean they'll understand. And now we had better join mamma." - -It was his evident inclination to linger in the room after he had said -this that gave her complete alarm. Mrs. Gosselin was in another room, in -which she sat in the morning, and Mary moved in that direction, pausing -only in the hall for him to accompany her. She wished to get him into -the presence of a third person. In the hall he joined her, and in doing -so laid his hand gently on her arm. Then looking into her eyes with all -the pleasantness of his honesty, he said: "It will be very easy for me -to appear to care--for I _shall_ care. I shall care immensely!" Lord -Beaupré added smiling. - -Anything, it struck her, was better than that--than that he should say: -"We'll keep on, if you like (_I_ should!) only this time it will be -serious. Hold me to it--do; don't let me go; lead me on to the -altar--really!" Some such words as these, she believed, were rising to -his lips, and she had an insurmountable horror of hearing them. It was -as if, well enough meant on _his_ part, they would do her a sort of -dishonour, so that all her impulse was quickly to avert them. That was -not the way she wanted to be asked in marriage. "Thank you very much," -she said, "but it doesn't in the least matter. You will seem to have -been jilted--so it's all right!" - -"All right! You mean--?" He hesitated, he had coloured a little: his -eyes questioned her. - -"I'm engaged to be married--in earnest." - -"Oh!" said Lord Beaupré. - -"You asked me just now if I had a special reason for having been on the -point of telegraphing to you, and I said I had. That was my special -reason." - -"I see!" said Lord Beaupré. He looked grave for a few seconds, then he -gave an awkward smile. But he behaved with perfect tact and discretion, -didn't even ask her who the gentleman in the case might be. He -congratulated her in the dark, as it were, and if the effect of this was -indeed a little odd she liked him for his quick perception of the fine -fitness of pulling up short. Besides, he extracted the name of the -gentleman soon enough from her mother, in whose company they now -immediately found themselves. Mary left Guy Firminger with the good lady -for half an hour before luncheon; and when the girl came back it was to -observe that she had been crying again. It was dreadful--what she might -have been saying. Their guest, however, at luncheon was not lachrymose; -he was natural, but he was talkative and gay. Mary liked the way he now -behaved, and more particularly the way he departed immediately after the -meal. As soon as he was gone Mrs. Gosselin broke out suppliantly: -"Mary!" But her daughter replied: - -"I know, mamma, perfectly what you're going to say, and if you attempt -to say it I shall leave the room." With this threat (day after day, for -the following time) she kept the terrible appeal unuttered until it was -too late for an appeal to be of use. That afternoon she wrote to -Bolton-Brown that she accepted his offer of marriage. - -Guy Firminger departed altogether; he went abroad again and to far -countries. He was therefore not able to be present at the nuptials of -Miss Gosselin and the young American whom he had entertained at Bosco, -which took place in the middle of November. Had he been in England -however he probably would have felt impelled by a due regard for past -verisimilitude to abstain from giving his countenance to such an -occasion. His absence from the country contributed to the needed even if -astonishing effect of his having been jilted; so, likewise, did the -reputed vastness of Bolton-Brown's young income, which in London was -grossly exaggerated. Hugh Gosselin had perhaps a little to do with this; -as he had sacrificed a part of his summer holiday, he got another month -and came out to his sister's wedding. He took public comfort in his -brother-in-law; nevertheless he listened with attention to a curious -communication made him by his mother after the young couple had started -for Italy; even to the point of bringing out the inquiry (in answer to -her assertion that poor Guy had been ready to place everything he had at -Mary's feet): "Then why the devil didn't he do it?" - -"From simple delicacy! He didn't want to make her feel as if she had -lent herself to an artifice only on purpose to get hold of him--to treat -her as if she too had been at bottom one of the very harpies she helped -him to elude." - -Hugh thought a moment. "That _was_ delicate." - -"He's the dearest creature in the world. He's on his guard, he's -prudent, he tested himself by separation. Then he came back to England -in love with her. She might have had it all!" - -"I'm glad she didn't get it _that_ way." - -"She had only to wait--to put an end to their artifice, harmless as it -was, for the present, but still wait. She might have broken off in a way -that would have made it come on again better." - -"That's exactly what she didn't want." - -"I mean as a quite separate incident," said Mrs. Gosselin. - -"_I_ loathed their artifice, harmless as it was!" her son observed. - -Mrs. Gosselin for a moment made no answer; then she turned away from the -fire into which she had been pensively gazing with the ejaculation "Poor -dear Guy!" - -"I can't for the life of me see that he's to be pitied." - -"He'll marry Charlotte Firminger." - -"If he's such an ass as that it's his own affair." - -"Bessie Whiteroy will bring it about." - -"What has _she_ to do with it?" - -"She wants to get hold of him." - -"Then why will she marry him to another woman?" - -"Because in that way she can select the other--a woman he won't care -for. It will keep him from taking some one that's nicer." - -Hugh Gosselin stared--he laughed aloud. "Lord, mamma, you're deep!" - -"Indeed I am, I see much more." - -"What do you see?" - -"Mary won't in the least care for America. Don't tell me she will," Mrs. -Gosselin added, "for you know perfectly you don't believe it." - -"She'll care for her husband, she'll care for everything that concerns -him." - -"He's very nice, in his little way he's delightful. But as an -alternative to Lord Beaupré he's ridiculous!" - -"Mary's in a position in which she has nothing to do with alternatives." - -"For the present, yes, but not for ever. She'll have enough of your New -York; they'll come back here. I see the future dark," Mrs. Gosselin -pursued, inexorably musing. - -"Tell me then all you see." - -"She'll find poor Guy wretchedly married, and she'll be very sorry for -him." - -"Do you mean that he'll make love to her? You give a queer account of -your paragon." - -"He'll value her sympathy. I see life as it is." - -"You give a queer account of your daughter." - -"I don't give _any_ account. She'll behave perfectly," Mrs. Gosselin -somewhat inconsequently subjoined. - -"Then what are you afraid of?" - -"She'll be sorry for him, and it will be all a worry." - -"A worry to whom?" - -The good lady was silent a moment. "To me," she replied. "And to you as -well." - -"Then they mustn't come back." - -"That will be a greater worry still." - -"Surely not a greater--a smaller. We'll put up with the lesser evil." - -"Nothing will prevent her coming to a sense, eventually, of what _might_ -have been. And when they _both_ recognize it----" - -"It will be very dreadful!" Hugh exclaimed, completing gaily his -mother's phrase. "I don't see, however," he added, "what in all this you -do with Bessie Whiteroy." - -"Oh, he'll be tired of her; she's hard, she'll have become despotic. I -see life as it is," the good lady repeated. - -"Then all I can say is that it's not very nice! But they sha'n't come -back: _I_'ll attend to that!" said Hugh Gosselin, who has attended to it -up to this time successfully, though the rest of his mother's prophecy -is so far accomplished (it was her second hit) as that Charlotte -Firminger is now, strange as it may seem, Lady Beaupré. - - - - -THE VISITS - - -The other day, after her death, when they were discussing her, someone -said in reference to the great number of years she had lived, the people -she had seen and the stories she knew: "What a pity no one ever took any -notes of her talk!" For a London epitaph that was almost exhaustive, and -the subject presently changed. One of the listeners had taken many -notes, but he didn't confess it on the spot. The following story is a -specimen of my exactitude--I took it down, _verbatim_, having that -faculty, the day after I heard it. I choose it, at hazard, among those -of her reminiscences that I have preserved; it's not worse than the -others. I will give you some of the others too--when occasion offers--so -that you may judge. - -I met in town that year a dear woman whom I had scarcely seen since I -was a girl; she had dropped out of the world; she came up but once in -five years. We had been together as very young creatures, and then we -had married and gone our ways. It was arranged between us that after I -should have paid a certain visit in August in the west of England I -would take her--it would be very convenient, she was just over the -Cornish border--on the way to my other engagements: I would work her in, -as you say nowadays. She wanted immensely to show me her home, and she -wanted still more to show me her girl, who had not come up to London, -choosing instead, after much deliberation, to go abroad for a month with -her brother and her brother's coach--he had been cramming for -something--and Mrs. Coach of course. All that Mrs. Chantry had been able -to show me in town was her husband, one of those country gentlemen with -a moderate property and an old place who are a part of the essence in -their own neighbourhood and not a part of anything anywhere else. - -A couple of days before my visit to Chantry Court the people to whom I -had gone from town took me over to see some friends of theirs who lived, -ten miles away, in a place that was supposed to be fine. As it was a -long drive we stayed to luncheon; and then as there were gardens and -other things that were more or less on show we struggled along to tea, -so as to get home just in time for dinner. There were a good many other -people present, and before luncheon a very pretty girl came into the -drawing-room, a real maiden in her flower, less than twenty, fresh and -fair and charming, with the expression of some one I knew. I asked who -she was, and was told she was Miss Chantry, so that in a moment I spoke -to her, mentioning that I was an old friend of her mother's and that I -was coming to pay them a visit. She looked rather frightened and blank, -was apparently unable to say that she had ever heard of me, and hinted -at no pleasure in the idea that she was to hear of me again. But this -didn't prevent my perceiving that she was lovely, for I was wise enough -even then not to think it necessary to measure people by the impression -that one makes on them. I saw that any I should make on Louisa Chantry -would be much too clumsy a test. She had been staying at the house at -which I was calling; she had come alone, as the people were old friends -and to a certain extent neighbours, and was going home in a few days. It -was a daughterless house, but there was inevitable young life: a couple -of girls from the vicarage, a married son and his wife, a young man who -had "ridden over" and another young man who was staying. - -Louisa Chantry sat opposite to me at luncheon, but too far for -conversation, and before we got up I had discovered that if her manner -to me had been odd it was not because she was inanimate. She was on the -contrary in a state of intense though carefully muffled vibration. There -was some fever in her blood, but no one perceived it, no one, that is, -with an exception--an exception which was just a part of the very -circumstance. This single suspicion was lodged in the breast of the -young man whom I have alluded to as staying in the house. He was on the -same side of the table as myself and diagonally facing the girl; -therefore what I learned about him was for the moment mainly what she -told me; meaning by "she" her face, her eyes, her movements, her whole -perverted personality. She was extremely on her guard, and I should -never have guessed her secret but for an accident. The accident was that -the only time she dropped her eyes upon him during the repast I happened -to notice it. It might not have been much to notice, but it led to my -seeing that there was a little drama going on and that the young man -would naturally be the hero. It was equally natural that in this -capacity he should be the cause of my asking my left-hand neighbour, who -happened to be my host, for some account of him. But "Oh, that fellow? -he's my nephew," was a description which, to appear copious, required -that I should know more about the uncle. - -We had coffee on the terrace of the house; a terrace laid out in one -quarter, oddly and charmingly, in grass where the servants who waited -upon us seemed to tread, processionally, on soundless velvet. There I -had a good look at my host's nephew and a longer talk with my friend's -daughter, in regard to whom I had become conscious of a faint, formless -anxiety. I remember saying to her, gropingly, instinctively: "My dear -child, can I do anything for you? I shall perhaps see your mother before -you do. Can I for instance say anything to her _from_ you?" This only -made her blush and turn away; and it was not till too many days had -passed that I guessed that what had looked out at me unwittingly in her -little gazing trepidation was something like "Oh, just take me away in -spite of myself!" Superficially, conspicuously, there was nothing in the -young man to take her away from. He was a person of the middle -condition, and save that he didn't look at all humble might have passed -for a poor relation. I mean that he had rather a seedy, shabby air, as -if he were wearing out old clothes (he had on faded things that didn't -match); and I formed vaguely the theory that he was a specimen of the -numerous youthful class that goes to seek its fortune in the colonies, -keeps strange company there and comes home without a penny. He had a -brown, smooth, handsome face, a slightly swaggering, self-conscious -ease, and was probably objected to in the house. He hung about, smoking -cigarettes on the terrace, and nobody seemed to have much to say to -him--a circumstance which, as he managed somehow to convey, left him -absolutely indifferent. Louisa Chantry strolled away with one of the -girls from the vicarage; the party on the terrace broke up and the -nephew disappeared. - -It was settled that my friends and I should take leave at half-past -five, and I begged to be abandoned in the interval to my devices. I -turned into the library and, mounted on ladders, I handled old books and -old prints and soiled my gloves. Most of the others had gone to look at -the church, and I was left in possession. I wandered into the rooms in -which I knew there were pictures; and if the pictures were not good -there was some interesting china which I followed from corner to corner -and from cabinet to cabinet. At last I found myself on the threshold of -a small room which appeared to terminate the series and in which, -between the curtains draping the doorways, there appeared to be rows of -rare old plates on velvet screens. I was on the point of going in when I -became aware that there was something else beside, something which threw -me back. Two persons were standing side by side at the window, looking -out together with their backs to me--two persons as to whom I -immediately felt that they believed themselves to be alone and -unwatched. One of them was Louisa Chantry, the other was the young man -whom my host had described as his nephew. They were so placed as not to -see me, and when I recognized them I checked myself instinctively. I -hesitated a moment; then I turned away altogether. I can't tell you why, -except that if I had gone in I should have had somehow the air of -discovering them. There was no visible reason why they should have been -embarrassed by discovery, inasmuch as, so far as I could see, they were -doing no harm, were only standing more or less together, without -touching, and for the moment apparently saying nothing. Were they -watching something out of the window? I don't know; all I know is that -the observation I had made at luncheon gave me a sense of -responsibility. I might have taken my responsibility the other way and -broken up their communion; but I didn't feel this to be sufficiently my -business. Later on I wished I had. - -I passed through the rooms again, and then out of the house. The gardens -were ingenious, but they made me think (I have always that conceited -habit) how much cleverer _I_ should have been about them. Presently I -met several of the rest of the party coming back from the church; on -which my hostess took possession of me, declaring there was a point of -view I must absolutely be treated to. I saw she was a walking woman and -that this meant half a mile in the park. But I was good for that, and we -wandered off together while the others returned to the house. It was -present to me that I ought to ask my companion, for Helen Chantry's -sake, a question about Louisa--whether for instance she had happened to -notice the way the girl seemed to be going. But it was difficult to say -anything without saying too much; so that to begin with I merely risked -the observation that our young friend was remarkably pretty. As the -point admitted of no discussion this didn't take us very far; nor was -the subject much enlarged by our unanimity as to the fact that she was -also remarkably nice. I observed that I had had very little chance to -talk with her, for which I was sorry, having known her mother for years. -My hostess, at this, looked vaguely round, as if she had missed her for -the first time. "Sure enough, she has not been about. I daresay she's -been writing to her mother--she's always writing to her mother." "Not -always," I mentally reflected; but I waited discreetly, admiring -everything and rising to the occasion and the views, before I inquired -casually who the young man might be who had sat two or three below me at -luncheon--the rather good-looking young man, with the regular features -and the brownish clothes--not the one with the moustache. - -"Oh, poor Jack Brandon," said my companion, in a tone calculated to make -him seem no one in particular. - -"Is he very poor?" I asked, with a laugh. - -"Oh dear, yes. There are nine of them--fancy!--all boys; and there's -nothing for anyone but the eldest. He's my husband's nephew--his poor -mother's my sister-in-law. He sometimes turns up here when he has -nothing better to do; but I don't think he likes us much." I saw she -meant that they didn't like _him_; and I exposed myself to suspicion by -asking if he had been with them long. But my friend was not very -plastic, and she simplified my whole theory of the case by replying -after she had thought a moment that she wasn't clear about it--she -thought he had come only the morning before. It seemed to me I could -safely feel a little further, so I inquired if he were likely to stay -many days. "Oh dear, no; he'll go to-morrow!" said my hostess. There was -nothing whatever to show that she saw a connection between my odd -interest in Mr. Brandon and the subject of our former reference; there -was only a quick lucidity on the subject of the young man's departure. -It reassured me, for no great complications would have arisen in -forty-eight hours. - -In retracing our steps we passed again through a part of the gardens. -Just after we had entered them my hostess, begging me to excuse her, -called at a man who was raking leaves to ask him a question about his -wife. I heard him reply "Oh, she's very bad, my lady," and I followed my -course. Presently my lady turned round with him, as if to go to see his -wife, who apparently was ill and on the place. I continued to look about -me--there were such charming things; and at the end of five minutes I -missed my way--I had not taken the direction of the house. Suddenly at -the turn of a walk, the angle of a great clipped hedge, I found myself -face to face with Jack Brandon. He was moving rapidly, looking down, -with his hands in his pockets, and he started and stared at me a moment. -I said "Oh, how d'ye do?" and I was on the point of adding "Won't you -kindly show me the right way?" But with a summary salute and a queer -expression of face he had already passed me. I looked after him an -instant and I all but stopped him; then one of the faintest voices of -the air told me that Louisa Chantry would not be far off, that in fact -if I were to go on a few steps I should find her. I continued and I -passed through an arched aperture of the hedge, a kind of door in the -partition. This corner of the place was like an old French garden, a -little inclosed apartment, with statues set into the niches of the high -walls of verdure. I paused in admiration; then just opposite to me I saw -poor Louisa. She was on a bench, with her hands clasped in her lap, her -head bent, her eyes staring down before her. I advanced on the grass, -attracting her attention; and I was close to her before she looked at -me, before she sprang up and showed me a face convulsed with nameless -pain. She was so pale that I thought she was ill--I had a vision of her -companion's having rushed off for help. She stood gazing at me with -expanded eyes and parted lips, and what I was mainly conscious of was -that she had become ten years older. Whatever troubled her it was -something pitiful--something that prompted me to hold out my two hands -to her and exclaim tenderly "My poor child, my poor child!" She wavered -a moment, as if she wanted to escape me but couldn't trust herself to -run; she looked away from me, turning her head this way and that. Then -as I went close to her she covered her face with her two hands, she let -me lay mine upon her and draw her to my breast. As she dropped her head -upon it she burst into tears, sobbing soundlessly and tragically. I -asked her no question, I only held her so long as she would, letting her -pour out the passion which I felt at the same time she made a tremendous -effort to smother. She couldn't smother it, but she could break away -violently; and this she quickly did, hurrying out of the nook where our -little scene--and some other greater scene, I judged, just before -it--had taken place, and leaving me infinitely mystified. I sat down on -the bench a moment and thought it over; then I succeeded in discovering -a path to the house. - -The carriage was at the door for our drive home, but my companions, who -had had tea, were waiting for our hostess, of whom they wished to take -leave and who had not yet come in. I reported her as engaged with the -wife of one of the gardeners, but we lingered a little in the hall, a -largeish group, to give her time to arrive. Two other persons were -absent, one of whom was Louisa Chantry and the other the young man whom -I had just seen quitting her in the garden. While I sat there, a trifle -abstracted, still somewhat agitated by the sequel to that incident and -at the same time impatient of our last vague dawdle, one of the footmen -presented me with a little folded note. I turned away to open it, and at -the very moment our hostess fortunately came in. This diverted the -attention of the others from the action of the footman, whom, after I -had looked at the note, I immediately followed into the drawing-room. He -led me through it and through two or three others to the door of the -little retreat in which, nearly an hour before, I had come upon Louisa -Chantry and Mr. Brandon. The note was from Louisa, it contained the -simple words "Would you very kindly speak to me an instant before you -go?" She was waiting for me in the most sequestered spot she had been -able to select, and there the footman left us. The girl came straight at -me and in an instant she had grasped my hands. I became aware that her -condition had changed; her tears were gone, she had a concentrated -purpose. I could scarcely see her beautiful young face--it was pressed, -beseechingly, so close to mine. I only felt, as her dry, shining eyes -almost dazzled me, that a strong light had been waved back and forth -before me. Her words at first seemed to me incoherent; then I understood -that she was asking me for a pledge. - -"Excuse me, forgive me for bringing you here--to say something I can't -say before all those people. _Do_ forgive me--it was so awfully kind of -you to come. I couldn't think of any other way--just for two seconds. I -want you to swear to me," she went on, with her hands now raised and -intensely clasped. - -"To swear, dearest child?" - -"I'm not your dearest child--I'm not anyone's! But _don't_ tell mamma. -Promise me--promise me," she insisted. - -"Tell her what?--I don't understand." - -"Oh, you do--you do!" she kept on; "and if you're going to Chantry -you'll see her, you'll be with her, you may see her before I do. On my -knees I ask you for a vow!" - -She seemed on the point of throwing herself at my feet, but I stopped -her, I kept her erect. "When shall _you_ see your mother?" - -"As soon as I can. I want to get home--I want to get home!" With this I -thought she was going to cry again, but she controlled herself and only -pressed me with feverish eyes. - -"You have some great trouble--for heaven's sake tell me what it is." - -"It isn't anything--it will pass. Only don't breathe it to mamma!" - -"How can I breathe it if I don't know what it is?" - -"You do know--you know what I mean." Then after an instant's pause she -added: "What I did in the garden." - -"_What_ did you do in the garden?" - -"I threw myself on your neck and I sobbed--I behaved like a maniac." - -"Is that all you mean?" - -"It's what I don't want mamma to know--it's what I beseech you to keep -silent about. If you don't I'll never, never go home. Have _mercy_ on -me!" the poor child quavered. - -"Dear girl, I only want to be tender to you--to be perfect. But tell me -first: has anyone acted wrongly to you?" - -"No one--_no_ one. I speak the truth." - -She looked into my eyes, and I looked far into hers. They were wild with -pain and yet they were so pure that they made me confusedly believe her. -I hesitated a moment; then I risked the question: "Isn't Mr. Brandon -responsible for anything?" - -"For nothing--for nothing! Don't blame _him_!" the girl passionately -cried. - -"He hasn't made love to you?" - -"Not a word--before God! Oh, it was too awful!" And with this she broke -away from me, flung herself on her knees before a sofa, burying her face -in it and in her arms. "Promise me, promise me, promise me!" she -continued to wail. - -I was horribly puzzled but I was immeasurably touched. I stood looking a -moment at her extravagant prostration; then I said "I'm dreadfully in -the dark, but I promise." - -This brought her to her feet again, and again she seized my hands. -"Solemnly, sacredly?" she panted. - -"Solemnly, sacredly." - -"Not a syllable--not a hint?" - -"Dear Louisa," I said kindly, "when I promise I perform." - -"You see I don't know you. And when do you go to Chantry?" - -"Day after to-morrow. And when do you?" - -"To-morrow if I can." - -"Then you'll see your mother first--it will be all right," I said -smiling. - -"All right, all right!" she repeated, with her woeful eyes. "Go, go!" -she added, hearing a step in the adjoining room. - -The footman had come back to announce that my friends were seated in the -carriage, and I was careful to say before him in a different tone: "Then -there's nothing more I can do for you?" - -"Nothing--good-bye," said Louisa, tearing herself away too abruptly to -take my kiss, which, to follow the servant again, I left unbestowed. I -felt awkward and guilty as I took leave of the company, murmuring -something to my entertainers about having had an arrangement to make -with Miss Chantry. Most of the people bade us good-bye from the steps, -but I didn't see Jack Brandon. On our drive home in the waning afternoon -my other friends doubtless found me silent and stupid. - -I went to Chantry two days later, and was disappointed to find that the -daughter of the house had not returned, though indeed after parting with -her I had been definitely of the opinion that she was much more likely -to go to bed and be ill. Her mother however had not heard that she was -ill, and my inquiry about the young lady was of course full of -circumspection. It was a little difficult, for I had to talk about her, -Helen being particularly delighted that we had already made -acquaintance. No day had been fixed for her return, but it came over my -friend that she oughtn't to be absent during too much of my visit. She -was the best thing they had to show--she was the flower and the charm of -the place. It had other charms as well--it was a sleepy, silvery old -home, exquisitely grey and exquisitely green; a house where you could -have confidence in your leisure: it would be as genuine as the butter -and the claret. The very look of the pleasant, prosaic drawing-room -suggested long mornings of fancy work, of Berlin wool and premeditated -patterns, new stitches and mild pauses. My good Helen was always in the -middle of something eternal, of which the past and the future were -rolled up in oilcloth and tissue paper, and the intensest moments of -conversation were when it was spread out for pensive opinions. These -used to drop sometimes even from Christopher Chantry when he straddled -vaguely in with muddy leggings and the raw materials of a joke. He had a -mind like a large, full milk-pan, and his wit was as thick as cream. - -One evening I came down to dinner a little early and, to my surprise, -found my troubled maiden in possession of the drawing-room. She was -evidently troubled still, and had been waiting there in the hope of -seeing me alone. We were too quickly interrupted by her parents, -however, and I had no conversation with her till I sat down to the piano -after dinner and beckoned to her to come and stand by it. Her father had -gone off to smoke; her mother dozed by one of the crackling little fires -of the summer's end. - -"Why didn't you come home the day you told me you meant to?" - -She fixed her eyes on my hands. "I couldn't, I couldn't!" - -"You look to me as if you were very ill." - -"I am," the girl said simply. - -"You ought to see some one. Something ought to be done." - -She shook her head with quiet despair. "It would be no use--no one would -know." - -"What do you mean--would know?" - -"No one would understand." - -"You ought to make them!" - -"Never--never!" she repeated. "Never!" - -"I confess _I_ don't," I replied, with a kind of angry renunciation. I -played louder, with the passion of my uneasiness and the aggravation of -my responsibility. - -"No, you don't indeed," said Louisa Chantry. - -I had only to accept this disadvantage, and after a moment I went on: -"What became of Mr. Brandon?" - -"I don't know." - -"Did he go away?" - -"That same evening." - -"Which same evening?" - -"The day you were there. I never saw him again." - -I was silent a minute, then I risked: "And you never will, eh?" - -"Never--never." - -"Then why shouldn't you get better?" - -She also hesitated, after which she answered: "Because I'm going to -die." - -My music ceased, in spite of me, and we sat looking at each other. Helen -Chantry woke up with a little start and asked what was the matter. I -rose from the piano and I couldn't help saying "Dear Helen, I haven't -the least idea." Louisa sprang up, pressing her hand to her left side, -and the next instant I cried aloud "She's faint--she's ill--do come to -her!" Mrs. Chantry bustled over to us, and immediately afterwards the -girl had thrown herself on her mother's breast, as she had thrown -herself days before on mine; only this time without tears, without -cries, in the strangest, most tragic silence. She was not faint, she was -only in despair--that at least is the way I really saw her. There was -something in her contact that scared poor Helen, that operated a sudden -revelation: I can see at this hour the queer frightened look she gave me -over Louisa's shoulder. The girl however in a moment disengaged herself, -declaring that she was not ill, only tired, very tired, and wanted to go -to bed. "Take her, take her--go with her," I said to her mother; and I -pushed them, got them out of the room, partly to conceal my own -trepidation. A few moments after they had gone Christopher Chantry came -in, having finished his cigar, and I had to mention to him--to explain -their absence--that his daughter was so fatigued that she had withdrawn -under her mother's superintendence. "Didn't she seem done up, awfully -done up? What on earth, at that confounded place, did she go in for?" -the dear man asked with his pointless kindness. I couldn't tell him this -was just what I myself wanted to know; and while I pretended to read I -wondered inextinguishably what indeed she had "gone in" for. It had -become still more difficult to keep my vow than I had expected; it was -also very difficult that evening to converse with Christopher Chantry. -His wife's continued absence rendered some conversation necessary; yet -it had the advantage of making him remark, after it had lasted an hour, -that he must go to see what was the matter. He left me, and soon -afterwards I betook myself to my room; bedtime was elastic in the early -sense at Chantry. I knew I should only have to wait awhile for Helen to -come to me, and in fact by eleven o'clock she arrived. - -"She's in a very strange state--something happened there." - -"And _what_ happened, pray?" - -"I can't make out; she won't tell me." - -"Then what makes you suppose so?" - -"She has broken down utterly; she says there was something." - -"Then she does tell you?" - -"Not a bit. She only begins and then stops short--she says it's too -dreadful." - -"Too dreadful?" - -"She says it's _horrible_," my poor friend murmured, with tears in her -eyes and tragic speculation in her mild maternal face. - -"But in what way? Does she give you no facts, no clue?" - -"It was something she did." - -We looked at each other a moment. "Did?" I echoed. "Did to whom?" - -"She won't tell me--she says she _can't_. She tries to bring it out, but -it sticks in her throat." - -"Nonsense. She did nothing," I said. - -"What _could_ she do?" Helen asked, gazing at me. - -"She's ill, she's in a fever, her mind's wandering." - -"So I say to her father." - -"And what does _she_ say to him?" - -"Nothing--she won't speak to him. He's with her now, but she only lies -there letting him hold her hand, with her face turned away from him and -her eyes closed." - -"You must send for the doctor immediately." - -"I've already sent for him." - -"Should you like me to sit up with her?" - -"Oh, I'll do that!" Helen said. Then she asked: "But if you were there -the other day, what did you see?" - -"Nothing whatever," I resolutely answered. - -"_Really_ nothing?" - -"Really, my dear child." - -"But was there nobody there who could have made up to her?" - -I hesitated a moment. "My poor Helen, you should have seen them!" - -"She wouldn't look at anybody that wasn't remarkably nice," Helen mused. - -"Well--I don't want to abuse your friends--but nobody was remarkably -nice. Believe me, she hasn't looked at anybody, and nothing whatever has -occurred. She's ill, and it's a mere morbid fancy." - -"It's a mere morbid fancy----!" Mrs. Chantry gobbled down this formula. -I felt that I was giving her another still more acceptable, and which -she as promptly adopted, when I added that Louisa would soon get over -it. - -I may as well say at once that Louisa never got over it. There followed -an extraordinary week, which I look back upon as one of the most -uncomfortable of my life. The doctor had something to say about the -action of his patient's heart--it was weak and slightly irregular, and -he was anxious to learn whether she had lately been exposed to any -violent shock or emotion--but he could give no name to the disorder -under the influence of which she had begun unmistakably to sink. She lay -on the sofa in her room--she refused to go to bed, and in the absence of -complications it was not insisted on--utterly white, weak and -abstracted, shaking her head at all suggestion, waving away all -nourishment save the infinitesimally little that enabled her to stretch -out her hand from time to time (at intervals of very unequal length) and -begin "Mother, mother!" as if she were mustering courage for a supreme -confession. The courage never came; she was haunted by a strange impulse -to speak, which in turn was checked on her lips by some deeper horror or -some stranger fear. She seemed to seek relief spasmodically from some -unforgettable consciousness and then to find the greatest relief of all -in impenetrable silence. I knew these things only from her mother, for -before me (I went gently in and out of her room two or three times a -day) she gave no sign whatever. The little local doctor, after the first -day, acknowledged himself at sea and expressed a desire to consult with -a colleague at Exeter. The colleague journeyed down to us and shuffled -and stammered: he recommended an appeal to a high authority in London. -The high authority was summoned by telegraph and paid us a flying visit. -He enunciated the valuable opinion that it was a very curious case and -dropped the striking remark that in so charming a home a young lady -ought to bloom like a flower. The young lady's late hostess came over, -but she could throw no light on anything: all that she had ever noticed -was that Louisa had seemed "rather blue" for a day or two before she -brought her visit to a close. Our days were dismal enough and our nights -were dreadful, for I took turns with Helen in sitting up with the girl. -Chantry Court itself seemed conscious of the riddle that made its -chambers ache; it bowed its grey old head over the fate of its daughter. -The people who had been coming were put off; dinner became a ceremony -enacted mainly by the servants. I sat alone with Christopher Chantry, -whose honest hair, in his mystification, stuck out as if he had been -overhauling accounts. My hours with Louisa were even more intensely -silent, for she almost never looked at me. In the watches of the night -however I at last saw more clearly into what she was thinking of. Once -when I caught her wan eyes resting upon me I took advantage of it to -kneel down by her bed and speak to her with the utmost tenderness. - -"If you can't say it to your mother, can you say it perhaps to _me_?" - -She gazed at me for some time. "What does it matter now--if I'm dying?" - -I shook my head and smiled. "You won't die if you get it off your mind." - -"You'd be cruel to him," she said. "He's innocent--he's innocent." - -"Do you mean _you're_ guilty? What trifle are you magnifying?" - -"Do you call it a trifle----?" She faltered and paused. - -"Certainly I do, my dear." Then I risked a great stroke. "I've often -done it myself!" - -"_You_? Never, never! I was cruel to him," she added. - -This puzzled me; I couldn't work it into my conception. "How were you -cruel?" - -"In the garden. I changed suddenly, I drove him away, I told him he -filled me with horror." - -"Why did you do that?" - -"Because my shame came over me." - -"Your shame?" - -"What I had done in the house." - -"And what had you done?" - -She lay a few moments with her eyes closed, as if she were living it -over. "I broke out to him, I told him," she began at last. But she -couldn't continue, she was powerless to utter it. - -"Yes, I know what you told him. Millions of girls have told young men -that before." - -"They've been asked, they've been asked! They didn't speak _first_! I -didn't even know him, he didn't care for me, I had seen him for the -first time the day before. I said strange things to him, and he behaved -like a gentleman." - -"Well he might!" - -"Then before he could turn round, when we had simply walked out of the -house together and strolled in the garden--it was as if I were borne -along in the air by the wonder of what I had said--it rolled over me -that I was lost." - -"Lost?" - -"That I had been horrible--that I had been mad. Nothing could never -unsay it. I frightened him--I almost struck him." - -"Poor fellow!" I smiled. - -"Yes--pity him. He was kind. But he'll see me that way--always!" - -I hesitated as to the answer it was best to make to this; then I -produced: "Don't think he'll remember you--he'll see other girls." - -"Ah, he'll _forget_ me!" she softly and miserably wailed; and I saw that -I had said the wrong thing. I bent over her more closely, to kiss her, -and when I raised my head her mother was on the other side of the bed. -She fell on her knees there for the same purpose, and when Louisa felt -her lips she stretched out her arms to embrace her. She had the strength -to draw her close, and I heard her begin again, for the hundredth time, -"Mother, mother----" - -"Yes, my own darling." - -Then for the hundredth time I heard her stop. There was an intensity in -her silence. It made me wildly nervous; I got up and turned away. - -"Mother, mother," the girl repeated, and poor Helen replied with a sound -of passionate solicitation. But her daughter only exhaled in the waiting -hush, while I stood at the window where the dawn was faint, the most -miserable moan in the world. "I'm dying," she said, articulately; and -she died that night, after an hour, unconscious. The doctor arrived -almost at the moment; this time he was sure it must have been the heart. -The poor parents were in stupefaction, and I gave up half my visits and -stayed with them a month. But in spite of their stupefaction I kept my -vow. - - - - -COLLABORATION - - -I don't know how much people care for my work, but they like my studio -(of which indeed I am exceedingly fond myself), as they show by their -inclination to congregate there at dusky hours on winter afternoons, or -on long dim evenings when the place looks well with its rich -combinations and low-burning lamps and the bad pictures (my own) are not -particularly visible. I won't go into the question of how many of these -are purchased, but I rejoice in the distinction that my invitations are -never declined. Some of my visitors have been good enough to say that on -Sunday evenings in particular there is no pleasanter place in -Paris--where so many places are pleasant--none friendlier to easy talk -and repeated cigarettes, to the exchange of points of view and the -comparison of accents. The air is as international as only Parisian air -can be; women, I surmise, think they look well in it; they come also -because they fancy they are doing something Bohemian, just as many of -the men come because they suppose they are doing something correct. The -old heraldic cushions on the divans, embossed with rusty gold, are -favourable both to expansion and to contraction--that of course of -contracting parties--and the Italian brocade on the walls appeals to -one's highest feelings. Music makes its home there--though I confess I -am not quite the master of _that_ house, and when it is going on in a -truly receptive hush I enjoy the way my company leans back and gazes -through the thin smoke of cigarettes up at the distant Tiepolo in the -almost palatial ceiling. I make sure the piano, the tobacco and the tea -are all of the best. - -For the conversation, I leave that mostly to take care of itself. There -are discussions of course and differences--sometimes even a violent -circulation of sense and sound; but I have a consciousness that beauty -flourishes and that harmonies prevail in the end. I have occasionally -known a visitor to be rude to me because he disliked another visitor's -opinions--I had seen an old habitué slip away without bidding me good -night on the arrival of some confident specimen of _les jeunes_; but as -a general thing we have it out together on the spot--the place is really -a chamber of justice, a temple of reconciliation: we understand each -other if we only sit up late enough. Art protects her children in the -long run--she only asks them to trust her. She is like the Catholic -Church--she guarantees paradise to the faithful. Music moreover is a -universal solvent; though I've not an infallible ear I've a sufficient -sense of the matter for that. Ah, the wounds I've known it to heal--the -bridges I've known it to build--the ghosts I've known it to lay! Though -I've seen people stalk out I've never observed them not to steal back. -My studio in short is the theatre of a cosmopolite drama, a comedy -essentially "of character." - -One of the liveliest scenes of the performance was the evening, last -winter, on which I became aware that one of my compatriots--an American, -my good friend Alfred Bonus--was engaged in a controversy somewhat -acrimonious, on a literary subject, with Herman Heidenmauer, the young -composer who had been playing to us divinely a short time before and -whom I thought of neither as a disputant nor as an Englishman. I -perceived in a moment that something had happened to present him in this -combined character to poor Bonus, who was so ardent a patriot that he -lived in Paris rather than in London, who had met his interlocutor for -the first time on this occasion, and who apparently had been misled by -the perfection with which Heidenmauer spoke English--he spoke it really -better than Alfred Bonus. The young musician, a born Bavarian, had spent -a few years in England, where he had a commercial step-brother planted -and more or less prosperous--a helpful man who had watched over his -difficult first steps, given him a temporary home, found him publishers -and pupils, smoothed the way to a stupefied hearing for his first -productions. He knew his London and might at a first glance have been -taken for one of its products; but he had, in addition to a genius of -the sort that London fosters but doesn't beget, a very German soul. He -brought me a note from an old friend on the other side of the Channel, -and I liked him as soon as I looked at him; so much indeed that I could -forgive him for making me feel thin and empirical, conscious that _he_ -was one of the higher kind whom the future has looked in the face. He -had met through his gold spectacles her deep eyes, and some mutual -communication had occurred. This had given him a confidence which passed -for conceit only with those who didn't know the reason. - -I guessed the reason early, and, as may be imagined, he didn't grudge me -the knowledge. He was happy and various--as little as possible the mere -long-haired musicmonger. His hair was short--it was only his legs and -his laughter that were long. He was fair and rosy, and his gold -spectacles glittered as if in response to the example set them by his -beautiful young golden beard. You would have been sure he was an artist -without going so far as to decide upon his particular passion; for you -would have been conscious that whatever this passion might be it was -acquainted with many of the others and mixed with them to its profit. -Yet these discoveries had not been fully made by Alfred Bonus, whose -occupation was to write letters to the American journals about the way -the "boys" were coming on in Paris; for in such a case he probably would -not have expected such nebulous greatness to condense at a moment's -notice. Bonus is clever and critical, and a sort of self-appointed -emissary or agent of the great republic. He has it at heart to prove -that the Americans in Europe _do_ get on--taking for granted on the part -of the Americans at home an interest in this subject greater, as I often -assure him, than any really felt. "Come, now, do _I_ get on?" I often -ask him; and I sometimes push the inquiry so far as to stammer: "And -you, my dear Bonus, do _you_ get on?" He is apt to look a little injured -on such occasions, as if he would like to say in reply: "Don't you call -it success to have Sunday evenings at which I'm a regular attendant? And -can you question for a moment the figure I make at them?" It has even -occurred to me that he suspects me of painting badly on purpose to spite -him--that is to interfere with his favourite dogma. Therefore to spite -me in return he's in the heroic predicament of refusing to admit that -I'm a failure. He takes a great interest in the plastic arts, but his -intensest sympathy is for literature. This sentiment is somewhat -starved, as in that school the boys languish as yet on a back seat. To -show what they are doing Bonus has to retreat upon the studios, but -there is nothing he enjoys so much as having, when the rare chance -offers, a good literary talk. He follows the French movement closely and -explains it profusely to our compatriots, whom he mystifies, but who -guess he's rather loose. - -I forget how his conversation with Heidenmauer began--it was, I think, -some difference of opinion about one of the English poets that set them -afloat. Heidenmauer knows the English poets, and the French, and the -Italian, and the Spanish, and the Russian--he is a wonderful -representative of that Germanism which consists in the negation of -intellectual frontiers. It is the English poets that, if I'm not -mistaken, he loves best, and probably the harm was done by his having -happened to say so. At any rate Alfred Bonus let him have it, without -due notice perhaps, which is rather Alfred's way, on the question (a -favourite one with my compatriot) of the backward state of literature in -England, for which after all Heidenmauer was not responsible. Bonus -believes in responsibility--the responsibility of others, an attitude -which tends to make some of his friends extremely secretive, though -perhaps it would have been justified--as to this I'm not sure--had -Heidenmauer been, under the circumstances, technically British. Before -he had had time to explain that he was not, the other persons present -had become aware that a kind of challenge had passed--that nation, in a -sudden startled flurry, somehow found itself pitted against nation. -There was much vagueness at first as to which of the nations were -engaged and as to what their quarrel was about, the question coming -presently to appear less simple than the spectacle (so easily -conceivable) of a German's finding it hot for him in a French house, a -house French enough at any rate to give countenance to the idea of his -quick defeat. - -How could the right cause fail of protection in any house of which -Madame de Brindes and her charming daughter were so good as to be -assiduous frequenters? I recollect perfectly the pale gleam of joy in -the mother's handsome face when she gathered that what had happened was -that a detested German was on his defence. She wears her eternal -mourning (I admit it's immensely becoming) for a triple woe, for -multiplied griefs and wrongs, all springing from the crash of the -Empire, from the battlefields of 1870. Her husband fell at Sedan, her -father and her brother on still darker days; both her own family and -that of M. de Brindes, their general situation in life, were, as may be -said, creations of the Empire, so that from one hour to the other she -found herself sinking with the wreck. You won't recognise her under the -name I give her, but you may none the less have admired, between their -pretty lemon-coloured covers, the touching tales of Claude Lorrain. She -plies an ingenious, pathetic pen and has reconciled herself to effort -and privation for the sake of her daughter. I say privation, because -these distinguished women are poor, receive with great modesty and have -broken with a hundred of those social sanctities than are dearer to -French souls than to any others. They have gone down into the -market-place, and Paule de Brindes, who is three-and-twenty to-day and -has a happy turn for keeping a water-colour liquid, earns a hundred -francs here and there. She is not so handsome as her mother, but she has -magnificent hair and what the French call a look of race, and is, or at -least was till the other day, a frank and charming young woman. There is -something exquisite in the way these ladies are earnestly, -conscientiously modern. From the moment they accept necessities they -accept them all, and poor Madame de Brindes flatters herself that she -has made her dowerless daughter one of us others. The girl goes out -alone, talks with young men and, although she only paints landscape, -takes a free view of the _convenances_. Nothing can please either of -them more than to tell them they have thrown over their superstitions. -They haven't, thank heaven; and when I want to be reminded of some of -the prettiest in the world--of a thousand fine scruples and pleasant -forms, and of what grace can do for the sake of grace--I know where to -go for it. - -It was a part of this pious heresy--much more august in the way they -presented it than some of the aspects of the old faith--that Paule -should have become "engaged," quite like a _jeune mees_, to my brilliant -friend Félix Vendemer. He is such a votary of the modern that he was -inevitably interested in the girl of the future and had matched one -reform with another, being ready to marry without a penny, as the -clearest way of expressing his appreciation, this favourable specimen of -the type. He simply fell in love with Mademoiselle de Brindes and -behaved, on his side, equally like one of us others, except that he -begged me to ask her mother for her hand. I was inspired to do so with -eloquence, and my friends were not insensible of such an opportunity to -show that they now lived in the world of realities. Vendemer's sole -fortune is his genius, and he and Paule, who confessed to an answering -flame, plighted their troth like a pair of young rustics or (what comes -for French people to the same thing) young Anglo-Saxons. Madame de -Brindes thinks such doings at bottom very vulgar; but vulgar is what she -tries hard to be, she is so convinced it is the only way to make a -living. Vendemer had had at that time only the first of his successes, -which was not, as you will remember--and unfortunately for Madame de -Brindes--of this remunerative kind. Only a few people recognised the -perfection of his little volume of verse: my acquaintance with him -originated in my having been one of the few. A volume of verse was a -scanty provision to marry on, so that, still like a pair of us others, -the luckless lovers had to bide their time. Presently however came the -success (again a success only with those who care for quality, not with -the rough and ready public) of his comedy in verse at the Français. -This charming work had just been taken off (it had been found not to -make money), when the various parties to my little drama met Heidenmauer -at my studio. - -Vendemer, who has, as indeed the others have, a passion for music, was -tremendously affected by hearing him play two or three of his -compositions, and I immediately saw that the immitigable German quality -was a morsel much less bitter for him than for the two uncompromising -ladies. He went so far as to speak to Heidenmauer frankly, to thank him -with effusion, an effort of which neither of the quivering women would -have been capable. Vendemer was in the room the night Alfred Bonus -raised his little breeze; I saw him lean on the piano and listen with a -queer face looking however rather wonderingly at Heidenmauer. Before -this I had noticed the instant paleness (her face was admirably -expressive) with which Madame de Brindes saw her prospective son-in-law -make up, as it were, to the original Teuton, whose national character -was intensified to her aching mind, as it would have been to that of -most Frenchwomen in her place, by his wash of English colour. A German -was bad enough--but a German with English aggravations! Her senses were -too fine to give her the excuse of not feeling that his compositions -were interesting, and she was capable, magnanimously, of listening to -them with dropped eyes; but (much as it ever cost her not to be -perfectly courteous), she couldn't have made even the most superficial -speech to him about them. Marie de Brindes could never have spoken to -Herman Heidenmauer. It was a narrowness if you will, but a narrowness -that to my vision was enveloped in a dense atmosphere--a kind of sunset -bloom--of enriching and fortifying things. Herman Heidenmauer himself, -like the man of imagination and the lover of life that he was, would -have entered into it delightedly, been charmed with it as a fine case of -bigotry. This was conspicuous in Marie de Brindes: her loyalty to the -national idea was that of a _dévote_ to a form of worship. She never -spoke of France, but she always made me think of it, and with an -authority which the women of her race seem to me to have in the question -much more than the men. I dare say I'm rather in love with her, though, -being considerably younger, I've never told her so--as if she would in -the least mind that! I have indeed been a little checked by a spirit of -allegiance to Vendemer; suspecting always (excuse my sophistication) -that in the last analysis it is the mother's charm that he feels--or -originally felt--in the daughter's. He spoke of the elder lady to me in -those days with the insistence with which only a Frenchman can speak of -the objects of his affection. At any rate there was always something -symbolic and slightly ceremonial to me in her delicate cameo-face and -her general black-robed presence: she made me think of a priestess or a -mourner, of revolutions and sieges, detested treaties and ugly public -things. I pitied her, too, for the strife of the elements in her--for -the way she must have felt a noble enjoyment mutilated. She was too good -for that, and yet she was too rigid for anything else; and the sight of -such dismal perversions made me hate more than ever the stupid terms on -which nations have organised their intercourse. - -When she gathered that one of my guests was simply cramming it down the -throat of another that the English literary mind was not even literary, -she turned away with a vague shrug and a pitiful look at her daughter -for the taste of people who took their pleasure so poorly: the truth in -question would be so obvious that it was not worth making a scene about. -Madame de Brindes evidently looked at any scene between the English and -the Americans as a quarrel proceeding vaguely from below stairs--a -squabble sordidly domestic. Her almost immediate departure with her -daughter operated as a lucky interruption, and I caught for the first -time in the straight, spare girl, as she followed her mother, a little -of the air that Vendemer had told me he found in her, the still -exaltation, the brown uplifted head that we attribute, or that at any -rate he made it visible to me that he attributed, to the dedicated Maid. -He considered that his intended bore a striking resemblance to Jeanne -d'Arc, and he marched after her on this occasion like a -square-shouldered armour-bearer. He reappeared, however, after he had -put the ladies into a cab, and half an hour later the rest of my -friends, with the sole exception of Bonus, having dispersed, he was -sitting up with me in the empty studio for another _bout de causerie_. -At first perhaps I was too occupied with reprimanding my compatriot to -give much attention to what Vendemer might have to say; I remember at -any rate that I had asked Bonus what had induced him to make so grave a -blunder. He was not even yet, it appeared, aware of his blunder, so that -I had to inquire by what odd chance he had taken Heidenmauer for a -bigoted Briton. - -"If I spoke to him as one he answered as one; that's bigoted enough," -said Alfred Bonus. - -"He was confused and amused at your onslaught: he wondered what fly had -stung you." - -"The fly of patriotism," Vendemer suggested. - -"Do _you_ like him--a beast of a German?" Bonus demanded. - -"If he's an Englishman he isn't a German--_il faut opter_. We can hang -him for the one or for the other, we can't hang him for both. I was -immensely struck with those things he played." - -"They had no charm for me, or doubtless I too should have been -demoralised," Alfred said. "He seemed to know nothing about Miss -Brownrigg. Now Miss Brownrigg's great." - -"I like the things and even the people you quarrel about, you big babies -of the same breast. _C'est à se tordre!_" Vendemer declared. - -"I may be very abject, but I _do_ take an interest in the American -novel," Alfred rejoined. - -"I hate such expressions: there's no such thing as the American novel." - -"Is there by chance any such thing as the French?" - -"_Pas davantage_--for the artist himself: how can you ask? I don't know -what is meant by French art and English art and American art: those seem -to me mere cataloguers' and reviewers' and tradesmen's names, -representing preoccupations utterly foreign to the artist. Art is art in -every country, and the novel (since Bonus mentions that) is the novel in -every tongue, and hard enough work they have to live up to that -privilege, without our adding another muddle to the problem. The reader, -the consumer may call things as he likes, but we leave him to his little -amusements." I suggested that we were all readers and consumers; which -only made Vendemer continue: "Yes, and only a small handful of us have -the ghost of a palate. But you and I and Bonus are of the handful." - -"What do you mean by the handful?" Bonus inquired. - -Vendemer hesitated a moment. "I mean the few intelligent people, and -even the few people who are not----" He paused again an instant, long -enough for me to request him not to say what they were "not," and then -went on: "People in a word who have the honour to live in the only -country worth living in." - -"And pray what country is that?" - -"The land of dreams--the country of art." - -"Oh, the land of dreams! I live in the land of realities!" Bonus -exclaimed. "What do you all mean then by chattering so about _le roman -russe?_" - -"It's a convenience--to identify the work of three or four, _là-bas_, -because we're so far from it. But do you see them _writing_ 'le roman -russe?'" - -"I happen to know that that's exactly what they want to do, some of -them," said Bonus. - -"Some of the idiots, then! There are plenty of those everywhere. -Anything born under that silly star is sure not to count." - -"Thank God I'm not an artist!" said Bonus. - -"Dear Alfred's a critic," I explained. - -"And I'm not ashamed of my country," he subjoined. - -"Even a critic perhaps may be an artist," Vendemer mused. - -"Then as the great American critic Bonus may be the great American -artist," I went on. - -"Is that what you're supposed to give us--'American' criticism?" -Vendemer asked, with dismay in his expressive, ironic face. "Take care, -take care, or it will be more American than critical, and then where -will _you_ be? However," he continued, laughing and with a change of -tone, "I may see the matter in too lurid a light, for I've just been -favoured with a judgment conceived in the purest spirit of our own -national genius." He looked at me a moment and then he remarked: "That -dear Madame de Brindes doesn't approve of my attitude." - -"Your attitude?" - -"Toward your German friend. She let me know it when I went down stairs -with her--told me I was much too cordial, that I must observe myself." - -"And what did you reply to that?" - -"I answered that the things he had played were extraordinarily -beautiful." - -"And how did she meet that?" - -"By saying that he's an enemy of our country." - -"She had you there," I rejoined. - -"Yes, I could only reply '_Chère madame, voyons!_'" - -"That was meagre." - -"Evidently, for it did no more for me than to give her a chance to -declare that he can't possibly be here for any good and that he belongs -to a race it's my sacred duty to loathe." - -"I see what she means." - -"I don't then--where artists are concerned. I said to her: '_Ah, madame, -vous savez que pour moi il n'y a que l'art!_'" - -"It's very exciting!" I laughed. "How could she parry that?" - -"'I know it, my dear child--but for _him_?' That's the way she parried -it. 'Very well, for him?' I asked. 'For him there's the insolence of -the victor and a secret scorn for our incurable illusions!'" - -"Heidenmauer has no insolence and no secret scorn." - -Vendemer was silent a moment. "Are you very sure of that?" - -"Oh, I like him! He's out of all that, and far above it. But what did -Mademoiselle Paule say?" I inquired. - -"She said nothing--she only looked at me." - -"Happy man!" - -"Not a bit. She looked at me with strange eyes, in which I could read -'Go straight, my friend--go straight!' _Oh, les femmes, les femmes!_" - -"What's the matter with them now?" - -"They've a mortal hatred of art!" - -"It's a true, deep instinct," said Alfred Bonus. - -"But what passed further with Madame de Brindes?" I went on. - -"She only got into her cab, pushing her daughter first; on which I -slammed the door rather hard and came up here. _Cela m'a porté sur les -nerfs._" - -"I'm afraid I haven't soothed them," Bonus said, looking for his hat. -When he had found it he added: "When the English have beaten us and -pocketed our _milliards_ I'll forgive them; but not till then!" And with -this he went off, made a little uncomfortable, I think, by Vendemer's -sharper alternatives, while the young Frenchman called after him: "My -dear fellow, at night all cats are grey!" - -Vendemer, when we were left alone together, mooned about the empty -studio awhile and asked me three or four questions about Heidenmauer. I -satisfied his curiosity as well as I could, but I demanded the reason of -it. The reason he gave was that one of the young German's compositions -had already begun to haunt his memory; but that was a reason which, to -my sense, still left something unexplained. I didn't however challenge -him, before he quitted me, further than to warn him against being -deliberately perverse. - -"What do you mean by being deliberately perverse?" He fixed me so with -his intensely living French eye that I became almost blushingly -conscious of a certain insincerity and, instead of telling him what I -meant, tried to get off with the deplorable remark that the prejudices -of Mesdames de Brindes were after all respectable. "That's exactly what -makes them so odious!" cried Vendemer. - -A few days after this, late in the afternoon, Herman Heidenmauer came in -to see me and found the young Frenchman seated at my piano--trying to -win back from the keys some echo of a passage in the _Abendlied_ we had -listened to on the Sunday evening. They met, naturally, as good friends, -and Heidenmauer sat down with instant readiness and gave him again the -page he was trying to recover. He asked him for his address, that he -might send him the composition, and at Vendemer's request, as we sat in -the firelight, played half-a-dozen other things. Vendemer listened in -silence but to my surprise took leave of me before the lamp was brought -in. I asked him to stay to dinner (I had already appealed to Heidenmauer -to stay), but he explained that he was engaged to dine with Madame de -Brindes--_à la maison_ as he always called it. When he had gone -Heidenmauer, with whom on departing he had shaken hands without a word, -put to me the same questions about him that Vendemer had asked on the -Sunday evening about the young German, and I replied that my visitor -would find in a small volume of remarkable verse published by Lemerre, -which I placed in his hands, much of the information he desired. This -volume, which had just appeared, contained, beside a reprint of -Vendemer's earlier productions, many of them admirable lyrics, the drama -that had lately been played at the Français, and Heidenmauer took it -with him when he left me. But he left me late, and before this occurred, -all the evening, we had much talk about the French nation. In the -foreign colony of Paris the exchange of opinions on this subject is one -of the most inevitable and by no means the least interesting of -distractions; it furnishes occupation to people rather conscious of the -burden of leisure. Heidenmauer had been little in Paris, but he was all -the more open to impressions; they evidently poured in upon him and he -gave them a generous hospitality. In the diffused white light of his -fine German intelligence old colours took on new tints to me, and while -we spun fancies about the wonderful race around us I added to my little -stock of notions about his own. I saw that his admiration for our -neighbours was a very high tide, and I was struck with something bland -and unconscious (noble and serene in its absence of precautions) in the -way he let his doors stand open to it. It would have been exasperating -to many Frenchmen; he looked at them through his clear spectacles with -such an absence of suspicion that they might have anything to forgive -him, such a thin metaphysical view of instincts and passions. He had the -air of not allowing for recollections and nerves, and would doubtless -give them occasion to make afresh some of their reflections on the tact -of _ces gens-là_. - -A couple of days after I had given him Vendemer's book he came back to -tell me that he found great beauty in it. "It speaks to me--it speaks to -me," he said with his air of happy proof. "I liked the songs--I liked -the songs. Besides," he added, "I like the little romantic play--it has -given me wonderful ideas; more ideas than anything has done for a long -time. Yes--yes." - -"What kind of ideas?" - -"Well, this kind." And he sat down to the piano and struck the keys. I -listened without more questions, and after a while I began to -understand. Suddenly he said: "Do you know the words of _that_?" and -before I could answer he was rolling out one of the lyrics of the little -volume. The poem was strange and obscure, yet irresistibly beautiful, -and he had translated it into music still more tantalizing than itself. -He sounded the words with his German accent, barely perceptible in -English but strongly marked in French. He dropped them and took them up -again; he was playing with them, feeling his way. "_This_ is my idea!" -he broke out; he had caught it, in one of its mystic mazes, and he -rendered it with a kind of solemn freshness. There was a phrase he -repeated, trying it again and again, and while he did so he chanted the -words of the song as if they were an illuminating flame, an inspiration. -I was rather glad on the whole that Vendemer didn't hear what his -pronunciation made of them, but as I was in the very act of rejoicing I -became aware that the author of the verses had opened the door. He had -pushed it gently, hearing the music; then hearing also his own poetry he -had paused and stood looking at Heidenmauer. The young German nodded and -laughed and, irreflectively, spontaneously, greeted him with a friendly -"_Was sagen Sie dazu?_" I saw Vendemer change colour; he blushed red -and, for an instant, as he stood wavering, I thought he was going to -retreat. But I beckoned him in and, on the divan beside me, patted a -place for him to sit. - -He came in but didn't take this place; he went and stood before the fire -to warm his feet, turning his back to us. Heidenmauer played and played, -and after a little Vendemer turned round; he looked about him for a -seat, dropped into it and sat with his elbows on his knees and his head -in his hands. Presently Heidenmauer called out, in French, above the -music: "I like your songs--I like them immensely!" but the young -Frenchman neither spoke nor moved. When however five minutes later -Heidenmauer stopped he sprang up with an entreaty to him to go on, to go -on for the love of God. "_Foilà--foilà!_" cried the musician, and with -hands for an instant suspended he wandered off into mysterious worlds. -He played Wagner and then Wagner again--a great deal of Wagner; in the -midst of which, abruptly, he addressed himself again to Vendemer, who -had gone still further from the piano, launching to me, however from his -corner a "_Dieu, que c'est beau!_" which I saw that Heidenmauer caught. -"I've a conception for an opera, you know--I'd give anything if you'd do -the libretto!" Our German friend laughed out, after this, with clear -good nature, and the rich appeal brought Vendemer slowly to his feet -again, staring at the musician across the room and turning this time -perceptibly pale. - -I felt there was a drama in the air, and it made me a little nervous; to -conceal which I said to Heidenmauer: "What's your conception? What's -your subject?" - -"My conception would be realized in the subject of M. Vendemer's -play--if he'll do that for me in a great lyric manner!" And with this -the young German, who had stopped playing to answer me, quitted the -piano and Vendemer got up to meet him. "The subject is splendid--it has -taken possession of me. Will you do it with me? Will you work with me? -We shall make something great!" - -"Ah, you don't know what you ask!" Vendemer answered, with his pale -smile. - -"I do--I do: I've thought of it. It will be bad for me in my country; I -shall suffer for it. They won't like it--they'll abuse me for -it--they'll say of me _pis que pendre._" Heidenmauer pronounced it _bis -que bendre._ - -"They'll hate my libretto so?" Vendemer asked. - -"Yes, your libretto--they'll say it's immoral and horrible. And they'll -say _I'm_ immoral and horrible for having worked with you," the young -composer went on, with his pleasant healthy lucidity. "You'll injure my -career. Oh yes, I shall suffer!" he joyously, exultingly cried. - -"_Et moi donc!_" Vendemer exclaimed. - -"Public opinion, yes. I shall also make you suffer--I shall nip your -prosperity in the bud. All that's _des bêtises--tes pétisses_," said -poor Heidenmauer. "In art there are no countries." - -"Yes, art is terrible, art is monstrous," Vendemer replied, looking at -the fire. - -"I love your songs--they have extraordinary beauty." - -"And Vendemer has an equal taste for your compositions," I said to -Heidenmauer. - -"Tempter!" Vendemer murmured to me, with a strange look. - -"_C'est juste!_ I mustn't meddle--which will be all the easier as I'm -dining out and must go and dress. You two make yourselves at home and -fight it out here." - -"Do you _leave_ me?" asked Vendemer, still with his strange look. - -"My dear fellow, I've only just time." - -"We will dine together--he and I--at one of those characteristic places, -and we will look at the matter in its different relations," said -Heidenmauer. "Then we will come back here to finish--your studio is so -good for music." - -"There are some things it _isn't_ good for," Vendemer remarked, looking -at our companion. - -"It's good for poetry--it's good for truth," smiled the composer. - -"You'll stay _here_ and dine together," I said; "my servant can manage -that." - -"No, no--we'll go out and we'll walk together. We'll talk a great deal," -Heidenmauer went on. "The subject is so comprehensive," he said to -Vendemer, as he lighted another cigar. - -"The subject?" - -"Of your drama. It's so universal." - -"Ah, the universe--_il n'y a que ça!_" I laughed, to Vendemer, partly -with a really amused sense of the exaggerated woe that looked out of his -poetic eyes and that seemed an appeal to me not to forsake him, to throw -myself into the scale of the associations he would have to stifle, and -partly to encourage him, to express my conviction that two such fine -minds couldn't in the long run be the worse for coming to an agreement. -I might have been a more mocking Mephistopheles handing over his pure -spirit to my literally German Faust. - -When I came home at eleven o'clock I found him alone in my studio, -where, evidently, for some time, he had been moving up and down in -agitated thought. The air was thick with Bavarian fumes, with the -reverberation of mighty music and great ideas, with the echoes of that -"universe" to which I had so mercilessly consigned him. But I judged in -a moment that Vendemer was in a very different phase of his evolution -from the one in which I had left him. I had never seen his handsome, -sensitive face so intensely illumined. - -"_Ça y est--ça y est!_" he exclaimed, standing there with his hands in -his pockets and looking at me. - -"You've really agreed to do something together?" - -"We've sworn a tremendous oath--we've taken a sacred engagement." - -"My dear fellow, you're a hero." - -"Wait and see! _C'est un très-grand esprit._" - -"So much the better!" - -"_C'est un bien beau génie._ Ah, we've risen--we soar; _nous sommes -dans les grandes espaces!_" my friend continued with his dilated eyes. - -"It's very interesting--because it will cost you something." - -"It will cost me everything!" said Félix Vendemer in a tone I seem to -hear at this hour. "That's just the beauty of it. It's the chance of -chances to testify for art--to affirm an indispensable truth." - -"An indispensable truth?" I repeated, feeling myself soar too, but into -the splendid vague. - -"Do you know the greatest crime that can be perpetrated against it?" - -"Against it?" I asked, still soaring. - -"Against the religion of art--against the love for beauty--against the -search for the Holy Grail?" The transfigured look with which he named -these things, the way his warm voice filled the rich room, was a -revelation of the wonderful talk that had taken place. - -"Do you know--for one of _us_--the really damnable, the only -unpardonable, sin?" - -"Tell me, so that I may keep clear of it!" - -"To profane _our_ golden air with the hideous invention of patriotism." - -"It was a clever invention in its time!" I laughed. - -"I'm not talking about its time--I'm talking about, its place. It was -never anything but a fifth-rate impertinence here. In art there are no -countries--no idiotic nationalities, no frontiers, nor _douanes_, nor -still more idiotic fortresses and bayonets. It has the unspeakable -beauty of being the region in which those abominations cease, the medium -in which such vulgarities simply can't live. What therefore are we to -say of the brutes who wish to drag them all in--to crush to death with -them all the flowers of such a garden, to shut out all the light of such -a sky?" I was far from desiring to defend the "brutes" in question, -though there rose before me even at that moment a sufficiently vivid -picture of the way, later on, poor Vendemer would have to face them. I -quickly perceived indeed that the picture was, to his own eyes, a still -more crowded canvas. Félix Vendemer, in the centre of it, was an -admirable, a really sublime figure. If there had been wonderful talk -after I quitted the two poets the wonder was not over yet--it went on -far into the night for my benefit. We looked at the prospect in many -lights, turned the subject about almost every way it would go; but I am -bound to say there was one relation in which we tacitly agreed to -forbear to consider it. We neither of us uttered the name of Paule de -Brindes--the outlook in that direction would too serious. And yet if -Félix Vendemer, exquisite and incorruptible artist that he was, had -fallen in love with the idea of "testifying," it was from that direction -that the finest part of his opportunity to do so would proceed. - -I was only too conscious of this when, within the week, I received a -hurried note from Madame de Brindes, begging me as a particular favour -to come and see her without delay. I had not seen Vendemer again, but I -had had a characteristic call from Heidenmauer, who, though I could -imagine him perfectly in a Prussian helmet, with a needle-gun, -perfectly, on definite occasion, a sturdy, formidable soldier, gave me a -renewed impression of inhabiting, in the expansion of his genius and the -exercise of his intelligence, no land of red tape, no province smaller -nor more pedantically administered than the totality of things. I was -reminded afresh too that _he_ foresaw no striking salon-picture, no -_chic_ of execution nor romance of martyrdom, or at any rate devoted -very little time to the consideration of such objects. He doubtless did -scant justice to poor Vendemer's attitude, though he said to me of him -by the way, with his rosy deliberation: "He has good ideas--he has good -ideas. The French mind has--for me--the taste of a very delightful -_bonbon_!" He only measured the angle of convergence, as he called it, -of their two projections. He was in short not preoccupied with the -personal gallantry of their experiment; he was preoccupied with its -"æsthetic and harmonic basis." - -It was without her daughter that Madame de Brindes received me, when I -obeyed her summons, in her scrap of a _quatrième_ in the Rue de -Miromesnil. - -"Ah, _cher monsieur_, how could you have permitted such a horror--how -could you have given it the countenance of your roof, of your -influence?" There were tears in her eyes, and I don't think that for the -moment I have ever been more touched by a reproach. But I pulled myself -together sufficiently to affirm my faith as well as to disengage my -responsibility. I explained that there was no horror to me in the -matter, that if I was not a German neither was I a Frenchman, and that -all I had before me was two young men inflamed by a great idea and nobly -determined to work together to give it a great form. - -"A great idea--to go over to _ces gens-là?_" - -"To go over to them?" - -"To put yourself on their side--to throw yourself into the arms of those -who hate us--to fall into their abominable trap!" - -"What do you call their abominable trap?" - -"Their false _bonhomie_, the very impudence of their intrigues, their -profound, scientific deceit and their determination to get the advantage -of us by exploiting our generosity." - -"You attribute to such a man as Heidenmauer too many motives and too -many calculations. He's quite ideally superior!" - -"Oh, German idealism--we know what that means! We've no use for their -superiority; let them carry it elsewhere--let them leave us alone. Why -do they thrust themselves in upon us and set old wounds throbbing by -their detested presence? We don't go near _them_, or ever wish to hear -their ugly names or behold their _visages de bois_; therefore the most -rudimentary good taste, the tact one would expect even from naked -savages, might suggest to them to seek their amusements elsewhere. But -_their_ taste, _their_ tact--I can scarcely trust myself to speak!" - -Madame de Brindes did speak however at considerable further length and -with a sincerity of passion which left one quite without arguments. -There was no argument to meet the fact that Vendemer's attitude wounded -her, wounded her daughter, _jusqu'au fond de l'âme_, that it -represented for them abysses of shame and suffering and that for himself -it meant a whole future compromised, a whole public alienated. It was -vain doubtless to talk of such things; if people didn't _feel_ them, if -they hadn't the fibre of loyalty, the high imagination of honour, all -explanations, all supplications were but a waste of noble emotion. M. -Vendemer's perversity was monstrous--she had had a sickening discussion -with him. What she desired of me was to make one last appeal to him, to -put the solemn truth before him, to try to bring him back to sanity. It -was as if he had temporarily lost his reason. It was to be made clear to -him, _par exemple_, that unless he should recover it Mademoiselle de -Brindes would unhesitatingly withdraw from her engagement. - -"Does she _really_ feel as you do?" I asked. - -"Do you think I put words into her mouth? She feels as a _fille de -France_ is obliged to feel!" - -"Doesn't she love him then?" - -"She adores him. But she won't take him without his honour." - -"I don't understand such refinements!" I said. - -"Oh, _vous autres!_" cried Madame de Brindes. Then with eyes glowing -through her tears she demanded: "Don't you know she knows how her father -died?" I was on the point of saying "What has that to do with it?" but I -withheld the question, for after all I could conceive that it might have -something. There was no disputing about tastes, and I could only express -my sincere conviction that Vendemer was profoundly attached to -Mademoiselle Paule. "Then let him prove it by making her a sacrifice!" -my strenuous hostess replied; to which I rejoined that I would repeat -our conversation to him and put the matter before him as strongly as I -could. I delayed a little to take leave, wondering if the girl would not -come in--I should have been so much more content to receive her strange -recantation from her own lips. I couldn't say this to Madame de Brindes; -but she guessed I meant it, and before we separated we exchanged a look -in which our mutual mistrust was written--the suspicion on her side that -I should not be a very passionate intercessor and the conjecture on mine -that she might be misrepresenting her daughter. This slight tension, I -must add, was only momentary, for I have had a chance of observing Paule -de Brindes since then, and the two ladies were soon satisfied that I -pitied them enough to have been eloquent. - -My eloquence has been of no avail, and I have learned (it has been one -of the most interesting lessons of my life) of what transcendent stuff -the artist may sometimes be made. Herman Heidenmauer and Félix Vendemer -are, at the hour I write, immersed in their monstrous collaboration. -There were postponements and difficulties at first, and there will be -more serious ones in the future, when it is a question of giving the -finished work to the world. The world of Paris will stop its ears in -horror, the German Empire will turn its mighty back, and the authors of -what I foresee (oh, I've been treated to specimens!) as a perhaps really -epoch-making musical revelation (is Heidenmauer's style rubbing off on -me?) will perhaps have to beg for a hearing in communities fatally -unintelligent. It may very well be that they will not obtain any hearing -at all for years. I like at any rate to think that time works for them. -At present they work for themselves and for each other, amid drawbacks -of several kinds. Separating after the episode in Paris, they have met -again on alien soil, at a little place on the Genoese Riviera where -sunshine is cheap and tobacco bad, and they live (the two together) for -five francs a day, which is all they can muster between them. It appears -that when Heidenmauer's London step-brother was informed of the young -composer's unnatural alliance he instantly withdrew his subsidy. The -return of it is contingent on the rupture of the unholy union and the -destruction by flame of all the manuscript. The pair are very poor and -the whole thing depends on their staying power. They are so preoccupied -with their opera that they have no time for pot-boilers. Vendemer is in -a feverish hurry, lest perhaps he should find himself chilled. There are -still other details which contribute to the interest of the episode and -which, for me, help to render it a most refreshing, a really great -little case. It rests me, it delights me, there is something in it that -makes for civilization. In their way they are working for human -happiness. The strange course taken by Vendemer (I mean his renunciation -of his engagement) must moreover be judged in the light of the fact that -he was really in love. Something had to be sacrificed, and what he clung -to most (he's extraordinary, I admit) was the truth he had the -opportunity of proclaiming. Men give up their love for advantages every -day, but they rarely give it up for such discomforts. - -Paule de Brindes was the less in love of the two; I see her often enough -to have made up my mind about that. But she's mysterious, she's odd; -there was at any rate a sufficient wrench in her life to make her often -absent-minded. Does her imagination hover about Félix Vendemer? A month -ago, going into their rooms one day when her mother was not at home (the -_bonne_ had admitted me under a wrong impression) I found her at the -piano, playing one of Heidenmauer's compositions--playing it without -notes and with infinite expression. How had she got hold of it? How had -she learned it? This was her secret--she blushed so that I didn't pry -into it. But what is she doing, under the singular circumstances, with a -composition of Herman Heidenmauer's? She never met him, she never heard -him play but that once. It will be a pretty complication if it shall -appear that the young German genius made on that occasion more than one -intense impression. This needn't appear, however, inasmuch as, being -naturally in terror of the discovery by her mother of such an anomaly, -she may count on me absolutely not to betray her. I hadn't fully -perceived how deeply susceptible she is to music. She must have a -strange confusion of feelings--a dim, haunting trouble, with a kind of -ache of impatience for the wonderful opera somewhere in the depths of -it. Don't we live fast after all, and doesn't the old order change? -Don't say art isn't mighty! I shall give you some more illustrations of -it yet. - - - - -OWEN WINGRAVE - - -I - - -"Upon my honour you must be off your head!" cried Spencer Coyle, as the -young man, with a white face, stood there panting a little and repeating -"Really, I've quite decided," and "I assure you I've thought it all -out." They were both pale, but Owen Wingrave smiled in a manner -exasperating to his interlocutor, who however still discriminated -sufficiently to see that his grimace (it was like an irrelevant leer) -was the result of extreme and conceivable nervousness. - -"It was certainly a mistake to have gone so far; but that is exactly why -I feel I mustn't go further," poor Owen said, waiting mechanically, -almost humbly (he wished not to swagger, and indeed he had nothing to -swagger about) and carrying through the window to the stupid opposite -houses the dry glitter of his eyes. - -"I'm unspeakably disgusted. You've made me dreadfully ill," Mr. Coyle -went on, looking thoroughly upset. - -"I'm very sorry. It was the fear of the effect on you that kept me from -speaking sooner." - -"You should have spoken three months ago. Don't you know your mind from -one day to the other?" - -The young man for a moment said nothing. Then he replied with a little -tremor: "You're very angry with me, and I expected it. I'm awfully -obliged to you for all you've done for me. I'll do anything else for you -in return, but I can't do that. Everyone else will let me have it, of -course. I'm prepared for it--I'm prepared for everything. That's what -has taken the time: to be sure I was prepared. I think it's your -displeasure I feel most and regret most. But little by little you'll get -over it." - -"_You'll_ get over it rather faster, I suppose!" Spencer Coyle -satirically exclaimed. He was quite as agitated as his young friend, and -they were evidently in no condition to prolong an encounter in which -they each drew blood. Mr. Coyle was a professional "coach"; he prepared -young men for the army, taking only three or four at a time, to whom he -applied the irresistible stimulus of which the possession was both his -secret and his fortune. He had not a great establishment; he would have -said himself that it was not a wholesale business. Neither his system, -his health nor his temper could have accommodated itself to numbers; so -he weighed and measured his pupils and turned away more applicants than -he passed. He was an artist in his line, caring only for picked subjects -and capable of sacrifices almost passionate for the individual. He liked -ardent young men (there were kinds of capacity to which he was -indifferent) and he had taken a particular fancy to Owen Wingrave. This -young man's facility really fascinated him. His candidates usually did -wonders, and he might have sent up a multitude. He was a person of -exactly the stature of the great Napoleon, with a certain flicker of -genius in his light blue eye: it had been said of him that he looked -like a pianist. The tone of his favourite pupil now expressed, without -intention indeed, a superior wisdom which irritated him. He had not -especially suffered before from Wingrave's high opinion of himself, -which had seemed justified by remarkable parts; but to-day it struck him -as intolerable. He cut short the discussion, declining absolutely to -regard their relations as terminated, and remarked to his pupil that he -had better go off somewhere (down to Eastbourne, say; the sea would -bring him round) and take a few days to find his feet and come to his -senses. He could afford the time, he was so well up: when Spencer Coyle -remembered how well up he was he could have boxed his ears. The tall, -athletic young man was not physically a subject for simplified -reasoning; but there was a troubled gentleness in his handsome face, the -index of compunction mixed with pertinacity, which signified that if it -could have done any good he would have turned both cheeks. He evidently -didn't pretend that his wisdom was superior; he only presented it as his -own. It was his own career after all that was in question. He couldn't -refuse to go through the form of trying Eastbourne or at least of -holding his tongue, though there was that in his manner which implied -that if he should do so it would be really to give Mr. Coyle a chance to -recuperate. He didn't feel a bit overworked, but there was nothing more -natural than that with their tremendous pressure Mr. Coyle should be. -Mr. Coyle's own intellect would derive an advantage from his pupil's -holiday. Mr. Coyle saw what he meant, but he controlled himself; he only -demanded, as his right, a truce of three days. Owen Wingrave granted it, -though as fostering sad illusions this went visibly against his -conscience; but before they separated the famous crammer remarked: - -"All the same I feel as if I ought to see someone. I think you mentioned -to me that your aunt had come to town?" - -"Oh yes; she's in Baker Street. Do go and see her," the boy said -comfortingly. - -Mr. Coyle looked at him an instant. "Have you broached this folly to -her?" - -"Not yet--to no one. I thought it right to speak to you first." - -"Oh, what you 'think right'!" cried Spencer Coyle, outraged by his young -friend's standards. He added that he would probably call on Miss -Wingrave; after which the recreant youth got out of the house. - -Owen Wingrave didn't however start punctually for Eastbourne; he only -directed his steps to Kensington Gardens, from which Mr. Coyle's -desirable residence (he was terribly expensive and had a big house) was -not far removed. The famous coach "put up" his pupils, and Owen had -mentioned to the butler that he would be back to dinner. The spring day -was warm to his young blood, and he had a book in his pocket which, when -he had passed into the gardens and, after a short stroll, dropped into a -chair, he took out with the slow, soft sigh that finally ushers in a -pleasure postponed. He stretched his long legs and began to read it; it -was a volume of Goethe's poems. He had been for days in a state of the -highest tension, and now that the cord had snapped the relief was -proportionate; only it was characteristic of him that this deliverance -should take the form of an intellectual pleasure. If he had thrown up -the probability of a magnificent career it was not to dawdle along Bond -Street nor parade his indifference in the window of a club. At any rate -he had in a few moments forgotten everything--the tremendous pressure, -Mr. Coyle's disappointment, and even his formidable aunt in Baker -Street. If these watchers had overtaken him there would surely have been -some excuse for their exasperation. There was no doubt he was perverse, -for his very choice of a pastime only showed how he had got up his -German. - -"What the devil's the matter with him, do _you_ know?" Spencer Coyle -asked that afternoon of young Lechmere, who had never before observed -the head of the establishment to set a fellow such an example of bad -language. Young Lechmere was not only Wingrave's fellow-pupil, he was -supposed to be his intimate, indeed quite his best friend, and had -unconsciously performed for Mr. Coyle the office of making the promise -of his great gifts more vivid by contrast. He was short and sturdy and -as a general thing uninspired, and Mr. Coyle, who found no amusement in -believing in him, had never thought him less exciting than as he stared -now out of a face from which you could never guess whether he had caught -an idea. Young Lechmere concealed such achievements as if they had been -youthful indiscretions. At any rate he could evidently conceive no -reason why it should be thought there was anything more than usual the -matter with the companion of his studies; so Mr. Coyle had to continue: - -"He declines to go up. He chucks the whole thing!" - -The first thing that struck young Lechmere in the case was the freshness -it had imparted to the governor's vocabulary. - -"He doesn't want to go to Sandhurst?" - -"He doesn't want to go anywhere. He gives up the army altogether. He -objects," said Mr. Coyle, in a tone that made young Lechmere almost hold -his breath, "to the military profession." - -"Why, it has been the profession of all his family!" - -"Their profession? It has been their religion! Do you know Miss -Wingrave?" - -"Oh, yes. Isn't she awful?" young Lechmere candidly ejaculated. - -His instructor demurred. - -"She's formidable, if you mean that, and it's right she should be; -because somehow in her very person, good maiden lady as she is, she -represents the might, she represents the traditions and the exploits of -the British army. She represents the expansive property of the English -name. I think his family can be trusted to come down on him, but every -influence should be set in motion. I want to know what yours is. Can -_you_ do anything in the matter?" - -"I can try a couple of rounds with him," said young Lechmere -reflectively. "But he knows a fearful lot. He has the most extraordinary -ideas." - -"Then he has told you some of them--he has taken you into his -confidence?" - -"I've heard him jaw by the yard," smiled the honest youth. "He has told -me he despises it." - -"What _is_ it he despises? I can't make out." - -The most consecutive of Mr. Coyle's nurslings considered a moment, as if -he were conscious of a responsibility. - -"Why, I think, military glory. He says we take the wrong view of it." - -"He oughtn't to talk to _you_ that way. It's corrupting the youth of -Athens. It's sowing sedition." - -"Oh, I'm all right!" said young Lechmere. "And he never told me he meant -to chuck it. I always thought he meant to see it through, simply because -he had to. He'll argue on any side you like. It's a tremendous pity--I'm -sure he'd have a big career." - -"Tell him so, then; plead with him; struggle with him--for God's sake." - -"I'll do what I can--I'll tell him it's a regular shame." - -"Yes, strike _that_ note--insist on the disgrace of it." - -The young man gave Mr. Coyle a more perceptive glance. "I'm sure he -wouldn't do anything dishonourable." - -"Well--it won't look right. He must be made to feel _that_--work it up. -Give him a comrade's point of view--that of a brother-in-arms." - -"That's what I thought we were going to be!" young Lechmere mused -romantically, much uplifted by the nature of the mission imposed on him. -"He's an awfully good sort." - -"No one will think so if he backs out!" said Spencer Coyle. - -"They mustn't say it to _me_!" his pupil rejoined with a flush. - -Mr. Coyle hesitated a moment, noting his tone and aware that in the -perversity of things, though this young man was a born soldier, no -excitement would ever attach to _his_ alternatives save perhaps on the -part of the nice girl to whom at an early day he was sure to be placidly -united. "Do you like him very much--do you believe in him?" - -Young Lechmere's life in these days was spent in answering terrible -questions; but he had never been subjected to so queer an interrogation -as this. "Believe in him? Rather!" - -"Then _save_ him!" - -The poor boy was puzzled, as if it were forced upon him by this -intensity that there was more in such an appeal than could appear on the -surface; and he doubtless felt that he was only entering into a complex -situation when after another moment, with his hands in his pockets, he -replied hopefully but not pompously: "I daresay I can bring him round!" - - - - -II - - -Before seeing young Lechmere Mr. Coyle had determined to telegraph an -inquiry to Miss Wingrave. He had prepaid the answer, which, being -promptly put into his hand, brought the interview we have just related -to a close. He immediately drove off to Baker Street, where the lady had -said she awaited him, and five minutes after he got there, as he sat -with Owen Wingrave's remarkable aunt, he repeated over several times, in -his angry sadness and with the infallibility of his experience: "He's so -intelligent--he's so intelligent!" He had declared it had been a luxury -to put such a fellow through. - -"Of course he's intelligent, what else could he be? We've never, that I -know of, had but _one_ idiot in the family!" said Jane Wingrave. This -was an allusion that Mr. Coyle could understand, and it brought home to -him another of the reasons for the disappointment, the humiliation as it -were, of the good people at Paramore, at the same that it gave an -example of the conscientious coarseness he had on former occasions -observed in his interlocutress. Poor Philip Wingrave, her late brother's -eldest son, was literally imbecile and banished from view; deformed, -unsocial, irretrievable, he had been relegated to a private asylum and -had become among the friends of the family only a little hushed -lugubrious legend. All the hopes of the house, picturesque Paramore, now -unintermittently old Sir Philip's rather melancholy home (his -infirmities would keep him there to the last) were therefore collected -on the second boy's head, which nature, as if in compunction for her -previous botch, had, in addition to making it strikingly handsome, -filled with marked originalities and talents. These two had been the -only children of the old man's only son, who, like so many of his -ancestors, had given up a gallant young life to the service of his -country. Owen Wingrave the elder had received his death-cut, in -close-quarters, from an Afghan sabre; the blow had come crashing across -his skull. His wife, at that time in India, was about to give birth to -her third child; and when the event took place, in darkness and anguish, -the baby came lifeless into the world and the mother sank under the -multiplication of her woes. The second of the little boys in England, -who was at Paramore with his grandfather, became the peculiar charge of -his aunt, the only unmarried one, and during the interesting Sunday -that, by urgent invitation, Spencer Coyle, busy as he was, had, after -consenting to put Owen through, spent under that roof, the celebrated -crammer received a vivid impression of the influence exerted at least in -intention by Miss Wingrave. Indeed the picture of this short visit -remained with the observant little man a curious one--the vision of an -impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and remarkably "creepy," but full of -character still and full of felicity as a setting for the distinguished -figure of the peaceful old soldier. Sir Philip Wingrave, a relic rather -than a celebrity, was a small brown, erect octogenarian, with -smouldering eyes and a studied courtesy. He liked to do the diminished -honours of his house, but even when with a shaky hand he lighted a -bedroom candle for a deprecating guest it was impossible not to feel -that beneath the surface he was a merciless old warrior. The eye of the -imagination could glance back into his crowded Eastern past--back at -episodes in which his scrupulous forms would only have made him more -terrible. - -Mr. Coyle remembered also two other figures--a faded inoffensive Mrs. -Julian, domesticated there by a system of frequent visits as the widow -of an officer and a particular friend of Miss Wingrave, and a remarkably -clever little girl of eighteen, who was this lady's daughter and who -struck the speculative visitor as already formed for other relations. -She was very impertinent to Owen, and in the course of a long walk that -he had taken with the young man and the effect of which, in much talk, -had been to clinch his high opinion of him, he had learned (for Owen -chattered confidentially) that Mrs. Julian was the sister of a very -gallant gentleman, Captain Hume-Walker, of the Artillery, who had fallen -in the Indian Mutiny and between whom and Miss Wingrave (it had been -that lady's one known concession) a passage of some delicacy, taking a -tragic turn, was believed to have been enacted. They had been engaged to -be married, but she had given way to the jealousy of her nature--had -broken with him and sent him off to his fate, which had been horrible. A -passionate sense of having wronged him, a hard eternal remorse had -thereupon taken possession of her, and when his poor sister, linked also -to a soldier, had by a still heavier blow been left almost without -resources, she had devoted herself charitably to a long expiation. She -had sought comfort in taking Mrs. Julian to live much of the time at -Paramore, where she became an unremunerated though not uncriticised -housekeeper, and Spencer Coyle suspected that it was a part of this -comfort that she could at her leisure trample on her. The impression of -Jane Wingrave was not the faintest he had gathered on that intensifying -Sunday--an occasion singularly tinged for him with the sense of -bereavement and mourning and memory, of names never mentioned, of the -far-away plaint of widows and the echoes of battles and bad news. It was -all military indeed, and Mr. Coyle was made to shudder a little at the -profession of which he helped to open the door to harmless young men. -Miss Wingrave moreover might have made such a bad conscience worse--so -cold and clear a good one looked at him out of her hard, fine eyes and -trumpeted in her sonorous voice. - -She was a high, distinguished person; angular but not awkward, with a -large forehead and abundant black hair, arranged like that of a woman -conceiving perhaps excusably of her head as "noble," and irregularly -streaked to-day with white. If however she represented for Spencer Coyle -the genius of a military race it was not that she had the step of a -grenadier or the vocabulary of a camp-follower; it was only that such -sympathies were vividly implied in the general fact to which her very -presence and each of her actions and glances and tones were a constant -and direct allusion--the paramount valour of her family. If she was -military it was because she sprang from a military house and because she -wouldn't for the world have been anything but what the Wingraves had -been. She was almost vulgar about her ancestors, and if one had been -tempted to quarrel with her one would have found a fair pretext in her -defective sense of proportion. This temptation however said nothing to -Spencer Coyle, for whom as a strong character revealing itself in colour -and sound she was a spectacle and who was glad to regard her as a force -exerted on his own side. He wished her nephew had more of her narrowness -instead of being almost cursed with the tendency to look at things in -their relations. He wondered why when she came up to town she always -resorted to Baker Street for lodgings. He had never known nor heard of -Baker Street as a residence--he associated it only with bazaars and -photographers. He divined in her a rigid indifference to everything that -was not the passion of her life. Nothing really mattered to her but -that, and she would have occupied apartments in Whitechapel if they had -been a feature in her tactics. She had received her visitor in a large -cold, faded room, furnished with slippery seats and decorated with -alabaster vases and wax-flowers. The only little personal comfort for -which she appeared to have looked out was a fat catalogue of the Army -and Navy Stores, which reposed on a vast, desolate table-cover of false -blue. Her clear forehead--it was like a porcelain slate, a receptacle -for addresses and sums--had flushed when her nephew's crammer told her -the extraordinary news; but he saw she was fortunately more angry than -frightened. She had essentially, she would always have, too little -imagination for fear, and the healthy habit moreover of facing -everything had taught her that the occasion usually found her a quantity -to reckon with. Mr. Coyle saw that her only fear at present could have -been that of not being able to prevent her nephew from being absurd and -that to such an apprehension as this she was in fact inaccessible. -Practically too she was not troubled by surprise; she recognised none of -the futile, none of the subtle sentiments. If Philip had for an hour -made a fool of himself she was angry; disconcerted as she would have -been on learning that he had confessed to debts or fallen in love with a -low girl. But there remained in any annoyance the saving fact that no -one could make a fool of _her_. - -"I don't know when I've taken such an interest in a young man--I think I -never have, since I began to handle them," Mr. Coyle said. "I like him, -I believe in him--it's been a delight to see how he was going." - -"Oh, I know how they go!" Miss Wingrave threw back her head with a -familiar briskness, as if a rapid procession of the generations had -flashed before her, rattling their scabbards and spurs. Spencer Coyle -recognised the intimation that she had nothing to learn from anybody -about the natural carriage of a Wingrave, and he even felt convicted by -her next words of being, in her eyes, with the troubled story of his -check, his weak complaint of his pupil, rather a poor creature. "If you -like him," she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake keep him quiet!" - -Mr. Coyle began to explain to her that this was less easy than she -appeared to imagine; but he perceived that she understood very little of -what he said. The more he insisted that the boy had a kind of -intellectual independence, the more this struck her as a conclusive -proof that her nephew was a Wingrave and a soldier. It was not till he -mentioned to her that Owen had spoken of the profession of arms as of -something that would be "beneath" him, it was not till her attention was -arrested by this intenser light on the complexity of the problem that -Miss Wingrave broke out after a moment's stupefied reflection: "Send him -to see me immediately!" - -"That's exactly what I wanted to ask your leave to do. But I've wanted -also to prepare you for the worst, to make you understand that he -strikes me as really obstinate and to suggest to you that the most -powerful arguments at your command--especially if you should be able to -put your hand on some intensely practical one--will be none too -effective." - -"I think I've got a powerful argument." Miss Wingrave looked very hard -at her visitor. He didn't know in the least what it was, but he begged -her to put it forward without delay. He promised that their young man -should come to Baker Street that evening, mentioning however that he had -already urged him to spend without delay a couple of days at Eastbourne. -This led Jane Wingrave to inquire with surprise what virtue there might -be in _that_ expensive remedy, and to reply with decision when Mr. Coyle -had said "The virtue of a little rest, a little change, a little relief -to overwrought nerves," "Ah, don't coddle him--he's costing us a great -deal of money! I'll talk to him and I'll take him down to Paramore; then -I'll send him back to you straightened out." - -Spencer Coyle hailed this pledge superficially with satisfaction, but -before he quitted Miss Wingrave he became conscious that he had really -taken on a new anxiety--a restlessness that made him say to himself, -groaning inwardly: "Oh, she is a grenadier at bottom, and she'll have no -tact. I don't know what her powerful argument is; I'm only afraid she'll -be stupid and make him worse. The old man's better--_he's_ capable of -tact, though he's not quite an extinct volcano. Owen will probably put -him in a rage. In short the difficulty is that the boy's the best of -them." - -Spencer Coyle felt afresh that evening at dinner that the boy was the -best of them. Young Wingrave (who, he was pleased to observe, had not -yet proceeded to the seaside) appeared at the repast as usual, looking -inevitably a little self-conscious, but not too original for Bayswater. -He talked very naturally to Mrs. Coyle, who had thought him from the -first the most beautiful young man they had ever received; so that the -person most ill at ease was poor Lechmere, who took great trouble, as if -from the deepest delicacy, not to meet the eye of his misguided mate. -Spencer Coyle however paid the penalty of his own profundity in feeling -more and more worried; he could so easily see that there were all sorts -of things in his young friend that the people of Paramore wouldn't -understand. He began even already to react against the notion of his -being harassed--to reflect that after all he had a right to his -ideas--to remember that he was of a substance too fine to be in fairness -roughly used. It was in this way that the ardent little crammer, with -his whimsical perceptions and complicated sympathies, was generally -condemned not to settle down comfortably either into his displeasures or -into his enthusiasms. His love of the real truth never gave him a chance -to enjoy them. He mentioned to Wingrave after dinner the propriety of an -immediate visit to Baker Street, and the young man, looking "queer," as -he thought--that is smiling again with the exaggerated glory he had -shown in their recent interview--went off to face the ordeal. Spencer -Coyle noted that he was scared--he was afraid of his aunt; but somehow -this didn't strike him as a sign of pusillanimity. _He_ should have been -scared, he was well aware, in the poor boy's place, and the sight of his -pupil marching up to the battery in spite of his terrors was a positive -suggestion of the temperament of the soldier. Many a plucky youth would -have shirked this particular peril. - -"He _has_ got ideas!" young Lechmere broke out to his instructor after -his comrade had quitted the house. He was evidently bewildered and -agitated--he had an emotion to work off. He had before dinner gone -straight at his friend, as Mr. Coyle had requested, and had elicited -from him that his scruples were founded on an overwhelming conviction of -the stupidity--the "crass barbarism" he called it--of war. His great -complaint was that people hadn't invented anything cleverer, and he was -determined to show, the only way he could, that _he_ wasn't such an ass. - -"And he thinks all the great generals ought to have been shot, and that -Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, the greatest, was a criminal, a -monster for whom language has no adequate name!" Mr. Coyle rejoined, -completing young Lechmere's picture. "He favoured you, I see, with -exactly the same pearls of wisdom that he produced for me. But I want to -know what _you_ said." - -"I said they were awful rot!" Young Lechmere spoke with emphasis, and he -was slightly surprised to hear Mr. Coyle laugh incongruously at this -just declaration and then after a moment continue: - -"It's all very curious--I daresay there's something in it. But it's a -pity!" - -"He told me when it was that the question began to strike him in that -light. Four or five years ago, when he did a lot of reading about all -the great swells and their campaigns--Hannibal and Julius Cæsar, -Marlborough and Frederick and Bonaparte. He _has_ done a lot of reading, -and he says it opened his eyes. He says that a wave of disgust rolled -over him. He talked about the 'immeasurable misery' of wars, and asked -me why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go -in for them. He hates poor old Bonaparte worst of all." - -"Well, poor old Bonaparte was a brute. He was a frightful ruffian," Mr. -Coyle unexpectedly declared. "But I suppose you didn't admit that." - -"Oh, I daresay he was objectionable, and I'm very glad we laid him on -his back. But the point I made to Wingrave was that his own behaviour -would excite no end of remark." Young Lechmere hesitated an instant, -then he added: "I told him he must be prepared for the worst." - -"Of course he asked you what you meant by the 'worst,'" said Spencer -Coyle. - -"Yes, he asked me that, and do you know what I said? I said people would -say that his conscientious scruples and his wave of disgust are only a -pretext. Then he asked 'A pretext for what?'" - -"Ah, he rather had you there!" Mr. Coyle exclaimed with a little laugh -that was mystifying to his pupil. - -"Not a bit--for I told him." - -"What did you tell him?" - -Once more, for a few seconds, with his conscious eyes in his -instructor's, the young man hung fire. - -"Why, what we spoke of a few hours ago. The appearance he'd present of -not having----" The honest youth faltered a moment, then brought it out: -"The military temperament, don't you know? But do you know what he said -to that?" young Lechmere went on. - -"Damn the military temperament!" the crammer promptly replied. - -Young Lechmere stared. Mr. Coyle's tone left him uncertain if he were -attributing the phrase to Wingrave or uttering his own opinion, but he -exclaimed: - -"Those were exactly his words!" - -"He doesn't care," said Mr. Coyle. - -"Perhaps not. But it isn't fair for him to abuse us fellows. I told him -it's the finest temperament in the world, and that there's nothing so -splendid as pluck and heroism." - -"Ah! there you had _him_." - -"I told him it was unworthy of him to abuse a gallant, a magnificent -profession. I told him there's no type so fine as that of the soldier -doing his duty." - -"That's essentially _your_ type, my dear boy." Young Lechmere blushed; -he couldn't make out (and the danger was naturally unexpected to him) -whether at that moment he didn't exist mainly for the recreation of his -friend. But he was partly reassured by the genial way this friend -continued, laying a hand on his shoulder: "Keep _at_ him that way! we -may do something. I'm extremely obliged to you." Another doubt however -remained unassuaged--a doubt which led him to exclaim to Mr. Coyle -before they dropped the painful subject: - -"He _doesn't_ care! But it's awfully odd he shouldn't!" - -"So it is, but remember what you said this afternoon--I mean about your -not advising people to make insinuations to _you_." - -"I believe I should knock a fellow down!" said young Lechmere. Mr. Coyle -had got up; the conversation had taken place while they sat together -after Mrs. Coyle's withdrawal from the dinner-table and the head of the -establishment administered to his disciple, on principles that were a -part of his thoroughness, a glass of excellent claret. The disciple, -also on his feet, lingered an instant, not for another "go," as he would -have called it, at the decanter, but to wipe his microscopic moustache -with prolonged and unusual care. His companion saw he had something to -bring out which required a final effort, and waited for him an instant -with a hand on the knob of the door. Then as young Lechmere approached -him Spencer Coyle grew conscious of an unwonted intensity in the round -and ingenuous face. The boy was nervous, but he tried to behave like a -man of the world. "Of course, it's between ourselves," he stammered, -"and I wouldn't breathe such a word to any one who wasn't interested in -poor Wingrave as you are. But do you think he funks it?" - -Mr. Coyle looked at him so hard for an instant that he was visibly -frightened at what he had said. - -"Funks it! Funks what?" - -"Why, what we're talking about--the service." Young Lechmere gave a -little gulp and added with a _naïveté_ almost pathetic to Spencer -Coyle: "The dangers, you know!" - -"Do you mean he's thinking of his skin?" - -Young Lechmere's eyes expanded appealingly, and what his instructor saw -in his pink face--he even thought he saw a tear--was the dread of a -disappointment shocking in the degree in which the loyalty of admiration -had been great. - -"Is he--is he _afraid_?" repeated the honest lad, with a quaver of -suspense. - -"Dear no!" said Spencer Coyle, turning his back. - -Young Lechmere felt a little snubbed and even a little ashamed; but he -felt still more relieved. - - - - -III - - -Less than a week after this Spencer Coyle received a note from Miss -Wingrave, who had immediately quitted London with her nephew. She -proposed that he should come down to Paramore for the following -Sunday--Owen was really so tiresome. On the spot, in that house of -examples and memories and in combination with her poor dear father, who -was "dreadfully annoyed," it might be worth their while to make a last -stand. Mr. Coyle read between the lines of this letter that the party at -Paramore had got over a good deal of ground since Miss Wingrave, in -Baker Street, had treated his despair as superficial. She was not an -insinuating woman, but she went so far as to put the question on the -ground of his conferring a particular favour on an afflicted family; and -she expressed the pleasure it would give them if he should be -accompanied by Mrs. Coyle, for whom she inclosed a separate invitation. -She mentioned that she was also writing, subject to Mr. Coyle's -approval, to young Lechmere. She thought such a nice manly boy might do -her wretched nephew some good. The celebrated crammer determined to -embrace this opportunity; and now it was the case not so much that he -was angry as that he was anxious. As he directed his answer to Miss -Wingrave's letter he caught himself smiling at the thought that at -bottom he was going to defend his young friend rather than to attack -him. He said to his wife, who was a fair, fresh, slow woman--a person of -much more presence than himself--that she had better take Miss Wingrave -at her word: it was such an extraordinary, such a fascinating specimen -of an old English home. This last allusion was amicably sarcastic--he -had already accused the good lady more than once of being in love with -Owen Wingrave. She admitted that she was, she even gloried in her -passion; which shows that the subject, between them, was treated in a -liberal spirit. She carried out the joke by accepting the invitation -with eagerness. Young Lechmere was delighted to do the same; his -instructor had good-naturedly taken the view that the little break would -freshen him up for his last spurt. - -It was the fact that the occupants of Paramore did indeed take their -trouble hard that struck Spencer Coyle after he had been an hour or two -in that fine old house. This very short second visit, beginning on the -Saturday evening, was to constitute the strangest episode of his life. -As soon as he found himself in private with his wife--they had retired -to dress for dinner--they called each other's attention with effusion -and almost with alarm to the sinister gloom that was stamped on the -place. The house was admirable with its old grey front which came -forward in wings so as to form three sides of a square, but Mrs. Coyle -made no scruple to declare that if she had known in advance the sort of -impression she was going to receive she would never have put her foot in -it. She characterized it as "uncanny," she accused her husband of not -having warned her properly. He had mentioned to her in advance certain -facts, but while she almost feverishly dressed she had innumerable -questions to ask. He hadn't told her about the girl, the extraordinary -girl, Miss Julian--that is, he hadn't told her that this young lady, who -in plain terms was a mere dependent, would be in effect, and as a -consequence of the way she carried herself, the most important person in -the house. Mrs. Coyle was already prepared to announce that she hated -Miss Julian's affectations. Her husband above all hadn't told her that -they should find their young charge looking five years older. - -"I couldn't imagine that," said Mr. Coyle, "nor that the character of -the crisis here would be quite so perceptible. But I suggested to Miss -Wingrave the other day that they should press her nephew in real -earnest, and she has taken me at my word. They've cut off his -supplies--they're trying to starve him out. That's not what I meant--but -indeed I don't quite _know_ to-day what I meant. Owen feels the -pressure, but he won't yield." The strange thing was that, now that he -was there, the versatile little coach felt still more that his own -spirit had been caught up by a wave of reaction. If he was there it was -because he was on poor Owen's side. His whole impression, his whole -apprehension, had on the spot become much deeper. There was something in -the dear boy's very resistance that began to charm him. When his wife, -in the intimacy of the conference I have mentioned, threw off the mask -and commended even with extravagance the stand his pupil had taken (he -was too good to be a horrid soldier and it was noble of him to suffer -for his convictions--wasn't he as upright as a young hero, even though -as pale as a Christian martyr?) the good lady only expressed the -sympathy which, under cover of regarding his young friend as a rare -exception, he had already recognised in his own soul. - -For, half an hour ago, after they had had superficial tea in the brown -old hall of the house, his young friend had proposed to him, before -going to dress, to take a turn outside, and had even, on the terrace, as -they walked together to one of the far ends of it, passed his hand -entreatingly into his companion's arm, permitting himself thus a -familiarity unusual between pupil and master and calculated to show that -he had guessed whom he could most depend on to be kind to him. Spencer -Coyle on his own side had guessed something, so that he was not -surprised at the boy's having a particular confidence to make. He had -felt on arriving that each member of the party had wished to get hold of -him first, and he knew that at that moment Jane Wingrave was peering -through the ancient blur of one of the windows (the house had been -modernised so little that the thick dim panes were three centuries old) -to see if her nephew looked as if he were poisoning the visitor's mind. -Mr. Coyle lost no time therefore in reminding the youth (and he took -care to laugh as he did so) that he had not come down to Paramore to be -corrupted. He had come down to make, face to face, a last appeal to -him--he hoped it wouldn't be utterly vain. Owen smiled sadly as they -went, asking him if he thought he had the general air of a fellow who -was going to knock under. - -"I think you look strange--I think you look ill," Spencer Coyle said -very honestly. They had paused at the end of the terrace. - -"I've had to exercise a great power of resistance, and it rather takes -it out of one." - -"Ah, my dear boy, I wish your great power--for you evidently possess -it--were exerted in a better cause!" - -Owen Wingrave smiled down at his small instructor. "I don't believe -that!" Then he added, to explain why: "Isn't what you want, if you're so -good as to think well of my character, to see me exert _most_ power, in -whatever direction? Well, _this_ is the way I exert most." Owen Wingrave -went on to relate that he had had some terrible hours with his -grandfather, who had denounced him in a way to make one's hair stand up -on one's head. He had expected them not to like it, not a bit, but he -had had no idea they would make such a row. His aunt was different, but -she was equally insulting. Oh, they had made him feel they were ashamed -of him; they accused him of putting a public dishonour on their name. He -was the only one who had ever backed out--he was the first for three -hundred years. Every one had known he was to go up, and now every one -would know he was a young hypocrite who suddenly pretended to have -scruples. They talked of his scruples as you wouldn't talk of a -cannibal's god. His grandfather had called him outrageous names. "He -called me--he called me----" Here the young man faltered, his voice -failed him. He looked as haggard as was possible to a young man in such -magnificent health. - -"I probably know!" said Spencer Coyle, with a nervous laugh. - -Owen Wingrave's clouded eyes, as if they were following the far-off -consequences of things, rested for an instant on a distant object. Then -they met his companion's and for another moment sounded them deeply. "It -isn't true. No, it isn't. It's not _that_!" - -"I don't suppose it is! But what _do_ you propose instead of it?" - -"Instead of what?" - -"Instead of the stupid solution of war. If you take that away you should -suggest at least a substitute." - -"That's for the people in charge, for governments and cabinets," said -Owen Wingrave. "_They_'ll arrive soon enough at a substitute, in the -particular case, if they're made to understand that they'll be hung if -they don't find one. Make it a capital crime--that'll quicken the wits -of ministers!" His eyes brightened as he spoke, and he looked assured -and exalted. Mr. Coyle gave a sigh of perplexed resignation--it was a -monomania. He fancied after this for a moment that Owen was going to ask -him if he too thought he was a coward; but he was relieved to observe -that he either didn't suspect him of it or shrank uncomfortably from -putting the question to the test. Spencer Coyle wished to show -confidence, but somehow a direct assurance that he didn't doubt of his -courage appeared too gross a compliment--it would be like saying he -didn't doubt of his honesty. The difficulty was presently averted by -Owen's continuing: "My grandfather can't break the entail, but I shall -have nothing but this place, which, as you know, is small and, with the -way rents are going, has quite ceased to yield an income. He has some -money--not much, but such as it is he cuts me off. My aunt does the -same--she has let me know her intentions. She was to have left me her -six hundred a year. It was all settled; but now what's settled is that I -don't get a penny of it if I give up the army. I must add in fairness -that I have from my mother three hundred a year of my own. And I tell -you the simple truth when I say that I don't care a rap for the loss of -the money." The young man drew a long, slow breath, like a creature in -pain; then he subjoined: "_That's_ not what worries me!" - -"What are you going to do?" asked Spencer Coyle. - -"I don't know; perhaps nothing. Nothing great, at all events. Only -something peaceful!" - -Owen gave a weary smile, as if, worried as he was, he could yet -appreciate the humorous effect of such a declaration from a Wingrave; -but what it suggested to his companion, who looked up at him with a -sense that he was after all not a Wingrave for nothing and had a -military steadiness under fire, was the exasperation that such a -programme, uttered in such a way and striking them as the last word of -the inglorious, might well have engendered on the part of his -grandfather and his aunt. "Perhaps nothing"--when he might carry on the -great tradition! Yes, he wasn't weak, and he was interesting; but there -_was_ a point of view from which he was provoking. "What _is_ it then -that worries you?" Mr. Coyle demanded. - -"Oh, the house--the very air and feeling of it. There are strange voices -in it that seem to mutter at me--to say dreadful things as I pass. I -mean the general consciousness and responsibility of what I'm doing. Of -course it hasn't been easy for me--not a bit. I assure you I don't enjoy -it." With a light in them that was like a longing for justice Owen again -bent his eyes on those of the little coach; then he pursued: "I've -started up all the old ghosts. The very portraits glower at me on the -walls. There's one of my great-great-grandfather (the one the -extraordinary story you know is about--the old fellow who hangs on the -second landing of the big staircase) that fairly stirs on the -canvas--just heaves a little--when I come near it. I have to go up and -down stairs--it's rather awkward! It's what my aunt calls the family -circle. It's all constituted here, it's a kind of indestructible -presence, it stretches away into the past, and when I came back with her -the other day Miss Wingrave told me I wouldn't have the impudence to -stand in the midst of it and say such things. I had to say them to my -grandfather; but now that I've said them it seems to me that the -question's ended. I want to go away--I don't care if I never come back -again." - -"Oh, you _are_ a soldier; you must fight it out!" Mr. Coyle laughed. - -The young man seemed discouraged at his levity, but as they turned -round, strolling back in the direction from which they had come, he -himself smiled faintly after an instant and replied: - -"Ah, we're tainted--all!" - -They walked in silence part of the way to the old portico; then Spencer -Coyle, stopping short after having assured himself that he was at a -sufficient distance from the house not to be heard, suddenly put the -question: "What does Miss Julian say?" - -"Miss Julian?" Owen had perceptibly coloured. - -"I'm sure _she_ hasn't concealed her opinion." - -"Oh, it's the opinion of the family circle, for she's a member of it of -course. And then she has her own as well." - -"Her own opinion?" - -"Her own family circle." - -"Do you mean her mother--that patient lady?" - -"I mean more particularly her father, who fell in battle. And her -grandfather, and _his_ father, and her uncles and great-uncles--they all -fell in battle." - -"Hasn't the sacrifice of so many lives been sufficient? Why should she -sacrifice you?" - -"Oh, she _hates_ me!" Owen declared, as they resumed their walk. - -"Ah, the hatred of pretty girls for fine young men!" exclaimed Spencer -Coyle. - -He didn't believe in it, but his wife did, it appeared perfectly, when -he mentioned this conversation while, in the fashion that has been -described, the visitors dressed for dinner. Mrs. Coyle had already -discovered that nothing could have been nastier than Miss Julian's -manner to the disgraced youth during the half-hour the party had spent -in the hall; and it was this lady's judgment that one must have had no -eyes in one's head not to see that she was already trying outrageously -to flirt with young Lechmere. It was a pity they had brought that silly -boy: he was down in the hall with her at that moment. Spencer Coyle's -version was different; he thought there were finer elements involved. -The girl's footing in the house was inexplicable on any ground save that -of her being predestined to Miss Wingrave's nephew. As the niece of Miss -Wingrave's own unhappy intended she had been dedicated early by this -lady to the office of healing by a union with Owen the tragic breach -that had separated their elders; and if in reply to this it was to be -said that a girl of spirit couldn't enjoy in such a matter having her -duty cut out for her, Owen's enlightened friend was ready with the -argument that a young person in Miss Julian's position would never be -such a fool as really to quarrel with a capital chance. She was familiar -at Paramore and she felt safe; therefore she might trust herself to the -amusement of pretending that she had her option. But it was all innocent -coquetry. She had a curious charm, and it was vain to pretend that the -heir of that house wouldn't seem good enough to a girl, clever as she -might be, of eighteen. Mrs. Coyle reminded her husband that the poor -young man was precisely now _not_ of that house: this problem was among -the questions that exercised their wits after the two men had taken the -turn on the terrace. Spencer Coyle told his wife that Owen was afraid of -the portrait of his great-great-grandfather. He would show it to her, -since she hadn't noticed it, on their way down stairs. - -"Why of his great-great-grandfather more than of any of the others?" - -"Oh, because he's the most formidable. He's the one who's sometimes -seen." - -"Seen where?" Mrs. Coyle had turned round with a jerk. - -"In the room he was found dead in--the White Room they've always called -it." - -"Do you mean to say the house has a _ghost_?" Mrs. Coyle almost -shrieked. "You brought me here without telling me?" - -"Didn't I mention it after my other visit?" - -"Not a word. You only talked about Miss Wingrave." - -"Oh, I was full of the story--you have simply forgotten." - -"Then you should have reminded me!" - -"If I had thought of it I would have held my peace, for you wouldn't -have come." - -"I wish, indeed, I hadn't!" cried Mrs. Coyle. "What _is_ the story?" - -"Oh, a deed of violence that took place here ages ago. I think it was in -George the First's time. Colonel Wingrave, one of their ancestors, -struck in a fit of passion one of his children, a lad just growing up, a -blow on the head of which the unhappy child died. The matter was hushed -up for the hour--some other explanation was put about. The poor boy was -laid out in one of those rooms on the other side of the house, and amid -strange smothered rumours the funeral was hurried on. The next morning, -when the household assembled, Colonel Wingrave was missing; he was -looked for vainly, and at last it occurred to some one that he might -perhaps be in the room from which his child had been carried to burial. -The seeker knocked without an answer--then opened the door. Colonel -Wingrave lay dead on the floor, in his clothes, as if he had reeled and -fallen back, without a wound, without a mark, without anything in his -appearance to indicate that he had either struggled or suffered. He was -a strong, sound man--there was nothing to account for such a -catastrophe. He is supposed to have gone to the room during the night, -just before going to bed, in some fit of compunction or some fascination -of dread. It was only after this that the truth about the boy came out. -But no one ever sleeps in the room." - -Mrs. Coyle had fairly turned pale. "I hope not! Thank heaven they -haven't put _us_ there!" - -"We're at a comfortable distance; but I've seen the gruesome chamber." - -"Do you mean you've been _in_ it?" - -"For a few moments. They're rather proud of it and my young friend -showed it to me when I was here before." - -Mrs. Coyle stared. "And what is it like?" - -"Simply like an empty, dull, old-fashioned bedroom, rather big, with the -things of the 'period' in it. It's panelled from floor to ceiling, and -the panels evidently, years and years ago, were painted white. But the -paint has darkened with time and there are three or four quaint little -ancient 'samplers,' framed and glazed, hung on the walls." - -Mrs. Coyle looked round with a shudder. "I'm glad there are no samplers -here! I never heard anything so jumpy! Come down to dinner." - -On the staircase as they went down her husband showed her the portrait -of Colonel Wingrave--rather a vigorous representation, for the place and -period, of a gentleman with a hard, handsome face, in a red coat and a -peruke. Mrs. Coyle declared that his descendant Sir Philip was -wonderfully like him; and her husband could fancy, though he kept it to -himself, that if one should have the courage to walk about the old -corridors of Paramore at night one might meet a figure that resembled -him roaming, with the restlessness of a ghost, hand in hand with the -figure of a tall boy. As he proceeded to the drawing-room with his wife -he found himself suddenly wishing that he had made more of a point of -his pupil's going to Eastbourne. The evening however seemed to have -taken upon itself to dissipate any such whimsical forebodings, for the -grimness of the family circle, as Spencer Coyle had preconceived its -composition, was mitigated by an infusion of the "neighbourhood." The -company at dinner was recruited by two cheerful couples--one of them the -vicar and his wife, and by a silent young man who had come down to fish. -This was a relief to Mr. Coyle, who had begun to wonder what was after -all expected of him and why he had been such a fool as to come, and who -now felt that for the first hours at least the situation would not have -directly to be dealt with. Indeed he found, as he had found before, -sufficient occupation for his ingenuity in reading the various symptoms -of which the picture before him was an expression. He should probably -have an irritating day on the morrow: he foresaw the difficulty of the -long decorous Sunday and how dry Jane Wingrave's ideas, elicited in a -strenuous conference, would taste. She and her father would make him -feel that they depended upon him for the impossible, and if they should -try to associate him with a merely stupid policy he might end by telling -them what he thought of it--an accident not required to make his visit a -sensible mistake. The old man's actual design was evidently to let their -friends see in it a positive mark of their being all right. The presence -of the great London coach was tantamount to a profession of faith in the -results of the impending examination. It had clearly been obtained from -Owen, rather to Spencer Coyle's surprise, that he would do nothing to -interfere with the apparent harmony. He let the allusions to his hard -work pass and, holding his tongue about his affairs, talked to the -ladies as amicably as if he had not been "cut off." When Spencer Coyle -looked at him once or twice across the table, catching his eye, which -showed an indefinable passion, he saw a puzzling pathos in his laughing -face: one couldn't resist a pang for a young lamb so visibly marked for -sacrifice. "Hang him--what a pity he's such a fighter!" he privately -sighed, with a want of logic that was only superficial. - -This idea however would have absorbed him more if so much of his -attention had not been given to Kate Julian, who now that he had her -well before him struck him as a remarkable and even as a possibly -fascinating young woman. The fascination resided not in any -extraordinary prettiness, for if she was handsome, with her long Eastern -eyes, her magnificent hair and her general unabashed originality, he had -seen complexions rosier and features that pleased him more: it resided -in a strange impression that she gave of being exactly the sort of -person whom, in her position, common considerations, those of prudence -and perhaps even a little those of decorum, would have enjoined on her -not to be. She was what was vulgarly termed a dependant--penniless, -patronized, tolerated; but something in her aspect and manner signified -that if her situation was inferior, her spirit, to make up for it, was -above precautions or submissions. It was not in the least that she was -aggressive, she was too indifferent for that; it was only as if, having -nothing either to gain or to lose, she could afford to do as she liked. -It occurred to Spencer Coyle that she might really have had more at -stake than her imagination appeared to take account of; whatever it was -at any rate he had never seen a young woman at less pains to be on the -safe side. He wondered inevitably how the peace was kept between Jane -Wingrave and such an inmate as this; but those questions of course were -unfathomable deeps. Perhaps Kate Julian lorded it even over her -protectress. The other time he was at Paramore he had received an -impression that, with Sir Philip beside her, the girl could fight with -her back to the wall. She amused Sir Philip, she charmed him, and he -liked people who weren't afraid; between him and his daughter moreover -there was no doubt which was the higher in command. Miss Wingrave took -many things for granted, and most of all the rigour of discipline and -the fate of the vanquished and the captive. - -But between their clever boy and so original a companion of his -childhood what odd relation would have grown up? It couldn't be -indifference, and yet on the part of happy, handsome, youthful creatures -it was still less likely to be aversion. They weren't Paul and Virginia, -but they must have had their common summer and their idyll: no nice girl -could have disliked such a nice fellow for anything but not liking -_her_, and no nice fellow could have resisted such propinquity. Mr. -Coyle remembered indeed that Mrs. Julian had spoken to him as if the -propinquity had been by no means constant, owing to her daughter's -absences at school, to say nothing of Owen's; her visits to a few -friends who were so kind as to "take her" from time to time; her -sojourns in London--so difficult to manage, but still managed by God's -help--for "advantages," for drawing and singing, especially drawing or -rather painting, in oils, in which she had had immense success. But the -good lady had also mentioned that the young people were quite brother -and sister, which _was_ a little, after all, like Paul and Virginia. -Mrs. Coyle had been right, and it was apparent that Virginia was doing -her best to make the time pass agreeably for young Lechmere. There was -no such whirl of conversation as to render it an effort for Mr. Coyle to -reflect on these things, for the tone of the occasion, thanks -principally to the other guests, was not disposed to stray--it tended to -the repetition of anecdote and the discussion of rents, topics that -huddled together like uneasy animals. He could judge how intensely his -hosts wished the evening to pass off as if nothing had happened; and -this gave him the measure of their private resentment. Before dinner was -over he found himself fidgetty about his second pupil. Young Lechmere, -since he began to cram, had done all that might have been expected of -him; but this couldn't blind his instructor to a present perception of -his being in moments of relaxation as innocent as a babe. Mr. Coyle had -considered that the amusements of Paramore would probably give him a -fillip, and the poor fellow's manner testified to the soundness of the -forecast. The fillip had been unmistakably administered; it had come in -the form of a revelation. The light on young Lechmere's brow announced -with a candour that was almost an appeal for compassion, or at least a -deprecation of ridicule, that he had never seen anything like Miss -Julian. - - - - -IV - - -In the drawing-room after dinner the girl found an occasion to approach -Spencer Coyle. She stood before him a moment, smiling while she opened -and shut her fan, and then she said abruptly, raising her strange eyes: -"I know what you've come for, but it isn't any use." - -"I've come to look after _you_ a little. Isn't _that_ any use?" - -"It's very kind. But I'm not the question of the hour. You won't do -anything with Owen." - -Spencer Coyle hesitated a moment. "What will _you_ do with his young -friend?" - -She stared, looked round her. - -"Mr. Lechmere? Oh, poor little lad! We've been talking about Owen. He -admires him so." - -"So do I. I should tell you that." - -"So do we all. That's why we're in such despair." - -"Personally then you'd _like_ him to be a soldier?" Spencer Coyle -inquired. - -"I've quite set my heart on it. I adore the army and I'm awfully fond of -my old playmate," said Miss Julian. - -Her interlocutor remembered the young man's own different version of her -attitude; but he judged it loyal not to challenge the girl. - -"It's not conceivable that your old playmate shouldn't be fond of you. -He must therefore wish to please you; and I don't see why--between -you--you don't set the matter right." - -"Wish to please me!" Miss Julian exclaimed. "I'm sorry to say he shows -no such desire. He thinks me an impudent wretch. I've told him what I -think of _him_, and he simply hates me." - -"But you think so highly! You just told me you admire him." - -"His talents, his possibilities, yes; even his appearance, if I may -allude to such a matter. But I don't admire his present behaviour." - -"Have you had the question out with him?" Spencer Coyle asked. - -"Oh, yes, I've ventured to be frank--the occasion seemed to excuse it. -He couldn't like what I said." - -"What did you say?" - -Miss Julian, thinking a moment, opened and shut her fan again. - -"Why, that such conduct isn't that of a gentleman!" - -After she had spoken her eyes met Spencer Coyle's, who looked into their -charming depths. - -"Do you want then so much to send him off to be killed?" - -"How odd for _you_ to ask that--in such a way!" she replied with a -laugh. "I don't understand your position: I thought your line was to -_make_ soldiers!" - -"You should take my little joke. But, as regards Owen Wingrave, there's -no 'making' needed," Mr. Coyle added. "To my sense"--the little crammer -paused a moment, as if with a consciousness of responsibility for his -paradox--"to my sense he _is_, in a high sense of the term, a fighting -man." - -"Ah, let him prove it!" the girl exclaimed, turning away. - -Spencer Coyle let her go; there was something in her tone that annoyed -and even a little shocked him. There had evidently been a violent -passage between these young people, and the reflection that such a -matter was after all none of his business only made him more sore. It -was indeed a military house, and she was at any rate a person who placed -her ideal of manhood (young persons doubtless always had their ideals of -manhood) in the type of the belted warrior. It was a taste like another; -but, even a quarter of an hour later, finding himself near young -Lechmere, in whom this type was embodied, Spencer Coyle was still so -ruffled that he addressed the innocent lad with a certain magisterial -dryness. "You're not to sit up late, you know. That's not what I brought -you down for." The dinner-guests were taking leave and the bedroom -candles twinkled in a monitory row. Young Lechmere however was too -agreeably agitated to be accessible to a snub: he had a happy -preoccupation which almost engendered a grin. - -"I'm only too eager for bedtime. Do you know there's an awfully jolly -room?" - -"Surely they haven't put you there?" - -"No indeed: no one has passed a night in it for ages. But that's exactly -what I want to do--it would be tremendous fun." - -"And have you been trying to get Miss Julian's permission?" - -"Oh, _she_ can't give leave, she says. But she believes in it, and she -maintains that no man dare." - -"No man _shall_! A man in your critical position in particular must have -a quiet night," said Spencer Coyle. - -Young Lechmere gave a disappointed but reasonable sigh. - -"Oh, all right. But mayn't I sit up for a little go at Wingrave? I -haven't had any yet." - -Mr. Coyle looked at his watch. - -"You may smoke _one_ cigarette." - -He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned round to see his wife -tilting candle-grease upon his coat. The ladies were going to bed and it -was Sir Philip's inveterate hour; but Mrs. Coyle confided to her husband -that after the dreadful things he had told her she positively declined -to be left alone, for no matter how short an interval, in any part of -the house. He promised to follow her within three minutes, and after the -orthodox handshakes the ladies rustled away. The forms were kept up at -Paramore as bravely as if the old house had no present heartache. The -only one of which Spencer Coyle noticed the omission was some salutation -to himself from Kate Julian. She gave him neither a word nor a glance, -but he saw her look hard at Owen Wingrave. Her mother, timid and -pitying, was apparently the only person from whom this young man caught -an inclination of the head. Miss Wingrave marshalled the three -ladies--her little procession of twinkling tapers--up the wide oaken -stairs and past the watching portrait of her ill-fated ancestor. Sir -Philip's servant appeared and offered his arm to the old man, who turned -a perpendicular back on poor Owen when the boy made a vague movement to -anticipate this office. Spencer Coyle learned afterwards that before -Owen had forfeited favour it had always, when he was at home, been his -privilege at bedtime to conduct his grandfather ceremoniously to rest. -Sir Philip's habits were contemptuously different now. His apartments -were on the lower floor and he shuffled stiffly off to them with his -valet's help, after fixing for a moment significantly on the most -responsible of his visitors the thick red ray, like the glow of stirred -embers, that always made his eyes conflict oddly with his mild manners. -They seemed to say to Spencer Coyle "We'll let the young scoundrel have -it to-morrow!" One might have gathered from them that the young -scoundrel, who had now strolled to the other end of the hall, had at -least forged a cheque. Mr. Coyle watched him an instant, saw him drop -nervously into a chair and then with a restless movement get up. The -same movement brought him back to where his late instructor stood -addressing a last injunction to young Lechmere. - -"I'm going to bed and I should like you particularly to conform to what -I said to you a short time ago. Smoke a single cigarette with your -friend here and then go to your room. You'll have me down on you if I -hear of your having, during the night, tried any preposterous games." -Young Lechmere, looking down with his hands in his pockets, said -nothing--he only poked at the corner of a rug with his toe; so that -Spencer Coyle, dissatisfied with so tacit a pledge, presently went on, -to Owen: "I must request you, Wingrave, not to keep this sensitive -subject sitting up--and indeed to put him to bed and turn his key in the -door." As Owen stared an instant, apparently not understanding the -motive of so much solicitude, he added: "Lechmere has a morbid curiosity -about one of your legends--of your historic rooms. Nip it in the bud." - -"Oh, the legend's rather good, but I'm afraid the room's an awful sell!" -Owen laughed. - -"You know you don't _believe_ that, my boy!" young Lechmere exclaimed. - -"I don't think he does," said Mr. Coyle, noticing Owen's mottled flush. - -"He wouldn't try a night there himself!" young Lechmere pursued. - -"I know who told you that," rejoined Owen, lighting a cigarette in an -embarrassed way at the candle, without offering one to either of his -companions. - -"Well, what if she did?" asked the younger of these gentleman, rather -red. "Do you want them _all_ yourself?" he continued facetiously, -fumbling in the cigarette-box. - -Owen Wingrave only smoked quietly; then he exclaimed: - -"Yes--what if she did? But she doesn't know," he added. - -"She doesn't know what?" - -"She doesn't know anything!--I'll tuck him in!" Owen went on gaily to -Mr. Coyle, who saw that his presence, now that a certain note had been -struck, made the young men uncomfortable. He was curious, but there was -a kind of discretion, with his pupils, that he had always pretended to -practise; a discretion that however didn't prevent him as he took his -way upstairs from recommending them not to be donkeys. - -At the top of the staircase, to his surprise, he met Miss Julian, who -was apparently going down again. She had not begun to undress, nor was -she perceptibly disconcerted at seeing him. She nevertheless, in a -manner slightly at variance with the rigour with which she had -overlooked him ten minutes before, dropped the words: "I'm going down to -look for something. I've lost a jewel." - -"A jewel?" - -"A rather good turquoise, out of my locket. As it's the only ornament I -have the honour to possess----!" And she passed down. - -"Shall I go with you and help you?" asked Spencer Coyle. - -The girl paused a few steps below him, looking back with her Oriental -eyes. - -"Don't I hear voices in the hall?" - -"Those remarkable young men are there." - -"_They'll_ help me." And Kate Julian descended. - -Spencer Coyle was tempted to follow her, but remembering his standard of -tact he rejoined his wife in their apartment. He delayed however to go -to bed, and though he went into his dressing-room he couldn't bring -himself even to take off his coat. He pretended for half an hour to read -a novel; after which, quietly, or perhaps I should say agitatedly, he -passed from the dressing-room into the corridor. He followed this -passage to the door of the room which he knew to have been assigned to -young Lechmere and was comforted to see that it was closed. Half an hour -earlier he had seen it standing open; therefore he could take for -granted that the bewildered boy had come to bed. It was of this he had -wished to assure himself, and having done so he was on the point of -retreating. But at the same instant he heard a sound in the room--the -occupant was doing, at the window, something which showed him that he -might knock without the reproach of waking his pupil up. Young Lechmere -came in fact to the door in his shirt and trousers. He admitted his -visitor in some surprise, and when the door was closed again Spencer -Coyle said: - -"I don't want to make your life a burden to you, but I had it on my -conscience to see for myself that you're not exposed to undue -excitement." - -"Oh, there's plenty of that!" said the ingenuous youth. "Miss Julian -came down again." - -"To look for a turquoise?" - -"So she said." - -"Did she find it?" - -"I don't know. I came up. I left her with poor Wingrave." - -"Quite the right thing," said Spencer Coyle. - -"I don't know," young Lechmere repeated uneasily. "I left them -quarrelling." - -"What about?" - -"I don't understand. They're a quaint pair!" - -Spencer Coyle hesitated. He had, fundamentally, principles and scruples, -but what he had in particular just now was a curiosity, or rather, to -recognise it for what it was, a sympathy, which brushed them away. - -"Does it strike you that _she's_ down on him?" he permitted himself to -inquire. - -"Rather!--when she tells him he lies!" - -"What do you mean?" - -"Why, before _me_. It made me leave them; it was getting too hot. I -stupidly brought up the question of the haunted room again, and said how -sorry I was that I had had to promise you not to try my luck with it." - -"You can't pry about in that gross way in other people's houses--you -can't take such liberties, you know!" Mr. Coyle interjected. - -"I'm all right--see how good I am. I don't want to go _near_ the place!" -said young Lechmere, confidingly. "Miss Julian said to me 'Oh, I daresay -_you'd_ risk it, but'--and she turned and laughed at poor Owen--'that's -more than we can expect of a gentleman who has taken _his_ extraordinary -line.' I could see that something had already passed between them on the -subject--some teasing or challenging of hers. It may have been only -chaff, but his chucking the profession had evidently brought up the -question of his pluck." - -"And what did Owen say?" - -"Nothing at first; but presently he brought out very quietly: 'I spent -all last night in the confounded place.' We both stared and cried out at -this and I asked him what he had seen there. He said he had seen -nothing, and Miss Julian replied that he ought to tell his story better -than that--he ought to make something good of it. 'It's not a -story--it's a simple fact,' said he; on which she jeered at him and -wanted to know why, if he had done it, he hadn't told her in the -morning, since he knew what she thought of him. 'I know, but I don't -care,' said Wingrave. This made her angry, and she asked him quite -seriously whether he would care if he should know she believed him to be -trying to deceive us." - -"Ah, what a brute!" cried Spencer Coyle. - -"She's a most extraordinary girl--I don't know what she's up to." - -"Extraordinary indeed--to be romping and bandying words at that hour of -the night with fast young men!" - -Young Lechmere reflected a moment. "I mean because I think she likes -him." - -Spencer Coyle was so struck with this unwonted symptom of subtlety that -he flashed out: "And do you think he likes _her_?" - -But his interlocutor only replied with a puzzled sigh and a plaintive "I -don't know--I give it up!--I'm sure he _did_ see something or hear -something," young Lechmere added. - -"In that ridiculous place? What makes you sure?" - -"I don't know--he looks as if he had. He behaves as if he had." - -"Why then shouldn't he mention it?" - -Young Lechmere thought a moment. "Perhaps it's too gruesome!" - -Spencer Coyle gave a laugh. "Aren't you glad then _you're_ not in it?" - -"Uncommonly!" - -"Go to bed, you goose," said Spencer Coyle, with another laugh. "But -before you go tell me what he said when she told him he was trying to -deceive you." - -"'Take me there yourself, then, and lock me in!'" - -"And _did_ she take him?" - -"I don't know--I came up." - -Spencer Coyle exchanged a long look with his pupil. - -"I don't think they're in the hall now. Where's Owen's own room?" - -"I haven't the least idea." - -Mr. Coyle was perplexed; he was in equal ignorance, and he couldn't go -about trying doors. He bade young Lechmere sink to slumber, and came out -into the passage. He asked himself if he should be able to find his way -to the room Owen had formerly shown him, remembering that in common with -many of the others it had its ancient name painted upon it. But the -corridors of Paramore were intricate; moreover some of the servants -would still be up, and he didn't wish to have the appearance of roaming -over the house. He went back to his own quarters, where Mrs. Coyle soon -perceived that his inability to rest had not subsided. As she confessed -for her own part, in the dreadful place, to an increased sense of -"creepiness," they spent the early part of the night in conversation, so -that a portion of their vigil was inevitably beguiled by her husband's -account of his colloquy with little Lechmere and by their exchange of -opinions upon it. Toward two o'clock Mrs. Coyle became so nervous about -their persecuted young friend, and so possessed by the fear that that -wicked girl had availed herself of his invitation to put him to an -abominable test, that she begged her husband to go and look into the -matter at whatever cost to his own equilibrium. But Spencer Coyle, -perversely, had ended, as the perfect stillness of the night settled -upon them, by charming himself into a tremulous acquiescence in Owen's -readiness to face a formidable ordeal--an ordeal the more formidable to -an excited imagination as the poor boy now knew from the experience of -the previous night how resolute an effort he should have to make. "I -hope he _is_ there," he said to his wife: "it puts them all so in the -wrong!" At any rate he couldn't take upon himself to explore a house he -knew so little. He was inconsequent--he didn't prepare for bed. He sat -in the dressing-room with his light and his novel, waiting to find -himself nodding. At last however Mrs. Coyle turned over and ceased to -talk, and at last too he fell asleep in his chair. How long he slept he -only knew afterwards by computation; what he knew to begin with was that -he had started up, in confusion, with the sense of a sudden appalling -sound. His sense cleared itself quickly, helped doubtless by a -confirmatory cry of horror from his wife's room. But he gave no heed to -his wife; he had already bounded into the passage. There the sound was -repeated--it was the "Help! help!" of a woman in agonised terror. It -came from a distant quarter of the house, but the quarter was -sufficiently indicated. Spencer Coyle rushed straight before him, with -the sound of opening doors and alarmed voices in his ears and the -faintness of the early dawn in his eyes. At a turn of one of the -passages he came upon the white figure of a girl in a swoon on a bench, -and in the vividness of the revelation he read as he went that Kate -Julian, stricken in her pride too late with a chill of compunction for -what she had mockingly done, had, after coming to release the victim of -her derision, reeled away, overwhelmed, from the catastrophe that was -her work--the catastrophe that the next moment he found himself aghast -at on the threshold of an open door. Owen Wingrave, dressed as he had -last seen him, lay dead on the spot on which his ancestor had been -found. He looked like a young soldier on a battle-field. - - - - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIVATE LIFE *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<table style='padding:0; margin-left:0; border-collapse:collapse'> - <tr><td>Title:</td><td>The Private Life</td></tr> - <tr><td></td><td>The wheel of time, Lord Beaupré, The visits, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave.</td></tr> -</table> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Henry James</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: January 26, 2021 [eBook #64396]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Dagny and Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIVATE LIFE ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/private_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - -<h1>THE PRIVATE LIFE</h1> - -<h4>THE WHEEL OF TIME LORD BEAUPRÉ<br /> -<br /> -THE VISITS COLLABORATION<br /> -<br /> -OWEN WINGRAVE</h4> - - -<h5>BY </h5> - -<h3>HENRY JAMES</h3> - - - -<h4>LONDON</h4> -<h4>JAMES R. OSGOOD, McILVAINE & CO.</h4> -<h5>45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.</h5> - - -<h5>1893</h5> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4>CONTENTS</h4> - -<p><a href="#THE_PRIVATE_LIFE">The Private Life</a><br /> -<a href="#THE_WHEEL_OF_TIME">The Wheel of Time </a><br /> -<a href="#LORD_BEAUPRE">Lord Beaupré</a><br /> -<a href="#THE_VISITS">The Visits</a><br /> -<a href="#COLLABORATION">Collaboration</a><br /> -<a href="#OWEN_WINGRAVE">Owen Wingrave</a></p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4><a id="THE_PRIVATE_LIFE">THE PRIVATE LIFE</a></h4> - - -<p>We talked of London, face to face with a great bristling, primeval -glacier. The hour and the scene were one of those impressions which make -up a little, in Switzerland, for the modern indignity of travel—the -promiscuities and vulgarities, the station and the hotel, the gregarious -patience, the struggle for a scrappy attention, the reduction to a -numbered state. The high valley was pink with the mountain rose, the -cool air as fresh as if the world were young. There was a faint flush of -afternoon on undiminished snows, and the fraternizing tinkle of the -unseen cattle came to us with a cropped and sun-warmed odour. The -balconied inn stood on the very neck of the sweetest pass in the -Oberland, and for a week we had had company and weather. This was felt -to be great luck, for one would have made up for the other had either -been bad.</p> - -<p>The weather certainly would have made up for the company; but it was not -subjected to this tax, for we had by a happy chance the <i>fleur des -pois</i>: Lord and Lady Mellifont, Clare Vawdrey, the greatest (in the -opinion of many) of our literary glories, and Blanche Adney, the -greatest (in the opinion of all) of our theatrical. I mention these -first, because they were just the people whom in London, at that time, -people tried to "get." People endeavoured to "book" them six weeks -ahead, yet on this occasion we had come in for them, we had all come in -for each other, without the least wire-pulling. A turn of the game had -pitched us together, the last of August, and we recognized our luck by -remaining so, under protection of the barometer. When the golden days -were over—that would come soon enough—we should wind down -opposite sides of the pass and disappear over the crest of surrounding -heights. We were of the same general communion, we participated in the same -miscellaneous publicity. We met, in London, with irregular frequency; we -were more or less governed by the laws and the language, the traditions -and the shibboleths of the same dense social state. I think all of us, -even the ladies, "did" something, though we pretended we didn't when it -was mentioned. Such things are not mentioned indeed in London, but it -was our innocent pleasure to be different here. There had to be some way -to show the difference, inasmuch as we were under the impression that -this was our annual holiday. We felt at any rate that the conditions -were more human than in London, or that at least we ourselves were. We -were frank about this, we talked about it: it was what we were talking -about as we looked at the flushing glacier, just as some one called -attention to the prolonged absence of Lord Mellifont and Mrs. Adney. We -were seated on the terrace of the inn, where there were benches and -little tables, and those of us who were most bent on proving that we had -returned to nature were, in the queer Germanic fashion, having coffee -before meat.</p> - -<p>The remark about the absence of our two companions was not taken up, not -even by Lady Mellifont, not even by little Adney, the fond composer; for -it had been dropped only in the briefest intermission of Clare Vawdrey's -talk. (This celebrity was "Clarence" only on the title-page.) It was -just that revelation of our being after all human that was his theme. He -asked the company whether, candidly, every one hadn't been tempted to -say to every one else: "I had no idea you were really so nice." I had -had, for my part, an idea that he was, and even a good deal nicer, but -that was too complicated to go into then; besides it is exactly my -story. There was a general understanding among us that when Vawdrey -talked we should be silent, and not, oddly enough, because he at all -expected it. He didn't, for of all abundant talkers he was the most -unconscious, the least greedy and professional. It was rather the -religion of the host, of the hostess, that prevailed among us: it was -their own idea, but they always looked for a listening circle when the -great novelist dined with them. On the occasion I allude to there was -probably no one present with whom, in London, he had not dined, and we -felt the force of this habit. He had dined even with me; and on the -evening of that dinner, as on this Alpine afternoon, I had been at no -pains to hold my tongue, absorbed as I inveterately was in a study of -the question which always rose before me, to such a height, in his fair, -square, strong stature.</p> - -<p>This question was all the more tormenting that he never suspected -himself (I am sure) of imposing it, any more than he had ever observed -that every day of his life every one listened to him at dinner. He used -to be called "subjective" in the weekly papers, but in society no -distinguished man could have been less so. He never talked about -himself; and this was a topic on which, though it would have been -tremendously worthy of him, he apparently never even reflected. He had -his hours and his habits, his tailor and his hatter, his hygiene and his -particular wine, but all these things together never made up an attitude. -Yet they constituted the only attitude he ever adopted, and it was -easy for him to refer to our being "nicer" abroad than at home. <i>He</i> -was exempt from variations, and not a shade either less or more nice in -one place than in another. He differed from other people, but never from -himself (save in the extraordinary sense which I will presently -explain), and struck me as having neither moods nor sensibilities nor -preferences. He might have been always in the same company, so far as he -recognized any influence from age or condition or sex: he addressed -himself to women exactly as he addressed himself to men, and gossiped -with all men alike, talking no better to clever folk than to dull. I -used to feel a despair at his way of liking one subject—so far as I -could tell—precisely as much as another: there were some I hated so -myself. I never found him anything but loud and cheerful and copious, -and I never heard him utter a paradox or express a shade or play with an -idea. That fancy about our being "human" was, in his conversation, quite -an exceptional flight. His opinions were sound and second-rate, and of -his perceptions it was too mystifying to think. I envied him his -magnificent health.</p> - -<p>Vawdrey had marched, with his even pace and his perfectly good -conscience, into the flat country of anecdote, where stories are visible -from afar like windmills and signposts; but I observed after a little -that Lady Mellifont's attention wandered. I happened to be sitting next -her. I noticed that her eyes rambled a little anxiously over the lower -slopes of the mountains. At last, after looking at her watch, she said -to me: "Do you know where they went?"</p> - -<p>"Do you mean Mrs. Adney and Lord Mellifont?"</p> - -<p>"Lord Mellifont and Mrs. Adney." Her ladyship's speech -seemed—unconsciously indeed—to correct me, but it didn't -occur to me that this was because she was jealous. I imputed to her no -such vulgar sentiment: in the first place, because I liked her, and in -the second because it would always occur to one quickly that it was -right, in any connection, to put Lord Mellifont first. He <i>was</i> -first—extraordinarily first. I don't say greatest or wisest or -most renowned, but essentially at the top of the list and the head of -the table. That is a position by itself, and his wife was naturally -accustomed to see him in it. My phrase had sounded as if Mrs. Adney had -taken him; but it was not possible for him to be taken—he only -took. No one, in the nature of things, could know this better than Lady -Mellifont. I had originally been rather afraid of her, thinking her, -with her stiff silences and the extreme blackness of almost everything -that made up her person, somewhat hard, even a little saturnine. Her -paleness seemed slightly grey, and her glossy black hair metallic, like -the brooches and bands and combs with which it was inveterately adorned. -She was in perpetual mourning, and wore numberless ornaments of jet and -onyx, a thousand clicking chains and bugles and beads. I had heard Mrs. -Adney call her the queen of night, and the term was descriptive if you -understood that the night was cloudy. She had a secret, and if you -didn't find it out as you knew her better you at least perceived that -she was gentle and unaffected and limited, and also rather submissively -sad. She was like a woman with a painless malady. I told her that I had -merely seen her husband and his companion stroll down the glen together -about an hour before, and suggested that Mr. Adney would perhaps know -something of their intentions.</p> - -<p>Vincent Adney, who, though he was fifty years old, looked like a good -little boy on whom it had been impressed that children should not talk -before company, acquitted himself with remarkable simplicity and taste -of the position of husband of a great exponent of comedy. When all was -said about her making it easy for him, one couldn't help admiring the -charmed affection with which he took everything for granted. It is -difficult for a husband who is not on the stage, or at least in the -theatre, to be graceful about a wife who is; but Adney was more than -graceful—he was exquisite, he was inspired. He set his beloved to -music; and you remember how genuine his music could be—the only -English compositions I ever saw a foreigner take an interest in. His -wife was in them, somewhere, always; they were like a free, rich -translation of the impression she produced. She seemed, as one listened, -to pass laughing, with loosened hair, across the scene. He had been only -a little fiddler at her theatre, always in his place during the acts; -but she had made him something rare and misunderstood. Their superiority -had become a kind of partnership, and their happiness was a part of the -happiness of their friends. Adney's one discomfort was that he couldn't -write a play for his wife, and the only way he meddled with her affairs -was by asking impossible people if <i>they</i> couldn't.</p> - - -<p>Lady Mellifont, after looking across at him a moment, remarked to me -that she would rather not put any question to him. She added the next -minute: "I had rather people shouldn't see I'm nervous."</p> - -<p>"<i>Are</i> you nervous?"</p> - -<p>"I always become so if my husband is away from me for any time."</p> - -<p>"Do you imagine something has happened to him?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, always. Of course I'm used to it."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean his tumbling over precipices—that sort of thing?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know exactly what it is: it's the general sense that he'll -never come back."</p> - -<p>She said so much and kept back so much that the only way to treat the -condition she referred to seemed the jocular. "Surely he'll never -forsake you!" I laughed.</p> - -<p>She looked at the ground a moment. "Oh, at bottom I'm easy."</p> - -<p>"Nothing can ever happen to a man so accomplished, so infallible, so -armed at all points," I went on, encouragingly.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you don't know how he's armed!" she exclaimed, with such an odd -quaver that I could account for it only by her being nervous. This idea -was confirmed by her moving just afterwards, changing her seat rather -pointlessly, not as if to cut our conversation short, but because she -was in a fidget. I couldn't know what was the matter with her, but I was -presently relieved to see Mrs. Adney come toward us. She had in her hand -a big bunch of wild flowers, but she was not closely attended by Lord -Mellifont. I quickly saw, however, that she had no disaster to announce; -yet as I knew there was a question Lady Mellifont would like to hear -answered, but did not wish to ask, I expressed to her immediately the -hope that his lordship had not remained in a crevasse.</p> - -<p>"Oh, no; he left me but three minutes ago. He has gone into the -house." Blanche Adney rested her eyes on mine an instant—a mode of -intercourse to which no man, for himself, could ever object. The -interest, on this occasion, was quickened by the particular thing the -eyes happened to say. What they usually said was only: "Oh, yes, I'm -charming, I know, but don't make a fuss about it. I only want a new -part—I do, I do!" At present they added, dimly, surreptitiously, -and of course sweetly—for that was the way they did everything: -"It's all right, but something did happen. Perhaps I'll tell you later." -She turned to Lady Mellifont, and the transition to simple gaiety -suggested her mastery of her profession. "I've brought him safe. We had -a charming walk."</p> - -<p>"I'm so very glad," returned Lady Mellifont, with her faint smile; -continuing vaguely, as she got up: "He must have gone to dress for -dinner. Isn't it rather near?" She moved away, to the hotel, in her -leave-taking, simplifying fashion, and the rest of us, at the mention of -dinner, looked at each other's watches, as if to shift the -responsibility of such grossness. The head-waiter, essentially, like all -head-waiters, a man of the world, allowed us hours and places of our -own, so that in the evening, apart under the lamp, we formed a compact, -an indulged little circle. But it was only the Mellifonts who "dressed" -and as to whom it was recognized that they naturally <i>would</i> dress: -she in exactly the same manner as on any other evening of her ceremonious -existence (she was not a woman whose habits could take account of -anything so mutable as fitness); and he, on the other hand, with -remarkable adjustment and suitability. He was almost as much a man of -the world as the head-waiter, and spoke almost as many languages; but he -abstained from courting a comparison of dress-coats and white -waistcoats, analyzing the occasion in a much finer way—into black -velvet and blue velvet and brown velvet, for instance, into delicate -harmonies of necktie and subtle informalities of shirt. He had a costume -for every function and a moral for every costume; and his functions and -costumes and morals were ever a part of the amusement of life—a part -at any rate of its beauty and romance—for an immense circle of -spectators. For his particular friends indeed these things were more than -an amusement; they were a topic, a social support and of course, in -addition, a subject of perpetual suspense. If his wife had not been -present before dinner they were what the rest of us probably would have -been putting our heads together about.</p> - -<p>Clare Vawdrey had a fund of anecdote on the whole question: he had known -Lord Mellifont almost from the beginning. It was a peculiarity of this -nobleman that there could be no conversation about him that didn't -instantly take the form of anecdote, and a still further distinction -that there could apparently be no anecdote that was not on the whole to -his honour. If he had come into a room at any moment, people might have -said frankly: "Of course we were telling stories about you!" As -consciences go, in London, the general conscience would have been good. -Moreover it would have been impossible to imagine his taking such a -tribute otherwise than amiably, for he was always as unperturbed as an -actor with the right cue. He had never in his life needed the -prompter—his very embarrassments had been rehearsed. For myself, when -he was talked about I always had an odd impression that we were speaking -of the dead—it was with that peculiar accumulation of relish. His -reputation was a kind of gilded obelisk, as if he had been buried -beneath it; the body of legend and reminiscence of which he was to be -the subject had crystallized in advance.</p> - -<p>This ambiguity sprang, I suppose, from the fact that the mere sound -of his name and air of his person, the general expectation he created, -were, somehow, too exalted to be verified. The experience of his -urbanity always came later; the prefigurement, the legend paled before -the reality. I remember that on the evening I refer to the reality was -particularly operative. The handsomest man of his period could never -have looked better, and he sat among us like a bland conductor -controlling by an harmonious play of arm an orchestra still a little -rough. He directed the conversation by gestures as irresistible as they -were vague; one felt as if without him it wouldn't have had anything to -call a tone. This was essentially what he contributed to any -occasion—what he contributed above all to English public life. He -pervaded it, he coloured it, he embellished it, and without him it would -scarcely have had a vocabulary. Certainly it would not have had a style; -for a style was what it had in having Lord Mellifont. He <i>was</i> a -style. I was freshly struck with it as, in the <i>salle à manger</i> of -the little Swiss inn, we resigned ourselves to inevitable veal. -Confronted with his form (I must parenthesize that it was not confronted -much), Clare Vawdrey's talk suggested the reporter contrasted with the -bard. It was interesting to watch the shock of characters from which, of -an evening, so much would be expected. There was however no -concussion—it was all muffled and minimized in Lord Mellifont's -tact. It was rudimentary with him to find the solution of such a problem -in playing the host, assuming responsibilities which carried with them -their sacrifice. He had indeed never been a guest in his life; he was -the host, the patron, the moderator at every board. If there was a -defect in his manner (and I suggest it under my breath), it was that he -had a little more art than any conjunction—even the most -complicated—could possibly require. At any rate one made one's -reflections in noticing how the accomplished peer handled the situation -and how the sturdy man of letters was unconscious that the situation -(and least of all he himself as part of it), was handled. Lord Mellifont -poured forth treasures of tact, and Clare Vawdrey never dreamed he was -doing it.</p> - -<p>Vawdrey had no suspicion of any such precaution even when Blanche -Adney asked him if he saw yet their third act—an inquiry into -which she introduced a subtlety of her own. She had a theory that he was -to write her a play and that the heroine, if he would only do his duty, -would be the part for which she had immemorially longed. She was forty -years old (this could be no secret to those who had admired her from the -first), and she could now reach out her hand and touch her uttermost -goal. This gave a kind of tragic passion—perfect actress of comedy -as she was—to her desire not to miss the great thing. The years -had passed, and still she had missed it; none of the things she had done -was the thing she had dreamed of, so that at present there was no more -time to lose. This was the canker in the rose, the ache beneath the -smile. It made her touching—made her sadness even sweeter than her -laughter. She had done the old English and the new French, and had -charmed her generation; but she was haunted by the vision of a bigger -chance, of something truer to the conditions that lay near her. She was -tired of Sheridan and she hated Bowdler; she called for a canvas of a -finer grain. The worst of it, to my sense, was that she would never -extract her modern comedy from the great mature novelist, who was as -incapable of producing it as he was of threading a needle. She coddled -him, she talked to him, she made love to him, as she frankly proclaimed; -but she dwelt in illusions—she would have to live and die with -Bowdler.</p> - -<p>It is difficult to be cursory over this charming woman, who was -beautiful without beauty and complete with a dozen deficiencies. The -perspective of the stage made her over, and in society she was like the -model off the pedestal. She was the picture walking about, which to the -artless social mind was a perpetual surprise—a miracle. People -thought she told them the secrets of the pictorial nature, in return for -which they gave her relaxation and tea. She told them nothing and she -drank the tea; but they had, all the same, the best of the bargain. -Vawdrey was really at work on a play; but if he had begun it because he -liked her I think he let it drag for the same reason. He secretly felt -the atrocious difficulty—knew that from his hand the finished -piece would have received no active life. At the same time nothing could -be more agreeable than to have such a question open with Blanche Adney, -and from time to time he put something very good into the play. If he -deceived Mrs. Adney it was only because in her despair she was -determined to be deceived. To her question about their third act he -replied that, before dinner, he had written a magnificent passage.</p> - -<p>"Before dinner?" I said. "Why, <i>cher maître</i>, before dinner you -were holding us all spellbound on the terrace."</p> - -<p>My words were a joke, because I thought his had been; but for the first -time that I could remember I perceived a certain confusion in his face. -He looked at me hard, throwing back his head quickly, the least bit like -a horse who has been pulled up short. "Oh, it was before that," he -replied, naturally enough.</p> - -<p>"Before that you were playing billiards with <i>me</i>," Lord Mellifont -intimated.</p> - -<p>"Then it must have been yesterday," said Vawdrey.</p> - -<p>But he was in a tight place. "You told me this morning you did nothing -yesterday," the actress objected.</p> - -<p>"I don't think I really know when I do things." Vawdrey looked vaguely, -without helping himself, at a dish that was offered him.</p> - -<p>"It's enough if <i>we</i> know," smiled Lord Mellifont.</p> - -<p>"I don't believe you've written a line," said Blanche Adney.</p> - -<p>"I think I could repeat you the scene." Vawdrey helped himself to -<i>haricots verts.</i></p> - -<p>"Oh, do—oh, do!" two or three of us cried.</p> - -<p>"After dinner, in the salon; it will be an immense <i>régal</i>," Lord -Mellifont declared.</p> - -<p>"I'm not sure, but I'll try," Vawdrey went on.</p> - -<p>"Oh, you lovely man!" exclaimed the actress, who was practising -Americanisms, being resigned even to an American comedy.</p> - -<p>"But there must be this condition," said Vawdrey: "you must make your -husband play."</p> - -<p>"Play while you're reading? Never!"</p> - -<p>"I've too much vanity," said Adney.</p> - -<p>Lord Mellifont distinguished him. "You must give us the overture, before -the curtain rises. That's a peculiarly delightful moment."</p> - -<p>"I sha'n't read—I shall just speak," said Vawdrey.</p> - -<p>"Better still, let me go and get your manuscript," the actress -suggested.</p> - -<p>Vawdrey replied that the manuscript didn't matter; but an hour later, -in the salon, we wished he might have had it. We sat expectant, still -under the spell of Adney's violin. His wife, in the foreground, on an -ottoman, was all impatience and profile, and Lord Mellifont, in the -chair—it was always <i>the</i> chair, Lord Mellifont's—made -our grateful little group feel like a social science congress or a -distribution of prizes. Suddenly, instead of beginning, our tame lion -began to roar out of tune—he had clean forgotten every word. He -was very sorry, but the lines absolutely wouldn't come to him; he was -utterly ashamed, but his memory was a blank. He didn't look in the least -ashamed—Vawdrey had never looked ashamed in his life; he was only -imperturbably and merrily natural. He protested that he had never -expected to make such a fool of himself, but we felt that this wouldn't -prevent the incident from taking its place among his jolliest -reminiscences. It was only <i>we</i> who were humiliated, as if he had -played us a premeditated trick. This was an occasion, if ever, for Lord -Mellifont's tact, which descended on us all like balm: he told -us, in his charming artistic way, his way of bridging over arid -intervals (he had a <i>débit</i>—there was nothing to approach it in -England—like the actors of the Comédie Française), of his own -collapse on a momentous occasion, the delivery of an address to a mighty -multitude, when, finding he had forgotten his memoranda, he fumbled, on -the terrible platform, the cynosure of every eye, fumbled vainly in -irreproachable pockets for indispensable notes. But the point of his -story was finer than that of Vawdrey's pleasantry; for he sketched with -a few light gestures the brilliancy of a performance which had risen -superior to embarrassment, had resolved itself, we were left to divine, -into an effort recognised at the moment as not absolutely a blot on what -the public was so good as to call his reputation.</p> - -<p>"Play up—play up!" cried Blanche Adney, tapping her husband and -remembering how, on the stage, a <i>contretemps</i> is always drowned in -music. Adney threw himself upon his fiddle, and I said to Clare Vawdrey -that his mistake could easily be corrected by his sending for the -manuscript. If he would tell me where it was I would immediately fetch -it from his room. To this he replied: "My dear fellow, I'm afraid there -<i>is</i> no manuscript."</p> - -<p>"Then you've not written anything?"</p> - -<p>"I'll write it to-morrow."</p> - -<p>"Ah, you trifle with us," I said, in much mystification.</p> - -<p>Vawdrey hesitated an instant. "If there <i>is</i> anything, -you'll find it on my table."</p> - -<p>At this moment one of the others spoke to him, and Lady Mellifont -remarked audibly, as if to correct gently our want of consideration, -that Mr. Adney was playing something very beautiful. I had noticed -before that she appeared extremely fond of music; she always listened to -it in a hushed transport. Vawdrey's attention was drawn away, but it -didn't seem to me that the words he had just dropped constituted a -definite permission to go to his room. Moreover I wanted to speak to -Blanche Adney; I had something to ask her. I had to await my chance, -however, as we remained silent awhile for her husband, after which the -conversation became general. It was our habit to go to bed early, but -there was still a little of the evening left. Before it quite waned I -found an opportunity to tell the actress that Vawdrey had given me leave -to put my hand on his manuscript. She adjured me, by all I held sacred, -to bring it immediately, to give it to her; and her insistence was proof -against my suggestion that it would now be too late for him to begin to -read: besides which the charm was broken—the others wouldn't care. It -was not too late for <i>her</i> to begin; therefore I was to possess -myself, without more delay, of the precious pages. I told her she should be -obeyed in a moment, but I wanted her first to satisfy my just curiosity. -What had happened before dinner, while she was on the hills with Lord -Mellifont?</p> - -<p>"How do you know anything happened?"</p> - -<p>"I saw it in your face when you came back."</p> - -<p>"And they call me an actress!" cried Mrs. Adney.</p> - -<p>"What do they call <i>me</i>?" I inquired.</p> - -<p>"You're a searcher of hearts—that frivolous thing an observer."</p> - -<p>"I wish you'd let an observer write you a play!" I broke out.</p> - -<p>"People don't care for what you write: you'd break any run of luck."</p> - -<p>"Well, I see plays all round me," I declared; "the air is full of them -to-night."</p> - -<p>"The air? Thank you for nothing! I only wish my table-drawers were."</p> - -<p>"Did he make love to you on the glacier?" I went on.</p> - -<p>She stared; then broke into the graduated ecstasy of her laugh. "Lord -Mellifont, poor dear? What a funny place! It would indeed be the place -for <i>our</i> love!"</p> - -<p>"Did he fall into a crevasse?" I continued.</p> - -<p>Blanche Adney looked at me again as she had done for an instant when she -came up, before dinner, with her hands full of flowers. "I don't know -into what he fell. I'll tell you to-morrow."</p> - -<p>"He did come down, then?"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps he went up," she laughed. "It's really strange."</p> - -<p>"All the more reason you should tell me to-night."</p> - -<p>"I must think it over; I must puzzle it out."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if you want conundrums I'll throw in another," I said. "What's the -matter with the master?"</p> - -<p>"The master of what?"</p> - -<p>"Of every form of dissimulation. Vawdrey hasn't written a line."</p> - -<p>"Go and get his papers and we'll see."</p> - -<p>"I don't like to expose him," I said.</p> - -<p>"Why not, if I expose Lord Mellifont?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'd do anything for that," I conceded. "But why should Vawdrey have -made a false statement? It's very curious."</p> - -<p>"It's very curious," Blanche Adney repeated, with a musing air and her -eyes on Lord Mellifont. Then, rousing herself, she added: "Go and look -in his room."</p> - -<p>"In Lord Mellifont's?"</p> - -<p>She turned to me quickly. "<i>That</i> would be a way!"</p> - -<p>"A way to what?"</p> - -<p>"To find out—to find out!" She spoke gaily and excitedly, but -suddenly checked herself. "We're talking nonsense," she said.</p> - -<p>"We're mixing things up, but I'm struck with your idea. Get Lady -Mellifont to let you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, <i>she</i> has looked!" Mrs. Adney murmured, with the oddest -dramatic expression. Then, after a movement of her beautiful uplifted hand, -as if to brush away a fantastic vision, she exclaimed imperiously: "Bring -me the scene—bring me the scene!"</p> - -<p>"I go for it," I answered; "but don't tell me I can't write a play."</p> - -<p>She left me, but my errand was arrested by the approach of a lady who -had produced a birthday-book—we had been threatened with it for -several evenings—and who did me the honour to solicit my -autograph. She had been asking the others, and she couldn't decently -leave me out. I could usually remember my name, but it always took me -some time to recall my date, and even when I had done so I was never -very sure. I hesitated between two days and I remarked to my petitioner -that I would sign on both if it would give her any satisfaction. She -said that surely I had been born only once; and I replied of course that -on the day I made her acquaintance I had been born again. I mention the -feeble joke only to show that, with the obligatory inspection of the -other autographs, we gave some minutes to this transaction. The lady -departed with her book, and then I became aware that the company had -dispersed. I was alone in the little salon that had been appropriated to -our use. My first impression was one of disappointment: if Vawdrey had -gone to bed I didn't wish to disturb him. While I hesitated, however. I -recognised that Vawdrey had not gone to bed. A window was open, and the -sound of voices outside came in to me: Blanche was on the terrace with -her dramatist, and they were talking about the stars. I went to the -window for a glimpse—the Alpine night was splendid. My friends had -stepped out together; the actress had picked up a cloak; she looked as I -had seen her look in the wing of the theatre. They were silent awhile, -and I heard the roar of a neighbouring torrent. I turned back into the -room, and its quiet lamplight gave me an idea. Our companions had -dispersed—it was late for a pastoral country—and we three -should have the place to ourselves. Clare Vawdrey had written his -scene—it was magnificent; and his reading it to us there, at such -an hour, would be an episode intensely memorable. I would bring down his -manuscript and meet the two with it as they came in.</p> - -<p>I quitted the salon for this purpose; I had been in Vawdrey's room and -knew it was on the second floor, the last in a long corridor. A minute -later my hand was on the knob of his door, which I naturally pushed open -without knocking. It was equally natural that in the absence of its -occupant the room should be dark; the more so as, the end of the -corridor being at that hour unlighted, the obscurity was not immediately -diminished by the opening of the door. I was only aware at first that I -had made no mistake and that, the window-curtains not being drawn, I was -confronted with a couple of vague starlighted apertures. Their aid, -however, was not sufficient to enable me to find what I had come for, -and my hand, in my pocket, was already on the little box of matches that -I always carried for cigarettes. Suddenly I withdrew it with a start, -uttering an ejaculation, an apology. I had entered the wrong room; a -glance prolonged for three seconds showed me a figure seated at a table -near one of the windows—a figure I had at first taken for a -travelling-rug thrown over a chair. I retreated, with a sense of -intrusion; but as I did so I became aware, more rapidly than it takes me -to express it, in the first place that this was Vawdrey's room and in -the second that, most singularly, Vawdrey himself sat before me. -Checking myself on the threshold I had a momentary feeling of -bewilderment, but before I knew it I had exclaimed: "Hullo! is that you, -Vawdrey?"</p> - -<p>He neither turned nor answered me, but my question received an immediate -and practical reply in the opening of a door on the other side of the -passage. A servant, with a candle, had come out of the opposite room, -and in this flitting illumination I definitely recognised the man whom, -an instant before, I had to the best of my belief left below in -conversation with Mrs. Adney. His back was half turned to me, and he -bent over the table in the attitude of writing, but I was conscious that -I was in no sort of error about his identity. "I beg your pardon—I -thought you were downstairs," I said; and as the personage gave no sign -of hearing me I added: "If you're busy I won't disturb you." I backed -out, closing the door—I had been in the place, I suppose, less than a -minute. I had a sense of mystification, which however deepened -infinitely the next instant. I stood there with my hand still on the -knob of the door, overtaken by the oddest impression of my life. Vawdrey -was at his table, writing, and it was a very natural place for him to -be; but why was he writing in the dark and why hadn't he answered me? I -waited a few seconds for the sound of some movement, to see if he wouldn't -rouse himself from his abstraction—a fit conceivable in a great -writer—and call out: "Oh, my dear fellow, is it you?" But I heard -only the stillness, I felt only the starlighted dusk of the room, with -the unexpected presence it enclosed. I turned away, slowly retracing my -steps, and came confusedly downstairs. The lamp was still burning in the -salon, but the room was empty. I passed round to the door of the hotel -and stepped out. Empty too was the terrace. Blanche Adney and the -gentleman with her had apparently come in. I hung about five minutes; -then I went to bed.</p> - -<p>I slept badly, for I was agitated. On looking back at these queer -occurrences (you will see presently that they were queer), I perhaps -suppose myself more agitated than I was; for great anomalies are never -so great at first as after we have reflected upon them. It takes us some -time to exhaust explanations. I was vaguely nervous—I had been -sharply startled; but there was nothing I could not clear up by asking -Blanche Adney, the first thing in the morning, who had been with her on the -terrace. Oddly enough, however, when the morning dawned—it dawned -admirably—I felt less desire to satisfy myself on this point than to -escape, to brush away the shadow of my stupefaction. I saw the day would -be splendid, and the fancy took me to spend it, as I had spent happy -days of youth, in a lonely mountain ramble. I dressed early, partook of -conventional coffee, put a big roll into one pocket and a small flask -into the other, and, with a stout stick in my hand, went forth into the -high places. My story is not closely concerned with the charming hours I -passed there—hours of the kind that make intense memories. If I -roamed away half of them on the shoulders of the hills, I lay on the -sloping grass for the other half and, with my cap pulled over my eyes (save -a peep for immensities of view), listened, in the bright stillness, to the -mountain bee and felt most things sink and dwindle. Clare Vawdrey grew -small, Blanche Adney grew dim, Lord Mellifont grew old, and before the -day was over I forgot that I had ever been puzzled. When in the late -afternoon I made my way down to the inn there was nothing I wanted so -much to find out as whether dinner would not soon be ready. To-night I -dressed, in a manner, and by the time I was presentable they were all at -table.</p> - -<p>In their company again my little problem came back to me, so that I was -curious to see if Vawdrey wouldn't look at me the least bit queerly. But -he didn't look at me at all; which gave me a chance both to be patient -and to wonder why I should hesitate to ask him my question across the -table. I did hesitate, and with the consciousness of doing so came back -a little of the agitation I had left behind me, or below me, during the -day. I wasn't ashamed of my scruple, however: it was only a fine -discretion. What I vaguely felt was that a public inquiry wouldn't have -been fair. Lord Mellifont was there, of course, to mitigate with his -perfect manner all consequences; but I think it was present to me that -with these particular elements his lordship would not be at home. The -moment we got up, therefore, I approached Mrs. Adney, asking her -whether, as the evening was lovely, she wouldn't take a turn with me -outside.</p> - -<p>"You've walked a hundred miles; had you not better be quiet?" she -replied.</p> - -<p>"I'd walk a hundred miles more to get you to tell me something."</p> - -<p>She looked at me an instant, with a little of the queerness that I had -sought, but had not found, in Clare Vawdrey's eyes. "Do you mean what -became of Lord Mellifont?"</p> - -<p>"Of Lord Mellifont?" With my new speculation I had lost that thread.</p> - -<p>"Where's your memory, foolish man? We talked of it last evening."</p> - -<p>"Ah, yes!" I cried, recalling; "we shall have lots to discuss." I drew -her out to the terrace, and before we had gone three steps I said to -her: "Who was with you here last night?"</p> - -<p>"Last night?" she repeated, as wide of the mark as I had been.</p> - -<p>"At ten o'clock—just after our company broke up. You came out here -with a gentleman; you talked about the stars."</p> - -<p>She stared a moment; then she gave her laugh. "Are you jealous of dear -Vawdrey?"</p> - -<p>"Then it was he?"</p> - -<p>"Certainly it was."</p> - -<p>"And how long did he stay?"</p> - -<p>"You have it badly. He stayed about a quarter of an hour—perhaps -rather more. We walked some distance; he talked about his play. There you -have it all; that is the only witchcraft I have used."</p> - -<p>"And what did Vawdrey do afterwards?"</p> - -<p>"I haven't the least idea. I left him and went to bed."</p> - -<p>"At what time did you go to bed?"</p> - -<p>"At what time did <i>you</i>? I happen to remember that I parted from -Mr. Vawdrey at ten twenty-five," said Mrs. Adney. "I came back into the -salon to pick up a book, and I noticed the clock."</p> - -<p>"In other words you and Vawdrey distinctly lingered here from about five -minutes past ten till the hour you mention?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know how distinct we were, but we were very jolly. <i>Où -voulez-vous en venir</i>?" Blanche Adney asked.</p> - -<p>"Simply to this, dear lady: that at the time your companion was occupied -in the manner you describe, he was also engaged in literary composition -in his own room."</p> - -<p>She stopped short at this, and her eyes had an expression in the -darkness. She wanted to know if I challenged her veracity; and I replied -that, on the contrary, I backed it up—it made the case so -interesting. She returned that this would only be if she should back up -mine; which, however, I had no difficulty in persuading her to do, after -I had related to her circumstantially the incident of my quest of the -manuscript—the manuscript which, at the time, for a reason I could -now understand, appeared to have passed so completely out of her own -head.</p> - -<p>"His talk made me forget it—I forgot I sent you for it. He made -up for his fiasco in the salon: he declaimed me the scene," said my -companion. She had dropped on a bench to listen to me and, as we sat -there, had briefly cross-examined me. Then she broke out into fresh -laughter. "Oh, the eccentricities of genius!"</p> - -<p>"They seem greater even than I supposed."</p> - -<p>"Oh, the mysteries of greatness!"</p> - -<p>"You ought to know all about them, but they take me by surprise."</p> - -<p>"Are you absolutely certain it was Mr. Vawdrey?" my companion asked.</p> - -<p>"If it wasn't he, who in the world was it? That a strange gentleman, -looking exactly like him, should be sitting in his room at that hour of -the night and writing at his table <i>in the dark</i>," I insisted, "would -be practically as wonderful as my own contention."</p> - -<p>"Yes, why in the dark?" mused Mrs. Adney.</p> - -<p>"Cats can see in the dark," I said.</p> - -<p>She smiled at me dimly. "Did it look like a cat?"</p> - -<p>"No, dear lady, but I'll tell you what it did look like—it looked -like the author of Vawdrey's admirable works. It looked infinitely more -like him than our friend does himself," I declared.</p> - -<p>"Do you mean it was somebody he gets to do them?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, while he dines out and disappoints you."</p> - -<p>"Disappoints me?" murmured Mrs. Adney artlessly.</p> - -<p>"Disappoints <i>me</i>—disappoints every one who looks in him for -the genius that created the pages they adore. Where is it in his talk?"</p> - -<p>"Ah, last night he was splendid," said the actress.</p> - -<p>"He's always splendid, as your morning bath is splendid, or a sirloin of -beef, or the railway service to Brighton. But he's never rare."</p> - -<p>"I see what you mean."</p> - -<p>"That's what makes you such a comfort to talk to. I've often -wondered—now I know. There are two of them."</p> - -<p>"What a delightful idea!"</p> - -<p>"One goes out, the other stays at home. One is the genius, the other's -the bourgeois, and it's only the bourgeois whom we personally know. He -talks, he circulates, he's awfully popular, he flirts with you—"</p> - -<p>"Whereas it's the genius <i>you</i> are privileged to see!" Mrs. Adney -broke in. "I'm much obliged to you for the distinction."</p> - -<p>I laid my hand on her arm. "See him yourself. Try it, test it, go to his -room."</p> - -<p>"Go to his room? It wouldn't be proper!" she exclaimed, in the tone of -her best comedy.</p> - -<p>"Anything is proper in such an inquiry. If you see him, it settles -it."</p> - -<p>"How charming—to settle it!" She thought a moment, then she sprang -up. "Do you mean <i>now</i>?"</p> - -<p>"Whenever you like."</p> - -<p>"But suppose I should find the wrong one?" said Blanche Adney, with an -exquisite effect.</p> - -<p>"The wrong one? Which one do you call the right?"</p> - -<p>"The wrong one for a lady to go and see. Suppose I shouldn't -find—the genius?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'll look after the other," I replied. Then, as I had happened to -glance about me, I added: "Take care—here comes Lord Mellifont."</p> - -<p>"I wish you'd look after <i>him</i>," my interlocutress murmured.</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with him?"</p> - -<p>"That's just what I was going to tell you."</p> - -<p>"Tell me now; he's not coming."</p> - -<p>Blanche Adney looked a moment. Lord Mellifont, who appeared to have -emerged from the hotel to smoke a meditative cigar, had paused, at a -distance from us, and stood admiring the wonders of the prospect, -discernible even in the dusk. We strolled slowly in another direction, -and she presently said: "My idea is almost as droll as yours."</p> - -<p>"I don't call mine droll: it's beautiful."</p> - -<p>"There's nothing so beautiful as the droll," Mrs. Adney declared.</p> - -<p>"You take a professional view. But I'm all ears." My curiosity was -indeed alive again.</p> - -<p>"Well then, my dear friend, if Clare Vawdrey is double (and I'm bound to -say I think that the more of him the better), his lordship there has the -opposite complaint: he isn't even whole."</p> - -<p>We stopped once more, simultaneously. "I don't understand."</p> - -<p>"No more do I. But I have a fancy that if there are two of Mr. Vawdrey, -there isn't so much as one, all told, of Lord Mellifont."</p> - -<p>I considered a moment, then I laughed out. "I think I see what you -mean!"</p> - -<p>"That's what makes <i>you</i> a comfort. Did you ever see him -alone?"</p> - -<p>I tried to remember. "Oh, yes; he has been to see me."</p> - -<p>"Ah, then he wasn't alone."</p> - -<p>"And I've been to see him, in his study."</p> - -<p>"Did he know you were there?"</p> - -<p>"Naturally—I was announced."</p> - -<p>Blanche Adney glanced at me like a lovely conspirator. "You mustn't be -announced!" With this she walked on.</p> - -<p>I rejoined her, breathless. "Do you mean one must come upon him when he -doesn't know it?"</p> - -<p>"You must take him unawares. You must go to his room—that's what -you must do."</p> - -<p>If I was elated by the way our mystery opened out, I was also, -pardonably, a little confused. "When I know he's not there?"</p> - -<p>"When you know he <i>is</i>."</p> - -<p>"And what shall I see?"</p> - -<p>"You won't see anything!" Mrs. Adney cried as we turned round.</p> - -<p>We had reached the end of the terrace, and our movement brought us face -to face with Lord Mellifont, who, resuming his walk, had now, without -indiscretion, overtaken us. The sight of him at that moment was -illuminating, and it kindled a great backward train, connecting itself -with one's general impression of the personage. As he stood there -smiling at us and waving a practised hand into the transparent night (he -introduced the view as if it had been a candidate and "supported" the -very Alps), as he rose before us in the delicate fragrance of his cigar -and all his other delicacies and fragrances, with more perfections, -somehow, heaped upon his handsome head than one had ever seen -accumulated before, he struck me as so essentially, so conspicuously and -uniformly the public character that I read in a flash the answer to -Blanche Adney's riddle. He was all public and had no corresponding -private life, just as Clare Vawdrey was all private and had no -corresponding public one. I had heard only half my companion's story, -yet as we joined Lord Mellifont (he had followed us—he liked Mrs. -Adney; but it was always to be conceived of him that he accepted society -rather than sought it), as we participated for half an hour in the -distributed wealth of his conversation, I felt with unabashed duplicity -that we had, as it were, found him out. I was even more deeply diverted -by that whisk of the curtain to which the actress had just treated me -than I had been by my own discovery; and if I was not ashamed of my -share of her secret any more than of having divided my own with her -(though my own was, of the two mysteries, the more glorious for the -personage involved), this was because there was no cruelty in my -advantage, but on the contrary an extreme tenderness and a positive -compassion. Oh, he was safe with me, and I felt moreover rich and -enlightened, as if I had suddenly put the universe into my pocket. I had -learned what an affair of the spot and the moment a great appearance may -be. It would doubtless be too much to say that I had always suspected -the possibility, in the background of his lordship's being, of some such -beautiful instance; but it is at least a fact that, patronising as it -sounds, I had been conscious of a certain reserve of indulgence for him. -I had secretly pitied him for the perfection of his performance, had -wondered what blank face such a mask had to cover, what was left to him -for the immitigable hours in which a man sits down with himself, or, -more serious still, with that intenser self, his lawful wife. How was he -at home and what did he do when he was alone? There was something in -Lady Mellifont that gave a point to these researches—something that -suggested that even to her he was still the public character and that -she was haunted by similar questionings. She had never cleared them up: -that was her eternal trouble. We therefore knew more than she did, -Blanche Adney and I; but we wouldn't tell her for the world, nor would -she probably thank us for doing so. She preferred the relative grandeur -of uncertainty. She was not at home with him, so she couldn't say; and -with her he was not alone, so he couldn't show her. He represented to -his wife and he was a hero to his servants, and what one wanted to -arrive at was what really became of him when no eye could see. He -rested, presumably; but what form of rest could repair such a plenitude -of presence? Lady Mellifont was too proud to pry, and as she had never -looked through a keyhole she remained dignified and unassuaged.</p> - -<p>It may have been a fancy of mine that Blanche Adney drew out our -companion, or it may be that the practical irony of our relation to him -at such a moment made me see him more vividly: at any rate he never had -struck me as so dissimilar from what he would have been if we had not -offered him a reflection of his image. We were only a concourse of two, -but he had never been more public. His perfect manner had never been -more perfect, his remarkable tact had never been more remarkable. I had -a tacit sense that it would all be in the morning papers, with a leader, -and also a secretly exhilarating one that I knew something that wouldn't -be, that never could be, though any enterprising journal would give one a -fortune for it. I must add, however, that in spite of my enjoyment—it -was almost sensual, like that of a consummate dish—I was eager to be -alone again with Mrs. Adney, who owed me an anecdote. It proved -impossible, that evening, for some of the others came out to see what we -found so absorbing; and then Lord Mellifont bespoke a little music from -the fiddler, who produced his violin and played to us divinely, on our -platform of echoes, face to face with the ghosts of the mountains. -Before the concert was over I missed our actress and, glancing into the -window of the salon, saw that she was established with Vawdrey, who was -reading to her from a manuscript. The great scene had apparently been -achieved and was doubtless the more interesting to Blanche from the new -lights she had gathered about its author. I judged it discreet not to -disturb them, and I went to bed without seeing her again. I looked out -for her betimes the next morning and, as the promise of the day was -fair, proposed to her that we should take to the hills, reminding her of -the high obligation she had incurred. She recognised the obligation and -gratified me with her company; but before we had strolled ten yards up -the pass she broke out with intensity: "My dear friend, you've no idea -how it works in me! I can think of nothing else."</p> - -<p>"Than your theory about Lord Mellifont?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, bother Lord Mellifont! I allude to yours about Mr. Vawdrey, who is -much the more interesting person of the two. I'm fascinated by that -vision of his—what-do-you-call-it?"</p> - -<p>"His alternative identity?"</p> - -<p>"His other self: that's easier to say."</p> - -<p>"You accept it, then, you adopt it?"</p> - -<p>"Adopt it? I rejoice in it! It became tremendously vivid to me last -evening."</p> - -<p>"While he read to you there?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, as I listened to him, watched him. It simplified everything, -explained everything."</p> - -<p>"That's indeed the blessing of it. Is the scene very fine?"</p> - -<p>"Magnificent, and he reads beautifully."</p> - -<p>"Almost as well as the other one writes!" I laughed.</p> - -<p>This made my companion stop a moment, laying her hand on my arm. "You -utter my very impression. I felt that he was reading me the work of -another man."</p> - -<p>"What a service to the other man!"</p> - -<p>"Such a totally different person," said Mrs. Adney. We talked of this -difference as we went on, and of what a wealth it constituted, what a -resource for life, such a duplication of character.</p> - -<p>"It ought to make him live twice as long as other people," I -observed.</p> - -<p>"Ought to make which of them?"</p> - -<p>"Well, both; for after all they're members of a firm, and one of them -couldn't carry on the business without the other. Moreover mere survival -would be dreadful for either."</p> - -<p>Blanche Adney was silent a little; then she exclaimed: "I don't -know—I wish he <i>would</i> survive!"</p> - -<p>"May I, on my side, inquire which?"</p> - -<p>"If you can't guess I won't tell you."</p> - -<p>"I know the heart of woman. You always prefer the other."</p> - -<p>She halted again, looking round her. "Off here, away from my husband, I -<i>can</i> tell you. I'm in love with him!"</p> - -<p>"Unhappy woman, he has no passions," I answered.</p> - -<p>"That's exactly why I adore him. Doesn't a woman with my history know -that the passions of others are insupportable? An actress, poor thing, -can't care for any love that's not all on <i>her</i> side; she can't afford -to be repaid. My marriage proves that: marriage is ruinous. Do you know -what was in my mind last night, all the while Mr. Vawdrey was reading me -those beautiful speeches? An insane desire to see the author." And -dramatically, as if to hide her shame, Blanche Adney passed on.</p> - -<p>"We'll manage that," I returned. "I want another glimpse of him myself. -But meanwhile please remember that I've been waiting more than -forty-eight hours for the evidence that supports your sketch, intensely -suggestive and plausible, of Lord Mellifont's private life."</p> - -<p>"Oh, Lord Mellifont doesn't interest me."</p> - -<p>"He did yesterday," I said.</p> - -<p>"Yes, but that was before I fell in love. You blotted him out with your -story."</p> - -<p>"You'll make me sorry I told it. Come," I pleaded, "if you don't let me -know how your idea came into your head I shall imagine you simply made -it up."</p> - -<p>"Let me recollect then, while we wander in this grassy valley."</p> - -<p>We stood at the entrance of a charming crooked gorge, a portion of whose -level floor formed the bed of a stream that was smooth with swiftness. -We turned into it, and the soft walk beside the clear torrent drew us on -and on; till suddenly, as we continued and I waited for my companion to -remember, a bend of the valley showed us Lady Mellifont coming toward -us. She was alone, under the canopy of her parasol, drawing her sable -train over the turf; and in this form, on the devious ways, she was a -sufficiently rare apparition. She usually took a footman, who marched -behind her on the highroads and whose livery was strange to the -mountaineers. She blushed on seeing us, as if she ought somehow to -justify herself; she laughed vaguely and said she had come out for a -little early stroll. We stood together a moment, exchanging platitudes, -and then she remarked that she had thought she might find her husband.</p> - -<p>"Is he in this quarter?" I inquired.</p> - -<p>"I supposed he would be. He came out an hour ago to sketch."</p> - -<p>"Have you been looking for him?" Mrs. Adney asked.</p> - -<p>"A little; not very much," said Lady Mellifont.</p> - -<p>Each of the women rested her eyes with some intensity, as it seemed to -me, on the eyes of the other.</p> - -<p>"We'll look for him <i>for</i> you, if you like," said Mrs. Adney.</p> - -<p>"Oh, it doesn't matter. I thought I'd join him."</p> - -<p>"He won't make his sketch if you don't," my companion hinted.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps he will if <i>you</i> do," said Lady Mellifont.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I dare say he'll turn up," I interposed.</p> - -<p>"He certainly will if he knows we're here!" Blanche Adney retorted.</p> - -<p>"Will you wait while we search?" I asked of Lady Mellifont.</p> - -<p>She repeated that it was of no consequence; upon which Mrs. Adney went -on: "We'll go into the matter for our own pleasure."</p> - -<p>"I wish you a pleasant expedition," said her ladyship, and was turning -away when I sought to know if we should inform her husband that she had -followed him. She hesitated a moment; then she jerked out oddly: "I -think you had better not." With this she took leave of us, floating a -little stiffly down the gorge.</p> - -<p>My companion and I watched her retreat, then we exchanged a stare, while -a light ghost of a laugh rippled from the actress's lips. "She might be -walking in the shrubberies at Mellifont!"</p> - -<p>"She suspects it, you know," I replied.</p> - -<p>"And she doesn't want him to know it. There won't be any sketch."</p> - -<p>"Unless we overtake him," I subjoined. "In that case we shall find him -producing one, in the most graceful attitude, and the queer thing is -that it will be brilliant."</p> - -<p>"Let us leave him alone—he'll have to come home without it."</p> - -<p>"He'd rather never come home. Oh, he'll find a public!"</p> - -<p>"Perhaps he'll do it for the cows," Blanche Adney suggested; and as I -was on the point of rebuking her profanity she went on: "That's simply -what I happened to discover."</p> - -<p>"What are you speaking of?"</p> - -<p>"The incident of day before yesterday."</p> - -<p>"Ah, let's have it at last!"</p> - -<p>"That's all it was—that I was like Lady Mellifont: I couldn't find -him."</p> - -<p>"Did you lose him?"</p> - -<p>"He lost <i>me</i>—that appears to be the way of it. He thought -I was gone."</p> - -<p>"But you did find him, since you came home with him."</p> - -<p>"It was he who found <i>me</i>. That again is what must happen. He's -there from the moment he knows somebody else is."</p> - -<p>"I understand his intermissions," I said after a short reflection, "but -I don't quite seize the law that governs them."</p> - -<p>"Oh, it's a fine shade, but I caught it at that moment. I had started to -come home. I was tired, and I had insisted on his not coming back with -me. We had found some rare flowers—those I brought home—and it -was he who had discovered almost all of them. It amused him very much, and -I knew he wanted to get more; but I was weary and I quitted him. He let me -go—where else would have been his tact?—and I was too stupid -then to have guessed that from the moment I was not there no flower would -be gathered. I started homeward, but at the end of three minutes I found I -had brought away his penknife—he had lent it to me to trim a -branch—and I knew he would need it. I turned back a few steps, to -call him, but before I spoke I looked about for him. You can't understand -what happened then without having the place before you."</p> - -<p>"You must take me there," I said.</p> - -<p>"We may see the wonder here. The place was simply one that offered no -chance for concealment—a great gradual hillside, without obstructions -or trees. There were some rocks below me, behind which I myself had -disappeared, but from which on coming back I immediately emerged again."</p> - -<p>"Then he must have seen you."</p> - -<p>"He was too utterly gone, for some reason best known to himself. It was -probably some moment of fatigue—he's getting on, you know, so that, -with the sense of returning solitude, the reaction had been -proportionately great, the extinction proportionately complete. At any -rate the stage was as bare as your hand."</p> - -<p>"Could he have been somewhere else?"</p> - -<p>"He couldn't have been, in the time, anywhere but where I had left him. -Yet the place was utterly empty—as empty as this stretch of valley -before us. He had vanished—he had ceased to be. But as soon as my -voice rang out (I uttered his name), he rose before me like the rising -sun."</p> - -<p>"And where did the sun rise?"</p> - -<p>"Just where it ought to—just where he would have been and where I -should have seen him had he been like other people."</p> - -<p>I had listened with the deepest interest, but it was my duty to think of -objections. "How long a time elapsed between the moment you perceived -his absence and the moment you called?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, only an instant. I don't pretend it was long."</p> - -<p>"Long enough for you to be sure?" I said.</p> - -<p>"Sure he wasn't there?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, and that you were not mistaken, not the victim of some hocus-pocus -of your eyesight."</p> - -<p>"I may have been mistaken, but I don't believe it. At any rate, that's -just why I want you to look in his room."</p> - -<p>I thought a moment. "How <i>can</i> I, when even his wife doesn't dare -to?"</p> - -<p>"She <i>wants</i> to; propose it to her. It wouldn't take much to make -her. She does suspect."</p> - -<p>I thought another moment. "Did he seem to know?"</p> - -<p>"That I had missed him? So it struck me, but he thought he had been -quick enough."</p> - -<p>"Did you speak of his disappearance?"</p> - -<p>"Heaven forbid! It seemed to me too strange."</p> - -<p>"Quite right. And how did he look?"</p> - -<p>Trying to think it out again and reconstitute her miracle, Blanche Adney -gazed abstractedly up the valley. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Just as he -looks now!" and I saw Lord Mellifont stand before us with his -sketch-block. I perceived, as we met him, that he looked neither -suspicious nor blank: he looked simply, as he did always, everywhere, -the principal feature of the scene. Naturally he had no sketch to show -us, but nothing could better have rounded off our actual conception of -him than the way he fell into position as we approached. He had been -selecting his point of view; he took possession of it with a flourish of -the pencil. He leaned against a rock; his beautiful little box of -water-colours reposed on a natural table beside him, a ledge of the bank -which showed how inveterately nature ministered to his convenience. He -painted while he talked and he talked while he painted; and if the -painting was as miscellaneous as the talk, the talk would equally have -graced an album. We waited while the exhibition went on, and it seemed -indeed as if the conscious profiles of the peaks were interested in his -success. They grew as black as silhouettes in paper, sharp against a -livid sky from which, however, there would be nothing to fear till Lord -Mellifont's sketch should be finished. Blanche Adney communed with me -dumbly, and I could read the language of her eyes: "Oh, if <i>we</i> could -only do it as well as that! He fills the stage in a way that beats us." -We could no more have left him than we could have quitted the theatre -till the play was over; but in due time we turned round with him and -strolled back to the inn, before the door of which his lordship, -glancing again at his picture, tore the fresh leaf from the block and -presented it with a few happy words to Mrs. Adney. Then he went into the -house; and a moment later, looking up from where we stood, we saw him, -above, at the window of his sitting-room (he had the best apartments), -watching the signs of the weather.</p> - -<p>"He'll have to rest after this," Blanche said, dropping her eyes on her -water-colour.</p> - -<p>"Indeed he will!" I raised mine to the window: Lord Mellifont had -vanished. "He's already reabsorbed."</p> - -<p>"Reabsorbed?" I could see the actress was now thinking of something -else.</p> - -<p>"Into the immensity of things. He has lapsed again; there's an -<i>entr'acte</i>."</p> - -<p>"It ought to be long." Mrs. Adney looked up and down the terrace, and at -that moment the head-waiter appeared in the doorway. Suddenly she turned -to this functionary with the question: "Have you seen Mr. Vawdrey -lately?"</p> - -<p>The man immediately approached. "He left the house five minutes -ago—for a walk, I think. He went down the pass; he had a book."</p> - -<p>I was watching the ominous clouds. "He had better have had an -umbrella."</p> - -<p>The waiter smiled. "I recommended him to take one."</p> - -<p>"Thank you," said Mrs. Adney; and the Oberkellner withdrew. Then she -went on, abruptly: "Will you do me a favour?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, if you'll do <i>me</i> one. Let me see if your picture is -signed."</p> - -<p>She glanced at the sketch before giving it to me. "For a wonder it -isn't."</p> - -<p>"It ought to be, for full value. May I keep it awhile?"</p> - -<p>"Yes, if you'll do what I ask. Take an umbrella and go after Mr. -Vawdrey."</p> - -<p>"To bring him to Mrs. Adney?"</p> - -<p>"To keep him out—as long as you can."</p> - -<p>"I'll keep him as long as the rain holds off."</p> - -<p>"Oh, never mind the rain!" my companion exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Would you have us drenched?"</p> - -<p>"Without remorse." Then with a strange light in her eyes she added: "I'm -going to try."</p> - -<p>"To try?"</p> - -<p>"To see the real one. Oh, if I can get at him!" she broke out with -passion.</p> - -<p>"Try, try!" I replied. "I'll keep our friend all day."</p> - -<p>"If I can get at the one who does it"—and she paused, with shining -eyes—"if I can have it out with him I shall get my part!"</p> - -<p>"I'll keep Vawdrey for ever!" I called after her as she passed quickly -into the house.</p> - -<p>Her audacity was communicative, and I stood there in a glow of -excitement. I looked at Lord Mellifont's water-colour and I looked at -the gathering storm; I turned my eyes again to his lordship's windows and -then I bent them on my watch. Vawdrey had so little the start of me that -I should have time to overtake him—time even if I should take five -minutes to go up to Lord Mellifont's sitting-room (where we had all been -hospitably received), and say to him, as a messenger, that Mrs. Adney -begged he would bestow upon his sketch the high consecration of his -signature. As I again considered this work of art I perceived there was -something it certainly did lack: what else then but so noble an -autograph? It was my duty to supply the deficiency without delay, and in -accordance with this conviction I instantly re-entered the hotel. I went -up to Lord Mellifont's apartments; I reached the door of his salon. -Here, however, I was met by a difficulty of which my extravagance had -not taken account. If I were to knock I should spoil everything; yet was -I prepared to dispense with this ceremony? I asked myself the question, -and it embarrassed me; I turned my little picture round and round, but -it didn't give me the answer I wanted. I wanted it to say: "Open the -door gently, gently, without a sound, yet very quickly: then you will see -what you will see." I had gone so far as to lay my hand, upon the knob when -I became aware (having my wits so about me), that exactly in the manner -I was thinking of—gently, gently, without a sound—another door -had moved, on the opposite side of the hall. At the same instant I -found myself smiling rather constrainedly upon Lady Mellifont, who, on -seeing me, had checked herself on the threshold of her room. For a -moment, as she stood there, we exchanged two or three ideas that were -the more singular for being unspoken. We had caught each other hovering, -and we understood each other; but as I stepped over to her (so that we -were separated from the sitting-room by the width of the hall), her lips -formed the almost soundless entreaty: "Don't!" I could see in her conscious -eyes everything that the word expressed—the confession of her own -curiosity and the dread of the consequences of mine. "<i>Don't!</i>" she -repeated, as I stood before her. From the moment my experiment could -strike her as an act of violence I was ready to renounce it; yet I -thought I detected in her frightened face a still deeper betrayal—a -possibility of disappointment if I should give way. It was as if she had -said: "I'll let you do it if you'll take the responsibility. Yes, with -some one else I'd surprise him. But it would never do for him to think -it was I."</p> - -<p>"We soon found Lord Mellifont," I observed, in allusion to our encounter -with her an hour before, "and he was so good as to give this lovely -sketch to Mrs. Adney, who has asked me to come up and beg him to put in -the omitted signature."</p> - -<p>Lady Mellifont took the drawing from me, and I could guess the struggle -that went on in her while she looked at it. She was silent for some -time; then I felt that all her delicacies and dignities, all her old -timidities and pieties were fighting against her opportunity. She turned -away from me and, with the drawing, went back to her room. She was -absent for a couple of minutes, and when she reappeared I could see that -she had vanquished her temptation; that even, with a kind of resurgent -horror, she had shrunk from it. She had deposited the sketch in the -room. "If you will kindly leave the picture with me, I will see that -Mrs. Adney's request is attended to," she said, with great courtesy and -sweetness, but in a manner that put an end to our colloquy.</p> - -<p>I assented, with a somewhat artificial enthusiasm perhaps, and then, to -ease off our separation, remarked that we were going to have a change of -weather.</p> - -<p>"In that case we shall go—we shall go immediately," said Lady -Mellifont. I was amused at the eagerness with which she made this -declaration: it appeared to represent a coveted flight into safety, an -escape with her threatened secret. I was the more surprised therefore -when, as I was turning away, she put out her hand to take mine. She had -the pretext of bidding me farewell, but as I shook hands with her on -this supposition I felt that what the movement really conveyed was: "I -thank you for the help you would have given me, but it's better as it -is. If I should know, who would help me then?" As I went to my room to -get my umbrella I said to myself: "She's sure, but she won't put it to -the proof."</p> - -<p>A quarter of an hour later I had overtaken Clare Vawdrey in the pass, -and shortly after this we found ourselves looking for refuge. The storm -had not only completely gathered, but it had broken at the last with -extraordinary rapidity. We scrambled up a hillside to an empty cabin, a -rough structure that was hardly more than a shed for the protection of -cattle. It was a tolerable shelter however, and it had fissures through -which we could watch the splendid spectacle of the tempest. This -entertainment lasted an hour—an hour that has remained with me as -full of odd disparities. While the lightning played with the thunder and -the rain gushed in on our umbrellas, I said to myself that Clare Vawdrey -was disappointing. I don't know exactly what I should have predicated of a -great author exposed to the fury of the elements, I can't say what -particular Manfred attitude I should have expected my companion to -assume, but it seemed to me somehow that I shouldn't have looked to him -to regale me in such a situation with stories (which I had already -heard), about the celebrated Lady Ringrose. Her ladyship formed the -subject of Vawdrey's conversation during this prodigious scene, though -before it was quite over he had launched out on Mr. Chafer, the scarcely -less notorious reviewer. It broke my heart to hear a man like Vawdrey -talk of reviewers. The lightning projected a hard clearness upon the -truth, familiar to me for years, to which the last day or two had added -transcendent support—the irritating certitude that for personal -relations this admirable genius thought his second-best good enough. It -was, no doubt, as society was made, but there was a contempt in the -distinction which could not fail to be galling to an admirer. The world -was vulgar and stupid, and the real man would have been a fool to come -out for it when he could gossip and dine by deputy. None the less my -heart sank as I felt my companion practice this economy. I don't know -exactly what I wanted; I suppose I wanted him to make an exception for -<i>me</i>. I almost believed he would, if he had known how I worshipped his -talent. But I had never been able to translate this to him, and his -application of his principle was relentless. At any rate I was more than -ever sure that at such an hour his chair at home was not empty: -<i>there</i> was the Manfred attitude, <i>there</i> were the responsive -flashes. I could only envy Mrs. Adney her presumable enjoyment of them.</p> - -<p>The weather drew off at last, and the rain abated sufficiently to allow -us to emerge from our asylum and make our way back to the inn, where we -found on our arrival that our prolonged absence had produced some -agitation. It was judged apparently that the fury of the elements might -have placed us in a predicament. Several of our friends were at the -door, and they seemed a little disconcerted when it was perceived that -we were only drenched. Clare Vawdrey, for some reason, was wetter than -I, and he took his course to his room. Blanche Adney was among the -persons collected to look out for us, but as Vawdrey came toward her she -shrank from him, without a greeting; with a movement that I observed as -almost one of estrangement she turned her back on him and went quickly -into the salon. Wet as I was I went in after her; on which she -immediately flung round and faced me. The first thing I saw was that she -had never been so beautiful. There was a light of inspiration in her -face, and she broke out to me in the quickest whisper, which was at the -same time the loudest cry, I have ever heard: "I've got my <i>part!</i>"</p> - -<p>"You went to his room—I was right?"</p> - -<p>"Right?" Blanche Adney repeated. "Ah, my dear fellow!" she murmured.</p> - -<p>"He was there—you saw him?"</p> - -<p>"He saw me. It was the hour of my life!"</p> - -<p>"It must have been the hour of his, if you were half as lovely as you -are at this moment."</p> - -<p>"He's splendid," she pursued, as if she didn't hear me. "He <i>is</i> -the one who does it!" I listened, immensely impressed, and she added: "We -understood each other."</p> - -<p>"By flashes of lightning?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I didn't see the lightning then!"</p> - -<p>"How long were you there?" I asked with admiration.</p> - -<p>"Long enough to tell him I adore him."</p> - -<p>"Ah, that's what I've never been able to tell him!" I exclaimed -ruefully.</p> - -<p>"I shall have my part—I shall have my part!" she continued, with -triumphant indifference; and she flung round the room with the joy of a -girl, only checking herself to say: "Go and change your clothes."</p> - -<p>"You shall have Lord Mellifont's signature," I said.</p> - -<p>"Oh, bother Lord Mellifont's signature! He's far nicer than Mr. -Vawdrey," she went on irrelevantly.</p> - -<p>"Lord Mellifont?" I pretended to inquire.</p> - -<p>"Confound Lord Mellifont!" And Blanche Adney, in her elation, brushed by -me, whisking again through the open door. Just outside of it she came -upon her husband; whereupon, with a charming cry of "We're talking of -you, my love!" she threw herself upon him and kissed him.</p> - -<p>I went to my room and changed my clothes, but I remained there till the -evening. The violence of the storm had passed over us, but the rain had -settled down to a drizzle. On descending to dinner I found that the -change in the weather had already broken up our party. The Mellifonts -had departed in a carriage and four, they had been followed by others, -and several vehicles had been bespoken for the morning. Blanche Adney's -was one of them, and on the pretext that she had preparations to make -she quitted us directly after dinner. Clare Vawdrey asked me what was the -matter with her—she suddenly appeared to dislike him. I forget what -answer I gave, but I did my best to comfort him by driving away with him -the next day. Mrs. Adney had vanished when we came down; but they made -up their quarrel in London, for he finished his play, which she -produced. I must add that she is still, nevertheless, in want of the -great part. I have a beautiful one in my head, but she doesn't come to -see me to stir me up about it. Lady Mellifont always drops me a kind -word when we meet, but that doesn't console me.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="THE_WHEEL_OF_TIME">THE WHEEL OF TIME</a></h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>"And your daughter?" said Lady Greyswood; "tell me about her. She must -be nice."</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, she's nice enough. She's a great comfort."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment, then she went on: "Unfortunately she's -not good-looking—not a bit."</p> - -<p>"That doesn't matter, when they're not ill-natured," rejoined, -insincerely, Lady Greyswood, who had the remains of great beauty.</p> - -<p>"Oh, but poor Fanny is quite extraordinarily plain. I assure you it does -matter. She knows it herself; she suffers from it. It's the sort of -thing that makes a great difference in a girl's life."</p> - -<p>"But if she's charming, if she's clever!" said Lady Greyswood, with more -benevolence than logic. "I've known plain women who were liked."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean <i>me</i>, my dear?" her old friend straightforwardly -inquired. "But I'm not so awfully liked!"</p> - -<p>"You?" Lady Greyswood exclaimed. "Why, you're grand!"</p> - -<p>"I'm not so repulsive as I was when I was young perhaps, but that's not -saying much."</p> - -<p>"As when you were young!" laughed Lady Greyswood. "You sweet thing, you -<i>are</i> young. I thought India dried people up."</p> - -<p>"Oh, when you're a mummy to begin with!" Mrs. Knocker returned, with her -trick of self-abasement. "Of course I've not been such a fool as to keep -my children there. My girl <i>is</i> clever," she continued, "but she's -afraid to show it. Therefore you may judge whether, with her unfortunate -appearance, she's charming."</p> - -<p>"She shall show it to <i>me!</i> You must let me do everything for -her."</p> - -<p>"Does that include finding her a husband? I should like her to show it -to someone who'll marry her."</p> - -<p>"<i>I</i>'ll marry her!" said Lady Greyswood, who was handsomer than -ever when she laughed and looked capable.</p> - -<p>"What a blessing to meet you this way on the threshold of home! I give -you notice that I shall cling to you. But that's what I meant; that's -the thing the want of beauty makes so difficult—as if it were not -difficult enough at the best."</p> - -<p>"My dear child, one meets plenty of ugly women with husbands," Lady -Greyswood argued, "and often with very nice ones."</p> - -<p>"Yes, mine is very nice. There are men who don't mind one's face, for -whom beauty isn't indispensable, but they are rare. I don't understand -them. If I'd been a man about to marry I should have gone in for looks. -However, the poor child will <i>have</i> something," Mrs. Knocker -continued.</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood rested thoughtful eyes on her. "Do you mean she'll be -well off?"</p> - -<p>"We shall do everything we can for her. We're not in such misery as we -used to be. We've managed to save in India, strange to say, and six -months ago my husband came into money (more than we had ever dreamed -of), by the death of his poor brother. We feel quite opulent (it's -rather nice!) and we should expect to do something decent for our -daughter. I don't mind it's being known."</p> - -<p>"It <i>shall</i> be known!" said Lady Greyswood, getting up. "Leave the -dear child to me!" The old friends embraced, for the porter of the hotel -had come in to say that the carriage ordered for her ladyship was at the -door. They had met in Paris by the merest chance, in the court of an -inn, after a separation of years, just as Lady Greyswood was going home. -She had been to Aix-les-Bains early in the season and was resting on her -way back to England. Mrs. Knocker and the General, bringing their -eastern exile to a close, had arrived only the night before from -Marseilles and were to wait in Paris for their children, a tall girl and -two younger boys, who, inevitably dissociated from their parents, had -been for the past two years with a devoted aunt, their father's maiden -sister, at Heidelberg. The reunion of the family was to take place with -jollity in Paris, whither this good lady was now hurrying with her -drilled and demoralized charges. Mrs. Knocker had come to England to see -them two years before, and the period at Heidelberg had been planned -during this visit. With the termination of her husband's service a new -life opened before them all, and they had plans of comprehensive -rejoicing for the summer—plans involving however a continuance, for a -few months, of useful foreign opportunities, during which various -questions connected with the organization of a final home in England -were practically to be dealt with. There was to be a salubrious house on -the continent, taken in some neighbourhood that would both yield a -stimulus to plain Fanny's French (her German was much commended), and -permit of frequent "running over" for the General. With these -preoccupations Mrs. Knocker, after her delightful encounter with Lady -Greyswood, was less keenly conscious of the variations of destiny than -she had been when, at the age of twenty, that intimate friend of her -youth, beautiful, loveable and about to be united to a nobleman of -ancient name, was brightly, almost insolently alienated. The less -attractive of the two girls had married only several years later, and -her marriage had perhaps emphasised the divergence of their ways. To-day -however the inequality, as Mrs. Knocker would have phrased it, rather -dropped out of the impression produced by the somewhat wasted and faded -dowager, exquisite still, but unexpectedly appealing, who made no secret -(an attempt that in an age of such publicity would have been useless), -of what she had had, in vulgar parlance, to put up with, or of her having -been left badly off. She had spoken of her children—she had had -no less than six—but she had evidently thought it better not to speak -of her husband. That somehow made up, on Mrs. Knocker's part, for some -ancient aches.</p> - -<p>It was not till a year after this incident that, one day in London, in -her little house in Queen Street, Lady Greyswood said to her third son, -Maurice—the one she was fondest of, the one who on his own side had -given her most signs of affection:</p> - -<p>"I don't see what there is for you but to marry a girl of a certain -fortune."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that's not my line! I may be an idiot, but I'm not mercenary," the -young man declared. He was not an idiot, but there was an examination, -rather stiff indeed, to which, without success, he had gone up twice. -The diplomatic service was closed to him by this catastrophe; nothing -else appeared particularly open; he was terribly at leisure. There had -been a theory none the less that he was the ablest of the family. Two of -his brothers had been squeezed into the army and had declared rather -crudely that they would do their best to keep Maurice out. They were not -put to any trouble in this respect however, as he professed a complete -indifference to the trade of arms. His mother, who was vague about -everything except the idea that people ought to like him, if only for -his extraordinary good looks, thought it strange there shouldn't be some -opening for him in political life, or something to be picked up even in -the City. But no bustling borough solicited the advantage of his -protection, no eminent statesman in want of a secretary took him by the -hand, no great commercial house had been keeping a stool for him. -Maurice, in a word, was not "approached" from any quarter, and meanwhile -he was as irritating as the intending traveller who allows you the -pleasure of looking out his railway-connections. Poor Lady Greyswood -fumbled the social Bradshaw in vain. The young man had only one marked -taste, with which his mother saw no way to deal—an invincible passion -for photography. He was perpetually taking shots at his friends, but she -couldn't open premises for him in Baker Street. He smoked endless -cigarettes—she was sure they made him languid. She would have been -more displeased with him if she had not felt so vividly that someone ought -to do something for him; nevertheless she almost lost patience at his -remark about not being mercenary. She was on the point of asking him -what he called it to live on his relations, but she checked the words as -she remembered that she herself was the only one who did much for him. -Nevertheless, as she hated open professions of disinterestedness, she -replied that that was a nonsensical tone. Whatever one should get in -such a way one would give quite as much, even if it didn't happen to be -money; and when he inquired in return what it was (beyond the disgrace -of his failures) that she judged a fellow like him would bring to his -bride, she replied that he would bring himself, his personal qualities -(she didn't like to be more definite about his appearance), his name, his -descent, his connections—good honest commodities all, for which any -girl of proper feeling would be glad to pay. Such a name as that of the -Glanvils was surely worth something, and she appealed to him to try what -he could do with it.</p> - -<p>"Surely I can do something better with it than sell it," said -Maurice.</p> - -<p>"I should like then very much to hear what," she replied very calmly, -waiting reasonably for his answer. She waited to no purpose; the -question baffled him, like those of his examinations. She explained that -she meant of course that he should care for the girl, who might easily -have a worse fault than the command of bread and butter. To humour her, -for he was always good-natured, he said after a moment, smiling:</p> - -<p>"Dear mother, is she pretty?"</p> - -<p>"Is who pretty?"</p> - -<p>"The young lady you have in your eye. Of course I see you've picked her -out."</p> - -<p>She coloured slightly at this—she had planned a more gradual -revelation. For an instant she thought of saying that she had only had a -general idea, for the form of his question embarrassed her; but on -reflection she determined to be frank and practical. "Well, I confess I -<i>am</i> thinking of a girl—a very nice one. But she hasn't great -beauty."</p> - -<p>"Oh, then it's of no use."</p> - -<p>"But she's delightful, and she'll have thirty thousand pounds down, to -say nothing of expectations."</p> - -<p>Maurice Glanvil looked at his mother. "She must be hideous—for you -to admit it. Therefore if she's rich she becomes quite impossible; for how -can a fellow have the air of having been bribed with gold to marry a -monster?"</p> - -<p>"Fanny Knocker isn't the least a monster, and I can see that she'll -improve. She's tall, and she's quite strong, and there's nothing at all -disagreeable about her. Remember that you can't have everything."</p> - -<p>"I thought you contended that I could!" said Maurice, amused at his -mother's description of her young friend's charms. He had never heard -anyone damned, as regards that sort of thing, with fainter praise. He -declared that he would be perfectly capable of marrying a poor girl, but -that the prime necessity in any young person he should think of would be -the possession of a face—to put it at the least—that it would -give him positive pleasure to look at. "I don't ask for much, but I do ask -for beauty," he went on. "My eye must be gratified—I must have a wife -I can photograph."</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood was tempted to answer that he himself had good looks -enough to make a handsome couple, but she withheld the remark as -injudicious, though effective, for it was a part of her son's amiability -that he appeared to have no conception of his plastic side. He would -have been disgusted if she had put it forward; if he had the ideal he -had just described it was not because his own profile was his standard. -What she herself saw in it was a force for coercing heiresses. She had -however to be patient, and she promised herself to be adroit; which was -all the easier as she really liked Fanny Knocker.</p> - -<p>The girl's parents had at last taken a house in Ennismore Gardens, and -the friend of her mother's youth had been confronted with the question -of redeeming the pledges uttered in Paris. This unsophisticated and -united family, with relations to visit and schoolboys' holidays to -outlive, had spent the winter in the country and had but lately begun to -talk of itself, extravagantly of course, through Mrs. Knocker's droll -lips, as open to social attentions. Lady Greyswood had not been false to -her vows; she had on the contrary recognised from the first that, if he -could only be made to see it, Fanny Knocker would be just the person to -fill out poor Maurice's blanks. She had kept this confidence to herself, -but it had made her very kind to the young lady. One of the forms of -this kindness had been an ingenuity in keeping her from coming to Queen -Street until Maurice should have been prepared. Was he to be regarded as -prepared now that he asserted he would have nothing to do with Miss -Knocker? This was a question that worried Lady Greyswood, who at any -rate said to herself that she had told him the worst. Her idea had been -to sound her old friend only after the young people should have met and -Fanny should have fallen in love. Such a catastrophe for Fanny belonged -for Lady Greyswood to that order of convenience that she could always -take for granted.</p> - -<p>She had found the girl, as she expected, ugly and awkward, but had -also discovered a charm of character in her intelligent timidity. No one -knew better than this observant woman how thankless a task in general it -was in London to "take out" a plain girl; she had seen the nicest -creatures, in the brutality of balls, participate only through wistful, -almost tearful eyes; her little drawing-room, at intimate hours, had -been shaken by the confidences of desperate mothers. None the less she -felt sure that Fanny's path would not be rugged; thirty thousand pounds -were a fine set of features, and her anxiety was rather on the score of -the expectations of the young lady's parents. Mrs. Knocker had dropped -remarks suggestive of a high imagination, of the conviction that there -might be a real efficacy in what they were doing for their daughter. The -danger, in other words, might well be that no younger son need -apply—a possibility that made Lady Greyswood take all her -precautions. The acceptability of her favourite child was consistent -with the rejection of those of other people—on which indeed it -even directly depended. She remembered on the other hand the proverb -about taking your horse to the water; the crystalline spring of her -young friend's homage might overflow, but she couldn't compel her boy to -drink. The clever way was to break down his prejudice—to get him -to consent to give poor Fanny a chance. Therefore if she was careful not -to worry him she let him see her project as something patient and deeply -wise; she had the air of waiting resignedly for the day on which, in the -absence of other solutions, he would say to her: "Well, let me have a -look at my fate!" Meanwhile moreover she was nothing if not -conscientious, and as she had made up her mind about the girl's -susceptibility she had a scruple against exposing her. This exposure -would not be justified so long as Maurice's theoretic rigour should -remain unabated.</p> - -<p>She felt virtuous in carrying her scruple to the point of rudeness; she -knew that Jane Knocker wondered why, though so attentive in a hundred -ways, she had never definitely included the poor child in any invitation -to Queen Street. There came a moment when it gave her pleasure to -suspect that her old friend had begun to explain this omission by the idea -of a positive exaggeration of good faith—an honest recognition of -the detrimental character of the young man in ambush there. As Maurice, -though much addicted to kissing his mother at home, never dangled about -her in public, he had remained a mythical figure to Mrs. Knocker: he had -been absent (culpably—there was a touch of the inevitable incivility -in it), on each of the occasions on which, after their arrival in London, -she and her husband dined with Lady Greyswood. This astute woman knew -that her delightful Jane was whimsical enough to be excited -good-humouredly by a mystery: she might very well want to make Maurice's -acquaintance in just the degree in which she guessed that his mother's -high sense of honour kept him out of the way. Moreover she desired -intensely that her daughter should have the sort of experience that -would help her to take confidence. Lady Greyswood knew that no one had -as yet asked the girl to dinner and that this particular attention was -the one for which her mother would be most grateful. No sooner had she -arrived at these illuminations than, with deep diplomacy, she requested -the pleasure of the company of her dear Jane and the General. Mrs. Knocker -accepted with delight—she always accepted with delight—so that -nothing remained for Lady Greyswood but to make sure of Maurice in -advance. After this was done she had only to wait. When the dinner, on a -day very near at hand, took place (she had jumped at the first evening -on which the Knockers were free), she had the gratification of seeing -her prevision exactly fulfilled. Her whimsical Jane had thrown the game -into her hands, had been taken at the very last moment with one of her -Indian headaches and, infinitely apologetic and explanatory, had hustled -poor Fanny off with the General. The girl, flurried and frightened by -her responsibility, sat at dinner next to Maurice, who behaved -beautifully—not in the least as the victim of a trick; and when a -fortnight later Lady Greyswood was able to divine that her mind from -that evening had been filled with a virginal ecstasy, she was also -fortunately able to feel serenely, delightfully guiltless.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>She knew this fact about Fanny's mind, she believed, some time before -Jane Knocker knew it; but she also had reason to think that Jane Knocker -had known it for some time before she spoke of it. It was not till the -middle of June, after a succession of encounters between the young -people, that her old friend came one morning to discuss the -circumstance. Mrs. Knocker asked her if she suspected it, and she -promptly replied that it had never occurred to her. She added that she -was extremely sorry and that it had probably in the first instance been -the fault of that injudicious dinner.</p> - -<p>"Ah, the day of my headache—my miserable headache?" said her -visitor. "Yes, very likely that did it. He's so dreadfully good-looking."</p> - -<p>"Poor child, he can't help that. Neither can I!" Lady Greyswood ventured -to add.</p> - -<p>"He comes by it honestly. He seems very nice."</p> - -<p>"He's nice enough, but he hasn't a farthing, you know, and his -expectations are <i>nil.</i>" They considered, they turned the matter -about, they wondered what they had better do. In the first place there -was no room for doubt; of course Mrs. Knocker hadn't sounded the girl, -but a mother, a true mother was never reduced to that. If Fanny was in -every relation of life so painfully, so constitutionally awkward, the -still depths of her shyness, of her dissimulation even, in such a -predicament as this, might easily be imagined. She would give no sign -that she could possibly smother, she would say nothing and do nothing, -watching herself, poor child, with trepidation; but she would suffer, -and some day when the question of her future should really come -up—it might after all in the form of some good proposal—they -would find themselves beating against a closed door. That was what they -had to think of; that was why Mrs. Knocker had come over. Her old friend -cross-examined her with a troubled face, but she was very impressive -with her reasons, her intuitions.</p> - -<p>"I'll send him away in a moment, if you'd like that," Lady Greyswood -said at last. "I'll try and get him to go abroad."</p> - -<p>Her visitor made no direct reply to this, and no reply at all for some -moments. "What does he expect to do—what does he want to do?" she -asked.</p> - -<p>"Oh, poor boy, he's looking—he's trying to decide. He asks nothing -of anyone. If he would only knock at a few doors! But he's too proud."</p> - -<p>"Do you call him <i>very</i> clever?" Fanny's mother demanded.</p> - -<p>"Yes, decidedly—and good and kind and true. But he has -been unlucky."</p> - -<p>"Of course he can't bear her!" said Mrs. Knocker with a little dry -laugh.</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood stared; then she broke out: "Do you mean you'd be -willing?——"</p> - -<p>"He's very charming."</p> - -<p>"Ah, but you must have great ideas."</p> - -<p>"He's very well connected," said Mrs. Knocker, snapping the tight -elastic on her umbrella.</p> - -<p>"Oh, my dear Jane—'connected'!" Lady Greyswood gave a sigh of the -sweetest irony.</p> - -<p>"He's connected with you, to begin with."</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood put out her hand and held her visitor's for a moment. "Of -course it isn't as if he were a different sort of person. Of course I -should like it!" she added.</p> - -<p>"Does he dislike her <i>very</i> much?"</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood looked at her friend with a smile. "He resembles -Fanny—he doesn't tell. But what would her father say?" she went -on.</p> - -<p>"He doesn't know it."</p> - -<p>"You've not talked with him?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment. "He thinks she's all right." Both the -ladies laughed a little at the density of men; then the visitor said: "I -wanted to see you first."</p> - -<p>This circumstance gave Lady Greyswood food for thought; it suggested -comprehensively that in spite of a probable deficiency of zeal on the -General's part the worthy man would not be the great obstacle. She had -begun so quickly to turn over in her mind the various ways in which this -new phase of the business might make it possible the real obstacle -should be surmounted that she scarcely heard her companion say next: -"The General will only want his daughter to be happy. He has no definite -ambitions for her. I dare say Maurice could make him like him." It was -something more said by her companion about Maurice that sounded sharply -through her reverie. "But unless the idea appeals to <i>him</i> a bit -there's no use talking about it."</p> - -<p>At this Lady Greyswood spoke with decision. "It <i>shall</i> appeal to -him. Leave it to me! Kiss your dear child for me," she added as the ladies -embraced and separated.</p> - -<p>In the course of the day she made up her mind, and when she again -broached the question to her son (it befell that very evening) she felt -that she stood on firmer ground. She began by mentioning to him -that her dear old friend had the same charming dream—for the -girl—that <i>she</i> had; she sketched with a light hand a picture -of their preconcerted happiness in the union of their children. When he -replied that he couldn't for the life of him imagine what the Knockers -could see in a poor beggar of a younger son who had publicly come a -cropper, she took pains to prove that he was as good as anyone else and -much better than many of the young men to whom persons of sense were -often willing to confide their daughters. She had been in much -tribulation over the circumstance announced to her in the morning, not -knowing whether, in her present enterprise, to keep it back or put it -forward. If Maurice should happen not to take it in the right way it was -the sort of thing that might dish the whole experiment. He might be -bored, he might be annoyed, he might be horrified—there was no -limit, in such cases, to the perversity, to the possible brutality of -even the most amiable man. On the other hand he might be pleased, -touched, flattered—if he didn't dislike the girl too much. Lady -Greyswood could indeed imagine that it might be unpleasant to know that -a person who was disagreeable to you was in love with you; so that there -was just that risk to run. She determined to run it only if there should -be absolutely no other card to play. Meanwhile she said: "Don't you see, -now, how intelligent she is, in her quiet way, and how perfect she is at -home—without any nonsense or affectation or ill-nature? She's not -a bit stupid, she's remarkably clever. She can do a lot of things; she -has no end of talents. Many girls with a quarter of her abilities would -make five times the show."</p> - -<p>"My dear mother, she's a great swell, I freely admit it. She's far too -good for me. What in the world puts it into your two heads that she -would look at me?"</p> - -<p>At this Lady Greyswood was tempted to speak; but after an instant she -said instead: "She <i>has</i> looked at you, and you've seen how. You've -seen her several times now, and she has been remarkably nice to you."</p> - -<p>"Nice? Ah, poor girl, she's frightened to death!"</p> - -<p>"Believe me—I read her," Lady Greyswood replied.</p> - -<p>"She knows she has money and she thinks I'm after it. She thinks I'm a -ravening wolf and she's scared."</p> - -<p>"I happen to know as a fact that she's in love with you!" Before she -could check herself Lady Greyswood had played her card, and though she -held her breath a little after doing so she felt that it had been a good -moment. "If I hadn't known it," she hastened further to declare, "I -should never have said another word." Maurice burst out -laughing—how in the world <i>did</i> she know it? When she put the -evidence before him she had the pleasure of seeing that he listened -without irritation; and this emboldened her to say: "Don't you think you -could <i>try</i> to like her?"</p> - -<p>Maurice was lounging on a sofa opposite to her; jocose but embarrassed, -he had thrown back his head, and while he stretched himself his eyes -wandered over the upper expanse of the room. "It's very kind of her and -of her mother, and I'm much obliged and all that, though a fellow feels -rather an ass in talking about such a thing. Of course also I don't -pretend—before such a proof of wisdom—that I think her in the -least a fool. But, oh, dear——!" And the young man broke off -with laughing impatience, as if he had too much to say. His mother waited -an instant, then she uttered a persuasive, interrogative sound, and he went -on: "It's only a pity she's so awful!"</p> - -<p>"So awful?" murmured Lady Greyswood.</p> - -<p>"Dear mother, she's about as ugly a woman as ever turned round on you. -If there were only just a touch or two less of it!"</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood got up: she stood looking in silence at the tinted shade -of the lamp. She remained in this position so long that he glanced at -her—he was struck with the sadness in her face. He would have been in -error however if he had suspected that this sadness was assumed for the -purpose of showing him that she was wounded by his resistance, for the -reflection that his last words caused her to make was as disinterested -as it was melancholy. Here was an excellent, a charming girl—a girl, -she was sure, with a rare capacity for devotion—whose future was -reduced to nothing by the mere accident, in her face, of a certain want -of drawing. A man could settle her fate with a laugh, could give her -away with a snap of his fingers. She seemed to see Maurice administer to -poor Fanny's image the little displeased shove with which he would have -disposed of an ill-seasoned dish. Moreover he greatly exaggerated. Her -heart grew heavy with a sense of the hardness of the lot of women, and -when she looked again at her son there were tears in her eyes that -startled him. "Poor girl—poor girl!" she simply sighed, in a tone -that was to reverberate in his mind and to constitute in doing so a real -appeal to his imagination. After a moment she added: "We'll talk no more -about her—no, no!"</p> - -<p>All the same she went three days later to see Mrs. Knocker and say to -her: "My dear creature, I think it's all right."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean he'll take us up?"</p> - -<p>"He'll come and see you, and you must give him plenty of chances." What -Lady Greyswood would have liked to be able to say, crudely and -comfortably, was: "He'll try to manage it—he promises to do what he -can." What she did say, however, was: "He's greatly prepossessed in the -dear child's favour."</p> - -<p>"Then I dare say he'll be very nice."</p> - -<p>"If I didn't think he'd behave like a gentleman I wouldn't raise a -finger. The more he sees of her the more he'll be sure to like her."</p> - -<p>"Of course with poor Fanny that's the only thing one can build on," said -Mrs. Knocker. "There's so much to get over."</p> - -<p>Lady Greyswood hesitated a moment. "Maurice <i>has</i> got over it. But -I should tell you that at first he doesn't want it known."</p> - -<p>"Doesn't want what known?"</p> - -<p>"Why, the footing on which he comes. You see it's just the least bit -experimental."</p> - -<p>"For what do you take me?" asked Mrs. Knocker. "The child shall never -dream that anything has passed between us. No more of course shall her -father."</p> - -<p>"It's too delightful of you to leave it that way," Lady Greyswood -replied. "We must surround her happiness with every safeguard."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Knocker sat pensive for some moments. "So that if nothing comes of -it there's no harm done? That idea—that nothing may come of -it—makes one a little nervous," she added.</p> - -<p>"Of course I can't absolutely answer for my poor boy!" said Lady -Greyswood, with just the faintest ring of impatience. "But he's much -affected by what he knows—I told him. That's what moves him."</p> - -<p>"He must of course be perfectly free."</p> - -<p>"The great thing is for her not to know."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Knocker considered. "Are you very sure?" She had apparently had a -profounder second thought.</p> - -<p>"Why, my dear—with the risk!"</p> - -<p>"Isn't the risk, after all, greater the other way? Mayn't it help the -matter on, mayn't it do the poor child a certain degree of good, the -idea that, as you say, he's prepossessed in her favour? It would perhaps -cheer her up, as it were, and encourage her, so that by the very fact of -being happier about herself she may make a better impression. That's -what she wants, poor thing—to be helped to hold up her head, to take -herself more seriously, to believe that people can like her. And fancy, -when it's a case of such a beautiful young man who's all ready to!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, he's all ready to," Lady Greyswood conceded. "Of course it's a -question for your own discretion. I can't advise you, for you know your -child. But it seems to me a case for tremendous caution."</p> - -<p>"Oh, trust me for that!" said Mrs. Knocker. "We shall be very kind to -him," she smiled, as her visitor got up.</p> - -<p>"He'll appreciate that. But it's too nice of you to leave it so."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Knocker gave a hopeful shrug. "He has only to be civil -to Blake!"</p> - -<p>"Ah, he isn't a brute!" Lady Greyswood exclaimed, caressing her.</p> - -<p>After this she passed a month of no little anxiety. She asked her son -no question, and for two or three weeks he offered her no other -information than to say two or three times that Miss Knocker really -could ride; but she learned from her old friend everything she wanted to -know. Immediately after the conference of the two ladies Maurice, in the -Row, had taken an opportunity of making up to the girl. She rode every -day with her father, and Maurice rode, though possessed of nothing in -life to put a leg across; and he had been so well received that this -proved the beginning of a custom. He had a canter with the young lady -most days in the week, and when they parted it was usually to meet again -in the evening. His relations with the household in Ennismore Gardens -were indeed not left greatly to his initiative; he became on the spot -the subject of perpetual invitations and arrangements, the centre of the -friendliest manœuvres; so that Lady Greyswood was struck with Jane -Knocker's feverish energy in the good cause—the ingenuity, the -bribery, the cunning that an exemplary mother might be inspired to -practise. She herself did nothing, she left it all to poor Jane, and -this perhaps gave her for the moment a sense of contemplative -superiority. She wondered if <i>she</i> would in any circumstances have -plotted so almost fiercely for one of her children. She was glad her old -friend's design had her full approbation; she held her breath a little -when she said to herself: "Suppose I hadn't liked it—suppose it -had been for Chumleigh!" Chumleigh was the present Lord Greyswood, whom -his mother still called by his earlier designation. Fanny Knocker's -thirty thousand would have been by no means enough for Chumleigh. Lady -Greyswood, in spite of her suspense, was detached enough to be amused -when her accomplice told her that "Blake" had said that Maurice really -could ride. The two mothers thanked God for the riding—the riding -would see them through. Lady Greyswood had watched Fanny narrowly in the -Park, where, in the saddle, she looked no worse than lots of girls. She -had no idea how Maurice got his mounts—she knew Chumleigh had none -to give him; but there were directions in which she would have -encouraged him to incur almost any liability. He was evidently -amused and beguiled; he fell into comfortable attitudes on the soft -cushions that were laid for him and partook with relish of the -dainties that were served; he had his fill of the theatres, of the -opera—entertainments of which he was fond. She could see he didn't -care for the sort of people he met in Ennismore Gardens, but this didn't -matter: so much as that she didn't ask of him. She knew that when he -should have something to tell her he would speak; and meanwhile she -pretended to be a thousand miles away. The only thing that worried her -was that he had dropped photography. She said to Mrs. Knocker more than -once: "Does he make love?—that's what I want to know!" to which -this lady replied with her incongruous drollery: "My dear, how can I -make out? He's so little like Blake!" But she added that she believed -Fanny was intensely happy. Lady Greyswood had been struck with the -girl's looking so, and she rejoiced to be able to declare in perfectly -good faith that she thought her greatly improved. "Didn't I tell you?" -returned Mrs. Knocker to this with a certain accent of triumph. It made -Lady Greyswood nervous, for she took it to mean that Fanny had had a -hint from her mother of Maurice's possible intentions. She was afraid to -ask her old friend directly if this were definitely true: poor Fanny's -improvement was after all not a gain sufficient to make up for the -cruelty that would reside in the sense of being rejected.</p> - -<p>One day, in Queen Street, Maurice said in an abrupt, conscientious way: -"You were right about Fanny Knocker—she's a remarkably clever and a -thoroughly nice girl; a fellow can really talk with her. But oh -mother!"</p> - -<p>"Well, my dear?"</p> - -<p>The young man's face wore a strange smile. "Oh mother!" he expressively, -quite tragically repeated. "But it's all right!" he presently added in a -different tone, and Lady Greyswood was reassured. This confidence, -however, received a shock a little later, on the evening of a day that -had been intensely hot. A torrid wave had passed over London, and in the -suffocating air the pleasures of the season had put on a purple face. -Lady Greyswood, whose own fine lowness of tone no temperature could -affect, knew, in her bedimmed drawing-room, exactly the detail of her son's -engagements. She pitied him—<i>she</i> had managed to keep clear; she -had in particular a vision of a distribution of prizes, by one of the -princesses, at a big horticultural show; she saw the sweltering starers -(and at what, after all?) under a huge glass roof, while there passed -before her, in a blur of crimson, the glimpse of uncomfortable cheeks -under an erratic white bonnet, together also with the sense that some of -Jane Knocker's ideas of pleasure were of the oddest (she had such -<i>lacunes</i>), and some of the ordeals to which she exposed poor Fanny -singularly ill-chosen. Maurice came in, perspiring but pale (nothing -could make <i>him</i> ugly!) to dress for dinner, and though he was in a -great hurry he found time to pant: "Oh mother, what I'm going through -for you!"</p> - -<p>"Do you mean rushing about so—in this weather? We shall have -a change to-night."</p> - -<p>"I hope so! There are people for whom it doesn't do at all; ah, not a -bit!" said Maurice with a laugh that she didn't fancy. But he went -upstairs before she could think of anything to reply, and after he had -dressed he passed out without speaking to her again. The next morning, -on entering her room, her maid mentioned as a delicate duty that Mr. -Glanvil, whose door stood wide open and whose bed was untouched, had -apparently not yet come in. While, however, her ladyship was in the -first freshness of meditation on this singular fact the morning's -letters were brought up, and as it happened that the second envelope she -glanced at was addressed in Maurice's hand she was quickly in possession -of an explanation still more startling than his absence. He wrote from a -club, at nine o'clock the previous evening, to announce that he was -taking the night train for the continent. He hadn't dressed for dinner, -he had dressed otherwise, and having stuffed a few things with -surreptitious haste into a Gladstone bag, had slipped unperceived out of -the house and into a hansom. He had sent to Ennismore Gardens, from his -club, an apology—a request he should not be waited for; and now he -should just have time to get to Charing Cross. He was off he didn't know -where, but he was off he did know why. "You'll know why, dear mother -too, I think," this wonderful communication continued; "you'll know why, -because I haven't deceived you. I've done what I could, but I've broken -down. I felt to-day that it was no use; there was a moment, at that -beastly exhibition, when I saw it, when the question was settled. The -truth rolled over me in a stifling wave. After that I made up my mind -there was nothing to do but to bolt. I meant to put it off till -to-morrow, and to tell you first, but while I was dressing to-day it -struck me irresistibly that my true course is to break now—never to -enter the house or go near her again. I was afraid of a scene with you -about this. I haven't uttered a word of 'love' to her (heaven save us!) -but my position this afternoon became definitely false, and that fact -prescribes the course I am taking. You shall hear from me again in a day -or two. I have the greatest regard for her, but I can't bear to look at -her. I don't care a bit for money, but, hang it, I <i>must</i> have beauty! -Please send me twenty pounds, <i>poste restante</i>, Boulogne."</p> - -<p>"What I want, Jane, is to get at this," Lady Greyswood said, later in -the day, with an austerity that was sensible even through her tears. -"Does the child know, or doesn't she, what was at stake?"</p> - -<p>"She hasn't an inkling of it—how should she? I recognised that it -was best not to tell her—and I didn't."</p> - -<p>On this, as Mrs. Knocker's tears had also flowed, Lady Greyswood kissed -her. But she didn't believe her. Fanny herself, however, for the rest of -the season, proved inscrutable. "She's a character!" Lady Greyswood -reflected with admiration. In September, in Yorkshire, the girl was -taken seriously ill.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>After luncheon at the Crisfords'—the big Sunday banquets of twenty -people and a dozen courses—the men, lingering a little in the -dining-room, dawdling among displaced chairs and dropped napkins while -the ladies rustled away, ended by shuffling in casual pairs up to the -studio, where coffee was served and where, presently, before the -cigarettes were smoked out, Mrs. Crisford always reappeared to usher in -her contingent. The studio was high and handsome, and luncheon at the -Crisfords' was, in the common esteem, more amusing than almost anything -else in London except dinner. It was Bohemia with excellent -service—Bohemia not debtor but creditor. Upstairs the pictures, -finished or nearly finished, and arranged in a shining row, gave an -obviousness of topic, so that conversation could easily touch bottom. -Maurice Glanvil, who had never been in the house before, looked about and -wondered; he was struck with the march of civilization—the rise of -the social tide. There were new notes in English life, which he caught -quickly with his fresh sense; during his long absence—twenty years of -France and Italy—all sorts of things had happened. In his youth, in -England, artists and authors and actors—people of that general -kind—were not nearly so "smart." Maurice Glanvil was forty-nine -to-day, and he thought a great deal of his youth. He regretted it, he -missed it, he tried to beckon it back; but the differences in London made -him feel that it had gone forever. There might perhaps be some sudden -compensation in being fifty, some turn of the dim telescope, some view -from the brow of the hill; it was a round, gross, stupid number, which -probably would make one pompous, make one think one's self venerable. -Meanwhile at any rate it was odious to be forty-nine. Maurice observed -the young now more than he had ever done; observed them, that is, as the -young. He wished he could have had a son, to be twenty with again; his -daughter was only eighteen, but fond as he was of her he couldn't live -instinctively into her girlishness. It was not that there was not plenty -of it, for she was simple, sweet, indefinite, without the gifts that the -boy would have had, the gifts—what had become of them now?—that -he himself used to have.</p> - -<p>The youngest person present, before the ladies came in, was the young -man who had sat next to Vera and whom, being on the same side of the -long table, he had not had under his eye. Maurice noticed him now, -noticed that he was very good-looking, fair and fresh and clean, -impeccable in his straight smoothness; also that apparently knowing none -of the other guests and moving by himself about the studio with visible -interest in the charming things, he had the modesty of his age and of -his position. He had however something more besides, which had begun to -prompt this observer to speak to him in order to hear the sound of his -voice—a strange, elusive resemblance, lost in the profile but -flickering straight out of the full face, to someone Maurice had known. For -a minute Glanvil was worried by it—he had a sense that a name would -suddenly come to him if he should see the lips in motion; but as he was -on the point of laying the ghost by an experiment Mrs. Crisford led in -her companions. His daughter was among them, and in company, as he was -constantly anxious about her appearance and her attitude, she had at -moments the faculty of drawing his attention from everything else. The -poor child, the only fruit of his odd, romantic union, the <i>coup de -foudre</i> of his youth, with her strangely beautiful mother, whose own -mother had been a Russian and who had died in giving birth to her—his -short, colourless, insignificant Vera was excessively, incorrigibly -plain. She had been the disappointment of his life, but he greatly -pitied her. Her want of beauty, with her antecedents, had been one of -the strangest tricks of fate; she was acutely conscious of it and, being -good and docile, would have liked to please. She did sometimes, to her -father's delight, in spite of everything; she had been educated abroad, -on foreign lines, near her mother's people. He had brought her to -England to take her out, to do what he could for her; but he was not -unaware that in England her manners, which had been thought very pretty -on the continent, would strike some persons as artificial. They were -exactly what her mother's had been; they made up to a certain extent for -the want of other resemblance. An extreme solicitude at any rate as to -the impression they might make was the source of his habit, in London, -of watching her covertly. He tried to see at a given moment how she -looked, if she were happy; it was always with an intention of -encouragement, and there was a frequent exchange between them of little -invisible affectionate signs. She wore charming clothes, but she was -terribly short; in England the girls were gigantic and it was only the -tallest who were noticed. Their manners, alas, had nothing to do with -it—many of them indeed hadn't any manners. As soon as he had got near -Vera he said to her, scanning her through his single glass from head to -foot:</p> - -<p>"Who is the young man who sat next you? the one at the other end of the -room."</p> - -<p>"I don't know his name, papa—I didn't catch it."</p> - -<p>"Was he civil—did he talk to you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, a great deal, papa—about all sorts of things."</p> - -<p>Something in the tone of her voice made him look with greater intensity -and even with greater tenderness than usual into her little dim green -eyes. "Then you're all right—you're getting on?"</p> - -<p>She gave her effusive smile—the one that perhaps wouldn't do in -England. "Oh beautifully, papa—everyone's so kind."</p> - -<p>She never complained, was a brave little optimist, full of sweet -resources; but he had detected to-day as soon as he looked at her the -particular shade of her content. It made him continue, after an -hesitation: "He didn't say anything about his relations—anything that -could give you a clue?"</p> - -<p>Vera thought a moment. "Not that I can remember—unless that Mr. -Crisford is painting the portrait of his mother. Ah, there it is!" the -girl exclaimed, looking across the room at a large picture on an easel, -which the young man had just approached and from which their host had -removed the drapery that covered it. Maurice Glanvil had observed this -drapery, and as the artist unveiled the canvas with a flourish he saw -that he had been waiting for the ladies to show it, to produce a -surprise, a grand effect. Everyone moved toward it, and Maurice, with -his daughter beside him, recognised that the production, a portrait, was -striking, a great success for Crisford—the figure, down to the -knees, with an extraordinary look of life, of a tall, handsome woman of -middle age, in full dress, in black. Yet he saw it for the moment -vaguely, through a preoccupation, that of a discovery which he had just -made and which had recalled to him an incident of his youth—his -juxtaposition, in London, at a dinner, to a girl, insurmountably -charmless to him, who had fallen in love with him (so that she was -nearly to die of it), within the first five minutes, before he had even -spoken; as he had subsequently learned from a communication made him by -his poor mother—a reminder uttered with a pointless bitterness -that he had failed to understand and accompanied with unsuspected -details, much later—too late, long after his marriage and shortly -before her death. He said to himself that he must look out, and he -wondered if poor Vera would also be insurmountably charmless to the -good-looking young man. "But what a likeness, papa—what a -likeness!" he heard her murmur at his elbow with suppressed -excitement.</p> - -<p>"How can you tell, my dear, if you haven't seen her?"</p> - -<p>"I mean to the gentleman—the son."</p> - -<p>Everyone was exclaiming "How wonderfully clever—how beautiful!" -and under cover of the agitation and applause Maurice Glanvil had drawn -nearer the picture. The movement had brought him close to the young man -of whom he had been talking with Vera and who, with his happy eyes on -the painted figure, seemed to smile in acknowledgment of the artist's -talent and of the sitter's charm.</p> - -<p>"Do you know who the lady is?" Maurice said to him.</p> - -<p>He turned his bright face to his interlocutor. "She's my -mother—Mrs. Tregent. Isn't it wonderful?"</p> - -<p>His eyes, his lips, his voice flashed a light into Glanvil's -uncertainty—the tormenting resemblance was simply a prolonged echo of -Fanny Knocker, in whose later name, precisely, he recognised the name -pronounced by the young man. Maurice Glanvil stared in some -bewilderment; this stately, splendid lady, with a face so vivid that it -was handsome, was what that unfortunate girl had become? The eyes, as if -they picked him out, looked at him strangely from the canvas; the face, -with all its difference, asserted itself, and he felt himself turning as -red as if he had been in the presence of the original. Young Tregent, -pleased and proud, had given way to the pressing spectators, placing -himself at Vera's other side; and Maurice heard the girl exclaim to him -in one of her pretty effusions: "How beautiful she must be, and how -amiable!"</p> - -<p>"She is indeed—it's not a bit flattered." And while Maurice still -stared, more and more mystified—for "flattered, flattered!" was the -unspoken solution in which he had instantly taken refuge—his -neighbour continued: "I wish you could know her—you must; she's -delightful. She couldn't come here to-day—they asked her: she has -people lunching at home."</p> - -<p>"I should be so glad; perhaps we may meet her somewhere," said -Vera.</p> - -<p>"If I ask her and if you'll let her I'm sure she'll come to see you," -the young man responded. Maurice had glanced at him while the face of -the portrait watched them with the oddest, the grimmest effect. He was -filled with a confusion of feelings, asking himself half-a-dozen -questions at once. Was young Tregent, with his attentive manner, "making -up" to Vera? was he going out of his way in answering for his mother's -civility? Little did he know what he was taking on himself! Above all -was Fanny Knocker to-day this extraordinary figure—extraordinary in -the light of the early plainness that had made him bolt? He became -conscious of an extreme curiosity, an irresistible desire to see her.</p> - -<p>"Oh, papa," said Vera, "Mr. Tregent's so kind; he's so good as to -promise us a visit from his mother."</p> - -<p>The young man's friendly eyes were still on the child's face. "I'll tell -her all about you. Oh, if I ask her she'll come!" he repeated.</p> - -<p>"Does she do everything you ask her?" the girl inquired.</p> - -<p>"She likes to know my friends!"</p> - -<p>Maurice hesitated, wondering if he were in the presence of a smooth -young humbug to whom compliments cost nothing, or in that of an -impression really made—made by his little fluttered, unpopular Vera. -He had a horror of exposing his child to risks, but his curiosity was -greater than his caution. "Your mother mustn't come to us—it's our -duty to go to her," he said to Mr. Tregent; "I had the honour of knowing -her—a long time ago. Her mother and mine were intimate friends. Be so -good as to mention my name to her, that of Maurice Glanvil, and to tell -her how glad I have been to make your acquaintance. And now, my dear -child," he added to Vera, "we must take leave."</p> - -<p>During the rest of that day it never occurred to him that there might be -an awkwardness in his presenting himself, even after many years, before -a person with whom he had broken as he had broken with Fanny Knocker. -This was partly because he held, justly enough, that he had never -committed himself, and partly because the intensity of his desire to -measure with his own eyes the change represented—misrepresented -perhaps—by the picture was a force greater than any embarrassment. His -mother had told him that the poor girl had cruelly suffered, but there -was no present intensity in that idea. With her expensive portrait, her -grand air, her handsome son, she somehow embodied success, whereas he -himself, standing for mere bereavement and disappointment, was a failure -not to be surpassed. With Vera that evening he was very silent; she saw -him smoke endless cigarettes and wondered what he was thinking of. She -guessed indeed, but she was too subtle a little person to attempt to -fall in with his thoughts or to be willing to betray her own by asking -him random questions about Mrs. Tregent. She had expressed as they came -away from their luncheon-party a natural surprise at the coincidence of -his having known the mother of her amusing neighbour, but the only other -words that dropped from her on the subject were contained in a question -that, before she went to bed, she put to him with abrupt gaiety, while -she carefully placed a marker in a book she had not been reading.</p> - -<p>"When is it then that we're to call upon this wonderful old friend?"</p> - -<p>He looked at her through the smoke of his cigarette. "I don't know. We -must wait a little, to allow her time to give some sign."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I see!" And Vera took leave of him with one of her sincere little -kisses.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>He had not long to wait for the sign from Mrs. Tregent; it arrived the -very next morning in the shape of an invitation to dinner. This -invitation was immediately accepted, but a fortnight was still to -intervene—a trial to Maurice Glanvil's patience. The promptitude of -the demonstration gave him pleasure—it showed him no bitterness had -survived. What place was there indeed for resentment, since she had -married and given birth to children and thought so well of the face God -had conferred on her as to wish to hand it on to her posterity? Her -husband was in Parliament, or had been—that came back to him from his -mother's story. He caught himself reverting to her with a frequency that -surprised him; he was haunted by the image of that bright, strong woman -on Crisford's canvas, in whom there was just enough of Fanny Knocker to -put a sort of defiance into the difference. He wanted to see it again, -and his opportunity was at hand in the form of a visit to Mrs. Crisford. -He called on this lady, without his daughter, four days after he had -lunched with her, and, finding her at home, he presently led the -conversation to the portrait and to his ardent desire for another glimpse -of it. Mrs. Crisford gratified this eagerness—perhaps he struck -her as a possible sitter; it was late in the afternoon and her husband -was out: she led him into the studio. Mrs. Tregent, splendid and serene, -stood there as if she had been watching for him. There was no doubt the -picture was a masterpiece. Maurice had mentioned that he had known the -original years before and then had lost sight of her. He questioned his -hostess with artful detachment.</p> - -<p>"What sort of a person has she become—agreeable, popular?"</p> - -<p>"Everyone adores her—she's so clever."</p> - -<p>"Really—remarkably?"</p> - -<p>"Extraordinarily—one of the cleverest women I've ever known, and -quite one of the most charming."</p> - -<p>Maurice looked at the portrait—at the super-subtle smile which -seemed to tell him Mrs. Tregent knew they were talking about her; a kind of -smile he had never expected to live to see in Fanny Knocker's eyes. Then -he asked: "Has she literally become as handsome as that?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Crisford hesitated. "She's beautiful."</p> - -<p>"Beautiful?" Maurice echoed.</p> - -<p>"What shall I say? It's a peculiar charm! It's her spirit. One sees that -her life has been beautiful in spite of her sorrows!" Mrs. Crisford -added.</p> - -<p>"What sorrows has she had?" Maurice coloured a little as soon as he had -spoken.</p> - -<p>"Oh, lots of deaths. She has lost her husband; she has lost several -children."</p> - -<p>"Ah, that's new to me. Was her marriage happy?"</p> - -<p>"It must have been for Mr. Tregent. If it wasn't for her, no one ever -knew."</p> - -<p>"But she has a son," said Maurice.</p> - -<p>"Yes, the only one—such a dear. She thinks all the world -of him."</p> - -<p>At this moment a message was brought to Mrs. Crisford, and she asked to -be excused while she went to say a word to someone who was waiting. -Maurice Glanvil in this way was left alone for five minutes with the -intensity of the presence evoked by the artist. He found himself -agitated, excited by it: the face of the portrait was so intelligent and -conscious that as he stood there he felt as if some strange -communication had taken place between his being and Mrs. Tregent's. The -idea made him nervous: he moved about the room and ended by turning his -back. Mrs. Crisford reappeared, but he soon took leave of her; and when -he had got home (he had settled himself in South Kensington, in a little -undiscriminated house which he had hated from the first), he learned -from his daughter that she had had a visit from young Tregent. He had -asked first for Mr. Glanvil and then, in the second instance, for -herself, telling her when admitted, as if to attenuate his possible -indiscretion, that his mother had charged him to try to see her even if -he should not find her father. Vera had never before received a -gentleman alone, and the incident had left traces of emotion. "Poor -little thing!" Maurice said to himself: he always took a melancholy view -of any happiness of his daughter's, tending to believe, in his -pessimism, that it could only lead to some refinement of humiliation. He -encouraged her however to talk about young Tregent, who, according to -her account, had been extravagantly amusing. He had said moreover that -his mother was tremendously impatient to renew such an old acquaintance. -"Why in the world doesn't she, then?" Maurice asked himself; "why -doesn't she come and see Vera?" He reflected afterwards that such an -expectation was unreasonable, but it represented at the moment a kind of -rebellion of his conscience. Then, as he had begun to be a little ashamed -of his curiosity, he liked to think that Mrs. Tregent would have quite as -much. On the morrow he knocked at her door—she lived in a -"commodious" house in Manchester Square—and had the satisfaction, as -he had chosen his time carefully, of learning that she had just come in.</p> - -<p>Upstairs, in a high, quiet, old-fashioned drawing-room, she was before -him. What he saw was a tall woman in black, in her bonnet, with a white -face, smiling intensely—smiling and smiling before she spoke. He -quickly perceived that she was agitated and was making an heroic effort, -which would presently be successful, not to show it. But it was above -all clear to him that she wasn't Fanny Knocker—was simply another -person altogether. She had nothing in common with Fanny Knocker—it -was impossible to meet her on the ground of any former acquaintance. What -acquaintance had he ever had with this graceful, harmonious, expressive -English matron, whose smile had a singular radiance? That rascal of a -Crisford had done her such perfect justice that he felt as if he had -before him the portrait of which the image in the studio had been the -original. There were nevertheless things to be said, and they said them -on either side, sinking together, with friendly exclamations and -exaggerated laughs, on the sofa, where her nearness seemed the span of -all the distance that separated her from the past. The phrase that -hummed through everything, to his sense, was his own inarticulate "How -could I have known? how could I have known?" How could he have foreseen -that time and life and happiness (it was probably more than anything -happiness), would transpose her into such a different key? Her whole -personality revealed itself from moment to moment as something so -agreeable that even after all these years he felt himself blushing for -the crass stupidity of his mistake. Yes, he was turning red, and she -could see it and would know why: a perception that could only constitute -for her a magnificent triumph, a revenge. All his natural and acquired -coolness, his experience of life, his habit of society, everything that -contributed to make him a man of the world, were of no avail to cover -his confusion. He took refuge from it almost angrily in trying to prove -to himself that she had on a second look a likeness to the ugly girl he -had not thought good enough—in trying to trace Fanny Knocker in her -fair, ripe bloom, the fine irregularity of her features. To put his -finger on the identity would make him feel better. Some of the facts of -the girl's crooked face were still there—conventional beauty was -absent; but the proportions and relations had changed, and the -expression and the spirit: she had accepted herself or ceased to -care—had found oblivion and activity and appreciation. What Maurice -mainly discovered however in this intenser observation was an attitude -of hospitality toward himself which immediately effaced the presumption -of "triumph." Vulgar vanity was far from her, and the grossness of -watching her effect upon him: she was watching only the lost vision that -had come back, the joy that, if for a single hour, she had found again. -She herself had no measure of the alteration that struck him, and there -was no substitution for her in the face that her deep eyes seemed to -brush with their hovering. Presently they were talking like old friends, -and before long each was in possession of the principal facts concerning -the other. Many things had come and gone and the common fate had pressed -them hard. Her parents were dead, and her husband and her first-born -children. He, on his side, had lost his mother and his wife. They -matched bereavements and compared bruises, and in the way she expressed -herself there was a charm which forced him, as he wondered, to remember -that Fanny Knocker had at least been intelligent.</p> - -<p>"I wish I could have seen your wife—you must tell me all about -her," she said. "Haven't you some portraits?"</p> - -<p>"Some poor little photographs. I'll show them to you. She was very -pretty and very gentle; she was also very un-English. But she only lived -a year. She wasn't clever and accomplished—like you."</p> - -<p>"Ah, me; you don't know <i>me!</i>"</p> - -<p>"No, but I want to—oh particularly. I'm prepared to give a good -deal of time to the study."</p> - -<p>"We must be friends," said Mrs. Tregent. "I shall take an extraordinary -interest in your daughter."</p> - -<p>"She'll be grateful for it. She's a good little reasonable thing, -without a scrap of beauty."</p> - -<p>"You care greatly for that," said Mrs. Tregent.</p> - -<p>He hesitated a moment. "Don't you?"</p> - -<p>She smiled at him with her basking candour. "I used to. That's my -husband," she added, with an odd, though evidently accidental, -inconsequence. She had reached out to a table for a photograph in a -silver frame. "He was very good to me."</p> - -<p>Maurice saw that Mr. Tregent had been many years older than his -wife—a prosperous, prosaic, parliamentary person whom she -couldn't impose on a man of the world. He sat an hour, and they -talked of the mutilated season of their youth: he wondered at the -things she remembered. In this little hour he felt his situation -change—something strange and important take place: he seemed to -see why he had come back to England. But there was an implication that -worried him—it was in the very air, a reverberation of that old -assurance of his mother's. He wished to clear the question up—it -would matter for the beginning of a new friendship. Had she had any -sense of injury when he took to his heels, any glimpse of the -understanding on which he had begun to come to Ennismore Gardens? He -couldn't find out to-day except by asking her, which, at their time of -life, after so many years and consolations, would be legitimate and even -amusing. When he took leave of her he held her hand a moment, -hesitating; then he brought out:</p> - -<p>"Did they ever tell you—a hundred years ago—that between -your mother and mine there was a great question of our marrying?"</p> - -<p>She stared—she broke into a laugh. "<i>Was</i> there?"</p> - -<p>"Did you ever know it? Did you ever suspect it?"</p> - -<p>She hesitated and, for the first time since he had been in the room, -ceased for an instant to look straight at him. She only answered, still -laughing however: "Poor dears—they were altogether too deep!"</p> - -<p>She evidently wished to convey that she had never known. Maurice was a -little disappointed: at present he would have preferred her knowledge. -But as he walked home across the park, through Kensington Gardens, he -felt it impossible to believe in her ignorance.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>V</h4> - - -<p>At the end of a month he broke out to her. "I can't get over it, it's so -extraordinary—the difference between your youth and your -maturity!"</p> - -<p>"Did you expect me to be an eternal child?" Mrs. Tregent asked -composedly.</p> - -<p>"No, it isn't that." He stopped—it would be difficult to explain.</p> - -<p>"What is it then?" she inquired, with her systematic refusal to -acknowledge a complication. There was always, to Maurice Glanvil's ear, -in her impenetrability to allusion, the faintest, softest glee, and it -gave her on this occasion the appearance of recognising his difficulty -and being amused at it. She would be excusable to be a little -cold-blooded. He really knew however that the penalty was all in his own -reflections, for it had not taken him even a month to perceive that she -was supremely, almost strangely indulgent. There was nothing he was -ready to say that she might not hear, and her absence of coquetry was a -remarkable rest to him.</p> - -<p>"It isn't what I expected—it's what I didn't expect. To say -exactly what I mean, it's the way you've improved."</p> - -<p>"I've improved? I'm so glad!"</p> - -<p>"Surely you've been aware of it—you've been conscious of the -transformation."</p> - -<p>"As an improvement? I don't know. I've been conscious of changes -enough—of all the stages and strains and lessons of life. I've been -aware of growing old, and I hold, in dissent from the usual belief, that -there's no fool like a young fool. One is never, I suppose, such a fool -as one <i>has</i> been, and that may count perhaps as amelioration. But I -can't flatter myself that I've had two different identities. I've had to -make one, such as it is, do for everything. I think I've been happier -than I originally supposed I should be—and yet I had my happiness too -as a girl. At all events if you were to scratch me, as they say, you'd -still find——" She paused a moment, and he really hung upon her -lips: there was such a charm of tone in whatever she said. "You'd -still find, underneath, the blowsy girl——" With this she again -checked herself and, slightly to his surprise, gave a nervous laugh.</p> - -<p>"The blowsy girl?" he repeated, with an artlessness of interrogation -that made her laugh again.</p> - -<p>"Whom you went with that hot day to see the princess give the -prizes."</p> - -<p>"Oh yes—that dreadful day!" he answered gravely, musingly, with -the whole scene pictured by her words and without contesting the manner in -which she qualified herself. It was the nearest allusion that had passed -between them to that crudest conception of his boyhood, his flight from -Ennismore Gardens. Almost every day for a month he had come to see her, -and they had talked of a thousand things; never yet however had they -made any explicit mention of this remote instance of premature wisdom. -Moreover if he now felt the need of going back it was not to be -apologetic, to do penance; he had nothing to explain, for his behaviour, -as he considered it, still struck him, given the circumstances, as -natural. It was to himself indeed that explanations were owing, for he -had been the one who had been most deceived. He liked Mrs. Tregent -better than he had ever liked a woman—that is he liked her for more -reasons. He had liked his poor little wife only for one, which was after -all no reason at all: he had been in love with her. In spite of the -charm that the renewal of acquaintance with his old friend had so -unexpectedly added to his life there was a vague torment in his relation -with her, the sense of a revenge (oh a very kind one!) to take, a -haunting idea that he couldn't pacify. He could still feel sore at the -trick that had been played him. Even after a month the curiosity with -which he had approached her was not assuaged; in a manner indeed it had -only borrowed force from all she had insisted on doing for him. She was -literally doing everything now; gently, gaily, with a touch so familiar -that protestations on his part would have been pedantic, she had taken -his life in hand. Rich as she was she had known how to give him lessons -in economy; she had taught him how to manage in London on his means. A -month ago his servants had been horrid—to-day they were the best he -had ever known. For Vera she was plainly a providence—her behaviour -to Vera was transcendent.</p> - -<p>He had privately made up his mind that Vera had in truth had her <i>coup -de foudre</i>—that if she had had a chance she would have laid down -her little life for Arthur Tregent; yet two circumstances, he could -perceive, had helped to postpone, to attenuate even somewhat, her full -consciousness of what had befallen her. One of these influences had been -the prompt departure of the young man from London; the other was simply -the diversion produced by Mrs. Tregent's encompassing art. It had had -immediate consequences for the child: it was like a drama in perpetual -climaxes. This surprising benefactress rejoiced in her society, took her -"out," treated her as if there were mysterious injustices to repair. -Vera was agitated not a little by such a change in her life; she had -English kindred enough, uncles and aunts and cousins; but she had felt -herself lost in her father's family and was principally aware, among -them, of their strangeness and their indifference. They affected her -mainly as mere number and stature. Mrs. Tregent's was a performance -unpromised and uninterrupted, and the girl desired to know if all -English people took so generous a view of friendship. Maurice laughed at -this question and, without meeting his daughter's eyes, answered in the -negative. Vera guessed so many things that he didn't know what she would -be guessing next. He saw her caught up to the blue like Ganymede, and -surrendered her contentedly. She had been the occupation of his life, -yet to Mrs. Tregent he was willing to part with her; this lady was the -only person of whom he would not have been jealous. Even in the young -man's absence moreover Vera lived with the son of the house and breathed -his air; Manchester Square was full of him, his photograph was on every -table. How often she spoke of him to his mother Maurice had no means of -knowing, nor whether Mrs. Tregent encouraged such a topic; he had reason -to believe indeed that there were reserves on either side, and he felt -that he could trust his old friend's prudence as much as her liberality. -The attitude of forbearance from rash allusions, which was Maurice's -own, could not at any rate keep Arthur from being a presence in the -little drama which had begun for them all, as the older man was more and -more to recognise with nervous prefigurements, on that occasion at the -Crisfords'.</p> - -<p>Arthur Tregent had gone to Ireland to spend a few weeks with an old -university friend—the gentleman indeed, at Cambridge, had been his -tutor—who had lately, in a district classified as "disturbed," come -into a bewildering heritage. He had chosen in short for a study of the -agrarian question on the spot the moment of the year when London was -most absorbing. Maurice Glanvil made no remark to his mother on this -anomaly, and she offered him no explanation of it; they talked in fact -of almost everything except Arthur. Mrs. Tregent had to her constant -visitor the air of feeling that she owed him in relation to her son an -apology which she had not the materials for making. It was certainly a -high standard of courtesy that would suggest to her that he ought to -have put himself out for these social specimens; but it was obvious that -her standard was high. Maurice Glanvil smiled when he thought to what -bare civility the young man would have deemed himself held had he known -of a certain passage of private history. But he knew nothing—Maurice -was sure of that; his reason for going away had been quite another -matter. That Vera's brooding parent should have had such an insight into -the young man's motives is a proof of the amount of reflection that he -devoted to him. He had not seen much of him and in truth he found him -provoking, but he was haunted by the odd analogy of which he had had a -glimpse on their first encounter. The late Mr. Tregent had had -"interests in the north," and the care of them had naturally devolved -upon his son, who by the mother's account had shown an admirable -capacity for business. The late Mr. Tregent had also been actively -political, and it was fondly hoped, in Manchester Square at least, that -the day was not distant when his heir would, in turn and as a -representative of the same respectabilities, speak reported words in -debate. Maurice himself, vague about the House of Commons, had nothing -to say against his making a figure there. Accordingly if these natural -gifts continued to remind him of his own fastidiously clever youth, it -was with the difference that Arthur Tregent's cleverness struck him as -much the greater of the two. If the changes in England were marked this -indeed was in general one of them, that the sharp young men were still -sharper than of yore. When they had ability at any rate they showed it -all; Maurice would never have pretended that he had shown all his. He -had not cared whether anyone knew it. It was not however this superior -intensity which provoked him, and poor young Tregent could not be held -responsible for his irritation. If the circumstance in which they most -resembled each other was the disposition to escape from plain girls who -aspired to them, such a characteristic, as embodied in the object of -Vera's admiration, was purely interesting, was even amusing, to Vera's -father; but it would have gratified him to be able to ascertain from -Mrs. Tregent whether, to her knowledge, her son thought his child really -repulsive, and what annoyed him was the fact that such an inquiry was -practically impossible. Arthur was provoking in short because he had an -advantage—an advantage residing in the fact that his mother's friend -couldn't ask questions about him without appearing to indulge in hints -and overtures. The idea of this officiousness was odious to Maurice -Glanvil; so that he confined himself to meditating in silence on the -happiness it would be for poor Vera to marry a beautiful young man with -a fortune and a future.</p> - -<p>Though the opportunity for this recreation—it engaged much of his -time—should be counted as one of the pleasant results of his intimacy -with Mrs. Tregent, yet the sense, perverse enough, that he had a ground -of complaint against her subsisted even to the point of finally -steadying him while he expressed his grievance. This happened in the -course of one of those afternoon hours that had now become indispensable -to him—hours of belated tea and egotistical talk in the long summer -light and the chastened roar of London.</p> - -<p>"No, it wasn't fair," he said, "and I wasn't well used—a hundred -years ago. I'm sore about it now; you ought to have notified me, to have -instructed me. Why didn't you, in common honesty? Why didn't my poor -mother, who was so eager and shrewd? Why didn't yours? She used to talk -to me. Heaven forgive me for saying it, but our mothers weren't up to -the mark! You may tell me they didn't know; to which I reply that mine -was universally supposed, and by me in particular, to know everything -that could be known. No, it wasn't well managed, and the consequence has -been this odious discovery, an awful shock to a man of my time of life -and under the effect of which I now speak to you, that for a quarter of -a century I've been a fool."</p> - -<p>"What would you have wished us to do?" Mrs. Tregent asked as she gave -him another cup of tea.</p> - -<p>"Why, to have said 'Wait, wait—at any price; have patience and -hold on!' They ought to have told me, <i>you</i> ought to have told me, -that your conditions at that time were a temporary phase and that you would -infallibly break your shell. You ought to have warned me, they ought to -have warned me, that there would be wizardry in the case, that you were -to be the subject, at a given moment, of a transformation absolutely -miraculous. I couldn't know it by inspiration; I measured you by the -common law—how could I do anything else? But it wasn't kind to leave -me in error."</p> - -<p>Maurice Glanvil treated himself without scruple to this fine ironic -flight, this sophistry which eased his nerves, because though it brought -him nearer than he had yet come to putting his finger, visibly to Mrs. -Tregent, on the fact that he had once tried to believe he could marry -her and had found her too ugly, their present relation was so -extraordinary and his present appreciation so liberal as to make almost -any freedom excusable, especially as his companion had the advantage of -being to all intents and purposes a different person from the one he -talked of, while he suffered the ignominy of being the same.</p> - -<p>"There has been no miracle," said Mrs. Tregent after a moment. "I've -never known anything but the common, ah the very common, law, and -anything that I may have become only the common things have made me."</p> - -<p>He shook his head. "You wore a disfiguring mask, a veil, a disguise. One -fine day you dropped them all and showed the world the real creature."</p> - -<p>"It wasn't one fine day—it was little by little."</p> - -<p>"Well, one fine day I saw the result; the process doesn't matter. To -arrive at a goal invisible from the starting-point is no doubt an -incident in the life of a certain number of women. But what is -absolutely unprecedented is to have traversed such a distance."</p> - -<p>"Hadn't I a single redeeming point?" Mrs. Tregent demanded.</p> - -<p>He hesitated a little, and while he hesitated she looked at him. Her -look was but of an instant, but it told him everything, told him, in one -misty moonbeam, all she had known of old. She had known perfectly—she -had been as conscious of the conditions of his experiment as of the -invincibility of his repugnance. Whether her mother had betrayed him -didn't matter; she had read everything clear and had had to accept the -cruel truth. He was touched as he had never been by that moment's -communication; he was, unexpectedly, almost awestruck, for there was -something still more in it than he had guessed. "I was letting my fancy -play just now," he answered, apologetically. "It was I who was -wanting—it was I who was the idiot!"</p> - -<p>"Don't say that. You were so kind." And hereupon Mrs. Tregent startled -her visitor by bursting into tears.</p> - -<p>She recovered herself indeed, and they forbore on that occasion, in the -interest of the decorum expected of persons of their age and in their -circumstances, to rake over these smouldering ashes; but such a -conversation had made a difference, and from that day onward Maurice -Glanvil was awake to the fact that he had been the passion of this -extraordinary woman's life. He felt humiliated for an hour, but after -that his pleasure was almost as great as his wonder. For wonder there -was plenty of room, but little by little he saw how things had come to -pass. She was not subjected to the ordeal of telling him or to the -abasement of any confession, but day by day he sounded, with a purity of -gratitude that renewed, in his spirit, the sources of youth, the depths -of everything that her behaviour implied. Of such a studied tenderness -as she showed him the roots could only be in some unspeakably sacred -past. She had not to explain, she had not to clear up inconsistencies, -she had only to let him be with her. She had striven, she had accepted, -she had conformed, but she had thought of him every day of her life. She -had taken up duties and performed them, she had banished every weakness -and practised every virtue, but the still, hidden flame had never been -quenched. His image had interposed, his reality had remained, and she -had never denied herself the sweetness of hoping that she should see him -again and that she should know him. She had never raised a little finger -for it, but fortune had answered her prayer. Women were capable of these -mysteries of sentiment, these intensities of fidelity and there were -moments in which Maurice Glanvil's heart beat strangely before a vision -really so sublime. He seemed to understand now by what miracle Fanny -Knocker had been beautified—the miracle of heroic docilities and -accepted pangs and vanquished egotisms. It had never come in a night, -but it had come by living for others. She was living for others still; -it was impossible for him to see anything else at last than that she was -living for him. The time of passion was over, but the time of service -was long. When all this became vivid to him he felt that he couldn't -recognise it enough and yet that recognition might only be tacit and, as -it were, circuitous. He couldn't say to her even humorously "It's very -kind of you to be in love with such a donkey," for these words would -have implied somehow that he had rights—an attitude from which his -renovated delicacy shrank. He bowed his head before such charity and -seemed to see moreover that Mrs. Tregent's desire to befriend him was a -feeling independent of any prospect of gain and indifferent to any chance -of reward. It would be described vulgarly, after so much had come and gone, -as the state of being "in love"—the state of the instinctive -and the simple, which they both had left far behind; so that there was a -certain sort of reciprocity which would almost constitute an insult to -it.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>VI</h4> - - -<p>He soared on these high thoughts till, toward the end of July (Mrs. -Tregent stayed late in town—she was awaiting her son's return) he -made the discovery that to some persons, perhaps indeed to many, he had all -the air of being in love. This image was flashed back to him from the -irreverent lips of a lady who knew and admired Mrs. Tregent and who -professed amusement at his surprise, at his artless declaration that he -had no idea he had made himself conspicuous. She assured him that everyone -was talking about him—though people after all had a tenderness -for elderly romance; and she left him divided between the acute sense -that he was comical (he had a horror of that) and the pale perception of -something that he could "help" still less. At the end of a few hours of -reflection he had sacrificed the penalty to the privilege; he was about -to be fifty, and he knew Fanny Knocker's age—no one better; but he -cared no straw for vulgar judgments and moreover could think of plenty -of examples of unions admired even after longer delays. For three days -he enjoyed the luxury of admitting to himself without reserve how -indispensable she had become to him; as the third drew to a close he was -more nervous than really he had ever been in his life, for this was the -evening on which, after many hindrances, Mrs. Tregent had agreed to dine -with him. He had planned the occasion for a month—he wanted to show -her how well he had learned from her how to live on his income. Her -occupations had always interposed—she was teaching him new lessons; -but at last she gave him the joy of sitting at his table. At the evening's -end he begged her to remain after the others, and he asked one of the -ladies who had been present, and who was going to a pair of parties, to -be so good as to take Vera away. This indeed had been arranged in -advance, and when, in the discomposed drawing-room, of which the windows -stood open to the summer night, he was alone with his old friend, he saw -in her face that she knew it had been arranged. He saw more than -this—that she knew what he was waiting to say and that if, after a -visible reluctance, she had consented to come, it was in order to meet -him, with whatever effort, on the ground he had chosen—meet him once -and then leave it forever. This was why, without interrupting him, but -before he had finished, putting out her hand to his own, with a strange -clasp of refusal, she was ready to show him, in a woeful but beautiful -headshake to which nothing could add, that it was impossible at this -time of day for them to marry. She stayed only a moment, but in that -moment he had to accept the knowledge that by as much as it might have -been of old, by so much might it never be again. After she had gone he -walked up and down the drawing-room half the night. He sent the servants -to bed, he blew out the candles; the forsaken place was lighted only by -the lamps in the street. He gave himself the motive of waiting for Vera -to come back, but in reality he threshed about in the darkness because -his cheeks had begun to burn. There was a sting for him in Mrs. -Tregent's refusal, and this sting was sharper even than the -disappointment of his desire. It was a reproach to his delicacy; it made -him feel as if he had been an ass for the second time. When she was -young and free his faith had been too poor and his perceptions too -dense; he had waited to show her that he only bargained for certainties -and only recognised success. He dropped into a chair at last and sat -there a long time, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, -trying to cover up his humiliation, waiting for it to ebb. As the sounds -of the night died away it began to come back to him that she had given -him a promise to which a rich meaning could be attached. What was it -that before going away she had said about Vera, in words he had been at -the moment too disconcerted to take in? Little by little he -reconstructed these words with comfort; finally, when after hearing a -carriage stop at the door he hastily pulled himself together and went -down to admit his daughter, the sight of the child on his threshold, as -the brougham that had restored her drove away, brought them all back in -their generosity.</p> - -<p>"Have you danced?" he asked.</p> - -<p>She hesitated. "A little, papa."</p> - -<p>He knew what that meant—she had danced once. He followed her -upstairs in silence; she had not wasted her time—she had had her -humiliation. Ah, clearly she was too short! Yet on the landing above, where -her bedroom candle stood, she tried to be gay with him, asking him about -his own party and whether the people had stayed late.</p> - -<p>"Mrs. Tregent stayed after the others. She spoke very kindly of you."</p> - -<p>The girl looked at her father with an anxiety that showed through her -smile. "What did she say?"</p> - -<p>He hesitated, as Vera had done a moment before. "That you must be our -compensation."</p> - -<p>His daughter's eyes, still wondering, turned away. "What did she -mean?"</p> - -<p>"That it's all right, darling!" And he supplied the deficiencies of this -explanation with a long kiss for good-night.</p> - -<p>The next day he went to see Mrs. Tregent, who wore the air of being glad -to have something at once positive and pleasant to say. She announced -immediately that Arthur was coming back.</p> - -<p>"I congratulate you." Then, as they exchanged one of their looks of -unreserved recognition, Maurice added: "Now it's for Vera and me to go."</p> - -<p>"To go?"</p> - -<p>"Without more delay. It's high time we should take ourselves off."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tregent was silent a moment. "Where shall you go?"</p> - -<p>"To our old haunts, abroad. We must see some of our old friends. We -shall spend six months away."</p> - -<p>"Then what becomes of <i>my</i> months?"</p> - -<p>"Your months?"</p> - -<p>"Those it's all arranged she's to spend at Blankley." Blankley was Mrs. -Tregent's house in Derbyshire, and she laughed as she went on: "Those -that I spoke of last evening. Don't look as if we had never discussed it -and settled it!"</p> - -<p>"What shall I do without her?" Maurice Glanvil presently demanded.</p> - -<p>"What will you do <i>with</i> her?" his hostess replied, with a world of -triumphant meaning. He was not prepared to say, in the sense of her -question, and he took refuge in remarking that he noted her avoidance of -any suggestion that he too would be welcome in Derbyshire; which led her -to continue, with unshrinking frankness: "Certainly, I don't want you a -bit. Leave us alone."</p> - -<p>"Is it safe?"</p> - -<p>"Of course I can't absolutely answer for anything, but at least it will -be safer than with <i>you</i>," said Mrs. Tregent.</p> - -<p>Maurice Glanvil turned this over. "Does he dislike me?"</p> - -<p>"What an idea!"</p> - -<p>But the question had brought the colour to her face, and the sight of -this, with her evasive answer, kindled in Maurice's heart a sudden -relief, a delight almost, that was strange enough. Arthur was in -opposition, plainly, and that was why he had so promptly quitted London, -that was why Mrs. Tregent had refused Mr. Glanvil. The idea was an -instant balm. "He'd be quite right, poor fellow!" Maurice declared. -"I'll go abroad alone."</p> - -<p>"Let me keep her six months," said Mrs. Tregent. "I'll try it—I'll -try it!"</p> - -<p>"I wouldn't interfere for the world."</p> - -<p>"It's an immense responsibility; but I should like so to succeed."</p> - -<p>"She's an angel!" Maurice said.</p> - -<p>"That's what gives me courage."</p> - -<p>"But she mustn't dream of any plot," he added.</p> - -<p>"For what do you take me?" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed with a smile which -lightened up for him intensely that far-away troubled past as to which -she had originally baffled his inquiry.</p> - -<p>The joy of perceiving in an aversion to himself a possible motive for -Arthur's absence was so great in him that before he took leave of her he -ventured to say to his old friend: "Does he like her at all?"</p> - -<p>"He likes her very much."</p> - -<p>Maurice remembered how much he had liked Fanny Knocker and been willing -to admit it to his mother; but he presently observed: "Of course he -can't think her in the least pretty."</p> - -<p>"As you say, she's an angel," Mrs. Tregent rejoined.</p> - -<p>"She would pass for one better if she were a few inches taller."</p> - -<p>"It doesn't matter," said Mrs. Tregent.</p> - -<p>"One must remember that in that respect, at her age, she won't change," -Maurice pursued, wondering after he had spoken whether he had pressed -upon the second pronoun.</p> - -<p>"No, she won't change. But she's a darling!" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed; and -it was in these meagre words, which were only half however of what -passed between them, that an extraordinary offer was made and accepted. -They were so ready to understand each other that no insistence and no -professions now were necessary, and that Maurice Glanvil had not even -broken into a murmur of gratitude at this quick revelation of his old -friend's beautiful conception of a nobler remedy—the endeavour to -place their union outside themselves, to make their children know the -happiness they had missed. They had not needed to teach each other what -they saw, what they guessed, what moved them with pity and hope, and -there were transitions enough safely skipped in the simple conversation -I have preserved. But what Mrs. Tregent was ready to do for him filled -Maurice Glanvil, for days after this, with an even greater wonder, and -it seemed to him that not till then had she fully shown him that she had -forgiven him.</p> - -<p>Six months, however, proved much more than sufficient for her attempt to -test the plasticity of her son. Maurice Glanvil went abroad, but was -nervous and restless, wandering from place to place, revisiting old -scenes and old friends, reverting, with a conscious, an even amused -incongruity, and yet with an effect that was momentarily soothing, to -places at which he had stayed with his wife, but feeling all the while -that he was really staking his child's happiness. It only half reassured -him to feel that Vera would never know what poor Fanny Knocker had been -condemned to know, for the daily contact was cruel from the moment the -issue was uncertain; and it only half helped him to reflect that she was -not so plain as Fanny, for had not Arthur Tregent given him the -impression that the young man of the present was intrinsically even more -difficult to please than the young man of the past? The letters he -received from Blankley conveyed no information about Arthur beyond the -fact that he was at home; only once Vera mentioned that he was -"remarkably good" to her. Toward the end of November he found himself in -Paris, submitting reluctantly to social accidents which put off from day -to day his return to London, when, one morning in the Rue de Rivoli, he -had to stop short to permit the passage of a vehicle which had emerged -from the court of an hotel. It was an open cab—the day was mild and -bright—with a small quantity of neat, leathery luggage, which Maurice -vaguely recognised as English, stowed in the place beside the -driver—luggage from which his eyes shifted straight to the occupant -of the carriage, a young man with his face turned to the allurements of -travel and the urbanity of farewell to bowing waiters still visible in -it. The young man was so bright and so on his way, as it were, that -Maurice, standing there to make room for him, felt for the instant that -he too had taken a tip. The feeling became acute as he recognised that -this humiliating obligation was to no less a person than Arthur Tregent. It -was Arthur who was so much on his way—it was Arthur who was catching -a train. He noticed his mother's friend as the cab passed into the -street, and, with a quick demonstration, caused the driver to pull up. -He jumped out, and under the arcade the two men met with every -appearance of cordiality, but with conscious confusion. Each of them -coloured perceptibly, and Maurice was angry with himself for blushing -before a boy. Long afterwards he remembered how cold, and even how hard, -was the handsome clearness of the young eyes that met his own in an -artificial smile.</p> - -<p>"You here? I thought you were at Blankley."</p> - -<p>"I left Blankley yesterday; I'm on my way to Spain."</p> - -<p>"To Spain? How charming!"</p> - -<p>"To join a friend there—just for a month or two."</p> - -<p>"Interesting country—well worth seeing. Your mother's all -right?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, all right. And Miss Glanvil——" Arthur Tregent went -on, cheerfully.</p> - -<p>"Vera's all right?" interrupted Maurice, with a still gayer tone.</p> - -<p>"Everyone, everything's all right!" Arthur laughed.</p> - -<p>"Well, I mustn't keep you. Bon voyage!"</p> - -<p>Maurice Glanvil, after the young man had driven on, flattered himself -that in this brief interview he had suppressed every indication of -surprise; but that evening he crossed the Channel, and on the morrow he -went down to Blankley. "To Spain—to Spain!" the words kept repeating -themselves in his ears. He, when he had taken flight in a similar -conjunction, had only got, for the time, as far as Boulogne; and he was -reminded afresh of the progress of the species. When he was introduced -into the drawing-room at Blankley—a chintzy, flowery, friendly -expanse—Mrs. Tregent rose before him alone and offered him a face -that she had never shown before. She was white and she looked scared; she -faltered in her movement to meet him.</p> - -<p>"I met Arthur in Paris, so I thought I might come."</p> - -<p>Oh, yes; there was pain in her face, and a kind of fear of him that -frightened him, but their hands found each other's hands while she -replied: "He went off—I didn't know it."</p> - -<p>"But you had a letter the next morning," Maurice said.</p> - -<p>She stared. "How did you know that?"</p> - -<p>"Who should know better than I? He wrote from London, explaining."</p> - -<p>"I did what I could—I believed in it!" said Mrs Tregent. "He was -charming, for a while."</p> - -<p>"But he broke down. She's too short, eh?" Maurice asked.</p> - -<p>"Don't laugh; she's ill."</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with her?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Tregent gave the visitor a look in which there was almost a -reproach for the question. "She has had a chill; she's in bed. You must -see her."</p> - -<p>She took him upstairs and he saw his child. He remembered what his -mother had told him of the grievous illness of Fanny Knocker. Poor -little Vera lay there in the flush of a feverish cold which had come on -the evening before. She grew worse from the effect of a complication, -and for three days he was anxious about her; but even more than with his -alarm he held his breath before the distress, the disappointment, the -humility of his old friend. Up to this hour he had not fully measured -the strength of her desire to do something for him, or the intensity of -passion with which she had wished to do it in the particular way that -had now broken down. She had counted on her influence with her son, on -his affection and on the maternal art, and there was anguish in her -compunction for her failure, for her false estimate of the possible. -Maurice Glanvil reminded her in vain of the consoling fact that Vera had -known nothing of any plan, and he guessed indeed the reason why this -theory had no comfort. No one could be better aware than Fanny Tregent -of how much girls knew who knew nothing. It was doubtless this same sad -wisdom that kept her sombre when he expressed a confidence that his child -would promptly recover. She herself had had a terrible fight—and -yet with the physical victory, had she recovered? Her apprehension for -Vera was justified, for the poor girl was destined finally to forfeit -even the physical victory. She got better, she got up, she quitted -Blankley, she quitted England with her father, but her health had failed -and a year later it gave way. Overtaken in Rome by a second illness, she -succumbed; unlike Fanny Knocker she was never to have her revenge.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="LORD_BEAUPRE">LORD BEAUPRÉ</a></h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>Some reference had been made to Northerley, which was within an easy -drive, and Firminger described how he had dined there the night before -and had found a lot of people. Mrs. Ashbury, one of the two visitors, -inquired who these people might be, and he mentioned half-a-dozen names, -among which was that of young Raddle, which had been a good deal on -people's lips, and even in the newspapers, on the occasion, still -recent, of his stepping into the fortune, exceptionally vast even as the -product of a patent-glue, left him by a father whose ugly name on all -the vacant spaces of the world had exasperated generations of men.</p> - -<p>"Oh, is he there?" asked Mrs. Ashbury, in a tone which might have been -taken as a vocal rendering of the act of pricking up one's ears. She -didn't hand on the information to her daughter, who was talking—if a -beauty of so few phrases could have been said to talk—with Mary -Gosselin, but in the course of a few moments she put down her teacup -with a failure of suavity and, getting up, gave the girl a poke with her -parasol. "Come, Maud, we must be stirring."</p> - -<p>"You pay us a very short visit," said Mrs. Gosselin, intensely demure -over the fine web of her knitting. Mrs. Ashbury looked hard for an -instant into her bland eyes, then she gave poor Maud another poke. She -alluded to a reason and expressed regrets; but she got her daughter into -motion, and Guy Firminger passed through the garden with the two ladies -to put them into their carriage. Mrs. Ashbury protested particularly -against any further escort. While he was absent the other parent and -child, sitting together on their pretty lawn in the yellow light of the -August afternoon, talked of the frightful way Maud Ashbury had "gone -off," and of something else as to which there was more to say when their -third visitor came back.</p> - -<p>"Don't think me grossly inquisitive if I ask you where they told the -coachman to drive," said Mary Gosselin as the young man dropped, near -her, into a low wicker chair, stretching his long legs as if he had been -one of the family.</p> - -<p>Firminger stared. "Upon my word I didn't particularly notice, but I -think the old lady said 'Home'."</p> - -<p>"There, mamma dear!" the girl exclaimed triumphantly.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Gosselin only knitted on, persisting in profundity. She replied -that "Home" was a feint, that Mrs. Ashbury would already have given -another order, and that it was her wish to hurry off to Northerley that -had made her keep them from going with her to the carriage, in which -they would have seen her take a suspected direction. Mary explained to -Guy Firminger that her mother had perceived poor Mrs. Ashbury to be -frantic to reach the house at which she had heard that Mr. Raddle was -staying. The young man stared again and wanted to know what she desired -to do with Mr. Raddle. Mary replied that her mother would tell him what -Mrs. Ashbury desired to do with poor Maud.</p> - -<p>"What all Christian mothers desire," said Mrs. Gosselin. "Only she -doesn't know how."</p> - -<p>"To marry the dear child to Mr. Raddle," Mary added, smiling.</p> - -<p>Firminger's vagueness expanded with the subject. "Do you mean you want -to marry <i>your</i> dear child to that little cad?" he asked of the elder -lady.</p> - -<p>"I speak of the general duty—not of the particular case," said -Mrs. Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"Mamma <i>does</i> know how," Mary went on.</p> - -<p>"Then why ain't you married?"</p> - -<p>"Because we're not acting, like the Ashburys, with injudicious -precipitation. Is that correct?" the girl demanded, laughing, of her -mother.</p> - -<p>"Laugh at me, my dear, as much as you like—it's very lucky you've -got me," Mrs. Gosselin declared.</p> - -<p>"She means I can't manage for myself," said Mary to the visitor.</p> - -<p>"What nonsense you talk!" Mrs. Gosselin murmured, counting stitches.</p> - -<p>"I can't, mamma, I can't; I admit it," Mary continued.</p> - -<p>"But injudicious precipitation and—what's the other -thing?—creeping prudence, seem to come out in very much the same -place," the young man objected.</p> - -<p>"Do you mean since I too wither on the tree?"</p> - -<p>"It only comes back to saying how hard it is nowadays to marry one's -daughters," said the lucid Mrs. Gosselin, saving Firminger, however, the -trouble of an ingenious answer. "I don't contend that, at the best, it's -easy."</p> - -<p>But Guy Firminger would not have struck you as capable of much -conversational effort as he lounged there in the summer softness, with -ironic familiarities, like one of the old friends who rarely deviate -into sincerity. He was a robust but loose-limbed young man, with a -well-shaped head and a face smooth, fair and kind. He was in -knickerbockers, and his clothes, which had seen service, were composed -of articles that didn't match. His laced boots were dusty—he had -evidently walked a certain distance; an indication confirmed by the -lingering, sociable way in which, in his basket-seat, he tilted himself -towards Mary Gosselin. It pointed to a pleasant reason for a long walk. -This young lady, of five-and-twenty, had black hair and blue eyes; a -combination often associated with the effect of beauty. The beauty in -this case, however, was dim and latent, not vulgarly obvious; and if her -height and slenderness gave that impression of length of line which, as -we know, is the fashion, Mary Gosselin had on the other hand too much -expression to be generally admired. Every one thought her intellectual; -a few of the most simple-minded even thought her plain. What Guy -Firminger thought—or rather what he took for granted, for he was not -built up on depths of reflection—will probably appear from this -narrative.</p> - -<p>"Yes indeed; things have come to a pass that's awful for <i>us</i>" the -girl announced.</p> - -<p>"For <i>us</i>, you mean," said Firminger. "We're hunted like the -ostrich; we're trapped and stalked and run to earth. We go in fear—I -assure you we do."</p> - -<p>"Are <i>you</i> hunted, Guy?" Mrs. Gosselin asked with an inflection of -her own.</p> - -<p>"Yes, Mrs. Gosselin, even <i>moi qui vous parle</i>, the ordinary male -of commerce, inconceivable as it may appear. I know something about it."</p> - -<p>"And of whom do you go in fear?" Mary Gosselin took up an uncut book and -a paper-knife which she had laid down on the advent of the other -visitors.</p> - -<p>"My dear child, of Diana and her nymphs, of the spinster at large. She's -always out with her rifle. And it isn't only that; you know there's -always a second gun, a walking arsenal, at her heels. I forget, for the -moment, who Diana's mother was, and the genealogy of the nymphs; but not -only do the old ladies know the younger ones are out, they distinctly go -<i>with</i> them."</p> - -<p>"Who was Diana's mother, my dear?" Mrs. Gosselin inquired of her -daughter.</p> - -<p>"She was a beautiful old lady with pink ribbons in her cap and a genius -for knitting," the girl replied, cutting her book.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm not speaking of you two dears; you're not like anyone else; -you're an immense comfort," said Guy Firminger. "But they've reduced it -to a science, and I assure you that if one were any one in particular, -if one were not protected by one's obscurity, one's life would be a -burden. Upon my honour one wouldn't escape. I've seen it, I've watched -them. Look at poor Beaupré—look at little Raddle over there. I object -to him, but I bleed for him."</p> - -<p>"Lord Beaupré won't marry again," said Mrs. Gosselin with an air of -conviction.</p> - -<p>"So much the worse for him!"</p> - -<p>"Come—that's a concession to our charms!" Mary laughed.</p> - -<p>But the ruthless young man explained away his concession. "I mean that -to be married's the only protection—or else to be engaged."</p> - -<p>"To be permanently engaged,—wouldn't that do?" Mary Gosselin -asked.</p> - -<p>"Beautifully—I would try it if I were a <i>parti</i>."</p> - -<p>"And how's the little boy?" Mrs. Gosselin presently inquired.</p> - -<p>"What little boy?"</p> - -<p>"Your little cousin—Lord Beaupré's child: isn't it a boy?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, poor little beggar, he isn't up to much. He was awfully cut up by -scarlet fever."</p> - -<p>"You're not the rose indeed, but you're tolerably near it," the elder -lady presently continued.</p> - -<p>"What do you call near it? Not even in the same garden—not in any -garden at all, alas!"</p> - -<p>"There are three lives—but after all!"</p> - -<p>"Dear lady, don't be homicidal!"</p> - -<p>"What do you call the 'rose'?" Mary asked of her mother.</p> - -<p>"The title," said Mrs. Gosselin, promptly but softly.</p> - -<p>Something in her tone made Firminger laugh aloud. "You don't mention the -property."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I mean the whole thing."</p> - -<p>"Is the property very large?" said Mary Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"Fifty thousand a year," her mother responded; at which the young man -laughed out again.</p> - -<p>"Take care, mamma, or we shall be thought to be out with our guns!" the -girl interposed; a recommendation that drew from Guy Firminger the just -remark that there would be time enough for this when his prospects -should be worth speaking of. He leaned over to pick up his hat and -stick, as if it were his time to go, but he didn't go for another -quarter of an hour, and during these minutes his prospects received some -frank consideration. He was Lord Beaupré's first cousin, and the three -intervening lives were his lordship's own, that of his little sickly -son, and that of his uncle the Major, who was also Guy's uncle and with -whom the young man was at present staying. It was from homely Trist, the -Major's house, that he had walked over to Mrs. Gosselin's. Frank -Firminger, who had married in youth a woman with something of her own -and eventually left the army, had nothing but girls, but he was only of -middle age and might possibly still have a son. At any rate his life was -a very good one. Beaupré might marry again, and, marry or not, he was -barely thirty-three and might live to a great age. The child moreover, -poor little devil, would doubtless, with the growing consciousness of an -incentive (there was none like feeling you were in people's way), -develop a capacity for duration; so that altogether Guy professed -himself, with the best will in the world, unable to take a rosy view of -the disappearance of obstacles. He treated the subject with a jocularity -that, in view of the remoteness of his chance, was not wholly tasteless, -and the discussion, between old friends and in the light of this -extravagance, was less crude than perhaps it sounds. The young man quite -declined to see any latent brilliancy in his future. They had all been -lashing him up, his poor dear mother, his uncle Frank, and Beaupré as -well, to make that future political; but even if he should get in (he was -nursing—oh, so languidly!—a possible opening), it would only be -into the shallow edge of the stream. He would stand there like a tall -idiot with the water up to his ankles. He didn't know how to swim—in -that element; he didn't know how to do anything.</p> - -<p>"I think you're very perverse, my dear," said Mrs. Gosselin. "I'm sure -you have great dispositions."</p> - -<p>"For what—except for sitting here and talking with you and Mary? I -revel in this sort of thing, but I scarcely like anything else."</p> - -<p>"You'd do very well if you weren't so lazy," Mary said. "I believe -you're the very laziest person in the world."</p> - -<p>"So do I—the very laziest in the world," the young man contentedly -replied. "But how can I regret it, when it keeps me so quiet, when (I -might even say) it makes me so amiable?"</p> - -<p>"You'll have, one of these days, to get over your quietness, and perhaps -even a little over your amiability," Mrs. Gosselin sagaciously stated.</p> - -<p>"I devoutly hope not."</p> - -<p>"You'll have to perform the duties of your position."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean keep my stump of a broom in order and my crossing -irreproachable?"</p> - -<p>"You may say what you like; you will be a <i>parti</i>," Mrs. Gosselin -continued.</p> - -<p>"Well, then, if the worst comes to the worst I shall do what I said just -now: I shall get some good plausible girl to see me through."</p> - -<p>"The proper way to 'get' her will be to marry her. After you're married -you won't be a <i>parti</i>."</p> - -<p>"Dear mamma, he'll think you're already levelling your rifle!" Mary -Gosselin laughingly wailed.</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger looked at her a moment. "I say, Mary, wouldn't -<i>you</i> do?"</p> - -<p>"For the good plausible girl? Should I be plausible enough?"</p> - -<p>"Surely—what could be more natural? Everything would seem to -contribute to the suitability of our alliance. I should be known to have -known you for years—from childhood's sunny hour; I should be known to -have bullied you, and even to have been bullied <i>by</i> you, in the -period of pinafores. My relations from a tender age with your brother, -which led to our schoolroom romps in holidays and to the happy footing on -which your mother has always been so good as to receive me here, would add -to all the presumptions of intimacy. People would accept such a conclusion -as inevitable."</p> - -<p>"Among all your reasons you don't mention the young lady's attractions," -said Mary Gosselin.</p> - -<p>Firminger stared a moment, his clear eye lighted by his happy thought. -"I don't mention the young man's. They would be so obvious, on one side -and the other, as to be taken for granted."</p> - -<p>"And is it your idea that one should pretend to be engaged to you all -one's life?"</p> - -<p>"Oh no, simply till I should have had time to look round. I'm determined -not to be hustled and bewildered into matrimony—to be dragged to the -shambles before I know where I am. With such an arrangement as the one I -speak of I should be able to take my time, to keep my head, to make my -choice."</p> - -<p>"And how would the young lady make hers?"</p> - -<p>"How do you mean, hers?"</p> - -<p>"The selfishness of men is something exquisite. Suppose the young -lady—if it's conceivable that you should find one idiotic enough to -be a party to such a transaction—suppose the poor girl herself should -happen to wish to be <i>really</i> engaged?"</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger thought a moment, with his slow but not stupid smile. "Do -you mean to <i>me</i>?"</p> - -<p>"To you—or to some one else."</p> - -<p>"Oh, if she'd give me notice I'd let her off."</p> - -<p>"Let her off till you could find a substitute?"</p> - -<p>"Yes—but I confess it would be a great inconvenience. People -wouldn't take the second one so seriously."</p> - -<p>"She would have to make a sacrifice; she would have to wait till you -should know where you were," Mrs. Gosselin suggested.</p> - -<p>"Yes, but where would <i>her</i> advantage come in?" Mary -persisted.</p> - -<p>"Only in the pleasure of charity; the moral satisfaction of doing a -fellow a good turn," said Firminger.</p> - -<p>"You must think people are keen to oblige you!"</p> - -<p>"Ah, but surely I could count on <i>you</i>, couldn't I?" the young man -asked.</p> - -<p>Mary had finished cutting her book; she got up and flung it down on the -tea-table. "What a preposterous conversation!" she exclaimed with force, -tossing the words from her as she tossed her book; and, looking round -her vaguely a moment, without meeting Guy Firminger's eye, she walked -away to the house.</p> - -<p>Firminger sat watching her; then he said serenely to her mother: "Why -has our Mary left us?"</p> - -<p>"She has gone to get something, I suppose."</p> - -<p>"What has she gone to get?"</p> - -<p>"A little stick to beat you perhaps."</p> - -<p>"You don't mean I've been objectionable?"</p> - -<p>"Dear, no—I'm joking. One thing is very certain," pursued Mrs. -Gosselin; "that you ought to work—to try to get on exactly as if -nothing could ever happen. Oughtn't you?" She threw off the question -mechanically as her visitor continued silent.</p> - -<p>"I'm sure she doesn't like it!" he exclaimed, without heeding her -appeal.</p> - -<p>"Doesn't like what?"</p> - -<p>"My free play of mind. It's perhaps too much in the key of our old -romps."</p> - -<p>"You're very clever; she always likes <i>that</i>," said Mrs. Gosselin. -"You ought to go in for something serious, for something honourable," she -continued, "just as much as if you had nothing at all to look to."</p> - -<p>"Words of wisdom, dear Mrs. Gosselin," Firminger replied, rising slowly -from his relaxed attitude. "But what <i>have</i> I to look to."</p> - -<p>She raised her mild, deep eyes to him as he stood before her—she -might have been a fairy godmother. "Everything!"</p> - -<p>"But you know I can't poison them!"</p> - -<p>"That won't be necessary."</p> - -<p>He looked at her an instant; then with a laugh: "One might think -<i>you</i> would undertake it!"</p> - -<p>"I almost would—for <i>you</i>. Good-bye."</p> - -<p>"Take care,—if they <i>should</i> be carried off!" But Mrs. -Gosselin only repeated her good-bye, and the young man departed before Mary -had come back.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Nearly two years after Guy Firminger had spent that friendly hour in -Mrs. Gosselin's little garden in Hampshire this far-seeing woman was -enabled (by the return of her son, who at New York, in an English bank, -occupied a position they all rejoiced over—to such great things might -it duly lead), to resume possession, for the season, of the little -London house which her husband had left her to inhabit, but which her -native thrift, in determining her to let it for a term, had converted -into a source of income. Hugh Gosselin, who was thirty years old and at -twenty-three, before his father's death, had been dispatched to America -to exert himself, was understood to be doing very well—so well that -his devotion to the interests of his employers had been rewarded, for the -first time, with a real holiday. He was to remain in England from May to -August, undertaking, as he said, to make it all right if during this -time his mother should occupy (to contribute to his entertainment), the -habitation in Chester Street. He was a small, preoccupied young man, -with a sharpness as acquired as a new hat; he struck his mother and -sister as intensely American. For the first few days after his arrival -they were startled by his intonations, though they admitted that they -had had an escape when he reminded them that he might have brought with -him an accent embodied in a wife.</p> - -<p>"When you do take one," said Mrs. Gosselin, who regarded such an -accident, over there, as inevitable, "you must charge her high for it."</p> - -<p>It was not with this question, however, that the little family in -Chester Street was mainly engaged, but with the last incident in the -extraordinary succession of events which, like a chapter of romance, had -in the course of a few months converted their vague and impecunious -friend into a personage envied and honoured. It was as if a blight had -been cast on all Guy Firminger's hindrances. On the day Hugh Gosselin -sailed from New York the delicate little boy at Bosco had succumbed to -an attack of diphtheria. His father had died of typhoid the previous -winter at Naples; his uncle, a few weeks later, had had a fatal accident -in the hunting-field. So strangely, so rapidly had the situation cleared -up, had his fate and theirs worked for him. Guy had opened his eyes one -morning to an earldom which carried with it a fortune not alone -nominally but really great. Mrs. Gosselin and Mary had not written to -him, but they knew he was at Bosco; he had remained there after the -funeral of the late little lord. Mrs. Gosselin, who heard everything, -had heard somehow that he was behaving with the greatest consideration, -giving the guardians, the trustees, whatever they were called, plenty of -time to do everything. Everything was comparatively simple; in the -absence of collaterals there were so few other people concerned. The -principal relatives were poor Frank Firminger's widow and her girls, who -had seen themselves so near to new honours and comforts. Probably the -girls would expect their cousin Guy to marry one of them, and think it -the least he could decently do; a view the young man himself (if he were -very magnanimous) might possibly embrace. The question would be whether -he would be very magnanimous. These young ladies exhausted in their -three persons the numerous varieties of plainness. On the other hand Guy -Firminger—or Lord Beaupré, as one would have to begin to call him -now—was unmistakably kind. Mrs. Gosselin appealed to her son as to -whether their noble friend were not unmistakably kind.</p> - -<p>"Of course I've known him always, and that time he came out to -America—when was it? four years ago—I saw him every day. I like -him awfully and all that, but since you push me, you know," said -Hugh Gosselin, "I'm bound to say that the first thing to mention -in any description of him would be—if you wanted to be quite -correct—that he's unmistakably selfish."</p> - -<p>"I see—I see," Mrs. Gosselin unblushingly replied. "Of course I -know what you mean," she added in a moment. "But is he any more so than any -one else? Every one's unmistakably selfish."</p> - -<p>"Every one but you and Mary," said the young man.</p> - -<p>"And <i>you</i>, dear!" his mother smiled. "But a person may be kind, -you know—mayn't he?—at the same time that he <i>is</i> selfish. -There are different sorts."</p> - -<p>"Different sorts of kindness?" Hugh Gosselin asked with a laugh; and the -inquiry undertaken by his mother occupied them for the moment, demanding -a subtlety of treatment from which they were not conscious of shrinking, -of which rather they had an idea that they were perhaps exceptionally -capable. They came back to the temperate view that Guy would never put -himself out, would probably never do anything great, but might show -himself all the same a delightful member of society. Yes, he was -probably selfish, like other people; but unlike most of them he was, -somehow, amiably, attachingly, sociably, almost lovably selfish. Without -doing anything great he would yet be a great success—a big, pleasant, -gossiping, lounging and, in its way doubtless very splendid, presence. -He would have no ambition, and it was ambition that made selfishness -ugly. Hugh and his mother were sure of this last point until Mary, -before whom the discussion, when it reached this stage, happened to be -carried on, checked them by asking whether that, on the contrary, were -not just what was supposed to make it fine.</p> - -<p>"Oh, he only wants to be comfortable," said her brother; "but he -<i>does</i> want it!"</p> - -<p>"There'll be a tremendous rush for him," Mrs. Gosselin prophesied to her -son.</p> - -<p>"Oh, he'll never marry. It will be too much trouble."</p> - -<p>"It's done here without any trouble—for the men. One sees how long -you've been out of the country."</p> - -<p>"There was a girl in New York whom he might have married—he really -liked her. But he wouldn't turn round for her."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps she wouldn't turn round for <i>him</i>," said Mary.</p> - -<p>"I daresay she'll turn round <i>now</i>," Mrs. Gosselin rejoined; on -which Hugh mentioned that there was nothing to be feared from her, all her -revolutions had been accomplished. He added that nothing would make any -difference—so intimate was his conviction that Beaupré would preserve -his independence.</p> - -<p>"Then I think he's not so selfish as you say," Mary declared; "or at any -rate one will never know whether he is. Isn't married life the great -chance to show it?"</p> - -<p>"Your father never showed it," said Mrs. Gosselin; and as her children -were silent in presence of this tribute to the departed she added, -smiling: "Perhaps you think that <i>I</i> did!" They embraced her, to -indicate what they thought, and the conversation ended, when she had -remarked that Lord Beaupré was a man who would be perfectly easy to -manage <i>after</i> marriage, with Hugh's exclaiming that this was -doubtless exactly why he wished to keep out of it.</p> - -<p>Such was evidently his wish, as they were able to judge in Chester -Street when he came up to town. He appeared there oftener than was to -have been expected, not taking himself in his new character at all too -seriously to find stray half-hours for old friends. It was plain that he -was going to do just as he liked, that he was not a bit excited or -uplifted by his change of fortune. Mary Gosselin observed that he had no -imagination—she even reproached him with the deficiency to his face; -an incident which showed indeed how little seriously <i>she</i> took him. -He had no idea of playing a part, and yet he would have been clever enough. -He wasn't even systematic about being simple; his simplicity was a series -of accidents and indifferences. Never was a man more conscientiously -superficial. There were matters on which he valued Mrs. Gosselin's -judgment and asked her advice—without, as usually appeared later, -ever taking it; such questions, mainly, as the claims of a predecessor's -servants, and those, in respect to social intercourse, of the -clergyman's family. He didn't like his parson—what was a fellow to do -when he didn't like his parson? What he did like was to talk with Hugh -about American investments, and it was amusing to Hugh, though he tried -not to show his amusement, to find himself looking at Guy Firminger in -the light of capital. To Mary he addressed from the first the oddest -snatches of confidential discourse, rendered in fact, however, by the -levity of his tone, considerably less confidential than in intention. He -had something to tell her that he joked about, yet without admitting -that it was any less important for being laughable. It was neither more -nor less than that Charlotte Firminger, the eldest of his late uncle's -four girls, had designated to him in the clearest manner the person she -considered he ought to marry. She appealed to his sense of justice, she -spoke and wrote, or at any rate she looked and moved, she sighed and -sang, in the name of common honesty. He had had four letters from her -that week, and to his knowledge there were a series of people in London, -people she could bully, whom she had got to promise to take her in for -the season. She was going to be on the spot, she was going to follow him -up. He took his stand on common honesty, but he had a mortal horror of -Charlotte. At the same time, when a girl had a jaw like that and had -marked you—really <i>marked</i> you, mind, you felt your safety -oozing away. He had given them during the past three months, all those -terrible girls, every sort of present that Bond Street could supply: but -these demonstrations had only been held to constitute another pledge. -Therefore what was a fellow to do? Besides, there were other portents; -the air was thick with them, as the sky over battlefields was darkened -by the flight of vultures. They were flocking, the birds of prey, from -every quarter, and every girl in England, by Jove! was going to be -thrown at his head. What had he done to deserve such a fate? He wanted -to stop in England and see all sorts of things through; but how could he -stand there and face such a charge? Yet what good would it do to bolt? -Wherever he should go there would be fifty of them there first. On his -honour he could say that he didn't deserve it; he had never, to his own -sense, been a flirt, such a flirt at least as to have given anyone a -handle. He appealed candidly to Mary Gosselin to know whether his past -conduct justified such penalties. "<i>Have</i> I been a flirt?—have I -given anyone a handle?" he inquired with pathetic intensity.</p> - -<p>She met his appeal by declaring that he had been awful, committing -himself right and left; and this manner of treating his affliction -contributed to the sarcastic publicity (as regarded the little house in -Chester Street) which presently became its natural element. Lord -Beaupré's comical and yet thoroughly grounded view of his danger was -soon a frequent theme among the Gosselins, who however had their own -reasons for not communicating the alarm. They had no motive for -concealing their interest in their old friend, but their allusions to -him among their other friends may be said on the whole to have been -studied. His state of mind recalled of course to Mary and her mother the -queer talk about his prospects that they had had, in the country, that -afternoon on which Mrs. Gosselin had been so strangely prophetic (she -confessed that she had had a flash of divination: the future had been -mysteriously revealed to her), and poor Guy too had seen himself quite -as he was to be. He had seen his nervousness, under inevitable pressure, -deepen to a panic, and he now, in intimate hours, made no attempt to -disguise that a panic had become his portion. It was a fixed idea with -him that he should fall a victim to woven toils, be caught in a trap -constructed with superior science. The science evolved in an -enterprising age by this branch of industry, the manufacture of the trap -matrimonial, he had terrible anecdotes to illustrate; and what had he on -his lips but a scientific term when he declared, as he perpetually did, -that it was his fate to be hypnotised?</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin reminded him, they each in turn reminded him that his -safeguard was to fall in love: were he once to put himself under that -protection all the mothers and maids in Mayfair would not prevail -against him. He replied that this was just the impossibility; it took -leisure and calmness and opportunity and a free mind to fall in love, -and never was a man less open to such experiences. He was literally -fighting his way. He reminded the girl of his old fancy for pretending -already to have disposed of his hand if he could put that hand on a -young person who should like him well enough to be willing to -participate in the fraud. She would have to place herself in rather a -false position of course—have to take a certain amount of trouble; -but there would after all be a good deal of fun in it (there was always fun -in duping the world,) between the pair themselves, the two happy -comedians.</p> - -<p>"Why should they both be happy?" Mary Gosselin asked. "I understand why -you should; but, frankly, I don't quite grasp the reason of <i>her</i> -pleasure."</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré, with his sunny human eyes, thought a moment. "Why, for -the lark, as they say, and that sort of thing. I should be awfully nice -to her."</p> - -<p>"She would require indeed to be in want of recreation!"</p> - -<p>"Ah, but I should want a good sort—a quiet, reasonable one, you -know!" he somewhat eagerly interposed.</p> - -<p>"You're too delightful!" Mary Gosselin exclaimed, continuing to laugh. -He thanked her for this appreciation, and she returned to her -point—that she didn't really see the advantage his accomplice could -hope to enjoy as her compensation for extreme disturbance.</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger stared. "But what extreme disturbance?"</p> - -<p>"Why, it would take a lot of time; it might become intolerable."</p> - -<p>"You mean I ought to pay her—to hire her for the season?"</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin considered him a moment. "Wouldn't marriage come cheaper -at once?" she asked with a quieter smile.</p> - -<p>"You <i>are</i> chaffing me!" he sighed forgivingly. "Of course she -would have to be good-natured enough to pity me."</p> - -<p>"Pity's akin to love. If she were good-natured enough to want so to help -you she'd be good-natured enough to want to marry you. That would be -<i>her</i> idea of help."</p> - -<p>"Would it be <i>yours</i>?" Lord Beaupré asked rather eagerly.</p> - -<p>"You're too absurd! You must sail your own boat!" the girl answered, -turning away.</p> - -<p>That evening at dinner she stated to her companions that she had never -seen a fatuity so dense, so serene, so preposterous as his lordship's.</p> - -<p>"Fatuity, my dear! what do you mean?" her mother inquired.</p> - -<p>"Oh, mamma, you know perfectly." Mary Gosselin spoke with a certain -impatience.</p> - -<p>"If you mean he's conceited I'm bound to say I don't agree with you," -her brother observed. "He's too indifferent to everyone's opinion for -that."</p> - -<p>"He's not vain, he's not proud, he's not pompous," said Mrs. -Gosselin.</p> - -<p>Mary was silent a moment. "He takes more things for granted than anyone -I ever saw."</p> - -<p>"What sort of things?"</p> - -<p>"Well, one's interest in his affairs."</p> - -<p>"With old friends surely a gentleman may."</p> - -<p>"Of course," said Hugh Gosselin, "old friends have in turn the right to -take for granted a corresponding interest on <i>his</i> part."</p> - -<p>"Well, who could be nicer to us than he is or come to see us oftener?" -his mother asked.</p> - -<p>"He comes exactly for the purpose I speak of—to talk about -himself," said Mary.</p> - -<p>"There are thousands of girls who would be delighted with his talk," -Mrs. Gosselin returned.</p> - -<p>"We agreed long ago that he's intensely selfish," the girl went on; "and -if I speak of it to-day it's not because that in itself is anything of a -novelty. What I'm freshly struck with is simply that he more shamelessly -shows it."</p> - -<p>"He shows it, exactly," said Hugh; "he shows all there is. There it is, -on the surface; there are not depths of it underneath."</p> - -<p>"He's not hard," Mrs. Gosselin contended; "he's not impervious."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean he's soft?" Mary asked.</p> - -<p>"I mean he's yielding." And Mrs. Gosselin, with considerable expression, -looked across at her daughter. She added, before they rose from dinner, -that poor Beaupré had plenty of difficulties and that she thought, for -her part, they ought in common loyalty to do what they could to assist -him.</p> - -<p>For a week nothing more passed between the two ladies on the subject of -their noble friend, and in the course of this week they had the -amusement of receiving in Chester Street a member of Hugh's American -circle, Mr. Bolton-Brown, a young man from New York. He was a person -engaged in large affairs, for whom Hugh Gosselin professed the highest -regard, from whom in New York he had received much hospitality, and for -whose advent he had from the first prepared his companions. Mrs. -Gosselin begged the amiable stranger to stay with them, and if she -failed to overcome his hesitation it was because his hotel was near at -hand and he should be able to see them often. It became evident that he -would do so, and, to the two ladies, as the days went by, equally -evident that no objection to such a relation was likely to arise. Mr. -Bolton-Brown was delightfully fresh; the most usual expressions acquired -on his lips a wellnigh comical novelty, the most superficial sentiments, -in the look with which he accompanied them, a really touching sincerity. -He was unmarried and good-looking, clever and natural, and if he was not -very rich was at least very free-handed. He literally strewed the path -of the ladies in Chester Street with flowers, he choked them with French -confectionery. Hugh, however, who was often rather mysterious on -monetary questions, placed in a light sufficiently clear the fact that -his friend had in Wall Street (they knew all about Wall Street), -improved each shining hour. They introduced him to Lord Beaupré, who -thought him "tremendous fun," as Hugh said, and who immediately declared -that the four must spend a Sunday at Bosco a week or two later. The date -of this visit was fixed—Mrs. Gosselin had uttered a comprehensive -acceptance; but after Guy Firminger had taken leave of them (this had -been his first appearance since the odd conversation with Mary), our -young lady confided to her mother that she should not be able to join -the little party. She expressed the conviction that it would be all that -was essential if Mrs. Gosselin should go with the two others. On being -pressed to communicate the reason of this aloofness Mary was able to -give no better one than that she never had cared for Bosco.</p> - -<p>"What makes you hate him so?" her mother presently broke out in a tone -which brought the red to the girl's cheek. Mary denied that she -entertained for Lord Beaupré any sentiment so intense; to which Mrs. -Gosselin rejoined with some sternness and, no doubt, considerable -wisdom: "Look out what you do then, or you'll be thought by everyone to -be in love with him!"</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>I know not whether it was this danger—that of appearing to be -moved to extremes—that weighed with Mary Gosselin; at any rate when -the day arrived she had decided to be perfectly colourless and take her -share of Lord Beaupré's hospitality. On perceiving that the house, when -with her companions she reached it, was full of visitors, she consoled -herself with the sense that such a share would be of the smallest. She even -wondered whether its smallness might not be caused in some degree by the -sufficiently startling presence, in this stronghold of the single life, -of Maud Ashbury and her mother. It was true that during the Saturday -evening she never saw their host address an observation to them; but she -was struck, as she had been struck before, with the girl's cold and -magnificent beauty. It was very well to say she had "gone off"; she was -still handsomer than anyone else. She had failed in everything she had -tried; the campaign undertaken with so much energy against young Raddle -had been conspicuously disastrous. Young Raddle had married his -grandmother, or a person who might have filled such an office, and Maud -was a year older, a year more disappointed and a year more ridiculous. -Nevertheless one could scarcely believe that a creature with such -advantages would always fail, though indeed the poor girl was stupid -enough to be a warning. Perhaps it would be at Bosco, or with the master -of Bosco, that fate had appointed her to succeed. Except Mary herself -she was the only young unmarried woman on the scene, and Mary glowed -with the generous sense of not being a competitor. She felt as much out -of the question as the blooming wives, the heavy matrons, who formed the -rest of the female contingent. Before the evening closed, however, her -host, who, she saw, was delightful in his own house, mentioned to her -that he had a couple of guests who had not been invited.</p> - -<p>"Not invited?"</p> - -<p>"They drove up to my door as they might have done to an inn. They asked -for rooms and complained of those that were given them. Don't pretend -not to know who they are."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean the Ashburys? How amusing!"</p> - -<p>"Don't laugh; it freezes my blood."</p> - -<p>"Do you really mean you're afraid of them?"</p> - -<p>"I tremble like a leaf. Some monstrous ineluctable fate seems to look at -me out of their eyes."</p> - -<p>"That's because you secretly admire Maud. How can you help it? She's -extremely good-looking, and if you get rid of her mother she'll become -a very nice girl."</p> - -<p>"It's an odious thing, no doubt, to say about a young person under one's -own roof, but I don't think I ever saw any one who happened to be less -to my taste," said Guy Firminger. "I don't know why I don't turn them -out even now."</p> - -<p>Mary persisted in sarcasm. "Perhaps you can make her have a worse time -by letting her stay."</p> - -<p>"<i>Please</i> don't laugh," her interlocutor repeated. "Such a fact as -I have mentioned to you seems to me to speak volumes—to show you what -my life is."</p> - -<p>"Oh, your life, your life!" Mary Gosselin murmured, with her mocking -note.</p> - -<p>"Don't you agree that at such a rate it may easily become -impossible?"</p> - -<p>"Many people would change with you. I don't see what there is for you to -do but to bear your cross!"</p> - -<p>"That's easy talk!" Lord Beaupré sighed.</p> - -<p>"Especially from me, do you mean? How do you know I don't bear -mine?"</p> - -<p>"Yours?" he asked vaguely.</p> - -<p>"How do you know that <i>I</i>'m not persecuted, that <i>my</i> -footsteps are not dogged, that <i>my</i> life isn't a burden?"</p> - -<p>They were walking in the old gardens, the proprietor of which, at this, -stopped short. "Do you mean by fellows who want to marry you?"</p> - -<p>His tone produced on his companion's part an irrepressible peal of -hilarity; but she walked on as she exclaimed: "You speak as if there -couldn't <i>be</i> such madmen!"</p> - -<p>"Of course such a charming girl must be made up to," Guy Firminger -conceded as he overtook her.</p> - -<p>"I don't speak of it; I keep quiet about it."</p> - -<p>"You realise then, at any rate, that it's all horrid when you don't care -for them."</p> - -<p>"I suffer in silence, because I know there are worse tribulations. It -seems to me you ought to remember that," Mary continued. "Your cross is -small compared with your crown. You've everything in the world that most -people most desire, and I'm bound to say I think your life is made very -comfortable for you. If you're oppressed by the quantity of interest and -affection you inspire you ought simply to make up your mind to bear up -and be cheerful under it."</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré received this admonition with perfect good humour; he -professed himself able to do it full justice. He remarked that he would -gladly give up some of his material advantages to be a little less -badgered, and that he had been quite content with his former -insignificance. No doubt, however, such annoyances were the essential -drawbacks of ponderous promotions; one had to pay for everything. Mary -was quite right to rebuke him; her own attitude, as a young woman much -admired, was a lesson to his irritability. She cut this appreciation -short, speaking of something else; but a few minutes later he broke out -irrelevantly: "Why, if you are hunted as well as I, that dodge I proposed -to you would be just the thing for us <i>both</i>!" He had evidently -been reasoning it out.</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin was silent at first; she only paused gradually in their -walk at a point where four long alleys met. In the centre of the circle, -on a massive pedestal, rose in Italian bronze a florid, complicated -image, so that the place made a charming old-world picture. The grounds -of Bosco were stately without stiffness and full of marble terraces and -misty avenues. The fountains in particular were royal. The girl had told -her mother in London that she disliked this fine residence, but she now -looked round her with a vague pleased sigh, holding up her glass (she -had been condemned to wear one, with a long handle, since she was -fifteen), to consider the weather-stained garden group. "What a perfect -place of its kind!" she musingly exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Wouldn't it really be just the thing?" Lord Beaupré went on, with the -eagerness of his idea.</p> - -<p>"Wouldn't what be just the thing?"</p> - -<p>"Why, the defensive alliance we've already talked of. You wanted to know -the good it would do <i>you</i>. Now you see the good it would do you!"</p> - -<p>"I don't like practical jokes," said Mary. "The remedy's worse than the -disease," she added; and she began to follow one of the paths that took -the direction of the house.</p> - -<p>Poor Lord Beaupré was absurdly in love with his invention; he had all -an inventor's importunity. He kept up his attempt to place his "dodge" -in a favourable light, in spite of a further objection from his -companion, who assured him that it was one of those contrivances which -break down in practice in just the proportion in which they make a -figure in theory. At last she said: "I was not sincere just now when I -told you I'm worried. I'm not worried!"</p> - -<p>"They <i>don't</i> buzz about you?" Guy Firminger asked.</p> - -<p>She hesitated an instant. "They buzz about me; but at bottom it's -flattering and I don't mind it. Now please drop the subject."</p> - -<p>He dropped the subject, though not without congratulating her on the -fact that, unlike his infirm self, she could keep her head and her -temper. His infirmity found a trap laid for it before they had proceeded -twenty yards, as was proved by his sudden exclamation of horror. "Good -Heavens—if there isn't Lottie!"</p> - -<p>Mary perceived, in effect, in the distance a female figure coming -towards them over a stretch of lawn, and she simultaneously saw, as a -gentleman passed from behind a clump of shrubbery, that it was not -unattended. She recognized Charlotte Firminger, and she also -distinguished the gentleman. She was moved to larger mirth at the dismay -expressed by poor Firminger, but she was able to articulate: "Walking -with Mr. Brown."</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré stopped again before they were joined by the pair. "Does -<i>he</i> buzz about you?"</p> - -<p>"Mercy, what questions you ask!" his companion exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Does he—<i>please</i>?" the young man repeated with odd -intensity.</p> - -<p>Mary looked at him an instant; she was puzzled by the deep annoyance -that had flushed through the essential good-humour of his face. Then she -saw that this annoyance had exclusive reference to poor Charlotte; so -that it left her free to reply, with another laugh: "Well, yes—he -does. But you know I like it!"</p> - -<p>"I don't, then!" Before she could have asked him, even had she wished -to, in what manner such a circumstance concerned him, he added with his -droll agitation: "I never invited <i>her</i>, either! Don't let her get at -me!"</p> - -<p>"What can I do?" Mary demanded as the others advanced.</p> - -<p>"Please take her away; keep her yourself! I'll take the American, I'll -keep <i>him</i>," he murmured, inconsequently, as a bribe.</p> - -<p>"But I don't object to him."</p> - -<p>"Do you like him so much?"</p> - -<p>"Very much indeed," the girl replied.</p> - -<p>The reply was perhaps lost upon her interlocutor, whose eye now fixed -itself gloomily on the dauntless Charlotte. As Miss Firminger came -nearer he exclaimed almost loud enough for her to hear: "I think I shall -<i>murder</i> her some day!"</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin's first impression had been that, in his panic, under the -empire of that fixed idea to which he confessed himself subject, he -attributed to his kinswoman machinations and aggressions of which she -was incapable; an impression that might have been confirmed by this -young lady's decorous placidity, her passionless eyes, her -expressionless cheeks and colourless tones. She was ugly, yet she was -orthodox; she was not what writers of books called intense. But after -Mary, to oblige their host, had tried, successfully enough, to be -crafty, had drawn her on to stroll a little in advance of the two -gentlemen, she became promptly aware, by the mystical influence of -propinquity, that Miss Firminger was indeed full of views, of a purpose -single, simple and strong, which gave her the effect of a person -carrying with a stiff, steady hand, with eyes fixed and lips compressed, -a cup charged to the brim. She had driven over to lunch, driven from -somewhere in the neighbourhood; she had picked up some weak woman as an -escort. Mary, though she knew the neighbourhood, failed to recognize her -base of operations, and, as Charlotte was not specific, ended by -suspecting that, far from being entertained by friends, she had put up -at an inn and hired a fly. This suspicion startled her; it gave her for -the first time something of the measure of the passions engaged, and she -wondered to what the insecurity complained of by Guy might lead. -Charlotte, on arriving, had gone through a part of the house in quest of -its master (the servants being unable to tell her where he was), and she -had finally come upon Mr. Bolton-Brown, who was looking at old books in -the library. He had placed himself at her service, as if he had been -trained immediately to recognize in such a case his duty, and informing -her that he believed Lord Beaupré to be in the grounds, had come out -with her to help to find him. Lottie Firminger questioned her companion -about this accommodating person; she intimated that he was rather odd -but rather nice. Mary mentioned to her that Lord Beaupré thought highly -of him; she believed they were going somewhere together. At this Miss -Firminger turned round to look for them, but they had already -disappeared, and the girl became ominously dumb.</p> - -<p>Mary wondered afterwards what profit she could hope to derive from such -proceedings; they struck her own sense, naturally, as disreputable and -desperate. She was equally unable to discover the compensation they -offered, in another variety, to poor Maud Ashbury, whom Lord Beaupré, -the greater part of the day, neglected as conscientiously as he -neglected his cousin. She asked herself if he should be blamed, and -replied that the others should be blamed first. He got rid of Charlotte -somehow after tea; she had to fall back to her mysterious lines. Mary -knew this method would have been detestable to him—he hated to force -his friendly nature; she was sorry for him and wished to lose sight of -him. She wished not to be mixed up even indirectly with his -tribulations, and the fevered faces of the Ashburys were particularly -dreadful to her. She spent as much of the long summer afternoon as -possible out of the house, which indeed on such an occasion emptied -itself of most of its inmates. Mary Gosselin asked her brother to join -her in a devious ramble; she might have had other society, but she was -in a mood to prefer his. These two were "great chums," and they had been -separated so long that they had arrears of talk to make up. They had -been at Bosco more than once, and though Hugh Gosselin said that the -land of the free (which he had assured his sister was even more enslaved -than dear old England) made one forget there were such spots on earth, -they both remembered, a couple of miles away, a little ancient church to -which the walk across the fields would be the right thing. They talked -of other things as they went, and among them they talked of Mr. -Bolton-Brown, in regard to whom Hugh, as scantily addicted to enthusiasm -as to bursts of song (he was determined not to be taken in), became, in -commendation, almost lyrical. Mary asked what he had done with his -paragon, and he replied that he believed him to have gone out stealthily -to sketch: they might come across him. He was extraordinarily clever at -water-colours, but haunted with the fear that the public practice of -such an art on Sunday was viewed with disfavour in England. Mary -exclaimed that this was the respectable fact, and when her brother -ridiculed the idea she told him she had already noticed he had lost all -sense of things at home, so that Mr. Bolton-Brown was apparently a -better Englishman than he. "He is indeed—he's awfully artificial!" -Hugh returned; but it must be added that in spite of this rigour their -American friend, when they reached the goal of their walk, was to be -perceived in an irregular attitude in the very churchyard. He was -perched on an old flat tomb, with a box of colours beside him and a -sketch half completed. Hugh asserted that this exercise was the only -thing that Mr. Bolton-Brown really cared for, but the young man -protested against the imputation in the face of an achievement so -modest. He showed his sketch to Mary however, and it consoled her for -not having kept up her own experiments; she never could make her trees -so leafy. He had found a lovely bit on the other side of the hill, a bit -he should like to come back to, and he offered to show it to his -friends. They were on the point of starting with him to look at it when -Hugh Gosselin, taking out his watch, remembered the hour at which he had -promised to be at the house again to give his mother, who wanted a -little mild exercise, his arm. His sister, at this, said she would go -back with him; but Bolton-Brown interposed an earnest inquiry. Mightn't -she let Hugh keep his appointment and let <i>him</i> take her over the hill -and bring her home?</p> - -<p>"Happy thought—<i>do</i> that!" said Hugh, with a crudity that -showed the girl how completely he had lost his English sense. He perceived -however in an instant that she was embarrassed, whereupon he went on: "My -dear child, I've walked with girls so often in America that we really ought -to let poor Brown walk with one in England." I know not if it was the -effect of this plea or that of some further eloquence of their friend; -at any rate Mary Gosselin in the course of another minute had accepted -the accident of Hugh's secession, had seen him depart with an injunction -to her to render it clear to poor Brown that he had made quite a -monstrous request. As she went over the hill with her companion she -reflected that since she had granted the request it was not in her -interest to pretend she had gone out of her way. She wondered moreover -whether her brother had wished to throw them together: it suddenly -occurred to her that the whole incident might have been prearranged. The -idea made her a little angry with Hugh; it led her however to entertain -no resentment against the other party (if party Mr. Brown had been) to -the transaction. He told her all the delight that certain sweet old -corners of rural England excited in his mind, and she liked him for -hovering near some of her own secrets.</p> - -<p>Hugh Gosselin meanwhile, at Bosco, strolling on the terrace with his -mother, who preferred walks that were as slow as conspiracies and had -had much to say to him about his extraordinary indiscretion, repeated -over and over (it ended by irritating her), that as he himself had been -out for hours with American girls it was only fair to let their friend -have a turn with an English one.</p> - -<p>"Pay as much as you like, but don't pay with your sister!" Mrs. Gosselin -replied; while Hugh submitted that it was just his sister who was -required to make the payment <i>his</i>. She turned his logic to easy scorn -and she waited on the terrace till she had seen the two explorers -reappear. When the ladies went to dress for dinner she expressed to her -daughter her extreme disapproval of such conduct, and Mary did nothing -more to justify herself than to exclaim at first "Poor dear man!" and -then to say "I was afraid you wouldn't like it." There were reservations -in her silence that made Mrs. Gosselin uneasy, and she was glad that at -dinner Mr. Bolton-Brown had to take in Mrs. Ashbury: it served him so -right. This arrangement had in Mrs. Gosselin's eyes the added merit of -serving Mrs. Ashbury right. She was more uneasy than ever when after -dinner, in the drawing-room, she saw Mary sit for a period on the same -small sofa with the culpable American. This young couple leaned back -together familiarly, and their conversation had the air of being -desultory without being in the least difficult. At last she quitted her -place and went over to them, remarking to Mr. Bolton-Brown that she wanted -him to come and talk a bit to <i>her</i>. She conducted him to another -part of the room, which was vast and animated by scattered groups, and -held him there very persuasively, quite maternally, till the approach of -the hour at which the ladies would exchange looks and murmur -good-nights. She made him talk about America, though he wanted to talk -about England, and she judged that she gave him an impression of the -kindest attention, though she was really thinking, in alternation, of -three important things. One of these was a circumstance of which she had -become conscious only just after sitting down with him—the prolonged -absence of Lord Beaupré from the drawing-room; the second was the -absence, equally marked (to her imagination) of Maud Ashbury; the third -was a matter different altogether. "England gives one such a sense of -immemorial continuity, something that drops like a plummet-line into the -past," said the young American, ingeniously exerting himself while Mrs. -Gosselin, rigidly contemporaneous, strayed into deserts of conjecture. -Had the fact that their host was out of the room any connection with the -fact that the most beautiful, even though the most suicidal, of his -satellites had quitted it? Yet if poor Guy was taking a turn by -starlight on the terrace with the misguided girl, what had he done with -his resentment at her invasion and by what inspiration of despair had -Maud achieved such a triumph? The good lady studied Mrs. Ashbury's face -across the room; she decided that triumph, accompanied perhaps with a -shade of nervousness, looked out of her insincere eyes. An intelligent -consciousness of ridicule was at any rate less present in them than -ever. While Mrs. Gosselin had her infallible finger on the pulse of the -occasion one of the doors opened to readmit Lord Beaupré, who struck -her as pale and who immediately approached Mrs. Ashbury with a remark -evidently intended for herself alone. It led this lady to rise with a -movement of dismay and, after a question or two, leave the room. Lord -Beaupré left it again in her company. Mr. Bolton-Brown had also noticed -the incident; his conversation languished and he asked Mrs. Gosselin if -she supposed anything had happened. She turned it over a moment and then -she said: "Yes, something will have happened to Miss Ashbury."</p> - -<p>"What do you suppose? Is she ill?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know; we shall see. They're capable of anything."</p> - -<p>"Capable of anything?"</p> - -<p>"I've guessed it,—she wants to have a grievance."</p> - -<p>"A grievance?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was mystified.</p> - -<p>"Of course you don't understand; how should you? Moreover it doesn't -signify. But I'm so vexed with them (he's a very old friend of ours) -that really, though I dare say I'm indiscreet, I can't speak civilly of -them."</p> - -<p>"Miss Ashbury's a wonderful type," said the young American.</p> - -<p>This remark appeared to irritate his companion. "I see perfectly what -has happened; she has made a scene."</p> - -<p>"A scene?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was terribly out of it.</p> - -<p>"She has tried to be injured—to provoke him, I mean, to some act -of impatience, to some failure of temper, of courtesy. She has asked him if -he wishes her to leave the house at midnight, and he may have -answered——But no, he wouldn't!" Mrs. Gosselin suppressed the -wild supposition.</p> - -<p>"How you read it! She looks so quiet."</p> - -<p>"Her mother has coached her, and (I won't pretend to say <i>exactly</i> -what has happened) they've done, somehow, what they wanted; they've got him -to do something to them that he'll have to make up for."</p> - -<p>"What an evolution of ingenuity!" the young man laughed.</p> - -<p>"It often answers."</p> - -<p>"Will it in this case?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin was silent a moment. "It <i>may</i>."</p> - -<p>"Really, you think?"</p> - -<p>"I mean it might if it weren't for something else."</p> - -<p>"I'm too judicious to ask what that is."</p> - -<p>"I'll tell you when we're back in town," said Mrs. Gosselin, getting -up.</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré was restored to them, and the ladies prepared to withdraw. -Before she went to bed Mrs. Gosselin asked him if there had been -anything the matter with Maud; to which he replied with abysmal -blankness (she had never seen him wear just that face) that he was -afraid Miss Ashbury was ill. She proved in fact in the morning too -unwell to return to London: a piece of news communicated to Mrs. -Gosselin at breakfast.</p> - -<p>"She'll have to stay; I can't turn her out of the house," said Guy -Firminger.</p> - -<p>"Very well; let her stay her fill!"</p> - -<p>"I wish you would stay too," the young man went on.</p> - -<p>"Do you mean to nurse her?"</p> - -<p>"No, her mother must do that. I mean to keep me company."</p> - -<p>"<i>You</i>? You're not going up?"</p> - -<p>"I think I had better wait over to-day, or long enough to see what's the -matter."</p> - -<p>"Don't you <i>know</i> what's the matter?"</p> - -<p>He was silent a moment. "I may have been nasty last night."</p> - -<p>"You have compunctions? You're too good-natured."</p> - -<p>"I dare say I hit rather wild. It will look better for me to stop over -twenty-four hours."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin fixed her eyes on a distant object. "Let no one ever say -you're selfish!"</p> - -<p>"<i>Does</i> anyone ever say it?"</p> - -<p>"You're too generous, you're too soft, you're too foolish. But if it -will give you any pleasure Mary and I will wait till to-morrow."</p> - -<p>"And Hugh, too, won't he, and Bolton-Brown?"</p> - -<p>"Hugh will do as he pleases. But don't keep the American."</p> - -<p>"Why not? He's all right."</p> - -<p>"That's why I want him to go," said Mrs. Gosselin, who could treat a -matter with candour, just as she could treat it with humour, at the -right moment.</p> - -<p>The party at Bosco broke up and there was a general retreat to town. -Hugh Gosselin pleaded pressing business, he accompanied the young -American to London. His mother and sister came back on the morrow, and -Bolton-Brown went in to see them, as he often did, at tea-time. He found -Mrs. Gosselin alone in the drawing-room, and she took such a convenient -occasion to mention to him, what she had withheld on the eve of their -departure from Bosco, the reason why poor Maud Ashbury's frantic assault -on the master of that property would be vain. He was greatly surprised, -the more so that Hugh hadn't told him. Mrs. Gosselin replied that Hugh -didn't know: she had not seen him all day and it had only just come out. -Hugh's friend at any rate was deeply interested, and his interest took -for several minutes the form of throbbing silence. At last Mrs. Gosselin -heard a sound below, on which she said quickly: "That's Hugh—I'll -tell him now!" She left the room with the request that their visitor would -wait for Mary, who would be down in a moment. During the instants that -he spent alone the visitor lurched, as if he had been on a deck in a -blow, to the window, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, -staring vacantly into Chester Street; then, turning away, he gave -himself, with an odd ejaculation, an impatient shake which had the -effect of enabling him to meet Mary Gosselin composedly enough when she -came in. It took her mother apparently some time to communicate the news -to Hugh, so that Bolton-Brown had a considerable margin for nervousness -and hesitation before he could say to the girl, abruptly, but with an -attempt at a voice properly gay: "You must let me very heartily -congratulate you!"</p> - -<p>Mary stared. "On what?"</p> - -<p>"On your engagement."</p> - -<p>"My engagement?"</p> - -<p>"To Lord Beaupré."</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin looked strange; she coloured. "Who told you I'm -engaged?"</p> - -<p>"Your mother—just now."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, turning away. She went and rang the bell for -fresh tea, rang it with noticeable force. But she said "Thank you very -much!" before the servant came.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>Bolton-Brown did something that evening toward disseminating the news: -he told it to the first people he met socially after leaving Chester -Street; and this although he had to do himself a certain violence in -speaking. He would have preferred to hold his peace; therefore if he -resisted his inclination it was for an urgent purpose. This purpose was -to prove to himself that he didn't mind. A perfect indifference could be -for him the only result of any understanding Mary Gosselin might arrive -at with anyone, and he wanted to be more and more conscious of his -indifference. He was aware indeed that it required demonstration, and -this was why he was almost feverishly active. He could mentally concede -at least that he had been surprised, for he had suspected nothing at -Bosco. When a fellow was attentive in America everyone knew it, and -judged by this standard Lord Beaupré made no show: how otherwise should -<i>he</i> have achieved that sweet accompanied ramble? Everything at any -rate was lucid now, except perhaps a certain ambiguity in Hugh Gosselin, -who on coming into the drawing-room with his mother had looked flushed and -grave and had stayed only long enough to kiss Mary and go out again. -There had been nothing effusive in the scene; but then there was nothing -effusive in any English scene. This helped to explain why Miss Gosselin -had been so blank during the minutes she spent with him before her -mother came back.</p> - -<p>He himself wanted to cultivate tranquillity, and he felt that he did so -the next day in not going again to Chester Street. He went instead to -the British Museum, where he sat quite like an elderly gentleman, with -his hands crossed on the top of his stick and his eyes fixed on an -Assyrian bull. When he came away, however, it was with the resolution to -move briskly; so that he walked westward the whole length of Oxford -Street and arrived at the Marble Arch. He stared for some minutes at -this monument, as in the national collection he had stared at even less -intelligible ones; then brushing away the apprehension that he should -meet two persons riding together, he passed into the park. He didn't -care a straw whom he met. He got upon the grass and made his way to the -southern expanse, and when he reached the Row he dropped into a chair, -rather tired, to watch the capering procession of riders. He watched it -with a lustreless eye, for what he seemed mainly to extract from it was -a vivification of his disappointment. He had had a hope that he should -not be forced to leave London without inducing Mary Gosselin to ride -with him; but that prospect failed, for what he had accomplished in the -British Museum was the determination to go to Paris. He tried to think -of the attractions supposed to be evoked by that name, and while he was -so engaged he recognised that a gentleman on horseback, close to the -barrier of the Row, was making a sign to him. The gentleman was Lord -Beaupré, who had pulled up his horse and whose sign the young American -lost no time in obeying. He went forward to speak to his late host, but -during the instant of the transit he was able both to observe that Mary -Gosselin was not in sight and to ask himself why she was not. She rode -with her brother; why then didn't she ride with her future husband? It -was singular at such a moment to see her future husband disporting -himself alone. This personage conversed a few moments with Bolton-Brown, -said it was too hot to ride, but that he ought to be mounted (<i>he</i> -would give him a mount if he liked) and was on the point of turning away -when his interlocutor succumbed to the temptation to put his modesty to the -test.</p> - -<p>"Good-bye, but let me congratulate you first," said Bolton-Brown.</p> - -<p>"Congratulate me? On what?" His look, his tone were very much what Mary -Gosselin's had been.</p> - -<p>"Why, on your engagement. Haven't you heard of it?"</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré stared a moment while his horse shifted uneasily. Then he -laughed and said: "Which of them do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"There's only one I know anything about. To Miss Gosselin," Brown added, -after a puzzled pause.</p> - -<p>"Oh yes, I see—thanks so much!" With this, letting his horse go, -Lord Beaupré broke off, while Bolton-Brown stood looking after him and -saying to himself that perhaps he <i>didn't</i> know! The chapter of -English oddities was long.</p> - -<p>But on the morrow the announcement was in "The Morning Post," and that -surely made it authentic. It was doubtless only superficially singular -that Guy Firminger should have found himself unable to achieve a call in -Chester Street until this journal had been for several hours in -circulation. He appeared there just before luncheon, and the first -person who received him was Mrs. Gosselin. He had always liked her, -finding her infallible on the question of behaviour; but he was on this -occasion more than ever struck with her ripe astuteness, her independent -wisdom.</p> - -<p>"I knew what you wanted, I knew what you needed, I knew the subject on -which you had pressed her," the good lady said; "and after Sunday I -found myself really haunted with your dangers. There was danger in the -air at Bosco, in your own defended house; it seemed to me too monstrous. I -said to myself 'We <i>can</i> help him, poor dear, and we <i>must</i>. It's -the least one can do for so old and so good a friend.' I decided what to -do: I simply put this other story about. In London that always answers. I -knew that Mary pitied you really as much as I do, and that what she saw -at Bosco had been a revelation—had at any rate brought your situation -home to her. Yet of course she would be shy about saying out for -herself: 'Here I am—I'll do what you want.' The thing was for me to -say it <i>for</i> her; so I said it first to that chattering American. He -repeated it to several others, and there you are! I just forced her hand -a little, but it's all right. All she has to do is not to contradict it. -It won't be any trouble and you'll be comfortable. That will be our -reward!" smiled Mrs. Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"Yes, all she has to do is not to contradict it," Lord Beaupré replied, -musing a moment. "It <i>won't</i> be any trouble," he added, "and I -<i>hope</i> I shall be comfortable." He thanked Mrs. Gosselin formally and -liberally, and expressed all his impatience to assure Mary herself of his -deep obligation to her; upon which his hostess promised to send her -daughter to him on the instant: she would go and call her, so that they -might be alone. Before Mrs. Gosselin left him however she touched on one or -two points that had their little importance. Guy Firminger had asked for -Hugh, but Hugh had gone to the City, and his mother mentioned candidly -that he didn't take part in the game. She even disclosed his reason: he -thought there was a want of dignity in it. Lord Beaupré stared at this -and after a moment exclaimed: "Dignity? Dignity be hanged! One must save -one's life!"</p> - -<p>"Yes, but the point poor Hugh makes is that one must save it by the use -of one's <i>own</i> wits, or one's <i>own</i> arms and legs. But do you -know what I said to him?" Mrs. Gosselin continued.</p> - -<p>"Something very clever, I daresay."</p> - -<p>"That if <i>we</i> were drowning you'd be the very first to jump in. And -we may fall overboard yet!" Fidgeting there with his hands in his pockets -Lord Beaupré gave a laugh at this, but assured her that there was -nothing in the world for which they mightn't count upon him. None the -less she just permitted herself another warning, a warning, it is true, -that was in his own interest, a reminder of a peril that he ought -beforehand to look in the face. Wasn't there always the chance—just -the bare chance—that a girl in Mary's position would, in the event, -decline to let him off, decline to release him even on the day he should -wish to marry? She wasn't speaking of Mary, but there were of course girls -who would play him that trick. Guy Firminger considered this contingency; -then he declared that it wasn't a question of 'girls,' it was simply a -question of dear old Mary! If <i>she</i> should wish to hold him, so much -the better: he would do anything in the world that she wanted. "Don't let -us dwell on such vulgarities; but I had it on my conscience!" Mrs. Gosselin -wound up.</p> - -<p>She left him, but at the end of three minutes Mary came in, and the -first thing she said was: "Before you speak a word, please understand -this, that it's wholly mamma's doing. I hadn't dreamed of it, but she -suddenly began to tell people."</p> - -<p>"It was charming of her, and it's charming of you!" the visitor -cried.</p> - -<p>"It's not charming of any one, I think," said Mary Gosselin, looking at -the carpet. "It's simply idiotic."</p> - -<p>"Don't be nasty about it. It will be tremendous fun."</p> - -<p>"I've only consented because mamma says we owe it to you," the girl -went on.</p> - -<p>"Never mind your reason—the end justifies the means. I can never -thank you enough nor tell you what a weight it lifts off my shoulders. Do -you know I feel the difference already?—a peace that passeth -understanding!" Mary replied that this was childish; how could such a -feeble fiction last? At the very best it could live but an hour, and -then he would be no better off than before. It would bristle moreover -with difficulties and absurdities; it would be so much more trouble than -it was worth. She reminded him that so ridiculous a service had never -been asked of any girl, and at this he seemed a little struck; he said: -"Ah, well, if it's positively disagreeable to you we'll instantly drop -the idea. But I—I thought you really liked me enough——!" -She turned away impatiently, and he went on to argue imperturbably that she -had always treated him in the kindest way in the world. He added that the -worst was over, the start, they were off: the thing would be in all the -evening papers. Wasn't it much simpler to accept it? That was all they -would have to do; and all <i>she</i> would have to do would be not to -gainsay it and to smile and thank people when she was congratulated. She -would have to <i>act</i> a little, but that would just be part of the fun. -Oh, he hadn't the shadow of a scruple about taking the world in; the world -deserved it richly, and she couldn't deny that this was what she had -felt for him, that she had really been moved to compassion. He grew -eloquent and charged her with having recognised in his predicament a -genuine motive for charity. Their little plot would last what it -could—it would be a part of their amusement to <i>make</i> it last. -Even if it should be but a thing of a day there would have been always so -much gained. But they would be ingenious, they would find ways, they would -have no end of sport.</p> - -<p>"<i>You</i> must be ingenious; I can't," said Mary. "If people scarcely -ever see us together they'll guess we're trying to humbug them."</p> - -<p>"But they <i>will</i> see us together. We <i>are</i> together. We've -been together—I mean we've seen a lot of each other—all our -lives."</p> - -<p>"Ah, not <i>that</i> way!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, trust me to work it right!" cried the young man, whose imagination -had now evidently begun to glow in the air of their pious fraud.</p> - -<p>"You'll find it a dreadful bore," said Mary Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"Then I'll drop it, don't you see? And <i>you</i>'ll drop it, of course, -the moment <i>you</i>'ve had enough," Lord Beaupré punctually added. "But -as soon as you begin to realise what a lot of good you do me you won't -<i>want</i> to drop it. That is if you're what I take you for!" laughed his -lordship.</p> - -<p>If a third person had been present at this conversation—and there -was nothing in it surely that might not have been spoken before a trusty -listener—that person would perhaps have thought, from the immediate -expression of Mary Gosselin's face, that she was on the point of -exclaiming "You take me for too big a fool!" No such ungracious words in -fact however passed her lips; she only said after an instant: "What -reason do you propose to give, on the day you need one, for our -rupture?"</p> - -<p>Her interlocutor stared. "To you, do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"<i>I</i> sha'n't ask you for one. I mean to other people."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'll tell them you're sick of me. I'll put everything on you, and -you'll put everything on me."</p> - -<p>"You <i>have</i> worked it out!" Mary exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Oh, I shall be intensely considerate."</p> - -<p>"Do you call that being considerate—publicly accusing me?"</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger stared again. "Why, isn't that the reason <i>you</i>'ll -give?"</p> - -<p>She looked at him an instant. "I won't tell you the reason I shall -give."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I shall learn it from others."</p> - -<p>"I hope you'll like it when you do!" said Mary, with sudden gaiety; and -she added frankly though kindly the hope that he might soon light upon -some young person who would really meet his requirements. He replied -that he shouldn't be in a hurry—that was now just the comfort; and -she, as if thinking over to the end the list of arguments against his -clumsy contrivance, broke out: "And of course you mustn't dream of giving -me anything—any tokens or presents."</p> - -<p>"Then it won't look natural."</p> - -<p>"That's exactly what I say. You can't make it deceive anybody."</p> - -<p>"I <i>must</i> give you something—something that people can see. -There must be some evidence! You can simply put my offerings away after a -little and give them back." But about this Mary was visibly serious; she -declared that she wouldn't touch anything that came from his hand, and -she spoke in such a tone that he coloured a little and hastened to say: -"Oh, all right, I shall be thoroughly careful!" This appeared to -complete their understanding; so that after it was settled that for the -deluded world they were engaged, there was obviously nothing for him to -do but to go. He therefore shook hands with her very gratefully and -departed.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>V</h4> - - -<p>He was able promptly to assure his accomplice that their little plot was -working to a charm; it already made such a difference for the better. -Only a week had elapsed, but he felt quite another man; his life was no -longer spent in springing to arms and he had ceased to sleep in his -boots. The ghost of his great fear was laid, he could follow out his -inclinations and attend to his neglected affairs. The news had been a -bomb in the enemy's camp, and there were plenty of blank faces to -testify to the confusion it had wrought. Every one was "sold" and every -one made haste to clap him on the back. Lottie Firminger only had -written in terms of which no notice could be taken, though of course he -expected, every time he came in, to find her waiting in his hall. Her -mother was coming up to town and he should have the family at his ears; -but, taking them as a single body, he could manage them, and that was a -detail. The Ashburys had remained at Bosco till that establishment was -favoured with the tidings that so nearly concerned it (they were -communicated to Maud's mother by the housekeeper), and then the -beautiful sufferer had found in her defeat strength to seek another -asylum. The two ladies had departed for a destination unknown; he didn't -think they had turned up in London. Guy Firminger averred that there -were precious portable objects which he was sure he should miss on -returning to his country home.</p> - -<p>He came every day to Chester Street, and was evidently much less bored -than Mary had prefigured by this regular tribute to verisimilitude. It -was amusement enough to see the progress of their comedy and to invent -new touches for some of its scenes. The girl herself was amused; it was -an opportunity like another for cleverness such as hers and had much in -common with private theatricals, especially with the rehearsals, the -most amusing part. Moreover she was good-natured enough to be really -pleased at the service it was impossible for her not to acknowledge that -she had rendered. Each of the parties to this queer contract had -anecdotes and suggestions for the other, and each reminded the other -duly that they must at every step keep their story straight. Except for -the exercise of this care Mary Gosselin found her duties less onerous -than she had feared and her part in general much more passive than -active. It consisted indeed largely of murmuring thanks and smiling and -looking happy and handsome; as well as perhaps also in saying in answer -to many questions that nothing as yet was fixed and of trying to remain -humble when people expressed without ceremony that such a match was a -wonder for such a girl. Her mother on the other hand was devotedly -active. She treated the situation with private humour but with public -zeal and, making it both real and ideal, told so many fibs about it that -there were none left for Mary. The girl had failed to understand Mrs. -Gosselin's interest in this elaborate pleasantry; the good lady had seen -in it from the first more than she herself had been able to see. Mary -performed her task mechanically, sceptically, but Mrs. Gosselin attacked -hers with conviction and had really the air at moments of thinking that -their fable had crystallised into fact. Mary allowed her as little of -this attitude as possible and was ironical about her duplicity; warnings -which the elder lady received with gaiety until one day when repetition -had made them act on her nerves. Then she begged her daughter, with -sudden asperity, not to talk to her as if she were a fool. She had already -had words with Hugh about some aspects of the affair—so much as -this was evident in Chester Street; a smothered discussion which at the -moment had determined the poor boy to go to Paris with Bolton-Brown. The -young men came back together after Mary had been "engaged" three weeks, -but she remained in ignorance of what passed between Hugh and his mother -the night of his return. She had gone to the opera with Lady Whiteroy, -after one of her invariable comments on Mrs. Gosselin's invariable -remark that of course Guy Firminger would spend his evening in their -box. The remedy for his trouble, Lord Beaupré's prospective bride had -said, was surely worse than the disease; she was in perfect good faith -when she wondered that his lordship's sacrifices, his laborious -cultivation of appearances should "pay."</p> - -<p>Hugh Gosselin dined with his mother and at dinner talked of Paris and of -what he had seen and done there; he kept the conversation superficial -and after he had heard how his sister, at the moment, was occupied, -asked no question that might have seemed to denote an interest in the -success of the experiment for which in going abroad he had declined -responsibility. His mother could not help observing that he never -mentioned Guy Firminger by either of his names, and it struck her as a -part of the same detachment that later, up stairs (she sat with him -while he smoked), he should suddenly say as he finished a cigar:</p> - -<p>"I return to New York next week."</p> - -<p>"Before your time? What for?" Mrs. Gosselin was horrified.</p> - -<p>"Oh, mamma, you know what for!"</p> - -<p>"Because you still resent poor Mary's good-nature?"</p> - -<p>"I don't understand it, and I don't like things I don't understand; -therefore I'd rather not be here to see it. Besides I really can't tell -a pack of lies."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin exclaimed and protested; she had arguments to prove that -there was no call at present for the least deflection from the truth; -all that any one had to reply to any question (and there could be none -that was embarrassing save the ostensible determination of the date of -the marriage) was that nothing was settled as yet—a form of words in -which for the life of her she couldn't see any perjury. "Why, then, go -in for anything in such bad taste, to culminate only in something so -absurd?" Hugh demanded. "If the essential part of the matter can't be -spoken of as fixed nothing is fixed, the deception becomes transparent -and they give the whole idea away. It's child's play."</p> - -<p>"That's why it's so innocent. All I can tell you is that practically -their attitude answers; he's delighted with its success. Those dreadful -women have given him up; they've already found some other victim."</p> - -<p>"And how is it all to end, please?"</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin was silent a moment. "Perhaps it won't end."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean that the engagement will become real?"</p> - -<p>Again the good lady said nothing until she broke out: "My dear boy, -can't you trust your poor old mummy?"</p> - -<p>"Is <i>that</i> your speculation? Is that Mary's? I never heard of -anything so odious!" Hugh Gosselin cried. But she defended his sister with -eagerness, with a gloss of coaxing, maternal indignation, declaring that -Mary's disinterestedness was complete—she had the perfect proof of -it. Hugh was conscious as he lighted another cigar that the conversation -was more fundamental than any that he had ever had with his mother, who -however hung fire but for an instant when he asked her what this -"perfect proof" might be. He didn't doubt of his sister, he admitted -that; but the perfect proof would make the whole thing more luminous. It -took finally the form of a confession from Mrs. Gosselin that the girl -evidently liked—well, greatly liked—Mr. Bolton-Brown. Yes, the -good lady had seen for herself at Bosco that the smooth young American was -making up to her and that, time and opportunity aiding, something might -very well happen which could not be regarded as satisfactory. She had -been very frank with Mary, had besought her not to commit herself to a -suitor who in the very nature of the case couldn't meet the most -legitimate of their views. Mary, who pretended not to know what their -"views" were, had denied that she was in danger; but Mrs. Gosselin had -assured her that she had all the air of it and had said triumphantly: -"Agree to what Lord Beaupré asks of you, and I'll <i>believe</i> you." Mary -had wished to be believed—so she had agreed. That was all the -witchcraft any one had used.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin out-talked her son, but there were two or three plain -questions that he came back to; and the first of these bore upon the -ground of her aversion to poor Bolton-Brown. He told her again, as he -had told her before, that his friend was that rare bird a maker of money -who was also a man of culture. He was a gentleman to his finger-tips, -accomplished, capable, kind, with a charming mother and two lovely -sisters (she should see them!) the sort of fellow in short whom it was -stupid not to appreciate.</p> - -<p>"I believe it all, and if I had three daughters he should be very -welcome to one of them."</p> - -<p>"You might easily have had three daughters who wouldn't attract him at -all! You've had the good fortune to have one who does, and I think you -do wrong to interfere with it."</p> - -<p>"My eggs are in one basket then, and that's a reason the more for -preferring Lord Beaupré," said Mrs. Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"Then it <i>is</i> your calculation—?" stammered Hugh in dismay; -on which she coloured and requested that he would be a little less rough -with his mother. She would rather part with him immediately, sad as that -would be, than that he should attempt to undo what she had done. When Hugh -replied that it was not to Mary but to Beaupré himself that he judged -it important he should speak, she informed him that a rash remonstrance -might do his sister a cruel wrong. Dear Guy was <i>most</i> attentive.</p> - -<p>"If you mean that he really cares for her there's the less excuse for -his taking such a liberty with her. He's either in love with her or he -isn't. If he is, let him make her a serious offer; if he isn't, let him -leave her alone."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin looked at her son with a kind of patient joy. "He's in -love with her, but he doesn't know it."</p> - -<p>"He ought to know it, and if he's so idiotic I don't see that we ought -to consider him."</p> - -<p>"Don't worry—he <i>shall</i> know it!" Mrs. Gosselin cried; and, -continuing to struggle with Hugh, she insisted on the delicacy of the -situation. She made a certain impression on him, though on confused -grounds; she spoke at one moment as if he was to forbear because the matter -was a make-believe that happened to contain a convenience for a distressed -friend, and at another as if one ought to strain a point because there -were great possibilities at stake. She was most lucid when she pictured -the social position and other advantages of a peer of the realm. What -had those of an American stockbroker, however amiable and with whatever -shrill belongings in the background, to compare with them? She was -inconsistent, but she was diplomatic, and the result of the discussion -was that Hugh Gosselin became conscious of a dread of "injuring" his -sister. He became conscious at the same time of a still greater -apprehension, that of seeing her arrive at the agreeable in a tortuous, -a second-rate manner. He might keep the peace to please his mother, but -he couldn't enjoy it, and he actually took his departure, travelling in -company with Bolton-Brown, who of course before going waited on the -ladies in Chester Street to thank them for the kindness they had shown -him. It couldn't be kept from Guy Firminger that Hugh was not happy, -though when they met, which was only once or twice before he quitted -London, Mary Gosselin's brother flattered himself that he was too proud -to show it. He had always liked old loafing Guy and it was disagreeable -to him not to like him now; but he was aware that he must either quarrel -with him definitely or not at all and that he had passed his word to his -mother. Therefore his attitude was strictly negative; he took with the -parties to it no notice whatever of the "engagement," and he couldn't -help it if to other people he had the air of not being initiated. They -doubtless thought him strangely fastidious. Perhaps he was; the tone of -London struck him in some respects as very horrid; he had grown in a -manner away from it. Mary was impenetrable; tender, gay, charming, but -with no patience, as she said, for his premature flight. Except when Lord -Beaupré was present you would not have dreamed that he existed for her. In -his company—he had to be present more or less of course—she -was simply like any other English girl who disliked effusiveness. They -had each the same manner, that of persons of rather a shy tradition who -were on their guard against public "spooning." They practised their -fraud with good taste, a good taste mystifying to Bolton-Brown, who -thought their precautions excessive. When he took leave of Mary Gosselin -her eyes consented for a moment to look deep down into his. He had been -from the first of the opinion that they were beautiful, and he was more -mystified than ever.</p> - -<p>If Guy Firminger had failed to ask Hugh Gosselin whether he had a fault -to find with what they were doing, this was, in spite of old friendship, -simply because he was too happy now to care much whom he didn't please, -to care at any rate for criticism. He had ceased to be critical himself, -and his high prosperity could take his blamelessness for granted. His -happiness would have been offensive if people generally hadn't liked -him, for it consisted of a kind of monstrous candid comfort. To take all -sorts of things for granted was still his great, his delightful -characteristic; but it didn't prevent his showing imagination and tact -and taste in particular circumstances. He made, in their little comedy, -all the right jokes and none of the wrong ones: the girl had an acute -sense that there were some jokes that would have been detestable. She -gathered that it was universally supposed she was having an -unprecedented season, and something of the glory of an enviable future -seemed indeed to hang about her. People no doubt thought it odd that she -didn't go about more with her future husband; but those who knew -anything about her knew that she had never done exactly as other girls -did. She had her own ways, her own freedoms and her own scruples. -Certainly he made the London weeks much richer than they had ever been -for a subordinate young person; he put more things into them, so that -they grew dense and complicated. This frightened her at moments, -especially when she thought with compunction that she was deceiving her -very friends. She didn't mind taking the vulgar world in, but there were -people she hated not to enlighten, to reassure. She could undeceive no -one now, and indeed she would have been ashamed. There were hours when -she wanted to stop—she had such a dread of doing too much; hours when -she thought with dismay that the fiction of the rupture was still to -come, with its horrid train of new untrue things. She spoke of it -repeatedly to her confederate, who only postponed and postponed, told -her she would never dream of forsaking him if she measured the good she -was doing him. She did measure it however when she met him in the great -world; she was of course always meeting him: that was the only way -appearances were kept up. There was a certain attitude she could allow -him to take on these occasions; it covered and carried off their -subterfuge. He could talk to her unmolested; for herself she never spoke -of anything but the charming girls, everywhere present, among whom he -could freely choose. He didn't protest, because to choose freely was -what he wanted, and they discussed these young ladies one by one. Some -she recommended, some she disparaged, but it was almost the only subject -she tolerated. It was her system in short, and she wondered he didn't -get tired of it; she was so tired of it herself.</p> - -<p>She tried other things that she thought he might find wearisome, but his -good-humour was magnificent. He was now really for the first time -enjoying his promotion, his wealth, his insight into the terms on which -the world offered itself to the happy few, and these terms made a -mixture healing to irritation. Once, at some glittering ball, he asked -her if she should be jealous if he were to dance again with Lady -Whiteroy, with whom he had danced already, and this was the only -occasion on which he had come near making a joke of the wrong sort. She -showed him what she thought of it and made him feel that the way to be -forgiven was to spend the rest of the evening with that lovely creature. -Now that the phalanx of the pressingly nubile was held in check there -was accordingly nothing to prevent his passing his time pleasantly. -Before he had taken this effective way the diplomatic mother, when she -spied him flirting with a married woman, felt that in urging a virgin -daughter's superior claims she worked for righteousness as well as for -the poor girl. But Mary Gosselin protected these scandals practically by -the still greater scandal of her indifference; so that he was in the odd -position of having waited to be confined to know what it was to be at -large. He had in other words the maximum of security with the minimum of -privation. The lovely creatures of Lady Whiteroy's order thought Mary -Gosselin charming, but they were the first to see through her falsity.</p> - -<p>All this carried our precious pair to the middle of July; but nearly a -month before that, one night under the summer stars, on the deck of the -steamer that was to reach New York on the morrow, something had passed -between Hugh Gosselin and his brooding American friend. The night was -warm and splendid; these were their last hours at sea, and Hugh, who had -been playing whist in the cabin, came up very late to take an -observation before turning in. It was in this way that he chanced on his -companion, who was leaning over the stern of the ship and gazing off, -beyond its phosphorescent track, at the muffled, moaning ocean, the -backward darkness, everything he had relinquished. Hugh stood by him for -a moment and then asked him what he was thinking about. Bolton-Brown -gave at first no answer; after which he turned round and, with his back -against the guard of the deck, looked up at the multiplied stars. "He -has it badly," Hugh Gosselin mentally commented. At last his friend -replied: "About something you said yesterday."</p> - -<p>"I forget what I said yesterday."</p> - -<p>"You spoke of your sister's intended marriage; it was the only time you -had spoken of it. You seemed to intimate that it might not after all -take place."</p> - -<p>Hugh hesitated a little. "Well, it <i>won't</i> take place. They're not -engaged, not really. This is a secret, a preposterous secret. I wouldn't -tell any one else, but I'm willing to tell you. It may make a difference -to you."</p> - -<p>Bolton-Brown turned his head; he looked at Hugh a minute through the -fresh darkness. "It does make a difference to me. But I don't -understand," he added.</p> - -<p>"Neither do I. I don't like it. It's a pretence, a temporary -make-believe, to help Beaupré through."</p> - -<p>"Through what?"</p> - -<p>"He's so run after."</p> - -<p>The young American stared, ejaculated, mused. "Oh, yes—your -mother told me."</p> - -<p>"It's a sort of invention of my mother's and a notion of his own (very -absurd, I think) till he can see his way. Mary serves as a kind of -escort for these first exposed months. It's ridiculous, but I don't know -that it hurts her."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" said Bolton-Brown.</p> - -<p>"I don't know either that it does her any good."</p> - -<p>"No!" said Bolton-Brown. Then he added: "It's certainly very kind of -her."</p> - -<p>"It's a case of old friends," Hugh explained, inadequately as he felt. -"He has always been in and out of our house."</p> - -<p>"But how will it end?"</p> - -<p>"I haven't the least idea."</p> - -<p>Bolton-Brown was silent; he faced about to the stern again and stared at -the rush of the ship. Then shifting his position once more: "Won't the -engagement, before they've done, develop into the regular thing?"</p> - -<p>Hugh felt as if his mother were listening. "I daresay not. If there were -even a remote chance of that, Mary wouldn't have consented."</p> - -<p>"But mayn't <i>he</i> easily find that—charming as she -is—he's in love with her?"</p> - -<p>"He's too much taken up with himself."</p> - -<p>"That's just a reason," said Bolton-Brown. "Love is selfish." He -considered a moment longer, then he went on: "And mayn't <i>she</i> -find—?"</p> - -<p>"Find what?" said Hugh, as he hesitated.</p> - -<p>"Why, that she likes him."</p> - -<p>"She likes him of course, else she wouldn't have come to his assistance. -But her certainty about herself must have been just what made her not -object to lending herself to the arrangement. She could do it decently -because she doesn't seriously care for him. If she did—!" Hugh -suddenly stopped.</p> - -<p>"If she did?" his friend repeated.</p> - -<p>"It would have been odious."</p> - -<p>"I see," said Bolton-Brown gently. "But how will they break off?"</p> - -<p>"It will be Mary who'll break off."</p> - -<p>"Perhaps she'll find it difficult."</p> - -<p>"She'll require a pretext."</p> - -<p>"I see," mused Bolton-Brown, shifting his position again.</p> - -<p>"She'll find one," Hugh declared.</p> - -<p>"I hope so," his companion responded.</p> - -<p>For some minutes neither of them spoke; then Hugh asked: "Are you in -love with her?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, my dear fellow!" Bolton-Brown wailed. He instantly added: "Will it -be any use for me to go back?"</p> - -<p>Again Hugh felt as if his mother were listening. But he answered: -"<i>Do</i> go back."</p> - -<p>"It's awfully strange," said Bolton-Brown. "I'll go back."</p> - -<p>"You had better wait a couple of months, you know."</p> - -<p>"Mayn't I lose her then?"</p> - -<p>"No—they'll drop it all."</p> - -<p>"I'll go back!" the American repeated, as if he hadn't heard. He was -restless, agitated; he had evidently been much affected. He fidgeted -away dimly, moved up the level length of the deck. Hugh Gosselin -lingered longer at the stern; he fell into the attitude in which he had -found the other, leaning over it and looking back at the great vague -distance they had come. He thought of his mother.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>VI</h4> - - -<p>To remind her fond parent of the vanity of certain expectations which -she more than suspected her of entertaining, Mary Gosselin, while she -felt herself intensely watched (it had all brought about a horrid new -situation at home) produced every day some fresh illustration of the -fact that people were no longer imposed upon. Moreover these -illustrations were not invented; the girl believed in them, and when -once she had begun to note them she saw them multiply fast. Lady -Whiteroy, for one, was distinctly suspicious; she had taken the liberty -more than once of asking the future Lady Beaupré what in the world was -the matter with her. Brilliant figure as she was and occupied with her -own pleasures, which were of a very independent nature, she had -nevertheless constituted herself Miss Gosselin's social sponsor: she -took a particular interest in her marriage, an interest all the greater -as it rested not only on a freely-professed regard for her, but on a -keen sympathy with the other party to the transaction. Lady Whiteroy, -who was very pretty and very clever and whom Mary secretly but -profoundly mistrusted, delighted in them both in short; so much so that -Mary judged herself happy to be in a false position, so certain should -she have been to be jealous had she been in a true one. This charming -woman threw out inquiries that made the girl not care to meet her eyes; -and Mary ended by forming a theory of the sort of marriage for Lord -Beaupré that Lady Whiteroy really would have appreciated. It would have -been a marriage to a fool, a marriage to Maud Ashbury or to Charlotte -Firminger. She would have her reasons for preferring that; and, as -regarded the actual prospect, she had only discovered that Mary was even -more astute than herself.</p> - -<p>It will be understood how much our young lady was on the crest of the -wave when I mention that in spite of this complicated consciousness she -was one of the ornaments (Guy Firminger was of course another) of the -party entertained by her zealous friend and Lord Whiteroy during the -Goodwood week. She came back to town with the firm intention of putting -an end to a comedy which had more than ever become odious to her; in -consequence of which she had on this subject with her fellow-comedian a -scene—the scene she had dreaded—half-pathetic, half-ridiculous. -He appealed to her, wrestled with her, took his usual ground that she was -saving his life without really lifting a finger. He denied that the -public was not satisfied with their pretexts for postponement, their -explanations of delay; what else was expected of a man who would wish to -celebrate his nuptials on a suitable scale, but who had the misfortune -to have had, one after another, three grievous bereavements? He promised -not to molest her for the next three months, to go away till his -"mourning" was over, to go abroad, to let her do as she liked. He -wouldn't come near her, he wouldn't even write (no one would know it), -if she would let him keep up the mere form of their fiction; and he -would let her off the very first instant he definitely perceived that -this expedient had ceased to be effective. She couldn't judge of -that—she must let <i>him</i> judge; and it was a matter in which she -could surely trust to his honour.</p> - -<p>Mary Gosselin trusted to it, but she insisted on his going away. When he -took such a tone as that she couldn't help being moved; he breathed with -such frank, generous lips on the irritation she had stored up against -him. Guy Firminger went to Homburg, and if his confederate consented not -to clip the slender thread by which this particular engagement still -hung, she made very short work with every other. A dozen invitations, -for Cowes, for the country, for Scotland, shimmered there before her, -made a pathway of flowers, but she sent barbarous excuses. When her -mother, aghast, said to her "What then will you do?" she replied in a -very conclusive manner "I'll go home!" Mrs. Gosselin was wise enough not -to struggle; she saw that the thread was delicate, that it must dangle -in quiet air. She therefore travelled back with her daughter to homely -Hampshire, feeling that they were people of less importance than they -had been for many a week. On the August afternoons they sat again on the -little lawn on which Guy Firminger had found them the day he first -became eloquent about the perils of the desirable young bachelor; and it -was on this very spot that, toward the end of the month, and with some -surprise, they beheld Mr. Bolton-Brown once more approach. He had come -back from America; he had arrived but a few days before; he was staying, -of all places in the world, at the inn in the village.</p> - -<p>His explanation of this caprice was of all explanations the oddest: he -had come three thousand miles for the love of water-colour. There was -nothing more sketchable than the sketchability of Hampshire—wasn't it -celebrated, classic? and he was so good as to include Mrs. Gosselin's -charming premises, and even their charming occupants, in his view of the -field. He fell to work with speed, with a sort of feverish eagerness; he -seemed possessed indeed by the frenzy of the brush. He sketched -everything on the place, and when he had represented an object once he -went straight at it again. His advent was soothing to Mary Gosselin, in -spite of his nervous activity; it must be admitted indeed that at the -moment he arrived she had already felt herself in quieter waters. The -August afternoons, the relinquishment of London, the simplified life, -had rendered her a service which, if she had freely qualified it, she -would have described as a restoration of her self-respect. If poor Guy -found any profit in such conditions as these there was no great reason -to repudiate him. She had so completely shaken off responsibility that -she took scarcely more than a languid interest in the fact, communicated -to her by Lady Whiteroy, that Charlotte Firminger had also, as the -newspapers said, "proceeded" to Homburg. Lady Whiteroy knew, for Lady -Whiteroy had "proceeded" as well; her physician had discovered in her -constitution a pressing need for the comfort imbibed in dripping -matutinal tumblers. She chronicled Charlotte's presence, and even to -some extent her behaviour, among the haunters of the spring, but it was -not till some time afterwards that Mary learned how Miss Firminger's -pilgrimage had been made under her ladyship's protection. This was a -further sign that, like Mrs. Gosselin, Lady Whiteroy had ceased to -struggle; she had, in town, only shrugged her shoulders ambiguously on -being informed that Lord Beaupré's intended was going down to her -stupid home.</p> - -<p>The fulness of Mrs. Gosselin's renunciation was apparent during the stay -of the young American in the neighbourhood of that retreat. She occupied -herself with her knitting, her garden and the cares of a punctilious -hospitality, but she had no appearance of any other occupation. When -people came to tea Bolton-Brown was always there, and she had the -self-control to attempt to say nothing that could assuage their natural -surprise. Mrs. Ashbury came one day with poor Maud, and the two elder -ladies, as they had done more than once before, looked for some moments -into each other's eyes. This time it was not a look of defiance, it was -rather—or it would have been for an observer completely in the -secret—a look of reciprocity, of fraternity, a look of arrangement. -There was however no one completely in the secret save perhaps Mary, and -Mary didn't heed. The arrangement at any rate was ineffectual; Mrs. -Gosselin might mutely say, over the young American's eager, talkative -shoulders, "Yes, you may have him if you can get him:" the most -rudimentary experiments demonstrated that he was not to be got. Nothing -passed on this subject between Mary and her mother, whom the girl none -the less knew to be holding her breath and continuing to watch. She -counted it more and more as one unpleasant result of her conspiracy with -Guy Firminger that it almost poisoned a relation that had always been -sweet. It was to show that she was independent of it that she did as she -liked now, which was almost always as Bolton-Brown liked. When in the -first days of September—it was in the warm, clear twilight, and they -happened, amid the scent of fresh hay, to be leaning side by side on a -stile—he gave her a view of the fundamental and esoteric, as -distinguished from the convenient and superficial motive of his having -come back to England, she of course made no allusion to a prior tie. On -the other hand she insisted on his going up to London by the first train -the next day. He was to wait—that was distinctly understood—for -his satisfaction.</p> - -<p>She desired meanwhile to write immediately to Guy Firminger, but as he -had kept his promise of not complicating their contract with letters she -was uncertain as to his actual whereabouts: she was only sure he would -have left Homburg. Lady Whiteroy had become silent, so there were no -more sidelights, and she was on the point of telegraphing to London for -an address when she received a telegram from Bosco. The proprietor of -that seat had arrived there the day before, and he found he could make -trains fit if she would on the morrow allow him to come over and see her -for a day or two. He had returned sooner than their agreement allowed, -but she answered "Come" and she showed his missive to her mother, who at -the sight of it wept with strange passion. Mary said to her "For -heaven's sake, don't let him see you!" She lost no time; she told him on -the morrow as soon as he entered the house that she couldn't keep it up -another hour.</p> - -<p>"All right—it <i>is</i> no use," he conceded; "they're at it -again!"</p> - -<p>"You see you've gained nothing!" she replied triumphantly. She had -instantly recognised that he was different, how much had happened.</p> - -<p>"I've gained some of the happiest days of my life."</p> - -<p>"Oh, that was not what you tried for!"</p> - -<p>"Indeed it was, and I got exactly what I wanted," said Guy Firminger. -They were in the cool little drawing-room where the morning light was -dim. Guy Firminger had a sunburnt appearance, as in England people -returning from other countries are apt to have, and Mary thought he had -never looked so well. It was odd, but it was noticeable, that he had -grown much handsomer since he had become a personage. He paused a -moment, smiling at her while her mysterious eyes rested on him, and then he -added: "Nothing ever worked better. It's no use now—people see. But -I've got a start. I wanted to turn round and look about, and I <i>have</i> -turned round and looked about. There are things I've escaped. I'm afraid -you'll never understand how deeply I'm indebted to you."</p> - -<p>"Oh, it's all right!" said Mary Gosselin.</p> - -<p>There was another short silence, after which he went on: "I've come back -sooner than I promised, but only to be strictly fair. I began to see -that we couldn't hold out and that it was my duty to let you off. From -that moment I was bound to put an end to your situation. I might have -done so by letter, but that seemed scarcely decent. It's all I came back -for, you know, and it's why I wired to you yesterday."</p> - -<p>Mary hesitated an instant, she reflected intensely. What had happened, -what would happen, was that if she didn't take care the signal for the -end of their little arrangement would not have appeared to come from -herself. She particularly wished it not to come from anyone else, she -had even a horror of that; so that after an instant she hastened to say: -"I was on the very point of wiring to <i>you</i>—I was only waiting -for your address."</p> - -<p>"Wiring to me?" He seemed rather blank.</p> - -<p>"To tell you that our absurd affair really, this time, can't go on -another day—to put a complete stop to it."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" said Guy Firminger.</p> - -<p>"So it's all right."</p> - -<p>"You've always hated it!" Guy laughed; and his laugh sounded slightly -foolish to the girl.</p> - -<p>"I found yesterday that I hated it more than ever."</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré showed a quickened attention. "For what -reason—yesterday?"</p> - -<p>"I would rather not tell you, please. Perhaps some time you'll find it -out."</p> - -<p>He continued to look at her brightly and fixedly with his confused -cheerfulness. Then he said with a vague, courteous alacrity: "I see, I -see!" She had an impression that he didn't see; but it didn't matter, -she was nervous and quite preferred that he shouldn't. They both got up, -and in a moment he exclaimed: "Well, I'm intensely sorry it's over! It -has been so charming."</p> - -<p>"You've been very good about it; I mean very reasonable," Mary said, to -say something. Then she felt in her nervousness that this was just what -she ought not to have said: it sounded ironical and provoking, whereas -she had meant it as pure good-nature. "Of course you'll stay to -luncheon?" she continued. She was bound in common hospitality to speak -of that, and he answered that it would give him the greatest pleasure. -After this her apprehension increased, and it was confirmed in -particular by the manner in which he suddenly asked:</p> - -<p>"By the way, what reason shall we give?"</p> - -<p>"What reason?"</p> - -<p>"For our rupture. Don't let us seem to have quarrelled."</p> - -<p>"We can't help that," said Mary. "Nothing else will account for our -behaviour."</p> - -<p>"Well, I sha'n't say anything about <i>you</i>."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean you'll let people think it was yourself who were tired of -it?"</p> - -<p>"I mean I sha'n't <i>blame</i> you."</p> - -<p>"You ought to behave as if you cared!" said Mary.</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger laughed, but he looked worried and he evidently was -puzzled. "You must act as if you had jilted me."</p> - -<p>"You're not the sort of person unfortunately that people jilt."</p> - -<p>Lord Beaupré appeared to accept this statement as incontestable; not -with elation however, but with candid regret, the slightly embarrassed -recognition of a fundamental obstacle. "Well, it's no one's business, at -any rate, is it?"</p> - -<p>"No one's, and that's what I shall say if people question me. Besides," -Mary added, "they'll see for themselves."</p> - -<p>"What will they see?"</p> - -<p>"I mean they'll understand. And now we had better join mamma."</p> - -<p>It was his evident inclination to linger in the room after he had said -this that gave her complete alarm. Mrs. Gosselin was in another room, in -which she sat in the morning, and Mary moved in that direction, pausing -only in the hall for him to accompany her. She wished to get him into -the presence of a third person. In the hall he joined her, and in doing -so laid his hand gently on her arm. Then looking into her eyes with all -the pleasantness of his honesty, he said: "It will be very easy for me -to appear to care—for I <i>shall</i> care. I shall care immensely!" -Lord Beaupré added smiling.</p> - -<p>Anything, it struck her, was better than that—than that he should -say: "We'll keep on, if you like (<i>I</i> should!) only this time it will -be serious. Hold me to it—do; don't let me go; lead me on to the -altar—really!" Some such words as these, she believed, were rising to -his lips, and she had an insurmountable horror of hearing them. It was -as if, well enough meant on <i>his</i> part, they would do her a sort of -dishonour, so that all her impulse was quickly to avert them. That was -not the way she wanted to be asked in marriage. "Thank you very much," -she said, "but it doesn't in the least matter. You will seem to have -been jilted—so it's all right!"</p> - -<p>"All right! You mean—?" He hesitated, he had coloured a little: -his eyes questioned her.</p> - -<p>"I'm engaged to be married—in earnest."</p> - -<p>"Oh!" said Lord Beaupré.</p> - -<p>"You asked me just now if I had a special reason for having been on the -point of telegraphing to you, and I said I had. That was my special -reason."</p> - -<p>"I see!" said Lord Beaupré. He looked grave for a few seconds, then he -gave an awkward smile. But he behaved with perfect tact and discretion, -didn't even ask her who the gentleman in the case might be. He -congratulated her in the dark, as it were, and if the effect of this was -indeed a little odd she liked him for his quick perception of the fine -fitness of pulling up short. Besides, he extracted the name of the -gentleman soon enough from her mother, in whose company they now -immediately found themselves. Mary left Guy Firminger with the good lady -for half an hour before luncheon; and when the girl came back it was to -observe that she had been crying again. It was dreadful—what she -might have been saying. Their guest, however, at luncheon was not -lachrymose; he was natural, but he was talkative and gay. Mary liked the -way he now behaved, and more particularly the way he departed immediately -after the meal. As soon as he was gone Mrs. Gosselin broke out suppliantly: -"Mary!" But her daughter replied:</p> - -<p>"I know, mamma, perfectly what you're going to say, and if you attempt -to say it I shall leave the room." With this threat (day after day, for -the following time) she kept the terrible appeal unuttered until it was -too late for an appeal to be of use. That afternoon she wrote to -Bolton-Brown that she accepted his offer of marriage.</p> - -<p>Guy Firminger departed altogether; he went abroad again and to far -countries. He was therefore not able to be present at the nuptials of -Miss Gosselin and the young American whom he had entertained at Bosco, -which took place in the middle of November. Had he been in England -however he probably would have felt impelled by a due regard for past -verisimilitude to abstain from giving his countenance to such an -occasion. His absence from the country contributed to the needed even if -astonishing effect of his having been jilted; so, likewise, did the -reputed vastness of Bolton-Brown's young income, which in London was -grossly exaggerated. Hugh Gosselin had perhaps a little to do with this; -as he had sacrificed a part of his summer holiday, he got another month -and came out to his sister's wedding. He took public comfort in his -brother-in-law; nevertheless he listened with attention to a curious -communication made him by his mother after the young couple had started -for Italy; even to the point of bringing out the inquiry (in answer to -her assertion that poor Guy had been ready to place everything he had at -Mary's feet): "Then why the devil didn't he do it?"</p> - -<p>"From simple delicacy! He didn't want to make her feel as if she had -lent herself to an artifice only on purpose to get hold of him—to -treat her as if she too had been at bottom one of the very harpies she -helped him to elude."</p> - -<p>Hugh thought a moment. "That <i>was</i> delicate."</p> - -<p>"He's the dearest creature in the world. He's on his guard, he's -prudent, he tested himself by separation. Then he came back to England -in love with her. She might have had it all!"</p> - -<p>"I'm glad she didn't get it <i>that</i> way."</p> - -<p>"She had only to wait—to put an end to their artifice, harmless as -it was, for the present, but still wait. She might have broken off in a way -that would have made it come on again better."</p> - -<p>"That's exactly what she didn't want."</p> - -<p>"I mean as a quite separate incident," said Mrs. Gosselin.</p> - -<p>"<i>I</i> loathed their artifice, harmless as it was!" her son -observed.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Gosselin for a moment made no answer; then she turned away from the -fire into which she had been pensively gazing with the ejaculation "Poor -dear Guy!"</p> - -<p>"I can't for the life of me see that he's to be pitied."</p> - -<p>"He'll marry Charlotte Firminger."</p> - -<p>"If he's such an ass as that it's his own affair."</p> - -<p>"Bessie Whiteroy will bring it about."</p> - -<p>"What has <i>she</i> to do with it?"</p> - -<p>"She wants to get hold of him."</p> - -<p>"Then why will she marry him to another woman?"</p> - -<p>"Because in that way she can select the other—a woman he won't -care for. It will keep him from taking some one that's nicer."</p> - -<p>Hugh Gosselin stared—he laughed aloud. "Lord, mamma, -you're deep!"</p> - -<p>"Indeed I am, I see much more."</p> - -<p>"What do you see?"</p> - -<p>"Mary won't in the least care for America. Don't tell me she will," Mrs. -Gosselin added, "for you know perfectly you don't believe it."</p> - -<p>"She'll care for her husband, she'll care for everything that concerns -him."</p> - -<p>"He's very nice, in his little way he's delightful. But as an -alternative to Lord Beaupré he's ridiculous!"</p> - -<p>"Mary's in a position in which she has nothing to do with -alternatives."</p> - -<p>"For the present, yes, but not for ever. She'll have enough of your New -York; they'll come back here. I see the future dark," Mrs. Gosselin -pursued, inexorably musing.</p> - -<p>"Tell me then all you see."</p> - -<p>"She'll find poor Guy wretchedly married, and she'll be very sorry for -him."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean that he'll make love to her? You give a queer account of -your paragon."</p> - -<p>"He'll value her sympathy. I see life as it is."</p> - -<p>"You give a queer account of your daughter."</p> - -<p>"I don't give <i>any</i> account. She'll behave perfectly," Mrs. -Gosselin somewhat inconsequently subjoined.</p> - -<p>"Then what are you afraid of?"</p> - -<p>"She'll be sorry for him, and it will be all a worry."</p> - -<p>"A worry to whom?"</p> - -<p>The good lady was silent a moment. "To me," she replied. "And to you as -well."</p> - -<p>"Then they mustn't come back."</p> - -<p>"That will be a greater worry still."</p> - -<p>"Surely not a greater—a smaller. We'll put up with the lesser -evil."</p> - -<p>"Nothing will prevent her coming to a sense, eventually, of -what <i>might</i> have been. And when they <i>both</i> recognize -it——"</p> - -<p>"It will be very dreadful!" Hugh exclaimed, completing gaily his -mother's phrase. "I don't see, however," he added, "what in all this you -do with Bessie Whiteroy."</p> - -<p>"Oh, he'll be tired of her; she's hard, she'll have become despotic. I -see life as it is," the good lady repeated.</p> - -<p>"Then all I can say is that it's not very nice! But they sha'n't come -back: <i>I</i>'ll attend to that!" said Hugh Gosselin, who has attended to -it up to this time successfully, though the rest of his mother's prophecy -is so far accomplished (it was her second hit) as that Charlotte -Firminger is now, strange as it may seem, Lady Beaupré.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="THE_VISITS">THE VISITS</a></h4> - - -<p>The other day, after her death, when they were discussing her, someone -said in reference to the great number of years she had lived, the people -she had seen and the stories she knew: "What a pity no one ever took any -notes of her talk!" For a London epitaph that was almost exhaustive, and -the subject presently changed. One of the listeners had taken many -notes, but he didn't confess it on the spot. The following story is a -specimen of my exactitude—I took it down, <i>verbatim</i>, having -that faculty, the day after I heard it. I choose it, at hazard, among those -of her reminiscences that I have preserved; it's not worse than the -others. I will give you some of the others too—when occasion -offers—so that you may judge.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>I met in town that year a dear woman whom I had scarcely seen since I -was a girl; she had dropped out of the world; she came up but once in -five years. We had been together as very young creatures, and then we -had married and gone our ways. It was arranged between us that after I -should have paid a certain visit in August in the west of England I -would take her—it would be very convenient, she was just over the -Cornish border—on the way to my other engagements: I would work her -in, as you say nowadays. She wanted immensely to show me her home, and she -wanted still more to show me her girl, who had not come up to London, -choosing instead, after much deliberation, to go abroad for a month with -her brother and her brother's coach—he had been cramming for -something—and Mrs. Coach of course. All that Mrs. Chantry had been -able to show me in town was her husband, one of those country gentlemen -with a moderate property and an old place who are a part of the essence in -their own neighbourhood and not a part of anything anywhere else.</p> - -<p>A couple of days before my visit to Chantry Court the people to whom I -had gone from town took me over to see some friends of theirs who lived, -ten miles away, in a place that was supposed to be fine. As it was a -long drive we stayed to luncheon; and then as there were gardens and -other things that were more or less on show we struggled along to tea, -so as to get home just in time for dinner. There were a good many other -people present, and before luncheon a very pretty girl came into the -drawing-room, a real maiden in her flower, less than twenty, fresh and -fair and charming, with the expression of some one I knew. I asked who -she was, and was told she was Miss Chantry, so that in a moment I spoke -to her, mentioning that I was an old friend of her mother's and that I -was coming to pay them a visit. She looked rather frightened and blank, -was apparently unable to say that she had ever heard of me, and hinted -at no pleasure in the idea that she was to hear of me again. But this -didn't prevent my perceiving that she was lovely, for I was wise enough -even then not to think it necessary to measure people by the impression -that one makes on them. I saw that any I should make on Louisa Chantry -would be much too clumsy a test. She had been staying at the house at -which I was calling; she had come alone, as the people were old friends -and to a certain extent neighbours, and was going home in a few days. It -was a daughterless house, but there was inevitable young life: a couple -of girls from the vicarage, a married son and his wife, a young man who -had "ridden over" and another young man who was staying.</p> - -<p>Louisa Chantry sat opposite to me at luncheon, but too far for -conversation, and before we got up I had discovered that if her manner -to me had been odd it was not because she was inanimate. She was on the -contrary in a state of intense though carefully muffled vibration. There -was some fever in her blood, but no one perceived it, no one, that is, -with an exception—an exception which was just a part of the very -circumstance. This single suspicion was lodged in the breast of the -young man whom I have alluded to as staying in the house. He was on the -same side of the table as myself and diagonally facing the girl; -therefore what I learned about him was for the moment mainly what she -told me; meaning by "she" her face, her eyes, her movements, her whole -perverted personality. She was extremely on her guard, and I should -never have guessed her secret but for an accident. The accident was that -the only time she dropped her eyes upon him during the repast I happened -to notice it. It might not have been much to notice, but it led to my -seeing that there was a little drama going on and that the young man -would naturally be the hero. It was equally natural that in this -capacity he should be the cause of my asking my left-hand neighbour, who -happened to be my host, for some account of him. But "Oh, that fellow? -he's my nephew," was a description which, to appear copious, required -that I should know more about the uncle.</p> - -<p>We had coffee on the terrace of the house; a terrace laid out in one -quarter, oddly and charmingly, in grass where the servants who waited -upon us seemed to tread, processionally, on soundless velvet. There I -had a good look at my host's nephew and a longer talk with my friend's -daughter, in regard to whom I had become conscious of a faint, formless -anxiety. I remember saying to her, gropingly, instinctively: "My dear -child, can I do anything for you? I shall perhaps see your mother before -you do. Can I for instance say anything to her <i>from</i> you?" This only -made her blush and turn away; and it was not till too many days had -passed that I guessed that what had looked out at me unwittingly in her -little gazing trepidation was something like "Oh, just take me away in -spite of myself!" Superficially, conspicuously, there was nothing in the -young man to take her away from. He was a person of the middle -condition, and save that he didn't look at all humble might have passed -for a poor relation. I mean that he had rather a seedy, shabby air, as -if he were wearing out old clothes (he had on faded things that didn't -match); and I formed vaguely the theory that he was a specimen of the -numerous youthful class that goes to seek its fortune in the colonies, -keeps strange company there and comes home without a penny. He had a -brown, smooth, handsome face, a slightly swaggering, self-conscious -ease, and was probably objected to in the house. He hung about, smoking -cigarettes on the terrace, and nobody seemed to have much to say to -him—a circumstance which, as he managed somehow to convey, left him -absolutely indifferent. Louisa Chantry strolled away with one of the -girls from the vicarage; the party on the terrace broke up and the -nephew disappeared.</p> - -<p>It was settled that my friends and I should take leave at half-past -five, and I begged to be abandoned in the interval to my devices. I -turned into the library and, mounted on ladders, I handled old books and -old prints and soiled my gloves. Most of the others had gone to look at -the church, and I was left in possession. I wandered into the rooms in -which I knew there were pictures; and if the pictures were not good -there was some interesting china which I followed from corner to corner -and from cabinet to cabinet. At last I found myself on the threshold of -a small room which appeared to terminate the series and in which, -between the curtains draping the doorways, there appeared to be rows of -rare old plates on velvet screens. I was on the point of going in when I -became aware that there was something else beside, something which threw -me back. Two persons were standing side by side at the window, looking -out together with their backs to me—two persons as to whom I -immediately felt that they believed themselves to be alone and -unwatched. One of them was Louisa Chantry, the other was the young man -whom my host had described as his nephew. They were so placed as not to -see me, and when I recognized them I checked myself instinctively. I -hesitated a moment; then I turned away altogether. I can't tell you why, -except that if I had gone in I should have had somehow the air of -discovering them. There was no visible reason why they should have been -embarrassed by discovery, inasmuch as, so far as I could see, they were -doing no harm, were only standing more or less together, without -touching, and for the moment apparently saying nothing. Were they -watching something out of the window? I don't know; all I know is that -the observation I had made at luncheon gave me a sense of -responsibility. I might have taken my responsibility the other way and -broken up their communion; but I didn't feel this to be sufficiently my -business. Later on I wished I had.</p> - -<p>I passed through the rooms again, and then out of the house. The gardens -were ingenious, but they made me think (I have always that conceited -habit) how much cleverer <i>I</i> should have been about them. Presently I -met several of the rest of the party coming back from the church; on -which my hostess took possession of me, declaring there was a point of -view I must absolutely be treated to. I saw she was a walking woman and -that this meant half a mile in the park. But I was good for that, and we -wandered off together while the others returned to the house. It was -present to me that I ought to ask my companion, for Helen Chantry's sake, -a question about Louisa—whether for instance she had happened to -notice the way the girl seemed to be going. But it was difficult to say -anything without saying too much; so that to begin with I merely risked -the observation that our young friend was remarkably pretty. As the -point admitted of no discussion this didn't take us very far; nor was -the subject much enlarged by our unanimity as to the fact that she was -also remarkably nice. I observed that I had had very little chance to -talk with her, for which I was sorry, having known her mother for years. -My hostess, at this, looked vaguely round, as if she had missed her for -the first time. "Sure enough, she has not been about. I daresay she's -been writing to her mother—she's always writing to her mother." "Not -always," I mentally reflected; but I waited discreetly, admiring -everything and rising to the occasion and the views, before I inquired -casually who the young man might be who had sat two or three below me at -luncheon—the rather good-looking young man, with the regular features -and the brownish clothes—not the one with the moustache.</p> - -<p>"Oh, poor Jack Brandon," said my companion, in a tone calculated to make -him seem no one in particular.</p> - -<p>"Is he very poor?" I asked, with a laugh.</p> - -<p>"Oh dear, yes. There are nine of them—fancy!—all boys; and -there's nothing for anyone but the eldest. He's my husband's -nephew—his poor mother's my sister-in-law. He sometimes turns up here -when he has nothing better to do; but I don't think he likes us much." I -saw she meant that they didn't like <i>him</i>; and I exposed myself to -suspicion by asking if he had been with them long. But my friend was not -very plastic, and she simplified my whole theory of the case by replying -after she had thought a moment that she wasn't clear about it—she -thought he had come only the morning before. It seemed to me I could -safely feel a little further, so I inquired if he were likely to stay -many days. "Oh dear, no; he'll go to-morrow!" said my hostess. There was -nothing whatever to show that she saw a connection between my odd -interest in Mr. Brandon and the subject of our former reference; there -was only a quick lucidity on the subject of the young man's departure. -It reassured me, for no great complications would have arisen in -forty-eight hours.</p> - -<p>In retracing our steps we passed again through a part of the gardens. -Just after we had entered them my hostess, begging me to excuse her, -called at a man who was raking leaves to ask him a question about his -wife. I heard him reply "Oh, she's very bad, my lady," and I followed my -course. Presently my lady turned round with him, as if to go to see his -wife, who apparently was ill and on the place. I continued to look about -me—there were such charming things; and at the end of five minutes I -missed my way—I had not taken the direction of the house. Suddenly at -the turn of a walk, the angle of a great clipped hedge, I found myself -face to face with Jack Brandon. He was moving rapidly, looking down, -with his hands in his pockets, and he started and stared at me a moment. -I said "Oh, how d'ye do?" and I was on the point of adding "Won't you -kindly show me the right way?" But with a summary salute and a queer -expression of face he had already passed me. I looked after him an -instant and I all but stopped him; then one of the faintest voices of -the air told me that Louisa Chantry would not be far off, that in fact -if I were to go on a few steps I should find her. I continued and I -passed through an arched aperture of the hedge, a kind of door in the -partition. This corner of the place was like an old French garden, a -little inclosed apartment, with statues set into the niches of the high -walls of verdure. I paused in admiration; then just opposite to me I saw -poor Louisa. She was on a bench, with her hands clasped in her lap, her -head bent, her eyes staring down before her. I advanced on the grass, -attracting her attention; and I was close to her before she looked at -me, before she sprang up and showed me a face convulsed with nameless -pain. She was so pale that I thought she was ill—I had a vision of -her companion's having rushed off for help. She stood gazing at me with -expanded eyes and parted lips, and what I was mainly conscious of was -that she had become ten years older. Whatever troubled her it was -something pitiful—something that prompted me to hold out my two hands -to her and exclaim tenderly "My poor child, my poor child!" She wavered -a moment, as if she wanted to escape me but couldn't trust herself to -run; she looked away from me, turning her head this way and that. Then -as I went close to her she covered her face with her two hands, she let -me lay mine upon her and draw her to my breast. As she dropped her head -upon it she burst into tears, sobbing soundlessly and tragically. I -asked her no question, I only held her so long as she would, letting her -pour out the passion which I felt at the same time she made a tremendous -effort to smother. She couldn't smother it, but she could break away -violently; and this she quickly did, hurrying out of the nook where our -little scene—and some other greater scene, I judged, just before -it—had taken place, and leaving me infinitely mystified. I sat down -on the bench a moment and thought it over; then I succeeded in discovering -a path to the house.</p> - -<p>The carriage was at the door for our drive home, but my companions, who -had had tea, were waiting for our hostess, of whom they wished to take -leave and who had not yet come in. I reported her as engaged with the -wife of one of the gardeners, but we lingered a little in the hall, a -largeish group, to give her time to arrive. Two other persons were -absent, one of whom was Louisa Chantry and the other the young man whom -I had just seen quitting her in the garden. While I sat there, a trifle -abstracted, still somewhat agitated by the sequel to that incident and -at the same time impatient of our last vague dawdle, one of the footmen -presented me with a little folded note. I turned away to open it, and at -the very moment our hostess fortunately came in. This diverted the -attention of the others from the action of the footman, whom, after I -had looked at the note, I immediately followed into the drawing-room. He -led me through it and through two or three others to the door of the -little retreat in which, nearly an hour before, I had come upon Louisa -Chantry and Mr. Brandon. The note was from Louisa, it contained the -simple words "Would you very kindly speak to me an instant before you -go?" She was waiting for me in the most sequestered spot she had been -able to select, and there the footman left us. The girl came straight at -me and in an instant she had grasped my hands. I became aware that her -condition had changed; her tears were gone, she had a concentrated -purpose. I could scarcely see her beautiful young face—it was -pressed, beseechingly, so close to mine. I only felt, as her dry, shining -eyes almost dazzled me, that a strong light had been waved back and forth -before me. Her words at first seemed to me incoherent; then I understood -that she was asking me for a pledge.</p> - -<p>"Excuse me, forgive me for bringing you here—to say something I -can't say before all those people. <i>Do</i> forgive me—it was so -awfully kind of you to come. I couldn't think of any other way—just -for two seconds. I want you to swear to me," she went on, with her hands -now raised and intensely clasped.</p> - -<p>"To swear, dearest child?"</p> - -<p>"I'm not your dearest child—I'm not anyone's! But <i>don't</i> -tell mamma. Promise me—promise me," she insisted.</p> - -<p>"Tell her what?—I don't understand."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you do—you do!" she kept on; "and if you're going to Chantry -you'll see her, you'll be with her, you may see her before I do. On my -knees I ask you for a vow!"</p> - -<p>She seemed on the point of throwing herself at my feet, but I stopped -her, I kept her erect. "When shall <i>you</i> see your mother?"</p> - -<p>"As soon as I can. I want to get home—I want to get home!" With -this I thought she was going to cry again, but she controlled herself and -only pressed me with feverish eyes.</p> - -<p>"You have some great trouble—for heaven's sake tell me what it -is."</p> - -<p>"It isn't anything—it will pass. Only don't breathe it to mamma!"</p> - -<p>"How can I breathe it if I don't know what it is?"</p> - -<p>"You do know—you know what I mean." Then after an instant's pause -she added: "What I did in the garden."</p> - -<p>"<i>What</i> did you do in the garden?"</p> - -<p>"I threw myself on your neck and I sobbed—I behaved like a -maniac."</p> - -<p>"Is that all you mean?"</p> - -<p>"It's what I don't want mamma to know—it's what I beseech you to -keep silent about. If you don't I'll never, never go home. Have -<i>mercy</i> on me!" the poor child quavered.</p> - -<p>"Dear girl, I only want to be tender to you—to be perfect. But -tell me first: has anyone acted wrongly to you?"</p> - -<p>"No one—<i>no</i> one. I speak the truth."</p> - -<p>She looked into my eyes, and I looked far into hers. They were wild with -pain and yet they were so pure that they made me confusedly believe her. -I hesitated a moment; then I risked the question: "Isn't Mr. Brandon -responsible for anything?"</p> - -<p>"For nothing—for nothing! Don't blame <i>him</i>!" the girl -passionately cried.</p> - -<p>"He hasn't made love to you?"</p> - -<p>"Not a word—before God! Oh, it was too awful!" And with this she -broke away from me, flung herself on her knees before a sofa, burying her -face in it and in her arms. "Promise me, promise me, promise me!" she -continued to wail.</p> - -<p>I was horribly puzzled but I was immeasurably touched. I stood looking a -moment at her extravagant prostration; then I said "I'm dreadfully in -the dark, but I promise."</p> - -<p>This brought her to her feet again, and again she seized my hands. -"Solemnly, sacredly?" she panted.</p> - -<p>"Solemnly, sacredly."</p> - -<p>"Not a syllable—not a hint?"</p> - -<p>"Dear Louisa," I said kindly, "when I promise I perform."</p> - -<p>"You see I don't know you. And when do you go to Chantry?"</p> - -<p>"Day after to-morrow. And when do you?"</p> - -<p>"To-morrow if I can."</p> - -<p>"Then you'll see your mother first—it will be all right," I said -smiling.</p> - -<p>"All right, all right!" she repeated, with her woeful eyes. "Go, go!" -she added, hearing a step in the adjoining room.</p> - -<p>The footman had come back to announce that my friends were seated in the -carriage, and I was careful to say before him in a different tone: "Then -there's nothing more I can do for you?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing—good-bye," said Louisa, tearing herself away too abruptly -to take my kiss, which, to follow the servant again, I left unbestowed. I -felt awkward and guilty as I took leave of the company, murmuring -something to my entertainers about having had an arrangement to make -with Miss Chantry. Most of the people bade us good-bye from the steps, -but I didn't see Jack Brandon. On our drive home in the waning afternoon -my other friends doubtless found me silent and stupid.</p> - -<p>I went to Chantry two days later, and was disappointed to find that the -daughter of the house had not returned, though indeed after parting with -her I had been definitely of the opinion that she was much more likely -to go to bed and be ill. Her mother however had not heard that she was -ill, and my inquiry about the young lady was of course full of -circumspection. It was a little difficult, for I had to talk about her, -Helen being particularly delighted that we had already made -acquaintance. No day had been fixed for her return, but it came over my -friend that she oughtn't to be absent during too much of my visit. She was -the best thing they had to show—she was the flower and the charm of -the place. It had other charms as well—it was a sleepy, silvery old -home, exquisitely grey and exquisitely green; a house where you could -have confidence in your leisure: it would be as genuine as the butter -and the claret. The very look of the pleasant, prosaic drawing-room -suggested long mornings of fancy work, of Berlin wool and premeditated -patterns, new stitches and mild pauses. My good Helen was always in the -middle of something eternal, of which the past and the future were -rolled up in oilcloth and tissue paper, and the intensest moments of -conversation were when it was spread out for pensive opinions. These -used to drop sometimes even from Christopher Chantry when he straddled -vaguely in with muddy leggings and the raw materials of a joke. He had a -mind like a large, full milk-pan, and his wit was as thick as cream.</p> - -<p>One evening I came down to dinner a little early and, to my surprise, -found my troubled maiden in possession of the drawing-room. She was -evidently troubled still, and had been waiting there in the hope of -seeing me alone. We were too quickly interrupted by her parents, -however, and I had no conversation with her till I sat down to the piano -after dinner and beckoned to her to come and stand by it. Her father had -gone off to smoke; her mother dozed by one of the crackling little fires -of the summer's end.</p> - -<p>"Why didn't you come home the day you told me you meant to?"</p> - -<p>She fixed her eyes on my hands. "I couldn't, I couldn't!"</p> - -<p>"You look to me as if you were very ill."</p> - -<p>"I am," the girl said simply.</p> - -<p>"You ought to see some one. Something ought to be done."</p> - -<p>She shook her head with quiet despair. "It would be no use—no one -would know."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean—would know?"</p> - -<p>"No one would understand."</p> - -<p>"You ought to make them!"</p> - -<p>"Never—never!" she repeated. "Never!"</p> - -<p>"I confess <i>I</i> don't," I replied, with a kind of angry -renunciation. I played louder, with the passion of my uneasiness and the -aggravation of my responsibility.</p> - -<p>"No, you don't indeed," said Louisa Chantry.</p> - -<p>I had only to accept this disadvantage, and after a moment I went on: -"What became of Mr. Brandon?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know."</p> - -<p>"Did he go away?"</p> - -<p>"That same evening."</p> - -<p>"Which same evening?"</p> - -<p>"The day you were there. I never saw him again."</p> - -<p>I was silent a minute, then I risked: "And you never will, eh?"</p> - -<p>"Never—never."</p> - -<p>"Then why shouldn't you get better?"</p> - -<p>She also hesitated, after which she answered: "Because I'm going to -die."</p> - -<p>My music ceased, in spite of me, and we sat looking at each other. Helen -Chantry woke up with a little start and asked what was the matter. I -rose from the piano and I couldn't help saying "Dear Helen, I haven't -the least idea." Louisa sprang up, pressing her hand to her left side, -and the next instant I cried aloud "She's faint—she's ill—do -come to her!" Mrs. Chantry bustled over to us, and immediately afterwards -the girl had thrown herself on her mother's breast, as she had thrown -herself days before on mine; only this time without tears, without -cries, in the strangest, most tragic silence. She was not faint, she was -only in despair—that at least is the way I really saw her. There was -something in her contact that scared poor Helen, that operated a sudden -revelation: I can see at this hour the queer frightened look she gave me -over Louisa's shoulder. The girl however in a moment disengaged herself, -declaring that she was not ill, only tired, very tired, and wanted to go -to bed. "Take her, take her—go with her," I said to her mother; and I -pushed them, got them out of the room, partly to conceal my own -trepidation. A few moments after they had gone Christopher Chantry came -in, having finished his cigar, and I had to mention to him—to explain -their absence—that his daughter was so fatigued that she had -withdrawn under her mother's superintendence. "Didn't she seem done up, -awfully done up? What on earth, at that confounded place, did she go in -for?" the dear man asked with his pointless kindness. I couldn't tell him -this was just what I myself wanted to know; and while I pretended to read I -wondered inextinguishably what indeed she had "gone in" for. It had -become still more difficult to keep my vow than I had expected; it was -also very difficult that evening to converse with Christopher Chantry. -His wife's continued absence rendered some conversation necessary; yet -it had the advantage of making him remark, after it had lasted an hour, -that he must go to see what was the matter. He left me, and soon -afterwards I betook myself to my room; bedtime was elastic in the early -sense at Chantry. I knew I should only have to wait awhile for Helen to -come to me, and in fact by eleven o'clock she arrived.</p> - -<p>"She's in a very strange state—something happened there."</p> - -<p>"And <i>what</i> happened, pray?"</p> - -<p>"I can't make out; she won't tell me."</p> - -<p>"Then what makes you suppose so?"</p> - -<p>"She has broken down utterly; she says there was something."</p> - -<p>"Then she does tell you?"</p> - -<p>"Not a bit. She only begins and then stops short—she says it's too -dreadful."</p> - -<p>"Too dreadful?"</p> - -<p>"She says it's <i>horrible</i>," my poor friend murmured, with tears in -her eyes and tragic speculation in her mild maternal face.</p> - -<p>"But in what way? Does she give you no facts, no clue?"</p> - -<p>"It was something she did."</p> - -<p>We looked at each other a moment. "Did?" I echoed. "Did to whom?"</p> - -<p>"She won't tell me—she says she <i>can't</i>. She tries to bring -it out, but it sticks in her throat."</p> - -<p>"Nonsense. She did nothing," I said.</p> - -<p>"What <i>could</i> she do?" Helen asked, gazing at me.</p> - -<p>"She's ill, she's in a fever, her mind's wandering."</p> - -<p>"So I say to her father."</p> - -<p>"And what does <i>she</i> say to him?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing—she won't speak to him. He's with her now, but she only -lies there letting him hold her hand, with her face turned away from him -and her eyes closed."</p> - -<p>"You must send for the doctor immediately."</p> - -<p>"I've already sent for him."</p> - -<p>"Should you like me to sit up with her?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'll do that!" Helen said. Then she asked: "But if you were there -the other day, what did you see?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing whatever," I resolutely answered.</p> - -<p>"<i>Really</i> nothing?"</p> - -<p>"Really, my dear child."</p> - -<p>"But was there nobody there who could have made up to her?"</p> - -<p>I hesitated a moment. "My poor Helen, you should have seen them!"</p> - -<p>"She wouldn't look at anybody that wasn't remarkably nice," Helen -mused.</p> - -<p>"Well—I don't want to abuse your friends—but nobody was -remarkably nice. Believe me, she hasn't looked at anybody, and nothing -whatever has occurred. She's ill, and it's a mere morbid fancy."</p> - -<p>"It's a mere morbid fancy——!" Mrs. Chantry gobbled down this -formula. I felt that I was giving her another still more acceptable, and -which she as promptly adopted, when I added that Louisa would soon get over -it.</p> - -<p>I may as well say at once that Louisa never got over it. There followed -an extraordinary week, which I look back upon as one of the most -uncomfortable of my life. The doctor had something to say about the -action of his patient's heart—it was weak and slightly irregular, and -he was anxious to learn whether she had lately been exposed to any -violent shock or emotion—but he could give no name to the disorder -under the influence of which she had begun unmistakably to sink. She lay -on the sofa in her room—she refused to go to bed, and in the absence -of complications it was not insisted on—utterly white, weak and -abstracted, shaking her head at all suggestion, waving away all -nourishment save the infinitesimally little that enabled her to stretch -out her hand from time to time (at intervals of very unequal length) and -begin "Mother, mother!" as if she were mustering courage for a supreme -confession. The courage never came; she was haunted by a strange impulse -to speak, which in turn was checked on her lips by some deeper horror or -some stranger fear. She seemed to seek relief spasmodically from some -unforgettable consciousness and then to find the greatest relief of all -in impenetrable silence. I knew these things only from her mother, for -before me (I went gently in and out of her room two or three times a -day) she gave no sign whatever. The little local doctor, after the first -day, acknowledged himself at sea and expressed a desire to consult with -a colleague at Exeter. The colleague journeyed down to us and shuffled -and stammered: he recommended an appeal to a high authority in London. -The high authority was summoned by telegraph and paid us a flying visit. -He enunciated the valuable opinion that it was a very curious case and -dropped the striking remark that in so charming a home a young lady -ought to bloom like a flower. The young lady's late hostess came over, -but she could throw no light on anything: all that she had ever noticed -was that Louisa had seemed "rather blue" for a day or two before she -brought her visit to a close. Our days were dismal enough and our nights -were dreadful, for I took turns with Helen in sitting up with the girl. -Chantry Court itself seemed conscious of the riddle that made its -chambers ache; it bowed its grey old head over the fate of its daughter. -The people who had been coming were put off; dinner became a ceremony -enacted mainly by the servants. I sat alone with Christopher Chantry, -whose honest hair, in his mystification, stuck out as if he had been -overhauling accounts. My hours with Louisa were even more intensely -silent, for she almost never looked at me. In the watches of the night -however I at last saw more clearly into what she was thinking of. Once -when I caught her wan eyes resting upon me I took advantage of it to -kneel down by her bed and speak to her with the utmost tenderness.</p> - -<p>"If you can't say it to your mother, can you say it perhaps to -<i>me</i>?"</p> - -<p>She gazed at me for some time. "What does it matter now—if I'm -dying?"</p> - -<p>I shook my head and smiled. "You won't die if you get it off your -mind."</p> - -<p>"You'd be cruel to him," she said. "He's innocent—he's -innocent."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean <i>you're</i> guilty? What trifle are you magnifying?"</p> - -<p>"Do you call it a trifle——?" She faltered and paused.</p> - -<p>"Certainly I do, my dear." Then I risked a great stroke. "I've often -done it myself!"</p> - -<p>"<i>You</i>? Never, never! I was cruel to him," she added.</p> - -<p>This puzzled me; I couldn't work it into my conception. "How were you -cruel?"</p> - -<p>"In the garden. I changed suddenly, I drove him away, I told him he -filled me with horror."</p> - -<p>"Why did you do that?"</p> - -<p>"Because my shame came over me."</p> - -<p>"Your shame?"</p> - -<p>"What I had done in the house."</p> - -<p>"And what had you done?"</p> - -<p>She lay a few moments with her eyes closed, as if she were living it -over. "I broke out to him, I told him," she began at last. But she -couldn't continue, she was powerless to utter it.</p> - -<p>"Yes, I know what you told him. Millions of girls have told young men -that before."</p> - -<p>"They've been asked, they've been asked! They didn't speak <i>first</i>! -I didn't even know him, he didn't care for me, I had seen him for the -first time the day before. I said strange things to him, and he behaved -like a gentleman."</p> - -<p>"Well he might!"</p> - -<p>"Then before he could turn round, when we had simply walked out of the -house together and strolled in the garden—it was as if I were borne -along in the air by the wonder of what I had said—it rolled over me -that I was lost."</p> - -<p>"Lost?"</p> - -<p>"That I had been horrible—that I had been mad. Nothing could never -unsay it. I frightened him—I almost struck him."</p> - -<p>"Poor fellow!" I smiled.</p> - -<p>"Yes—pity him. He was kind. But he'll see me that -way—always!"</p> - -<p>I hesitated as to the answer it was best to make to this; then I -produced: "Don't think he'll remember you—he'll see other girls."</p> - -<p>"Ah, he'll <i>forget</i> me!" she softly and miserably wailed; and I saw -that I had said the wrong thing. I bent over her more closely, to kiss her, -and when I raised my head her mother was on the other side of the bed. -She fell on her knees there for the same purpose, and when Louisa felt -her lips she stretched out her arms to embrace her. She had the strength -to draw her close, and I heard her begin again, for the hundredth time, -"Mother, mother——"</p> - -<p>"Yes, my own darling."</p> - -<p>Then for the hundredth time I heard her stop. There was an intensity in -her silence. It made me wildly nervous; I got up and turned away.</p> - -<p>"Mother, mother," the girl repeated, and poor Helen replied with a sound -of passionate solicitation. But her daughter only exhaled in the waiting -hush, while I stood at the window where the dawn was faint, the most -miserable moan in the world. "I'm dying," she said, articulately; and -she died that night, after an hour, unconscious. The doctor arrived -almost at the moment; this time he was sure it must have been the heart. -The poor parents were in stupefaction, and I gave up half my visits and -stayed with them a month. But in spite of their stupefaction I kept my -vow.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="COLLABORATION">COLLABORATION</a></h4> - - -<p>I don't know how much people care for my work, but they like my studio -(of which indeed I am exceedingly fond myself), as they show by their -inclination to congregate there at dusky hours on winter afternoons, or -on long dim evenings when the place looks well with its rich -combinations and low-burning lamps and the bad pictures (my own) are not -particularly visible. I won't go into the question of how many of these -are purchased, but I rejoice in the distinction that my invitations are -never declined. Some of my visitors have been good enough to say that on -Sunday evenings in particular there is no pleasanter place in -Paris—where so many places are pleasant—none friendlier to easy -talk and repeated cigarettes, to the exchange of points of view and the -comparison of accents. The air is as international as only Parisian air -can be; women, I surmise, think they look well in it; they come also -because they fancy they are doing something Bohemian, just as many of -the men come because they suppose they are doing something correct. The -old heraldic cushions on the divans, embossed with rusty gold, are -favourable both to expansion and to contraction—that of course of -contracting parties—and the Italian brocade on the walls appeals to -one's highest feelings. Music makes its home there—though I confess I -am not quite the master of <i>that</i> house, and when it is going on in a -truly receptive hush I enjoy the way my company leans back and gazes -through the thin smoke of cigarettes up at the distant Tiepolo in the -almost palatial ceiling. I make sure the piano, the tobacco and the tea -are all of the best.</p> - -<p>For the conversation, I leave that mostly to take care of itself. There -are discussions of course and differences—sometimes even a violent -circulation of sense and sound; but I have a consciousness that beauty -flourishes and that harmonies prevail in the end. I have occasionally -known a visitor to be rude to me because he disliked another visitor's -opinions—I had seen an old habitué slip away without bidding me good -night on the arrival of some confident specimen of <i>les jeunes</i>; but -as a general thing we have it out together on the spot—the place is -really a chamber of justice, a temple of reconciliation: we understand each -other if we only sit up late enough. Art protects her children in the -long run—she only asks them to trust her. She is like the Catholic -Church—she guarantees paradise to the faithful. Music moreover is a -universal solvent; though I've not an infallible ear I've a sufficient -sense of the matter for that. Ah, the wounds I've known it to -heal—the bridges I've known it to build—the ghosts I've known -it to lay! Though I've seen people stalk out I've never observed them not -to steal back. My studio in short is the theatre of a cosmopolite drama, a -comedy essentially "of character."</p> - -<p>One of the liveliest scenes of the performance was the evening, last -winter, on which I became aware that one of my compatriots—an -American, my good friend Alfred Bonus—was engaged in a controversy -somewhat acrimonious, on a literary subject, with Herman Heidenmauer, the -young composer who had been playing to us divinely a short time before and -whom I thought of neither as a disputant nor as an Englishman. I -perceived in a moment that something had happened to present him in this -combined character to poor Bonus, who was so ardent a patriot that he -lived in Paris rather than in London, who had met his interlocutor for -the first time on this occasion, and who apparently had been misled by the -perfection with which Heidenmauer spoke English—he spoke it really -better than Alfred Bonus. The young musician, a born Bavarian, had spent -a few years in England, where he had a commercial step-brother planted -and more or less prosperous—a helpful man who had watched over his -difficult first steps, given him a temporary home, found him publishers -and pupils, smoothed the way to a stupefied hearing for his first -productions. He knew his London and might at a first glance have been -taken for one of its products; but he had, in addition to a genius of -the sort that London fosters but doesn't beget, a very German soul. He -brought me a note from an old friend on the other side of the Channel, -and I liked him as soon as I looked at him; so much indeed that I could -forgive him for making me feel thin and empirical, conscious that <i>he</i> -was one of the higher kind whom the future has looked in the face. He -had met through his gold spectacles her deep eyes, and some mutual -communication had occurred. This had given him a confidence which passed -for conceit only with those who didn't know the reason.</p> - -<p>I guessed the reason early, and, as may be imagined, he didn't grudge -me the knowledge. He was happy and various—as little as possible the -mere long-haired musicmonger. His hair was short—it was only his legs -and his laughter that were long. He was fair and rosy, and his gold -spectacles glittered as if in response to the example set them by his -beautiful young golden beard. You would have been sure he was an artist -without going so far as to decide upon his particular passion; for you -would have been conscious that whatever this passion might be it was -acquainted with many of the others and mixed with them to its profit. -Yet these discoveries had not been fully made by Alfred Bonus, whose -occupation was to write letters to the American journals about the way -the "boys" were coming on in Paris; for in such a case he probably would -not have expected such nebulous greatness to condense at a moment's -notice. Bonus is clever and critical, and a sort of self-appointed -emissary or agent of the great republic. He has it at heart to prove that -the Americans in Europe <i>do</i> get on—taking for granted on the -part of the Americans at home an interest in this subject greater, as I -often assure him, than any really felt. "Come, now, do <i>I</i> get on?" I -often ask him; and I sometimes push the inquiry so far as to stammer: "And -you, my dear Bonus, do <i>you</i> get on?" He is apt to look a little -injured on such occasions, as if he would like to say in reply: "Don't you -call it success to have Sunday evenings at which I'm a regular attendant? -And can you question for a moment the figure I make at them?" It has even -occurred to me that he suspects me of painting badly on purpose to spite -him—that is to interfere with his favourite dogma. Therefore to spite -me in return he's in the heroic predicament of refusing to admit that -I'm a failure. He takes a great interest in the plastic arts, but his -intensest sympathy is for literature. This sentiment is somewhat -starved, as in that school the boys languish as yet on a back seat. To -show what they are doing Bonus has to retreat upon the studios, but -there is nothing he enjoys so much as having, when the rare chance -offers, a good literary talk. He follows the French movement closely and -explains it profusely to our compatriots, whom he mystifies, but who -guess he's rather loose.</p> - -<p>I forget how his conversation with Heidenmauer began—it was, I -think, some difference of opinion about one of the English poets that set -them afloat. Heidenmauer knows the English poets, and the French, and the -Italian, and the Spanish, and the Russian—he is a wonderful -representative of that Germanism which consists in the negation of -intellectual frontiers. It is the English poets that, if I'm not -mistaken, he loves best, and probably the harm was done by his having -happened to say so. At any rate Alfred Bonus let him have it, without -due notice perhaps, which is rather Alfred's way, on the question (a -favourite one with my compatriot) of the backward state of literature in -England, for which after all Heidenmauer was not responsible. Bonus -believes in responsibility—the responsibility of others, an attitude -which tends to make some of his friends extremely secretive, though perhaps -it would have been justified—as to this I'm not sure—had -Heidenmauer been, under the circumstances, technically British. Before -he had had time to explain that he was not, the other persons present -had become aware that a kind of challenge had passed—that nation, in -a sudden startled flurry, somehow found itself pitted against nation. -There was much vagueness at first as to which of the nations were -engaged and as to what their quarrel was about, the question coming -presently to appear less simple than the spectacle (so easily -conceivable) of a German's finding it hot for him in a French house, a -house French enough at any rate to give countenance to the idea of his -quick defeat.</p> - -<p>How could the right cause fail of protection in any house of which -Madame de Brindes and her charming daughter were so good as to be -assiduous frequenters? I recollect perfectly the pale gleam of joy in -the mother's handsome face when she gathered that what had happened was -that a detested German was on his defence. She wears her eternal -mourning (I admit it's immensely becoming) for a triple woe, for -multiplied griefs and wrongs, all springing from the crash of the -Empire, from the battlefields of 1870. Her husband fell at Sedan, her -father and her brother on still darker days; both her own family and -that of M. de Brindes, their general situation in life, were, as may be -said, creations of the Empire, so that from one hour to the other she -found herself sinking with the wreck. You won't recognise her under the -name I give her, but you may none the less have admired, between their -pretty lemon-coloured covers, the touching tales of Claude Lorrain. She -plies an ingenious, pathetic pen and has reconciled herself to effort -and privation for the sake of her daughter. I say privation, because -these distinguished women are poor, receive with great modesty and have -broken with a hundred of those social sanctities than are dearer to -French souls than to any others. They have gone down into the -market-place, and Paule de Brindes, who is three-and-twenty to-day and -has a happy turn for keeping a water-colour liquid, earns a hundred -francs here and there. She is not so handsome as her mother, but she has -magnificent hair and what the French call a look of race, and is, or at -least was till the other day, a frank and charming young woman. There is -something exquisite in the way these ladies are earnestly, -conscientiously modern. From the moment they accept necessities they -accept them all, and poor Madame de Brindes flatters herself that she -has made her dowerless daughter one of us others. The girl goes out -alone, talks with young men and, although she only paints landscape, -takes a free view of the <i>convenances</i>. Nothing can please either of -them more than to tell them they have thrown over their superstitions. -They haven't, thank heaven; and when I want to be reminded of some of -the prettiest in the world—of a thousand fine scruples and pleasant -forms, and of what grace can do for the sake of grace—I know where to -go for it.</p> - -<p>It was a part of this pious heresy—much more august in the way -they presented it than some of the aspects of the old faith—that -Paule should have become "engaged," quite like a <i>jeune mees</i>, to my -brilliant friend Félix Vendemer. He is such a votary of the modern that he -was inevitably interested in the girl of the future and had matched one -reform with another, being ready to marry without a penny, as the -clearest way of expressing his appreciation, this favourable specimen of -the type. He simply fell in love with Mademoiselle de Brindes and -behaved, on his side, equally like one of us others, except that he -begged me to ask her mother for her hand. I was inspired to do so with -eloquence, and my friends were not insensible of such an opportunity to -show that they now lived in the world of realities. Vendemer's sole -fortune is his genius, and he and Paule, who confessed to an answering -flame, plighted their troth like a pair of young rustics or (what comes -for French people to the same thing) young Anglo-Saxons. Madame de -Brindes thinks such doings at bottom very vulgar; but vulgar is what she -tries hard to be, she is so convinced it is the only way to make a -living. Vendemer had had at that time only the first of his successes, -which was not, as you will remember—and unfortunately for Madame de -Brindes—of this remunerative kind. Only a few people recognised the -perfection of his little volume of verse: my acquaintance with him -originated in my having been one of the few. A volume of verse was a -scanty provision to marry on, so that, still like a pair of us others, -the luckless lovers had to bide their time. Presently however came the -success (again a success only with those who care for quality, not with -the rough and ready public) of his comedy in verse at the Français. -This charming work had just been taken off (it had been found not to -make money), when the various parties to my little drama met Heidenmauer -at my studio.</p> - -<p>Vendemer, who has, as indeed the others have, a passion for music, was -tremendously affected by hearing him play two or three of his -compositions, and I immediately saw that the immitigable German quality -was a morsel much less bitter for him than for the two uncompromising -ladies. He went so far as to speak to Heidenmauer frankly, to thank him -with effusion, an effort of which neither of the quivering women would -have been capable. Vendemer was in the room the night Alfred Bonus -raised his little breeze; I saw him lean on the piano and listen with a -queer face looking however rather wonderingly at Heidenmauer. Before -this I had noticed the instant paleness (her face was admirably -expressive) with which Madame de Brindes saw her prospective son-in-law -make up, as it were, to the original Teuton, whose national character -was intensified to her aching mind, as it would have been to that of -most Frenchwomen in her place, by his wash of English colour. A German -was bad enough—but a German with English aggravations! Her senses -were too fine to give her the excuse of not feeling that his compositions -were interesting, and she was capable, magnanimously, of listening to -them with dropped eyes; but (much as it ever cost her not to be -perfectly courteous), she couldn't have made even the most superficial -speech to him about them. Marie de Brindes could never have spoken to -Herman Heidenmauer. It was a narrowness if you will, but a narrowness that -to my vision was enveloped in a dense atmosphere—a kind of sunset -bloom—of enriching and fortifying things. Herman Heidenmauer himself, -like the man of imagination and the lover of life that he was, would -have entered into it delightedly, been charmed with it as a fine case of -bigotry. This was conspicuous in Marie de Brindes: her loyalty to the -national idea was that of a <i>dévote</i> to a form of worship. She never -spoke of France, but she always made me think of it, and with an -authority which the women of her race seem to me to have in the question -much more than the men. I dare say I'm rather in love with her, though, -being considerably younger, I've never told her so—as if she would in -the least mind that! I have indeed been a little checked by a spirit of -allegiance to Vendemer; suspecting always (excuse my sophistication) -that in the last analysis it is the mother's charm that he feels—or -originally felt—in the daughter's. He spoke of the elder lady to me -in those days with the insistence with which only a Frenchman can speak of -the objects of his affection. At any rate there was always something -symbolic and slightly ceremonial to me in her delicate cameo-face and -her general black-robed presence: she made me think of a priestess or a -mourner, of revolutions and sieges, detested treaties and ugly public -things. I pitied her, too, for the strife of the elements in her—for -the way she must have felt a noble enjoyment mutilated. She was too good -for that, and yet she was too rigid for anything else; and the sight of -such dismal perversions made me hate more than ever the stupid terms on -which nations have organised their intercourse.</p> - -<p>When she gathered that one of my guests was simply cramming it down the -throat of another that the English literary mind was not even literary, -she turned away with a vague shrug and a pitiful look at her daughter -for the taste of people who took their pleasure so poorly: the truth in -question would be so obvious that it was not worth making a scene about. -Madame de Brindes evidently looked at any scene between the English and -the Americans as a quarrel proceeding vaguely from below stairs—a -squabble sordidly domestic. Her almost immediate departure with her -daughter operated as a lucky interruption, and I caught for the first -time in the straight, spare girl, as she followed her mother, a little -of the air that Vendemer had told me he found in her, the still -exaltation, the brown uplifted head that we attribute, or that at any -rate he made it visible to me that he attributed, to the dedicated Maid. -He considered that his intended bore a striking resemblance to Jeanne -d'Arc, and he marched after her on this occasion like a -square-shouldered armour-bearer. He reappeared, however, after he had -put the ladies into a cab, and half an hour later the rest of my -friends, with the sole exception of Bonus, having dispersed, he was -sitting up with me in the empty studio for another <i>bout de causerie</i>. -At first perhaps I was too occupied with reprimanding my compatriot to -give much attention to what Vendemer might have to say; I remember at -any rate that I had asked Bonus what had induced him to make so grave a -blunder. He was not even yet, it appeared, aware of his blunder, so that -I had to inquire by what odd chance he had taken Heidenmauer for a -bigoted Briton.</p> - -<p>"If I spoke to him as one he answered as one; that's bigoted enough," -said Alfred Bonus.</p> - -<p>"He was confused and amused at your onslaught: he wondered what fly had -stung you."</p> - -<p>"The fly of patriotism," Vendemer suggested.</p> - -<p>"Do <i>you</i> like him—a beast of a German?" Bonus demanded.</p> - -<p>"If he's an Englishman he isn't a German—<i>il faut opter</i>. We -can hang him for the one or for the other, we can't hang him for both. I -was immensely struck with those things he played."</p> - -<p>"They had no charm for me, or doubtless I too should have been -demoralised," Alfred said. "He seemed to know nothing about Miss -Brownrigg. Now Miss Brownrigg's great."</p> - -<p>"I like the things and even the people you quarrel about, you big babies -of the same breast. <i>C'est à se tordre!</i>" Vendemer declared.</p> - -<p>"I may be very abject, but I <i>do</i> take an interest in the American -novel," Alfred rejoined.</p> - -<p>"I hate such expressions: there's no such thing as the American -novel."</p> - -<p>"Is there by chance any such thing as the French?"</p> - -<p>"<i>Pas davantage</i>—for the artist himself: how can you ask? I -don't know what is meant by French art and English art and American art: -those seem to me mere cataloguers' and reviewers' and tradesmen's names, -representing preoccupations utterly foreign to the artist. Art is art in -every country, and the novel (since Bonus mentions that) is the novel in -every tongue, and hard enough work they have to live up to that -privilege, without our adding another muddle to the problem. The reader, -the consumer may call things as he likes, but we leave him to his little -amusements." I suggested that we were all readers and consumers; which -only made Vendemer continue: "Yes, and only a small handful of us have -the ghost of a palate. But you and I and Bonus are of the handful."</p> - -<p>"What do you mean by the handful?" Bonus inquired.</p> - -<p>Vendemer hesitated a moment. "I mean the few intelligent people, and -even the few people who are not——" He paused again an instant, -long enough for me to request him not to say what they were "not," and then -went on: "People in a word who have the honour to live in the only -country worth living in."</p> - -<p>"And pray what country is that?"</p> - -<p>"The land of dreams—the country of art."</p> - -<p>"Oh, the land of dreams! I live in the land of realities!" Bonus -exclaimed. "What do you all mean then by chattering so about <i>le roman -russe?</i>"</p> - -<p>"It's a convenience—to identify the work of three or four, -<i>là-bas</i>, because we're so far from it. But do you see them -<i>writing</i> 'le roman russe?'"</p> - -<p>"I happen to know that that's exactly what they want to do, some of -them," said Bonus.</p> - -<p>"Some of the idiots, then! There are plenty of those everywhere. -Anything born under that silly star is sure not to count."</p> - -<p>"Thank God I'm not an artist!" said Bonus.</p> - -<p>"Dear Alfred's a critic," I explained.</p> - -<p>"And I'm not ashamed of my country," he subjoined.</p> - -<p>"Even a critic perhaps may be an artist," Vendemer mused.</p> - -<p>"Then as the great American critic Bonus may be the great American -artist," I went on.</p> - -<p>"Is that what you're supposed to give us—'American' criticism?" -Vendemer asked, with dismay in his expressive, ironic face. "Take care, -take care, or it will be more American than critical, and then where -will <i>you</i> be? However," he continued, laughing and with a change of -tone, "I may see the matter in too lurid a light, for I've just been -favoured with a judgment conceived in the purest spirit of our own -national genius." He looked at me a moment and then he remarked: "That -dear Madame de Brindes doesn't approve of my attitude."</p> - -<p>"Your attitude?"</p> - -<p>"Toward your German friend. She let me know it when I went down stairs -with her—told me I was much too cordial, that I must observe -myself."</p> - -<p>"And what did you reply to that?"</p> - -<p>"I answered that the things he had played were extraordinarily -beautiful."</p> - -<p>"And how did she meet that?"</p> - -<p>"By saying that he's an enemy of our country."</p> - -<p>"She had you there," I rejoined.</p> - -<p>"Yes, I could only reply '<i>Chère madame, voyons!</i>'"</p> - -<p>"That was meagre."</p> - -<p>"Evidently, for it did no more for me than to give her a chance to -declare that he can't possibly be here for any good and that he belongs -to a race it's my sacred duty to loathe."</p> - -<p>"I see what she means."</p> - -<p>"I don't then—where artists are concerned. I said to her: '<i>Ah, -madame, vous savez que pour moi il n'y a que l'art!</i>'"</p> - -<p>"It's very exciting!" I laughed. "How could she parry that?"</p> - -<p>"'I know it, my dear child—but for <i>him</i>?' That's the way she -parried it. 'Very well, for him?' I asked. 'For him there's the insolence -of the victor and a secret scorn for our incurable illusions!'"</p> - -<p>"Heidenmauer has no insolence and no secret scorn."</p> - -<p>Vendemer was silent a moment. "Are you very sure of that?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, I like him! He's out of all that, and far above it. But what did -Mademoiselle Paule say?" I inquired.</p> - -<p>"She said nothing—she only looked at me."</p> - -<p>"Happy man!"</p> - -<p>"Not a bit. She looked at me with strange eyes, in which I could read -'Go straight, my friend—go straight!' <i>Oh, les femmes, les -femmes!</i>"</p> - -<p>"What's the matter with them now?"</p> - -<p>"They've a mortal hatred of art!"</p> - -<p>"It's a true, deep instinct," said Alfred Bonus.</p> - -<p>"But what passed further with Madame de Brindes?" I went on.</p> - -<p>"She only got into her cab, pushing her daughter first; on which I -slammed the door rather hard and came up here. <i>Cela m'a porté sur les -nerfs.</i>"</p> - -<p>"I'm afraid I haven't soothed them," Bonus said, looking for his hat. -When he had found it he added: "When the English have beaten us and -pocketed our <i>milliards</i> I'll forgive them; but not till then!" And -with this he went off, made a little uncomfortable, I think, by Vendemer's -sharper alternatives, while the young Frenchman called after him: "My -dear fellow, at night all cats are grey!"</p> - -<p>Vendemer, when we were left alone together, mooned about the empty -studio awhile and asked me three or four questions about Heidenmauer. I -satisfied his curiosity as well as I could, but I demanded the reason of -it. The reason he gave was that one of the young German's compositions -had already begun to haunt his memory; but that was a reason which, to -my sense, still left something unexplained. I didn't however challenge -him, before he quitted me, further than to warn him against being -deliberately perverse.</p> - -<p>"What do you mean by being deliberately perverse?" He fixed me so with -his intensely living French eye that I became almost blushingly -conscious of a certain insincerity and, instead of telling him what I -meant, tried to get off with the deplorable remark that the prejudices -of Mesdames de Brindes were after all respectable. "That's exactly what -makes them so odious!" cried Vendemer.</p> - -<p>A few days after this, late in the afternoon, Herman Heidenmauer came in -to see me and found the young Frenchman seated at my piano—trying to -win back from the keys some echo of a passage in the <i>Abendlied</i> we -had listened to on the Sunday evening. They met, naturally, as good -friends, and Heidenmauer sat down with instant readiness and gave him again -the page he was trying to recover. He asked him for his address, that he -might send him the composition, and at Vendemer's request, as we sat in -the firelight, played half-a-dozen other things. Vendemer listened in -silence but to my surprise took leave of me before the lamp was brought -in. I asked him to stay to dinner (I had already appealed to Heidenmauer -to stay), but he explained that he was engaged to dine with Madame de -Brindes—<i>à la maison</i> as he always called it. When he had gone -Heidenmauer, with whom on departing he had shaken hands without a word, -put to me the same questions about him that Vendemer had asked on the -Sunday evening about the young German, and I replied that my visitor -would find in a small volume of remarkable verse published by Lemerre, -which I placed in his hands, much of the information he desired. This -volume, which had just appeared, contained, beside a reprint of -Vendemer's earlier productions, many of them admirable lyrics, the drama -that had lately been played at the Français, and Heidenmauer took it -with him when he left me. But he left me late, and before this occurred, -all the evening, we had much talk about the French nation. In the -foreign colony of Paris the exchange of opinions on this subject is one -of the most inevitable and by no means the least interesting of -distractions; it furnishes occupation to people rather conscious of the -burden of leisure. Heidenmauer had been little in Paris, but he was all -the more open to impressions; they evidently poured in upon him and he -gave them a generous hospitality. In the diffused white light of his -fine German intelligence old colours took on new tints to me, and while -we spun fancies about the wonderful race around us I added to my little -stock of notions about his own. I saw that his admiration for our -neighbours was a very high tide, and I was struck with something bland -and unconscious (noble and serene in its absence of precautions) in the -way he let his doors stand open to it. It would have been exasperating -to many Frenchmen; he looked at them through his clear spectacles with -such an absence of suspicion that they might have anything to forgive -him, such a thin metaphysical view of instincts and passions. He had the -air of not allowing for recollections and nerves, and would doubtless -give them occasion to make afresh some of their reflections on the tact -of <i>ces gens-là</i>.</p> - -<p>A couple of days after I had given him Vendemer's book he came back to -tell me that he found great beauty in it. "It speaks to me—it speaks -to me," he said with his air of happy proof. "I liked the songs—I -liked the songs. Besides," he added, "I like the little romantic -play—it has given me wonderful ideas; more ideas than anything has -done for a long time. Yes—yes."</p> - -<p>"What kind of ideas?"</p> - -<p>"Well, this kind." And he sat down to the piano and struck the keys. I -listened without more questions, and after a while I began to -understand. Suddenly he said: "Do you know the words of <i>that</i>?" and -before I could answer he was rolling out one of the lyrics of the little -volume. The poem was strange and obscure, yet irresistibly beautiful, -and he had translated it into music still more tantalizing than itself. -He sounded the words with his German accent, barely perceptible in -English but strongly marked in French. He dropped them and took them up -again; he was playing with them, feeling his way. "<i>This</i> is my idea!" -he broke out; he had caught it, in one of its mystic mazes, and he -rendered it with a kind of solemn freshness. There was a phrase he -repeated, trying it again and again, and while he did so he chanted the -words of the song as if they were an illuminating flame, an inspiration. -I was rather glad on the whole that Vendemer didn't hear what his -pronunciation made of them, but as I was in the very act of rejoicing I -became aware that the author of the verses had opened the door. He had -pushed it gently, hearing the music; then hearing also his own poetry he -had paused and stood looking at Heidenmauer. The young German nodded and -laughed and, irreflectively, spontaneously, greeted him with a friendly -"<i>Was sagen Sie dazu?</i>" I saw Vendemer change colour; he blushed red -and, for an instant, as he stood wavering, I thought he was going to -retreat. But I beckoned him in and, on the divan beside me, patted a -place for him to sit.</p> - -<p>He came in but didn't take this place; he went and stood before the fire -to warm his feet, turning his back to us. Heidenmauer played and played, -and after a little Vendemer turned round; he looked about him for a -seat, dropped into it and sat with his elbows on his knees and his head -in his hands. Presently Heidenmauer called out, in French, above the -music: "I like your songs—I like them immensely!" but the young -Frenchman neither spoke nor moved. When however five minutes later -Heidenmauer stopped he sprang up with an entreaty to him to go on, to go -on for the love of God. "<i>Foilà—foilà!</i>" cried the musician, and -with hands for an instant suspended he wandered off into mysterious worlds. -He played Wagner and then Wagner again—a great deal of Wagner; in the -midst of which, abruptly, he addressed himself again to Vendemer, who -had gone still further from the piano, launching to me, however from his -corner a "<i>Dieu, que c'est beau!</i>" which I saw that Heidenmauer caught. -"I've a conception for an opera, you know—I'd give anything if you'd -do the libretto!" Our German friend laughed out, after this, with clear -good nature, and the rich appeal brought Vendemer slowly to his feet -again, staring at the musician across the room and turning this time -perceptibly pale.</p> - -<p>I felt there was a drama in the air, and it made me a little nervous; to -conceal which I said to Heidenmauer: "What's your conception? What's -your subject?"</p> - -<p>"My conception would be realized in the subject of M. Vendemer's -play—if he'll do that for me in a great lyric manner!" And with -this the young German, who had stopped playing to answer me, quitted the -piano and Vendemer got up to meet him. "The subject is splendid—it -has taken possession of me. Will you do it with me? Will you work with me? -We shall make something great!"</p> - -<p>"Ah, you don't know what you ask!" Vendemer answered, with his pale -smile.</p> - -<p>"I do—I do: I've thought of it. It will be bad for me -in my country; I shall suffer for it. They won't like it—they'll -abuse me for it—they'll say of me <i>pis que pendre.</i>" Heidenmauer -pronounced it <i>bis que bendre.</i></p> - -<p>"They'll hate my libretto so?" Vendemer asked.</p> - -<p>"Yes, your libretto—they'll say it's immoral and horrible. And -they'll say <i>I'm</i> immoral and horrible for having worked with you," -the young composer went on, with his pleasant healthy lucidity. "You'll -injure my career. Oh yes, I shall suffer!" he joyously, exultingly -cried.</p> - -<p>"<i>Et moi donc!</i>" Vendemer exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"Public opinion, yes. I shall also make you suffer—I shall -nip your prosperity in the bud. All that's <i>des bêtises—tes -pétisses</i>," said poor Heidenmauer. "In art there are no countries."</p> - -<p>"Yes, art is terrible, art is monstrous," Vendemer replied, looking at -the fire.</p> - -<p>"I love your songs—they have extraordinary beauty."</p> - -<p>"And Vendemer has an equal taste for your compositions," I said to -Heidenmauer.</p> - -<p>"Tempter!" Vendemer murmured to me, with a strange look.</p> - -<p>"<i>C'est juste!</i> I mustn't meddle—which will be all the easier -as I'm dining out and must go and dress. You two make yourselves at home -and fight it out here."</p> - -<p>"Do you <i>leave</i> me?" asked Vendemer, still with his strange -look.</p> - -<p>"My dear fellow, I've only just time."</p> - -<p>"We will dine together—he and I—at one of those -characteristic places, and we will look at the matter in its different -relations," said Heidenmauer. "Then we will come back here to -finish—your studio is so good for music."</p> - -<p>"There are some things it <i>isn't</i> good for," Vendemer remarked, -looking at our companion.</p> - -<p>"It's good for poetry—it's good for truth," smiled the -composer.</p> - -<p>"You'll stay <i>here</i> and dine together," I said; "my servant can -manage that."</p> - -<p>"No, no—we'll go out and we'll walk together. We'll talk a great -deal," Heidenmauer went on. "The subject is so comprehensive," he said to -Vendemer, as he lighted another cigar.</p> - -<p>"The subject?"</p> - -<p>"Of your drama. It's so universal."</p> - -<p>"Ah, the universe—<i>il n'y a que ça!</i>" I laughed, to Vendemer, -partly with a really amused sense of the exaggerated woe that looked out of -his poetic eyes and that seemed an appeal to me not to forsake him, to -throw myself into the scale of the associations he would have to stifle, -and partly to encourage him, to express my conviction that two such fine -minds couldn't in the long run be the worse for coming to an agreement. -I might have been a more mocking Mephistopheles handing over his pure -spirit to my literally German Faust.</p> - -<p>When I came home at eleven o'clock I found him alone in my studio, -where, evidently, for some time, he had been moving up and down in -agitated thought. The air was thick with Bavarian fumes, with the -reverberation of mighty music and great ideas, with the echoes of that -"universe" to which I had so mercilessly consigned him. But I judged in -a moment that Vendemer was in a very different phase of his evolution -from the one in which I had left him. I had never seen his handsome, -sensitive face so intensely illumined.</p> - -<p>"<i>Ça y est—ça y est!</i>" he exclaimed, standing there with his -hands in his pockets and looking at me.</p> - -<p>"You've really agreed to do something together?"</p> - -<p>"We've sworn a tremendous oath—we've taken a sacred -engagement."</p> - -<p>"My dear fellow, you're a hero."</p> - -<p>"Wait and see! <i>C'est un très-grand esprit.</i>"</p> - -<p>"So much the better!"</p> - -<p>"<i>C'est un bien beau génie.</i> Ah, we've risen—we soar; <i>nous -sommes dans les grandes espaces!</i>" my friend continued with his dilated -eyes.</p> - -<p>"It's very interesting—because it will cost you something."</p> - -<p>"It will cost me everything!" said Félix Vendemer in a tone I seem to -hear at this hour. "That's just the beauty of it. It's the chance of -chances to testify for art—to affirm an indispensable truth."</p> - -<p>"An indispensable truth?" I repeated, feeling myself soar too, but into -the splendid vague.</p> - -<p>"Do you know the greatest crime that can be perpetrated against it?"</p> - -<p>"Against it?" I asked, still soaring.</p> - -<p>"Against the religion of art—against the love for -beauty—against the search for the Holy Grail?" The transfigured look -with which he named these things, the way his warm voice filled the rich -room, was a revelation of the wonderful talk that had taken place.</p> - -<p>"Do you know—for one of <i>us</i>—the really damnable, the -only unpardonable, sin?"</p> - -<p>"Tell me, so that I may keep clear of it!"</p> - -<p>"To profane <i>our</i> golden air with the hideous invention of -patriotism."</p> - -<p>"It was a clever invention in its time!" I laughed.</p> - -<p>"I'm not talking about its time—I'm talking about, its place. It -was never anything but a fifth-rate impertinence here. In art there are no -countries—no idiotic nationalities, no frontiers, nor <i>douanes</i>, -nor still more idiotic fortresses and bayonets. It has the unspeakable -beauty of being the region in which those abominations cease, the medium -in which such vulgarities simply can't live. What therefore are we to -say of the brutes who wish to drag them all in—to crush to death with -them all the flowers of such a garden, to shut out all the light of such -a sky?" I was far from desiring to defend the "brutes" in question, -though there rose before me even at that moment a sufficiently vivid -picture of the way, later on, poor Vendemer would have to face them. I -quickly perceived indeed that the picture was, to his own eyes, a still -more crowded canvas. Félix Vendemer, in the centre of it, was an -admirable, a really sublime figure. If there had been wonderful talk -after I quitted the two poets the wonder was not over yet—it went on -far into the night for my benefit. We looked at the prospect in many -lights, turned the subject about almost every way it would go; but I am -bound to say there was one relation in which we tacitly agreed to -forbear to consider it. We neither of us uttered the name of Paule de -Brindes—the outlook in that direction would too serious. And yet if -Félix Vendemer, exquisite and incorruptible artist that he was, had -fallen in love with the idea of "testifying," it was from that direction -that the finest part of his opportunity to do so would proceed.</p> - -<p>I was only too conscious of this when, within the week, I received a -hurried note from Madame de Brindes, begging me as a particular favour -to come and see her without delay. I had not seen Vendemer again, but I -had had a characteristic call from Heidenmauer, who, though I could -imagine him perfectly in a Prussian helmet, with a needle-gun, -perfectly, on definite occasion, a sturdy, formidable soldier, gave me a -renewed impression of inhabiting, in the expansion of his genius and the -exercise of his intelligence, no land of red tape, no province smaller -nor more pedantically administered than the totality of things. I was -reminded afresh too that <i>he</i> foresaw no striking salon-picture, no -<i>chic</i> of execution nor romance of martyrdom, or at any rate devoted -very little time to the consideration of such objects. He doubtless did -scant justice to poor Vendemer's attitude, though he said to me of him -by the way, with his rosy deliberation: "He has good ideas—he has -good ideas. The French mind has—for me—the taste of a very -delightful <i>bonbon</i>!" He only measured the angle of convergence, as he -called it, of their two projections. He was in short not preoccupied with -the personal gallantry of their experiment; he was preoccupied with its -"æsthetic and harmonic basis."</p> - -<p>It was without her daughter that Madame de Brindes received me, when I -obeyed her summons, in her scrap of a <i>quatrième</i> in the Rue de -Miromesnil.</p> - -<p>"Ah, <i>cher monsieur</i>, how could you have permitted such a -horror—how could you have given it the countenance of your roof, of -your influence?" There were tears in her eyes, and I don't think that for -the moment I have ever been more touched by a reproach. But I pulled myself -together sufficiently to affirm my faith as well as to disengage my -responsibility. I explained that there was no horror to me in the -matter, that if I was not a German neither was I a Frenchman, and that -all I had before me was two young men inflamed by a great idea and nobly -determined to work together to give it a great form.</p> - -<p>"A great idea—to go over to <i>ces gens-là?</i>"</p> - -<p>"To go over to them?"</p> - -<p>"To put yourself on their side—to throw yourself into the arms of -those who hate us—to fall into their abominable trap!"</p> - -<p>"What do you call their abominable trap?"</p> - -<p>"Their false <i>bonhomie</i>, the very impudence of their intrigues, -their profound, scientific deceit and their determination to get the -advantage of us by exploiting our generosity."</p> - -<p>"You attribute to such a man as Heidenmauer too many motives and too -many calculations. He's quite ideally superior!"</p> - -<p>"Oh, German idealism—we know what that means! We've no use for -their superiority; let them carry it elsewhere—let them leave us -alone. Why do they thrust themselves in upon us and set old wounds -throbbing by their detested presence? We don't go near <i>them</i>, or -ever wish to hear their ugly names or behold their <i>visages de -bois</i>; therefore the most rudimentary good taste, the tact one would -expect even from naked savages, might suggest to them to seek their -amusements elsewhere. But <i>their</i> taste, <i>their</i> tact—I -can scarcely trust myself to speak!"</p> - - -<p>Madame de Brindes did speak however at considerable further length and -with a sincerity of passion which left one quite without arguments. -There was no argument to meet the fact that Vendemer's attitude wounded -her, wounded her daughter, <i>jusqu'au fond de l'âme</i>, that it -represented for them abysses of shame and suffering and that for himself -it meant a whole future compromised, a whole public alienated. It was vain -doubtless to talk of such things; if people didn't <i>feel</i> them, if -they hadn't the fibre of loyalty, the high imagination of honour, all -explanations, all supplications were but a waste of noble emotion. M. -Vendemer's perversity was monstrous—she had had a sickening -discussion with him. What she desired of me was to make one last appeal to -him, to put the solemn truth before him, to try to bring him back to -sanity. It was as if he had temporarily lost his reason. It was to be made -clear to him, <i>par exemple</i>, that unless he should recover it -Mademoiselle de Brindes would unhesitatingly withdraw from her -engagement.</p> - -<p>"Does she <i>really</i> feel as you do?" I asked.</p> - -<p>"Do you think I put words into her mouth? She feels as a <i>fille de -France</i> is obliged to feel!"</p> - -<p>"Doesn't she love him then?"</p> - -<p>"She adores him. But she won't take him without his honour."</p> - -<p>"I don't understand such refinements!" I said.</p> - -<p>"Oh, <i>vous autres!</i>" cried Madame de Brindes. Then with eyes -glowing through her tears she demanded: "Don't you know she knows how her -father died?" I was on the point of saying "What has that to do with it?" -but I withheld the question, for after all I could conceive that it might -have something. There was no disputing about tastes, and I could only -express my sincere conviction that Vendemer was profoundly attached to -Mademoiselle Paule. "Then let him prove it by making her a sacrifice!" -my strenuous hostess replied; to which I rejoined that I would repeat -our conversation to him and put the matter before him as strongly as I -could. I delayed a little to take leave, wondering if the girl would not -come in—I should have been so much more content to receive her -strange recantation from her own lips. I couldn't say this to Madame de -Brindes; but she guessed I meant it, and before we separated we exchanged a -look in which our mutual mistrust was written—the suspicion on her -side that I should not be a very passionate intercessor and the conjecture -on mine that she might be misrepresenting her daughter. This slight -tension, I must add, was only momentary, for I have had a chance of -observing Paule de Brindes since then, and the two ladies were soon -satisfied that I pitied them enough to have been eloquent.</p> - -<p>My eloquence has been of no avail, and I have learned (it has been one -of the most interesting lessons of my life) of what transcendent stuff -the artist may sometimes be made. Herman Heidenmauer and Félix Vendemer -are, at the hour I write, immersed in their monstrous collaboration. -There were postponements and difficulties at first, and there will be -more serious ones in the future, when it is a question of giving the -finished work to the world. The world of Paris will stop its ears in -horror, the German Empire will turn its mighty back, and the authors of -what I foresee (oh, I've been treated to specimens!) as a perhaps really -epoch-making musical revelation (is Heidenmauer's style rubbing off on -me?) will perhaps have to beg for a hearing in communities fatally -unintelligent. It may very well be that they will not obtain any hearing -at all for years. I like at any rate to think that time works for them. -At present they work for themselves and for each other, amid drawbacks -of several kinds. Separating after the episode in Paris, they have met -again on alien soil, at a little place on the Genoese Riviera where -sunshine is cheap and tobacco bad, and they live (the two together) for -five francs a day, which is all they can muster between them. It appears -that when Heidenmauer's London step-brother was informed of the young -composer's unnatural alliance he instantly withdrew his subsidy. The -return of it is contingent on the rupture of the unholy union and the -destruction by flame of all the manuscript. The pair are very poor and -the whole thing depends on their staying power. They are so preoccupied -with their opera that they have no time for pot-boilers. Vendemer is in -a feverish hurry, lest perhaps he should find himself chilled. There are -still other details which contribute to the interest of the episode and -which, for me, help to render it a most refreshing, a really great -little case. It rests me, it delights me, there is something in it that -makes for civilization. In their way they are working for human -happiness. The strange course taken by Vendemer (I mean his renunciation -of his engagement) must moreover be judged in the light of the fact that -he was really in love. Something had to be sacrificed, and what he clung -to most (he's extraordinary, I admit) was the truth he had the -opportunity of proclaiming. Men give up their love for advantages every -day, but they rarely give it up for such discomforts.</p> - -<p>Paule de Brindes was the less in love of the two; I see her often enough -to have made up my mind about that. But she's mysterious, she's odd; -there was at any rate a sufficient wrench in her life to make her often -absent-minded. Does her imagination hover about Félix Vendemer? A month -ago, going into their rooms one day when her mother was not at home (the -<i>bonne</i> had admitted me under a wrong impression) I found her at the -piano, playing one of Heidenmauer's compositions—playing it without -notes and with infinite expression. How had she got hold of it? How had -she learned it? This was her secret—she blushed so that I didn't pry -into it. But what is she doing, under the singular circumstances, with a -composition of Herman Heidenmauer's? She never met him, she never heard -him play but that once. It will be a pretty complication if it shall -appear that the young German genius made on that occasion more than one -intense impression. This needn't appear, however, inasmuch as, being -naturally in terror of the discovery by her mother of such an anomaly, -she may count on me absolutely not to betray her. I hadn't fully -perceived how deeply susceptible she is to music. She must have a -strange confusion of feelings—a dim, haunting trouble, with a kind of -ache of impatience for the wonderful opera somewhere in the depths of -it. Don't we live fast after all, and doesn't the old order change? -Don't say art isn't mighty! I shall give you some more illustrations of -it yet.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="OWEN_WINGRAVE">OWEN WINGRAVE</a></h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - - -<p>"Upon my honour you must be off your head!" cried Spencer Coyle, as the -young man, with a white face, stood there panting a little and repeating -"Really, I've quite decided," and "I assure you I've thought it all -out." They were both pale, but Owen Wingrave smiled in a manner -exasperating to his interlocutor, who however still discriminated -sufficiently to see that his grimace (it was like an irrelevant leer) -was the result of extreme and conceivable nervousness.</p> - -<p>"It was certainly a mistake to have gone so far; but that is exactly why -I feel I mustn't go further," poor Owen said, waiting mechanically, -almost humbly (he wished not to swagger, and indeed he had nothing to -swagger about) and carrying through the window to the stupid opposite -houses the dry glitter of his eyes.</p> - -<p>"I'm unspeakably disgusted. You've made me dreadfully ill," Mr. Coyle -went on, looking thoroughly upset.</p> - -<p>"I'm very sorry. It was the fear of the effect on you that kept me from -speaking sooner."</p> - -<p>"You should have spoken three months ago. Don't you know your mind from -one day to the other?"</p> - -<p>The young man for a moment said nothing. Then he replied with a little -tremor: "You're very angry with me, and I expected it. I'm awfully -obliged to you for all you've done for me. I'll do anything else for you -in return, but I can't do that. Everyone else will let me have it, of -course. I'm prepared for it—I'm prepared for everything. That's what -has taken the time: to be sure I was prepared. I think it's your -displeasure I feel most and regret most. But little by little you'll get -over it."</p> - -<p>"<i>You'll</i> get over it rather faster, I suppose!" Spencer Coyle -satirically exclaimed. He was quite as agitated as his young friend, and -they were evidently in no condition to prolong an encounter in which -they each drew blood. Mr. Coyle was a professional "coach"; he prepared -young men for the army, taking only three or four at a time, to whom he -applied the irresistible stimulus of which the possession was both his -secret and his fortune. He had not a great establishment; he would have -said himself that it was not a wholesale business. Neither his system, -his health nor his temper could have accommodated itself to numbers; so -he weighed and measured his pupils and turned away more applicants than -he passed. He was an artist in his line, caring only for picked subjects -and capable of sacrifices almost passionate for the individual. He liked -ardent young men (there were kinds of capacity to which he was -indifferent) and he had taken a particular fancy to Owen Wingrave. This -young man's facility really fascinated him. His candidates usually did -wonders, and he might have sent up a multitude. He was a person of -exactly the stature of the great Napoleon, with a certain flicker of -genius in his light blue eye: it had been said of him that he looked -like a pianist. The tone of his favourite pupil now expressed, without -intention indeed, a superior wisdom which irritated him. He had not -especially suffered before from Wingrave's high opinion of himself, -which had seemed justified by remarkable parts; but to-day it struck him -as intolerable. He cut short the discussion, declining absolutely to -regard their relations as terminated, and remarked to his pupil that he -had better go off somewhere (down to Eastbourne, say; the sea would -bring him round) and take a few days to find his feet and come to his -senses. He could afford the time, he was so well up: when Spencer Coyle -remembered how well up he was he could have boxed his ears. The tall, -athletic young man was not physically a subject for simplified -reasoning; but there was a troubled gentleness in his handsome face, the -index of compunction mixed with pertinacity, which signified that if it -could have done any good he would have turned both cheeks. He evidently -didn't pretend that his wisdom was superior; he only presented it as his -own. It was his own career after all that was in question. He couldn't -refuse to go through the form of trying Eastbourne or at least of -holding his tongue, though there was that in his manner which implied -that if he should do so it would be really to give Mr. Coyle a chance to -recuperate. He didn't feel a bit overworked, but there was nothing more -natural than that with their tremendous pressure Mr. Coyle should be. -Mr. Coyle's own intellect would derive an advantage from his pupil's -holiday. Mr. Coyle saw what he meant, but he controlled himself; he only -demanded, as his right, a truce of three days. Owen Wingrave granted it, -though as fostering sad illusions this went visibly against his -conscience; but before they separated the famous crammer remarked:</p> - -<p>"All the same I feel as if I ought to see someone. I think you mentioned -to me that your aunt had come to town?"</p> - -<p>"Oh yes; she's in Baker Street. Do go and see her," the boy said -comfortingly.</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle looked at him an instant. "Have you broached this folly to -her?"</p> - -<p>"Not yet—to no one. I thought it right to speak to you first."</p> - -<p>"Oh, what you 'think right'!" cried Spencer Coyle, outraged by his young -friend's standards. He added that he would probably call on Miss -Wingrave; after which the recreant youth got out of the house.</p> - -<p>Owen Wingrave didn't however start punctually for Eastbourne; he only -directed his steps to Kensington Gardens, from which Mr. Coyle's -desirable residence (he was terribly expensive and had a big house) was -not far removed. The famous coach "put up" his pupils, and Owen had -mentioned to the butler that he would be back to dinner. The spring day -was warm to his young blood, and he had a book in his pocket which, when -he had passed into the gardens and, after a short stroll, dropped into a -chair, he took out with the slow, soft sigh that finally ushers in a -pleasure postponed. He stretched his long legs and began to read it; it -was a volume of Goethe's poems. He had been for days in a state of the -highest tension, and now that the cord had snapped the relief was -proportionate; only it was characteristic of him that this deliverance -should take the form of an intellectual pleasure. If he had thrown up -the probability of a magnificent career it was not to dawdle along Bond -Street nor parade his indifference in the window of a club. At any rate -he had in a few moments forgotten everything—the tremendous pressure, -Mr. Coyle's disappointment, and even his formidable aunt in Baker -Street. If these watchers had overtaken him there would surely have been -some excuse for their exasperation. There was no doubt he was perverse, -for his very choice of a pastime only showed how he had got up his -German.</p> - -<p>"What the devil's the matter with him, do <i>you</i> know?" Spencer -Coyle asked that afternoon of young Lechmere, who had never before observed -the head of the establishment to set a fellow such an example of bad -language. Young Lechmere was not only Wingrave's fellow-pupil, he was -supposed to be his intimate, indeed quite his best friend, and had -unconsciously performed for Mr. Coyle the office of making the promise -of his great gifts more vivid by contrast. He was short and sturdy and -as a general thing uninspired, and Mr. Coyle, who found no amusement in -believing in him, had never thought him less exciting than as he stared -now out of a face from which you could never guess whether he had caught -an idea. Young Lechmere concealed such achievements as if they had been -youthful indiscretions. At any rate he could evidently conceive no -reason why it should be thought there was anything more than usual the -matter with the companion of his studies; so Mr. Coyle had to continue:</p> - -<p>"He declines to go up. He chucks the whole thing!"</p> - -<p>The first thing that struck young Lechmere in the case was the freshness -it had imparted to the governor's vocabulary.</p> - -<p>"He doesn't want to go to Sandhurst?"</p> - -<p>"He doesn't want to go anywhere. He gives up the army altogether. He -objects," said Mr. Coyle, in a tone that made young Lechmere almost hold -his breath, "to the military profession."</p> - -<p>"Why, it has been the profession of all his family!"</p> - -<p>"Their profession? It has been their religion! Do you know Miss -Wingrave?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes. Isn't she awful?" young Lechmere candidly ejaculated.</p> - -<p>His instructor demurred.</p> - -<p>"She's formidable, if you mean that, and it's right she should be; -because somehow in her very person, good maiden lady as she is, she -represents the might, she represents the traditions and the exploits of -the British army. She represents the expansive property of the English -name. I think his family can be trusted to come down on him, but every -influence should be set in motion. I want to know what yours is. Can -<i>you</i> do anything in the matter?"</p> - -<p>"I can try a couple of rounds with him," said young Lechmere -reflectively. "But he knows a fearful lot. He has the most extraordinary -ideas."</p> - -<p>"Then he has told you some of them—he has taken you into his -confidence?"</p> - -<p>"I've heard him jaw by the yard," smiled the honest youth. "He has told -me he despises it."</p> - -<p>"What <i>is</i> it he despises? I can't make out."</p> - -<p>The most consecutive of Mr. Coyle's nurslings considered a moment, as if -he were conscious of a responsibility.</p> - -<p>"Why, I think, military glory. He says we take the wrong view of -it."</p> - -<p>"He oughtn't to talk to <i>you</i> that way. It's corrupting the youth -of Athens. It's sowing sedition."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I'm all right!" said young Lechmere. "And he never told me he -meant to chuck it. I always thought he meant to see it through, simply -because he had to. He'll argue on any side you like. It's a tremendous -pity—I'm sure he'd have a big career."</p> - - -<p>"Tell him so, then; plead with him; struggle with him—for God's -sake."</p> - -<p>"I'll do what I can—I'll tell him it's a regular shame."</p> - -<p>"Yes, strike <i>that</i> note—insist on the disgrace of it."</p> - -<p>The young man gave Mr. Coyle a more perceptive glance. "I'm sure he -wouldn't do anything dishonourable."</p> - -<p>"Well—it won't look right. He must be made to feel -<i>that</i>—work it up. Give him a comrade's point of -view—that of a brother-in-arms."</p> - -<p>"That's what I thought we were going to be!" young Lechmere mused -romantically, much uplifted by the nature of the mission imposed on him. -"He's an awfully good sort."</p> - -<p>"No one will think so if he backs out!" said Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>"They mustn't say it to <i>me</i>!" his pupil rejoined with a flush.</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle hesitated a moment, noting his tone and aware that in the -perversity of things, though this young man was a born soldier, no -excitement would ever attach to <i>his</i> alternatives save perhaps on the -part of the nice girl to whom at an early day he was sure to be placidly -united. "Do you like him very much—do you believe in him?"</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere's life in these days was spent in answering terrible -questions; but he had never been subjected to so queer an interrogation -as this. "Believe in him? Rather!"</p> - -<p>"Then <i>save</i> him!"</p> - -<p>The poor boy was puzzled, as if it were forced upon him by this -intensity that there was more in such an appeal than could appear on the -surface; and he doubtless felt that he was only entering into a complex -situation when after another moment, with his hands in his pockets, he -replied hopefully but not pompously: "I daresay I can bring him round!"</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - - -<p>Before seeing young Lechmere Mr. Coyle had determined to telegraph an -inquiry to Miss Wingrave. He had prepaid the answer, which, being -promptly put into his hand, brought the interview we have just related -to a close. He immediately drove off to Baker Street, where the lady had -said she awaited him, and five minutes after he got there, as he sat -with Owen Wingrave's remarkable aunt, he repeated over several times, in -his angry sadness and with the infallibility of his experience: "He's so -intelligent—he's so intelligent!" He had declared it had been a -luxury to put such a fellow through.</p> - -<p>"Of course he's intelligent, what else could he be? We've never, that I -know of, had but <i>one</i> idiot in the family!" said Jane Wingrave. This -was an allusion that Mr. Coyle could understand, and it brought home to -him another of the reasons for the disappointment, the humiliation as it -were, of the good people at Paramore, at the same that it gave an -example of the conscientious coarseness he had on former occasions -observed in his interlocutress. Poor Philip Wingrave, her late brother's -eldest son, was literally imbecile and banished from view; deformed, -unsocial, irretrievable, he had been relegated to a private asylum and -had become among the friends of the family only a little hushed -lugubrious legend. All the hopes of the house, picturesque Paramore, now -unintermittently old Sir Philip's rather melancholy home (his -infirmities would keep him there to the last) were therefore collected -on the second boy's head, which nature, as if in compunction for her -previous botch, had, in addition to making it strikingly handsome, -filled with marked originalities and talents. These two had been the -only children of the old man's only son, who, like so many of his -ancestors, had given up a gallant young life to the service of his -country. Owen Wingrave the elder had received his death-cut, in -close-quarters, from an Afghan sabre; the blow had come crashing across -his skull. His wife, at that time in India, was about to give birth to -her third child; and when the event took place, in darkness and anguish, -the baby came lifeless into the world and the mother sank under the -multiplication of her woes. The second of the little boys in England, -who was at Paramore with his grandfather, became the peculiar charge of -his aunt, the only unmarried one, and during the interesting Sunday -that, by urgent invitation, Spencer Coyle, busy as he was, had, after -consenting to put Owen through, spent under that roof, the celebrated -crammer received a vivid impression of the influence exerted at least in -intention by Miss Wingrave. Indeed the picture of this short visit -remained with the observant little man a curious one—the vision of an -impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and remarkably "creepy," but full of -character still and full of felicity as a setting for the distinguished -figure of the peaceful old soldier. Sir Philip Wingrave, a relic rather -than a celebrity, was a small brown, erect octogenarian, with -smouldering eyes and a studied courtesy. He liked to do the diminished -honours of his house, but even when with a shaky hand he lighted a -bedroom candle for a deprecating guest it was impossible not to feel -that beneath the surface he was a merciless old warrior. The eye of the -imagination could glance back into his crowded Eastern past—back at -episodes in which his scrupulous forms would only have made him more -terrible.</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle remembered also two other figures—a faded inoffensive -Mrs. Julian, domesticated there by a system of frequent visits as the widow -of an officer and a particular friend of Miss Wingrave, and a remarkably -clever little girl of eighteen, who was this lady's daughter and who -struck the speculative visitor as already formed for other relations. -She was very impertinent to Owen, and in the course of a long walk that -he had taken with the young man and the effect of which, in much talk, -had been to clinch his high opinion of him, he had learned (for Owen -chattered confidentially) that Mrs. Julian was the sister of a very -gallant gentleman, Captain Hume-Walker, of the Artillery, who had fallen -in the Indian Mutiny and between whom and Miss Wingrave (it had been -that lady's one known concession) a passage of some delicacy, taking a -tragic turn, was believed to have been enacted. They had been engaged to -be married, but she had given way to the jealousy of her nature—had -broken with him and sent him off to his fate, which had been horrible. A -passionate sense of having wronged him, a hard eternal remorse had -thereupon taken possession of her, and when his poor sister, linked also -to a soldier, had by a still heavier blow been left almost without -resources, she had devoted herself charitably to a long expiation. She -had sought comfort in taking Mrs. Julian to live much of the time at -Paramore, where she became an unremunerated though not uncriticised -housekeeper, and Spencer Coyle suspected that it was a part of this -comfort that she could at her leisure trample on her. The impression of -Jane Wingrave was not the faintest he had gathered on that intensifying -Sunday—an occasion singularly tinged for him with the sense of -bereavement and mourning and memory, of names never mentioned, of the -far-away plaint of widows and the echoes of battles and bad news. It was -all military indeed, and Mr. Coyle was made to shudder a little at the -profession of which he helped to open the door to harmless young men. -Miss Wingrave moreover might have made such a bad conscience worse—so -cold and clear a good one looked at him out of her hard, fine eyes and -trumpeted in her sonorous voice.</p> - -<p>She was a high, distinguished person; angular but not awkward, with a -large forehead and abundant black hair, arranged like that of a woman -conceiving perhaps excusably of her head as "noble," and irregularly -streaked to-day with white. If however she represented for Spencer Coyle -the genius of a military race it was not that she had the step of a -grenadier or the vocabulary of a camp-follower; it was only that such -sympathies were vividly implied in the general fact to which her very -presence and each of her actions and glances and tones were a constant -and direct allusion—the paramount valour of her family. If she was -military it was because she sprang from a military house and because she -wouldn't for the world have been anything but what the Wingraves had -been. She was almost vulgar about her ancestors, and if one had been -tempted to quarrel with her one would have found a fair pretext in her -defective sense of proportion. This temptation however said nothing to -Spencer Coyle, for whom as a strong character revealing itself in colour -and sound she was a spectacle and who was glad to regard her as a force -exerted on his own side. He wished her nephew had more of her narrowness -instead of being almost cursed with the tendency to look at things in -their relations. He wondered why when she came up to town she always -resorted to Baker Street for lodgings. He had never known nor heard of -Baker Street as a residence—he associated it only with bazaars and -photographers. He divined in her a rigid indifference to everything that -was not the passion of her life. Nothing really mattered to her but -that, and she would have occupied apartments in Whitechapel if they had -been a feature in her tactics. She had received her visitor in a large -cold, faded room, furnished with slippery seats and decorated with -alabaster vases and wax-flowers. The only little personal comfort for -which she appeared to have looked out was a fat catalogue of the Army -and Navy Stores, which reposed on a vast, desolate table-cover of false -blue. Her clear forehead—it was like a porcelain slate, a receptacle -for addresses and sums—had flushed when her nephew's crammer told her -the extraordinary news; but he saw she was fortunately more angry than -frightened. She had essentially, she would always have, too little -imagination for fear, and the healthy habit moreover of facing -everything had taught her that the occasion usually found her a quantity -to reckon with. Mr. Coyle saw that her only fear at present could have -been that of not being able to prevent her nephew from being absurd and -that to such an apprehension as this she was in fact inaccessible. -Practically too she was not troubled by surprise; she recognised none of -the futile, none of the subtle sentiments. If Philip had for an hour -made a fool of himself she was angry; disconcerted as she would have -been on learning that he had confessed to debts or fallen in love with a -low girl. But there remained in any annoyance the saving fact that no -one could make a fool of <i>her</i>.</p> - -<p>"I don't know when I've taken such an interest in a young man—I -think I never have, since I began to handle them," Mr. Coyle said. "I like -him, I believe in him—it's been a delight to see how he was -going."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I know how they go!" Miss Wingrave threw back her head with a -familiar briskness, as if a rapid procession of the generations had -flashed before her, rattling their scabbards and spurs. Spencer Coyle -recognised the intimation that she had nothing to learn from anybody -about the natural carriage of a Wingrave, and he even felt convicted by -her next words of being, in her eyes, with the troubled story of his -check, his weak complaint of his pupil, rather a poor creature. "If you -like him," she exclaimed, "for mercy's sake keep him quiet!"</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle began to explain to her that this was less easy than she -appeared to imagine; but he perceived that she understood very little of -what he said. The more he insisted that the boy had a kind of -intellectual independence, the more this struck her as a conclusive -proof that her nephew was a Wingrave and a soldier. It was not till he -mentioned to her that Owen had spoken of the profession of arms as of -something that would be "beneath" him, it was not till her attention was -arrested by this intenser light on the complexity of the problem that -Miss Wingrave broke out after a moment's stupefied reflection: "Send him -to see me immediately!"</p> - -<p>"That's exactly what I wanted to ask your leave to do. But I've wanted -also to prepare you for the worst, to make you understand that he -strikes me as really obstinate and to suggest to you that the most -powerful arguments at your command—especially if you should be able -to put your hand on some intensely practical one—will be none too -effective."</p> - -<p>"I think I've got a powerful argument." Miss Wingrave looked very hard -at her visitor. He didn't know in the least what it was, but he begged -her to put it forward without delay. He promised that their young man -should come to Baker Street that evening, mentioning however that he had -already urged him to spend without delay a couple of days at Eastbourne. -This led Jane Wingrave to inquire with surprise what virtue there might be -in <i>that</i> expensive remedy, and to reply with decision when Mr. Coyle -had said "The virtue of a little rest, a little change, a little relief -to overwrought nerves," "Ah, don't coddle him—he's costing us a great -deal of money! I'll talk to him and I'll take him down to Paramore; then -I'll send him back to you straightened out."</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle hailed this pledge superficially with satisfaction, but -before he quitted Miss Wingrave he became conscious that he had really -taken on a new anxiety—a restlessness that made him say to himself, -groaning inwardly: "Oh, she is a grenadier at bottom, and she'll have no -tact. I don't know what her powerful argument is; I'm only afraid -she'll be stupid and make him worse. The old man's better—<i>he's</i> -capable of tact, though he's not quite an extinct volcano. Owen will -probably put him in a rage. In short the difficulty is that the boy's the -best of them."</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle felt afresh that evening at dinner that the boy was the -best of them. Young Wingrave (who, he was pleased to observe, had not -yet proceeded to the seaside) appeared at the repast as usual, looking -inevitably a little self-conscious, but not too original for Bayswater. -He talked very naturally to Mrs. Coyle, who had thought him from the -first the most beautiful young man they had ever received; so that the -person most ill at ease was poor Lechmere, who took great trouble, as if -from the deepest delicacy, not to meet the eye of his misguided mate. -Spencer Coyle however paid the penalty of his own profundity in feeling -more and more worried; he could so easily see that there were all sorts -of things in his young friend that the people of Paramore wouldn't -understand. He began even already to react against the notion of his -being harassed—to reflect that after all he had a right to his -ideas—to remember that he was of a substance too fine to be in -fairness roughly used. It was in this way that the ardent little crammer, -with his whimsical perceptions and complicated sympathies, was generally -condemned not to settle down comfortably either into his displeasures or -into his enthusiasms. His love of the real truth never gave him a chance -to enjoy them. He mentioned to Wingrave after dinner the propriety of an -immediate visit to Baker Street, and the young man, looking "queer," as -he thought—that is smiling again with the exaggerated glory he had -shown in their recent interview—went off to face the ordeal. Spencer -Coyle noted that he was scared—he was afraid of his aunt; but somehow -this didn't strike him as a sign of pusillanimity. <i>He</i> should have -been scared, he was well aware, in the poor boy's place, and the sight of -his pupil marching up to the battery in spite of his terrors was a positive -suggestion of the temperament of the soldier. Many a plucky youth would -have shirked this particular peril.</p> - -<p>"He <i>has</i> got ideas!" young Lechmere broke out to his instructor -after his comrade had quitted the house. He was evidently bewildered and -agitated—he had an emotion to work off. He had before dinner gone -straight at his friend, as Mr. Coyle had requested, and had elicited -from him that his scruples were founded on an overwhelming conviction of -the stupidity—the "crass barbarism" he called it—of war. His -great complaint was that people hadn't invented anything cleverer, and he -was determined to show, the only way he could, that <i>he</i> wasn't such -an ass.</p> - -<p>"And he thinks all the great generals ought to have been shot, and that -Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, the greatest, was a criminal, a -monster for whom language has no adequate name!" Mr. Coyle rejoined, -completing young Lechmere's picture. "He favoured you, I see, with -exactly the same pearls of wisdom that he produced for me. But I want to -know what <i>you</i> said."</p> - -<p>"I said they were awful rot!" Young Lechmere spoke with emphasis, and he -was slightly surprised to hear Mr. Coyle laugh incongruously at this -just declaration and then after a moment continue:</p> - -<p>"It's all very curious—I daresay there's something in it. But it's -a pity!"</p> - -<p>"He told me when it was that the question began to strike him in that -light. Four or five years ago, when he did a lot of reading about all -the great swells and their campaigns—Hannibal and Julius Cæsar, -Marlborough and Frederick and Bonaparte. He <i>has</i> done a lot of -reading, and he says it opened his eyes. He says that a wave of disgust -rolled over him. He talked about the 'immeasurable misery' of wars, and -asked me why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that -go in for them. He hates poor old Bonaparte worst of all."</p> - -<p>"Well, poor old Bonaparte was a brute. He was a frightful ruffian," Mr. -Coyle unexpectedly declared. "But I suppose you didn't admit that."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I daresay he was objectionable, and I'm very glad we laid him on -his back. But the point I made to Wingrave was that his own behaviour -would excite no end of remark." Young Lechmere hesitated an instant, -then he added: "I told him he must be prepared for the worst."</p> - -<p>"Of course he asked you what you meant by the 'worst,'" said Spencer -Coyle.</p> - -<p>"Yes, he asked me that, and do you know what I said? I said people would -say that his conscientious scruples and his wave of disgust are only a -pretext. Then he asked 'A pretext for what?'"</p> - -<p>"Ah, he rather had you there!" Mr. Coyle exclaimed with a little laugh -that was mystifying to his pupil.</p> - -<p>"Not a bit—for I told him."</p> - -<p>"What did you tell him?"</p> - -<p>Once more, for a few seconds, with his conscious eyes in his -instructor's, the young man hung fire.</p> - -<p>"Why, what we spoke of a few hours ago. The appearance he'd present of -not having——" The honest youth faltered a moment, then brought -it out: "The military temperament, don't you know? But do you know what he -said to that?" young Lechmere went on.</p> - -<p>"Damn the military temperament!" the crammer promptly replied.</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere stared. Mr. Coyle's tone left him uncertain if he were -attributing the phrase to Wingrave or uttering his own opinion, but he -exclaimed:</p> - -<p>"Those were exactly his words!"</p> - -<p>"He doesn't care," said Mr. Coyle.</p> - -<p>"Perhaps not. But it isn't fair for him to abuse us fellows. I told him -it's the finest temperament in the world, and that there's nothing so -splendid as pluck and heroism."</p> - -<p>"Ah! there you had <i>him</i>."</p> - -<p>"I told him it was unworthy of him to abuse a gallant, a magnificent -profession. I told him there's no type so fine as that of the soldier -doing his duty."</p> - -<p>"That's essentially <i>your</i> type, my dear boy." Young Lechmere -blushed; he couldn't make out (and the danger was naturally unexpected to -him) whether at that moment he didn't exist mainly for the recreation of -his friend. But he was partly reassured by the genial way this friend -continued, laying a hand on his shoulder: "Keep <i>at</i> him that way! we -may do something. I'm extremely obliged to you." Another doubt however -remained unassuaged—a doubt which led him to exclaim to Mr. Coyle -before they dropped the painful subject:</p> - -<p>"He <i>doesn't</i> care! But it's awfully odd he shouldn't!"</p> - -<p>"So it is, but remember what you said this afternoon—I mean about -your not advising people to make insinuations to <i>you</i>."</p> - -<p>"I believe I should knock a fellow down!" said young Lechmere. Mr. Coyle -had got up; the conversation had taken place while they sat together -after Mrs. Coyle's withdrawal from the dinner-table and the head of the -establishment administered to his disciple, on principles that were a -part of his thoroughness, a glass of excellent claret. The disciple, -also on his feet, lingered an instant, not for another "go," as he would -have called it, at the decanter, but to wipe his microscopic moustache -with prolonged and unusual care. His companion saw he had something to -bring out which required a final effort, and waited for him an instant -with a hand on the knob of the door. Then as young Lechmere approached -him Spencer Coyle grew conscious of an unwonted intensity in the round -and ingenuous face. The boy was nervous, but he tried to behave like a -man of the world. "Of course, it's between ourselves," he stammered, -"and I wouldn't breathe such a word to any one who wasn't interested in -poor Wingrave as you are. But do you think he funks it?"</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle looked at him so hard for an instant that he was visibly -frightened at what he had said.</p> - -<p>"Funks it! Funks what?"</p> - -<p>"Why, what we're talking about—the service." Young Lechmere gave a -little gulp and added with a <i>naïveté</i> almost pathetic to Spencer -Coyle: "The dangers, you know!"</p> - -<p>"Do you mean he's thinking of his skin?"</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere's eyes expanded appealingly, and what his instructor saw -in his pink face—he even thought he saw a tear—was the dread of -a disappointment shocking in the degree in which the loyalty of admiration -had been great.</p> - -<p>"Is he—is he <i>afraid</i>?" repeated the honest lad, with a -quaver of suspense.</p> - -<p>"Dear no!" said Spencer Coyle, turning his back.</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere felt a little snubbed and even a little ashamed; but he -felt still more relieved.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - - -<p>Less than a week after this Spencer Coyle received a note from Miss -Wingrave, who had immediately quitted London with her nephew. She -proposed that he should come down to Paramore for the following -Sunday—Owen was really so tiresome. On the spot, in that house of -examples and memories and in combination with her poor dear father, who -was "dreadfully annoyed," it might be worth their while to make a last -stand. Mr. Coyle read between the lines of this letter that the party at -Paramore had got over a good deal of ground since Miss Wingrave, in -Baker Street, had treated his despair as superficial. She was not an -insinuating woman, but she went so far as to put the question on the -ground of his conferring a particular favour on an afflicted family; and -she expressed the pleasure it would give them if he should be -accompanied by Mrs. Coyle, for whom she inclosed a separate invitation. -She mentioned that she was also writing, subject to Mr. Coyle's -approval, to young Lechmere. She thought such a nice manly boy might do -her wretched nephew some good. The celebrated crammer determined to -embrace this opportunity; and now it was the case not so much that he -was angry as that he was anxious. As he directed his answer to Miss -Wingrave's letter he caught himself smiling at the thought that at bottom -he was going to defend his young friend rather than to attack him. He said -to his wife, who was a fair, fresh, slow woman—a person of much more -presence than himself—that she had better take Miss Wingrave -at her word: it was such an extraordinary, such a fascinating specimen -of an old English home. This last allusion was amicably sarcastic—he -had already accused the good lady more than once of being in love with -Owen Wingrave. She admitted that she was, she even gloried in her -passion; which shows that the subject, between them, was treated in a -liberal spirit. She carried out the joke by accepting the invitation -with eagerness. Young Lechmere was delighted to do the same; his -instructor had good-naturedly taken the view that the little break would -freshen him up for his last spurt.</p> - -<p>It was the fact that the occupants of Paramore did indeed take their -trouble hard that struck Spencer Coyle after he had been an hour or two -in that fine old house. This very short second visit, beginning on the -Saturday evening, was to constitute the strangest episode of his life. -As soon as he found himself in private with his wife—they had retired -to dress for dinner—they called each other's attention with effusion -and almost with alarm to the sinister gloom that was stamped on the -place. The house was admirable with its old grey front which came -forward in wings so as to form three sides of a square, but Mrs. Coyle -made no scruple to declare that if she had known in advance the sort of -impression she was going to receive she would never have put her foot in -it. She characterized it as "uncanny," she accused her husband of not -having warned her properly. He had mentioned to her in advance certain -facts, but while she almost feverishly dressed she had innumerable -questions to ask. He hadn't told her about the girl, the extraordinary -girl, Miss Julian—that is, he hadn't told her that this young lady, -who in plain terms was a mere dependent, would be in effect, and as a -consequence of the way she carried herself, the most important person in -the house. Mrs. Coyle was already prepared to announce that she hated -Miss Julian's affectations. Her husband above all hadn't told her that -they should find their young charge looking five years older.</p> - -<p>"I couldn't imagine that," said Mr. Coyle, "nor that the character of -the crisis here would be quite so perceptible. But I suggested to Miss -Wingrave the other day that they should press her nephew in real -earnest, and she has taken me at my word. They've cut off his -supplies—they're trying to starve him out. That's not what I -meant—but indeed I don't quite <i>know</i> to-day what I meant. -Owen feels the pressure, but he won't yield." The strange thing was -that, now that he was there, the versatile little coach felt still more -that his own spirit had been caught up by a wave of reaction. If he was -there it was because he was on poor Owen's side. His whole impression, -his whole apprehension, had on the spot become much deeper. There was -something in the dear boy's very resistance that began to charm him. -When his wife, in the intimacy of the conference I have mentioned, threw -off the mask and commended even with extravagance the stand his pupil -had taken (he was too good to be a horrid soldier and it was noble of -him to suffer for his convictions—wasn't he as upright as a young -hero, even though as pale as a Christian martyr?) the good lady only -expressed the sympathy which, under cover of regarding his young friend -as a rare exception, he had already recognised in his own soul.</p> - -<p>For, half an hour ago, after they had had superficial tea in the brown -old hall of the house, his young friend had proposed to him, before -going to dress, to take a turn outside, and had even, on the terrace, as -they walked together to one of the far ends of it, passed his hand -entreatingly into his companion's arm, permitting himself thus a -familiarity unusual between pupil and master and calculated to show that -he had guessed whom he could most depend on to be kind to him. Spencer -Coyle on his own side had guessed something, so that he was not -surprised at the boy's having a particular confidence to make. He had -felt on arriving that each member of the party had wished to get hold of -him first, and he knew that at that moment Jane Wingrave was peering -through the ancient blur of one of the windows (the house had been -modernised so little that the thick dim panes were three centuries old) -to see if her nephew looked as if he were poisoning the visitor's mind. -Mr. Coyle lost no time therefore in reminding the youth (and he took -care to laugh as he did so) that he had not come down to Paramore to be -corrupted. He had come down to make, face to face, a last appeal to -him—he hoped it wouldn't be utterly vain. Owen smiled sadly as they -went, asking him if he thought he had the general air of a fellow who -was going to knock under.</p> - -<p>"I think you look strange—I think you look ill," Spencer Coyle -said very honestly. They had paused at the end of the terrace.</p> - -<p>"I've had to exercise a great power of resistance, and it rather takes -it out of one."</p> - -<p>"Ah, my dear boy, I wish your great power—for you evidently -possess it—were exerted in a better cause!"</p> - -<p>Owen Wingrave smiled down at his small instructor. "I don't believe -that!" Then he added, to explain why: "Isn't what you want, if you're so -good as to think well of my character, to see me exert <i>most</i> power, -in whatever direction? Well, <i>this</i> is the way I exert most." Owen -Wingrave went on to relate that he had had some terrible hours with his -grandfather, who had denounced him in a way to make one's hair stand up -on one's head. He had expected them not to like it, not a bit, but he -had had no idea they would make such a row. His aunt was different, but -she was equally insulting. Oh, they had made him feel they were ashamed -of him; they accused him of putting a public dishonour on their name. He -was the only one who had ever backed out—he was the first for three -hundred years. Every one had known he was to go up, and now every one -would know he was a young hypocrite who suddenly pretended to -have scruples. They talked of his scruples as you wouldn't talk -of a cannibal's god. His grandfather had called him outrageous -names. "He called me—he called me——" Here the young man -faltered, his voice failed him. He looked as haggard as was possible to a -young man in such magnificent health.</p> - -<p>"I probably know!" said Spencer Coyle, with a nervous laugh.</p> - -<p>Owen Wingrave's clouded eyes, as if they were following the far-off -consequences of things, rested for an instant on a distant object. Then -they met his companion's and for another moment sounded them deeply. "It -isn't true. No, it isn't. It's not <i>that</i>!"</p> - -<p>"I don't suppose it is! But what <i>do</i> you propose instead -of it?"</p> - -<p>"Instead of what?"</p> - -<p>"Instead of the stupid solution of war. If you take that away you should -suggest at least a substitute."</p> - -<p>"That's for the people in charge, for governments and cabinets," said -Owen Wingrave. "<i>They</i>'ll arrive soon enough at a substitute, in the -particular case, if they're made to understand that they'll be hung if -they don't find one. Make it a capital crime—that'll quicken the wits -of ministers!" His eyes brightened as he spoke, and he looked assured -and exalted. Mr. Coyle gave a sigh of perplexed resignation—it was a -monomania. He fancied after this for a moment that Owen was going to ask -him if he too thought he was a coward; but he was relieved to observe -that he either didn't suspect him of it or shrank uncomfortably from -putting the question to the test. Spencer Coyle wished to show -confidence, but somehow a direct assurance that he didn't doubt of his -courage appeared too gross a compliment—it would be like saying he -didn't doubt of his honesty. The difficulty was presently averted by -Owen's continuing: "My grandfather can't break the entail, but I shall -have nothing but this place, which, as you know, is small and, with the -way rents are going, has quite ceased to yield an income. He has some -money—not much, but such as it is he cuts me off. My aunt does the -same—she has let me know her intentions. She was to have left me her -six hundred a year. It was all settled; but now what's settled is that I -don't get a penny of it if I give up the army. I must add in fairness -that I have from my mother three hundred a year of my own. And I tell -you the simple truth when I say that I don't care a rap for the loss of -the money." The young man drew a long, slow breath, like a creature in -pain; then he subjoined: "<i>That's</i> not what worries me!"</p> - -<p>"What are you going to do?" asked Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>"I don't know; perhaps nothing. Nothing great, at all events. Only -something peaceful!"</p> - -<p>Owen gave a weary smile, as if, worried as he was, he could yet -appreciate the humorous effect of such a declaration from a Wingrave; -but what it suggested to his companion, who looked up at him with a -sense that he was after all not a Wingrave for nothing and had a -military steadiness under fire, was the exasperation that such a -programme, uttered in such a way and striking them as the last word of -the inglorious, might well have engendered on the part of his grandfather -and his aunt. "Perhaps nothing"—when he might carry on the great -tradition! Yes, he wasn't weak, and he was interesting; but there -<i>was</i> a point of view from which he was provoking. "What <i>is</i> it -then that worries you?" Mr. Coyle demanded.</p> - -<p>"Oh, the house—the very air and feeling of it. There are strange -voices in it that seem to mutter at me—to say dreadful things as I -pass. I mean the general consciousness and responsibility of what I'm -doing. Of course it hasn't been easy for me—not a bit. I assure you I -don't enjoy it." With a light in them that was like a longing for justice -Owen again bent his eyes on those of the little coach; then he pursued: -"I've started up all the old ghosts. The very portraits glower at me on the -walls. There's one of my great-great-grandfather (the one the -extraordinary story you know is about—the old fellow who hangs on the -second landing of the big staircase) that fairly stirs on the -canvas—just heaves a little—when I come near it. I have to go -up and down stairs—it's rather awkward! It's what my aunt calls the -family circle. It's all constituted here, it's a kind of indestructible -presence, it stretches away into the past, and when I came back with her -the other day Miss Wingrave told me I wouldn't have the impudence to -stand in the midst of it and say such things. I had to say them to my -grandfather; but now that I've said them it seems to me that the -question's ended. I want to go away—I don't care if I never come back -again."</p> - -<p>"Oh, you <i>are</i> a soldier; you must fight it out!" Mr. Coyle -laughed.</p> - -<p>The young man seemed discouraged at his levity, but as they turned -round, strolling back in the direction from which they had come, he -himself smiled faintly after an instant and replied:</p> - -<p>"Ah, we're tainted—all!"</p> - -<p>They walked in silence part of the way to the old portico; then Spencer -Coyle, stopping short after having assured himself that he was at a -sufficient distance from the house not to be heard, suddenly put the -question: "What does Miss Julian say?"</p> - -<p>"Miss Julian?" Owen had perceptibly coloured.</p> - -<p>"I'm sure <i>she</i> hasn't concealed her opinion."</p> - -<p>"Oh, it's the opinion of the family circle, for she's a member of it of -course. And then she has her own as well."</p> - -<p>"Her own opinion?"</p> - -<p>"Her own family circle."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean her mother—that patient lady?"</p> - -<p>"I mean more particularly her father, who fell in battle. -And her grandfather, and <i>his</i> father, and her uncles and -great-uncles—they all fell in battle."</p> - -<p>"Hasn't the sacrifice of so many lives been sufficient? Why should she -sacrifice you?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, she <i>hates</i> me!" Owen declared, as they resumed their -walk.</p> - -<p>"Ah, the hatred of pretty girls for fine young men!" exclaimed Spencer -Coyle.</p> - -<p>He didn't believe in it, but his wife did, it appeared perfectly, when -he mentioned this conversation while, in the fashion that has been -described, the visitors dressed for dinner. Mrs. Coyle had already -discovered that nothing could have been nastier than Miss Julian's -manner to the disgraced youth during the half-hour the party had spent -in the hall; and it was this lady's judgment that one must have had no -eyes in one's head not to see that she was already trying outrageously -to flirt with young Lechmere. It was a pity they had brought that silly -boy: he was down in the hall with her at that moment. Spencer Coyle's -version was different; he thought there were finer elements involved. -The girl's footing in the house was inexplicable on any ground save that -of her being predestined to Miss Wingrave's nephew. As the niece of Miss -Wingrave's own unhappy intended she had been dedicated early by this -lady to the office of healing by a union with Owen the tragic breach -that had separated their elders; and if in reply to this it was to be -said that a girl of spirit couldn't enjoy in such a matter having her -duty cut out for her, Owen's enlightened friend was ready with the -argument that a young person in Miss Julian's position would never be -such a fool as really to quarrel with a capital chance. She was familiar -at Paramore and she felt safe; therefore she might trust herself to the -amusement of pretending that she had her option. But it was all innocent -coquetry. She had a curious charm, and it was vain to pretend that the -heir of that house wouldn't seem good enough to a girl, clever as she -might be, of eighteen. Mrs. Coyle reminded her husband that the poor young -man was precisely now <i>not</i> of that house: this problem was among -the questions that exercised their wits after the two men had taken the -turn on the terrace. Spencer Coyle told his wife that Owen was afraid of -the portrait of his great-great-grandfather. He would show it to her, -since she hadn't noticed it, on their way down stairs.</p> - -<p>"Why of his great-great-grandfather more than of any of the -others?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, because he's the most formidable. He's the one who's sometimes -seen."</p> - -<p>"Seen where?" Mrs. Coyle had turned round with a jerk.</p> - -<p>"In the room he was found dead in—the White Room they've always -called it."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean to say the house has a <i>ghost</i>?" Mrs. Coyle almost -shrieked. "You brought me here without telling me?"</p> - -<p>"Didn't I mention it after my other visit?"</p> - -<p>"Not a word. You only talked about Miss Wingrave."</p> - -<p>"Oh, I was full of the story—you have simply forgotten."</p> - -<p>"Then you should have reminded me!"</p> - -<p>"If I had thought of it I would have held my peace, for you wouldn't -have come."</p> - -<p>"I wish, indeed, I hadn't!" cried Mrs. Coyle. "What <i>is</i> the -story?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, a deed of violence that took place here ages ago. I think it was in -George the First's time. Colonel Wingrave, one of their ancestors, -struck in a fit of passion one of his children, a lad just growing up, a -blow on the head of which the unhappy child died. The matter was hushed -up for the hour—some other explanation was put about. The poor boy -was laid out in one of those rooms on the other side of the house, and amid -strange smothered rumours the funeral was hurried on. The next morning, -when the household assembled, Colonel Wingrave was missing; he was -looked for vainly, and at last it occurred to some one that he might -perhaps be in the room from which his child had been carried to burial. -The seeker knocked without an answer—then opened the door. Colonel -Wingrave lay dead on the floor, in his clothes, as if he had reeled and -fallen back, without a wound, without a mark, without anything in his -appearance to indicate that he had either struggled or suffered. He was -a strong, sound man—there was nothing to account for such a -catastrophe. He is supposed to have gone to the room during the night, -just before going to bed, in some fit of compunction or some fascination -of dread. It was only after this that the truth about the boy came out. -But no one ever sleeps in the room."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Coyle had fairly turned pale. "I hope not! Thank heaven they -haven't put <i>us</i> there!"</p> - -<p>"We're at a comfortable distance; but I've seen the gruesome -chamber."</p> - -<p>"Do you mean you've been <i>in</i> it?"</p> - -<p>"For a few moments. They're rather proud of it and my young friend -showed it to me when I was here before."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Coyle stared. "And what is it like?"</p> - -<p>"Simply like an empty, dull, old-fashioned bedroom, rather big, with the -things of the 'period' in it. It's panelled from floor to ceiling, and -the panels evidently, years and years ago, were painted white. But the -paint has darkened with time and there are three or four quaint little -ancient 'samplers,' framed and glazed, hung on the walls."</p> - -<p>Mrs. Coyle looked round with a shudder. "I'm glad there are no samplers -here! I never heard anything so jumpy! Come down to dinner."</p> - -<p>On the staircase as they went down her husband showed her the portrait -of Colonel Wingrave—rather a vigorous representation, for the place -and period, of a gentleman with a hard, handsome face, in a red coat and a -peruke. Mrs. Coyle declared that his descendant Sir Philip was -wonderfully like him; and her husband could fancy, though he kept it to -himself, that if one should have the courage to walk about the old -corridors of Paramore at night one might meet a figure that resembled -him roaming, with the restlessness of a ghost, hand in hand with the -figure of a tall boy. As he proceeded to the drawing-room with his wife -he found himself suddenly wishing that he had made more of a point of -his pupil's going to Eastbourne. The evening however seemed to have -taken upon itself to dissipate any such whimsical forebodings, for the -grimness of the family circle, as Spencer Coyle had preconceived its -composition, was mitigated by an infusion of the "neighbourhood." The -company at dinner was recruited by two cheerful couples—one of them -the vicar and his wife, and by a silent young man who had come down to -fish. This was a relief to Mr. Coyle, who had begun to wonder what was -after all expected of him and why he had been such a fool as to come, and -who now felt that for the first hours at least the situation would not have -directly to be dealt with. Indeed he found, as he had found before, -sufficient occupation for his ingenuity in reading the various symptoms -of which the picture before him was an expression. He should probably -have an irritating day on the morrow: he foresaw the difficulty of the -long decorous Sunday and how dry Jane Wingrave's ideas, elicited in a -strenuous conference, would taste. She and her father would make him -feel that they depended upon him for the impossible, and if they should -try to associate him with a merely stupid policy he might end by telling -them what he thought of it—an accident not required to make his visit -a sensible mistake. The old man's actual design was evidently to let their -friends see in it a positive mark of their being all right. The presence -of the great London coach was tantamount to a profession of faith in the -results of the impending examination. It had clearly been obtained from -Owen, rather to Spencer Coyle's surprise, that he would do nothing to -interfere with the apparent harmony. He let the allusions to his hard -work pass and, holding his tongue about his affairs, talked to the -ladies as amicably as if he had not been "cut off." When Spencer Coyle -looked at him once or twice across the table, catching his eye, which -showed an indefinable passion, he saw a puzzling pathos in his laughing -face: one couldn't resist a pang for a young lamb so visibly marked for -sacrifice. "Hang him—what a pity he's such a fighter!" he privately -sighed, with a want of logic that was only superficial.</p> - -<p>This idea however would have absorbed him more if so much of his -attention had not been given to Kate Julian, who now that he had her -well before him struck him as a remarkable and even as a possibly -fascinating young woman. The fascination resided not in any -extraordinary prettiness, for if she was handsome, with her long Eastern -eyes, her magnificent hair and her general unabashed originality, he had -seen complexions rosier and features that pleased him more: it resided -in a strange impression that she gave of being exactly the sort of -person whom, in her position, common considerations, those of prudence -and perhaps even a little those of decorum, would have enjoined on her -not to be. She was what was vulgarly termed a dependant—penniless, -patronized, tolerated; but something in her aspect and manner signified -that if her situation was inferior, her spirit, to make up for it, was -above precautions or submissions. It was not in the least that she was -aggressive, she was too indifferent for that; it was only as if, having -nothing either to gain or to lose, she could afford to do as she liked. -It occurred to Spencer Coyle that she might really have had more at -stake than her imagination appeared to take account of; whatever it was -at any rate he had never seen a young woman at less pains to be on the -safe side. He wondered inevitably how the peace was kept between Jane -Wingrave and such an inmate as this; but those questions of course were -unfathomable deeps. Perhaps Kate Julian lorded it even over her -protectress. The other time he was at Paramore he had received an -impression that, with Sir Philip beside her, the girl could fight with -her back to the wall. She amused Sir Philip, she charmed him, and he -liked people who weren't afraid; between him and his daughter moreover -there was no doubt which was the higher in command. Miss Wingrave took -many things for granted, and most of all the rigour of discipline and -the fate of the vanquished and the captive.</p> - -<p>But between their clever boy and so original a companion of his -childhood what odd relation would have grown up? It couldn't be -indifference, and yet on the part of happy, handsome, youthful creatures -it was still less likely to be aversion. They weren't Paul and Virginia, -but they must have had their common summer and their idyll: no nice girl -could have disliked such a nice fellow for anything but not liking -<i>her</i>, and no nice fellow could have resisted such propinquity. Mr. -Coyle remembered indeed that Mrs. Julian had spoken to him as if the -propinquity had been by no means constant, owing to her daughter's -absences at school, to say nothing of Owen's; her visits to a few -friends who were so kind as to "take her" from time to time; her -sojourns in London—so difficult to manage, but still managed by God's -help—for "advantages," for drawing and singing, especially drawing or -rather painting, in oils, in which she had had immense success. But the -good lady had also mentioned that the young people were quite brother -and sister, which <i>was</i> a little, after all, like Paul and Virginia. -Mrs. Coyle had been right, and it was apparent that Virginia was doing -her best to make the time pass agreeably for young Lechmere. There was -no such whirl of conversation as to render it an effort for Mr. Coyle to -reflect on these things, for the tone of the occasion, thanks -principally to the other guests, was not disposed to stray—it tended -to the repetition of anecdote and the discussion of rents, topics that -huddled together like uneasy animals. He could judge how intensely his -hosts wished the evening to pass off as if nothing had happened; and -this gave him the measure of their private resentment. Before dinner was -over he found himself fidgetty about his second pupil. Young Lechmere, -since he began to cram, had done all that might have been expected of -him; but this couldn't blind his instructor to a present perception of -his being in moments of relaxation as innocent as a babe. Mr. Coyle had -considered that the amusements of Paramore would probably give him a -fillip, and the poor fellow's manner testified to the soundness of the -forecast. The fillip had been unmistakably administered; it had come in -the form of a revelation. The light on young Lechmere's brow announced -with a candour that was almost an appeal for compassion, or at least a -deprecation of ridicule, that he had never seen anything like Miss -Julian.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IV</h4> - - -<p>In the drawing-room after dinner the girl found an occasion to approach -Spencer Coyle. She stood before him a moment, smiling while she opened -and shut her fan, and then she said abruptly, raising her strange eyes: -"I know what you've come for, but it isn't any use."</p> - -<p>"I've come to look after <i>you</i> a little. Isn't <i>that</i> any -use?"</p> - -<p>"It's very kind. But I'm not the question of the hour. You won't do -anything with Owen."</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle hesitated a moment. "What will <i>you</i> do with his -young friend?"</p> - -<p>She stared, looked round her.</p> - -<p>"Mr. Lechmere? Oh, poor little lad! We've been talking about Owen. He -admires him so."</p> - -<p>"So do I. I should tell you that."</p> - -<p>"So do we all. That's why we're in such despair."</p> - -<p>"Personally then you'd <i>like</i> him to be a soldier?" Spencer Coyle -inquired.</p> - -<p>"I've quite set my heart on it. I adore the army and I'm awfully fond of -my old playmate," said Miss Julian.</p> - -<p>Her interlocutor remembered the young man's own different version of her -attitude; but he judged it loyal not to challenge the girl.</p> - -<p>"It's not conceivable that your old playmate shouldn't be fond of you. -He must therefore wish to please you; and I don't see why—between -you—you don't set the matter right."</p> - -<p>"Wish to please me!" Miss Julian exclaimed. "I'm sorry to say he shows -no such desire. He thinks me an impudent wretch. I've told him what I -think of <i>him</i>, and he simply hates me."</p> - -<p>"But you think so highly! You just told me you admire him."</p> - -<p>"His talents, his possibilities, yes; even his appearance, if I may -allude to such a matter. But I don't admire his present behaviour."</p> - -<p>"Have you had the question out with him?" Spencer Coyle asked.</p> - -<p>"Oh, yes, I've ventured to be frank—the occasion seemed to excuse -it. He couldn't like what I said."</p> - -<p>"What did you say?"</p> - -<p>Miss Julian, thinking a moment, opened and shut her fan again.</p> - -<p>"Why, that such conduct isn't that of a gentleman!"</p> - -<p>After she had spoken her eyes met Spencer Coyle's, who looked into their -charming depths.</p> - -<p>"Do you want then so much to send him off to be killed?"</p> - -<p>"How odd for <i>you</i> to ask that—in such a way!" she replied -with a laugh. "I don't understand your position: I thought your line was to -<i>make</i> soldiers!"</p> - -<p>"You should take my little joke. But, as regards Owen Wingrave, there's -no 'making' needed," Mr. Coyle added. "To my sense"—the little -crammer paused a moment, as if with a consciousness of responsibility for -his paradox—"to my sense he <i>is</i>, in a high sense of the term, a -fighting man."</p> - -<p>"Ah, let him prove it!" the girl exclaimed, turning away.</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle let her go; there was something in her tone that annoyed -and even a little shocked him. There had evidently been a violent -passage between these young people, and the reflection that such a -matter was after all none of his business only made him more sore. It -was indeed a military house, and she was at any rate a person who placed -her ideal of manhood (young persons doubtless always had their ideals of -manhood) in the type of the belted warrior. It was a taste like another; -but, even a quarter of an hour later, finding himself near young -Lechmere, in whom this type was embodied, Spencer Coyle was still so -ruffled that he addressed the innocent lad with a certain magisterial -dryness. "You're not to sit up late, you know. That's not what I brought -you down for." The dinner-guests were taking leave and the bedroom -candles twinkled in a monitory row. Young Lechmere however was too -agreeably agitated to be accessible to a snub: he had a happy -preoccupation which almost engendered a grin.</p> - -<p>"I'm only too eager for bedtime. Do you know there's an awfully jolly -room?"</p> - -<p>"Surely they haven't put you there?"</p> - -<p>"No indeed: no one has passed a night in it for ages. But that's exactly -what I want to do—it would be tremendous fun."</p> - -<p>"And have you been trying to get Miss Julian's permission?"</p> - -<p>"Oh, <i>she</i> can't give leave, she says. But she believes in it, and -she maintains that no man dare."</p> - -<p>"No man <i>shall</i>! A man in your critical position in particular must -have a quiet night," said Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere gave a disappointed but reasonable sigh.</p> - -<p>"Oh, all right. But mayn't I sit up for a little go at Wingrave? I -haven't had any yet."</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle looked at his watch.</p> - -<p>"You may smoke <i>one</i> cigarette."</p> - -<p>He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned round to see his wife -tilting candle-grease upon his coat. The ladies were going to bed and it -was Sir Philip's inveterate hour; but Mrs. Coyle confided to her husband -that after the dreadful things he had told her she positively declined -to be left alone, for no matter how short an interval, in any part of -the house. He promised to follow her within three minutes, and after the -orthodox handshakes the ladies rustled away. The forms were kept up at -Paramore as bravely as if the old house had no present heartache. The -only one of which Spencer Coyle noticed the omission was some salutation -to himself from Kate Julian. She gave him neither a word nor a glance, -but he saw her look hard at Owen Wingrave. Her mother, timid and -pitying, was apparently the only person from whom this young man caught -an inclination of the head. Miss Wingrave marshalled the three -ladies—her little procession of twinkling tapers—up the wide -oaken stairs and past the watching portrait of her ill-fated ancestor. Sir -Philip's servant appeared and offered his arm to the old man, who turned -a perpendicular back on poor Owen when the boy made a vague movement to -anticipate this office. Spencer Coyle learned afterwards that before -Owen had forfeited favour it had always, when he was at home, been his -privilege at bedtime to conduct his grandfather ceremoniously to rest. -Sir Philip's habits were contemptuously different now. His apartments -were on the lower floor and he shuffled stiffly off to them with his -valet's help, after fixing for a moment significantly on the most -responsible of his visitors the thick red ray, like the glow of stirred -embers, that always made his eyes conflict oddly with his mild manners. -They seemed to say to Spencer Coyle "We'll let the young scoundrel have -it to-morrow!" One might have gathered from them that the young -scoundrel, who had now strolled to the other end of the hall, had at -least forged a cheque. Mr. Coyle watched him an instant, saw him drop -nervously into a chair and then with a restless movement get up. The -same movement brought him back to where his late instructor stood -addressing a last injunction to young Lechmere.</p> - -<p>"I'm going to bed and I should like you particularly to conform to what -I said to you a short time ago. Smoke a single cigarette with your -friend here and then go to your room. You'll have me down on you if I -hear of your having, during the night, tried any preposterous games." -Young Lechmere, looking down with his hands in his pockets, said -nothing—he only poked at the corner of a rug with his toe; so that -Spencer Coyle, dissatisfied with so tacit a pledge, presently went on, -to Owen: "I must request you, Wingrave, not to keep this sensitive -subject sitting up—and indeed to put him to bed and turn his key in -the door." As Owen stared an instant, apparently not understanding the -motive of so much solicitude, he added: "Lechmere has a morbid curiosity -about one of your legends—of your historic rooms. Nip it in the -bud."</p> - -<p>"Oh, the legend's rather good, but I'm afraid the room's an awful sell!" -Owen laughed.</p> - -<p>"You know you don't <i>believe</i> that, my boy!" young Lechmere -exclaimed.</p> - -<p>"I don't think he does," said Mr. Coyle, noticing Owen's mottled -flush.</p> - -<p>"He wouldn't try a night there himself!" young Lechmere pursued.</p> - -<p>"I know who told you that," rejoined Owen, lighting a cigarette in an -embarrassed way at the candle, without offering one to either of his -companions.</p> - -<p>"Well, what if she did?" asked the younger of these gentleman, rather -red. "Do you want them <i>all</i> yourself?" he continued facetiously, -fumbling in the cigarette-box.</p> - -<p>Owen Wingrave only smoked quietly; then he exclaimed:</p> - -<p>"Yes—what if she did? But she doesn't know," he added.</p> - -<p>"She doesn't know what?"</p> - -<p>"She doesn't know anything!—I'll tuck him in!" Owen went on gaily -to Mr. Coyle, who saw that his presence, now that a certain note had been -struck, made the young men uncomfortable. He was curious, but there was -a kind of discretion, with his pupils, that he had always pretended to -practise; a discretion that however didn't prevent him as he took his -way upstairs from recommending them not to be donkeys.</p> - -<p>At the top of the staircase, to his surprise, he met Miss Julian, who -was apparently going down again. She had not begun to undress, nor was -she perceptibly disconcerted at seeing him. She nevertheless, in a -manner slightly at variance with the rigour with which she had -overlooked him ten minutes before, dropped the words: "I'm going down to -look for something. I've lost a jewel."</p> - -<p>"A jewel?"</p> - -<p>"A rather good turquoise, out of my locket. As it's the only ornament I -have the honour to possess——!" And she passed down.</p> - -<p>"Shall I go with you and help you?" asked Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>The girl paused a few steps below him, looking back with her Oriental -eyes.</p> - -<p>"Don't I hear voices in the hall?"</p> - -<p>"Those remarkable young men are there."</p> - -<p>"<i>They'll</i> help me." And Kate Julian descended.</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle was tempted to follow her, but remembering his standard of -tact he rejoined his wife in their apartment. He delayed however to go -to bed, and though he went into his dressing-room he couldn't bring -himself even to take off his coat. He pretended for half an hour to read -a novel; after which, quietly, or perhaps I should say agitatedly, he -passed from the dressing-room into the corridor. He followed this -passage to the door of the room which he knew to have been assigned to -young Lechmere and was comforted to see that it was closed. Half an hour -earlier he had seen it standing open; therefore he could take for -granted that the bewildered boy had come to bed. It was of this he had -wished to assure himself, and having done so he was on the point of -retreating. But at the same instant he heard a sound in the room—the -occupant was doing, at the window, something which showed him that he -might knock without the reproach of waking his pupil up. Young Lechmere -came in fact to the door in his shirt and trousers. He admitted his -visitor in some surprise, and when the door was closed again Spencer -Coyle said:</p> - -<p>"I don't want to make your life a burden to you, but I had it on my -conscience to see for myself that you're not exposed to undue -excitement."</p> - -<p>"Oh, there's plenty of that!" said the ingenuous youth. "Miss Julian -came down again."</p> - -<p>"To look for a turquoise?"</p> - -<p>"So she said."</p> - -<p>"Did she find it?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know. I came up. I left her with poor Wingrave."</p> - -<p>"Quite the right thing," said Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>"I don't know," young Lechmere repeated uneasily. "I left them -quarrelling."</p> - -<p>"What about?"</p> - -<p>"I don't understand. They're a quaint pair!"</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle hesitated. He had, fundamentally, principles and scruples, -but what he had in particular just now was a curiosity, or rather, to -recognise it for what it was, a sympathy, which brushed them away.</p> - -<p>"Does it strike you that <i>she's</i> down on him?" he permitted himself -to inquire.</p> - -<p>"Rather!—when she tells him he lies!"</p> - -<p>"What do you mean?"</p> - -<p>"Why, before <i>me</i>. It made me leave them; it was getting too hot. I -stupidly brought up the question of the haunted room again, and said how -sorry I was that I had had to promise you not to try my luck with it."</p> - -<p>"You can't pry about in that gross way in other people's -houses—you can't take such liberties, you know!" Mr. Coyle -interjected.</p> - -<p>"I'm all right—see how good I am. I don't want to go -<i>near</i> the place!" said young Lechmere, confidingly. "Miss -Julian said to me 'Oh, I daresay <i>you'd</i> risk it, but'—and she -turned and laughed at poor Owen—'that's more than we can expect of -a gentleman who has taken <i>his</i> extraordinary line.' I could see -that something had already passed between them on the subject—some -teasing or challenging of hers. It may have been only chaff, but his -chucking the profession had evidently brought up the question of his -pluck."</p> - -<p>"And what did Owen say?"</p> - -<p>"Nothing at first; but presently he brought out very quietly: 'I spent -all last night in the confounded place.' We both stared and cried out at -this and I asked him what he had seen there. He said he had seen -nothing, and Miss Julian replied that he ought to tell his story better -than that—he ought to make something good of it. 'It's not a -story—it's a simple fact,' said he; on which she jeered at him and -wanted to know why, if he had done it, he hadn't told her in the -morning, since he knew what she thought of him. 'I know, but I don't -care,' said Wingrave. This made her angry, and she asked him quite -seriously whether he would care if he should know she believed him to be -trying to deceive us."</p> - -<p>"Ah, what a brute!" cried Spencer Coyle.</p> - -<p>"She's a most extraordinary girl—I don't know what she's -up to."</p> - -<p>"Extraordinary indeed—to be romping and bandying words at that -hour of the night with fast young men!"</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere reflected a moment. "I mean because I think she likes -him."</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle was so struck with this unwonted symptom of subtlety that -he flashed out: "And do you think he likes <i>her</i>?"</p> - -<p>But his interlocutor only replied with a puzzled sigh and a plaintive "I -don't know—I give it up!—I'm sure he <i>did</i> see something -or hear something," young Lechmere added.</p> - -<p>"In that ridiculous place? What makes you sure?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know—he looks as if he had. He behaves as if he had."</p> - -<p>"Why then shouldn't he mention it?"</p> - -<p>Young Lechmere thought a moment. "Perhaps it's too gruesome!"</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle gave a laugh. "Aren't you glad then <i>you're</i> not -in it?"</p> - -<p>"Uncommonly!"</p> - -<p>"Go to bed, you goose," said Spencer Coyle, with another laugh. "But -before you go tell me what he said when she told him he was trying to -deceive you."</p> - -<p>"'Take me there yourself, then, and lock me in!'"</p> - -<p>"And <i>did</i> she take him?"</p> - -<p>"I don't know—I came up."</p> - -<p>Spencer Coyle exchanged a long look with his pupil.</p> - -<p>"I don't think they're in the hall now. Where's Owen's own room?"</p> - -<p>"I haven't the least idea."</p> - -<p>Mr. Coyle was perplexed; he was in equal ignorance, and he couldn't go -about trying doors. He bade young Lechmere sink to slumber, and came out -into the passage. He asked himself if he should be able to find his way -to the room Owen had formerly shown him, remembering that in common with -many of the others it had its ancient name painted upon it. But the -corridors of Paramore were intricate; moreover some of the servants -would still be up, and he didn't wish to have the appearance of roaming -over the house. He went back to his own quarters, where Mrs. Coyle soon -perceived that his inability to rest had not subsided. As she confessed -for her own part, in the dreadful place, to an increased sense of -"creepiness," they spent the early part of the night in conversation, so -that a portion of their vigil was inevitably beguiled by her husband's -account of his colloquy with little Lechmere and by their exchange of -opinions upon it. Toward two o'clock Mrs. Coyle became so nervous about -their persecuted young friend, and so possessed by the fear that that -wicked girl had availed herself of his invitation to put him to an -abominable test, that she begged her husband to go and look into the -matter at whatever cost to his own equilibrium. But Spencer Coyle, -perversely, had ended, as the perfect stillness of the night settled -upon them, by charming himself into a tremulous acquiescence in Owen's -readiness to face a formidable ordeal—an ordeal the more formidable -to an excited imagination as the poor boy now knew from the experience of -the previous night how resolute an effort he should have to make. "I -hope he <i>is</i> there," he said to his wife: "it puts them all so in the -wrong!" At any rate he couldn't take upon himself to explore a house he -knew so little. He was inconsequent—he didn't prepare for bed. He sat -in the dressing-room with his light and his novel, waiting to find -himself nodding. At last however Mrs. Coyle turned over and ceased to -talk, and at last too he fell asleep in his chair. How long he slept he -only knew afterwards by computation; what he knew to begin with was that -he had started up, in confusion, with the sense of a sudden appalling -sound. His sense cleared itself quickly, helped doubtless by a -confirmatory cry of horror from his wife's room. But he gave no heed to -his wife; he had already bounded into the passage. There the sound was -repeated—it was the "Help! help!" of a woman in agonised terror. It -came from a distant quarter of the house, but the quarter was -sufficiently indicated. Spencer Coyle rushed straight before him, with -the sound of opening doors and alarmed voices in his ears and the -faintness of the early dawn in his eyes. At a turn of one of the -passages he came upon the white figure of a girl in a swoon on a bench, -and in the vividness of the revelation he read as he went that Kate -Julian, stricken in her pride too late with a chill of compunction for -what she had mockingly done, had, after coming to release the victim of -her derision, reeled away, overwhelmed, from the catastrophe that was -her work—the catastrophe that the next moment he found himself aghast -at on the threshold of an open door. Owen Wingrave, dressed as he had -last seen him, lay dead on the spot on which his ancestor had been -found. He looked like a young soldier on a battle-field.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<p class="center">THE END</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIVATE LIFE ***</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. 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