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diff --git a/old/898-h.htm b/old/898-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5ab28d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/898-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2806 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Lesson of the Master</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net + + + + + +Title: The Lesson of the Master + + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: May 13, 2005 [eBook #898] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE LESSON OF THE MASTER<br /> +by Henry James</h1> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p>He had been told the ladies were at church, but this was corrected +by what he saw from the top of the steps—they descended from a +great height in two arms, with a circular sweep of the most charming +effect—at the threshold of the door which, from the long bright +gallery, overlooked the immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the +grass, at a distance, sat under the great trees, while the fourth figure +showed a crimson dress that told as a “bit of colour” amid +the fresh rich green. The servant had so far accompanied Paul +Overt as to introduce him to this view, after asking him if he wished +first to go to his room. The young man declined that privilege, +conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a journey and always +liking to take at once a general perceptive possession of a new scene. +He stood there a little with his eyes on the group and on the admirable +picture, the wide grounds of an old country-house near London—that +only made it better—on a splendid Sunday in June. “But +that lady, who’s <i>she</i>?” he said to the servant before +the man left him.</p> +<p>“I think she’s Mrs. St. George, sir.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished—” +Then Paul Overt checked himself, doubting if a footman would know.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir—probably, sir,” said his guide, who appeared +to wish to intimate that a person staying at Summersoft would naturally +be, if only by alliance, distinguished. His tone, however, made +poor Overt himself feel for the moment scantly so.</p> +<p>“And the gentlemen?” Overt went on.</p> +<p>“Well, sir, one of them’s General Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“Ah yes, I know; thank you.” General Fancourt was +distinguished, there was no doubt of that, for something he had done, +or perhaps even hadn’t done—the young man couldn’t +remember which—some years before in India. The servant went +away, leaving the glass doors open into the gallery, and Paul Overt +remained at the head of the wide double staircase, saying to himself +that the place was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he leaned +on the balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the other details, +was of the same period as the house. It all went together and +spoke in one voice—a rich English voice of the early part of the +eighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer’s +day in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be +modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was something +so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth house, the +expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red +and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which +a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt +became aware that the people under the trees had noticed him he turned +back through the open doors into the great gallery which was the pride +of the place. It marched across from end to end and seemed—with +its bright colours, its high panelled windows, its faded flowered chintzes, +its quickly-recognised portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china +of its cabinets and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling—a +cheerful upholstered avenue into the other century.</p> +<p>Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character as +a student of fine prose, went with the artist’s general disposition +to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that Henry +St. George might be a member of the party. For the young aspirant +he had remained a high literary figure, in spite of the lower range +of production to which he had fallen after his first three great successes, +the comparative absence of quality in his later work. There had +been moments when Paul Overt almost shed tears for this; but now that +he was near him—he had never met him—he was conscious only +of the fine original source and of his own immense debt. After +he had taken a turn or two up and down the gallery he came out again +and descended the steps. He was but slenderly supplied with a +certain social boldness—it was really a weakness in him—so +that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with the four persons in the +distance, he gave way to motions recommended by their not committing +him to a positive approach. There was a fine English awkwardness +in this—he felt that too as he sauntered vaguely and obliquely +across the lawn, taking an independent line. Fortunately there +was an equally fine English directness in the way one of the gentlemen +presently rose and made as if to “stalk” him, though with +an air of conciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration +Paul Overt instantly responded, even if the gentleman were not his host. +He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like the great house itself, +a pink smiling face, and into the bargain a white moustache. Our +young man met him halfway while he laughed and said: “Er—Lady +Watermouth told us you were coming; she asked me just to look after +you.” Paul Overt thanked him, liking him on the spot, and +turned round with him to walk toward the others. “They’ve +all gone to church—all except us,” the stranger continued +as they went; “we’re just sitting here—it’s +so jolly.” Overt pronounced it jolly indeed: it was such +a lovely place. He mentioned that he was having the charming impression +for the first time.</p> +<p>“Ah you’ve not been here before?” said his companion. +“It’s a nice little place—not much to <i>do</i>, you +know”. Overt wondered what he wanted to “do”—he +felt that he himself was doing so much. By the time they came +to where the others sat he had recognised his initiator for a military +man and—such was the turn of Overt’s imagination—had +found him thus still more sympathetic. He would naturally have +a need for action, for deeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene. +He was evidently so good-natured, however, that he accepted the inglorious +hour for what it was worth. Paul Overt shared it with him and +with his companions for the next twenty minutes; the latter looked at +him and he looked at them without knowing much who they were, while +the talk went on without much telling him even what it meant. +It seemed indeed to mean nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual +pointless pauses and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons +and places—names which, for our friend, had no great power of +evocation. It was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural +of a warm Sunday morning.</p> +<p>His first attention was given to the question, privately considered, +of whether one of the two younger men would be Henry St. George. +He knew many of his distinguished contemporaries by their photographs, +but had never, as happened, seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist. +One of the gentlemen was unimaginable—he was too young; and the +other scarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating +eyes. If those eyes were St. George’s the problem, presented +by the ill-matched parts of his genius would be still more difficult +of solution. Besides, the deportment of their proprietor was not, +as regards the lady in the red dress, such as could be natural, toward +the wife of his bosom, even to a writer accused by several critics of +sacrificing too much to manner. Lastly Paul Overt had a vague +sense that if the gentleman with the expressionless eyes bore the name +that had set his heart beating faster (he also had contradictory conventional +whiskers—the young admirer of the celebrity had never in a mental +vision seen <i>his</i> face in so vulgar a frame) he would have given +him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, would have heard of him +a little, would know something about “Ginistrella,” would +have an impression of how that fresh fiction had caught the eye of real +criticism. Paul Overt had a dread of being grossly proud, but +even morbid modesty might view the authorship of “Ginistrella” +as constituting a degree of identity. His soldierly friend became +clear enough: he was “Fancourt,” but was also “the +General”; and he mentioned to the new visitor in the course of +a few moments that he had but lately returned from twenty years service +abroad.</p> +<p>“And now you remain in England?” the young man asked.</p> +<p>“Oh yes; I’ve bought a small house in London.”</p> +<p>“And I hope you like it,” said Overt, looking at Mrs. +St. George.</p> +<p>“Well, a little house in Manchester Square—there’s +a limit to the enthusiasm <i>that</i> inspires.”</p> +<p>“Oh I meant being at home again—being back in Piccadilly.”</p> +<p>“My daughter likes Piccadilly—that’s the main thing. +She’s very fond of art and music and literature and all that kind +of thing. She missed it in India and she finds it in London, or +she hopes she’ll find it. Mr. St. George has promised to +help her—he has been awfully kind to her. She has gone to +church—she’s fond of that too—but they’ll all +be back in a quarter of an hour. You must let me introduce you +to her—she’ll be so glad to know you. I dare say she +has read every blest word you’ve written.”</p> +<p>“I shall be delighted—I haven’t written so very +many,” Overt pleaded, feeling, and without resentment, that the +General at least was vagueness itself about that. But he wondered +a little why, expressing this friendly disposition, it didn’t +occur to the doubtless eminent soldier to pronounce the word that would +put him in relation with Mrs. St. George. If it was a question +of introductions Miss Fancourt—apparently as yet unmarried—was +far away, while the wife of his illustrious confrère was almost +between them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty, +with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, something +that—he could scarcely have said why—served for mystification. +St. George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he himself +would never have imagined the important little woman in the aggressively +Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man of letters. +That partner in general, he knew, that second self, was far from presenting +herself in a single type: observation had taught him that she was not +inveterately, not necessarily plain. But he had never before seen +her look so much as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than an +ink-spotted study-table littered with proof-sheets. Mrs. St. George +might have been the wife of a gentleman who “kept” books +rather than wrote them, who carried on great affairs in the City and +made better bargains than those that poets mostly make with publishers. +With this she hinted at a success more personal—a success peculiarly +stamping the age in which society, the world of conversation, is a great +drawing-room with the City for its antechamber. Overt numbered +her years at first as some thirty, and then ended by believing that +she might approach her fiftieth. But she somehow in this case +juggled away the excess and the difference—you only saw them in +a rare glimpse, like the rabbit in the conjurer’s sleeve. +She was extraordinarily white, and her every element and item was pretty; +her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, her feet—to +which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave a great publicity—and +the numerous ribbons and trinkets with which she was bedecked. +She looked as if she had put on her best clothes to go to church and +then had decided they were too good for that and had stayed at home. +She told a story of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane had treated +the Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase she had +made in Paris—on her way back from Cannes; made for Lady Egbert, +who had never refunded the money. Paul Overt suspected her of +a tendency to figure great people as larger than life, until he noticed +the manner in which she handled Lady Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous +that it reassured him. He felt he should have understood her better +if he might have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at +him. “Ah here they come—all the good ones!” +she said at last; and Paul Overt admired at his distance the return +of the church-goers—several persons, in couples and threes, advancing +in a flicker of sun and shade at the end of a large green vista formed +by the level grass and the overarching boughs.</p> +<p>“If you mean to imply that <i>we’re</i> bad, I protest,” +said one of the gentlemen—“after making one’s self +agreeable all the morning!”</p> +<p>“Ah if they’ve found you agreeable—!” Mrs. +St. George gaily cried. “But if we’re good the others +are better.”</p> +<p>“They must be angels then,” said the amused General.</p> +<p>“Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding,” +the gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George.</p> +<p>“At my bidding?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t you make him go to church?”</p> +<p>“I never made him do anything in my life but once—when +I made him burn up a bad book. That’s all!” +At her “That’s all!” our young friend broke into an +irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew her eyes to +him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him to understand +her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on the instant how +the burnt book—the way she alluded to it!—would have been +one of her husband’s finest things.</p> +<p>“A bad book?” her interlocutor repeated.</p> +<p>“I didn’t like it. He went to church because your +daughter went,” she continued to General Fancourt. “I +think it my duty to call your attention to his extraordinary demonstrations +to your daughter.”</p> +<p>“Well, if you don’t mind them I don’t,” the +General laughed.</p> +<p>“Il s’attache à ses pas. But I don’t +wonder—she’s so charming.”</p> +<p>“I hope she won’t make him burn any books!” Paul +Overt ventured to exclaim.</p> +<p>“If she’d make him write a few it would be more to the +purpose,” said Mrs. St. George. “He has been of a +laziness of late—!”</p> +<p>Our young man stared—he was so struck with the lady’s +phraseology. Her “Write a few” seemed to him almost +as good as her “That’s all.” Didn’t she, +as the wife of a rare artist, know what it was to produce one perfect +work of art? How in the world did she think they were turned off? +His private conviction was that, admirably as Henry St. George wrote, +he had written for the last ten years, and especially for the last five, +only too much, and there was an instant during which he felt inwardly +solicited to make this public. But before he had spoken a diversion +was effected by the return of the absentees. They strolled up +dispersedly—there were eight or ten of them—and the circle +under the trees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. +They made it much larger, so that Paul Overt could feel—he was +always feeling that sort of thing, as he said to himself—that +if the company had already been interesting to watch the interest would +now become intense. He shook hands with his hostess, who welcomed +him without many words, in the manner of a woman able to trust him to +understand and conscious that so pleasant an occasion would in every +way speak for itself. She offered him no particular facility for +sitting by her, and when they had all subsided again he found himself +still next General Fancourt, with an unknown lady on his other flank.</p> +<p>“That’s my daughter—that one opposite,” the +General said to him without lose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, +with magnificent red hair, in a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and +of a limp silken texture, a garment that clearly shirked every modern +effect. It had therefore somehow the stamp of the latest thing, +so that our beholder quickly took her for nothing if not contemporaneous.</p> +<p>“She’s very handsome—very handsome,” he repeated +while he considered her. There was something noble in her head, +and she appeared fresh and strong.</p> +<p>Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: “She +looks too hot—that’s her walk. But she’ll be +all right presently. Then I’ll make her come over and speak +to you.”</p> +<p>“I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were +to take me over <i>there</i>—!” the young man murmured.</p> +<p>“My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? +I don’t mean for you, but for Marian,” the General added.</p> +<p>“<i>I</i> would put myself out for her soon enough,” +Overt replied; after which he went on: “Will you be so good as +to tell me which of those gentlemen is Henry St. George?”</p> +<p>“The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he <i>is</i> +making up to her—they’re going off for another walk.”</p> +<p>“Ah is that he—really?” Our friend felt a +certain surprise, for the personage before him seemed to trouble a vision +which had been vague only while not confronted with the reality. +As soon as the reality dawned the mental image, retiring with a sigh, +became substantial enough to suffer a slight wrong. Overt, who +had spent a considerable part of his short life in foreign lands, made +now, but not for the first time, the reflexion that whereas in those +countries he had almost always recognised the artist and the man of +letters by his personal “type,” the mould of his face, the +character of his head, the expression of his figure and even the indications +of his dress, so in England this identification was as little as possible +a matter of course, thanks to the greater conformity, the habit of sinking +the profession instead of advertising it, the general diffusion of the +air of the gentleman—the gentleman committed to no particular +set of ideas. More than once, on returning to his own country, +he had said to himself about people met in society: “One sees +them in this place and that, and one even talks with them; but to find +out what they <i>do</i> one would really have to be a detective.” +In respect to several individuals whose work he was the opposite of +“drawn to”—perhaps he was wrong—he found himself +adding “No wonder they conceal it—when it’s so bad!” +He noted that oftener than in France and in Germany his artist looked +like a gentleman—that is like an English one—while, certainly +outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn’t look like an artist. +St. George was not one of the exceptions; that circumstance he definitely +apprehended before the great man had turned his back to walk off with +Miss Fancourt. He certainly looked better behind than any foreign +man of letters—showed for beautifully correct in his tall black +hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, all the same, these +very garments—he wouldn’t have minded them so much on a +weekday—were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment +that the head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. +He had caught a glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache +and a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promised +himself to study these denotements on the first occasion. His +superficial sense was that their owner might have passed for a lucky +stockbroker—a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a +sanitary suburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the impression +already derived from his wife. Paul’s glance, after a moment, +travelled back to this lady, and he saw how her own had followed her +husband as he moved off with Miss Fancourt. Overt permitted himself +to wonder a little if she were jealous when another woman took him away. +Then he made out that Mrs. St. George wasn’t glaring at the indifferent +maiden. Her eyes rested but on her husband, and with unmistakeable +serenity. That was the way she wanted him to be—she liked +his conventional uniform. Overt longed to hear more about the +book she had induced him to destroy.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p>As they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of +him with an “I say, I want you to know my girl!” as if the +idea had just occurred to him and he hadn’t spoken of it before. +With the other hand he possessed himself all paternally of the young +lady. “You know all about him. I’ve seen you +with his books. She reads everything—everything!” +he went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at +her father. The General turned away and his daughter spoke—“Isn’t +papa delightful?”</p> +<p>“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“As if I read you because I read ‘everything’!”</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t mean for saying that,” said Paul Overt. +“I liked him from the moment he began to be kind to me. +Then he promised me this privilege.”</p> +<p>“It isn’t for you he means it—it’s for me. +If you flatter yourself that he thinks of anything in life but me you’ll +find you’re mistaken. He introduces every one. He +thinks me insatiable.”</p> +<p>“You speak just like him,” laughed our youth.</p> +<p>“Ah but sometimes I want to”—and the girl coloured. +“I don’t read everything—I read very little. +But I <i>have</i> read you.”</p> +<p>“Suppose we go into the gallery,” said Paul Overt. +She pleased him greatly, not so much because of this last remark—though +that of course was not too disconcerting—as because, seated opposite +to him at luncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression +of her beautiful face. Something else had come with it—a +sense of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike many enthusiasms, +was not all manner. That was not spoiled for him by his seeing +that the repast had placed her again in familiar contact with Henry +St. George. Sitting next her this celebrity was also opposite +our young man, who had been able to note that he multiplied the attentions +lately brought by his wife to the General’s notice. Paul +Overt had gathered as well that this lady was not in the least discomposed +by these fond excesses and that she gave every sign of an unclouded +spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on the other +the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-class lively evening +paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circles increasingly +conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, and unconvinced when +assured by those of another political colour that it was already amusing +enough. At the end of an hour spent in her company Paul Overt +thought her still prettier than at the first radiation, and if her profane +allusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in his ears +he should have liked her—so far as it could be a question of that +in connexion with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom +probably he should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty +women were a clear need to this genius, and for the hour it was Miss +Fancourt who supplied the want. If Overt had promised himself +a closer view the occasion was now of the best, and it brought consequences +felt by the young man as important. He saw more in St. George’s +face, which he liked the better for its not having told its whole story +in the first three minutes. That story came out as one read, in +short instalments—it was excusable that one’s analogies +should be somewhat professional—and the text was a style considerably +involved, a language not easy to translate at sight. There were +shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which receded +as you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. +The first of these was that he liked the measured mask much better at +inscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile +above all displeased him (as much as any impression from that source +could), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in proportion as +stillness settled again. The change to the expression of gaiety +excited, he made out, very much the private protest of a person sitting +gratefully in the twilight when the lamp is brought in too soon. +His second reflexion was that, though generally averse to the flagrant +use of ingratiating arts by a man of age “making up” to +a pretty girl, he was not in this case too painfully affected: which +seemed to prove either that St. George had a light hand or the air of +being younger than he was, or else that Miss Fancourt’s own manner +somehow made everything right.</p> +<p>Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the +end of it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming vista, +which harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling +it by a long brightness, with great divans and old chairs that figured +hours of rest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving +those who came into it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat +down with her new acquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, +very numerous, were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently +said: “I’m so glad to have a chance to thank you.”</p> +<p>“To thank me—?” He had to wonder.</p> +<p>“I liked your book so much. I think it splendid.”</p> +<p>She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book +she meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed +a vulgar detail, and he wasn’t even gratified by the idea of the +pleasure she told him—her handsome bright face told him—he +had given her. The feeling she appealed to, or at any rate the +feeling she excited, was something larger, something that had little +to do with any quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive +admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of +which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble <i>that</i>, +to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to +have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink-stained +table. While her grey eyes rested on him—there was a wideish +space between these, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, so +thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them—he +was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which it was her present +inclination to commend. He was conscious he should have liked +better to please her in some other way. The lines of her face +were those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexion +and in the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural—that +was indubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps +on account of her æsthetic toggery, which was conventionally unconventional, +suggesting what he might have called a tortuous spontaneity. He +had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and his fears had been +justified; for, though he was an artist to the essence, the modern reactionary +nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a look +as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not as a man +of starch and patent leather, but as a man potentially himself a poet +or even a faun. The girl was really more candid than her costume, +and the best proof of it was her supposing her liberal character suited +by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since if she was draped as +a pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of life. He thanked +her for her appreciation—aware at the same time that he didn’t +appear to thank her enough and that she might think him ungracious. +He was afraid she would ask him to explain something he had written, +and he always winced at that—perhaps too timidly—for to +his own ear the explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. +But he liked her so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run +he should be able to show her he wasn’t rudely evasive. +Moreover she surely wasn’t quick to take offence, wasn’t +irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he said to her, +“Ah don’t talk of anything I’ve done, don’t +talk of it <i>here</i>; there’s another man in the house who’s +the actuality!”—when he uttered this short sincere protest +it was with the sense that she would see in the words neither mock humility +nor the impatience of a successful man bored with praise.</p> +<p>“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he delightful?”</p> +<p>Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would +have half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been so young. “Alas +I don’t know him. I only admire him at a distance.”</p> +<p>“Oh you must know him—he wants so to talk to you,” +returned Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things +that, by her quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul +saw how she would always calculate on everything’s being simple +between others.</p> +<p>“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about me,” +he professed.</p> +<p>“He does then—everything. And if he didn’t +I should be able to tell him.”</p> +<p>“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled.</p> +<p>“You talk just like the people in your book!” she answered.</p> +<p>“Then they must all talk alike.”</p> +<p>She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. “Well, +it must be so difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it <i>is</i>—terribly. +I’ve tried too—and I find it so. I’ve tried +to write a novel.”</p> +<p>“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” Paul +went so far as to say.</p> +<p>“You do much more—when you wear that expression.”</p> +<p>“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” the young +man pursued. “It’s so poor—so poor!”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Fancourt, +who looked grave.</p> +<p>“I mean as compared with being a person of action—as +living your works.”</p> +<p>“But what’s art but an intense life—if it be real?” +she asked. “I think it’s the only one—everything +else is so clumsy!” Her companion laughed, and she brought +out with her charming serenity what next struck her. “It’s +so interesting to meet so many celebrated people.”</p> +<p>“So I should think—but surely it isn’t new to you.”</p> +<p>“Why I’ve never seen any one—any one: living always +in Asia.”</p> +<p>The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. “But +doesn’t that continent swarm with great figures? Haven’t +you administered provinces in India and had captive rajahs and tributary +princes chained to your car?”</p> +<p>It was as if she didn’t care even <i>should</i> he amuse himself +at her cost. “I was with my father, after I left school +to go out there. It was delightful being with him—we’re +alone together in the world, he and I—but there was none of the +society I like best. One never heard of a picture—never +of a book, except bad ones.”</p> +<p>“Never of a picture? Why, wasn’t all life a picture?”</p> +<p>She looked over the delightful place where they sat. “Nothing +to compare to this. I adore England!” she cried.</p> +<p>It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. “Ah of course +I don’t deny that we must do something with her, poor old dear, +yet.”</p> +<p>“She hasn’t been touched, really,” said the girl.</p> +<p>“Did Mr. St. George say that?”</p> +<p>There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony in his +question; which, however, she answered very simply, not noticing the +insinuation. “Yes, he says England hasn’t been touched—not +considering all there is,” she went on eagerly. “He’s +so interesting about our country. To listen to him makes one want +so to do something.”</p> +<p>“It would make <i>me</i> want to,” said Paul Overt, feeling +strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of +the emotion with which she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, +on St. George’s lips, such a speech might be.</p> +<p>“Oh you—as if you hadn’t! I should like so +to hear you talk together,” she added ardently.</p> +<p>“That’s very genial of you; but he’d have it all +his own way. I’m prostrate before him.”</p> +<p>She had an air of earnestness. “Do you think then he’s +so perfect?”</p> +<p>“Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a +queerness—!”</p> +<p>“Yes, yes—he knows that.”</p> +<p>Paul Overt stared. “That they seem to me of a queerness—!”</p> +<p>“Well yes, or at any rate that they’re not what they +should be. He told me he didn’t esteem them. He has +told me such wonderful things—he’s so interesting.”</p> +<p>There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the +fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession +and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss +Fancourt was charming what was she after all but an immature girl encountered +at a country-house? Yet precisely this was part of the sentiment +he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely for the +poor peccable great man not because he didn’t read him clear, +but altogether because he did. His consideration was half composed +of tenderness for superficialities which he was sure their perpetrator +judged privately, judged more ferociously than any one, and which represented +some tragic intellectual secret. He would have his reasons for +his psychology à fleur de peau, and these reasons could only +be cruel ones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were +fond of him. “You excite my envy. I have my reserves, +I discriminate—but I love him,” Paul said in a moment. +“And seeing him for the first time this way is a great event for +me.”</p> +<p>“How momentous—how magnificent!” cried the girl. +“How delicious to bring you together!”</p> +<p>“Your doing it—that makes it perfect,” our friend +returned.</p> +<p>“He’s as eager as you,” she went on. “But +it’s so odd you shouldn’t have met.”</p> +<p>“It’s not really so odd as it strikes you. I’ve +been out of England so much—made repeated absences all these last +years.”</p> +<p>She took this in with interest. “And yet you write of +it as well as if you were always here.”</p> +<p>“It’s just the being away perhaps. At any rate +the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in dreary places +abroad.”</p> +<p>“And why were they dreary?”</p> +<p>“Because they were health-resorts—where my poor mother +was dying.”</p> +<p>“Your poor mother?”—she was all sweet wonder.</p> +<p>“We went from place to place to help her to get better. +But she never did. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high +Alps, to Algiers, and far away—a hideous journey—to Colorado.”</p> +<p>“And she isn’t better?” Miss Fancourt went on.</p> +<p>“She died a year ago.”</p> +<p>“Really?—like mine! Only that’s years since. +Some day you must tell me about your mother,” she added.</p> +<p>He could at first, on this, only gaze at her. “What right +things you say! If you say them to St. George I don’t wonder +he’s in bondage.”</p> +<p>It pulled her up for a moment. “I don’t know what +you mean. He doesn’t make speeches and professions at all—he +isn’t ridiculous.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid you consider then that I am.”</p> +<p>“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rather shortly. +And then she added: “He understands—understands everything.”</p> +<p>The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: “And I don’t—is +that it?” But these words, in time, changed themselves to +others slightly less trivial: “Do you suppose he understands his +wife?”</p> +<p>Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment’s hesitation +put it: “Isn’t she charming?”</p> +<p>“Not in the least!”</p> +<p>“Here he comes. Now you must know him,” she went +on. A small group of visitors had gathered at the other end of +the gallery and had been there overtaken by Henry St. George, who strolled +in from a neighbouring room. He stood near them a moment, not +falling into the talk but taking up an old miniature from a table and +vaguely regarding it. At the end of a minute he became aware of +Miss Fancourt and her companion in the distance; whereupon, laying down +his miniature, he approached them with the same procrastinating air, +his hands in his pockets and his eyes turned, right and left, to the +pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took some +little time, especially as there was a moment when he stopped to admire +the fine Gainsborough. “He says Mrs. St. George has been +the making of him,” the girl continued in a voice slightly lowered.</p> +<p>“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed.</p> +<p>“Obscure?” she repeated as if she heard it for the first +time. Her eyes rested on her other friend, and it wasn’t +lost upon Paul that they appeared to send out great shafts of softness. +“He’s going to speak to us!” she fondly breathed. +There was a sort of rapture in her voice, and our friend was startled. +“Bless my soul, does she care for him like <i>that</i>?—is +she in love with him?” he mentally enquired. “Didn’t +I tell you he was eager?” she had meanwhile asked of him.</p> +<p>“It’s eagerness dissimulated,” the young man returned +as the subject of their observation lingered before his Gainsborough. +“He edges toward us shyly. Does he mean that she saved him +by burning that book?”</p> +<p>“That book? what book did she burn?” The girl quickly +turned her face to him.</p> +<p>“Hasn’t he told you then?”</p> +<p>“Not a word.”</p> +<p>“Then he doesn’t tell you everything!” Paul +had guessed that she pretty much supposed he did. The great man +had now resumed his course and come nearer; in spite of which his more +qualified admirer risked a profane observation: “St. George and +the Dragon is what the anecdote suggests!”</p> +<p>His companion, however, didn’t hear it; she smiled at the dragon’s +adversary. “He <i>is</i> eager—he is!” she insisted.</p> +<p>“Eager for you—yes.”</p> +<p>But meanwhile she had called out: “I’m sure you want +to know Mr. Overt. You’ll be great friends, and it will +always be delightful to me to remember I was here when you first met +and that I had something to do with it.”</p> +<p>There was a freshness of intention in the words that carried them +off; nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St. George, as he +was sorry at any time for any person publicly invited to be responsive +and delightful. He would have been so touched to believe that +a man he deeply admired should care a straw for him that he wouldn’t +play with such a presumption if it were possibly vain. In a single +glance of the eye of the pardonable Master he read—having the +sort of divination that belonged to his talent—that this personage +had ever a store of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit, +but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. There +was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already +for what he had done, how could one have liked him any more for a perception +which must at the best have been vague? Paul Overt got up, trying +to show his compassion, but at the same instant he found himself encompassed +by St. George’s happy personal art—a manner of which it +was the essence to conjure away false positions. It all took place +in a moment. Paul was conscious that he knew him now, conscious +of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand; of his face, seen +nearer and consequently seen better, of a general fraternising assurance, +and in particular of the circumstance that St. George didn’t dislike +him (as yet at least) for being imposed by a charming but too gushing +girl, attractive enough without such danglers. No irritation at +any rate was reflected in the voice with which he questioned Miss Fancourt +as to some project of a walk—a general walk of the company round +the park. He had soon said something to Paul about a talk—“We +must have a tremendous lot of talk; there are so many things, aren’t +there?”—but our friend could see this idea wouldn’t +in the present case take very immediate effect. All the same he +was extremely happy, even after the matter of the walk had been settled—the +three presently passed back to the other part of the gallery, where +it was discussed with several members of the party; even when, after +they had all gone out together, he found himself for half an hour conjoined +with Mrs. St. George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss +Fancourt, and this pair were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest +of rambles for a summer afternoon—a grassy circuit, of immense +extent, skirting the limit of the park within. The park was completely +surrounded by its old mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way +on their left, constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. +St. George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres thus enclosed, +together with numerous other facts relating to the property and the +family, and the family’s other properties: she couldn’t +too strongly urge on him the importance of seeing their other houses. +She ran over the names of these and rang the changes on them with the +facility of practice, making them appear an almost endless list. +She had received Paul Overt very amiably on his breaking ground with +her by the mention of his joy in having just made her husband’s +acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so accommodating a little +woman that he was rather ashamed of his <i>mot</i> about her to Miss +Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred other people, on a hundred +occasions, would have been sure to make it. He got on with Ms. +St. George, in short, better than he expected; but this didn’t +prevent her suddenly becoming aware that she was faint with fatigue +and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. She +professed that she hadn’t the strength of a kitten and was a miserable +wreck; a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while +he wondered in what sense she could be held to have been the making +of her husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when +she announced that she must leave him, though this perception was of +course provisional. While he was in the very act of placing himself +at her disposal for the return the situation underwent a change; Lord +Masham had suddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, +emerging from the shrubbery—Overt could scarcely have said how +he appeared—and Mrs. St. George had protested that she wanted +to be left alone and not to break up the party. A moment later +she was walking off with Lord Masham. Our friend fell back and +joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently mentioned that Mrs. St. +George had been obliged to renounce the attempt to go further.</p> +<p>“She oughtn’t to have come out at all,” her ladyship +rather grumpily remarked.</p> +<p>“Is she so very much of an invalid?”</p> +<p>“Very bad indeed.” And his hostess added with still +greater austerity: “She oughtn’t really to come to one!” +He wondered what was implied by this, and presently gathered that it +was not a reflexion on the lady’s conduct or her moral nature: +it only represented that her strength was not equal to her aspirations.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p>The smoking-room at Summersoft was on the scale of the rest of the +place; high light commodious and decorated with such refined old carvings +and mouldings that it seemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit +at work at fading crewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strong +cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in considerable force on +the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front of one of +the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, the entablature of which was +adorned with a delicate little Italian “subject.” +There was another in the wall that faced it, and, thanks to the mild +summer night, a fire in neither; but a nucleus for aggregation was furnished +on one side by a table in the chimney-corner laden with bottles, decanters +and tall tumblers. Paul Overt was a faithless smoker; he would +puff a cigarette for reasons with which tobacco had nothing to do. +This was particularly the case on the occasion of which I speak; his +motive was the vision of a little direct talk with Henry St. George. +The “tremendous” communion of which the great man had held +out hopes to him earlier in the day had not yet come off, and this saddened +him considerably, for the party was to go its several ways immediately +after breakfast on the morrow. He had, however, the disappointment +of finding that apparently the author of “Shadowmere” was +not disposed to prolong his vigil. He wasn’t among the gentlemen +assembled when Paul entered, nor was he one of those who turned up, +in bright habiliments, during the next ten minutes. The young +man waited a little, wondering if he had only gone to put on something +extraordinary; this would account for his delay as well as contribute +further to Overt’s impression of his tendency to do the approved +superficial thing. But he didn’t arrive—he must have +been putting on something more extraordinary than was probable. +Our hero gave him up, feeling a little injured, a little wounded, at +this loss of twenty coveted words. He wasn’t angry, but +he puffed his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rare +possibly missed. He wandered away with his regret and moved slowly +round the room, looking at the old prints on the walls. In this +attitude he presently felt a hand on his shoulder and a friendly voice +in his ear “This is good. I hoped I should find you. +I came down on purpose.” St. George was there without a +change of dress and with a fine face—his graver one—to which +our young man all in a flutter responded. He explained that it +was only for the Master—the idea of a little talk—that he +had sat up, and that, not finding him, he had been on the point of going +to bed.</p> +<p>“Well, you know, I don’t smoke—my wife doesn’t +let me,” said St. George, looking for a place to sit down. +“It’s very good for me—very good for me. Let +us take that sofa.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean smoking’s good for you?”</p> +<p>“No no—her not letting me. It’s a great thing +to have a wife who’s so sure of all the things one can do without. +One might never find them out one’s self. She doesn’t +allow me to touch a cigarette.” They took possession of +a sofa at a distance from the group of smokers, and St. George went +on: “Have you got one yourself?”</p> +<p>“Do you mean a cigarette?”</p> +<p>“Dear no—a wife.”</p> +<p>“No; and yet I’d give up my cigarette for one.”</p> +<p>“You’d give up a good deal more than that,” St. +George returned. “However, you’d get a great deal +in return. There’s a something to be said for wives,” +he added, folding his arms and crossing his outstretched legs. +He declined tobacco altogether and sat there without returning fire. +His companion stopped smoking, touched by his courtesy; and after all +they were out of the fumes, their sofa was in a far-away corner. +It would have been a mistake, St. George went on, a great mistake for +them to have separated without a little chat; “for I know all +about you,” he said, “I know you’re very remarkable. +You’ve written a very distinguished book.”</p> +<p>“And how do you know it?” Paul asked.</p> +<p>“Why, my dear fellow, it’s in the air, it’s in +the papers, it’s everywhere.” St. George spoke with +the immediate familiarity of a confrère—a tone that seemed +to his neighbour the very rustle of the laurel. “You’re +on all men’s lips and, what’s better, on all women’s. +And I’ve just been reading your book.”</p> +<p>“Just? You hadn’t read it this afternoon,” +said Overt.</p> +<p>“How do you know that?”</p> +<p>“I think you should know how I know it,” the young man +laughed.</p> +<p>“I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.”</p> +<p>“No indeed—she led me rather to suppose you had.”</p> +<p>“Yes—that’s much more what she’d do. +Doesn’t she shed a rosy glow over life? But you didn’t +believe her?” asked St. George.</p> +<p>“No, not when you came to us there.”</p> +<p>“Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?” But without +waiting for an answer to this St. George went on: “You ought always +to believe such a girl as that—always, always. Some women +are meant to be taken with allowances and reserves; but you must take +<i>her</i> just as she is.”</p> +<p>“I like her very much,” said Paul Overt.</p> +<p>Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion’s +part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of deliberation +attending this judgement. St. George broke into a laugh to reply. +“It’s the best thing you can do with her. She’s +a rare young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I hadn’t +read you this afternoon.”</p> +<p>“Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to +believe Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit by it?”</p> +<p>“Do you wish to pass exactly for what she represents you? +Certainly you needn’t be afraid,” Paul said.</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear young man, don’t talk about passing—for +the likes of me! I’m passing away—nothing else than +that. She has a better use for her young imagination (isn’t +it fine?) than in ‘representing’ in any way such a weary +wasted used-up animal!” The Master spoke with a sudden sadness +that produced a protest on Paul’s part; but before the protest +could be uttered he went on, reverting to the latter’s striking +novel: “I had no idea you were so good—one hears of so many +things. But you’re surprisingly good.”</p> +<p>“I’m going to be surprisingly better,” Overt made +bold to reply.</p> +<p>“I see that, and it’s what fetches me. I don’t +see so much else—as one looks about—that’s going to +be surprisingly better. They’re going to be consistently +worse—most of the things. It’s so much easier to be +worse—heaven knows I’ve found it so. I’m not +in a great glow, you know, about what’s breaking out all over +the place. But you <i>must</i> be better—you really must +keep it up. I haven’t of course. It’s very difficult—that’s +the devil of the whole thing, keeping it up. But I see you’ll +be able to. It will be a great disgrace if you don’t.”</p> +<p>“It’s very interesting to hear you speak of yourself; +but I don’t know what you mean by your allusions to your having +fallen off,” Paul Overt observed with pardonable hypocrisy. +He liked his companion so much now that the fact of any decline of talent +or of care had ceased for the moment to be vivid to him.</p> +<p>“Don’t say that—don’t say that,” St. +George returned gravely, his head resting on the top of the sofa-back +and his eyes on the ceiling. “You know perfectly what I +mean. I haven’t read twenty pages of your book without seeing +that you can’t help it.”</p> +<p>“You make me very miserable,” Paul ecstatically breathed.</p> +<p>“I’m glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of warning. +Shocking enough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of +faith—the spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my +age in such dishonour.” St. George, in the same contemplative +attitude, spoke softly but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. +His tone indeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically +cruel—cruel to himself—and made his young friend lay an +argumentative hand on his arm. But he went on while his eyes seemed +to follow the graces of the eighteenth-century ceiling: “Look +at me well, take my lesson to heart—for it <i>is</i> a lesson. +Let that good come of it at least that you shudder with your pitiful +impression, and that this may help to keep you straight in the future. +Don’t become in your old age what I have in mine—the depressing, +the deplorable illustration of the worship of false gods!”</p> +<p>“What do you mean by your old age?” the young man asked.</p> +<p>“It has made me old. But I like your youth.”</p> +<p>Paul answered nothing—they sat for a minute in silence. +They heard the others going on about the governmental majority. +Then “What do you mean by false gods?” he enquired.</p> +<p>His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, “The idols +of the market; money and luxury and ‘the world;’ placing +one’s children and dressing one’s wife; everything that +drives one to the short and easy way. Ah the vile things they +make one do!”</p> +<p>“But surely one’s right to want to place one’s +children.”</p> +<p>“One has no business to have any children,” St. George +placidly declared. “I mean of course if one wants to do +anything good.”</p> +<p>“But aren’t they an inspiration—an incentive?”</p> +<p>“An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking.”</p> +<p>“You touch on very deep things—things I should like to +discuss with you,” Paul said. “I should like you to +tell me volumes about yourself. This is a great feast for <i>me</i>!”</p> +<p>“Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you I’m +still not incapable, degraded as I am, of an act of faith, I’ll +tie my vanity to the stake for you and burn it to ashes. You must +come and see me—you must come and see us,” the Master quickly +substituted. “Mrs. St. George is charming; I don’t +know whether you’ve had any opportunity to talk with her. +She’ll be delighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whether +incipient or predominant. You must come and dine—my wife +will write to you. Where are you to be found?”</p> +<p>“This is my little address”—and Overt drew out +his pocketbook and extracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, +however, he kept it back, remarking that he wouldn’t trouble his +friend to take charge of it but would come and see him straightway in +London and leave it at his door if he should fail to obtain entrance.</p> +<p>“Ah you’ll probably fail; my wife’s always out—or +when she isn’t out is knocked up from having been out. You +must come and dine—though that won’t do much good either, +for my wife insists on big dinners.” St. George turned it +over further, but then went on: “You must come down and see us +in the country, that’s the best way; we’ve plenty of room, +and it isn’t bad.”</p> +<p>“You’ve a house in the country?” Paul asked enviously.</p> +<p>“Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go +to—an hour from Euston. That’s one of the reasons.”</p> +<p>“One of the reasons?”</p> +<p>“Why my books are so bad.”</p> +<p>“You must tell me all the others!” Paul longingly laughed.</p> +<p>His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again abruptly. +“Why have I never seen you before?”</p> +<p>The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our hero, who +felt it to imply the great man’s now perceiving he had for years +missed something. “Partly, I suppose, because there has +been no particular reason why you should see me. I haven’t +lived in the world—in your world. I’ve spent many +years out of England, in different places abroad.”</p> +<p>“Well, please don’t do it any more. You must do +England—there’s such a lot of it.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean I must write about it?” and Paul struck +the note of the listening candour of a child.</p> +<p>“Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you mind? +That takes off a little of my esteem for this thing of yours—that +it goes on abroad. Hang ‘abroad!’ Stay at home +and do things here—do subjects we can measure.”</p> +<p>“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” Overt said, deeply +attentive. “But pardon me if I say I don’t understand +how you’ve been reading my book,” he added. “I’ve +had you before me all the afternoon, first in that long walk, then at +tea on the lawn, till we went to dress for dinner, and all the evening +at dinner and in this place.”</p> +<p>St. George turned his face about with a smile. “I gave +it but a quarter of an hour.”</p> +<p>“A quarter of an hour’s immense, but I don’t understand +where you put it in. In the drawing-room after dinner you weren’t +reading—you were talking to Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“It comes to the same thing, because we talked about ‘Ginistrella.’ +She described it to me—she lent me her copy.”</p> +<p>“Lent it to you?”</p> +<p>“She travels with it.”</p> +<p>“It’s incredible,” Paul blushed.</p> +<p>“It’s glorious for you, but it also turned out very well +for me. When the ladies went off to bed she kindly offered to +send the book down to me. Her maid brought it to me in the hall +and I went to my room with it. I hadn’t thought of coming +here, I do that so little. But I don’t sleep early, I always +have to read an hour or two. I sat down to your novel on the spot, +without undressing, without taking off anything but my coat. I +think that’s a sign my curiosity had been strongly roused about +it. I read a quarter of an hour, as I tell you, and even in a +quarter of an hour I was greatly struck.”</p> +<p>“Ah the beginning isn’t very good—it’s the +whole thing!” said Overt, who had listened to this recital with +extreme interest. “And you laid down the book and came after +me?” he asked.</p> +<p>“That’s the way it moved me. I said to myself ‘I +see it’s off his own bat, and he’s there, by the way, and +the day’s over and I haven’t said twenty words to him.’ +It occurred to me that you’d probably be in the smoking-room and +that it wouldn’t be too late to repair my omission. I wanted +to do something civil to you, so I put on my coat and came down. +I shall read your book again when I go up.”</p> +<p>Our friend faced round in his place—he was touched as he had +scarce ever been by the picture of such a demonstration in his favour. +“You’re really the kindest of men. Cela s’est +passé comme ça?—and I’ve been sitting here +with you all this time and never apprehended it and never thanked you!”</p> +<p>“Thank Miss Fancourt—it was she who wound me up. +She has made me feel as if I had read your novel.”</p> +<p>“She’s an angel from heaven!” Paul declared.</p> +<p>“She is indeed. I’ve never seen any one like her. +Her interest in literature’s touching—something quite peculiar +to herself; she takes it all so seriously. She feels the arts +and she wants to feel them more. To those who practise them it’s +almost humiliating—her curiosity, her sympathy, her good faith. +How can anything be as fine as she supposes it?”</p> +<p>“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man sighed.</p> +<p>“The richest I’ve ever seen—an artistic intelligence +really of the first order. And lodged in such a form!” St. +George exclaimed.</p> +<p>“One would like to represent such a girl as that,” Paul +continued.</p> +<p>“Ah there it is—there’s nothing like life!” +said his companion. “When you’re finished, squeezed +dry and used up and you think the sack’s empty, you’re still +appealed to, you still get touches and thrills, the idea springs up—out +of the lap of the actual—and shows you there’s always something +to be done. But I shan’t do it—she’s not for +me!”</p> +<p>“How do you mean, not for you?”</p> +<p>“Oh it’s all over—she’s for you, if you like.”</p> +<p>“Ah much less!” said Paul. “She’s not +for a dingy little man of letters; she’s for the world, the bright +rich world of bribes and rewards. And the world will take hold +of her—it will carry her away.”</p> +<p>“It will try—but it’s just a case in which there +may be a fight. It would be worth fighting, for a man who had +it in him, with youth and talent on his side.”</p> +<p>These words rang not a little in Paul Overt’s consciousness—they +held him briefly silent. “It’s a wonder she has remained +as she is; giving herself away so—with so much to give away.”</p> +<p>“Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous—so natural? +Oh she doesn’t care a straw—she gives away because she overflows. +She has her own feelings, her own standards; she doesn’t keep +remembering that she must be proud. And then she hasn’t +been here long enough to be spoiled; she has picked up a fashion or +two, but only the amusing ones. She’s a provincial—a +provincial of genius,” St. George went on; “her very blunders +are charming, her mistakes are interesting. She has come back +from Asia with all sorts of excited curiosities and unappeased appetities. +She’s first-rate herself and she expends herself on the second-rate. +She’s life herself and she takes a rare interest in imitations. +She mixes all things up, but there are none in regard to which she hasn’t +perceptions. She sees things in a perspective—as if from +the top of the Himalayas—and she enlarges everything she touches. +Above all she exaggerates—to herself, I mean. She exaggerates +you and me!”</p> +<p>There was nothing in that description to allay the agitation caused +in our younger friend by such a sketch of a fine subject. It seemed +to him to show the art of St. George’s admired hand, and he lost +himself in gazing at the vision—this hovered there before him—of +a woman’s figure which should be part of the glory of a novel. +But at the end of a moment the thing had turned into smoke, and out +of the smoke—the last puff of a big cigar—proceeded the +voice of General Fancourt, who had left the others and come and planted +himself before the gentlemen on the sofa. “I suppose that +when you fellows get talking you sit up half the night.”</p> +<p>“Half the night?—jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene”—and +St. George rose to his feet.</p> +<p>“I see—you’re hothouse plants,” laughed the +General. “That’s the way you produce your flowers.”</p> +<p>“I produce mine between ten and one every morning—I bloom +with a regularity!” St. George went on.</p> +<p>“And with a splendour!” added the polite General, while +Paul noted how little the author of “Shadowmere” minded, +as he phrased it to himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. +The young man had an idea <i>he</i> should never get used to that; it +would always make him uncomfortable—from the suspicion that people +would think they had to—and he would want to prevent it. +Evidently his great colleague had toughened and hardened—had made +himself a surface. The group of men had finished their cigars +and taken up their bedroom candlesticks; but before they all passed +out Lord Watermouth invited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed +together to “have” something. It happened that they +both declined; upon which General Fancourt said: “Is that the +hygiene? You don’t water the flowers?”</p> +<p>“Oh I should drown them!” St. George replied; but, leaving +the room still at his young friend’s side, he added whimsically, +for the latter’s benefit, in a lower tone: “My wife doesn’t +let me.”</p> +<p>“Well I’m glad I’m not one of you fellows!” +the General richly concluded.</p> +<p>The nearness of Summersoft to London had this consequence, chilling +to a person who had had a vision of sociability in a railway-carriage, +that most of the company, after breakfast, drove back to town, entering +their own vehicles, which had come out to fetch them, while their servants +returned by train with their luggage. Three or four young men, +among whom was Paul Overt, also availed themselves of the common convenience; +but they stood in the portico of the house and saw the others roll away. +Miss Fancourt got into a victoria with her father after she had shaken +hands with our hero and said, smiling in the frankest way in the world, +“I <i>must</i> see you more. Mrs. St. George is so nice: +she has promised to ask us both to dinner together.” This +lady and her husband took their places in a perfectly-appointed brougham—she +required a closed carriage—and as our young man waved his hat +to them in response to their nods and flourishes he reflected that, +taken together, they were an honourable image of success, of the material +rewards and the social credit of literature. Such things were +not the full measure, but he nevertheless felt a little proud for literature.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p>Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, at +a private view of the works of a young artist in “black-and-white” +who had been so good as to invite him to the stuffy scene. The +drawings were admirable, but the crowd in the one little room was so +dense that he felt himself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A +fringe of people at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward their +backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface of resistance +to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an interval between their noses +and the glazed mounts of the pictures; while the central body, in the +comparative gloom projected by a wide horizontal screen hung under the +skylight and allowing only a margin for the day, remained upright dense +and vague, lost in the contemplation of its own ingredients. This +contemplation sat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, +surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which rose +on long necks above the others. One of the heads Paul perceived, +was much the so most beautiful of the collection, and his next discovery +was that it belonged to Miss Fancourt. Its beauty was enhanced +by the glad smile she sent him across surrounding obstructions, a smile +that drew him to her as fast as he could make his way. He had +seen for himself at Summersoft that the last thing her nature contained +was an affectation of indifference; yet even with this circumspection +he took a fresh satisfaction in her not having pretended to await his +arrival with composure. She smiled as radiantly as if she wished +to make him hurry, and as soon as he came within earshot she broke out +in her voice of joy: “He’s here—he’s here—he’s +coming back in a moment!”</p> +<p>“Ah your father?” Paul returned as she offered him her +hand.</p> +<p>“Oh dear no, this isn’t in my poor father’s line. +I mean Mr. St. George. He has just left me to speak to some one—he’s +coming back. It’s he who brought me—wasn’t it +charming?”</p> +<p>“Ah that gives him a pull over me—I couldn’t have +‘brought’ you, could I?”</p> +<p>“If you had been so kind as to propose it—why not you +as well as he?” the girl returned with a face that, expressing +no cheap coquetry, simply affirmed a happy fact.</p> +<p>“Why he’s a père de famille. They’ve +privileges,” Paul explained. And then quickly: “Will +you go to see places with <i>me</i>?” he asked.</p> +<p>“Anything you like!” she smiled. “I know +what you mean, that girls have to have a lot of people—” +Then she broke off: “I don’t know; I’m free. +I’ve always been like that—I can go about with any one. +I’m so glad to meet you,” she added with a sweet distinctness +that made those near her turn round.</p> +<p>“Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this +squash,” her friend said. “Surely people aren’t +happy here!”</p> +<p>“No, they’re awfully mornes, aren’t they? +But I’m very happy indeed and I promised Mr. St. George to remain +in this spot till he comes back. He’s going to take me away. +They send him invitations for things of this sort—more than he +wants. It was so kind of him to think of me.”</p> +<p>“They also send me invitations of this kind—more than +<i>I</i> want. And if thinking of <i>you</i> will do it—!” +Paul went on.</p> +<p>“Oh I delight in them—everything that’s life—everything +that’s London!”</p> +<p>“They don’t have private views in Asia, I suppose,” +he laughed. “But what a pity that for this year, even in +this gorged city, they’re pretty well over.”</p> +<p>“Well, next year will do, for I hope you believe we’re +going to be friends always. Here he comes!” Miss Fancourt +continued before Paul had time to respond.</p> +<p>He made out St. George in the gaps of the crowd, and this perhaps +led to his hurrying a little to say: “I hope that doesn’t +mean I’m to wait till next year to see you.”</p> +<p>“No, no—aren’t we to meet at dinner on the twenty-fifth?” +she panted with an eagerness as happy as his own.</p> +<p>“That’s almost next year. Is there no means of +seeing you before?”</p> +<p>She stared with all her brightness. “Do you mean you’d +<i>come</i>?”</p> +<p>“Like a shot, if you’ll be so good as to ask me!”</p> +<p>“On Sunday then—this next Sunday?”</p> +<p>“What have I done that you should doubt it?” the young +man asked with delight.</p> +<p>Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had now joined +them, and announced triumphantly: “He’s coming on Sunday—this +next Sunday!”</p> +<p>“Ah my day—my day too!” said the famous novelist, +laughing, to their companion.</p> +<p>“Yes, but not yours only. You shall meet in Manchester +Square; you shall talk—you shall be wonderful!”</p> +<p>“We don’t meet often enough,” St. George allowed, +shaking hands with his disciple. “Too many things—ah +too many things! But we must make it up in the country in September. +You won’t forget you’ve promised me that?”</p> +<p>“Why he’s coming on the twenty-fifth—you’ll +see him then,” said the girl.</p> +<p>“On the twenty-fifth?” St. George asked vaguely.</p> +<p>“We dine with you; I hope you haven’t forgotten. +He’s dining out that day,” she added gaily to Paul.</p> +<p>“Oh bless me, yes—that’s charming! And you’re +coming? My wife didn’t tell me,” St. George said to +him. “Too many things—too many things!” he repeated.</p> +<p>“Too many people—too many people!” Paul exclaimed, +giving ground before the penetration of an elbow.</p> +<p>“You oughtn’t to say that. They all read you.”</p> +<p>“Me? I should like to see them! Only two or three +at most,” the young man returned.</p> +<p>“Did you ever hear anything like that? He knows, haughtily, +how good he is!” St. George declared, laughing to Miss Fancourt. +“They read <i>me</i>, but that doesn’t make me like them +any better. Come away from them, come away!” And he +led the way out of the exhibition.</p> +<p>“He’s going to take me to the Park,” Miss Fancourt +observed to Overt with elation as they passed along the corridor that +led to the street.</p> +<p>“Ah does he go there?” Paul asked, taking the fact for +a somewhat unexpected illustration of St. George’s moeurs.</p> +<p>“It’s a beautiful day—there’ll be a great +crowd. We’re going to look at the people, to look at types,” +the girl went on. “We shall sit under the trees; we shall +walk by the Row.”</p> +<p>“I go once a year—on business,” said St. George, +who had overheard Paul’s question.</p> +<p>“Or with a country cousin, didn’t you tell me? +I’m the country cousin!” she continued over her shoulder +to Paul as their friend drew her toward a hansom to which he had signalled. +The young man watched them get in; he returned, as he stood there, the +friendly wave of the hand with which, ensconced in the vehicle beside +her, St. George took leave of him. He even lingered to see the +vehicle start away and lose itself in the confusion of Bond Street. +He followed it with his eyes; it put to him embarrassing things. +“She’s not for <i>me</i>!” the great novelist had +said emphatically at Summersoft; but his manner of conducting himself +toward her appeared not quite in harmony with such a conviction. +How could he have behaved differently if she <i>had</i> been for him? +An indefinite envy rose in Paul Overt’s heart as he took his way +on foot alone; a feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of +the occupants of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle +about London with such a girl! How much he should like to go and +look at “types” with St. George!</p> +<p>The next Sunday at four o’clock he called in Manchester Square, +where his secret wish was gratified by his finding Miss Fancourt alone. +She was in a large bright friendly occupied room, which was painted +red all over, draped with the quaint cheap florid stuffs that are represented +as coming from southern and eastern countries, where they are fabled +to serve as the counterpanes of the peasantry, and bedecked with pottery +of vivid hues, ranged on casual shelves, and with many water-colour +drawings from the hand (as the visitor learned) of the young lady herself, +commemorating with a brave breadth the sunsets, the mountains, the temples +and palaces of India. He sat an hour—more than an hour, +two hours—and all the while no one came in. His hostess +was so good as to remark, with her liberal humanity, that it was delightful +they weren’t interrupted; it was so rare in London, especially +at that season, that people got a good talk. But luckily now, +of a fine Sunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it +better for those who didn’t go, when these others were in sympathy. +It was the defect of London—one of two or three, the very short +list of those she recognised in the teeming world-city she adored—that +there were too few good chances for talk; you never had time to carry +anything far.</p> +<p>“Too many things—too many things!” Paul said, quoting +St. George’s exclamation of a few days before.</p> +<p>“Ah yes, for him there are too many—his life’s +too complicated.”</p> +<p>“Have you seen it <i>near</i>? That’s what I should +like to do; it might explain some mysteries,” her visitor went +on. She asked him what mysteries he meant, and he said: “Oh +peculiarities of his work, inequalities, superficialities. For +one who looks at it from the artistic point of view it contains a bottomless +ambiguity.”</p> +<p>She became at this, on the spot, all intensity. “Ah do +describe that more—it’s so interesting. There are +no such suggestive questions. I’m so fond of them. +He thinks he’s a failure—fancy!” she beautifully wailed.</p> +<p>“That depends on what his ideal may have been. With his +gifts it ought to have been high. But till one knows what he really +proposed to himself—? Do <i>you</i> know by chance?” +the young man broke off.</p> +<p>“Oh he doesn’t talk to me about himself. I can’t +make him. It’s too provoking.”</p> +<p>Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about, but +discretion checked it and he said instead: “Do you think he’s +unhappy at home?”</p> +<p>She seemed to wonder. “At home?”</p> +<p>“I mean in his relations with his wife. He has a mystifying +little way of alluding to her.”</p> +<p>“Not to me,” said Marian Fancourt with her clear eyes. +“That wouldn’t be right, would it?” she asked gravely.</p> +<p>“Not particularly; so I’m glad he doesn’t mention +her to you. To praise her might bore you, and he has no business +to do anything else. Yet he knows you better than me.”</p> +<p>“Ah but he respects <i>you</i>!” the girl cried as with +envy.</p> +<p>Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. “Doesn’t +he respect you?”</p> +<p>“Of course, but not in the same way. He respects what +you’ve done—he told me so, the other day.”</p> +<p>Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. “When you +went to look at types?”</p> +<p>“Yes—we found so many: he has such an observation of +them! He talked a great deal about your book. He says it’s +really important.”</p> +<p>“Important! Ah the grand creature!”—and the +author of the work in question groaned for joy.</p> +<p>“He was wonderfully amusing, he was inexpressibly droll, while +we walked about. He sees everything; he has so many comparisons +and images, and they’re always exactly right. C’est +d’un trouvé, as they say.”</p> +<p>“Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to have done!” +Paul sighed.</p> +<p>“And don’t you think he <i>has</i> done them?”</p> +<p>Ah it was just the point. “A part of them, and of course +even that part’s immense. But he might have been one of +the greatest. However, let us not make this an hour of qualifications. +Even as they stand,” our friend earnestly concluded, “his +writings are a mine of gold.”</p> +<p>To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half an hour +the pair talked over the Master’s principal productions. +She knew them well—she knew them even better than her visitor, +who was struck with her critical intelligence and with something large +and bold in the movement in her mind. She said things that startled +him and that evidently had come to her directly; they weren’t +picked-up phrases—she placed them too well. St. George had +been right about her being first-rate, about her not being afraid to +gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenly something +came back to her, and she said: “I recollect that he did speak +of Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, apropos of something or +other, that she didn’t care for perfection.”</p> +<p>“That’s a great crime in an artist’s wife,” +Paul returned.</p> +<p>“Yes, poor thing!” and the girl sighed with a suggestion +of many reflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently +added: “Ah perfection, perfection—how one ought to go in +for it! I wish <i>I</i> could.”</p> +<p>“Every one can in his way,” her companion opined.</p> +<p>“In <i>his</i> way, yes—but not in hers. Women +are so hampered—so condemned! Yet it’s a kind of dishonour +if you don’t, when you want to <i>do</i> something, isn’t +it?” Miss Fancourt pursued, dropping one train in her quickness +to take up another, an accident that was common with her. So these +two young persons sat discussing high themes in their eclectic drawing-room, +in their London “season”—discussing, with extreme +seriousness, the high theme of perfection. It must be said in +extenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in the business. +Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty; they weren’t posturing +for each other or for some one else.</p> +<p>The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducing it; the +perfection to which for the moment they agreed to confine their speculations +was that of the valid, the exemplary work of art. Our young woman’s +imagination, it appeared, had wandered far in that direction, and her +guest had the rare delight of feeling in their conversation a full interchange. +This episode will have lived for years in his memory and even in his +wonder; it had the quality that fortune distils in a single drop at +a time—the quality that lubricates many ensuing frictions. +He still, whenever he likes, has a vision of the room, the bright red +sociable talkative room with the curtains that, by a stroke of successful +audacity, had the note of vivid blue. He remembers where certain +things stood, the particular book open on the table and the almost intense +odour of the flowers placed, at the left, somewhere behind him. +These facts were the fringe, as it were, of a fine special agitation +which had its birth in those two hours and of which perhaps the main +sign was in its leading him inwardly and repeatedly to breathe “I +had no idea there was any one like this—I had no idea there was +any one like this!” Her freedom amazed him and charmed him—it +seemed so to simplify the practical question. She was on the footing +of an independent personage—a motherless girl who had passed out +of her teens and had a position and responsibilities, who wasn’t +held down to the limitations of a little miss. She came and went +with no dragged duenna, she received people alone, and, though she was +totally without hardness, the question of protection or patronage had +no relevancy in regard to her. She gave such an impression of +the clear and the noble combined with the easy and the natural that +in spite of her eminent modern situation she suggested no sort of sister-hood +with the “fast” girl. Modern she was indeed, and made +Paul Overt, who loved old colour, the golden glaze of time, think with +some alarm of the muddled palette of the future. He couldn’t +get used to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too good +to be real—it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into such +a well of sympathy. One might stray into the desert easily—that +was on the cards and that was the law of life; but it was too rare an +accident to stumble on a crystal well. Yet if her aspirations +seemed at one moment too extravagant to be real they struck him at the +next as too intelligent to be false. They were both high and lame, +and, whims for whims, he preferred them to any he had met in a like +relation. It was probable enough she would leave them behind—exchange +them for politics or “smartness” or mere prolific maternity, +as was the custom of scribbling daubing educated flattered girls in +an age of luxury and a society of leisure. He noted that the water-colours +on the walls of the room she sat in had mainly the quality of being +naïves, and reflected that naïveté in art is like a +zero in a number: its importance depends on the figure it is united +with. Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her. +Before he went away, at any rate, he said to her: “I thought St. +George was coming to see you to-day, but he doesn’t turn up.”</p> +<p>For a moment he supposed she was going to cry “Comment donc? +Did you come here only to meet him?” But the next he became +aware of how little such a speech would have fallen in with any note +of flirtation he had as yet perceived in her. She only replied: +“Ah yes, but I don’t think he’ll come. He recommended +me not to expect him.” Then she gaily but all gently added: +“He said it wasn’t fair to you. But I think I could +manage two.”</p> +<p>“So could I,” Paul Overt returned, stretching the point +a little to meet her. In reality his appreciation of the occasion +was so completely an appreciation of the woman before him that another +figure in the scene, even so esteemed a one as St. George, might for +the hour have appealed to him vainly. He left the house wondering +what the great man had meant by its not being fair to him; and, still +more than that, whether he had actually stayed away from the force of +that idea. As he took his course through the Sunday solitude of +Manchester Square, swinging his stick and with a good deal of emotion +fermenting in his soul, it appeared to him he was living in a world +strangely magnanimous. Miss Fancourt had told him it was possible +she should be away, and that her father should be, on the following +Sunday, but that she had the hope of a visit from him in the other event. +She promised to let him know should their absence fail, and then he +might act accordingly. After he had passed into one of the streets +that open from the Square he stopped, without definite intentions, looking +sceptically for a cab. In a moment he saw a hansom roll through +the place from the other side and come a part of the way toward him. +He was on the point of hailing the driver when he noticed a “fare” +within; then he waited, seeing the man prepare to deposit his passenger +by pulling up at one of the houses. The house was apparently the +one he himself had just quitted; at least he drew that inference as +he recognised Henry St. George in the person who stepped out of the +hansom. Paul turned off as quickly as if he had been caught in +the act of spying. He gave up his cab—he preferred to walk; +he would go nowhere else. He was glad St. George hadn’t +renounced his visit altogether—that would have been too absurd. +Yes, the world was magnanimous, and even he himself felt so as, on looking +at his watch, he noted but six o’clock, so that he could mentally +congratulate his successor on having an hour still to sit in Miss Fancourt’s +drawing-room. He himself might use that hour for another visit, +but by the time he reached the Marble Arch the idea of such a course +had become incongruous to him. He passed beneath that architectural +effort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreading grass. +Here he continued to walk; he took his way across the elastic turf and +came out by the Serpentine. He watched with a friendly eye the +diversions of the London people, he bent a glance almost encouraging +on the young ladies paddling their sweethearts about the lake and the +guardsmen tickling tenderly with their bearskins the artificial flowers +in the Sunday hats of their partners. He prolonged his meditative +walk; he went into Kensington Gardens, he sat upon the penny chairs, +he looked at the little sail-boats launched upon the round pond and +was glad he had no engagement to dine. He repaired for this purpose, +very late, to his club, where he found himself unable to order a repast +and told the waiter to bring whatever there was. He didn’t +even observe what he was served with, and he spent the evening in the +library of the establishment, pretending to read an article in an American +magazine. He failed to discover what it was about; it appeared +in a dim way to be about Marian Fancourt.</p> +<p>Quite late in the week she wrote to him that she was not to go into +the country—it had only just been settled. Her father, she +added, would never settle anything, but put it all on her. She +felt her responsibility—she had to—and since she was forced +this was the way she had decided. She mentioned no reasons, which +gave our friend all the clearer field for bold conjecture about them. +In Manchester Square on this second Sunday he esteemed his fortune less +good, for she had three or four other visitors. But there were +three or four compensations; perhaps the greatest of which was that, +learning how her father had after all, at the last hour, gone out of +town alone, the bold conjecture I just now spoke of found itself becoming +a shade more bold. And then her presence was her presence, and +the personal red room was there and was full of it, whatever phantoms +passed and vanished, emitting incomprehensible sounds. Lastly, +he had the resource of staying till every one had come and gone and +of believing this grateful to her, though she gave no particular sign. +When they were alone together he came to his point. “But +St. George did come—last Sunday. I saw him as I looked back.”</p> +<p>“Yes; but it was the last time.”</p> +<p>“The last time?”</p> +<p>“He said he would never come again.”</p> +<p>Paul Overt stared. “Does he mean he wishes to cease to +see you?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what he means,” the girl bravely +smiled. “He won’t at any rate see me here.”</p> +<p>“And pray why not?”</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea,” said Marian Fancourt, +whose visitor found her more perversely sublime than ever yet as she +professed this clear helplessness.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p>“Oh I say, I want you to stop a little,” Henry St. George +said to him at eleven o’clock the night he dined with the head +of the profession. The company—none of it indeed <i>of</i> +the profession—had been numerous and was taking its leave; our +young man, after bidding good-night to his hostess, had put out his +hand in farewell to the master of the house. Besides drawing from +the latter the protest I have cited this movement provoked a further +priceless word about their chance now to have a talk, their going into +his room, his having still everything to say. Paul Overt was all +delight at this kindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocose qualification +the bare fact that he had promised to go to another place which was +at a considerable distance.</p> +<p>“Well then you’ll break your promise, that’s all. +You quite awful humbug!” St. George added in a tone that confirmed +our young man’s ease.</p> +<p>“Certainly I’ll break it—but it was a real promise.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You’re following +her?” his friend asked.</p> +<p>He answered by a question. “Oh is <i>she</i> going?”</p> +<p>“Base impostor!” his ironic host went on. “I’ve +treated you handsomely on the article of that young lady: I won’t +make another concession. Wait three minutes—I’ll be +with you.” He gave himself to his departing guests, accompanied +the long-trained ladies to the door. It was a hot night, the windows +were open, the sound of the quick carriages and of the linkmen’s +call came into the house. The affair had rather glittered; a sense +of festal things was in the heavy air: not only the influence of that +particular entertainment, but the suggestion of the wide hurry of pleasure +which in London on summer nights fills so many of the happier quarters +of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St. George’s drawing-room +emptied itself; Paul was left alone with his hostess, to whom he explained +the motive of his waiting. “Ah yes, some intellectual, some +<i>professional</i>, talk,” she leered; “at this season +doesn’t one miss it? Poor dear Henry, I’m so glad!” +The young man looked out of the window a moment, at the called hansoms +that lurched up, at the smooth broughams that rolled away. When +he turned round Mrs. St. George had disappeared; her husband’s +voice rose to him from below—he was laughing and talking, in the +portico, with some lady who awaited her carriage. Paul had solitary +possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted rooms where the covered +tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had been pushed about and the odour +of flowers lingered. They were large, they were pretty, they contained +objects of value; everything in the picture told of a “good house.” +At the end of five minutes a servant came in with a request from the +Master that he would join him downstairs; upon which, descending, he +followed his conductor through a long passage to an apartment thrown +out, in the rear of the habitation, for the special requirements, as +he guessed, of a busy man of letters.</p> +<p>St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large high +room—a room without windows, but with a wide skylight at the top, +that of a place of exhibition. It was furnished as a library, +and the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, a surface of incomparable +tone produced by dimly-gilt “backs” interrupted here and +there by the suspension of old prints and drawings. At the end +furthest from the door of admission was a tall desk, of great extent, +at which the person using it could write only in the erect posture of +a clerk in a counting-house; and stretched from the entrance to this +structure was a wide plain band of crimson cloth, as straight as a garden-path +and almost as long, where, in his mind’s eye, Paul at once beheld +the Master pace to and fro during vexed hours—hours, that is, +of admirable composition. The servant gave him a coat, an old +jacket with a hang of experience, from a cupboard in the wall, retiring +afterwards with the garment he had taken off. Paul Overt welcomed +the coat; it was a coat for talk, it promised confidences—having +visibly received so many—and had tragic literary elbows. +“Ah we’re practical—we’re practical!” +St. George said as he saw his visitor look the place over. “Isn’t +it a good big cage for going round and round? My wife invented +it and she locks me up here every morning.”</p> +<p>Our young man breathed—by way of tribute—with a certain +oppression. “You don’t miss a window—a place +to look out?”</p> +<p>“I did at first awfully; but her calculation was just. +It saves time, it has saved me many months in these ten years. +Here I stand, under the eye of day—in London of course, very often, +it’s rather a bleared old eye—walled in to my trade. +I can’t get away—so the room’s a fine lesson in concentration. +I’ve learnt the lesson, I think; look at that big bundle of proof +and acknowledge it.” He pointed to a fat roll of papers, +on one of the tables, which had not been undone.</p> +<p>“Are you bringing out another—?” Paul asked in +a tone the fond deficiencies of which he didn’t recognise till +his companion burst out laughing, and indeed scarce even then.</p> +<p>“You humbug, you humbug!”—St. George appeared to +enjoy caressing him, as it were, with that opprobrium. “Don’t +I know what you think of them?” he asked, standing there with +his hands in his pockets and with a new kind of smile. It was +as if he were going to let his young votary see him all now.</p> +<p>“Upon my word in that case you know more than I do!” +the latter ventured to respond, revealing a part of the torment of being +able neither clearly to esteem nor distinctly to renounce him.</p> +<p>“My dear fellow,” said the more and more interesting +Master, “don’t imagine I talk about my books specifically; +they’re not a decent subject—il ne manquerait plus que ça! +I’m not so bad as you may apprehend! About myself, yes, +a little, if you like; though it wasn’t for that I brought you +down here. I want to ask you something—very much indeed; +I value this chance. Therefore sit down. We’re practical, +but there <i>is</i> a sofa, you see—for she does humour my poor +bones so far. Like all really great administrators and disciplinarians +she knows when wisely to relax.” Paul sank into the corner +of a deep leathern couch, but his friend remained standing and explanatory. +“If you don’t mind, in this room, this is my habit. +From the door to the desk and from the desk to the door. That +shakes up my imagination gently; and don’t you see what a good +thing it is that there’s no window for her to fly out of? +The eternal standing as I write (I stop at that bureau and put it down, +when anything comes, and so we go on) was rather wearisome at first, +but we adopted it with an eye to the long run; you’re in better +order—if your legs don’t break down!—and you can keep +it up for more years. Oh we’re practical—we’re +practical!” St. George repeated, going to the table and taking +up all mechanically the bundle of proofs. But, pulling off the +wrapper, he had a change of attention that appealed afresh to our hero. +He lost himself a moment, examining the sheets of his new book, while +the younger man’s eyes wandered over the room again.</p> +<p>“Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a charming +place as this to do them in!” Paul reflected. The outer +world, the world of accident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, +and within the rich protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, +the dream-figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular +revel. It was a fond prevision of Overt’s rather than an +observation on actual data, for which occasions had been too few, that +the Master thus more closely viewed would have the quality, the charming +gift, of flashing out, all surprisingly, in personal intercourse and +at moments of suspended or perhaps even of diminished expectation. +A happy relation with him would be a thing proceeding by jumps, not +by traceable stages.</p> +<p>“Do you read them—really?” he asked, laying down +the proofs on Paul’s enquiring of him how soon the work would +be published. And when the young man answered “Oh yes, always,” +he was moved to mirth again by something he caught in his manner of +saying that. “You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—and +very proper it is, especially as she won’t last for ever. +She has lost every faculty and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, +nor speaks; but all customary pieties and kindly habits are respectable. +Only you’re strong if you <i>do</i> read ’em! <i>I</i> +couldn’t, my dear fellow. You are strong, I know; and that’s +just a part of what I wanted to say to you. You’re very +strong indeed. I’ve been going into your other things—they’ve +interested me immensely. Some one ought to have told me about +them before—some one I could believe. But whom can one believe? +You’re wonderfully on the right road—it’s awfully +decent work. Now do you mean to keep it up?—that’s +what I want to ask you.”</p> +<p>“Do I mean to do others?” Paul asked, looking up from +his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little +boy when the school-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old +who might have consulted a world-famous oracle. St. George’s +own performance had been infirm, but as an adviser he would be infallible.</p> +<p>“Others—others? Ah the number won’t matter; +one other would do, if it were really a further step—a throb of +the same effort. What I mean is have you it in your heart to go +in for some sort of decent perfection?”</p> +<p>“Ah decency, ah perfection—!” the young man sincerely +sighed. “I talked of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>It produced on the Master’s part a laugh of odd acrimony. +“Yes, they’ll ‘talk’ of them as much as you +like! But they’ll do little to help one to them. There’s +no obligation of course; only you strike me as capable,” he went +on. “You must have thought it all over. I can’t +believe you’re without a plan. That’s the sensation +you give me, and it’s so rare that it really stirs one up—it +makes you remarkable. If you haven’t a plan, if you <i>don’t</i> +mean to keep it up, surely you’re within your rights; it’s +nobody’s business, no one can force you, and not more than two +or three people will notice you don’t go straight. The others—<i>all</i> +the rest, every blest soul in England, will think you do—will +think you are keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall +be one of the two or three who know better. Now the question is +whether you can do it for two or three. Is that the stuff you’re +made of?”</p> +<p>It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. “I +could do it for one, if you were the one.”</p> +<p>“Don’t say that; I don’t deserve it; it scorches +me,” he protested with eyes suddenly grave and glowing. +“The ‘one’ is of course one’s self, one’s +conscience, one’s idea, the singleness of one’s aim. +I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some +detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him +with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, +you know, I’ve married for money.” Paul stared and +even blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, +observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh and pursued: +“You don’t follow my figure. I’m not speaking +of my dear wife, who had a small fortune—which, however, was not +my bribe. I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. +I refer to the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. +Don’t, my boy, put your nose into <i>that</i> yoke. The +awful jade will lead you a life!”</p> +<p>Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. “Haven’t +you been happy!”</p> +<p>“Happy? It’s a kind of hell.”</p> +<p>“There are things I should like to ask you,” Paul said +after a pause.</p> +<p>“Ask me anything in all the world. I’d turn myself +inside out to save you.”</p> +<p>“To ‘save’ me?” he quavered.</p> +<p>“To make you stick to it—to make you see it through. +As I said to you the other night at Summersoft, let my example be vivid +to you.”</p> +<p>“Why your books are not so bad as that,” said Paul, fairly +laughing and feeling that if ever a fellow had breathed the air of art—!</p> +<p>“So bad as what?”</p> +<p>“Your talent’s so great that it’s in everything +you do, in what’s less good as well as in what’s best. +You’ve some forty volumes to show for it—forty volumes of +wonderful life, of rare observation, of magnificent ability.”</p> +<p>“I’m very clever, of course I know that”—but +it was a thing, in fine, this author made nothing of. “Lord, +what rot they’d all be if I hadn’t been I’m a successful +charlatan,” he went on—“I’ve been able to pass +off my system. But do you know what it is? It’s cartonpierre.”</p> +<p>“Carton-pierre?” Paul was struck, and gaped.</p> +<p>“Lincrusta-Walton!”</p> +<p>“Ah don’t say such things—you make me bleed!” +the younger man protested. “I see you in a beautiful fortunate +home, living in comfort and honour.”</p> +<p>“Do you call it honour?”—his host took him up with +an intonation that often comes back to him. “That’s +what I want <i>you</i> to go in for. I mean the real thing. +This is brummagem.”</p> +<p>“Brummagem?” Paul ejaculated while his eyes wandered, +by a movement natural at the moment, over the luxurious room.</p> +<p>“Ah they make it so well to-day—it’s wonderfully +deceptive!”</p> +<p>Our friend thrilled with the interest and perhaps even more with +the pity of it. Yet he wasn’t afraid to seem to patronise +when he could still so far envy. “Is it deceptive that I +find you living with every appearance of domestic felicity—blest +with a devoted, accomplished wife, with children whose acquaintance +I haven’t yet had the pleasure of making, but who <i>must</i> +be delightful young people, from what I know of their parents?”</p> +<p>St. George smiled as for the candour of his question. “It’s +all excellent, my dear fellow—heaven forbid I should deny it. +I’ve made a great deal of money; my wife has known how to take +care of it, to use it without wasting it, to put a good bit of it by, +to make it fructify. I’ve got a loaf on the shelf; I’ve +got everything in fact but the great thing.”</p> +<p>“The great thing?” Paul kept echoing.</p> +<p>“The sense of having done the best—the sense which is +the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of +having drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music that +nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played. +He either does that or he doesn’t—and if he doesn’t +he isn’t worth speaking of. Therefore, precisely, those +who really know <i>don’t</i> speak of him. He may still +hear a great chatter, but what he hears most is the incorruptible silence +of Fame. I’ve squared her, you may say, for my little hour—but +what’s my little hour? Don’t imagine for a moment,” +the Master pursued, “that I’m such a cad as to have brought +you down here to abuse or to complain of my wife to you. She’s +a woman of distinguished qualities, to whom my obligations are immense; +so that, if you please, we’ll say nothing about her. My +boys—my children are all boys—are straight and strong, thank +God, and have no poverty of growth about them, no penury of needs. +I receive periodically the most satisfactory attestation from Harrow, +from Oxford, from Sandhurst—oh we’ve done the best for them!—of +their eminence as living thriving consuming organisms.”</p> +<p>“It must be delightful to feel that the son of one’s +loins is at Sandhurst,” Paul remarked enthusiastically.</p> +<p>“It is—it’s charming. Oh I’m a patriot!”</p> +<p>The young man then could but have the greater tribute of questions +to pay. “Then what did you mean—the other night at +Summersoft—by saying that children are a curse?”</p> +<p>“My dear youth, on what basis are we talking?” and St. +George dropped upon the sofa at a short distance from him. Sitting +a little sideways he leaned back against the opposite arm with his hands +raised and interlocked behind his head. “On the supposition +that a certain perfection’s possible and even desirable—isn’t +it so? Well, all I say is that one’s children interfere +with perfection. One’s wife interferes. Marriage interferes.”</p> +<p>“You think then the artist shouldn’t marry?”</p> +<p>“He does so at his peril—he does so at his cost.”</p> +<p>“Not even when his wife’s in sympathy with his work?”</p> +<p>“She never is—she can’t be! Women haven’t +a conception of such things.”</p> +<p>“Surely they on occasion work themselves,” Paul objected.</p> +<p>“Yes, very badly indeed. Oh of course, often, they think +they understand, they think they sympathise. Then it is they’re +most dangerous. Their idea is that you shall do a great lot and +get a great lot of money. Their great nobleness and virtue, their +exemplary conscientiousness as British females, is in keeping you up +to that. My wife makes all my bargains with my publishers for +me, and has done so for twenty years. She does it consummately +well—that’s why I’m really pretty well off. +Aren’t you the father of their innocent babes, and will you withhold +from them their natural sustenance? You asked me the other night +if they’re not an immense incentive. Of course they are—there’s +no doubt of that!”</p> +<p>Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt open so +wide, so much looking at. “For myself I’ve an idea +I need incentives.”</p> +<p>“Ah well then, n’en parlons plus!” his companion +handsomely smiled.</p> +<p>“<i>You</i> are an incentive, I maintain,” the young +man went on. “You don’t affect me in the way you’d +apparently like to. Your great success is what I see—the +pomp of Ennismore Gardens!”</p> +<p>“Success?”—St. George’s eyes had a cold fine +light. “Do you call it success to be spoken of as you’d +speak of me if you were sitting here with another artist—a young +man intelligent and sincere like yourself? Do you call it success +to make you blush—as you would blush!—if some foreign critic +(some fellow, of course I mean, who should know what he was talking +about and should have shown you he did, as foreign critics like to show +it) were to say to you: ‘He’s the one, in this country, +whom they consider the most perfect, isn’t he?’ Is +it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman’s having to +stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment for old England? +No, no; success is to have made people wriggle to another tune. +Do try it!”</p> +<p>Paul continued all gravely to glow. “Try what?”</p> +<p>“Try to do some really good work.”</p> +<p>“Oh I want to, heaven knows!”</p> +<p>“Well, you can’t do it without sacrifices—don’t +believe that for a moment,” the Master said. “I’ve +made none. I’ve had everything. In other words I’ve +missed everything.”</p> +<p>“You’ve had the full rich masculine human general life, +with all the responsibilities and duties and burdens and sorrows and +joys—all the domestic and social initiations and complications. +They must be immensely suggestive, immensely amusing,” Paul anxiously +submitted.</p> +<p>“Amusing?”</p> +<p>“For a strong man—yes.”</p> +<p>“They’ve given me subjects without number, if that’s +what you mean; but they’ve taken away at the same time the power +to use them. I’ve touched a thousand things, but which one +of them have I turned into gold? The artist has to do only with +that—he knows nothing of any baser metal. I’ve led +the life of the world, with my wife and my progeny; the clumsy conventional +expensive materialised vulgarised brutalised life of London. We’ve +got everything handsome, even a carriage—we’re perfect Philistines +and prosperous hospitable eminent people. But, my dear fellow, +don’t try to stultify yourself and pretend you don’t know +what we <i>haven’t</i> got. It’s bigger than all the +rest. Between artists—come!” the Master wound up. +“You know as well as you sit there that you’d put a pistol-ball +into your brain if you had written my books!”</p> +<p>It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised by him at +Summersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, a fulness, with +which the latter’s young imagination had scarcely reckoned. +His impression fairly shook him and he throbbed with the excitement +of such deep soundings and such strange confidences. He throbbed +indeed with the conflict of his feelings—bewilderment and recognition +and alarm, enjoyment and protest and assent, all commingled with tenderness +(and a kind of shame in the participation) for the sores and bruises +exhibited by so fine a creature, and with a sense of the tragic secret +nursed under his trappings. The idea of <i>his</i>, Paul Overt’s, +becoming the occasion of such an act of humility made him flush and +pant, at the same time that his consciousness was in certain directions +too much alive not to swallow—and not intensely to taste—every +offered spoonful of the revelation. It had been his odd fortune +to blow upon the deep waters, to make them surge and break in waves +of strange eloquence. But how couldn’t he give out a passionate +contradiction of his host’s last extravagance, how couldn’t +he enumerate to him the parts of his work he loved, the splendid things +he had found in it, beyond the compass of any other writer of the day? +St. George listened a while, courteously; then he said, laying his hand +on his visitor’s: “That’s all very well; and if your +idea’s to do nothing better there’s no reason you shouldn’t +have as many good things as I—as many human and material appendages, +as many sons or daughters, a wife with as many gowns, a house with as +many servants, a stable with as many horses, a heart with as many aches.” +The Master got up when he had spoken thus—he stood a moment—near +the sofa looking down on his agitated pupil. “Are you possessed +of any property?” it occurred to him to ask.</p> +<p>“None to speak of.”</p> +<p>“Oh well then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t +make a goodish income—if you set about it the right way. +Study <i>me</i> for that—study me well. You may really have +horses.”</p> +<p>Paul sat there some minutes without speaking. He looked straight +before him—he turned over many things. His friend had wandered +away, taking up a parcel of letters from the table where the roll of +proofs had lain. “What was the book Mrs. St. George made +you burn—the one she didn’t like?” our young man brought +out.</p> +<p>“The book she made me burn—how did you know that?” +The Master looked up from his letters quite without the facial convulsion +the pupil had feared.</p> +<p>“I heard her speak of it at Summersoft.”</p> +<p>“Ah yes—she’s proud of it. I don’t +know—it was rather good.”</p> +<p>“What was it about?”</p> +<p>“Let me see.” And he seemed to make an effort to +remember. “Oh yes—it was about myself.” +Paul gave an irrepressible groan for the disappearance of such a production, +and the elder man went on: “Oh but <i>you</i> should write it—<i>you</i> +should do me.” And he pulled up—from the restless +motion that had come upon him; his fine smile a generous glare. +“There’s a subject, my boy: no end of stuff in it!”</p> +<p>Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. “Are +there no women who really understand—who can take part in a sacrifice?”</p> +<p>“How can they take part? They themselves are the sacrifice. +They’re the idol and the altar and the flame.”</p> +<p>“Isn’t there even <i>one</i> who sees further?” +Paul continued.</p> +<p>For a moment St. George made no answer; after which, having torn +up his letters, he came back to the point all ironic. “Of +course I know the one you mean. But not even Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“I thought you admired her so much.”</p> +<p>“It’s impossible to admire her more. Are you in +love with her?” St. George asked.</p> +<p>“Yes,” Paul Overt presently said.</p> +<p>“Well then give it up.”</p> +<p>Paul stared. “Give up my ‘love’?”</p> +<p>“Bless me, no. Your idea.” And then as our +hero but still gazed: “The one you talked with her about. +The idea of a decent perfection.”</p> +<p>“She’d help it—she’d help it!” the +young man cried.</p> +<p>“For about a year—the first year, yes. After that +she’d be as a millstone round its neck.”</p> +<p>Paul frankly wondered. “Why she has a passion for the +real thing, for good work—for everything you and I care for most.”</p> +<p>“‘You and I’ is charming, my dear fellow!” +his friend laughed. “She has it indeed, but she’d +have a still greater passion for her children—and very proper +too. She’d insist on everything’s being made comfortable, +advantageous, propitious for them. That isn’t the artist’s +business.”</p> +<p>“The artist—the artist! Isn’t he a man all +the same?”</p> +<p>St. George had a grand grimace. “I mostly think not. +You know as well as I what he has to do: the concentration, the finish, +the independence he must strive for from the moment he begins to wish +his work really decent. Ah my young friend, his relation to women, +and especially to the one he’s most intimately concerned with, +is at the mercy of the damning fact that whereas he can in the nature +of things have but one standard, they have about fifty. That’s +what makes them so superior,” St. George amusingly added. +“Fancy an artist with a change of standards as you’d have +a change of shirts or of dinner-plates. To <i>do</i> it—to +do it and make it divine—is the only thing he has to think about. +‘Is it done or not?’ is his only question. Not ‘Is +it done as well as a proper solicitude for my dear little family will +allow?’ He has nothing to do with the relative—he +has only to do with the absolute; and a dear little family may represent +a dozen relatives.”</p> +<p>“Then you don’t allow him the common passions and affections +of men?” Paul asked.</p> +<p>“Hasn’t he a passion, an affection, which includes all +the rest? Besides, let him have all the passions he likes—if +he only keeps his independence. He must be able to be poor.”</p> +<p>Paul slowly got up. “Why then did you advise me to make +up to her?”</p> +<p>St. George laid his hand on his shoulder. “Because she’d +make a splendid wife! And I hadn’t read you then.”</p> +<p>The young man had a strained smile. “I wish you had left +me alone!”</p> +<p>“I didn’t know that that wasn’t good enough for +you,” his host returned.</p> +<p>“What a false position, what a condemnation of the artist, +that he’s a mere disfranchised monk and can produce his effect +only by giving up personal happiness. What an arraignment of art!” +Paul went on with a trembling voice.</p> +<p>“Ah you don’t imagine by chance that I’m defending +art? ‘Arraignment’—I should think so! +Happy the societies in which it hasn’t made its appearance, for +from the moment it comes they have a consuming ache, they have an incurable +corruption, in their breast. Most assuredly is the artist in a +false position! But I thought we were taking him for granted. +Pardon me,” St. George continued: “‘Ginistrella’ +made me!”</p> +<p>Paul stood looking at the floor—one o’clock struck, in +the stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. “Do you +think she’d ever look at me?” he put to his friend at last.</p> +<p>“Miss Fancourt—as a suitor? Why shouldn’t +I think it? That’s why I’ve tried to favour you—I’ve +had a little chance or two of bettering your opportunity.”</p> +<p>“Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away yourself?” +Paul said with a blush.</p> +<p>“I’m an old idiot—my place isn’t there,” +St. George stated gravely.</p> +<p>“I’m nothing yet, I’ve no fortune; and there must +be so many others,” his companion pursued.</p> +<p>The Master took this considerably in, but made little of it. +“You’re a gentleman and a man of genius. I think you +might do something.”</p> +<p>“But if I must give that up—the genius?”</p> +<p>“Lots of people, you know, think I’ve kept mine,” +St. George wonderfully grinned.</p> +<p>“You’ve a genius for mystification!” Paul declared; +but grasping his hand gratefully in attenuation of this judgement.</p> +<p>“Poor dear boy, I do worry you! But try, try, all the +same. I think your chances are good and you’ll win a great +prize.”</p> +<p>Paul held fast the other’s hand a minute; he looked into the +strange deep face. “No, I <i>am</i> an artist—I can’t +help it!”</p> +<p>“Ah show it then!” St. George pleadingly broke out. +“Let me see before I die the thing I most want, the thing I yearn +for: a life in which the passion—ours—is really intense. +If you can be rare don’t fail of it! Think what it is—how +it counts—how it lives!”</p> +<p>They had moved to the door and he had closed both his hands over +his companion’s. Here they paused again and our hero breathed +deep. “I want to live!”</p> +<p>“In what sense?”</p> +<p>“In the greatest.”</p> +<p>“Well then stick to it—see it through.”</p> +<p>“With your sympathy—your help?”</p> +<p>“Count on that—you’ll be a great figure to me. +Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. You’ll give +me satisfaction—if that has any weight with you.” +After which, as Paul appeared still to waver, his host added: “Do +you remember what you said to me at Summersoft?”</p> +<p>“Something infatuated, no doubt!”</p> +<p>“‘I’ll do anything in the world you tell me.’ +You said that.”</p> +<p>“And you hold me to it?”</p> +<p>“Ah what am I?” the Master expressively sighed.</p> +<p>“Lord, what things I shall have to do!” Paul almost moaned +as be departed.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p>“It goes on too much abroad—hang abroad!” +These or something like them had been the Master’s remarkable +words in relation to the action of “Ginistrella”; and yet, +though they had made a sharp impression on the author of that work, +like almost all spoken words from the same source, he a week after the +conversation I have noted left England for a long absence and full of +brave intentions. It is not a perversion of the truth to pronounce +that encounter the direct cause of his departure. If the oral +utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving him deeply +it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days +later, that it appeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibit its +extreme importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland and, having +in September begun a new task, determined not to cross the Alps till +he should have made a good start. To this end he returned to a +quiet corner he knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva and within +sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and a view for which he had +an affection that sprang from old associations and was capable of mysterious +revivals and refreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow +was on the nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he could +climb when his stint, on the shortening afternoons, was performed. +The autumn was fine, the lake was blue and his book took form and direction. +These felicities, for the time, embroidered his life, which he suffered +to cover him with its mantle. At the end of six weeks he felt +he had learnt St. George’s lesson by heart, had tested and proved +its doctrine. Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing: before +crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of +the perversity of this act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, +the reward of a strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had +asked of him no such favour when, shortly before he left London, three +days after their dinner in Ennismore Gardens, he went to take leave +of her. It was true she had had no ground—he hadn’t +named his intention of absence. He had kept his counsel for want +of due assurance: it was that particular visit that was, the next thing, +to settle the matter. He had paid the visit to see how much he +really cared for her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit +farewell, was the sequel to this enquiry, the answer to which had created +within him a deep yearning. When he wrote her from Clarens he +noted that he owed her an explanation (more than three months after!) +for not having told her what he was doing.</p> +<p>She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave him a striking piece +of news: that of the death, a week before, of Mrs. St. George. +This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the country, to a violent attack +of inflammation of the lungs—he would remember that for a long +time she had been delicate. Miss Fancourt added that she believed +her husband overwhelmed by the blow; he would miss her too terribly—she +had been everything in life to him. Paul Overt, on this, immediately +wrote to St. George. He would from the day of their parting have +been glad to remain in communication with him, but had hitherto lacked +the right excuse for troubling so busy a man. Their long nocturnal +talk came back to him in every detail, but this was no bar to an expression +of proper sympathy with the head of the profession, for hadn’t +that very talk made it clear that the late accomplished lady was the +influence that ruled his life? What catastrophe could be more +cruel than the extinction of such an influence? This was to be +exactly the tone taken by St. George in answering his young friend upwards +of a month later. He made no allusion of course to their important +discussion. He spoke of his wife as frankly and generously as +if he had quite forgotten that occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement +was visible in his words. “She took everything off my hands—off +my mind. She carried on our life with the greatest art, the rarest +devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, to drive my pen, +to shut myself up with my trade. This was a rare service—the +highest she could have rendered me. Would I could have acknowledged +it more fitly!”</p> +<p>A certain bewilderment, for our hero, disengaged itself from these +remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a retractation, strange +on the part of a man who hadn’t the excuse of witlessness. +He had certainly not expected his correspondent to rejoice in the death +of his wife, and it was perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie +of more than twenty years should have left him sore. But if she +had been so clear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the +dear man meant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing +him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the +doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable +loss, then her husband’s inspired advice had been a bad joke and +renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of rushing +back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly willing +to consider it so, and he went so far as to take the manuscript of the +first chapters of his new book out of his table-drawer, to insert it +into a pocket of his portmanteau. This led to his catching a glimpse +of certain pages he hadn’t looked at for months, and that accident, +in turn, to his being struck with the high promise they revealed—a +rare result of such retrospections, which it was his habit to avoid +as much as possible: they usually brought home to him that the glow +of composition might be a purely subjective and misleading emotion. +On this occasion a certain belief in himself disengaged itself whimsically +from the serried erasures of his first draft, making him think it best +after all to pursue his present trial to the end. If he could +write as well under the rigour of privation it might be a mistake to +change the conditions before that spell had spent itself. He would +go back to London of course, but he would go back only when he should +have finished his book. This was the vow he privately made, restoring +his manuscript to the table-drawer. It may be added that it took +him a long time to finish his book, for the subject was as difficult +as it was fine, and he was literally embarrassed by the fulness of his +notes. Something within him warned him that he must make it supremely +good—otherwise he should lack, as regards his private behaviour, +a handsome excuse. He had a horror of this deficiency and found +himself as firm as need be on the question of the lamp and the file. +He crossed the Alps at last and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing +summer, in Italy, where still, at the end of a twelvemonth, his task +was unachieved. “Stick to it—see it through”: +this general injunction of St. George’s was good also for the +particular case. He applied it to the utmost, with the result +that when in its slow order the summer had come round again he felt +he had given all that was in him. This time he put his papers +into his portmanteau, with the address of his publisher attached, and +took his way northward.</p> +<p>He had been absent from London for two years—two years which, +seeming to count as more, had made such a difference in his own life—through +the production of a novel far stronger, he believed, than “Ginistrella”—that +he turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival, with a +vague expectation of changes, of finding great things had happened. +But there were few transformations in Piccadilly—only three or +four big red houses where there had been low black ones—and the +brightness of the end of June peeped through the rusty railings of the +Green Park and glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as +he had seen it in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting +he appreciated; it seemed friendly and pointed, added to the exhilaration +of his finished book, of his having his own country and the huge oppressive +amusing city that suggested everything, that contained everything, under +his hand again. “Stay at home and do things here—do +subjects we can measure,” St. George had said; and now it struck +him he should ask nothing better than to stay at home for ever. +Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square, looking +out for a number he hadn’t forgotten. Miss Fancourt, however, +was not at home, so that he turned rather dejectedly from the door. +His movement brought him face to face with a gentleman just approaching +it and recognised on another glance as Miss Fancourt’s father. +Paul saluted this personage, and the General returned the greeting with +his customary good manner—a manner so good, however, that you +could never tell whether it meant he placed you. The disappointed +caller felt the impulse to address him; then, hesitating, became both +aware of having no particular remark to make, and convinced that though +the old soldier remembered him he remembered him wrong. He therefore +went his way without computing the irresistible effect his own evident +recognition would have on the General, who never neglected a chance +to gossip. Our young man’s face was expressive, and observation +seldom let it pass. He hadn’t taken ten steps before he +heard himself called after with a friendly semi-articulate “Er—I +beg your pardon!” He turned round and the General, smiling +at him from the porch, said: “Won’t you come in? I +won’t leave you the advantage of me!” Paul declined +to come in, and then felt regret, for Miss Fancourt, so late in the +afternoon, might return at any moment. But her father gave him +no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to have struck him +as ungracious. A further look at the visitor had recalled something, +enough at least to enable him to say: “You’ve come back, +you’ve come back?” Paul was on the point of replying +that he had come back the night before, but he suppressed, the next +instant, this strong light on the immediacy of his visit and, giving +merely a general assent, alluded to the young lady he deplored not having +found. He had come late in the hope she would be in. “I’ll +tell her—I’ll tell her,” said the old man; and then +he added quickly, gallantly: “You’ll be giving us something +new? It’s a long time, isn’t it?” Now +he remembered him right.</p> +<p>“Rather long. I’m very slow.” Paul explained. +“I met you at Summersoft a long time ago.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes—with Henry St. George. I remember very +well. Before his poor wife—” General Fancourt paused +a moment, smiling a little less. “I dare say you know.”</p> +<p>“About Mrs. St. George’s death? Certainly—I +heard at the time.”</p> +<p>“Oh no, I mean—I mean he’s to be married.”</p> +<p>“Ah I’ve not heard that!” But just as Paul +was about to add “To whom?” the General crossed his intention.</p> +<p>“When did you come back? I know you’ve been away—by +my daughter. She was very sorry. You ought to give her something +new.”</p> +<p>“I came back last night,” said our young man, to whom +something had occurred which made his speech for the moment a little +thick.</p> +<p>“Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn’t +you turn up at dinner?”</p> +<p>“At dinner?” Paul just mechanically repeated, not liking +to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking only of that.</p> +<p>“There are several people, I believe. Certainly St. George. +Or afterwards if you like better. I believe my daughter expects—” +He appeared to notice something in the visitor’s raised face (on +his steps he stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and the +interruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from which he +sought a quick issue. “Perhaps then you haven’t heard +she’s to be married.”</p> +<p>Paul gaped again. “To be married?”</p> +<p>“To Mr. St. George—it has just been settled. Odd +marriage, isn’t it?” Our listener uttered no opinion +on this point: he only continued to stare. “But I dare say +it will do—she’s so awfully literary!” said the General.</p> +<p>Paul had turned very red. “Oh it’s a surprise—very +interesting, very charming! I’m afraid I can’t dine—so +many thanks!”</p> +<p>“Well, you must come to the wedding!” cried the General. +“Oh I remember that day at Summersoft. He’s a great +man, you know.”</p> +<p>“Charming—charming!” Paul stammered for retreat. +He shook hands with the General and got off. His face was red +and he had the sense of its growing more and more crimson. All +the evening at home—he went straight to his rooms and remained +there dinnerless—his cheek burned at intervals as if it had been +smitten. He didn’t understand what had happened to him, +what trick had been played him, what treachery practised. “None, +none,” he said to himself. “I’ve nothing to +do with it. I’m out of it—it’s none of my business.” +But that bewildered murmur was followed again and again by the incongruous +ejaculation: “Was it a plan—was it a plan?” +Sometimes he cried to himself, breathless, “Have I been duped, +sold, swindled?” If at all, he was an absurd, an abject +victim. It was as if he hadn’t lost her till now. +He had renounced her, yes; but that was another affair—that was +a closed but not a locked door. Now he seemed to see the door +quite slammed in his face. Did he expect her to wait—was +she to give him his time like that: two years at a stretch? He +didn’t know what he had expected—he only knew what he hadn’t. +It wasn’t this—it wasn’t this. Mystification +bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in him when he thought of the deference, +the devotion, the credulity with which he had listened to St. George. +The evening wore on and the light was long; but even when it had darkened +he remained without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, +where he lay through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing +at the gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something, +to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easy—that +idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven +o’clock strike, he jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt +had said about his coming after dinner. He’d go—he’d +see her at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt +as if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the +others were wanting: he couldn’t do his sum till he had got all +his figures.</p> +<p>He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was +at Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the +door—a party was going on; a circumstance which at the last gave +him a slight relief, for now he would rather see her in a crowd. +People passed him on the staircase; they were going away, going “on” +with the hunted herdlike movement of London society at night. +But sundry groups remained in the drawing-room, and it was some minutes, +as she didn’t hear him announced, before he discovered and spoke +to her. In this short interval he had seen St. George talking +to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once looked away, feeling +unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn’t be sure the author +of “Shadowmere” noticed him. At all events he didn’t +come over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him—she +almost rushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had +forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she was +in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hair was a casque +of gold. He saw in a single moment that she was happy, happy with +an aggressive splendour. But she wouldn’t speak to him of +that, she would speak only of himself.</p> +<p>“I’m so delighted; my father told me. How kind +of you to come!” She struck him as so fresh and brave, while +his eyes moved over her, that he said to himself irresistibly: “Why +to him, why not to youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? +Why, in her rich young force, to failure, to abdication to superannuation?” +In his thought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all that +had been left of his faith in the peccable Master. “I’m +so sorry I missed you,” she went on. “My father told +me. How charming of you to have come so soon!”</p> +<p>“Does that surprise you?” Paul Overt asked.</p> +<p>“The first day? No, from you—nothing that’s +nice.” She was interrupted by a lady who bade her good-night, +and he seemed to read that it cost her nothing to speak to him in that +tone; it was her old liberal lavish way, with a certain added amplitude +that time had brought; and if this manner began to operate on the spot, +at such a juncture in her history, perhaps in the other days too it +had meant just as little or as much—a mere mechanical charity, +with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready to give but in +want of nothing. Oh she was satisfied—and why shouldn’t +she be? Why shouldn’t she have been surprised at his coming +the first day—for all the good she had ever got from him? +As the lady continued to hold her attention Paul turned from her with +a strange irritation in his complicated artistic soul and a sort of +disinterested disappointment. She was so happy that it was almost +stupid—a disproof of the extraordinary intelligence he had formerly +found in her. Didn’t she know how bad St. George could be, +hadn’t she recognised the awful thinness—? If she +didn’t she was nothing, and if she did why such an insolence of +serenity? This question expired as our young man’s eyes +settled at last on the genius who had advised him in a great crisis. +St. George was still before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone—fixed, +waiting, as if he meant to stop after every one—and he met the +clouded gaze of the young friend so troubled as to the degree of his +right (the right his resentment would have enjoyed) to regard himself +as a victim. Somehow the ravage of the question was checked by +the Master’s radiance. It was as fine in its way as Marian +Fancourt’s, it denoted the happy human being; but also it represented +to Paul Overt that the author of “Shadowmere” had now definitely +ceased to count—ceased to count as a writer. As he smiled +a welcome across the place he was almost banal, was almost smug. +Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make a movement, as if +for all the world he <i>had</i> his bad conscience; then they had already +met in the middle of the room and had shaken hands—expressively, +cordially on St. George’s part. With which they had passed +back together to where the elder man had been standing, while St. George +said: “I hope you’re never going away again. I’ve +been dining here; the General told me.” He was handsome, +he was young, he looked as if he had still a great fund of life. +He bent the friendliest, most unconfessing eyes on his disciple of a +couple of years before; asked him about everything, his health, his +plans, his late occupations, the new book. “When will it +be out—soon, soon, I hope? Splendid, eh? That’s +right; you’re a comfort, you’re a luxury! I’ve +read you all over again these last six months.” Paul waited +to see if he would tell him what the General had told him in the afternoon +and what Miss Fancourt, verbally at least, of course hadn’t. +But as it didn’t come out he at last put the question.</p> +<p>“Is it true, the great news I hear—that you’re +to be married?”</p> +<p>“Ah you have heard it then?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t the General tell you?” Paul asked.</p> +<p>The Master’s face was wonderful. “Tell me what?”</p> +<p>“That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, I don’t remember. We’ve +been in the midst of people. I’m sorry, in that case, that +I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing to you a fact that touches +me so nearly. It <i>is</i> a fact, strange as it may appear. +It has only just become one. Isn’t it ridiculous?” +St. George made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, +so far as our friend could judge, without latent impudence. It +struck his interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, he +must simply have forgotten what had passed between them. His next +words, however, showed he hadn’t, and they produced, as an appeal +to Paul’s own memory, an effect which would have been ludicrous +if it hadn’t been cruel. “Do you recall the talk we +had at my house that night, into which Miss Fancourt’s name entered? +I’ve often thought of it since.”</p> +<p>“Yes; no wonder you said what you did”—Paul was +careful to meet his eyes.</p> +<p>“In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was +no light then. How could I have foreseen this hour?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t you think it probable?”</p> +<p>“Upon my honour, no,” said Henry St. George. “Certainly +I owe you that assurance. Think how my situation has changed.”</p> +<p>“I see—I see,” our young man murmured.</p> +<p>His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been broached, +he was, as a person of imagination and tact, quite ready to give every +satisfaction—being both by his genius and his method so able to +enter into everything another might feel. “But it’s +not only that; for honestly, at my age, I never dreamed—a widower +with big boys and with so little else! It has turned out differently +from anything one could have dreamed, and I’m fortunate beyond +all measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents. +Better than any one else perhaps—for I remember how you liked +her before you went away, and how she liked you—you can intelligently +congratulate me.”</p> +<p>“She has been so free!” Those words made a great +impression on Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in +them as to which it so little mattered whether it was designed or casual. +Of course she had been free, and appreciably perhaps by his own act; +for wasn’t the Master’s allusion to her having liked him +a part of the irony too? “I thought that by your theory +you disapproved of a writer’s marrying.”</p> +<p>“Surely—surely. But you don’t call me a writer?”</p> +<p>“You ought to be ashamed,” said Paul.</p> +<p>“Ashamed of marrying again?”</p> +<p>“I won’t say that—but ashamed of your reasons.”</p> +<p>The elder man beautifully smiled. “You must let me judge +of them, my good friend.”</p> +<p>“Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine.”</p> +<p>The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, to suggest +the unsuspected. He stared as if divining a bitterness. +“Don’t you think I’ve been straight?”</p> +<p>“You might have told me at the time perhaps.”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, when I say I couldn’t pierce futurity—!”</p> +<p>“I mean afterwards.”</p> +<p>The Master wondered. “After my wife’s death?”</p> +<p>“When this idea came to you.”</p> +<p>“Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious +as you are.”</p> +<p>Poor Overt looked hard at him. “Are you marrying Miss +Fancourt to save me?”</p> +<p>“Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure. I shall +be the making of you,” St. George smiled. “I was greatly +struck, after our talk, with the brave devoted way you quitted the country, +and still more perhaps with your force of character in remaining abroad. +You’re very strong—you’re wonderfully strong.”</p> +<p>Paul tried to sound his shining eyes; the strange thing was that +he seemed sincere—not a mocking fiend. He turned away, and +as he did so heard the Master say something about his giving them all +the proof, being the joy of his old age. He faced him again, taking +another look. “Do you mean to say you’ve stopped writing?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, of course I have. It’s too late. +Didn’t I tell you?”</p> +<p>“I can’t believe it!”</p> +<p>“Of course you can’t—with your own talent! +No, no; for the rest of my life I shall only read <i>you</i>.”</p> +<p>“Does she know that—Miss Fancourt?”</p> +<p>“She will—she will.” Did he mean this, our +young man wondered, as a covert intimation that the assistance he should +derive from that young lady’s fortune, moderate as it was, would +make the difference of putting it in his power to cease to work ungratefully +an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of +his successful manhood, he didn’t suggest that any of his veins +were exhausted. “Don’t you remember the moral I offered +myself to you that night as pointing?” St. George continued. +“Consider at any rate the warning I am at present.”</p> +<p>This was too much—he <i>was</i> the mocking fiend. Paul +turned from him with a mere nod for good-night and the sense in a sore +heart that he might come back to him and his easy grace, his fine way +of arranging things, some time in the far future, but couldn’t +fraternise with him now. It was necessary to his soreness to believe +for the hour in the intensity of his grievance—all the more cruel +for its not being a legal one. It was doubtless in the attitude +of hugging this wrong that he descended the stairs without taking leave +of Miss Fancourt, who hadn’t been in view at the moment he quitted +the room. He was glad to get out into the honest dusky unsophisticating +night, to move fast, to take his way home on foot. He walked a +long time, going astray, paying no attention. He was thinking +of too many other things. His steps recovered their direction, +however, and at the end of an hour he found himself before his door +in the small inexpensive empty street. He lingered, questioning +himself still before going in, with nothing around and above him but +moonless blackness, a bad lamp or two and a few far-away dim stars. +To these last faint features he raised his eyes; he had been saying +to himself that he should have been “sold” indeed, diabolically +sold, if now, on his new foundation, at the end of a year, St. George +were to put forth something of his prime quality—something of +the type of “Shadowmere” and finer than his finest. +Greatly as he admired his talent Paul literally hoped such an incident +wouldn’t occur; it seemed to him just then that he shouldn’t +be able to bear it. His late adviser’s words were still +in his ears—“You’re very strong, wonderfully strong.” +Was he really? Certainly he would have to be, and it might a little +serve for revenge. <i>Is</i> he? the reader may ask in turn, if +his interest has followed the perplexed young man so far. The +best answer to that perhaps is that he’s doing his best, but that +it’s too soon to say. When the new book came out in the +autumn Mr. and Mrs. St. George found it really magnificent. The +former still has published nothing but Paul doesn’t even yet feel +safe. I may say for him, however, that if this event were to occur +he would really be the very first to appreciate it: which is perhaps +a proof that the Master was essentially right and that Nature had dedicated +him to intellectual, not to personal passion.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 898-h.htm or 898-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/8/9/898 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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