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diff --git a/898-0.txt b/898-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd45d8e --- /dev/null +++ b/898-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3042 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: The Lesson of the Master + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: February 28, 2015 [eBook #898] +[This file was first posted on May 1, 1997] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER*** + + +Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + + + + + THE LESSON OF + THE MASTER + + + BY HENRY JAMES + + [Picture: Decorative graphic] + + * * * * * + + LONDON: MARTIN SECKER + NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI + + * * * * * + + This edition first printed 1915 + + * * * * * + + + + +I + + +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 _she_?” he said to the servant before the man left him. + +“I think she’s Mrs. St. George, sir.” + +“Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished—” Then Paul Overt +checked himself, doubting if a footman would know. + +“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. + +“And the gentlemen?” Overt went on. + +“Well, sir, one of them’s General Fancourt.” + +“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. + +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. + +“Ah you’ve not been here before?” said his companion. “It’s a nice +little place—not much to _do_, 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. + +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 _his_ 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. + +“And now you remain in England?” the young man asked. + +“Oh yes; I’ve bought a small house in London.” + +“And I hope you like it,” said Overt, looking at Mrs. St. George. + +“Well, a little house in Manchester Square—there’s a limit to the +enthusiasm _that_ inspires.” + +“Oh I meant being at home again—being back in Piccadilly.” + +“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.” + +“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. + +“If you mean to imply that _we’re_ bad, I protest,” said one of the +gentlemen—“after making one’s self agreeable all the morning!” + +“Ah if they’ve found you agreeable—!” Mrs. St. George gaily cried. “But +if we’re good the others are better.” + +“They must be angels then,” said the amused General. + +“Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding,” the +gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George. + +“At my bidding?” + +“Didn’t you make him go to church?” + +“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. + +“A bad book?” her interlocutor repeated. + +“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.” + +“Well, if you don’t mind them I don’t,” the General laughed. + +“Il s’attache à ses pas. But I don’t wonder—she’s so charming.” + +“I hope she won’t make him burn any books!” Paul Overt ventured to +exclaim. + +“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—!” + +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 on? +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. + +“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. + +“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. + +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.” + +“I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were to take me over +_there_—!” the young man murmured. + +“My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don’t mean for +you, but for Marian,” the General added. + +“_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?” + +“The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he _is_ making up to +her—they’re going off for another walk.” + +“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 _do_ 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. + + + + +II + + +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?” + +“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.” + +“As if I read you because I read ‘everything’!” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“You speak just like him,” laughed our youth. + +“Ah but sometimes I want to”—and the girl coloured. “I don’t read +everything—I read very little. But I _have_ read you.” + +“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. + +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.” + +“To thank me—?” He had to wonder. + +“I liked your book so much. I think it splendid.” + +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 _that_, 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 _here_; 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. + +“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he delightful?” + +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.” + +“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. + +“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about me,” he professed. + +“He does then—everything. And if he didn’t I should be able to tell +him.” + +“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled. + +“You talk just like the people in your book!” she answered. + +“Then they must all talk alike.” + +She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. “Well, it must be so +difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it _is_—terribly. I’ve tried too—and +I find it so. I’ve tried to write a novel.” + +“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” Paul went so far as to say. + +“You do much more—when you wear that expression.” + +“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” the young man pursued. “It’s +so poor—so poor!” + +“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave. + +“I mean as compared with being a person of action—as living your works.” + +“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.” + +“So I should think—but surely it isn’t new to you.” + +“Why I’ve never seen any one—any one: living always in Asia.” + +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?” + +It was as if she didn’t care even _should_ 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.” + +“Never of a picture? Why, wasn’t all life a picture?” + +She looked over the delightful place where they sat. “Nothing to compare +to this. I adore England!” she cried. + +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.” + +“She hasn’t been touched, really,” said the girl. + +“Did Mr. St. George say that?” + +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.” + +“It would make _me_ 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. + +“Oh you—as if you hadn’t! I should like so to hear you talk together,” +she added ardently. + +“That’s very genial of you; but he’d have it all his own way. I’m +prostrate before him.” + +She had an air of earnestness. “Do you think then he’s so perfect?” + +“Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness—!” + +“Yes, yes—he knows that.” + +Paul Overt stared. “That they seem to me of a queerness—!” + +“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.” + +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.” + +“How momentous—how magnificent!” cried the girl. “How delicious to bring +you together!” + +“Your doing it—that makes it perfect,” our friend returned. + +“He’s as eager as you,” she went on. “But it’s so odd you shouldn’t have +met.” + +“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.” + +She took this in with interest. “And yet you write of it as well as if +you were always here.” + +“It’s just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I suspect, +are those that were done in dreary places abroad.” + +“And why were they dreary?” + +“Because they were health-resorts—where my poor mother was dying.” + +“Your poor mother?”—she was all sweet wonder. + +“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.” + +“And she isn’t better?” Miss Fancourt went on. + +“She died a year ago.” + +“Really?—like mine! Only that’s years since. Some day you must tell me +about your mother,” she added. + +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.” + +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.” + +“I’m afraid you consider then that I am.” + +“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rather shortly. And then she added: “He +understands—understands everything.” + +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?” + +Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment’s hesitation put +it: “Isn’t she charming?” + +“Not in the least!” + +“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. + +“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed. + +“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 +_that_?—is she in love with him?” he mentally enquired. “Didn’t I tell +you he was eager?” she had meanwhile asked of him. + +“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?” + +“That book? what book did she burn?” The girl quickly turned her face to +him. + +“Hasn’t he told you then?” + +“Not a word.” + +“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!” + +His companion, however, didn’t hear it; she smiled at the dragon’s +adversary. “He _is_ eager—he is!” she insisted. + +“Eager for you—yes.” + +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.” + +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 _mot_ +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. + +“She oughtn’t to have come out at all,” her ladyship rather grumpily +remarked. + +“Is she so very much of an invalid?” + +“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. + + + + +III + + +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. + +“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.” + +“Do you mean smoking’s good for you?” + +“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?” + +“Do you mean a cigarette?” + +“Dear no—a wife.” + +“No; and yet I’d give up my cigarette for one.” + +“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.” + +“And how do you know it?” Paul asked. + +“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.” + +“Just? You hadn’t read it this afternoon,” said Overt. + +“How do you know that?” + +“I think you should know how I know it,” the young man laughed. + +“I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.” + +“No indeed—she led me rather to suppose you had.” + +“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. + +“No, not when you came to us there.” + +“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 _her_ just as she is.” + +“I like her very much,” said Paul Overt. + +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.” + +“Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to believe Miss +Fancourt.” + +“How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit by it?” + +“Do you wish to pass exactly for what she represents you? Certainly you +needn’t be afraid,” Paul said. + +“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.” + +“I’m going to be surprisingly better,” Overt made bold to reply. + +“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 _must_ 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.” + +“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. + +“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.” + +“You make me very miserable,” Paul ecstatically breathed. + +“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 _is_ 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!” + +“What do you mean by your old age?” the young man asked. + +“It has made me old. But I like your youth.” + +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. + +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!” + +“But surely one’s right to want to place one’s children.” + +“One has no business to have any children,” St. George placidly declared. +“I mean of course if one wants to do anything good.” + +“But aren’t they an inspiration—an incentive?” + +“An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking.” + +“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 _me_!” + +“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?” + +“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. + +“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.” + +“You’ve a house in the country?” Paul asked enviously. + +“Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go to—an hour from +Euston. That’s one of the reasons.” + +“One of the reasons?” + +“Why my books are so bad.” + +“You must tell me all the others!” Paul longingly laughed. + +His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again abruptly. +“Why have I never seen you before?” + +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.” + +“Well, please don’t do it any more. You must do England—there’s such a +lot of it.” + +“Do you mean I must write about it?” and Paul struck the note of the +listening candour of a child. + +“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.” + +“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.” + +St. George turned his face about with a smile. “I gave it but a quarter +of an hour.” + +“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.” + +“It comes to the same thing, because we talked about ‘Ginistrella.’ She +described it to me—she lent me her copy.” + +“Lent it to you?” + +“She travels with it.” + +“It’s incredible,” Paul blushed. + +“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.” + +“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. + +“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.” + +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!” + +“Thank Miss Fancourt—it was she who wound me up. She has made me feel as +if I had read your novel.” + +“She’s an angel from heaven!” Paul declared. + +“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?” + +“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man sighed. + +“The richest I’ve ever seen—an artistic intelligence really of the first +order. And lodged in such a form!” St. George exclaimed. + +“One would like to represent such a girl as that,” Paul continued. + +“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!” + +“How do you mean, not for you?” + +“Oh it’s all over—she’s for you, if you like.” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +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.” + +“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!” + +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.” + +“Half the night?—jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene”—and St. George +rose to his feet. + +“I see—you’re hothouse plants,” laughed the General. “That’s the way you +produce your flowers.” + +“I produce mine between ten and one every morning—I bloom with a +regularity!” St. George went on. + +“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 +_he_ 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?” + +“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.” + +“Well I’m glad I’m not one of you fellows!” the General richly concluded. + +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 _must_ 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. + + + + +IV + + +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!” + +“Ah your father?” Paul returned as she offered him her hand. + +“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?” + +“Ah that gives him a pull over me—I couldn’t have ‘brought’ you, could +I?” + +“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. + +“Why he’s a père de famille. They’ve privileges,” Paul explained. And +then quickly: “Will you go to see places with _me_?” he asked. + +“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. + +“Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this squash,” her +friend said. “Surely people aren’t happy here!” + +“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.” + +“They also send me invitations of this kind—more than _I_ want. And if +thinking of _you_ will do it—!” Paul went on. + +“Oh I delight in them—everything that’s life—everything that’s London!” + +“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.” + +“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. + +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.” + +“No, no—aren’t we to meet at dinner on the twenty-fifth?” she panted with +an eagerness as happy as his own. + +“That’s almost next year. Is there no means of seeing you before?” + +She stared with all her brightness. “Do you mean you’d _come_?” + +“Like a shot, if you’ll be so good as to ask me!” + +“On Sunday then—this next Sunday?” + +“What have I done that you should doubt it?” the young man asked with +delight. + +Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had now joined them, +and announced triumphantly: “He’s coming on Sunday—this next Sunday!” + +“Ah my day—my day too!” said the famous novelist, laughing, to their +companion. + +“Yes, but not yours only. You shall meet in Manchester Square; you shall +talk—you shall be wonderful!” + +“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?” + +“Why he’s coming on the twenty-fifth—you’ll see him then,” said the girl. + +“On the twenty-fifth?” St. George asked vaguely. + +“We dine with you; I hope you haven’t forgotten. He’s dining out that +day,” she added gaily to Paul. + +“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. + +“Too many people—too many people!” Paul exclaimed, giving ground before +the penetration of an elbow. + +“You oughtn’t to say that. They all read you.” + +“Me? I should like to see them! Only two or three at most,” the young +man returned. + +“Did you ever hear anything like that? He knows, haughtily, how good he +is!” St. George declared, laughing to Miss Fancourt. “They read _me_, +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. + +“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. + +“Ah does he go there?” Paul asked, taking the fact for a somewhat +unexpected illustration of St. George’s moeurs. + +“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.” + +“I go once a year—on business,” said St. George, who had overheard Paul’s +question. + +“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 _me_!” 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 _had_ 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! + +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. + +“Too many things—too many things!” Paul said, quoting St. George’s +exclamation of a few days before. + +“Ah yes, for him there are too many—his life’s too complicated.” + +“Have you seen it _near_? 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.” + +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. + +“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 _you_ know by chance?” the young man broke off. + +“Oh he doesn’t talk to me about himself. I can’t make him. It’s too +provoking.” + +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?” + +She seemed to wonder. “At home?” + +“I mean in his relations with his wife. He has a mystifying little way +of alluding to her.” + +“Not to me,” said Marian Fancourt with her clear eyes. “That wouldn’t be +right, would it?” she asked gravely. + +“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.” + +“Ah but he respects _you_!” the girl cried as with envy. + +Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. “Doesn’t he +respect you?” + +“Of course, but not in the same way. He respects what you’ve done—he +told me so, the other day.” + +Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. “When you went to look at +types?” + +“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.” + +“Important! Ah the grand creature!”—and the author of the work in +question groaned for joy. + +“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.” + +“Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to have done!” Paul sighed. + +“And don’t you think he _has_ done them?” + +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.” + +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.” + +“That’s a great crime in an artist’s wife,” Paul returned. + +“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_ could.” + +“Every one can in his way,” her companion opined. + +“In _his_ 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 _do_ +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. + +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.” + +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.” + +“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. + +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.” + +“Yes; but it was the last time.” + +“The last time?” + +“He said he would never come again.” + +Paul Overt stared. “Does he mean he wishes to cease to see you?” + +“I don’t know what he means,” the girl bravely smiled. “He won’t at any +rate see me here.” + +“And pray why not?” + +“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. + + + + +V + + +“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 _of_ 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. + +“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. + +“Certainly I’ll break it—but it was a real promise.” + +“Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You’re following her?” his friend asked. + +He answered by a question. “Oh is _she_ going?” + +“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 _professional_, 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. + +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.” + +Our young man breathed—by way of tribute—with a certain oppression. “You +don’t miss a window—a place to look out?” + +“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. + +“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. + +“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. + +“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. + +“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 _is_ 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. + +“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. + +“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 _do_ read ’em! _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.” + +“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. + +“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?” + +“Ah decency, ah perfection—!” the young man sincerely sighed. “I talked +of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt.” + +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 _don’t_ 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—_all_ 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?” + +It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. “I could do it +for one, if you were the one.” + +“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 _that_ yoke. The awful jade will lead you a +life!” + +Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. “Haven’t you been +happy!” + +“Happy? It’s a kind of hell.” + +“There are things I should like to ask you,” Paul said after a pause. + +“Ask me anything in all the world. I’d turn myself inside out to save +you.” + +“To ‘save’ me?” he quavered. + +“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.” + +“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—! + +“So bad as what?” + +“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.” + +“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.” + +“Carton-pierre?” Paul was struck, and gaped. + +“Lincrusta-Walton!” + +“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.” + +“Do you call it honour?”—his host took him up with an intonation that +often comes back to him. “That’s what I want _you_ to go in for. I mean +the real thing. This is brummagem.” + +“Brummagem?” Paul ejaculated while his eyes wandered, by a movement +natural at the moment, over the luxurious room. + +“Ah they make it so well to-day—it’s wonderfully deceptive!” + +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 _must_ be delightful young people, from what I know of their +parents?” + +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.” + +“The great thing?” Paul kept echoing. + +“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 _don’t_ 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.” + +“It must be delightful to feel that the son of one’s loins is at +Sandhurst,” Paul remarked enthusiastically. + +“It is—it’s charming. Oh I’m a patriot!” + +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?” + +“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.” + +“You think then the artist shouldn’t marry?” + +“He does so at his peril—he does so at his cost.” + +“Not even when his wife’s in sympathy with his work?” + +“She never is—she can’t be! Women haven’t a conception of such things.” + +“Surely they on occasion work themselves,” Paul objected. + +“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!” + +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.” + +“Ah well then, n’en parlons plus!” his companion handsomely smiled. + +“_You_ 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!” + +“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!” + +Paul continued all gravely to glow. “Try what?” + +“Try to do some really good work.” + +“Oh I want to, heaven knows!” + +“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.” + +“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. + +“Amusing?” + +“For a strong man—yes.” + +“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 _haven’t_ 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!” + +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 _his_, 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. + +“None to speak of.” + +“Oh well then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t make a goodish +income—if you set about it the right way. Study _me_ for that—study me +well. You may really have horses.” + +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. + +“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. + +“I heard her speak of it at Summersoft.” + +“Ah yes—she’s proud of it. I don’t know—it was rather good.” + +“What was it about?” + +“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 +_you_ should write it—_you_ 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!” + +Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. “Are there no women +who really understand—who can take part in a sacrifice?” + +“How can they take part? They themselves are the sacrifice. They’re the +idol and the altar and the flame.” + +“Isn’t there even _one_ who sees further?” Paul continued. + +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.” + +“I thought you admired her so much.” + +“It’s impossible to admire her more. Are you in love with her?” St. +George asked. + +“Yes,” Paul Overt presently said. + +“Well then give it up.” + +Paul stared. “Give up my ‘love’?” + +“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.” + +“She’d help it—she’d help it!” the young man cried. + +“For about a year—the first year, yes. After that she’d be as a +millstone round its neck.” + +Paul frankly wondered. “Why she has a passion for the real thing, for +good work—for everything you and I care for most.” + +“‘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.” + +“The artist—the artist! Isn’t he a man all the same?” + +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 _do_ 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.” + +“Then you don’t allow him the common passions and affections of men?” +Paul asked. + +“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.” + +Paul slowly got up. “Why then did you advise me to make up to her?” + +St. George laid his hand on his shoulder. “Because she’d make a splendid +wife! And I hadn’t read you then.” + +The young man had a strained smile. “I wish you had left me alone!” + +“I didn’t know that that wasn’t good enough for you,” his host returned. + +“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. + +“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!” + +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. + +“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.” + +“Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away yourself?” Paul +said with a blush. + +“I’m an old idiot—my place isn’t there,” St. George stated gravely. + +“I’m nothing yet, I’ve no fortune; and there must be so many others,” his +companion pursued. + +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.” + +“But if I must give that up—the genius?” + +“Lots of people, you know, think I’ve kept mine,” St. George wonderfully +grinned. + +“You’ve a genius for mystification!” Paul declared; but grasping his hand +gratefully in attenuation of this judgement. + +“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.” + +Paul held fast the other’s hand a minute; he looked into the strange deep +face. “No, I _am_ an artist—I can’t help it!” + +“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!” + +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!” + +“In what sense?” + +“In the greatest.” + +“Well then stick to it—see it through.” + +“With your sympathy—your help?” + +“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?” + +“Something infatuated, no doubt!” + +“‘I’ll do anything in the world you tell me.’ You said that.” + +“And you hold me to it?” + +“Ah what am I?” the Master expressively sighed. + +“Lord, what things I shall have to do!” Paul almost moaned as be +departed. + + + + +VI + + +“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. + +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!” + +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. + +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. + +“Rather long. I’m very slow.” Paul explained. “I met you at Summersoft +a long time ago.” + +“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.” + +“About Mrs. St. George’s death? Certainly—I heard at the time.” + +“Oh no, I mean—I mean he’s to be married.” + +“Ah I’ve not heard that!” But just as Paul was about to add “To whom?” +the General crossed his intention. + +“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.” + +“I came back last night,” said our young man, to whom something had +occurred which made his speech for the moment a little thick. + +“Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn’t you turn up at dinner?” + +“At dinner?” Paul just mechanically repeated, not liking to ask whom St. +George was going to marry, but thinking only of that. + +“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.” + +Paul gaped again. “To be married?” + +“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. + +Paul had turned very red. “Oh it’s a surprise—very interesting, very +charming! I’m afraid I can’t dine—so many thanks!” + +“Well, you must come to the wedding!” cried the General. “Oh I remember +that day at Summersoft. He’s a great man, you know.” + +“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. + +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. + +“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!” + +“Does that surprise you?” Paul Overt asked. + +“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 _had_ 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. + +“Is it true, the great news I hear—that you’re to be married?” + +“Ah you have heard it then?” + +“Didn’t the General tell you?” Paul asked. + +The Master’s face was wonderful. “Tell me what?” + +“That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?” + +“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 _is_ 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.” + +“Yes; no wonder you said what you did”—Paul was careful to meet his eyes. + +“In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light then. +How could I have foreseen this hour?” + +“Didn’t you think it probable?” + +“Upon my honour, no,” said Henry St. George. “Certainly I owe you that +assurance. Think how my situation has changed.” + +“I see—I see,” our young man murmured. + +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.” + +“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.” + +“Surely—surely. But you don’t call me a writer?” + +“You ought to be ashamed,” said Paul. + +“Ashamed of marrying again?” + +“I won’t say that—but ashamed of your reasons.” + +The elder man beautifully smiled. “You must let me judge of them, my +good friend.” + +“Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine.” + +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?” + +“You might have told me at the time perhaps.” + +“My dear fellow, when I say I couldn’t pierce futurity—!” + +“I mean afterwards.” + +The Master wondered. “After my wife’s death?” + +“When this idea came to you.” + +“Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious as you are.” + +Poor Overt looked hard at him. “Are you marrying Miss Fancourt to save +me?” + +“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.” + +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?” + +“My dear fellow, of course I have. It’s too late. Didn’t I tell you?” + +“I can’t believe it!” + +“Of course you can’t—with your own talent! No, no; for the rest of my +life I shall only read _you_.” + +“Does she know that—Miss Fancourt?” + +“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.” + +This was too much—he _was_ 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. _Is_ 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. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER*** + + +******* This file should be named 898-0.txt or 898-0.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 print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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