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diff --git a/898-h/898-h.htm b/898-h/898-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a50ef7d --- /dev/null +++ b/898-h/898-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3291 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Lesson of the Master, by Henry James</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +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: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from the 1915 Martin Secker edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/coverb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Book cover" +title= +"Book cover" + src="images/covers.jpg" /> +</a></p> +<h1>THE LESSON OF<br /> +THE MASTER</h1> +<p style="text-align: center">BY HENRY JAMES</p> +<p style="text-align: center"> +<a href="images/tpb.jpg"> +<img alt= +"Decorative graphic" +title= +"Decorative graphic" + src="images/tps.jpg" /> +</a></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON: MARTIN SECKER<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">This edition +first printed 1915</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>I</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">He</span> had been told the ladies were at +church, but this was corrected by what he saw from the top of the +steps—they descended from a great height in two arms, with +a circular sweep of the most charming effect—at the +threshold of the door which, from the long bright gallery, +overlooked the immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the grass, +at a distance, sat under the great trees, while the fourth figure +showed a crimson dress that told as a “bit of colour” +amid the fresh rich green. The servant had so far +accompanied Paul Overt as to introduce him to this view, after +asking him if he wished first to go to his room. The young +man declined that privilege, conscious of no disrepair from so +short and easy a journey and always liking to take at once a +general perceptive possession of a new scene. He stood +there a little with his eyes on the group and on the admirable +picture, the wide grounds of an old country-house near +London—that only made it better—on a splendid Sunday +in June. “But that lady, who’s +<i>she</i>?” he said to the servant before the man left +him.</p> +<p>“I think she’s Mrs. St. George, sir.”</p> +<p>“Mrs. St. George, the wife of the +distinguished—” Then Paul Overt checked +himself, doubting if a footman would know.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir—probably, sir,” said his guide, +who appeared to wish to intimate that a person staying at +Summersoft would naturally be, if only by alliance, +distinguished. His tone, however, made poor Overt himself +feel for the moment scantly so.</p> +<p>“And the gentlemen?” Overt went on.</p> +<p>“Well, sir, one of them’s General +Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“Ah yes, I know; thank you.” General +Fancourt was distinguished, there was no doubt of that, for +something he had done, or perhaps even hadn’t +done—the young man couldn’t remember which—some +years before in India. The servant went away, leaving the +glass doors open into the gallery, and Paul Overt remained at the +head of the wide double staircase, saying to himself that the +place was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he leaned on +the balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the other +details, was of the same period as the house. It all went +together and spoke in one voice—a rich English voice of the +early part of the eighteenth century. It might have been +church-time on a summer’s day in the reign of Queen Anne; +the stillness was too perfect to be modern, the nearness counted +so as distance, and there was something so fresh and sound in the +originality of the large smooth house, the expanse of beautiful +brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that had been +kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with +a rare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became +aware that the people under the trees had noticed him he turned +back through the open doors into the great gallery which was the +pride of the place. It marched across from end to end and +seemed—with its bright colours, its high panelled windows, +its faded flowered chintzes, its quickly-recognised portraits and +pictures, the blue-and-white china of its cabinets and the +attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling—a cheerful +upholstered avenue into the other century.</p> +<p>Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character +as a student of fine prose, went with the artist’s general +disposition to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the +idea that Henry St. George might be a member of the party. +For the young aspirant he had remained a high literary figure, in +spite of the lower range of production to which he had fallen +after his first three great successes, the comparative absence of +quality in his later work. There had been moments when Paul +Overt almost shed tears for this; but now that he was near +him—he had never met him—he was conscious only of the +fine original source and of his own immense debt. After he +had taken a turn or two up and down the gallery he came out again +and descended the steps. He was but slenderly supplied with +a certain social boldness—it was really a weakness in +him—so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with the +four persons in the distance, he gave way to motions recommended +by their not committing him to a positive approach. There +was a fine English awkwardness in this—he felt that too as +he sauntered vaguely and obliquely across the lawn, taking an +independent line. Fortunately there was an equally fine +English directness in the way one of the gentlemen presently rose +and made as if to “stalk” him, though with an air of +conciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration Paul +Overt instantly responded, even if the gentleman were not his +host. He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like the +great house itself, a pink smiling face, and into the bargain a +white moustache. Our young man met him halfway while he +laughed and said: “Er—Lady Watermouth told us you +were coming; she asked me just to look after you.” +Paul Overt thanked him, liking him on the spot, and turned round +with him to walk toward the others. “They’ve +all gone to church—all except us,” the stranger +continued as they went; “we’re just sitting +here—it’s so jolly.” Overt pronounced it +jolly indeed: it was such a lovely place. He mentioned that +he was having the charming impression for the first time.</p> +<p>“Ah you’ve not been here before?” said his +companion. “It’s a nice little place—not +much to <i>do</i>, you know”. Overt wondered what he +wanted to “do”—he felt that he himself was +doing so much. By the time they came to where the others +sat he had recognised his initiator for a military man +and—such was the turn of Overt’s +imagination—had found him thus still more +sympathetic. He would naturally have a need for action, for +deeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene. He was +evidently so good-natured, however, that he accepted the +inglorious hour for what it was worth. Paul Overt shared it +with him and with his companions for the next twenty minutes; the +latter looked at him and he looked at them without knowing much +who they were, while the talk went on without much telling him +even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing in +particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and short +terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places—names +which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It +was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural of a warm +Sunday morning.</p> +<p>His first attention was given to the question, privately +considered, of whether one of the two younger men would be Henry +St. George. He knew many of his distinguished +contemporaries by their photographs, but had never, as happened, +seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist. One of the +gentlemen was unimaginable—he was too young; and the other +scarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating +eyes. If those eyes were St. George’s the problem, +presented by the ill-matched parts of his genius would be still +more difficult of solution. Besides, the deportment of +their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in the red dress, +such as could be natural, toward the wife of his bosom, even to a +writer accused by several critics of sacrificing too much to +manner. Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if the +gentleman with the expressionless eyes bore the name that had set +his heart beating faster (he also had contradictory conventional +whiskers—the young admirer of the celebrity had never in a +mental vision seen <i>his</i> face in so vulgar a frame) he would +have given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, would +have heard of him a little, would know something about +“Ginistrella,” would have an impression of how that +fresh fiction had caught the eye of real criticism. Paul +Overt had a dread of being grossly proud, but even morbid modesty +might view the authorship of “Ginistrella” as +constituting a degree of identity. His soldierly friend +became clear enough: he was “Fancourt,” but was also +“the General”; and he mentioned to the new visitor in +the course of a few moments that he had but lately returned from +twenty years service abroad.</p> +<p>“And now you remain in England?” the young man +asked.</p> +<p>“Oh yes; I’ve bought a small house in +London.”</p> +<p>“And I hope you like it,” said Overt, looking at +Mrs. St. George.</p> +<p>“Well, a little house in Manchester +Square—there’s a limit to the enthusiasm <i>that</i> +inspires.”</p> +<p>“Oh I meant being at home again—being back in +Piccadilly.”</p> +<p>“My daughter likes Piccadilly—that’s the +main thing. She’s very fond of art and music and +literature and all that kind of thing. She missed it in +India and she finds it in London, or she hopes she’ll find +it. Mr. St. George has promised to help her—he has +been awfully kind to her. She has gone to +church—she’s fond of that too—but they’ll +all be back in a quarter of an hour. You must let me +introduce you to her—she’ll be so glad to know +you. I dare say she has read every blest word you’ve +written.”</p> +<p>“I shall be delighted—I haven’t written so +very many,” Overt pleaded, feeling, and without resentment, +that the General at least was vagueness itself about that. +But he wondered a little why, expressing this friendly +disposition, it didn’t occur to the doubtless eminent +soldier to pronounce the word that would put him in relation with +Mrs. St. George. If it was a question of introductions Miss +Fancourt—apparently as yet unmarried—was far away, +while the wife of his illustrious confrère was almost +between them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether +pretty, with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of +aspect, something that—he could scarcely have said +why—served for mystification. St. George certainly +had every right to a charming wife, but he himself would never +have imagined the important little woman in the aggressively +Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man of +letters. That partner in general, he knew, that second +self, was far from presenting herself in a single type: +observation had taught him that she was not inveterately, not +necessarily plain. But he had never before seen her look so +much as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than an +ink-spotted study-table littered with proof-sheets. Mrs. +St. George might have been the wife of a gentleman who +“kept” books rather than wrote them, who carried on +great affairs in the City and made better bargains than those +that poets mostly make with publishers. With this she +hinted at a success more personal—a success peculiarly +stamping the age in which society, the world of conversation, is +a great drawing-room with the City for its antechamber. +Overt numbered her years at first as some thirty, and then ended +by believing that she might approach her fiftieth. But she +somehow in this case juggled away the excess and the +difference—you only saw them in a rare glimpse, like the +rabbit in the conjurer’s sleeve. She was +extraordinarily white, and her every element and item was pretty; +her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, her +feet—to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave +a great publicity—and the numerous ribbons and trinkets +with which she was bedecked. She looked as if she had put +on her best clothes to go to church and then had decided they +were too good for that and had stayed at home. She told a +story of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane had treated +the Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase she +had made in Paris—on her way back from Cannes; made for +Lady Egbert, who had never refunded the money. Paul Overt +suspected her of a tendency to figure great people as larger than +life, until he noticed the manner in which she handled Lady +Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous that it reassured +him. He felt he should have understood her better if he +might have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at +him. “Ah here they come—all the good +ones!” she said at last; and Paul Overt admired at his +distance the return of the church-goers—several persons, in +couples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade at +the end of a large green vista formed by the level grass and the +overarching boughs.</p> +<p>“If you mean to imply that <i>we’re</i> bad, I +protest,” said one of the gentlemen—“after +making one’s self agreeable all the morning!”</p> +<p>“Ah if they’ve found you agreeable—!” +Mrs. St. George gaily cried. “But if we’re good +the others are better.”</p> +<p>“They must be angels then,” said the amused +General.</p> +<p>“Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your +bidding,” the gentleman who had first spoken declared to +Mrs. St. George.</p> +<p>“At my bidding?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t you make him go to church?”</p> +<p>“I never made him do anything in my life but +once—when I made him burn up a bad book. That’s +all!” At her “That’s all!” our +young friend broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a +second, but it drew her eyes to him. His own met them, +though not long enough to help him to understand her; unless it +were a step towards this that he saw on the instant how the burnt +book—the way she alluded to it!—would have been one +of her husband’s finest things.</p> +<p>“A bad book?” her interlocutor repeated.</p> +<p>“I didn’t like it. He went to church because +your daughter went,” she continued to General +Fancourt. “I think it my duty to call your attention +to his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter.”</p> +<p>“Well, if you don’t mind them I +don’t,” the General laughed.</p> +<p>“Il s’attache à ses pas. But I +don’t wonder—she’s so charming.”</p> +<p>“I hope she won’t make him burn any books!” +Paul Overt ventured to exclaim.</p> +<p>“If she’d make him write a few it would be more to +the purpose,” said Mrs. St. George. “He has +been of a laziness of late—!”</p> +<p>Our young man stared—he was so struck with the +lady’s phraseology. Her “Write a few” +seemed to him almost as good as her “That’s +all.” Didn’t she, as the wife of a rare artist, +know what it was to produce one perfect work of art? How in +the world did she think they were turned 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.</p> +<p>“That’s my daughter—that one +opposite,” the General said to him without lose of +time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, in +a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture, +a garment that clearly shirked every modern effect. It had +therefore somehow the stamp of the latest thing, so that our +beholder quickly took her for nothing if not contemporaneous.</p> +<p>“She’s very handsome—very handsome,” +he repeated while he considered her. There was something +noble in her head, and she appeared fresh and strong.</p> +<p>Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: +“She looks too hot—that’s her walk. But +she’ll be all right presently. Then I’ll make +her come over and speak to you.”</p> +<p>“I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If +you were to take me over <i>there</i>—!” the young +man murmured.</p> +<p>“My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that +way? I don’t mean for you, but for Marian,” the +General added.</p> +<p>“<i>I</i> would put myself out for her soon +enough,” Overt replied; after which he went on: “Will +you be so good as to tell me which of those gentlemen is Henry +St. George?”</p> +<p>“The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he +<i>is</i> making up to her—they’re going off for +another walk.”</p> +<p>“Ah is that he—really?” Our friend +felt a certain surprise, for the personage before him seemed to +trouble a vision which had been vague only while not confronted +with the reality. As soon as the reality dawned the mental +image, retiring with a sigh, became substantial enough to suffer +a slight wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable part of +his short life in foreign lands, made now, but not for the first +time, the reflexion that whereas in those countries he had almost +always recognised the artist and the man of letters by his +personal “type,” the mould of his face, the character +of his head, the expression of his figure and even the +indications of his dress, so in England this identification was +as little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater +conformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead of +advertising it, the general diffusion of the air of the +gentleman—the gentleman committed to no particular set of +ideas. More than once, on returning to his own country, he +had said to himself about people met in society: “One sees +them in this place and that, and one even talks with them; but to +find out what they <i>do</i> one would really have to be a +detective.” In respect to several individuals whose +work he was the opposite of “drawn to”—perhaps +he was wrong—he found himself adding “No wonder they +conceal it—when it’s so bad!” He noted +that oftener than in France and in Germany his artist looked like +a gentleman—that is like an English one—while, +certainly outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn’t +look like an artist. St. George was not one of the +exceptions; that circumstance he definitely apprehended before +the great man had turned his back to walk off with Miss +Fancourt. He certainly looked better behind than any +foreign man of letters—showed for beautifully correct in +his tall black hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, +all the same, these very garments—he wouldn’t have +minded them so much on a weekday—were disconcerting to Paul +Overt, who forgot for the moment that the head of the profession +was not a bit better dressed than himself. He had caught a +glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache and +a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he +promised himself to study these denotements on the first +occasion. His superficial sense was that their owner might +have passed for a lucky stockbroker—a gentleman driving +eastward every morning from a sanitary suburb in a smart +dog-cart. That carried out the impression already derived +from his wife. Paul’s glance, after a moment, +travelled back to this lady, and he saw how her own had followed +her husband as he moved off with Miss Fancourt. Overt +permitted himself to wonder a little if she were jealous when +another woman took him away. Then he made out that Mrs. St. +George wasn’t glaring at the indifferent maiden. Her +eyes rested but on her husband, and with unmistakeable +serenity. That was the way she wanted him to be—she +liked his conventional uniform. Overt longed to hear more +about the book she had induced him to destroy.</p> +<h2><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>II</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">As</span> they all came out from luncheon +General Fancourt took hold of him with an “I say, I want +you to know my girl!” as if the idea had just occurred to +him and he hadn’t spoken of it before. With the other +hand he possessed himself all paternally of the young lady. +“You know all about him. I’ve seen you with his +books. She reads everything—everything!” he +went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at +her father. The General turned away and his daughter +spoke—“Isn’t papa delightful?”</p> +<p>“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“As if I read you because I read +‘everything’!”</p> +<p>“Oh I don’t mean for saying that,” said Paul +Overt. “I liked him from the moment he began to be +kind to me. Then he promised me this privilege.”</p> +<p>“It isn’t for you he means it—it’s for +me. If you flatter yourself that he thinks of anything in +life but me you’ll find you’re mistaken. He +introduces every one. He thinks me insatiable.”</p> +<p>“You speak just like him,” laughed our youth.</p> +<p>“Ah but sometimes I want to”—and the girl +coloured. “I don’t read everything—I read +very little. But I <i>have</i> read you.”</p> +<p>“Suppose we go into the gallery,” said Paul +Overt. She pleased him greatly, not so much because of this +last remark—though that of course was not too +disconcerting—as because, seated opposite to him at +luncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression of +her beautiful face. Something else had come with it—a +sense of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike many +enthusiasms, was not all manner. That was not spoiled for +him by his seeing that the repast had placed her again in +familiar contact with Henry St. George. Sitting next her +this celebrity was also opposite our young man, who had been able +to note that he multiplied the attentions lately brought by his +wife to the General’s notice. Paul Overt had gathered +as well that this lady was not in the least discomposed by these +fond excesses and that she gave every sign of an unclouded +spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on the +other the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-class +lively evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in +circles increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made +amusing, and unconvinced when assured by those of another +political colour that it was already amusing enough. At the +end of an hour spent in her company Paul Overt thought her still +prettier than at the first radiation, and if her profane +allusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in his +ears he should have liked her—so far as it could be a +question of that in connexion with a woman to whom he had not yet +spoken and to whom probably he should never speak if it were left +to her. Pretty women were a clear need to this genius, and +for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied the want. If +Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion was now of +the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man as +important. He saw more in St. George’s face, which he +liked the better for its not having told its whole story in the +first three minutes. That story came out as one read, in +short instalments—it was excusable that one’s +analogies should be somewhat professional—and the text was +a style considerably involved, a language not easy to translate +at sight. There were shades of meaning in it and a vague +perspective of history which receded as you advanced. Two +facts Paul had particularly heeded. The first of these was +that he liked the measured mask much better at inscrutable rest +than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smile above all +displeased him (as much as any impression from that source +could), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in +proportion as stillness settled again. The change to the +expression of gaiety excited, he made out, very much the private +protest of a person sitting gratefully in the twilight when the +lamp is brought in too soon. His second reflexion was that, +though generally averse to the flagrant use of ingratiating arts +by a man of age “making up” to a pretty girl, he was +not in this case too painfully affected: which seemed to prove +either that St. George had a light hand or the air of being +younger than he was, or else that Miss Fancourt’s own +manner somehow made everything right.</p> +<p>Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to +the end of it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the +charming vista, which harmonised with the prospect of the summer +afternoon, resembling it by a long brightness, with great divans +and old chairs that figured hours of rest. Such a place as +that had the added merit of giving those who came into it plenty +to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with her new +acquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very +numerous, were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently +said: “I’m so glad to have a chance to thank +you.”</p> +<p>“To thank me—?” He had to wonder.</p> +<p>“I liked your book so much. I think it +splendid.”</p> +<p>She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which +book she meant; for after all he had written three or four. +That seemed a vulgar detail, and he wasn’t even gratified +by the idea of the pleasure she told him—her handsome +bright face told him—he had given her. The feeling +she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was +something larger, something that had little to do with any +quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive +admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and +richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to +resemble <i>that</i>, to live, to bloom, to present the +perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy +fancies with a bent back at an ink-stained table. While her +grey eyes rested on him—there was a wideish space between +these, and the division of her rich-coloured hair, so thick that +it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch above them—he +was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen which it was her +present inclination to commend. He was conscious he should +have liked better to please her in some other way. The +lines of her face were those of a woman grown, but the child +lingered on in her complexion and in the sweetness of her +mouth. Above all she was natural—that was indubitable +now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps on +account of her æsthetic toggery, which was conventionally +unconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuous +spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other +cases, and his fears had been justified; for, though he was an +artist to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with the +brambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a look as if the +satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not as a man of +starch and patent leather, but as a man potentially himself a +poet or even a faun. The girl was really more candid than +her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing her +liberal character suited by any uniform. This was a +fallacy, since if she was draped as a pessimist he was sure she +liked the taste of life. He thanked her for her +appreciation—aware at the same time that he didn’t +appear to thank her enough and that she might think him +ungracious. He was afraid she would ask him to explain +something he had written, and he always winced at +that—perhaps too timidly—for to his own ear the +explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he liked +her so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run he +should be able to show her he wasn’t rudely evasive. +Moreover she surely wasn’t quick to take offence, +wasn’t irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So +when he said to her, “Ah don’t talk of anything +I’ve done, don’t talk of it <i>here</i>; +there’s another man in the house who’s the +actuality!”—when he uttered this short sincere +protest it was with the sense that she would see in the words +neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful man +bored with praise.</p> +<p>“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he +delightful?”</p> +<p>Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that +would have half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been so +young. “Alas I don’t know him. I only +admire him at a distance.”</p> +<p>“Oh you must know him—he wants so to talk to +you,” returned Miss Fancourt, who evidently had the habit +of saying the things that, by her quick calculation, would give +people pleasure. Paul saw how she would always calculate on +everything’s being simple between others.</p> +<p>“I shouldn’t have supposed he knew anything about +me,” he professed.</p> +<p>“He does then—everything. And if he +didn’t I should be able to tell him.”</p> +<p>“To tell him everything?” our friend smiled.</p> +<p>“You talk just like the people in your book!” she +answered.</p> +<p>“Then they must all talk alike.”</p> +<p>She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. +“Well, it must be so difficult. Mr. St. George tells +me it <i>is</i>—terribly. I’ve tried +too—and I find it so. I’ve tried to write a +novel.”</p> +<p>“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” +Paul went so far as to say.</p> +<p>“You do much more—when you wear that +expression.”</p> +<p>“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” the +young man pursued. “It’s so poor—so +poor!”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss +Fancourt, who looked grave.</p> +<p>“I mean as compared with being a person of +action—as living your works.”</p> +<p>“But what’s art but an intense life—if it be +real?” she asked. “I think it’s the only +one—everything else is so clumsy!” Her +companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity +what next struck her. “It’s so interesting to +meet so many celebrated people.”</p> +<p>“So I should think—but surely it isn’t new +to you.”</p> +<p>“Why I’ve never seen any one—any one: living +always in Asia.”</p> +<p>The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. +“But doesn’t that continent swarm with great +figures? Haven’t you administered provinces in India +and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to your +car?”</p> +<p>It was as if she didn’t care even <i>should</i> he amuse +himself at her cost. “I was with my father, after I +left school to go out there. It was delightful being with +him—we’re alone together in the world, he and +I—but there was none of the society I like best. One +never heard of a picture—never of a book, except bad +ones.”</p> +<p>“Never of a picture? Why, wasn’t all life a +picture?”</p> +<p>She looked over the delightful place where they sat. +“Nothing to compare to this. I adore England!” +she cried.</p> +<p>It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. “Ah of +course I don’t deny that we must do something with her, +poor old dear, yet.”</p> +<p>“She hasn’t been touched, really,” said the +girl.</p> +<p>“Did Mr. St. George say that?”</p> +<p>There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony in +his question; which, however, she answered very simply, not +noticing the insinuation. “Yes, he says England +hasn’t been touched—not considering all there +is,” she went on eagerly. “He’s so +interesting about our country. To listen to him makes one +want so to do something.”</p> +<p>“It would make <i>me</i> want to,” said Paul +Overt, feeling strongly, on the instant, the suggestion of what +she said and that of the emotion with which she said it, and well +aware of what an incentive, on St. George’s lips, such a +speech might be.</p> +<p>“Oh you—as if you hadn’t! I should +like so to hear you talk together,” she added ardently.</p> +<p>“That’s very genial of you; but he’d have it +all his own way. I’m prostrate before him.”</p> +<p>She had an air of earnestness. “Do you think then +he’s so perfect?”</p> +<p>“Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me +of a queerness—!”</p> +<p>“Yes, yes—he knows that.”</p> +<p>Paul Overt stared. “That they seem to me of a +queerness—!”</p> +<p>“Well yes, or at any rate that they’re not what +they should be. He told me he didn’t esteem +them. He has told me such wonderful things—he’s +so interesting.”</p> +<p>There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that +the fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so +explicit a confession and had made it, in his misery, to the +first comer; for though Miss Fancourt was charming what was she +after all but an immature girl encountered at a +country-house? Yet precisely this was part of the sentiment +he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely for +the poor peccable great man not because he didn’t read him +clear, but altogether because he did. His consideration was +half composed of tenderness for superficialities which he was +sure their perpetrator judged privately, judged more ferociously +than any one, and which represented some tragic intellectual +secret. He would have his reasons for his psychology +à fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruel +ones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were +fond of him. “You excite my envy. I have my +reserves, I discriminate—but I love him,” Paul said +in a moment. “And seeing him for the first time this +way is a great event for me.”</p> +<p>“How momentous—how magnificent!” cried the +girl. “How delicious to bring you +together!”</p> +<p>“Your doing it—that makes it perfect,” our +friend returned.</p> +<p>“He’s as eager as you,” she went on. +“But it’s so odd you shouldn’t have +met.”</p> +<p>“It’s not really so odd as it strikes you. +I’ve been out of England so much—made repeated +absences all these last years.”</p> +<p>She took this in with interest. “And yet you write +of it as well as if you were always here.”</p> +<p>“It’s just the being away perhaps. At any +rate the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in dreary +places abroad.”</p> +<p>“And why were they dreary?”</p> +<p>“Because they were health-resorts—where my poor +mother was dying.”</p> +<p>“Your poor mother?”—she was all sweet +wonder.</p> +<p>“We went from place to place to help her to get +better. But she never did. To the deadly Riviera (I +hate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers, and far away—a +hideous journey—to Colorado.”</p> +<p>“And she isn’t better?” Miss Fancourt went +on.</p> +<p>“She died a year ago.”</p> +<p>“Really?—like mine! Only that’s years +since. Some day you must tell me about your mother,” +she added.</p> +<p>He could at first, on this, only gaze at her. +“What right things you say! If you say them to St. +George I don’t wonder he’s in bondage.”</p> +<p>It pulled her up for a moment. “I don’t know +what you mean. He doesn’t make speeches and +professions at all—he isn’t ridiculous.”</p> +<p>“I’m afraid you consider then that I +am.”</p> +<p>“No, I don’t”—she spoke it rather +shortly. And then she added: “He +understands—understands everything.”</p> +<p>The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: “And +I don’t—is that it?” But these words, in +time, changed themselves to others slightly less trivial: +“Do you suppose he understands his wife?”</p> +<p>Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a +moment’s hesitation put it: “Isn’t she +charming?”</p> +<p>“Not in the least!”</p> +<p>“Here he comes. Now you must know him,” she +went on. A small group of visitors had gathered at the +other end of the gallery and had been there overtaken by Henry +St. George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room. He +stood near them a moment, not falling into the talk but taking up +an old miniature from a table and vaguely regarding it. At +the end of a minute he became aware of Miss Fancourt and her +companion in the distance; whereupon, laying down his miniature, +he approached them with the same procrastinating air, his hands +in his pockets and his eyes turned, right and left, to the +pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took +some little time, especially as there was a moment when he +stopped to admire the fine Gainsborough. “He says +Mrs. St. George has been the making of him,” the girl +continued in a voice slightly lowered.</p> +<p>“Ah he’s often obscure!” Paul laughed.</p> +<p>“Obscure?” she repeated as if she heard it for the +first time. Her eyes rested on her other friend, and it +wasn’t lost upon Paul that they appeared to send out great +shafts of softness. “He’s going to speak to +us!” she fondly breathed. There was a sort of rapture +in her voice, and our friend was startled. “Bless my +soul, does she care for him like <i>that</i>?—is she in +love with him?” he mentally enquired. +“Didn’t I tell you he was eager?” she had +meanwhile asked of him.</p> +<p>“It’s eagerness dissimulated,” the young man +returned as the subject of their observation lingered before his +Gainsborough. “He edges toward us shyly. Does +he mean that she saved him by burning that book?”</p> +<p>“That book? what book did she burn?” The +girl quickly turned her face to him.</p> +<p>“Hasn’t he told you then?”</p> +<p>“Not a word.”</p> +<p>“Then he doesn’t tell you everything!” +Paul had guessed that she pretty much supposed he did. The +great man had now resumed his course and come nearer; in spite of +which his more qualified admirer risked a profane observation: +“St. George and the Dragon is what the anecdote +suggests!”</p> +<p>His companion, however, didn’t hear it; she smiled at +the dragon’s adversary. “He <i>is</i> +eager—he is!” she insisted.</p> +<p>“Eager for you—yes.”</p> +<p>But meanwhile she had called out: “I’m sure you +want to know Mr. Overt. You’ll be great friends, and +it will always be delightful to me to remember I was here when +you first met and that I had something to do with it.”</p> +<p>There was a freshness of intention in the words that carried +them off; nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St. +George, as he was sorry at any time for any person publicly +invited to be responsive and delightful. He would have been +so touched to believe that a man he deeply admired should care a +straw for him that he wouldn’t play with such a presumption +if it were possibly vain. In a single glance of the eye of +the pardonable Master he read—having the sort of divination +that belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever a +store of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit, +but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. +There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so +much already for what he had done, how could one have liked him +any more for a perception which must at the best have been +vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, +but at the same instant he found himself encompassed by St. +George’s happy personal art—a manner of which it was +the essence to conjure away false positions. It all took +place in a moment. Paul was conscious that he knew him now, +conscious of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand; +of his face, seen nearer and consequently seen better, of a +general fraternising assurance, and in particular of the +circumstance that St. George didn’t dislike him (as yet at +least) for being imposed by a charming but too gushing girl, +attractive enough without such danglers. No irritation at +any rate was reflected in the voice with which he questioned Miss +Fancourt as to some project of a walk—a general walk of the +company round the park. He had soon said something to Paul +about a talk—“We must have a tremendous lot of talk; +there are so many things, aren’t there?”—but +our friend could see this idea wouldn’t in the present case +take very immediate effect. All the same he was extremely +happy, even after the matter of the walk had been +settled—the three presently passed back to the other part +of the gallery, where it was discussed with several members of +the party; even when, after they had all gone out together, he +found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St. +George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss +Fancourt, and this pair were quite out of sight. It was the +prettiest of rambles for a summer afternoon—a grassy +circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limit of the park +within. The park was completely surrounded by its old +mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left, +constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. St. +George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres thus +enclosed, together with numerous other facts relating to the +property and the family, and the family’s other properties: +she couldn’t too strongly urge on him the importance of +seeing their other houses. She ran over the names of these +and rang the changes on them with the facility of practice, +making them appear an almost endless list. She had received +Paul Overt very amiably on his breaking ground with her by the +mention of his joy in having just made her husband’s +acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so accommodating a +little woman that he was rather ashamed of his <i>mot</i> about +her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred other +people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make +it. He got on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he +expected; but this didn’t prevent her suddenly becoming +aware that she was faint with fatigue and must take her way back +to the house by the shortest cut. She professed that she +hadn’t the strength of a kitten and was a miserable wreck; +a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while +he wondered in what sense she could be held to have been the +making of her husband. He had arrived at a glimmering of +the answer when she announced that she must leave him, though +this perception was of course provisional. While he was in +the very act of placing himself at her disposal for the return +the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham had suddenly turned +up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging from the +shrubbery—Overt could scarcely have said how he +appeared—and Mrs. St. George had protested that she wanted +to be left alone and not to break up the party. A moment +later she was walking off with Lord Masham. Our friend fell +back and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presently mentioned +that Mrs. St. George had been obliged to renounce the attempt to +go further.</p> +<p>“She oughtn’t to have come out at all,” her +ladyship rather grumpily remarked.</p> +<p>“Is she so very much of an invalid?”</p> +<p>“Very bad indeed.” And his hostess added +with still greater austerity: “She oughtn’t really to +come to one!” He wondered what was implied by this, +and presently gathered that it was not a reflexion on the +lady’s conduct or her moral nature: it only represented +that her strength was not equal to her aspirations.</p> +<h2><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>III</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> smoking-room at Summersoft was +on the scale of the rest of the place; high light commodious and +decorated with such refined old carvings and mouldings that it +seemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit at work at fading +crewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strong +cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in considerable force +on the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front of +one of the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, the entablature +of which was adorned with a delicate little Italian +“subject.” There was another in the wall that +faced it, and, thanks to the mild summer night, a fire in +neither; but a nucleus for aggregation was furnished on one side +by a table in the chimney-corner laden with bottles, decanters +and tall tumblers. Paul Overt was a faithless smoker; he +would puff a cigarette for reasons with which tobacco had nothing +to do. This was particularly the case on the occasion of +which I speak; his motive was the vision of a little direct talk +with Henry St. George. The “tremendous” +communion of which the great man had held out hopes to him +earlier in the day had not yet come off, and this saddened him +considerably, for the party was to go its several ways +immediately after breakfast on the morrow. He had, however, +the disappointment of finding that apparently the author of +“Shadowmere” was not disposed to prolong his +vigil. He wasn’t among the gentlemen assembled when +Paul entered, nor was he one of those who turned up, in bright +habiliments, during the next ten minutes. The young man +waited a little, wondering if he had only gone to put on +something extraordinary; this would account for his delay as well +as contribute further to Overt’s impression of his tendency +to do the approved superficial thing. But he didn’t +arrive—he must have been putting on something more +extraordinary than was probable. Our hero gave him up, +feeling a little injured, a little wounded, at this loss of +twenty coveted words. He wasn’t angry, but he puffed +his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rare +possibly missed. He wandered away with his regret and moved +slowly round the room, looking at the old prints on the +walls. In this attitude he presently felt a hand on his +shoulder and a friendly voice in his ear “This is +good. I hoped I should find you. I came down on +purpose.” St. George was there without a change of +dress and with a fine face—his graver one—to which +our young man all in a flutter responded. He explained that +it was only for the Master—the idea of a little +talk—that he had sat up, and that, not finding him, he had +been on the point of going to bed.</p> +<p>“Well, you know, I don’t smoke—my wife +doesn’t let me,” said St. George, looking for a place +to sit down. “It’s very good for me—very +good for me. Let us take that sofa.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean smoking’s good for you?”</p> +<p>“No no—her not letting me. It’s a +great thing to have a wife who’s so sure of all the things +one can do without. One might never find them out +one’s self. She doesn’t allow me to touch a +cigarette.” They took possession of a sofa at a +distance from the group of smokers, and St. George went on: +“Have you got one yourself?”</p> +<p>“Do you mean a cigarette?”</p> +<p>“Dear no—a wife.”</p> +<p>“No; and yet I’d give up my cigarette for +one.”</p> +<p>“You’d give up a good deal more than that,” +St. George returned. “However, you’d get a +great deal in return. There’s a something to be said +for wives,” he added, folding his arms and crossing his +outstretched legs. He declined tobacco altogether and sat +there without returning fire. His companion stopped +smoking, touched by his courtesy; and after all they were out of +the fumes, their sofa was in a far-away corner. It would +have been a mistake, St. George went on, a great mistake for them +to have separated without a little chat; “for I know all +about you,” he said, “I know you’re very +remarkable. You’ve written a very distinguished +book.”</p> +<p>“And how do you know it?” Paul asked.</p> +<p>“Why, my dear fellow, it’s in the air, it’s +in the papers, it’s everywhere.” St. George +spoke with the immediate familiarity of a confrère—a +tone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of the +laurel. “You’re on all men’s lips and, +what’s better, on all women’s. And I’ve +just been reading your book.”</p> +<p>“Just? You hadn’t read it this +afternoon,” said Overt.</p> +<p>“How do you know that?”</p> +<p>“I think you should know how I know it,” the young +man laughed.</p> +<p>“I suppose Miss Fancourt told you.”</p> +<p>“No indeed—she led me rather to suppose you +had.”</p> +<p>“Yes—that’s much more what she’d +do. Doesn’t she shed a rosy glow over life? But +you didn’t believe her?” asked St. George.</p> +<p>“No, not when you came to us there.”</p> +<p>“Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?” But +without waiting for an answer to this St. George went on: +“You ought always to believe such a girl as +that—always, always. Some women are meant to be taken +with allowances and reserves; but you must take <i>her</i> just +as she is.”</p> +<p>“I like her very much,” said Paul Overt.</p> +<p>Something in his tone appeared to excite on his +companion’s part a momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps +it was the air of deliberation attending this judgement. +St. George broke into a laugh to reply. “It’s +the best thing you can do with her. She’s a rare +young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I +hadn’t read you this afternoon.”</p> +<p>“Then you see how right I was in this particular case +not to believe Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit +by it?”</p> +<p>“Do you wish to pass exactly for what she represents +you? Certainly you needn’t be afraid,” Paul +said.</p> +<p>“Ah, my dear young man, don’t talk about +passing—for the likes of me! I’m passing +away—nothing else than that. She has a better use for +her young imagination (isn’t it fine?) than in +‘representing’ in any way such a weary wasted used-up +animal!” The Master spoke with a sudden sadness that +produced a protest on Paul’s part; but before the protest +could be uttered he went on, reverting to the latter’s +striking novel: “I had no idea you were so good—one +hears of so many things. But you’re surprisingly +good.”</p> +<p>“I’m going to be surprisingly better,” Overt +made bold to reply.</p> +<p>“I see that, and it’s what fetches me. I +don’t see so much else—as one looks +about—that’s going to be surprisingly better. +They’re going to be consistently worse—most of the +things. It’s so much easier to be worse—heaven +knows I’ve found it so. I’m not in a great +glow, you know, about what’s breaking out all over the +place. But you <i>must</i> be better—you really must +keep it up. I haven’t of course. It’s +very difficult—that’s the devil of the whole thing, +keeping it up. But I see you’ll be able to. It +will be a great disgrace if you don’t.”</p> +<p>“It’s very interesting to hear you speak of +yourself; but I don’t know what you mean by your allusions +to your having fallen off,” Paul Overt observed with +pardonable hypocrisy. He liked his companion so much now +that the fact of any decline of talent or of care had ceased for +the moment to be vivid to him.</p> +<p>“Don’t say that—don’t say that,” +St. George returned gravely, his head resting on the top of the +sofa-back and his eyes on the ceiling. “You know +perfectly what I mean. I haven’t read twenty pages of +your book without seeing that you can’t help it.”</p> +<p>“You make me very miserable,” Paul ecstatically +breathed.</p> +<p>“I’m glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of +warning. Shocking enough it must be, especially to a young +fresh mind, full of faith—the spectacle of a man meant for +better things sunk at my age in such dishonour.” St. +George, in the same contemplative attitude, spoke softly but +deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone +indeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically +cruel—cruel to himself—and made his young friend lay +an argumentative hand on his arm. But he went on while his +eyes seemed to follow the graces of the eighteenth-century +ceiling: “Look at me well, take my lesson to +heart—for it <i>is</i> a lesson. Let that good come +of it at least that you shudder with your pitiful impression, and +that this may help to keep you straight in the future. +Don’t become in your old age what I have in mine—the +depressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of false +gods!”</p> +<p>“What do you mean by your old age?” the young man +asked.</p> +<p>“It has made me old. But I like your +youth.”</p> +<p>Paul answered nothing—they sat for a minute in +silence. They heard the others going on about the +governmental majority. Then “What do you mean by +false gods?” he enquired.</p> +<p>His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, “The +idols of the market; money and luxury and ‘the +world;’ placing one’s children and dressing +one’s wife; everything that drives one to the short and +easy way. Ah the vile things they make one do!”</p> +<p>“But surely one’s right to want to place +one’s children.”</p> +<p>“One has no business to have any children,” St. +George placidly declared. “I mean of course if one +wants to do anything good.”</p> +<p>“But aren’t they an inspiration—an +incentive?”</p> +<p>“An incentive to damnation, artistically +speaking.”</p> +<p>“You touch on very deep things—things I should +like to discuss with you,” Paul said. “I should +like you to tell me volumes about yourself. This is a great +feast for <i>me</i>!”</p> +<p>“Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you +I’m still not incapable, degraded as I am, of an act of +faith, I’ll tie my vanity to the stake for you and burn it +to ashes. You must come and see me—you must come and +see us,” the Master quickly substituted. “Mrs. +St. George is charming; I don’t know whether you’ve +had any opportunity to talk with her. She’ll be +delighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whether +incipient or predominant. You must come and dine—my +wife will write to you. Where are you to be +found?”</p> +<p>“This is my little address”—and Overt drew +out his pocketbook and extracted a visiting-card. On second +thoughts, however, he kept it back, remarking that he +wouldn’t trouble his friend to take charge of it but would +come and see him straightway in London and leave it at his door +if he should fail to obtain entrance.</p> +<p>“Ah you’ll probably fail; my wife’s always +out—or when she isn’t out is knocked up from having +been out. You must come and dine—though that +won’t do much good either, for my wife insists on big +dinners.” St. George turned it over further, but then +went on: “You must come down and see us in the country, +that’s the best way; we’ve plenty of room, and it +isn’t bad.”</p> +<p>“You’ve a house in the country?” Paul asked +enviously.</p> +<p>“Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we +go to—an hour from Euston. That’s one of the +reasons.”</p> +<p>“One of the reasons?”</p> +<p>“Why my books are so bad.”</p> +<p>“You must tell me all the others!” Paul longingly +laughed.</p> +<p>His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again +abruptly. “Why have I never seen you +before?”</p> +<p>The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our +hero, who felt it to imply the great man’s now perceiving +he had for years missed something. “Partly, I +suppose, because there has been no particular reason why you +should see me. I haven’t lived in the world—in +your world. I’ve spent many years out of England, in +different places abroad.”</p> +<p>“Well, please don’t do it any more. You must +do England—there’s such a lot of it.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean I must write about it?” and Paul +struck the note of the listening candour of a child.</p> +<p>“Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you +mind? That takes off a little of my esteem for this thing +of yours—that it goes on abroad. Hang +‘abroad!’ Stay at home and do things +here—do subjects we can measure.”</p> +<p>“I’ll do whatever you tell me,” Overt said, +deeply attentive. “But pardon me if I say I +don’t understand how you’ve been reading my +book,” he added. “I’ve had you before me +all the afternoon, first in that long walk, then at tea on the +lawn, till we went to dress for dinner, and all the evening at +dinner and in this place.”</p> +<p>St. George turned his face about with a smile. “I +gave it but a quarter of an hour.”</p> +<p>“A quarter of an hour’s immense, but I don’t +understand where you put it in. In the drawing-room after +dinner you weren’t reading—you were talking to Miss +Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“It comes to the same thing, because we talked about +‘Ginistrella.’ She described it to me—she +lent me her copy.”</p> +<p>“Lent it to you?”</p> +<p>“She travels with it.”</p> +<p>“It’s incredible,” Paul blushed.</p> +<p>“It’s glorious for you, but it also turned out +very well for me. When the ladies went off to bed she +kindly offered to send the book down to me. Her maid +brought it to me in the hall and I went to my room with it. +I hadn’t thought of coming here, I do that so little. +But I don’t sleep early, I always have to read an hour or +two. I sat down to your novel on the spot, without +undressing, without taking off anything but my coat. I +think that’s a sign my curiosity had been strongly roused +about it. I read a quarter of an hour, as I tell you, and +even in a quarter of an hour I was greatly struck.”</p> +<p>“Ah the beginning isn’t very good—it’s +the whole thing!” said Overt, who had listened to this +recital with extreme interest. “And you laid down the +book and came after me?” he asked.</p> +<p>“That’s the way it moved me. I said to +myself ‘I see it’s off his own bat, and he’s +there, by the way, and the day’s over and I haven’t +said twenty words to him.’ It occurred to me that +you’d probably be in the smoking-room and that it +wouldn’t be too late to repair my omission. I wanted +to do something civil to you, so I put on my coat and came +down. I shall read your book again when I go up.”</p> +<p>Our friend faced round in his place—he was touched as he +had scarce ever been by the picture of such a demonstration in +his favour. “You’re really the kindest of +men. Cela s’est passé comme +ça?—and I’ve been sitting here with you all +this time and never apprehended it and never thanked +you!”</p> +<p>“Thank Miss Fancourt—it was she who wound me +up. She has made me feel as if I had read your +novel.”</p> +<p>“She’s an angel from heaven!” Paul +declared.</p> +<p>“She is indeed. I’ve never seen any one like +her. Her interest in literature’s +touching—something quite peculiar to herself; she takes it +all so seriously. She feels the arts and she wants to feel +them more. To those who practise them it’s almost +humiliating—her curiosity, her sympathy, her good +faith. How can anything be as fine as she supposes +it?”</p> +<p>“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man +sighed.</p> +<p>“The richest I’ve ever seen—an artistic +intelligence really of the first order. And lodged in such +a form!” St. George exclaimed.</p> +<p>“One would like to represent such a girl as that,” +Paul continued.</p> +<p>“Ah there it is—there’s nothing like +life!” said his companion. “When you’re +finished, squeezed dry and used up and you think the sack’s +empty, you’re still appealed to, you still get touches and +thrills, the idea springs up—out of the lap of the +actual—and shows you there’s always something to be +done. But I shan’t do it—she’s not for +me!”</p> +<p>“How do you mean, not for you?”</p> +<p>“Oh it’s all over—she’s for you, if +you like.”</p> +<p>“Ah much less!” said Paul. +“She’s not for a dingy little man of letters; +she’s for the world, the bright rich world of bribes and +rewards. And the world will take hold of her—it will +carry her away.”</p> +<p>“It will try—but it’s just a case in which +there may be a fight. It would be worth fighting, for a man +who had it in him, with youth and talent on his side.”</p> +<p>These words rang not a little in Paul Overt’s +consciousness—they held him briefly silent. +“It’s a wonder she has remained as she is; giving +herself away so—with so much to give away.”</p> +<p>“Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous—so +natural? Oh she doesn’t care a straw—she gives +away because she overflows. She has her own feelings, her +own standards; she doesn’t keep remembering that she must +be proud. And then she hasn’t been here long enough +to be spoiled; she has picked up a fashion or two, but only the +amusing ones. She’s a provincial—a provincial +of genius,” St. George went on; “her very blunders +are charming, her mistakes are interesting. She has come +back from Asia with all sorts of excited curiosities and +unappeased appetities. She’s first-rate herself and +she expends herself on the second-rate. She’s life +herself and she takes a rare interest in imitations. She +mixes all things up, but there are none in regard to which she +hasn’t perceptions. She sees things in a +perspective—as if from the top of the Himalayas—and +she enlarges everything she touches. Above all she +exaggerates—to herself, I mean. She exaggerates you +and me!”</p> +<p>There was nothing in that description to allay the agitation +caused in our younger friend by such a sketch of a fine +subject. It seemed to him to show the art of St. +George’s admired hand, and he lost himself in gazing at the +vision—this hovered there before him—of a +woman’s figure which should be part of the glory of a +novel. But at the end of a moment the thing had turned into +smoke, and out of the smoke—the last puff of a big +cigar—proceeded the voice of General Fancourt, who had left +the others and come and planted himself before the gentlemen on +the sofa. “I suppose that when you fellows get +talking you sit up half the night.”</p> +<p>“Half the night?—jamais de la vie! I follow +a hygiene”—and St. George rose to his feet.</p> +<p>“I see—you’re hothouse plants,” +laughed the General. “That’s the way you +produce your flowers.”</p> +<p>“I produce mine between ten and one every +morning—I bloom with a regularity!” St. George went +on.</p> +<p>“And with a splendour!” added the polite General, +while Paul noted how little the author of +“Shadowmere” minded, as he phrased it to himself, +when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young man +had an idea <i>he</i> should never get used to that; it would +always make him uncomfortable—from the suspicion that +people would think they had to—and he would want to prevent +it. Evidently his great colleague had toughened and +hardened—had made himself a surface. The group of men +had finished their cigars and taken up their bedroom +candlesticks; but before they all passed out Lord Watermouth +invited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed together to +“have” something. It happened that they both +declined; upon which General Fancourt said: “Is that the +hygiene? You don’t water the flowers?”</p> +<p>“Oh I should drown them!” St. George replied; but, +leaving the room still at his young friend’s side, he added +whimsically, for the latter’s benefit, in a lower tone: +“My wife doesn’t let me.”</p> +<p>“Well I’m glad I’m not one of you +fellows!” the General richly concluded.</p> +<p>The nearness of Summersoft to London had this consequence, +chilling to a person who had had a vision of sociability in a +railway-carriage, that most of the company, after breakfast, +drove back to town, entering their own vehicles, which had come +out to fetch them, while their servants returned by train with +their luggage. Three or four young men, among whom was Paul +Overt, also availed themselves of the common convenience; but +they stood in the portico of the house and saw the others roll +away. Miss Fancourt got into a victoria with her father +after she had shaken hands with our hero and said, smiling in the +frankest way in the world, “I <i>must</i> see you +more. Mrs. St. George is so nice: she has promised to ask +us both to dinner together.” This lady and her +husband took their places in a perfectly-appointed +brougham—she required a closed carriage—and as our +young man waved his hat to them in response to their nods and +flourishes he reflected that, taken together, they were an +honourable image of success, of the material rewards and the +social credit of literature. Such things were not the full +measure, but he nevertheless felt a little proud for +literature.</p> +<h2><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>IV</h2> +<p>Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, +at a private view of the works of a young artist in +“black-and-white” who had been so good as to invite +him to the stuffy scene. The drawings were admirable, but +the crowd in the one little room was so dense that he felt +himself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A fringe of +people at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward their +backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface of +resistance to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an interval +between their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures; while +the central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a wide +horizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only a +margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the +contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation +sat especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, +surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which +rose on long necks above the others. One of the heads Paul +perceived, was much the so most beautiful of the collection, and +his next discovery was that it belonged to Miss Fancourt. +Its beauty was enhanced by the glad smile she sent him across +surrounding obstructions, a smile that drew him to her as fast as +he could make his way. He had seen for himself at +Summersoft that the last thing her nature contained was an +affectation of indifference; yet even with this circumspection he +took a fresh satisfaction in her not having pretended to await +his arrival with composure. She smiled as radiantly as if +she wished to make him hurry, and as soon as he came within +earshot she broke out in her voice of joy: “He’s +here—he’s here—he’s coming back in a +moment!”</p> +<p>“Ah your father?” Paul returned as she offered him +her hand.</p> +<p>“Oh dear no, this isn’t in my poor father’s +line. I mean Mr. St. George. He has just left me to +speak to some one—he’s coming back. It’s +he who brought me—wasn’t it charming?”</p> +<p>“Ah that gives him a pull over me—I couldn’t +have ‘brought’ you, could I?”</p> +<p>“If you had been so kind as to propose it—why not +you as well as he?” the girl returned with a face that, +expressing no cheap coquetry, simply affirmed a happy fact.</p> +<p>“Why he’s a père de famille. +They’ve privileges,” Paul explained. And then +quickly: “Will you go to see places with <i>me</i>?” +he asked.</p> +<p>“Anything you like!” she smiled. “I +know what you mean, that girls have to have a lot of +people—” Then she broke off: “I +don’t know; I’m free. I’ve always been +like that—I can go about with any one. I’m so +glad to meet you,” she added with a sweet distinctness that +made those near her turn round.</p> +<p>“Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of +this squash,” her friend said. “Surely people +aren’t happy here!”</p> +<p>“No, they’re awfully mornes, aren’t +they? But I’m very happy indeed and I promised Mr. +St. George to remain in this spot till he comes back. +He’s going to take me away. They send him invitations +for things of this sort—more than he wants. It was so +kind of him to think of me.”</p> +<p>“They also send me invitations of this kind—more +than <i>I</i> want. And if thinking of <i>you</i> will do +it—!” Paul went on.</p> +<p>“Oh I delight in them—everything that’s +life—everything that’s London!”</p> +<p>“They don’t have private views in Asia, I +suppose,” he laughed. “But what a pity that for +this year, even in this gorged city, they’re pretty well +over.”</p> +<p>“Well, next year will do, for I hope you believe +we’re going to be friends always. Here he +comes!” Miss Fancourt continued before Paul had time to +respond.</p> +<p>He made out St. George in the gaps of the crowd, and this +perhaps led to his hurrying a little to say: “I hope that +doesn’t mean I’m to wait till next year to see +you.”</p> +<p>“No, no—aren’t we to meet at dinner on the +twenty-fifth?” she panted with an eagerness as happy as his +own.</p> +<p>“That’s almost next year. Is there no means +of seeing you before?”</p> +<p>She stared with all her brightness. “Do you mean +you’d <i>come</i>?”</p> +<p>“Like a shot, if you’ll be so good as to ask +me!”</p> +<p>“On Sunday then—this next Sunday?”</p> +<p>“What have I done that you should doubt it?” the +young man asked with delight.</p> +<p>Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had now +joined them, and announced triumphantly: “He’s coming +on Sunday—this next Sunday!”</p> +<p>“Ah my day—my day too!” said the famous +novelist, laughing, to their companion.</p> +<p>“Yes, but not yours only. You shall meet in +Manchester Square; you shall talk—you shall be +wonderful!”</p> +<p>“We don’t meet often enough,” St. George +allowed, shaking hands with his disciple. “Too many +things—ah too many things! But we must make it up in +the country in September. You won’t forget +you’ve promised me that?”</p> +<p>“Why he’s coming on the +twenty-fifth—you’ll see him then,” said the +girl.</p> +<p>“On the twenty-fifth?” St. George asked +vaguely.</p> +<p>“We dine with you; I hope you haven’t +forgotten. He’s dining out that day,” she added +gaily to Paul.</p> +<p>“Oh bless me, yes—that’s charming! And +you’re coming? My wife didn’t tell me,” +St. George said to him. “Too many things—too +many things!” he repeated.</p> +<p>“Too many people—too many people!” Paul +exclaimed, giving ground before the penetration of an elbow.</p> +<p>“You oughtn’t to say that. They all read +you.”</p> +<p>“Me? I should like to see them! Only two or +three at most,” the young man returned.</p> +<p>“Did you ever hear anything like that? He knows, +haughtily, how good he is!” St. George declared, laughing +to Miss Fancourt. “They read <i>me</i>, but that +doesn’t make me like them any better. Come away from +them, come away!” And he led the way out of the +exhibition.</p> +<p>“He’s going to take me to the Park,” Miss +Fancourt observed to Overt with elation as they passed along the +corridor that led to the street.</p> +<p>“Ah does he go there?” Paul asked, taking the fact +for a somewhat unexpected illustration of St. George’s +moeurs.</p> +<p>“It’s a beautiful day—there’ll be a +great crowd. We’re going to look at the people, to +look at types,” the girl went on. “We shall sit +under the trees; we shall walk by the Row.”</p> +<p>“I go once a year—on business,” said St. +George, who had overheard Paul’s question.</p> +<p>“Or with a country cousin, didn’t you tell +me? I’m the country cousin!” she continued over +her shoulder to Paul as their friend drew her toward a hansom to +which he had signalled. The young man watched them get in; +he returned, as he stood there, the friendly wave of the hand +with which, ensconced in the vehicle beside her, St. George took +leave of him. He even lingered to see the vehicle start +away and lose itself in the confusion of Bond Street. He +followed it with his eyes; it put to him embarrassing +things. “She’s not for <i>me</i>!” the +great novelist had said emphatically at Summersoft; but his +manner of conducting himself toward her appeared not quite in +harmony with such a conviction. How could he have behaved +differently if she <i>had</i> been for him? An indefinite +envy rose in Paul Overt’s heart as he took his way on foot +alone; a feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of the +occupants of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle +about London with such a girl! How much he should like to +go and look at “types” with St. George!</p> +<p>The next Sunday at four o’clock he called in Manchester +Square, where his secret wish was gratified by his finding Miss +Fancourt alone. She was in a large bright friendly occupied +room, which was painted red all over, draped with the quaint +cheap florid stuffs that are represented as coming from southern +and eastern countries, where they are fabled to serve as the +counterpanes of the peasantry, and bedecked with pottery of vivid +hues, ranged on casual shelves, and with many water-colour +drawings from the hand (as the visitor learned) of the young lady +herself, commemorating with a brave breadth the sunsets, the +mountains, the temples and palaces of India. He sat an +hour—more than an hour, two hours—and all the while +no one came in. His hostess was so good as to remark, with +her liberal humanity, that it was delightful they weren’t +interrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that season, +that people got a good talk. But luckily now, of a fine +Sunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it better +for those who didn’t go, when these others were in +sympathy. It was the defect of London—one of two or +three, the very short list of those she recognised in the teeming +world-city she adored—that there were too few good chances +for talk; you never had time to carry anything far.</p> +<p>“Too many things—too many things!” Paul +said, quoting St. George’s exclamation of a few days +before.</p> +<p>“Ah yes, for him there are too many—his +life’s too complicated.”</p> +<p>“Have you seen it <i>near</i>? That’s what I +should like to do; it might explain some mysteries,” her +visitor went on. She asked him what mysteries he meant, and +he said: “Oh peculiarities of his work, inequalities, +superficialities. For one who looks at it from the artistic +point of view it contains a bottomless ambiguity.”</p> +<p>She became at this, on the spot, all intensity. +“Ah do describe that more—it’s so +interesting. There are no such suggestive questions. +I’m so fond of them. He thinks he’s a +failure—fancy!” she beautifully wailed.</p> +<p>“That depends on what his ideal may have been. +With his gifts it ought to have been high. But till one +knows what he really proposed to himself—? Do +<i>you</i> know by chance?” the young man broke off.</p> +<p>“Oh he doesn’t talk to me about himself. I +can’t make him. It’s too provoking.”</p> +<p>Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about, +but discretion checked it and he said instead: “Do you +think he’s unhappy at home?”</p> +<p>She seemed to wonder. “At home?”</p> +<p>“I mean in his relations with his wife. He has a +mystifying little way of alluding to her.”</p> +<p>“Not to me,” said Marian Fancourt with her clear +eyes. “That wouldn’t be right, would it?” +she asked gravely.</p> +<p>“Not particularly; so I’m glad he doesn’t +mention her to you. To praise her might bore you, and he +has no business to do anything else. Yet he knows you +better than me.”</p> +<p>“Ah but he respects <i>you</i>!” the girl cried as +with envy.</p> +<p>Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. +“Doesn’t he respect you?”</p> +<p>“Of course, but not in the same way. He respects +what you’ve done—he told me so, the other +day.”</p> +<p>Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. +“When you went to look at types?”</p> +<p>“Yes—we found so many: he has such an observation +of them! He talked a great deal about your book. He +says it’s really important.”</p> +<p>“Important! Ah the grand +creature!”—and the author of the work in question +groaned for joy.</p> +<p>“He was wonderfully amusing, he was inexpressibly droll, +while we walked about. He sees everything; he has so many +comparisons and images, and they’re always exactly +right. C’est d’un trouvé, as they +say.”</p> +<p>“Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to have +done!” Paul sighed.</p> +<p>“And don’t you think he <i>has</i> done +them?”</p> +<p>Ah it was just the point. “A part of them, and of +course even that part’s immense. But he might have +been one of the greatest. However, let us not make this an +hour of qualifications. Even as they stand,” our +friend earnestly concluded, “his writings are a mine of +gold.”</p> +<p>To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half an +hour the pair talked over the Master’s principal +productions. She knew them well—she knew them even +better than her visitor, who was struck with her critical +intelligence and with something large and bold in the movement in +her mind. She said things that startled him and that +evidently had come to her directly; they weren’t picked-up +phrases—she placed them too well. St. George had been +right about her being first-rate, about her not being afraid to +gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenly +something came back to her, and she said: “I recollect that +he did speak of Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, +apropos of something or other, that she didn’t care for +perfection.”</p> +<p>“That’s a great crime in an artist’s +wife,” Paul returned.</p> +<p>“Yes, poor thing!” and the girl sighed with a +suggestion of many reflexions, some of them mitigating. But +she presently added: “Ah perfection, perfection—how +one ought to go in for it! I wish <i>I</i> +could.”</p> +<p>“Every one can in his way,” her companion +opined.</p> +<p>“In <i>his</i> way, yes—but not in hers. +Women are so hampered—so condemned! Yet it’s a +kind of dishonour if you don’t, when you want to <i>do</i> +something, isn’t it?” Miss Fancourt pursued, +dropping one train in her quickness to take up another, an +accident that was common with her. So these two young +persons sat discussing high themes in their eclectic +drawing-room, in their London +“season”—discussing, with extreme seriousness, +the high theme of perfection. It must be said in +extenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in the +business. Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty; +they weren’t posturing for each other or for some one +else.</p> +<p>The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducing +it; the perfection to which for the moment they agreed to confine +their speculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work of +art. Our young woman’s imagination, it appeared, had +wandered far in that direction, and her guest had the rare +delight of feeling in their conversation a full +interchange. This episode will have lived for years in his +memory and even in his wonder; it had the quality that fortune +distils in a single drop at a time—the quality that +lubricates many ensuing frictions. He still, whenever he +likes, has a vision of the room, the bright red sociable +talkative room with the curtains that, by a stroke of successful +audacity, had the note of vivid blue. He remembers where +certain things stood, the particular book open on the table and +the almost intense odour of the flowers placed, at the left, +somewhere behind him. These facts were the fringe, as it +were, of a fine special agitation which had its birth in those +two hours and of which perhaps the main sign was in its leading +him inwardly and repeatedly to breathe “I had no idea there +was any one like this—I had no idea there was any one like +this!” Her freedom amazed him and charmed +him—it seemed so to simplify the practical question. +She was on the footing of an independent personage—a +motherless girl who had passed out of her teens and had a +position and responsibilities, who wasn’t held down to the +limitations of a little miss. She came and went with no +dragged duenna, she received people alone, and, though she was +totally without hardness, the question of protection or patronage +had no relevancy in regard to her. She gave such an +impression of the clear and the noble combined with the easy and +the natural that in spite of her eminent modern situation she +suggested no sort of sister-hood with the “fast” +girl. Modern she was indeed, and made Paul Overt, who loved +old colour, the golden glaze of time, think with some alarm of +the muddled palette of the future. He couldn’t get +used to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too good +to be real—it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into +such a well of sympathy. One might stray into the desert +easily—that was on the cards and that was the law of life; +but it was too rare an accident to stumble on a crystal +well. Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment too +extravagant to be real they struck him at the next as too +intelligent to be false. They were both high and lame, and, +whims for whims, he preferred them to any he had met in a like +relation. It was probable enough she would leave them +behind—exchange them for politics or +“smartness” or mere prolific maternity, as was the +custom of scribbling daubing educated flattered girls in an age +of luxury and a society of leisure. He noted that the +water-colours on the walls of the room she sat in had mainly the +quality of being naïves, and reflected that +naïveté in art is like a zero in a number: its +importance depends on the figure it is united with. +Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her. Before +he went away, at any rate, he said to her: “I thought St. +George was coming to see you to-day, but he doesn’t turn +up.”</p> +<p>For a moment he supposed she was going to cry “Comment +donc? Did you come here only to meet him?” But +the next he became aware of how little such a speech would have +fallen in with any note of flirtation he had as yet perceived in +her. She only replied: “Ah yes, but I don’t +think he’ll come. He recommended me not to expect +him.” Then she gaily but all gently added: “He +said it wasn’t fair to you. But I think I could +manage two.”</p> +<p>“So could I,” Paul Overt returned, stretching the +point a little to meet her. In reality his appreciation of +the occasion was so completely an appreciation of the woman +before him that another figure in the scene, even so esteemed a +one as St. George, might for the hour have appealed to him +vainly. He left the house wondering what the great man had +meant by its not being fair to him; and, still more than that, +whether he had actually stayed away from the force of that +idea. As he took his course through the Sunday solitude of +Manchester Square, swinging his stick and with a good deal of +emotion fermenting in his soul, it appeared to him he was living +in a world strangely magnanimous. Miss Fancourt had told +him it was possible she should be away, and that her father +should be, on the following Sunday, but that she had the hope of +a visit from him in the other event. She promised to let +him know should their absence fail, and then he might act +accordingly. After he had passed into one of the streets +that open from the Square he stopped, without definite +intentions, looking sceptically for a cab. In a moment he +saw a hansom roll through the place from the other side and come +a part of the way toward him. He was on the point of +hailing the driver when he noticed a “fare” within; +then he waited, seeing the man prepare to deposit his passenger +by pulling up at one of the houses. The house was +apparently the one he himself had just quitted; at least he drew +that inference as he recognised Henry St. George in the person +who stepped out of the hansom. Paul turned off as quickly +as if he had been caught in the act of spying. He gave up +his cab—he preferred to walk; he would go nowhere +else. He was glad St. George hadn’t renounced his +visit altogether—that would have been too absurd. +Yes, the world was magnanimous, and even he himself felt so as, +on looking at his watch, he noted but six o’clock, so that +he could mentally congratulate his successor on having an hour +still to sit in Miss Fancourt’s drawing-room. He +himself might use that hour for another visit, but by the time he +reached the Marble Arch the idea of such a course had become +incongruous to him. He passed beneath that architectural +effort and walked into the Park till he got upon the spreading +grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way across +the elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched +with a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he bent +a glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling their +sweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderly +with their bearskins the artificial flowers in the Sunday hats of +their partners. He prolonged his meditative walk; he went +into Kensington Gardens, he sat upon the penny chairs, he looked +at the little sail-boats launched upon the round pond and was +glad he had no engagement to dine. He repaired for this +purpose, very late, to his club, where he found himself unable to +order a repast and told the waiter to bring whatever there +was. He didn’t even observe what he was served with, +and he spent the evening in the library of the establishment, +pretending to read an article in an American magazine. He +failed to discover what it was about; it appeared in a dim way to +be about Marian Fancourt.</p> +<p>Quite late in the week she wrote to him that she was not to go +into the country—it had only just been settled. Her +father, she added, would never settle anything, but put it all on +her. She felt her responsibility—she had to—and +since she was forced this was the way she had decided. She +mentioned no reasons, which gave our friend all the clearer field +for bold conjecture about them. In Manchester Square on +this second Sunday he esteemed his fortune less good, for she had +three or four other visitors. But there were three or four +compensations; perhaps the greatest of which was that, learning +how her father had after all, at the last hour, gone out of town +alone, the bold conjecture I just now spoke of found itself +becoming a shade more bold. And then her presence was her +presence, and the personal red room was there and was full of it, +whatever phantoms passed and vanished, emitting incomprehensible +sounds. Lastly, he had the resource of staying till every +one had come and gone and of believing this grateful to her, +though she gave no particular sign. When they were alone +together he came to his point. “But St. George did +come—last Sunday. I saw him as I looked +back.”</p> +<p>“Yes; but it was the last time.”</p> +<p>“The last time?”</p> +<p>“He said he would never come again.”</p> +<p>Paul Overt stared. “Does he mean he wishes to +cease to see you?”</p> +<p>“I don’t know what he means,” the girl +bravely smiled. “He won’t at any rate see me +here.”</p> +<p>“And pray why not?”</p> +<p>“I haven’t the least idea,” said Marian +Fancourt, whose visitor found her more perversely sublime than +ever yet as she professed this clear helplessness.</p> +<h2><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>V</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">Oh</span> I say, I want you to stop +a little,” Henry St. George said to him at eleven +o’clock the night he dined with the head of the +profession. The company—none of it indeed <i>of</i> +the profession—had been numerous and was taking its leave; +our young man, after bidding good-night to his hostess, had put +out his hand in farewell to the master of the house. +Besides drawing from the latter the protest I have cited this +movement provoked a further priceless word about their chance now +to have a talk, their going into his room, his having still +everything to say. Paul Overt was all delight at this +kindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocose qualification +the bare fact that he had promised to go to another place which +was at a considerable distance.</p> +<p>“Well then you’ll break your promise, that’s +all. You quite awful humbug!” St. George added in a +tone that confirmed our young man’s ease.</p> +<p>“Certainly I’ll break it—but it was a real +promise.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You’re +following her?” his friend asked.</p> +<p>He answered by a question. “Oh is <i>she</i> +going?”</p> +<p>“Base impostor!” his ironic host went on. +“I’ve treated you handsomely on the article of that +young lady: I won’t make another concession. Wait +three minutes—I’ll be with you.” He gave +himself to his departing guests, accompanied the long-trained +ladies to the door. It was a hot night, the windows were +open, the sound of the quick carriages and of the linkmen’s +call came into the house. The affair had rather glittered; +a sense of festal things was in the heavy air: not only the +influence of that particular entertainment, but the suggestion of +the wide hurry of pleasure which in London on summer nights fills +so many of the happier quarters of the complicated town. +Gradually Mrs. St. George’s drawing-room emptied itself; +Paul was left alone with his hostess, to whom he explained the +motive of his waiting. “Ah yes, some intellectual, +some <i>professional</i>, talk,” she leered; “at this +season doesn’t one miss it? Poor dear Henry, +I’m so glad!” The young man looked out of the +window a moment, at the called hansoms that lurched up, at the +smooth broughams that rolled away. When he turned round +Mrs. St. George had disappeared; her husband’s voice rose +to him from below—he was laughing and talking, in the +portico, with some lady who awaited her carriage. Paul had +solitary possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted rooms +where the covered tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had been +pushed about and the odour of flowers lingered. They were +large, they were pretty, they contained objects of value; +everything in the picture told of a “good +house.” At the end of five minutes a servant came in +with a request from the Master that he would join him downstairs; +upon which, descending, he followed his conductor through a long +passage to an apartment thrown out, in the rear of the +habitation, for the special requirements, as he guessed, of a +busy man of letters.</p> +<p>St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large +high room—a room without windows, but with a wide skylight +at the top, that of a place of exhibition. It was furnished +as a library, and the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, a +surface of incomparable tone produced by dimly-gilt +“backs” interrupted here and there by the suspension +of old prints and drawings. At the end furthest from the +door of admission was a tall desk, of great extent, at which the +person using it could write only in the erect posture of a clerk +in a counting-house; and stretched from the entrance to this +structure was a wide plain band of crimson cloth, as straight as +a garden-path and almost as long, where, in his mind’s eye, +Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during vexed +hours—hours, that is, of admirable composition. The +servant gave him a coat, an old jacket with a hang of experience, +from a cupboard in the wall, retiring afterwards with the garment +he had taken off. Paul Overt welcomed the coat; it was a +coat for talk, it promised confidences—having visibly +received so many—and had tragic literary elbows. +“Ah we’re practical—we’re +practical!” St. George said as he saw his visitor look the +place over. “Isn’t it a good big cage for going +round and round? My wife invented it and she locks me up +here every morning.”</p> +<p>Our young man breathed—by way of tribute—with a +certain oppression. “You don’t miss a +window—a place to look out?”</p> +<p>“I did at first awfully; but her calculation was +just. It saves time, it has saved me many months in these +ten years. Here I stand, under the eye of day—in +London of course, very often, it’s rather a bleared old +eye—walled in to my trade. I can’t get +away—so the room’s a fine lesson in +concentration. I’ve learnt the lesson, I think; look +at that big bundle of proof and acknowledge it.” He +pointed to a fat roll of papers, on one of the tables, which had +not been undone.</p> +<p>“Are you bringing out another—?” Paul asked +in a tone the fond deficiencies of which he didn’t +recognise till his companion burst out laughing, and indeed +scarce even then.</p> +<p>“You humbug, you humbug!”—St. George +appeared to enjoy caressing him, as it were, with that +opprobrium. “Don’t I know what you think of +them?” he asked, standing there with his hands in his +pockets and with a new kind of smile. It was as if he were +going to let his young votary see him all now.</p> +<p>“Upon my word in that case you know more than I +do!” the latter ventured to respond, revealing a part of +the torment of being able neither clearly to esteem nor +distinctly to renounce him.</p> +<p>“My dear fellow,” said the more and more +interesting Master, “don’t imagine I talk about my +books specifically; they’re not a decent subject—il +ne manquerait plus que ça! I’m not so bad as +you may apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you +like; though it wasn’t for that I brought you down +here. I want to ask you something—very much indeed; I +value this chance. Therefore sit down. We’re +practical, but there <i>is</i> a sofa, you see—for she does +humour my poor bones so far. Like all really great +administrators and disciplinarians she knows when wisely to +relax.” Paul sank into the corner of a deep leathern +couch, but his friend remained standing and explanatory. +“If you don’t mind, in this room, this is my +habit. From the door to the desk and from the desk to the +door. That shakes up my imagination gently; and don’t +you see what a good thing it is that there’s no window for +her to fly out of? The eternal standing as I write (I stop +at that bureau and put it down, when anything comes, and so we go +on) was rather wearisome at first, but we adopted it with an eye +to the long run; you’re in better order—if your legs +don’t break down!—and you can keep it up for more +years. Oh we’re practical—we’re +practical!” St. George repeated, going to the table and +taking up all mechanically the bundle of proofs. But, +pulling off the wrapper, he had a change of attention that +appealed afresh to our hero. He lost himself a moment, +examining the sheets of his new book, while the younger +man’s eyes wandered over the room again.</p> +<p>“Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a +charming place as this to do them in!” Paul +reflected. The outer world, the world of accident and +ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within the rich +protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the +dream-figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular +revel. It was a fond prevision of Overt’s rather than +an observation on actual data, for which occasions had been too +few, that the Master thus more closely viewed would have the +quality, the charming gift, of flashing out, all surprisingly, in +personal intercourse and at moments of suspended or perhaps even +of diminished expectation. A happy relation with him would +be a thing proceeding by jumps, not by traceable stages.</p> +<p>“Do you read them—really?” he asked, laying +down the proofs on Paul’s enquiring of him how soon the +work would be published. And when the young man answered +“Oh yes, always,” he was moved to mirth again by +something he caught in his manner of saying that. +“You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—and +very proper it is, especially as she won’t last for +ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; she +neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties +and kindly habits are respectable. Only you’re strong +if you <i>do</i> read ’em! <i>I</i> couldn’t, +my dear fellow. You are strong, I know; and that’s +just a part of what I wanted to say to you. You’re +very strong indeed. I’ve been going into your other +things—they’ve interested me immensely. Some +one ought to have told me about them before—some one I +could believe. But whom can one believe? You’re +wonderfully on the right road—it’s awfully decent +work. Now do you mean to keep it up?—that’s +what I want to ask you.”</p> +<p>“Do I mean to do others?” Paul asked, looking up +from his sofa at his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a +happy little boy when the school-master is gay, and partly like +some pilgrim of old who might have consulted a world-famous +oracle. St. George’s own performance had been infirm, +but as an adviser he would be infallible.</p> +<p>“Others—others? Ah the number won’t +matter; one other would do, if it were really a further +step—a throb of the same effort. What I mean is have +you it in your heart to go in for some sort of decent +perfection?”</p> +<p>“Ah decency, ah perfection—!” the young man +sincerely sighed. “I talked of them the other Sunday +with Miss Fancourt.”</p> +<p>It produced on the Master’s part a laugh of odd +acrimony. “Yes, they’ll ‘talk’ of +them as much as you like! But they’ll do little to +help one to them. There’s no obligation of course; +only you strike me as capable,” he went on. +“You must have thought it all over. I can’t +believe you’re without a plan. That’s the +sensation you give me, and it’s so rare that it really +stirs one up—it makes you remarkable. If you +haven’t a plan, if you <i>don’t</i> mean to keep it +up, surely you’re within your rights; it’s +nobody’s business, no one can force you, and not more than +two or three people will notice you don’t go +straight. The others—<i>all</i> the rest, every blest +soul in England, will think you do—will think you are +keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one of +the two or three who know better. Now the question is +whether you can do it for two or three. Is that the stuff +you’re made of?”</p> +<p>It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing +arms. “I could do it for one, if you were the +one.”</p> +<p>“Don’t say that; I don’t deserve it; it +scorches me,” he protested with eyes suddenly grave and +glowing. “The ‘one’ is of course +one’s self, one’s conscience, one’s idea, the +singleness of one’s aim. I think of that pure spirit +as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of his +youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful +eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you +know, I’ve married for money.” Paul stared and +even blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his +host, observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh +and pursued: “You don’t follow my figure. +I’m not speaking of my dear wife, who had a small +fortune—which, however, was not my bribe. I fell in +love with her, as many other people have done. I refer to +the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. +Don’t, my boy, put your nose into <i>that</i> yoke. +The awful jade will lead you a life!”</p> +<p>Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. +“Haven’t you been happy!”</p> +<p>“Happy? It’s a kind of hell.”</p> +<p>“There are things I should like to ask you,” Paul +said after a pause.</p> +<p>“Ask me anything in all the world. I’d turn +myself inside out to save you.”</p> +<p>“To ‘save’ me?” he quavered.</p> +<p>“To make you stick to it—to make you see it +through. As I said to you the other night at Summersoft, +let my example be vivid to you.”</p> +<p>“Why your books are not so bad as that,” said +Paul, fairly laughing and feeling that if ever a fellow had +breathed the air of art—!</p> +<p>“So bad as what?”</p> +<p>“Your talent’s so great that it’s in +everything you do, in what’s less good as well as in +what’s best. You’ve some forty volumes to show +for it—forty volumes of wonderful life, of rare +observation, of magnificent ability.”</p> +<p>“I’m very clever, of course I know +that”—but it was a thing, in fine, this author made +nothing of. “Lord, what rot they’d all be if I +hadn’t been I’m a successful charlatan,” he +went on—“I’ve been able to pass off my +system. But do you know what it is? It’s +cartonpierre.”</p> +<p>“Carton-pierre?” Paul was struck, and gaped.</p> +<p>“Lincrusta-Walton!”</p> +<p>“Ah don’t say such things—you make me +bleed!” the younger man protested. “I see you +in a beautiful fortunate home, living in comfort and +honour.”</p> +<p>“Do you call it honour?”—his host took him +up with an intonation that often comes back to him. +“That’s what I want <i>you</i> to go in for. I +mean the real thing. This is brummagem.”</p> +<p>“Brummagem?” Paul ejaculated while his eyes +wandered, by a movement natural at the moment, over the luxurious +room.</p> +<p>“Ah they make it so well to-day—it’s +wonderfully deceptive!”</p> +<p>Our friend thrilled with the interest and perhaps even more +with the pity of it. Yet he wasn’t afraid to seem to +patronise when he could still so far envy. “Is it +deceptive that I find you living with every appearance of +domestic felicity—blest with a devoted, accomplished wife, +with children whose acquaintance I haven’t yet had the +pleasure of making, but who <i>must</i> be delightful young +people, from what I know of their parents?”</p> +<p>St. George smiled as for the candour of his question. +“It’s all excellent, my dear fellow—heaven +forbid I should deny it. I’ve made a great deal of +money; my wife has known how to take care of it, to use it +without wasting it, to put a good bit of it by, to make it +fructify. I’ve got a loaf on the shelf; I’ve +got everything in fact but the great thing.”</p> +<p>“The great thing?” Paul kept echoing.</p> +<p>“The sense of having done the best—the sense which +is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his +death, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument the +finest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as +it should be played. He either does that or he +doesn’t—and if he doesn’t he isn’t worth +speaking of. Therefore, precisely, those who really know +<i>don’t</i> speak of him. He may still hear a great +chatter, but what he hears most is the incorruptible silence of +Fame. I’ve squared her, you may say, for my little +hour—but what’s my little hour? Don’t +imagine for a moment,” the Master pursued, “that +I’m such a cad as to have brought you down here to abuse or +to complain of my wife to you. She’s a woman of +distinguished qualities, to whom my obligations are immense; so +that, if you please, we’ll say nothing about her. My +boys—my children are all boys—are straight and +strong, thank God, and have no poverty of growth about them, no +penury of needs. I receive periodically the most +satisfactory attestation from Harrow, from Oxford, from +Sandhurst—oh we’ve done the best for them!—of +their eminence as living thriving consuming organisms.”</p> +<p>“It must be delightful to feel that the son of +one’s loins is at Sandhurst,” Paul remarked +enthusiastically.</p> +<p>“It is—it’s charming. Oh I’m a +patriot!”</p> +<p>The young man then could but have the greater tribute of +questions to pay. “Then what did you mean—the +other night at Summersoft—by saying that children are a +curse?”</p> +<p>“My dear youth, on what basis are we talking?” and +St. George dropped upon the sofa at a short distance from +him. Sitting a little sideways he leaned back against the +opposite arm with his hands raised and interlocked behind his +head. “On the supposition that a certain +perfection’s possible and even desirable—isn’t +it so? Well, all I say is that one’s children +interfere with perfection. One’s wife +interferes. Marriage interferes.”</p> +<p>“You think then the artist shouldn’t +marry?”</p> +<p>“He does so at his peril—he does so at his +cost.”</p> +<p>“Not even when his wife’s in sympathy with his +work?”</p> +<p>“She never is—she can’t be! Women +haven’t a conception of such things.”</p> +<p>“Surely they on occasion work themselves,” Paul +objected.</p> +<p>“Yes, very badly indeed. Oh of course, often, they +think they understand, they think they sympathise. Then it +is they’re most dangerous. Their idea is that you +shall do a great lot and get a great lot of money. Their +great nobleness and virtue, their exemplary conscientiousness as +British females, is in keeping you up to that. My wife +makes all my bargains with my publishers for me, and has done so +for twenty years. She does it consummately +well—that’s why I’m really pretty well +off. Aren’t you the father of their innocent babes, +and will you withhold from them their natural sustenance? +You asked me the other night if they’re not an immense +incentive. Of course they are—there’s no doubt +of that!”</p> +<p>Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt open +so wide, so much looking at. “For myself I’ve +an idea I need incentives.”</p> +<p>“Ah well then, n’en parlons plus!” his +companion handsomely smiled.</p> +<p>“<i>You</i> are an incentive, I maintain,” the +young man went on. “You don’t affect me in the +way you’d apparently like to. Your great success is +what I see—the pomp of Ennismore Gardens!”</p> +<p>“Success?”—St. George’s eyes had a +cold fine light. “Do you call it success to be spoken +of as you’d speak of me if you were sitting here with +another artist—a young man intelligent and sincere like +yourself? Do you call it success to make you blush—as +you would blush!—if some foreign critic (some fellow, of +course I mean, who should know what he was talking about and +should have shown you he did, as foreign critics like to show it) +were to say to you: ‘He’s the one, in this country, +whom they consider the most perfect, isn’t he?’ +Is it success to be the occasion of a young Englishman’s +having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such a moment +for old England? No, no; success is to have made people +wriggle to another tune. Do try it!”</p> +<p>Paul continued all gravely to glow. “Try +what?”</p> +<p>“Try to do some really good work.”</p> +<p>“Oh I want to, heaven knows!”</p> +<p>“Well, you can’t do it without +sacrifices—don’t believe that for a moment,” +the Master said. “I’ve made none. +I’ve had everything. In other words I’ve missed +everything.”</p> +<p>“You’ve had the full rich masculine human general +life, with all the responsibilities and duties and burdens and +sorrows and joys—all the domestic and social initiations +and complications. They must be immensely suggestive, +immensely amusing,” Paul anxiously submitted.</p> +<p>“Amusing?”</p> +<p>“For a strong man—yes.”</p> +<p>“They’ve given me subjects without number, if +that’s what you mean; but they’ve taken away at the +same time the power to use them. I’ve touched a +thousand things, but which one of them have I turned into +gold? The artist has to do only with that—he knows +nothing of any baser metal. I’ve led the life of the +world, with my wife and my progeny; the clumsy conventional +expensive materialised vulgarised brutalised life of +London. We’ve got everything handsome, even a +carriage—we’re perfect Philistines and prosperous +hospitable eminent people. But, my dear fellow, don’t +try to stultify yourself and pretend you don’t know what we +<i>haven’t</i> got. It’s bigger than all the +rest. Between artists—come!” the Master wound +up. “You know as well as you sit there that +you’d put a pistol-ball into your brain if you had written +my books!”</p> +<p>It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised by +him at Summersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, a +fulness, with which the latter’s young imagination had +scarcely reckoned. His impression fairly shook him and he +throbbed with the excitement of such deep soundings and such +strange confidences. He throbbed indeed with the conflict +of his feelings—bewilderment and recognition and alarm, +enjoyment and protest and assent, all commingled with tenderness +(and a kind of shame in the participation) for the sores and +bruises exhibited by so fine a creature, and with a sense of the +tragic secret nursed under his trappings. The idea of +<i>his</i>, Paul Overt’s, becoming the occasion of such an +act of humility made him flush and pant, at the same time that +his consciousness was in certain directions too much alive not to +swallow—and not intensely to taste—every offered +spoonful of the revelation. It had been his odd fortune to +blow upon the deep waters, to make them surge and break in waves +of strange eloquence. But how couldn’t he give out a +passionate contradiction of his host’s last extravagance, +how couldn’t he enumerate to him the parts of his work he +loved, the splendid things he had found in it, beyond the compass +of any other writer of the day? St. George listened a +while, courteously; then he said, laying his hand on his +visitor’s: “That’s all very well; and if your +idea’s to do nothing better there’s no reason you +shouldn’t have as many good things as I—as many human +and material appendages, as many sons or daughters, a wife with +as many gowns, a house with as many servants, a stable with as +many horses, a heart with as many aches.” The Master +got up when he had spoken thus—he stood a moment—near +the sofa looking down on his agitated pupil. “Are you +possessed of any property?” it occurred to him to ask.</p> +<p>“None to speak of.”</p> +<p>“Oh well then there’s no reason why you +shouldn’t make a goodish income—if you set about it +the right way. Study <i>me</i> for that—study me +well. You may really have horses.”</p> +<p>Paul sat there some minutes without speaking. He looked +straight before him—he turned over many things. His +friend had wandered away, taking up a parcel of letters from the +table where the roll of proofs had lain. “What was +the book Mrs. St. George made you burn—the one she +didn’t like?” our young man brought out.</p> +<p>“The book she made me burn—how did you know +that?” The Master looked up from his letters quite +without the facial convulsion the pupil had feared.</p> +<p>“I heard her speak of it at Summersoft.”</p> +<p>“Ah yes—she’s proud of it. I +don’t know—it was rather good.”</p> +<p>“What was it about?”</p> +<p>“Let me see.” And he seemed to make an +effort to remember. “Oh yes—it was about +myself.” Paul gave an irrepressible groan for the +disappearance of such a production, and the elder man went on: +“Oh but <i>you</i> should write it—<i>you</i> should +do me.” And he pulled up—from the restless +motion that had come upon him; his fine smile a generous +glare. “There’s a subject, my boy: no end of +stuff in it!”</p> +<p>Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. +“Are there no women who really understand—who can +take part in a sacrifice?”</p> +<p>“How can they take part? They themselves are the +sacrifice. They’re the idol and the altar and the +flame.”</p> +<p>“Isn’t there even <i>one</i> who sees +further?” Paul continued.</p> +<p>For a moment St. George made no answer; after which, having +torn up his letters, he came back to the point all ironic. +“Of course I know the one you mean. But not even Miss +Fancourt.”</p> +<p>“I thought you admired her so much.”</p> +<p>“It’s impossible to admire her more. Are you +in love with her?” St. George asked.</p> +<p>“Yes,” Paul Overt presently said.</p> +<p>“Well then give it up.”</p> +<p>Paul stared. “Give up my +‘love’?”</p> +<p>“Bless me, no. Your idea.” And then as +our hero but still gazed: “The one you talked with her +about. The idea of a decent perfection.”</p> +<p>“She’d help it—she’d help it!” +the young man cried.</p> +<p>“For about a year—the first year, yes. After +that she’d be as a millstone round its neck.”</p> +<p>Paul frankly wondered. “Why she has a passion for +the real thing, for good work—for everything you and I care +for most.”</p> +<p>“‘You and I’ is charming, my dear +fellow!” his friend laughed. “She has it +indeed, but she’d have a still greater passion for her +children—and very proper too. She’d insist on +everything’s being made comfortable, advantageous, +propitious for them. That isn’t the artist’s +business.”</p> +<p>“The artist—the artist! Isn’t he a man +all the same?”</p> +<p>St. George had a grand grimace. “I mostly think +not. You know as well as I what he has to do: the +concentration, the finish, the independence he must strive for +from the moment he begins to wish his work really decent. +Ah my young friend, his relation to women, and especially to the +one he’s most intimately concerned with, is at the mercy of +the damning fact that whereas he can in the nature of things have +but one standard, they have about fifty. That’s what +makes them so superior,” St. George amusingly added. +“Fancy an artist with a change of standards as you’d +have a change of shirts or of dinner-plates. To <i>do</i> +it—to do it and make it divine—is the only thing he +has to think about. ‘Is it done or not?’ is his +only question. Not ‘Is it done as well as a proper +solicitude for my dear little family will allow?’ He +has nothing to do with the relative—he has only to do with +the absolute; and a dear little family may represent a dozen +relatives.”</p> +<p>“Then you don’t allow him the common passions and +affections of men?” Paul asked.</p> +<p>“Hasn’t he a passion, an affection, which includes +all the rest? Besides, let him have all the passions he +likes—if he only keeps his independence. He must be +able to be poor.”</p> +<p>Paul slowly got up. “Why then did you advise me to +make up to her?”</p> +<p>St. George laid his hand on his shoulder. “Because +she’d make a splendid wife! And I hadn’t read +you then.”</p> +<p>The young man had a strained smile. “I wish you +had left me alone!”</p> +<p>“I didn’t know that that wasn’t good enough +for you,” his host returned.</p> +<p>“What a false position, what a condemnation of the +artist, that he’s a mere disfranchised monk and can produce +his effect only by giving up personal happiness. What an +arraignment of art!” Paul went on with a trembling +voice.</p> +<p>“Ah you don’t imagine by chance that I’m +defending art? ‘Arraignment’—I should +think so! Happy the societies in which it hasn’t made +its appearance, for from the moment it comes they have a +consuming ache, they have an incurable corruption, in their +breast. Most assuredly is the artist in a false +position! But I thought we were taking him for +granted. Pardon me,” St. George continued: +“‘Ginistrella’ made me!”</p> +<p>Paul stood looking at the floor—one o’clock +struck, in the stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. +“Do you think she’d ever look at me?” he put to +his friend at last.</p> +<p>“Miss Fancourt—as a suitor? Why +shouldn’t I think it? That’s why I’ve +tried to favour you—I’ve had a little chance or two +of bettering your opportunity.”</p> +<p>“Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away +yourself?” Paul said with a blush.</p> +<p>“I’m an old idiot—my place isn’t +there,” St. George stated gravely.</p> +<p>“I’m nothing yet, I’ve no fortune; and there +must be so many others,” his companion pursued.</p> +<p>The Master took this considerably in, but made little of +it. “You’re a gentleman and a man of +genius. I think you might do something.”</p> +<p>“But if I must give that up—the genius?”</p> +<p>“Lots of people, you know, think I’ve kept +mine,” St. George wonderfully grinned.</p> +<p>“You’ve a genius for mystification!” Paul +declared; but grasping his hand gratefully in attenuation of this +judgement.</p> +<p>“Poor dear boy, I do worry you! But try, try, all +the same. I think your chances are good and you’ll +win a great prize.”</p> +<p>Paul held fast the other’s hand a minute; he looked into +the strange deep face. “No, I <i>am</i> an +artist—I can’t help it!”</p> +<p>“Ah show it then!” St. George pleadingly broke +out. “Let me see before I die the thing I most want, +the thing I yearn for: a life in which the +passion—ours—is really intense. If you can be +rare don’t fail of it! Think what it is—how it +counts—how it lives!”</p> +<p>They had moved to the door and he had closed both his hands +over his companion’s. Here they paused again and our +hero breathed deep. “I want to live!”</p> +<p>“In what sense?”</p> +<p>“In the greatest.”</p> +<p>“Well then stick to it—see it through.”</p> +<p>“With your sympathy—your help?”</p> +<p>“Count on that—you’ll be a great figure to +me. Count on my highest appreciation, my devotion. +You’ll give me satisfaction—if that has any weight +with you.” After which, as Paul appeared still to +waver, his host added: “Do you remember what you said to me +at Summersoft?”</p> +<p>“Something infatuated, no doubt!”</p> +<p>“‘I’ll do anything in the world you tell +me.’ You said that.”</p> +<p>“And you hold me to it?”</p> +<p>“Ah what am I?” the Master expressively +sighed.</p> +<p>“Lord, what things I shall have to do!” Paul +almost moaned as be departed.</p> +<h2><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>VI</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">It</span> goes on too much +abroad—hang abroad!” These or something like +them had been the Master’s remarkable words in relation to +the action of “Ginistrella”; and yet, though they had +made a sharp impression on the author of that work, like almost +all spoken words from the same source, he a week after the +conversation I have noted left England for a long absence and +full of brave intentions. It is not a perversion of the +truth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of his +departure. If the oral utterance of the eminent writer had +the privilege of moving him deeply it was especially on his +turning it over at leisure, hours and days later, that it +appeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibit its extreme +importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland and, having +in September begun a new task, determined not to cross the Alps +till he should have made a good start. To this end he +returned to a quiet corner he knew well, on the edge of the Lake +of Geneva and within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and +a view for which he had an affection that sprang from old +associations and was capable of mysterious revivals and +refreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow was on +the nearer hills, almost down to the limit to which he could +climb when his stint, on the shortening afternoons, was +performed. The autumn was fine, the lake was blue and his +book took form and direction. These felicities, for the +time, embroidered his life, which he suffered to cover him with +its mantle. At the end of six weeks he felt he had learnt +St. George’s lesson by heart, had tested and proved its +doctrine. Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing: +before crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt. He +was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as a +luxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that he +justified it. She had asked of him no such favour when, +shortly before he left London, three days after their dinner in +Ennismore Gardens, he went to take leave of her. It was +true she had had no ground—he hadn’t named his +intention of absence. He had kept his counsel for want of +due assurance: it was that particular visit that was, the next +thing, to settle the matter. He had paid the visit to see +how much he really cared for her, and quick departure, without so +much as an explicit farewell, was the sequel to this enquiry, the +answer to which had created within him a deep yearning. +When he wrote her from Clarens he noted that he owed her an +explanation (more than three months after!) for not having told +her what he was doing.</p> +<p>She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave him a striking +piece of news: that of the death, a week before, of Mrs. St. +George. This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the country, +to a violent attack of inflammation of the lungs—he would +remember that for a long time she had been delicate. Miss +Fancourt added that she believed her husband overwhelmed by the +blow; he would miss her too terribly—she had been +everything in life to him. Paul Overt, on this, immediately +wrote to St. George. He would from the day of their parting +have been glad to remain in communication with him, but had +hitherto lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy a +man. Their long nocturnal talk came back to him in every +detail, but this was no bar to an expression of proper sympathy +with the head of the profession, for hadn’t that very talk +made it clear that the late accomplished lady was the influence +that ruled his life? What catastrophe could be more cruel +than the extinction of such an influence? This was to be +exactly the tone taken by St. George in answering his young +friend upwards of a month later. He made no allusion of +course to their important discussion. He spoke of his wife +as frankly and generously as if he had quite forgotten that +occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in his +words. “She took everything off my hands—off my +mind. She carried on our life with the greatest art, the +rarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, to +drive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade. This was a +rare service—the highest she could have rendered me. +Would I could have acknowledged it more fitly!”</p> +<p>A certain bewilderment, for our hero, disengaged itself from +these remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a +retractation, strange on the part of a man who hadn’t the +excuse of witlessness. He had certainly not expected his +correspondent to rejoice in the death of his wife, and it was +perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twenty +years should have left him sore. But if she had been so +clear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the dear man +meant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing him +to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the +doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an +irreparable loss, then her husband’s inspired advice had +been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was +on the point of rushing back to London to show that, for his +part, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, and he went so +far as to take the manuscript of the first chapters of his new +book out of his table-drawer, to insert it into a pocket of his +portmanteau. This led to his catching a glimpse of certain +pages he hadn’t looked at for months, and that accident, in +turn, to his being struck with the high promise they +revealed—a rare result of such retrospections, which it was +his habit to avoid as much as possible: they usually brought home +to him that the glow of composition might be a purely subjective +and misleading emotion. On this occasion a certain belief +in himself disengaged itself whimsically from the serried +erasures of his first draft, making him think it best after all +to pursue his present trial to the end. If he could write +as well under the rigour of privation it might be a mistake to +change the conditions before that spell had spent itself. +He would go back to London of course, but he would go back only +when he should have finished his book. This was the vow he +privately made, restoring his manuscript to the +table-drawer. It may be added that it took him a long time +to finish his book, for the subject was as difficult as it was +fine, and he was literally embarrassed by the fulness of his +notes. Something within him warned him that he must make it +supremely good—otherwise he should lack, as regards his +private behaviour, a handsome excuse. He had a horror of +this deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on the +question of the lamp and the file. He crossed the Alps at +last and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in +Italy, where still, at the end of a twelvemonth, his task was +unachieved. “Stick to it—see it through”: +this general injunction of St. George’s was good also for +the particular case. He applied it to the utmost, with the +result that when in its slow order the summer had come round +again he felt he had given all that was in him. This time +he put his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of his +publisher attached, and took his way northward.</p> +<p>He had been absent from London for two years—two years +which, seeming to count as more, had made such a difference in +his own life—through the production of a novel far +stronger, he believed, than “Ginistrella”—that +he turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival, +with a vague expectation of changes, of finding great things had +happened. But there were few transformations in +Piccadilly—only three or four big red houses where there +had been low black ones—and the brightness of the end of +June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and +glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen +it in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting he +appreciated; it seemed friendly and pointed, added to the +exhilaration of his finished book, of his having his own country +and the huge oppressive amusing city that suggested everything, +that contained everything, under his hand again. +“Stay at home and do things here—do subjects we can +measure,” St. George had said; and now it struck him he +should ask nothing better than to stay at home for ever. +Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square, +looking out for a number he hadn’t forgotten. Miss +Fancourt, however, was not at home, so that he turned rather +dejectedly from the door. His movement brought him face to +face with a gentleman just approaching it and recognised on +another glance as Miss Fancourt’s father. Paul +saluted this personage, and the General returned the greeting +with his customary good manner—a manner so good, however, +that you could never tell whether it meant he placed you. +The disappointed caller felt the impulse to address him; then, +hesitating, became both aware of having no particular remark to +make, and convinced that though the old soldier remembered him he +remembered him wrong. He therefore went his way without +computing the irresistible effect his own evident recognition +would have on the General, who never neglected a chance to +gossip. Our young man’s face was expressive, and +observation seldom let it pass. He hadn’t taken ten +steps before he heard himself called after with a friendly +semi-articulate “Er—I beg your pardon!” +He turned round and the General, smiling at him from the porch, +said: “Won’t you come in? I won’t leave +you the advantage of me!” Paul declined to come in, +and then felt regret, for Miss Fancourt, so late in the +afternoon, might return at any moment. But her father gave +him no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to have +struck him as ungracious. A further look at the visitor had +recalled something, enough at least to enable him to say: +“You’ve come back, you’ve come +back?” Paul was on the point of replying that he had +come back the night before, but he suppressed, the next instant, +this strong light on the immediacy of his visit and, giving +merely a general assent, alluded to the young lady he deplored +not having found. He had come late in the hope she would be +in. “I’ll tell her—I’ll tell +her,” said the old man; and then he added quickly, +gallantly: “You’ll be giving us something new? +It’s a long time, isn’t it?” Now he +remembered him right.</p> +<p>“Rather long. I’m very slow.” Paul +explained. “I met you at Summersoft a long time +ago.”</p> +<p>“Oh yes—with Henry St. George. I remember +very well. Before his poor wife—” General +Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less. “I +dare say you know.”</p> +<p>“About Mrs. St. George’s death? +Certainly—I heard at the time.”</p> +<p>“Oh no, I mean—I mean he’s to be +married.”</p> +<p>“Ah I’ve not heard that!” But just as +Paul was about to add “To whom?” the General crossed +his intention.</p> +<p>“When did you come back? I know you’ve been +away—by my daughter. She was very sorry. You +ought to give her something new.”</p> +<p>“I came back last night,” said our young man, to +whom something had occurred which made his speech for the moment +a little thick.</p> +<p>“Ah most kind of you to come so soon. +Couldn’t you turn up at dinner?”</p> +<p>“At dinner?” Paul just mechanically repeated, not +liking to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking +only of that.</p> +<p>“There are several people, I believe. Certainly +St. George. Or afterwards if you like better. I +believe my daughter expects—” He appeared to +notice something in the visitor’s raised face (on his steps +he stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and the +interruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from +which he sought a quick issue. “Perhaps then you +haven’t heard she’s to be married.”</p> +<p>Paul gaped again. “To be married?”</p> +<p>“To Mr. St. George—it has just been settled. +Odd marriage, isn’t it?” Our listener uttered +no opinion on this point: he only continued to stare. +“But I dare say it will do—she’s so awfully +literary!” said the General.</p> +<p>Paul had turned very red. “Oh it’s a +surprise—very interesting, very charming! I’m +afraid I can’t dine—so many thanks!”</p> +<p>“Well, you must come to the wedding!” cried the +General. “Oh I remember that day at Summersoft. +He’s a great man, you know.”</p> +<p>“Charming—charming!” Paul stammered for +retreat. He shook hands with the General and got off. +His face was red and he had the sense of its growing more and +more crimson. All the evening at home—he went +straight to his rooms and remained there dinnerless—his +cheek burned at intervals as if it had been smitten. He +didn’t understand what had happened to him, what trick had +been played him, what treachery practised. “None, +none,” he said to himself. “I’ve nothing +to do with it. I’m out of it—it’s none of +my business.” But that bewildered murmur was followed +again and again by the incongruous ejaculation: “Was it a +plan—was it a plan?” Sometimes he cried to +himself, breathless, “Have I been duped, sold, +swindled?” If at all, he was an absurd, an abject +victim. It was as if he hadn’t lost her till +now. He had renounced her, yes; but that was another +affair—that was a closed but not a locked door. Now +he seemed to see the door quite slammed in his face. Did he +expect her to wait—was she to give him his time like that: +two years at a stretch? He didn’t know what he had +expected—he only knew what he hadn’t. It +wasn’t this—it wasn’t this. Mystification +bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in him when he thought of +the deference, the devotion, the credulity with which he had +listened to St. George. The evening wore on and the light +was long; but even when it had darkened he remained without a +lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay +through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at the +gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear +something, to bear having been made a fool of. He had made +it too easy—that idea passed over him like a hot +wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven o’clock strike, he +jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had said about his +coming after dinner. He’d go—he’d see her +at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt as +if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the +others were wanting: he couldn’t do his sum till he had got +all his figures.</p> +<p>He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he +was at Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages +at the door—a party was going on; a circumstance which at +the last gave him a slight relief, for now he would rather see +her in a crowd. People passed him on the staircase; they +were going away, going “on” with the hunted herdlike +movement of London society at night. But sundry groups +remained in the drawing-room, and it was some minutes, as she +didn’t hear him announced, before he discovered and spoke +to her. In this short interval he had seen St. George +talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once looked +away, feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore +couldn’t be sure the author of “Shadowmere” +noticed him. At all events he didn’t come over though +Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him—she almost rushed +at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had +forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she +was in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hair +was a casque of gold. He saw in a single moment that she +was happy, happy with an aggressive splendour. But she +wouldn’t speak to him of that, she would speak only of +himself.</p> +<p>“I’m so delighted; my father told me. How +kind of you to come!” She struck him as so fresh and +brave, while his eyes moved over her, that he said to himself +irresistibly: “Why to him, why not to youth, to strength, +to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich young force, to +failure, to abdication to superannuation?” In his +thought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all that +had been left of his faith in the peccable Master. +“I’m so sorry I missed you,” she went on. +“My father told me. How charming of you to have come +so soon!”</p> +<p>“Does that surprise you?” Paul Overt asked.</p> +<p>“The first day? No, from you—nothing +that’s nice.” She was interrupted by a lady who +bade her good-night, and he seemed to read that it cost her +nothing to speak to him in that tone; it was her old liberal +lavish way, with a certain added amplitude that time had brought; +and if this manner began to operate on the spot, at such a +juncture in her history, perhaps in the other days too it had +meant just as little or as much—a mere mechanical charity, +with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready to give but +in want of nothing. Oh she was satisfied—and why +shouldn’t she be? Why shouldn’t she have been +surprised at his coming the first day—for all the good she +had ever got from him? As the lady continued to hold her +attention Paul turned from her with a strange irritation in his +complicated artistic soul and a sort of disinterested +disappointment. She was so happy that it was almost +stupid—a disproof of the extraordinary intelligence he had +formerly found in her. Didn’t she know how bad St. +George could be, hadn’t she recognised the awful +thinness—? If she didn’t she was nothing, and +if she did why such an insolence of serenity? This question +expired as our young man’s eyes settled at last on the +genius who had advised him in a great crisis. St. George +was still before the chimney-piece, but now he was +alone—fixed, waiting, as if he meant to stop after every +one—and he met the clouded gaze of the young friend so +troubled as to the degree of his right (the right his resentment +would have enjoyed) to regard himself as a victim. Somehow +the ravage of the question was checked by the Master’s +radiance. It was as fine in its way as Marian +Fancourt’s, it denoted the happy human being; but also it +represented to Paul Overt that the author of +“Shadowmere” had now definitely ceased to +count—ceased to count as a writer. As he smiled a +welcome across the place he was almost banal, was almost +smug. Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make a +movement, as if for all the world he <i>had</i> his bad +conscience; then they had already met in the middle of the room +and had shaken hands—expressively, cordially on St. +George’s part. With which they had passed back +together to where the elder man had been standing, while St. +George said: “I hope you’re never going away +again. I’ve been dining here; the General told +me.” He was handsome, he was young, he looked as if +he had still a great fund of life. He bent the friendliest, +most unconfessing eyes on his disciple of a couple of years +before; asked him about everything, his health, his plans, his +late occupations, the new book. “When will it be +out—soon, soon, I hope? Splendid, eh? +That’s right; you’re a comfort, you’re a +luxury! I’ve read you all over again these last six +months.” Paul waited to see if he would tell him what +the General had told him in the afternoon and what Miss Fancourt, +verbally at least, of course hadn’t. But as it +didn’t come out he at last put the question.</p> +<p>“Is it true, the great news I hear—that +you’re to be married?”</p> +<p>“Ah you have heard it then?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t the General tell you?” Paul +asked.</p> +<p>The Master’s face was wonderful. “Tell me +what?”</p> +<p>“That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, I don’t remember. +We’ve been in the midst of people. I’m sorry, +in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing to +you a fact that touches me so nearly. It <i>is</i> a fact, +strange as it may appear. It has only just become +one. Isn’t it ridiculous?” St. George +made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so far +as our friend could judge, without latent impudence. It +struck his interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, +he must simply have forgotten what had passed between them. +His next words, however, showed he hadn’t, and they +produced, as an appeal to Paul’s own memory, an effect +which would have been ludicrous if it hadn’t been +cruel. “Do you recall the talk we had at my house +that night, into which Miss Fancourt’s name entered? +I’ve often thought of it since.”</p> +<p>“Yes; no wonder you said what you did”—Paul +was careful to meet his eyes.</p> +<p>“In the light of the present occasion? Ah but +there was no light then. How could I have foreseen this +hour?”</p> +<p>“Didn’t you think it probable?”</p> +<p>“Upon my honour, no,” said Henry St. George. +“Certainly I owe you that assurance. Think how my +situation has changed.”</p> +<p>“I see—I see,” our young man murmured.</p> +<p>His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been +broached, he was, as a person of imagination and tact, quite +ready to give every satisfaction—being both by his genius +and his method so able to enter into everything another might +feel. “But it’s not only that; for honestly, at +my age, I never dreamed—a widower with big boys and with so +little else! It has turned out differently from anything +one could have dreamed, and I’m fortunate beyond all +measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents. +Better than any one else perhaps—for I remember how you +liked her before you went away, and how she liked you—you +can intelligently congratulate me.”</p> +<p>“She has been so free!” Those words made a +great impression on Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that +irony in them as to which it so little mattered whether it was +designed or casual. Of course she had been free, and +appreciably perhaps by his own act; for wasn’t the +Master’s allusion to her having liked him a part of the +irony too? “I thought that by your theory you +disapproved of a writer’s marrying.”</p> +<p>“Surely—surely. But you don’t call me +a writer?”</p> +<p>“You ought to be ashamed,” said Paul.</p> +<p>“Ashamed of marrying again?”</p> +<p>“I won’t say that—but ashamed of your +reasons.”</p> +<p>The elder man beautifully smiled. “You must let me +judge of them, my good friend.”</p> +<p>“Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of +mine.”</p> +<p>The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, to +suggest the unsuspected. He stared as if divining a +bitterness. “Don’t you think I’ve been +straight?”</p> +<p>“You might have told me at the time perhaps.”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, when I say I couldn’t pierce +futurity—!”</p> +<p>“I mean afterwards.”</p> +<p>The Master wondered. “After my wife’s +death?”</p> +<p>“When this idea came to you.”</p> +<p>“Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and +precious as you are.”</p> +<p>Poor Overt looked hard at him. “Are you marrying +Miss Fancourt to save me?”</p> +<p>“Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure. I +shall be the making of you,” St. George smiled. +“I was greatly struck, after our talk, with the brave +devoted way you quitted the country, and still more perhaps with +your force of character in remaining abroad. You’re +very strong—you’re wonderfully strong.”</p> +<p>Paul tried to sound his shining eyes; the strange thing was +that he seemed sincere—not a mocking fiend. He turned +away, and as he did so heard the Master say something about his +giving them all the proof, being the joy of his old age. He +faced him again, taking another look. “Do you mean to +say you’ve stopped writing?”</p> +<p>“My dear fellow, of course I have. It’s too +late. Didn’t I tell you?”</p> +<p>“I can’t believe it!”</p> +<p>“Of course you can’t—with your own +talent! No, no; for the rest of my life I shall only read +<i>you</i>.”</p> +<p>“Does she know that—Miss Fancourt?”</p> +<p>“She will—she will.” Did he mean this, +our young man wondered, as a covert intimation that the +assistance he should derive from that young lady’s fortune, +moderate as it was, would make the difference of putting it in +his power to cease to work ungratefully an exhausted vein? +Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his successful +manhood, he didn’t suggest that any of his veins were +exhausted. “Don’t you remember the moral I +offered myself to you that night as pointing?” St. George +continued. “Consider at any rate the warning I am at +present.”</p> +<p>This was too much—he <i>was</i> the mocking fiend. +Paul turned from him with a mere nod for good-night and the sense +in a sore heart that he might come back to him and his easy +grace, his fine way of arranging things, some time in the far +future, but couldn’t fraternise with him now. It was +necessary to his soreness to believe for the hour in the +intensity of his grievance—all the more cruel for its not +being a legal one. It was doubtless in the attitude of +hugging this wrong that he descended the stairs without taking +leave of Miss Fancourt, who hadn’t been in view at the +moment he quitted the room. He was glad to get out into the +honest dusky unsophisticating night, to move fast, to take his +way home on foot. He walked a long time, going astray, +paying no attention. He was thinking of too many other +things. His steps recovered their direction, however, and +at the end of an hour he found himself before his door in the +small inexpensive empty street. He lingered, questioning +himself still before going in, with nothing around and above him +but moonless blackness, a bad lamp or two and a few far-away dim +stars. To these last faint features he raised his eyes; he +had been saying to himself that he should have been +“sold” indeed, diabolically sold, if now, on his new +foundation, at the end of a year, St. George were to put forth +something of his prime quality—something of the type of +“Shadowmere” and finer than his finest. Greatly +as he admired his talent Paul literally hoped such an incident +wouldn’t occur; it seemed to him just then that he +shouldn’t be able to bear it. His late +adviser’s words were still in his +ears—“You’re very strong, wonderfully +strong.” Was he really? Certainly he would have +to be, and it might a little serve for revenge. <i>Is</i> +he? the reader may ask in turn, if his interest has followed the +perplexed young man so far. The best answer to that perhaps +is that he’s doing his best, but that it’s too soon +to say. When the new book came out in the autumn Mr. and +Mrs. St. George found it really magnificent. The former +still has published nothing but Paul doesn’t even yet feel +safe. I may say for him, however, that if this event were +to occur he would really be the very first to appreciate it: +which is perhaps a proof that the Master was essentially right +and that Nature had dedicated him to intellectual, not to +personal passion.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LESSON OF THE MASTER***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 898-h.htm or 898-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/8/9/898 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from 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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