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diff --git a/old/tlotm10.txt b/old/tlotm10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d409d28 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tlotm10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3071 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lesson of the Master by James +#13 in our series by Henry James + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +The Lesson of the Master by Henry James +Scanned and proofed by David Price +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +The Lesson of the Master + + + + +He had been told the ladies were at church, but this was corrected +by what he saw from the top of the steps - they descended from a +great height in two arms, with a circular sweep of the most +charming effect - at the threshold of the door which, from the long +bright gallery, overlooked the immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on +the grass, at a distance, sat under the great trees, while the +fourth figure showed a crimson dress that told as a "bit of colour" +amid the fresh rich green. The servant had so far accompanied Paul +Overt as to introduce him to this view, after asking him if he +wished first to go to his room. The young man declined that +privilege, conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a +journey and always liking to take at once a general perceptive +possession of a new scene. He stood there a little with his eyes +on the group and on the admirable picture, the wide grounds of an +old country-house near London - that only made it better - on a +splendid Sunday in June. "But that lady, who's SHE?" he said to +the servant before the man left him. + +"I think she's Mrs. St. George, sir." + +"Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished - " Then Paul +Overt checked himself, doubting if a footman would know. + +"Yes, sir - probably, sir," said his guide, who appeared to wish to +intimate that a person staying at Summersoft would naturally be, if +only by alliance, distinguished. His tone, however, made poor +Overt himself feel for the moment scantly so. + +"And the gentlemen?" Overt went on. + +"Well, sir, one of them's General Fancourt." + +"Ah yes, I know; thank you." General Fancourt was distinguished, +there was no doubt of that, for something he had done, or perhaps +even hadn't done - the young man couldn't remember which - some +years before in India. The servant went away, leaving the glass +doors open into the gallery, and Paul Overt remained at the head of +the wide double staircase, saying to himself that the place was +sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while he leaned on the +balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the other details, +was of the same period as the house. It all went together and +spoke in one voice - a rich English voice of the early part of the +eighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer's +day in the reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be +modern, the nearness counted so as distance, and there was +something so fresh and sound in the originality of the large smooth +house, the expanse of beautiful brickwork that showed for pink +rather than red and that had been kept clear of messy creepers by +the law under which a woman with a rare complexion disdains a veil. +When Paul Overt became aware that the people under the trees had +noticed him he turned back through the open doors into the great +gallery which was the pride of the place. It marched across from +end to end and seemed - with its bright colours, its high panelled +windows, its faded flowered chintzes, its quickly-recognised +portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china of its cabinets +and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling - a +cheerful upholstered avenue into the other century. + +Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character as a +student of fine prose, went with the artist's general disposition +to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that +Henry St. George might be a member of the party. For the young +aspirant he had remained a high literary figure, in spite of the +lower range of production to which he had fallen after his first +three great successes, the comparative absence of quality in his +later work. There had been moments when Paul Overt almost shed +tears for this; but now that he was near him - he had never met him +- he was conscious only of the fine original source and of his own +immense debt. After he had taken a turn or two up and down the +gallery he came out again and descended the steps. He was but +slenderly supplied with a certain social boldness - it was really a +weakness in him - so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with +the four persons in the distance, he gave way to motions +recommended by their not committing him to a positive approach. +There was a fine English awkwardness in this - he felt that too as +he sauntered vaguely and obliquely across the lawn, taking an +independent line. Fortunately there was an equally fine English +directness in the way one of the gentlemen presently rose and made +as if to "stalk" him, though with an air of conciliation and +reassurance. To this demonstration Paul Overt instantly responded, +even if the gentleman were not his host. He was tall, straight and +elderly and had, like the great house itself, a pink smiling face, +and into the bargain a white moustache. Our young man met him +halfway while he laughed and said: "Er - Lady Watermouth told us +you were coming; she asked me just to look after you." Paul Overt +thanked him, liking him on the spot, and turned round with him to +walk toward the others. "They've all gone to church - all except +us," the stranger continued as they went; "we're just sitting here +- it's so jolly." Overt pronounced it jolly indeed: it was such a +lovely place. He mentioned that he was having the charming +impression for the first time. + +"Ah you've not been here before?" said his companion. "It's a nice +little place - not much to DO, you know". Overt wondered what he +wanted to "do" - he felt that he himself was doing so much. By the +time they came to where the others sat he had recognised his +initiator for a military man and - such was the turn of Overt's +imagination - had found him thus still more sympathetic. He would +naturally have a need for action, for deeds at variance with the +pacific pastoral scene. He was evidently so good-natured, however, +that he accepted the inglorious hour for what it was worth. Paul +Overt shared it with him and with his companions for the next +twenty minutes; the latter looked at him and he looked at them +without knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without +much telling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean +nothing in particular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses +and short terrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places - +names which, for our friend, had no great power of evocation. It +was all sociable and slow, as was right and natural of a warm +Sunday morning. + +His first attention was given to the question, privately +considered, of whether one of the two younger men would be Henry +St. George. He knew many of his distinguished contemporaries by +their photographs, but had never, as happened, seen a portrait of +the great misguided novelist. One of the gentlemen was +unimaginable - he was too young; and the other scarcely looked +clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating eyes. If those eyes +were St. George's the problem, presented by the ill-matched parts +of his genius would be still more difficult of solution. Besides, +the deportment of their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in +the red dress, such as could be natural, toward the wife of his +bosom, even to a writer accused by several critics of sacrificing +too much to manner. Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if +the gentleman with the expressionless eyes bore the name that had +set his heart beating faster (he also had contradictory +conventional whiskers - the young admirer of the celebrity had +never in a mental vision seen HIS face in so vulgar a frame) he +would have given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, +would have heard of him a little, would know something about +"Ginistrella," would have an impression of how that fresh fiction +had caught the eye of real criticism. Paul Overt had a dread of +being grossly proud, but even morbid modesty might view the +authorship of "Ginistrella" as constituting a degree of identity. +His soldierly friend became clear enough: he was "Fancourt," but +was also "the General"; and he mentioned to the new visitor in the +course of a few moments that he had but lately returned from twenty +years service abroad. + +"And now you remain in England?" the young man asked. + +"Oh yes; I've bought a small house in London." + +"And I hope you like it," said Overt, looking at Mrs. St. George. + +"Well, a little house in Manchester Square - there's a limit to the +enthusiasm THAT inspires." + +"Oh I meant being at home again - being back in Piccadilly." + +"My daughter likes Piccadilly - that's the main thing. She's very +fond of art and music and literature and all that kind of thing. +She missed it in India and she finds it in London, or she hopes +she'll find it. Mr. St. George has promised to help her - he has +been awfully kind to her. She has gone to church - she's fond of +that too - but they'll all be back in a quarter of an hour. You +must let me introduce you to her - she'll be so glad to know you. +I dare say she has read every blest word you've written." + +"I shall be delighted - I haven't written so very many," Overt +pleaded, feeling, and without resentment, that the General at least +was vagueness itself about that. But he wondered a little why, +expressing this friendly disposition, it didn't occur to the +doubtless eminent soldier to pronounce the word that would put him +in relation with Mrs. St. George. If it was a question of +introductions Miss Fancourt - apparently as yet unmarried - was far +away, while the wife of his illustrious confrere was almost between +them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty, with a +surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, something +that - he could scarcely have said why - served for mystification. +St. George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he +himself would never have imagined the important little woman in the +aggressively Parisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of +a man of letters. That partner in general, he knew, that second +self, was far from presenting herself in a single type: +observation had taught him that she was not inveterately, not +necessarily plain. But he had never before seen her look so much +as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than an ink-spotted +study-table littered with proof-sheets. Mrs. St. George might have +been the wife of a gentleman who "kept" books rather than wrote +them, who carried on great affairs in the City and made better +bargains than those that poets mostly make with publishers. With +this she hinted at a success more personal - a success peculiarly +stamping the age in which society, the world of conversation, is a +great drawing-room with the City for its antechamber. Overt +numbered her years at first as some thirty, and then ended by +believing that she might approach her fiftieth. But she somehow in +this case juggled away the excess and the difference - you only saw +them in a rare glimpse, like the rabbit in the conjurer's sleeve. +She was extraordinarily white, and her every element and item was +pretty; her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, her +feet - to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave a +great publicity - and the numerous ribbons and trinkets with which +she was bedecked. She looked as if she had put on her best clothes +to go to church and then had decided they were too good for that +and had stayed at home. She told a story of some length about the +shabby way Lady Jane had treated the Duchess, as well as an +anecdote in relation to a purchase she had made in Paris - on her +way back from Cannes; made for Lady Egbert, who had never refunded +the money. Paul Overt suspected her of a tendency to figure great +people as larger than life, until he noticed the manner in which +she handled Lady Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous that it +reassured him. He felt he should have understood her better if he +might have met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at him. +"Ah here they come - all the good ones!" she said at last; and Paul +Overt admired at his distance the return of the church-goers - +several persons, in couples and threes, advancing in a flicker of +sun and shade at the end of a large green vista formed by the level +grass and the overarching boughs. + +"If you mean to imply that WE'RE bad, I protest," said one of the +gentlemen - "after making one's self agreeable all the morning!" + +"Ah if they've found you agreeable - !" Mrs. St. George gaily +cried. "But if we're good the others are better." + +"They must be angels then," said the amused General. + +"Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding," +the gentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George. + +"At my bidding?" + +"Didn't you make him go to church?" + +"I never made him do anything in my life but once - when I made him +burn up a bad book. That's all!" At her "That's all!" our young +friend broke into an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, +but it drew her eyes to him. His own met them, though not long +enough to help him to understand her; unless it were a step towards +this that he saw on the instant how the burnt book - the way she +alluded to it! - would have been one of her husband's finest +things. + +"A bad book?" her interlocutor repeated. + +"I didn't like it. He went to church because your daughter went," +she continued to General Fancourt. "I think it my duty to call +your attention to his extraordinary demonstrations to your +daughter." + +"Well, if you don't mind them I don't," the General laughed. + +"Il s'attache e ses pas. But I don't wonder - she's so charming." + +"I hope she won't make him burn any books!" Paul Overt ventured to +exclaim. + +"If she'd make him write a few it would be more to the purpose," +said Mrs. St. George. "He has been of a laziness of late - !" + +Our young man stared - he was so struck with the lady's +phraseology. Her "Write a few" seemed to him almost as good as her +"That's all." Didn't she, as the wife of a rare artist, know what +it was to produce one perfect work of art? How in the world did +she think they were turned on? His private conviction was that, +admirably as Henry St. George wrote, he had written for the last +ten years, and especially for the last five, only too much, and +there was an instant during which he felt inwardly solicited to +make this public. But before he had spoken a diversion was +effected by the return of the absentees. They strolled up +dispersedly - there were eight or ten of them - and the circle +under the trees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. +They made it much larger, so that Paul Overt could feel - he was +always feeling that sort of thing, as he said to himself - that if +the company had already been interesting to watch the interest +would now become intense. He shook hands with his hostess, who +welcomed him without many words, in the manner of a woman able to +trust him to understand and conscious that so pleasant an occasion +would in every way speak for itself. She offered him no particular +facility for sitting by her, and when they had all subsided again +he found himself still next General Fancourt, with an unknown lady +on his other flank. + +"That's my daughter - that one opposite," the General said to him +without lose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red +hair, in a dress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken +texture, a garment that clearly shirked every modern effect. It +had therefore somehow the stamp of the latest thing, so that our +beholder quickly took her for nothing if not contemporaneous. + +"She's very handsome - very handsome," he repeated while he +considered her. There was something noble in her head, and she +appeared fresh and strong. + +Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: +"She looks too hot - that's her walk. But she'll be all right +presently. Then I'll make her come over and speak to you." + +"I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were to take +me over THERE - !" the young man murmured. + +"My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don't +mean for you, but for Marian," the General added. + +"I would put myself out for her soon enough," Overt replied; after +which he went on: "Will you be so good as to tell me which of +those gentlemen is Henry St. George?" + +"The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he IS making up to her - +they're going off for another walk." + +"Ah is that he - really?" Our friend felt a certain surprise, for +the personage before him seemed to trouble a vision which had been +vague only while not confronted with the reality. As soon as the +reality dawned the mental image, retiring with a sigh, became +substantial enough to suffer a slight wrong. Overt, who had spent +a considerable part of his short life in foreign lands, made now, +but not for the first time, the reflexion that whereas in those +countries he had almost always recognised the artist and the man of +letters by his personal "type," the mould of his face, the +character of his head, the expression of his figure and even the +indications of his dress, so in England this identification was as +little as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater +conformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead of +advertising it, the general diffusion of the air of the gentleman - +the gentleman committed to no particular set of ideas. More than +once, on returning to his own country, he had said to himself about +people met in society: "One sees them in this place and that, and +one even talks with them; but to find out what they DO one would +really have to be a detective." In respect to several individuals +whose work he was the opposite of "drawn to" - perhaps he was wrong +- he found himself adding "No wonder they conceal it - when it's so +bad!" He noted that oftener than in France and in Germany his +artist looked like a gentleman - that is like an English one - +while, certainly outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn't +look like an artist. St. George was not one of the exceptions; +that circumstance he definitely apprehended before the great man +had turned his back to walk off with Miss Fancourt. He certainly +looked better behind than any foreign man of letters - showed for +beautifully correct in his tall black hat and his superior frock +coat. Somehow, all the same, these very garments - he wouldn't +have minded them so much on a weekday - were disconcerting to Paul +Overt, who forgot for the moment that the head of the profession +was not a bit better dressed than himself. He had caught a glimpse +of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustache and a pair of +eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promised himself +to study these denotements on the first occasion. His superficial +sense was that their owner might have passed for a lucky +stockbroker - a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a +sanitary suburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the +impression already derived from his wife. Paul's glance, after a +moment, travelled back to this lady, and he saw how her own had +followed her husband as he moved off with Miss Fancourt. Overt +permitted himself to wonder a little if she were jealous when +another woman took him away. Then he made out that Mrs. St. George +wasn't glaring at the indifferent maiden. Her eyes rested but on +her husband, and with unmistakeable serenity. That was the way she +wanted him to be - she liked his conventional uniform. Overt +longed to hear more about the book she had induced him to destroy. + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +As they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of +him with an "I say, I want you to know my girl!" as if the idea had +just occurred to him and he hadn't spoken of it before. With the +other hand he possessed himself all paternally of the young lady. +"You know all about him. I've seen you with his books. She reads +everything - everything!" he went on to Paul. The girl smiled at +him and then laughed at her father. The General turned away and +his daughter spoke - "Isn't papa delightful?" + +"He is indeed, Miss Fancourt." + +"As if I read you because I read 'everything'!" + +"Oh I don't mean for saying that," said Paul Overt. "I liked him +from the moment he began to be kind to me. Then he promised me +this privilege." + +"It isn't for you he means it - it's for me. If you flatter +yourself that he thinks of anything in life but me you'll find +you're mistaken. He introduces every one. He thinks me +insatiable." + +"You speak just like him," laughed our youth. + +"Ah but sometimes I want to" - and the girl coloured. "I don't +read everything - I read very little. But I HAVE read you." + +"Suppose we go into the gallery," said Paul Overt. She pleased him +greatly, not so much because of this last remark - though that of +course was not too disconcerting - as because, seated opposite to +him at luncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression +of her beautiful face. Something else had come with it - a sense +of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike many enthusiasms, was +not all manner. That was not spoiled for him by his seeing that +the repast had placed her again in familiar contact with Henry St. +George. Sitting next her this celebrity was also opposite our +young man, who had been able to note that he multiplied the +attentions lately brought by his wife to the General's notice. +Paul Overt had gathered as well that this lady was not in the least +discomposed by these fond excesses and that she gave every sign of +an unclouded spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on +the other the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high- +class lively evening paper which was expected to meet a want felt +in circles increasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made +amusing, and unconvinced when assured by those of another political +colour that it was already amusing enough. At the end of an hour +spent in her company Paul Overt thought her still prettier than at +the first radiation, and if her profane allusions to her husband's +work had not still rung in his ears he should have liked her - so +far as it could be a question of that in connexion with a woman to +whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably he should never +speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clear need to +this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied the +want. If Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion was +now of the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man +as important. He saw more in St. George's face, which he liked the +better for its not having told its whole story in the first three +minutes. That story came out as one read, in short instalments - +it was excusable that one's analogies should be somewhat +professional - and the text was a style considerably involved, a +language not easy to translate at sight. There were shades of +meaning in it and a vague perspective of history which receded as +you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. The first +of these was that he liked the measured mask much better at +inscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive +smile above all displeased him (as much as any impression from that +source could), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in +proportion as stillness settled again. The change to the +expression of gaiety excited, he made out, very much the private +protest of a person sitting gratefully in the twilight when the +lamp is brought in too soon. His second reflexion was that, though +generally averse to the flagrant use of ingratiating arts by a man +of age "making up" to a pretty girl, he was not in this case too +painfully affected: which seemed to prove either that St. George +had a light hand or the air of being younger than he was, or else +that Miss Fancourt's own manner somehow made everything right. + +Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the +end of it, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming +vista, which harmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, +resembling it by a long brightness, with great divans and old +chairs that figured hours of rest. Such a place as that had the +added merit of giving those who came into it plenty to talk about. +Miss Fancourt sat down with her new acquaintance on a flowered +sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous, were tight ancient +cubes of many sizes, and presently said: "I'm so glad to have a +chance to thank you." + +"To thank me - ?" He had to wonder. + +"I liked your book so much. I think it splendid." + +She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book +she meant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed +a vulgar detail, and he wasn't even gratified by the idea of the +pleasure she told him - her handsome bright face told him - he had +given her. The feeling she appealed to, or at any rate the feeling +she excited, was something larger, something that had little to do +with any quickened pulsation of his own vanity. It was responsive +admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness +of which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble THAT, +to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to +have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink- +stained table. While her grey eyes rested on him - there was a +wideish space between these, and the division of her rich-coloured +hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a free arch +above them - he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen +which it was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious +he should have liked better to please her in some other way. The +lines of her face were those of a woman grown, but the child +lingered on in her complexion and in the sweetness of her mouth. +Above all she was natural - that was indubitable now; more natural +than he had supposed at first, perhaps on account of her aesthetic +toggery, which was conventionally unconventional, suggesting what +he might have called a tortuous spontaneity. He had feared that +sort of thing in other cases, and his fears had been justified; +for, though he was an artist to the essence, the modern reactionary +nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught in her folds and a +look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made him shrink not +as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a man potentially +himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really more candid +than her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing her +liberal character suited by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since +if she was draped as a pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of +life. He thanked her for her appreciation - aware at the same time +that he didn't appear to thank her enough and that she might think +him ungracious. He was afraid she would ask him to explain +something he had written, and he always winced at that - perhaps +too timidly - for to his own ear the explanation of a work of art +sounded fatuous. But he liked her so much as to feel a confidence +that in the long run he should be able to show her he wasn't rudely +evasive. Moreover she surely wasn't quick to take offence, wasn't +irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he said to her, +"Ah don't talk of anything I've done, don't talk of it HERE; +there's another man in the house who's the actuality!" - when he +uttered this short sincere protest it was with the sense that she +would see in the words neither mock humility nor the impatience of +a successful man bored with praise. + +"You mean Mr. St. George - isn't he delightful?" + +Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would +have half-broken his heart if he hadn't been so young. "Alas I +don't know him. I only admire him at a distance." + +"Oh you must know him - he wants so to talk to you," returned Miss +Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by +her quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how +she would always calculate on everything's being simple between +others. + +"I shouldn't have supposed he knew anything about me," he +professed. + +"He does then - everything. And if he didn't I should be able to +tell him." + +"To tell him everything?" our friend smiled. + +"You talk just like the people in your book!" she answered. + +"Then they must all talk alike." + +She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. "Well, it must be so +difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it IS - terribly. I've tried +too - and I find it so. I've tried to write a novel." + +"Mr. St. George oughtn't to discourage you," Paul went so far as to +say. + +"You do much more - when you wear that expression." + +"Well, after all, why try to be an artist?" the young man pursued. +"It's so poor - so poor!" + +"I don't know what you mean," said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave. + +"I mean as compared with being a person of action - as living your +works." + +"But what's art but an intense life - if it be real?" she asked. +"I think it's the only one - everything else is so clumsy!" Her +companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity +what next struck her. "It's so interesting to meet so many +celebrated people." + +"So I should think - but surely it isn't new to you." + +"Why I've never seen any one - any one: living always in Asia." + +The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. "But doesn't +that continent swarm with great figures? Haven't you administered +provinces in India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes +chained to your car?" + +It was as if she didn't care even SHOULD he amuse himself at her +cost. "I was with my father, after I left school to go out there. +It was delightful being with him - we're alone together in the +world, he and I - but there was none of the society I like best. +One never heard of a picture - never of a book, except bad ones." + +"Never of a picture? Why, wasn't all life a picture?" + +She looked over the delightful place where they sat. "Nothing to +compare to this. I adore England!" she cried. + +It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. "Ah of course I don't +deny that we must do something with her, poor old dear, yet." + +"She hasn't been touched, really," said the girl. + +"Did Mr. St. George say that?" + +There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony in his +question; which, however, she answered very simply, not noticing +the insinuation. "Yes, he says England hasn't been touched - not +considering all there is," she went on eagerly. "He's so +interesting about our country. To listen to him makes one want so +to do something." + +"It would make ME want to," said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on +the instant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the +emotion with which she said it, and well aware of what an +incentive, on St. George's lips, such a speech might be. + +"Oh you - as if you hadn't! I should like so to hear you talk +together," she added ardently. + +"That's very genial of you; but he'd have it all his own way. I'm +prostrate before him." + +She had an air of earnestness. "Do you think then he's so +perfect?" + +"Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness - +!" + +"Yes, yes - he knows that." + +Paul Overt stared. "That they seem to me of a queerness - !" + +"Well yes, or at any rate that they're not what they should be. He +told me he didn't esteem them. He has told me such wonderful +things - he's so interesting." + +There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the +fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a +confession and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for +though Miss Fancourt was charming what was she after all but an +immature girl encountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this +was part of the sentiment he himself had just expressed: he would +make way completely for the poor peccable great man not because he +didn't read him clear, but altogether because he did. His +consideration was half composed of tenderness for superficialities +which he was sure their perpetrator judged privately, judged more +ferociously than any one, and which represented some tragic +intellectual secret. He would have his reasons for his psychology +e fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruel ones, such +as would make him dearer to those who already were fond of him. +"You excite my envy. I have my reserves, I discriminate - but I +love him," Paul said in a moment. "And seeing him for the first +time this way is a great event for me." + +"How momentous - how magnificent!" cried the girl. "How delicious +to bring you together!" + +"Your doing it - that makes it perfect," our friend returned. + +"He's as eager as you," she went on. "But it's so odd you +shouldn't have met." + +"It's not really so odd as it strikes you. I've been out of +England so much - made repeated absences all these last years." + +She took this in with interest. "And yet you write of it as well +as if you were always here." + +"It's just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I +suspect, are those that were done in dreary places abroad." + +"And why were they dreary?" + +"Because they were health-resorts - where my poor mother was +dying." + +"Your poor mother?" - she was all sweet wonder. + +"We went from place to place to help her to get better. But she +never did. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high Alps, to +Algiers, and far away - a hideous journey - to Colorado." + +"And she isn't better?" Miss Fancourt went on. + +"She died a year ago." + +"Really? - like mine! Only that's years since. Some day you must +tell me about your mother," she added. + +He could at first, on this, only gaze at her. "What right things +you say! If you say them to St. George I don't wonder he's in +bondage." + +It pulled her up for a moment. "I don't know what you mean. He +doesn't make speeches and professions at all - he isn't +ridiculous." + +"I'm afraid you consider then that I am." + +"No, I don't" - she spoke it rather shortly. And then she added: +"He understands - understands everything." + +The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: "And I don't - +is that it?" But these words, in time, changed themselves to +others slightly less trivial: "Do you suppose he understands his +wife?" + +Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment's +hesitation put it: "Isn't she charming?" + +"Not in the least!" + +"Here he comes. Now you must know him," she went on. A small +group of visitors had gathered at the other end of the gallery and +had been there overtaken by Henry St. George, who strolled in from +a neighbouring room. He stood near them a moment, not falling into +the talk but taking up an old miniature from a table and vaguely +regarding it. At the end of a minute he became aware of Miss +Fancourt and her companion in the distance; whereupon, laying down +his miniature, he approached them with the same procrastinating +air, his hands in his pockets and his eyes turned, right and left, +to the pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took +some little time, especially as there was a moment when he stopped +to admire the fine Gainsborough. "He says Mrs. St. George has been +the making of him," the girl continued in a voice slightly lowered. + +"Ah he's often obscure!" Paul laughed. + +"Obscure?" she repeated as if she heard it for the first time. Her +eyes rested on her other friend, and it wasn't lost upon Paul that +they appeared to send out great shafts of softness. "He's going to +speak to us!" she fondly breathed. There was a sort of rapture in +her voice, and our friend was startled. "Bless my soul, does she +care for him like THAT? - is she in love with him?" he mentally +enquired. "Didn't I tell you he was eager?" she had meanwhile +asked of him. + +"It's eagerness dissimulated," the young man returned as the +subject of their observation lingered before his Gainsborough. "He +edges toward us shyly. Does he mean that she saved him by burning +that book?" + +"That book? what book did she burn?" The girl quickly turned her +face to him. + +"Hasn't he told you then?" + +"Not a word." + +"Then he doesn't tell you everything!" Paul had guessed that she +pretty much supposed he did. The great man had now resumed his +course and come nearer; in spite of which his more qualified +admirer risked a profane observation: "St. George and the Dragon +is what the anecdote suggests!" + +His companion, however, didn't hear it; she smiled at the dragon's +adversary. "He IS eager - he is!" she insisted. + +"Eager for you - yes." + +But meanwhile she had called out: "I'm sure you want to know Mr. +Overt. You'll be great friends, and it will always be delightful +to me to remember I was here when you first met and that I had +something to do with it." + +There was a freshness of intention in the words that carried them +off; nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St. George, as +he was sorry at any time for any person publicly invited to be +responsive and delightful. He would have been so touched to +believe that a man he deeply admired should care a straw for him +that he wouldn't play with such a presumption if it were possibly +vain. In a single glance of the eye of the pardonable Master he +read - having the sort of divination that belonged to his talent - +that this personage had ever a store of friendly patience, which +was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printed page of a +rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in +that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could +one have liked him any more for a perception which must at the best +have been vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, +but at the same instant he found himself encompassed by St. +George's happy personal art - a manner of which it was the essence +to conjure away false positions. It all took place in a moment. +Paul was conscious that he knew him now, conscious of his handshake +and of the very quality of his hand; of his face, seen nearer and +consequently seen better, of a general fraternising assurance, and +in particular of the circumstance that St. George didn't dislike +him (as yet at least) for being imposed by a charming but too +gushing girl, attractive enough without such danglers. No +irritation at any rate was reflected in the voice with which he +questioned Miss Fancourt as to some project of a walk - a general +walk of the company round the park. He had soon said something to +Paul about a talk - "We must have a tremendous lot of talk; there +are so many things, aren't there?" - but our friend could see this +idea wouldn't in the present case take very immediate effect. All +the same he was extremely happy, even after the matter of the walk +had been settled - the three presently passed back to the other +part of the gallery, where it was discussed with several members of +the party; even when, after they had all gone out together, he +found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St. George. Her +husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and this pair +were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for a +summer afternoon - a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting +the limit of the park within. The park was completely surrounded +by its old mottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on +their left, constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. St. +George mentioned to him the surprising number of acres thus +enclosed, together with numerous other facts relating to the +property and the family, and the family's other properties: she +couldn't too strongly urge on him the importance of seeing their +other houses. She ran over the names of these and rang the changes +on them with the facility of practice, making them appear an almost +endless list. She had received Paul Overt very amiably on his +breaking ground with her by the mention of his joy in having just +made her husband's acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and so +accommodating a little woman that he was rather ashamed of his MOT +about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred +other people, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make +it. He got on with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he +expected; but this didn't prevent her suddenly becoming aware that +she was faint with fatigue and must take her way back to the house +by the shortest cut. She professed that she hadn't the strength of +a kitten and was a miserable wreck; a character he had been too +preoccupied to discern in her while he wondered in what sense she +could be held to have been the making of her husband. He had +arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announced that she +must leave him, though this perception was of course provisional. +While he was in the very act of placing himself at her disposal for +the return the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham had +suddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging +from the shrubbery - Overt could scarcely have said how he appeared +- and Mrs. St. George had protested that she wanted to be left +alone and not to break up the party. A moment later she was +walking off with Lord Masham. Our friend fell back and joined Lady +Watermouth, to whom he presently mentioned that Mrs. St. George had +been obliged to renounce the attempt to go further. + +"She oughtn't to have come out at all," her ladyship rather +grumpily remarked. + +"Is she so very much of an invalid?" + +"Very bad indeed." And his hostess added with still greater +austerity: "She oughtn't really to come to one!" He wondered what +was implied by this, and presently gathered that it was not a +reflexion on the lady's conduct or her moral nature: it only +represented that her strength was not equal to her aspirations. + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +The smoking-room at Summersoft was on the scale of the rest of the +place; high light commodious and decorated with such refined old +carvings and mouldings that it seemed rather a bower for ladies who +should sit at work at fading crewels than a parliament of gentlemen +smoking strong cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in +considerable force on the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one +end, in front of one of the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, +the entablature of which was adorned with a delicate little Italian +"subject." There was another in the wall that faced it, and, +thanks to the mild summer night, a fire in neither; but a nucleus +for aggregation was furnished on one side by a table in the +chimney-corner laden with bottles, decanters and tall tumblers. +Paul Overt was a faithless smoker; he would puff a cigarette for +reasons with which tobacco had nothing to do. This was +particularly the case on the occasion of which I speak; his motive +was the vision of a little direct talk with Henry St. George. The +"tremendous" communion of which the great man had held out hopes to +him earlier in the day had not yet come off, and this saddened him +considerably, for the party was to go its several ways immediately +after breakfast on the morrow. He had, however, the disappointment +of finding that apparently the author of "Shadowmere" was not +disposed to prolong his vigil. He wasn't among the gentlemen +assembled when Paul entered, nor was he one of those who turned up, +in bright habiliments, during the next ten minutes. The young man +waited a little, wondering if he had only gone to put on something +extraordinary; this would account for his delay as well as +contribute further to Overt's impression of his tendency to do the +approved superficial thing. But he didn't arrive - he must have +been putting on something more extraordinary than was probable. +Our hero gave him up, feeling a little injured, a little wounded, +at this loss of twenty coveted words. He wasn't angry, but he +puffed his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rare +possibly missed. He wandered away with his regret and moved slowly +round the room, looking at the old prints on the walls. In this +attitude he presently felt a hand on his shoulder and a friendly +voice in his ear "This is good. I hoped I should find you. I came +down on purpose." St. George was there without a change of dress +and with a fine face - his graver one - to which our young man all +in a flutter responded. He explained that it was only for the +Master - the idea of a little talk - that he had sat up, and that, +not finding him, he had been on the point of going to bed. + +"Well, you know, I don't smoke - my wife doesn't let me," said St. +George, looking for a place to sit down. "It's very good for me - +very good for me. Let us take that sofa." + +"Do you mean smoking's good for you?" + +"No no - her not letting me. It's a great thing to have a wife +who's so sure of all the things one can do without. One might +never find them out one's self. She doesn't allow me to touch a +cigarette." They took possession of a sofa at a distance from the +group of smokers, and St. George went on: "Have you got one +yourself?" + +"Do you mean a cigarette?" + +"Dear no - a wife." + +"No; and yet I'd give up my cigarette for one." + +"You'd give up a good deal more than that," St. George returned. +"However, you'd get a great deal in return. There's a something to +be said for wives," he added, folding his arms and crossing his +outstretched legs. He declined tobacco altogether and sat there +without returning fire. His companion stopped smoking, touched by +his courtesy; and after all they were out of the fumes, their sofa +was in a far-away corner. It would have been a mistake, St. George +went on, a great mistake for them to have separated without a +little chat; "for I know all about you," he said, "I know you're +very remarkable. You've written a very distinguished book." + +"And how do you know it?" Paul asked. + +"Why, my dear fellow, it's in the air, it's in the papers, it's +everywhere." St. George spoke with the immediate familiarity of a +confrere - a tone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of +the laurel. "You're on all men's lips and, what's better, on all +women's. And I've just been reading your book." + +"Just? You hadn't read it this afternoon," said Overt. + +"How do you know that?" + +"I think you should know how I know it," the young man laughed. + +"I suppose Miss Fancourt told you." + +"No indeed - she led me rather to suppose you had." + +"Yes - that's much more what she'd do. Doesn't she shed a rosy +glow over life? But you didn't believe her?" asked St. George. + +"No, not when you came to us there." + +"Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?" But without waiting for an +answer to this St. George went on: "You ought always to believe +such a girl as that - always, always. Some women are meant to be +taken with allowances and reserves; but you must take HER just as +she is." + +"I like her very much," said Paul Overt. + +Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion's part a +momentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of +deliberation attending this judgement. St. George broke into a +laugh to reply. "It's the best thing you can do with her. She's a +rare young lady! In point of fact, however, I confess I hadn't +read you this afternoon." + +"Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to +believe Miss Fancourt." + +"How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit by it?" + +"Do you wish to pass exactly for what she represents you? +Certainly you needn't be afraid," Paul said. + +"Ah, my dear young man, don't talk about passing - for the likes of +me! I'm passing away - nothing else than that. She has a better +use for her young imagination (isn't it fine?) than in +'representing' in any way such a weary wasted used-up animal!" The +Master spoke with a sudden sadness that produced a protest on +Paul's part; but before the protest could be uttered he went on, +reverting to the latter's striking novel: "I had no idea you were +so good - one hears of so many things. But you're surprisingly +good." + +"I'm going to be surprisingly better," Overt made bold to reply. + +"I see that, and it's what fetches me. I don't see so much else - +as one looks about - that's going to be surprisingly better. +They're going to be consistently worse - most of the things. It's +so much easier to be worse - heaven knows I've found it so. I'm +not in a great glow, you know, about what's breaking out all over +the place. But you MUST be better - you really must keep it up. I +haven't of course. It's very difficult - that's the devil of the +whole thing, keeping it up. But I see you'll be able to. It will +be a great disgrace if you don't." + +"It's very interesting to hear you speak of yourself; but I don't +know what you mean by your allusions to your having fallen off," +Paul Overt observed with pardonable hypocrisy. He liked his +companion so much now that the fact of any decline of talent or of +care had ceased for the moment to be vivid to him. + +"Don't say that - don't say that," St. George returned gravely, his +head resting on the top of the sofa-back and his eyes on the +ceiling. "You know perfectly what I mean. I haven't read twenty +pages of your book without seeing that you can't help it." + +"You make me very miserable," Paul ecstatically breathed. + +"I'm glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of warning. Shocking +enough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of faith +- the spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my age in +such dishonour." St. George, in the same contemplative attitude, +spoke softly but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. +His tone indeed suggested an impersonal lucidity that was +practically cruel - cruel to himself - and made his young friend +lay an argumentative hand on his arm. But he went on while his +eyes seemed to follow the graces of the eighteenth-century ceiling: +"Look at me well, take my lesson to heart - for it IS a lesson. +Let that good come of it at least that you shudder with your +pitiful impression, and that this may help to keep you straight in +the future. Don't become in your old age what I have in mine - the +depressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of false +gods!" + +"What do you mean by your old age?" the young man asked. + +"It has made me old. But I like your youth." + +Paul answered nothing - they sat for a minute in silence. They +heard the others going on about the governmental majority. Then +"What do you mean by false gods?" he enquired. + +His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, "The idols of +the market; money and luxury and 'the world;' placing one's +children and dressing one's wife; everything that drives one to the +short and easy way. Ah the vile things they make one do!" + +"But surely one's right to want to place one's children." + +"One has no business to have any children," St. George placidly +declared. "I mean of course if one wants to do anything good." + +"But aren't they an inspiration - an incentive?" + +"An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking." + +"You touch on very deep things - things I should like to discuss +with you," Paul said. "I should like you to tell me volumes about +yourself. This is a great feast for ME!" + +"Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you I'm still not +incapable, degraded as I am, of an act of faith, I'll tie my vanity +to the stake for you and burn it to ashes. You must come and see +me - you must come and see us," the Master quickly substituted. +"Mrs. St. George is charming; I don't know whether you've had any +opportunity to talk with her. She'll be delighted to see you; she +likes great celebrities, whether incipient or predominant. You +must come and dine - my wife will write to you. Where are you to +be found?" + +"This is my little address" - and Overt drew out his pocketbook and +extracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, however, he kept it +back, remarking that he wouldn't trouble his friend to take charge +of it but would come and see him straightway in London and leave it +at his door if he should fail to obtain entrance. + +"Ah you'll probably fail; my wife's always out - or when she isn't +out is knocked up from having been out. You must come and dine - +though that won't do much good either, for my wife insists on big +dinners." St. George turned it over further, but then went on: +"You must come down and see us in the country, that's the best way; +we've plenty of room, and it isn't bad." + +"You've a house in the country?" Paul asked enviously. + +"Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go to - an hour +from Euston. That's one of the reasons." + +"One of the reasons?" + +"Why my books are so bad." + +"You must tell me all the others!" Paul longingly laughed. + +His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again +abruptly. "Why have I never seen you before?" + +The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our hero, who +felt it to imply the great man's now perceiving he had for years +missed something. "Partly, I suppose, because there has been no +particular reason why you should see me. I haven't lived in the +world - in your world. I've spent many years out of England, in +different places abroad." + +"Well, please don't do it any more. You must do England - there's +such a lot of it." + +"Do you mean I must write about it?" and Paul struck the note of +the listening candour of a child. + +"Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you mind? That +takes off a little of my esteem for this thing of yours - that it +goes on abroad. Hang 'abroad!' Stay at home and do things here - +do subjects we can measure." + +"I'll do whatever you tell me," Overt said, deeply attentive. "But +pardon me if I say I don't understand how you've been reading my +book," he added. "I've had you before me all the afternoon, first +in that long walk, then at tea on the lawn, till we went to dress +for dinner, and all the evening at dinner and in this place." + +St. George turned his face about with a smile. "I gave it but a +quarter of an hour." + +"A quarter of an hour's immense, but I don't understand where you +put it in. In the drawing-room after dinner you weren't reading - +you were talking to Miss Fancourt." + +"It comes to the same thing, because we talked about 'Ginistrella.' +She described it to me - she lent me her copy." + +"Lent it to you?" + +"She travels with it." + +"It's incredible," Paul blushed. + +"It's glorious for you, but it also turned out very well for me. +When the ladies went off to bed she kindly offered to send the book +down to me. Her maid brought it to me in the hall and I went to my +room with it. I hadn't thought of coming here, I do that so +little. But I don't sleep early, I always have to read an hour or +two. I sat down to your novel on the spot, without undressing, +without taking off anything but my coat. I think that's a sign my +curiosity had been strongly roused about it. I read a quarter of +an hour, as I tell you, and even in a quarter of an hour I was +greatly struck." + +"Ah the beginning isn't very good - it's the whole thing!" said +Overt, who had listened to this recital with extreme interest. +"And you laid down the book and came after me?" he asked. + +"That's the way it moved me. I said to myself 'I see it's off his +own bat, and he's there, by the way, and the day's over and I +haven't said twenty words to him.' It occurred to me that you'd +probably be in the smoking-room and that it wouldn't be too late to +repair my omission. I wanted to do something civil to you, so I +put on my coat and came down. I shall read your book again when I +go up." + +Our friend faced round in his place - he was touched as he had +scarce ever been by the picture of such a demonstration in his +favour. "You're really the kindest of men. Cela s'est passe comme +ca? - and I've been sitting here with you all this time and never +apprehended it and never thanked you!" + +"Thank Miss Fancourt - it was she who wound me up. She has made me +feel as if I had read your novel." + +"She's an angel from heaven!" Paul declared. + +"She is indeed. I've never seen any one like her. Her interest in +literature's touching - something quite peculiar to herself; she +takes it all so seriously. She feels the arts and she wants to +feel them more. To those who practise them it's almost humiliating +- her curiosity, her sympathy, her good faith. How can anything be +as fine as she supposes it?" + +"She's a rare organisation," the younger man sighed. + +"The richest I've ever seen - an artistic intelligence really of +the first order. And lodged in such a form!" St. George exclaimed. + +"One would like to represent such a girl as that," Paul continued. + +"Ah there it is - there's nothing like life!" said his companion. +"When you're finished, squeezed dry and used up and you think the +sack's empty, you're still appealed to, you still get touches and +thrills, the idea springs up - out of the lap of the actual - and +shows you there's always something to be done. But I shan't do it +- she's not for me!" + +"How do you mean, not for you?" + +"Oh it's all over - she's for you, if you like." + +"Ah much less!" said Paul. "She's not for a dingy little man of +letters; she's for the world, the bright rich world of bribes and +rewards. And the world will take hold of her - it will carry her +away." + +"It will try - but it's just a case in which there may be a fight. +It would be worth fighting, for a man who had it in him, with youth +and talent on his side." + +These words rang not a little in Paul Overt's consciousness - they +held him briefly silent. "It's a wonder she has remained as she +is; giving herself away so - with so much to give away." + +"Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous - so natural? Oh she doesn't +care a straw - she gives away because she overflows. She has her +own feelings, her own standards; she doesn't keep remembering that +she must be proud. And then she hasn't been here long enough to be +spoiled; she has picked up a fashion or two, but only the amusing +ones. She's a provincial - a provincial of genius," St. George +went on; "her very blunders are charming, her mistakes are +interesting. She has come back from Asia with all sorts of excited +curiosities and unappeased appetities. She's first-rate herself +and she expends herself on the second-rate. She's life herself and +she takes a rare interest in imitations. She mixes all things up, +but there are none in regard to which she hasn't perceptions. She +sees things in a perspective - as if from the top of the Himalayas +- and she enlarges everything she touches. Above all she +exaggerates - to herself, I mean. She exaggerates you and me!" + +There was nothing in that description to allay the agitation caused +in our younger friend by such a sketch of a fine subject. It +seemed to him to show the art of St. George's admired hand, and he +lost himself in gazing at the vision - this hovered there before +him - of a woman's figure which should be part of the glory of a +novel. But at the end of a moment the thing had turned into smoke, +and out of the smoke - the last puff of a big cigar - proceeded +the voice of General Fancourt, who had left the others and come and +planted himself before the gentlemen on the sofa. "I suppose that +when you fellows get talking you sit up half the night." + +"Half the night? - jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene" - and St. +George rose to his feet. + +"I see - you're hothouse plants," laughed the General. "That's the +way you produce your flowers." + +"I produce mine between ten and one every morning - I bloom with a +regularity!" St. George went on. + +"And with a splendour!" added the polite General, while Paul noted +how little the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to +himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young +man had an idea HE should never get used to that; it would always +make him uncomfortable - from the suspicion that people would think +they had to - and he would want to prevent it. Evidently his great +colleague had toughened and hardened - had made himself a surface. +The group of men had finished their cigars and taken up their +bedroom candlesticks; but before they all passed out Lord +Watermouth invited the pair of guests who had been so absorbed +together to "have" something. It happened that they both declined; +upon which General Fancourt said: "Is that the hygiene? You don't +water the flowers?" + +"Oh I should drown them!" St. George replied; but, leaving the room +still at his young friend's side, he added whimsically, for the +latter's benefit, in a lower tone: "My wife doesn't let me." + +"Well I'm glad I'm not one of you fellows!" the General richly +concluded. + +The nearness of Summersoft to London had this consequence, chilling +to a person who had had a vision of sociability in a railway- +carriage, that most of the company, after breakfast, drove back to +town, entering their own vehicles, which had come out to fetch +them, while their servants returned by train with their luggage. +Three or four young men, among whom was Paul Overt, also availed +themselves of the common convenience; but they stood in the portico +of the house and saw the others roll away. Miss Fancourt got into +a victoria with her father after she had shaken hands with our hero +and said, smiling in the frankest way in the world, "I MUST see you +more. Mrs. St. George is so nice: she has promised to ask us both +to dinner together." This lady and her husband took their places +in a perfectly-appointed brougham - she required a closed carriage +- and as our young man waved his hat to them in response to their +nods and flourishes he reflected that, taken together, they were an +honourable image of success, of the material rewards and the social +credit of literature. Such things were not the full measure, but +he nevertheless felt a little proud for literature. + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, at a +private view of the works of a young artist in "black-and-white" +who had been so good as to invite him to the stuffy scene. The +drawings were admirable, but the crowd in the one little room was +so dense that he felt himself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A +fringe of people at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward +their backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface +of resistance to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an interval +between their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures; while +the central body, in the comparative gloom projected by a wide +horizontal screen hung under the skylight and allowing only a +margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the +contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation sat +especially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, surmounted with +hats of strange convolution and plumage, which rose on long necks +above the others. One of the heads Paul perceived, was much the so +most beautiful of the collection, and his next discovery was that +it belonged to Miss Fancourt. Its beauty was enhanced by the glad +smile she sent him across surrounding obstructions, a smile that +drew him to her as fast as he could make his way. He had seen for +himself at Summersoft that the last thing her nature contained was +an affectation of indifference; yet even with this circumspection +he took a fresh satisfaction in her not having pretended to await +his arrival with composure. She smiled as radiantly as if she +wished to make him hurry, and as soon as he came within earshot she +broke out in her voice of joy: "He's here - he's here - he's +coming back in a moment!" + +"Ah your father?" Paul returned as she offered him her hand. + +"Oh dear no, this isn't in my poor father's line. I mean Mr. St. +George. He has just left me to speak to some one - he's coming +back. It's he who brought me - wasn't it charming?" + +"Ah that gives him a pull over me - I couldn't have 'brought' you, +could I?" + +"If you had been so kind as to propose it - why not you as well as +he?" the girl returned with a face that, expressing no cheap +coquetry, simply affirmed a happy fact. + +"Why he's a pere de famille. They've privileges," Paul explained. +And then quickly: "Will you go to see places with ME?" he asked. + +"Anything you like!" she smiled. "I know what you mean, that girls +have to have a lot of people - " Then she broke off: "I don't +know; I'm free. I've always been like that - I can go about with +any one. I'm so glad to meet you," she added with a sweet +distinctness that made those near her turn round. + +"Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this +squash," her friend said. "Surely people aren't happy here!" + +"No, they're awfully mornes, aren't they? But I'm very happy +indeed and I promised Mr. St. George to remain in this spot till he +comes back. He's going to take me away. They send him invitations +for things of this sort - more than he wants. It was so kind of +him to think of me." + +"They also send me invitations of this kind - more than I want. +And if thinking of YOU will do it - !" Paul went on. + +"Oh I delight in them - everything that's life - everything that's +London!" + +"They don't have private views in Asia, I suppose," he laughed. +"But what a pity that for this year, even in this gorged city, +they're pretty well over." + +"Well, next year will do, for I hope you believe we're going to be +friends always. Here he comes!" Miss Fancourt continued before +Paul had time to respond. + +He made out St. George in the gaps of the crowd, and this perhaps +led to his hurrying a little to say: "I hope that doesn't mean I'm +to wait till next year to see you." + +"No, no - aren't we to meet at dinner on the twenty-fifth?" she +panted with an eagerness as happy as his own. + +"That's almost next year. Is there no means of seeing you before?" + +She stared with all her brightness. "Do you mean you'd COME?" + +"Like a shot, if you'll be so good as to ask me!" + +"On Sunday then - this next Sunday?" + +"What have I done that you should doubt it?" the young man asked +with delight. + +Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had now joined +them, and announced triumphantly: "He's coming on Sunday - this +next Sunday!" + +"Ah my day - my day too!" said the famous novelist, laughing, to +their companion. + +"Yes, but not yours only. You shall meet in Manchester Square; you +shall talk - you shall be wonderful!" + +"We don't meet often enough," St. George allowed, shaking hands +with his disciple. "Too many things - ah too many things! But we +must make it up in the country in September. You won't forget +you've promised me that?" + +"Why he's coming on the twenty-fifth - you'll see him then," said +the girl. + +"On the twenty-fifth?" St. George asked vaguely. + +"We dine with you; I hope you haven't forgotten. He's dining out +that day," she added gaily to Paul. + +"Oh bless me, yes - that's charming! And you're coming? My wife +didn't tell me," St. George said to him. "Too many things - too +many things!" he repeated. + +"Too many people - too many people!" Paul exclaimed, giving ground +before the penetration of an elbow. + +"You oughtn't to say that. They all read you." + +"Me? I should like to see them! Only two or three at most," the +young man returned. + +"Did you ever hear anything like that? He knows, haughtily, how +good he is!" St. George declared, laughing to Miss Fancourt. "They +read ME, but that doesn't make me like them any better. Come away +from them, come away!" And he led the way out of the exhibition. + +"He's going to take me to the Park," Miss Fancourt observed to +Overt with elation as they passed along the corridor that led to +the street. + +"Ah does he go there?" Paul asked, taking the fact for a somewhat +unexpected illustration of St. George's moeurs. + +"It's a beautiful day - there'll be a great crowd. We're going to +look at the people, to look at types," the girl went on. "We shall +sit under the trees; we shall walk by the Row." + +"I go once a year - on business," said St. George, who had +overheard Paul's question. + +"Or with a country cousin, didn't you tell me? I'm the country +cousin!" she continued over her shoulder to Paul as their friend +drew her toward a hansom to which he had signalled. The young man +watched them get in; he returned, as he stood there, the friendly +wave of the hand with which, ensconced in the vehicle beside her, +St. George took leave of him. He even lingered to see the vehicle +start away and lose itself in the confusion of Bond Street. He +followed it with his eyes; it put to him embarrassing things. +"She's not for ME!" the great novelist had said emphatically at +Summersoft; but his manner of conducting himself toward her +appeared not quite in harmony with such a conviction. How could he +have behaved differently if she HAD been for him? An indefinite +envy rose in Paul Overt's heart as he took his way on foot alone; a +feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of the occupants +of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle about London with +such a girl! How much he should like to go and look at "types" +with St. George! + +The next Sunday at four o'clock he called in Manchester Square, +where his secret wish was gratified by his finding Miss Fancourt +alone. She was in a large bright friendly occupied room, which was +painted red all over, draped with the quaint cheap florid stuffs +that are represented as coming from southern and eastern countries, +where they are fabled to serve as the counterpanes of the +peasantry, and bedecked with pottery of vivid hues, ranged on +casual shelves, and with many water-colour drawings from the hand +(as the visitor learned) of the young lady herself, commemorating +with a brave breadth the sunsets, the mountains, the temples and +palaces of India. He sat an hour - more than an hour, two hours - +and all the while no one came in. His hostess was so good as to +remark, with her liberal humanity, that it was delightful they +weren't interrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that +season, that people got a good talk. But luckily now, of a fine +Sunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it better +for those who didn't go, when these others were in sympathy. It +was the defect of London - one of two or three, the very short list +of those she recognised in the teeming world-city she adored - that +there were too few good chances for talk; you never had time to +carry anything far. + +"Too many things - too many things!" Paul said, quoting St. +George's exclamation of a few days before. + +"Ah yes, for him there are too many - his life's too complicated." + +"Have you seen it NEAR? That's what I should like to do; it might +explain some mysteries," her visitor went on. She asked him what +mysteries he meant, and he said: "Oh peculiarities of his work, +inequalities, superficialities. For one who looks at it from the +artistic point of view it contains a bottomless ambiguity." + +She became at this, on the spot, all intensity. "Ah do describe +that more - it's so interesting. There are no such suggestive +questions. I'm so fond of them. He thinks he's a failure - +fancy!" she beautifully wailed. + +"That depends on what his ideal may have been. With his gifts it +ought to have been high. But till one knows what he really +proposed to himself - ? Do YOU know by chance?" the young man +broke off. + +"Oh he doesn't talk to me about himself. I can't make him. It's +too provoking." + +Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about, but +discretion checked it and he said instead: "Do you think he's +unhappy at home?" + +She seemed to wonder. "At home?" + +"I mean in his relations with his wife. He has a mystifying little +way of alluding to her." + +"Not to me," said Marian Fancourt with her clear eyes. "That +wouldn't be right, would it?" she asked gravely. + +"Not particularly; so I'm glad he doesn't mention her to you. To +praise her might bore you, and he has no business to do anything +else. Yet he knows you better than me." + +"Ah but he respects YOU!" the girl cried as with envy. + +Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. "Doesn't he +respect you?" + +"Of course, but not in the same way. He respects what you've done +- he told me so, the other day." + +Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. "When you went to +look at types?" + +"Yes - we found so many: he has such an observation of them! He +talked a great deal about your book. He says it's really +important." + +"Important! Ah the grand creature!" - and the author of the work +in question groaned for joy. + +"He was wonderfully amusing, he was inexpressibly droll, while we +walked about. He sees everything; he has so many comparisons and +images, and they're always exactly right. C'est d'un trouve, as +they say." + +"Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to have done!" Paul +sighed. + +"And don't you think he HAS done them?" + +Ah it was just the point. "A part of them, and of course even that +part's immense. But he might have been one of the greatest. +However, let us not make this an hour of qualifications. Even as +they stand," our friend earnestly concluded, "his writings are a +mine of gold." + +To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half an hour +the pair talked over the Master's principal productions. She knew +them well - she knew them even better than her visitor, who was +struck with her critical intelligence and with something large and +bold in the movement in her mind. She said things that startled +him and that evidently had come to her directly; they weren't +picked-up phrases - she placed them too well. St. George had been +right about her being first-rate, about her not being afraid to +gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenly something +came back to her, and she said: "I recollect that he did speak of +Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, apropos of something or +other, that she didn't care for perfection." + +"That's a great crime in an artist's wife," Paul returned. + +"Yes, poor thing!" and the girl sighed with a suggestion of many +reflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently added: "Ah +perfection, perfection - how one ought to go in for it! I wish I +could." + +"Every one can in his way," her companion opined. + +"In HIS way, yes - but not in hers. Women are so hampered - so +condemned! Yet it's a kind of dishonour if you don't, when you +want to DO something, isn't it?" Miss Fancourt pursued, dropping +one train in her quickness to take up another, an accident that was +common with her. So these two young persons sat discussing high +themes in their eclectic drawing-room, in their London "season" - +discussing, with extreme seriousness, the high theme of perfection. +It must be said in extenuation of this eccentricity that they were +interested in the business. Their tone had truth and their emotion +beauty; they weren't posturing for each other or for some one else. + +The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducing it; the +perfection to which for the moment they agreed to confine their +speculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work of art. Our +young woman's imagination, it appeared, had wandered far in that +direction, and her guest had the rare delight of feeling in their +conversation a full interchange. This episode will have lived for +years in his memory and even in his wonder; it had the quality that +fortune distils in a single drop at a time - the quality that +lubricates many ensuing frictions. He still, whenever he likes, +has a vision of the room, the bright red sociable talkative room +with the curtains that, by a stroke of successful audacity, had the +note of vivid blue. He remembers where certain things stood, the +particular book open on the table and the almost intense odour of +the flowers placed, at the left, somewhere behind him. These facts +were the fringe, as it were, of a fine special agitation which had +its birth in those two hours and of which perhaps the main sign was +in its leading him inwardly and repeatedly to breathe "I had no +idea there was any one like this - I had no idea there was any one +like this!" Her freedom amazed him and charmed him - it seemed so +to simplify the practical question. She was on the footing of an +independent personage - a motherless girl who had passed out of her +teens and had a position and responsibilities, who wasn't held down +to the limitations of a little miss. She came and went with no +dragged duenna, she received people alone, and, though she was +totally without hardness, the question of protection or patronage +had no relevancy in regard to her. She gave such an impression of +the clear and the noble combined with the easy and the natural that +in spite of her eminent modern situation she suggested no sort of +sister-hood with the "fast" girl. Modern she was indeed, and made +Paul Overt, who loved old colour, the golden glaze of time, think +with some alarm of the muddled palette of the future. He couldn't +get used to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too +good to be real - it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into +such a well of sympathy. One might stray into the desert easily - +that was on the cards and that was the law of life; but it was too +rare an accident to stumble on a crystal well. Yet if her +aspirations seemed at one moment too extravagant to be real they +struck him at the next as too intelligent to be false. They were +both high and lame, and, whims for whims, he preferred them to any +he had met in a like relation. It was probable enough she would +leave them behind - exchange them for politics or "smartness" or +mere prolific maternity, as was the custom of scribbling daubing +educated flattered girls in an age of luxury and a society of +leisure. He noted that the water-colours on the walls of the room +she sat in had mainly the quality of being naives, and reflected +that naivete in art is like a zero in a number: its importance +depends on the figure it is united with. Meanwhile, however, he +had fallen in love with her. Before he went away, at any rate, he +said to her: "I thought St. George was coming to see you to-day, +but he doesn't turn up." + +For a moment he supposed she was going to cry "Comment donc? Did +you come here only to meet him?" But the next he became aware of +how little such a speech would have fallen in with any note of +flirtation he had as yet perceived in her. She only replied: "Ah +yes, but I don't think he'll come. He recommended me not to expect +him." Then she gaily but all gently added: "He said it wasn't +fair to you. But I think I could manage two." + +"So could I," Paul Overt returned, stretching the point a little to +meet her. In reality his appreciation of the occasion was so +completely an appreciation of the woman before him that another +figure in the scene, even so esteemed a one as St. George, might +for the hour have appealed to him vainly. He left the house +wondering what the great man had meant by its not being fair to +him; and, still more than that, whether he had actually stayed away +from the force of that idea. As he took his course through the +Sunday solitude of Manchester Square, swinging his stick and with a +good deal of emotion fermenting in his soul, it appeared to him he +was living in a world strangely magnanimous. Miss Fancourt had +told him it was possible she should be away, and that her father +should be, on the following Sunday, but that she had the hope of a +visit from him in the other event. She promised to let him know +should their absence fail, and then he might act accordingly. +After he had passed into one of the streets that open from the +Square he stopped, without definite intentions, looking sceptically +for a cab. In a moment he saw a hansom roll through the place from +the other side and come a part of the way toward him. He was on +the point of hailing the driver when he noticed a "fare" within; +then he waited, seeing the man prepare to deposit his passenger by +pulling up at one of the houses. The house was apparently the one +he himself had just quitted; at least he drew that inference as he +recognised Henry St. George in the person who stepped out of the +hansom. Paul turned off as quickly as if he had been caught in the +act of spying. He gave up his cab - he preferred to walk; he would +go nowhere else. He was glad St. George hadn't renounced his visit +altogether - that would have been too absurd. Yes, the world was +magnanimous, and even he himself felt so as, on looking at his +watch, he noted but six o'clock, so that he could mentally +congratulate his successor on having an hour still to sit in Miss +Fancourt's drawing-room. He himself might use that hour for +another visit, but by the time he reached the Marble Arch the idea +of such a course had become incongruous to him. He passed beneath +that architectural effort and walked into the Park till he got upon +the spreading grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way +across the elastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched +with a friendly eye the diversions of the London people, he bent a +glance almost encouraging on the young ladies paddling their +sweethearts about the lake and the guardsmen tickling tenderly with +their bearskins the artificial flowers in the Sunday hats of their +partners. He prolonged his meditative walk; he went into +Kensington Gardens, he sat upon the penny chairs, he looked at the +little sail-boats launched upon the round pond and was glad he had +no engagement to dine. He repaired for this purpose, very late, to +his club, where he found himself unable to order a repast and told +the waiter to bring whatever there was. He didn't even observe +what he was served with, and he spent the evening in the library of +the establishment, pretending to read an article in an American +magazine. He failed to discover what it was about; it appeared in +a dim way to be about Marian Fancourt. + +Quite late in the week she wrote to him that she was not to go into +the country - it had only just been settled. Her father, she +added, would never settle anything, but put it all on her. She +felt her responsibility - she had to - and since she was forced +this was the way she had decided. She mentioned no reasons, which +gave our friend all the clearer field for bold conjecture about +them. In Manchester Square on this second Sunday he esteemed his +fortune less good, for she had three or four other visitors. But +there were three or four compensations; perhaps the greatest of +which was that, learning how her father had after all, at the last +hour, gone out of town alone, the bold conjecture I just now spoke +of found itself becoming a shade more bold. And then her presence +was her presence, and the personal red room was there and was full +of it, whatever phantoms passed and vanished, emitting +incomprehensible sounds. Lastly, he had the resource of staying +till every one had come and gone and of believing this grateful to +her, though she gave no particular sign. When they were alone +together he came to his point. "But St. George did come - last +Sunday. I saw him as I looked back." + +"Yes; but it was the last time." + +"The last time?" + +"He said he would never come again." + +Paul Overt stared. "Does he mean he wishes to cease to see you?" + +"I don't know what he means," the girl bravely smiled. "He won't +at any rate see me here." + +"And pray why not?" + +"I haven't the least idea," said Marian Fancourt, whose visitor +found her more perversely sublime than ever yet as she professed +this clear helplessness. + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +"Oh I say, I want you to stop a little," Henry St. George said to +him at eleven o'clock the night he dined with the head of the +profession. The company - none of it indeed OF the profession - +had been numerous and was taking its leave; our young man, after +bidding good-night to his hostess, had put out his hand in farewell +to the master of the house. Besides drawing from the latter the +protest I have cited this movement provoked a further priceless +word about their chance now to have a talk, their going into his +room, his having still everything to say. Paul Overt was all +delight at this kindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocose +qualification the bare fact that he had promised to go to another +place which was at a considerable distance. + +"Well then you'll break your promise, that's all. You quite awful +humbug!" St. George added in a tone that confirmed our young man's +ease. + +"Certainly I'll break it - but it was a real promise." + +"Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You're following her?" his friend +asked. + +He answered by a question. "Oh is SHE going?" + +"Base impostor!" his ironic host went on. "I've treated you +handsomely on the article of that young lady: I won't make another +concession. Wait three minutes - I'll be with you." He gave +himself to his departing guests, accompanied the long-trained +ladies to the door. It was a hot night, the windows were open, the +sound of the quick carriages and of the linkmen's call came into +the house. The affair had rather glittered; a sense of festal +things was in the heavy air: not only the influence of that +particular entertainment, but the suggestion of the wide hurry of +pleasure which in London on summer nights fills so many of the +happier quarters of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St. +George's drawing-room emptied itself; Paul was left alone with his +hostess, to whom he explained the motive of his waiting. "Ah yes, +some intellectual, some PROFESSIONAL, talk," she leered; "at this +season doesn't one miss it? Poor dear Henry, I'm so glad!" The +young man looked out of the window a moment, at the called hansoms +that lurched up, at the smooth broughams that rolled away. When he +turned round Mrs. St. George had disappeared; her husband's voice +rose to him from below - he was laughing and talking, in the +portico, with some lady who awaited her carriage. Paul had +solitary possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted rooms +where the covered tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had been +pushed about and the odour of flowers lingered. They were large, +they were pretty, they contained objects of value; everything in +the picture told of a "good house." At the end of five minutes a +servant came in with a request from the Master that he would join +him downstairs; upon which, descending, he followed his conductor +through a long passage to an apartment thrown out, in the rear of +the habitation, for the special requirements, as he guessed, of a +busy man of letters. + +St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large high +room - a room without windows, but with a wide skylight at the top, +that of a place of exhibition. It was furnished as a library, and +the serried bookshelves rose to the ceiling, a surface of +incomparable tone produced by dimly-gilt "backs" interrupted here +and there by the suspension of old prints and drawings. At the end +furthest from the door of admission was a tall desk, of great +extent, at which the person using it could write only in the erect +posture of a clerk in a counting-house; and stretched from the +entrance to this structure was a wide plain band of crimson cloth, +as straight as a garden-path and almost as long, where, in his +mind's eye, Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during +vexed hours - hours, that is, of admirable composition. The +servant gave him a coat, an old jacket with a hang of experience, +from a cupboard in the wall, retiring afterwards with the garment +he had taken off. Paul Overt welcomed the coat; it was a coat for +talk, it promised confidences - having visibly received so many - +and had tragic literary elbows. "Ah we're practical - we're +practical!" St. George said as he saw his visitor look the place +over. "Isn't it a good big cage for going round and round? My +wife invented it and she locks me up here every morning." + +Our young man breathed - by way of tribute - with a certain +oppression. "You don't miss a window - a place to look out?" + +"I did at first awfully; but her calculation was just. It saves +time, it has saved me many months in these ten years. Here I +stand, under the eye of day - in London of course, very often, it's +rather a bleared old eye - walled in to my trade. I can't get away +- so the room's a fine lesson in concentration. I've learnt the +lesson, I think; look at that big bundle of proof and acknowledge +it." He pointed to a fat roll of papers, on one of the tables, +which had not been undone. + +"Are you bringing out another -?" Paul asked in a tone the fond +deficiencies of which he didn't recognise till his companion burst +out laughing, and indeed scarce even then. + +"You humbug, you humbug!" - St. George appeared to enjoy caressing +him, as it were, with that opprobrium. "Don't I know what you +think of them?" he asked, standing there with his hands in his +pockets and with a new kind of smile. It was as if he were going +to let his young votary see him all now. + +"Upon my word in that case you know more than I do!" the latter +ventured to respond, revealing a part of the torment of being able +neither clearly to esteem nor distinctly to renounce him. + +"My dear fellow," said the more and more interesting Master, "don't +imagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decent +subject - il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you may +apprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it +wasn't for that I brought you down here. I want to ask you +something - very much indeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit +down. We're practical, but there IS a sofa, you see - for she does +humour my poor bones so far. Like all really great administrators +and disciplinarians she knows when wisely to relax." Paul sank +into the corner of a deep leathern couch, but his friend remained +standing and explanatory. "If you don't mind, in this room, this +is my habit. From the door to the desk and from the desk to the +door. That shakes up my imagination gently; and don't you see what +a good thing it is that there's no window for her to fly out of? +The eternal standing as I write (I stop at that bureau and put it +down, when anything comes, and so we go on) was rather wearisome at +first, but we adopted it with an eye to the long run; you're in +better order - if your legs don't break down! - and you can keep it +up for more years. Oh we're practical - we're practical!" St. +George repeated, going to the table and taking up all mechanically +the bundle of proofs. But, pulling off the wrapper, he had a +change of attention that appealed afresh to our hero. He lost +himself a moment, examining the sheets of his new book, while the +younger man's eyes wandered over the room again. + +"Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a charming place +as this to do them in!" Paul reflected. The outer world, the world +of accident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within +the rich protecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the dream- +figures, the summoned company, could hold their particular revel. +It was a fond prevision of Overt's rather than an observation on +actual data, for which occasions had been too few, that the Master +thus more closely viewed would have the quality, the charming gift, +of flashing out, all surprisingly, in personal intercourse and at +moments of suspended or perhaps even of diminished expectation. A +happy relation with him would be a thing proceeding by jumps, not +by traceable stages. + +"Do you read them - really?" he asked, laying down the proofs on +Paul's enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And +when the young man answered "Oh yes, always," he was moved to mirth +again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go +to see your grandmother on her birthday - and very proper it is, +especially as she won't last for ever. She has lost every faculty +and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all +customary pieties and kindly habits are respectable. Only you're +strong if you DO read 'em! I couldn't, my dear fellow. You are +strong, I know; and that's just a part of what I wanted to say to +you. You're very strong indeed. I've been going into your other +things - they've interested me immensely. Some one ought to have +told me about them before - some one I could believe. But whom can +one believe? You're wonderfully on the right road - it's awfully +decent work. Now do you mean to keep it up? - that's what I want +to ask you." + +"Do I mean to do others?" Paul asked, looking up from his sofa at +his erect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little boy +when the school-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old +who might have consulted a world-famous oracle. St. George's own +performance had been infirm, but as an adviser he would be +infallible. + +"Others - others? Ah the number won't matter; one other would do, +if it were really a further step - a throb of the same effort. +What I mean is have you it in your heart to go in for some sort of +decent perfection?" + +"Ah decency, ah perfection -!" the young man sincerely sighed. "I +talked of them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt." + +It produced on the Master's part a laugh of odd acrimony. "Yes, +they'll 'talk' of them as much as you like! But they'll do little +to help one to them. There's no obligation of course; only you +strike me as capable," he went on. "You must have thought it all +over. I can't believe you're without a plan. That's the sensation +you give me, and it's so rare that it really stirs one up - it +makes you remarkable. If you haven't a plan, if you DON'T mean to +keep it up, surely you're within your rights; it's nobody's +business, no one can force you, and not more than two or three +people will notice you don't go straight. The others - ALL the +rest, every blest soul in England, will think you do - will think +you are keeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one +of the two or three who know better. Now the question is whether +you can do it for two or three. Is that the stuff you're made of?" + +It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. "I could +do it for one, if you were the one." + +"Don't say that; I don't deserve it; it scorches me," he protested +with eyes suddenly grave and glowing. "The 'one' is of course +one's self, one's conscience, one's idea, the singleness of one's +aim. I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has +in some detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts +him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an +artist, you know, I've married for money." Paul stared and even +blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, +observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh and +pursued: "You don't follow my figure. I'm not speaking of my dear +wife, who had a small fortune - which, however, was not my bribe. +I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. I refer +to the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. +Don't, my boy, put your nose into THAT yoke. The awful jade will +lead you a life!" + +Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. "Haven't you +been happy!" + +"Happy? It's a kind of hell." + +"There are things I should like to ask you," Paul said after a +pause. + +"Ask me anything in all the world. I'd turn myself inside out to +save you." + +"To 'save' me?" he quavered. + +"To make you stick to it - to make you see it through. As I said +to you the other night at Summersoft, let my example be vivid to +you." + +"Why your books are not so bad as that," said Paul, fairly laughing +and feeling that if ever a fellow had breathed the air of art - ! + +"So bad as what?" + +"Your talent's so great that it's in everything you do, in what's +less good as well as in what's best. You've some forty volumes to +show for it - forty volumes of wonderful life, of rare observation, +of magnificent ability." + +"I'm very clever, of course I know that" - but it was a thing, in +fine, this author made nothing of. "Lord, what rot they'd all be +if I hadn't been I'm a successful charlatan," he went on - "I've +been able to pass off my system. But do you know what it is? It's +cartonpierre." + +"Carton-pierre?" Paul was struck, and gaped. + +"Lincrusta-Walton!" + +"Ah don't say such things - you make me bleed!" the younger man +protested. "I see you in a beautiful fortunate home, living in +comfort and honour." + +"Do you call it honour?" - his host took him up with an intonation +that often comes back to him. "That's what I want YOU to go in +for. I mean the real thing. This is brummagem." + +"Brummagem?" Paul ejaculated while his eyes wandered, by a movement +natural at the moment, over the luxurious room. + +"Ah they make it so well to-day - it's wonderfully deceptive!" + +Our friend thrilled with the interest and perhaps even more with +the pity of it. Yet he wasn't afraid to seem to patronise when he +could still so far envy. "Is it deceptive that I find you living +with every appearance of domestic felicity - blest with a devoted, +accomplished wife, with children whose acquaintance I haven't yet +had the pleasure of making, but who MUST be delightful young +people, from what I know of their parents?" + +St. George smiled as for the candour of his question. "It's all +excellent, my dear fellow - heaven forbid I should deny it. I've +made a great deal of money; my wife has known how to take care of +it, to use it without wasting it, to put a good bit of it by, to +make it fructify. I've got a loaf on the shelf; I've got +everything in fact but the great thing." + +"The great thing?" Paul kept echoing. + +"The sense of having done the best - the sense which is the real +life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of having +drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music that nature +had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played. He +either does that or he doesn't - and if he doesn't he isn't worth +speaking of. Therefore, precisely, those who really know DON'T +speak of him. He may still hear a great chatter, but what he hears +most is the incorruptible silence of Fame. I've squared her, you +may say, for my little hour - but what's my little hour? Don't +imagine for a moment," the Master pursued, "that I'm such a cad as +to have brought you down here to abuse or to complain of my wife to +you. She's a woman of distinguished qualities, to whom my +obligations are immense; so that, if you please, we'll say nothing +about her. My boys - my children are all boys - are straight and +strong, thank God, and have no poverty of growth about them, no +penury of needs. I receive periodically the most satisfactory +attestation from Harrow, from Oxford, from Sandhurst - oh we've +done the best for them! - of their eminence as living thriving +consuming organisms." + +"It must be delightful to feel that the son of one's loins is at +Sandhurst," Paul remarked enthusiastically. + +"It is - it's charming. Oh I'm a patriot!" + +The young man then could but have the greater tribute of questions +to pay. "Then what did you mean - the other night at Summersoft - +by saying that children are a curse?" + +"My dear youth, on what basis are we talking?" and St. George +dropped upon the sofa at a short distance from him. Sitting a +little sideways he leaned back against the opposite arm with his +hands raised and interlocked behind his head. "On the supposition +that a certain perfection's possible and even desirable - isn't it +so? Well, all I say is that one's children interfere with +perfection. One's wife interferes. Marriage interferes." + +"You think then the artist shouldn't marry?" + +"He does so at his peril - he does so at his cost." + +"Not even when his wife's in sympathy with his work?" + +"She never is - she can't be! Women haven't a conception of such +things." + +"Surely they on occasion work themselves," Paul objected. + +"Yes, very badly indeed. Oh of course, often, they think they +understand, they think they sympathise. Then it is they're most +dangerous. Their idea is that you shall do a great lot and get a +great lot of money. Their great nobleness and virtue, their +exemplary conscientiousness as British females, is in keeping you +up to that. My wife makes all my bargains with my publishers for +me, and has done so for twenty years. She does it consummately +well - that's why I'm really pretty well off. Aren't you the +father of their innocent babes, and will you withhold from them +their natural sustenance? You asked me the other night if they're +not an immense incentive. Of course they are - there's no doubt of +that!" + +Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt open so +wide, so much looking at. "For myself I've an idea I need +incentives." + +"Ah well then, n'en parlons plus!" his companion handsomely smiled. + +"YOU are an incentive, I maintain," the young man went on. "You +don't affect me in the way you'd apparently like to. Your great +success is what I see - the pomp of Ennismore Gardens!" + +"Success?" - St. George's eyes had a cold fine light. "Do you call +it success to be spoken of as you'd speak of me if you were sitting +here with another artist - a young man intelligent and sincere like +yourself? Do you call it success to make you blush - as you would +blush! - if some foreign critic (some fellow, of course I mean, who +should know what he was talking about and should have shown you he +did, as foreign critics like to show it) were to say to you: 'He's +the one, in this country, whom they consider the most perfect, +isn't he?' Is it success to be the occasion of a young +Englishman's having to stammer as you would have to stammer at such +a moment for old England? No, no; success is to have made people +wriggle to another tune. Do try it!" + +Paul continued all gravely to glow. "Try what?" + +"Try to do some really good work." + +"Oh I want to, heaven knows!" + +"Well, you can't do it without sacrifices - don't believe that for +a moment," the Master said. "I've made none. I've had everything. +In other words I've missed everything." + +"You've had the full rich masculine human general life, with all +the responsibilities and duties and burdens and sorrows and joys - +all the domestic and social initiations and complications. They +must be immensely suggestive, immensely amusing," Paul anxiously +submitted. + +"Amusing?" + +"For a strong man - yes." + +"They've given me subjects without number, if that's what you mean; +but they've taken away at the same time the power to use them. +I've touched a thousand things, but which one of them have I turned +into gold? The artist has to do only with that - he knows nothing +of any baser metal. I've led the life of the world, with my wife +and my progeny; the clumsy conventional expensive materialised +vulgarised brutalised life of London. We've got everything +handsome, even a carriage - we're perfect Philistines and +prosperous hospitable eminent people. But, my dear fellow, don't +try to stultify yourself and pretend you don't know what we HAVEN'T +got. It's bigger than all the rest. Between artists - come!" the +Master wound up. "You know as well as you sit there that you'd put +a pistol-ball into your brain if you had written my books!" + +It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised by him at +Summersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, a fulness, +with which the latter's young imagination had scarcely reckoned. +His impression fairly shook him and he throbbed with the excitement +of such deep soundings and such strange confidences. He throbbed +indeed with the conflict of his feelings - bewilderment and +recognition and alarm, enjoyment and protest and assent, all +commingled with tenderness (and a kind of shame in the +participation) for the sores and bruises exhibited by so fine a +creature, and with a sense of the tragic secret nursed under his +trappings. The idea of HIS, Paul Overt's, becoming the occasion of +such an act of humility made him flush and pant, at the same time +that his consciousness was in certain directions too much alive not +to swallow - and not intensely to taste - every offered spoonful +of the revelation. It had been his odd fortune to blow upon the +deep waters, to make them surge and break in waves of strange +eloquence. But how couldn't he give out a passionate contradiction +of his host's last extravagance, how couldn't he enumerate to him +the parts of his work he loved, the splendid things he had found in +it, beyond the compass of any other writer of the day? St. George +listened a while, courteously; then he said, laying his hand on his +visitor's: "That's all very well; and if your idea's to do nothing +better there's no reason you shouldn't have as many good things as +I - as many human and material appendages, as many sons or +daughters, a wife with as many gowns, a house with as many +servants, a stable with as many horses, a heart with as many +aches." The Master got up when he had spoken thus - he stood a +moment - near the sofa looking down on his agitated pupil. "Are +you possessed of any property?" it occurred to him to ask. + +"None to speak of." + +"Oh well then there's no reason why you shouldn't make a goodish +income - if you set about it the right way. Study ME for that - +study me well. You may really have horses." + +Paul sat there some minutes without speaking. He looked straight +before him - he turned over many things. His friend had wandered +away, taking up a parcel of letters from the table where the roll +of proofs had lain. "What was the book Mrs. St. George made you +burn - the one she didn't like?" our young man brought out. + +"The book she made me burn - how did you know that?" The Master +looked up from his letters quite without the facial convulsion the +pupil had feared. + +"I heard her speak of it at Summersoft." + +"Ah yes - she's proud of it. I don't know - it was rather good." + +"What was it about?" + +"Let me see." And he seemed to make an effort to remember. "Oh +yes - it was about myself." Paul gave an irrepressible groan for +the disappearance of such a production, and the elder man went on: +"Oh but YOU should write it - YOU should do me." And he pulled up +- from the restless motion that had come upon him; his fine smile a +generous glare. "There's a subject, my boy: no end of stuff in +it!" + +Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. "Are there no +women who really understand - who can take part in a sacrifice?" + +"How can they take part? They themselves are the sacrifice. +They're the idol and the altar and the flame." + +"Isn't there even ONE who sees further?" Paul continued. + +For a moment St. George made no answer; after which, having torn up +his letters, he came back to the point all ironic. "Of course I +know the one you mean. But not even Miss Fancourt." + +"I thought you admired her so much." + +"It's impossible to admire her more. Are you in love with her?" +St. George asked. + +"Yes," Paul Overt presently said. + +"Well then give it up." + +Paul stared. "Give up my 'love'?" + +"Bless me, no. Your idea." And then as our hero but still gazed: +"The one you talked with her about. The idea of a decent +perfection." + +"She'd help it - she'd help it!" the young man cried. + +"For about a year - the first year, yes. After that she'd be as a +millstone round its neck." + +Paul frankly wondered. "Why she has a passion for the real thing, +for good work - for everything you and I care for most." + +"'You and I' is charming, my dear fellow!" his friend laughed. +"She has it indeed, but she'd have a still greater passion for her +children - and very proper too. She'd insist on everything's being +made comfortable, advantageous, propitious for them. That isn't +the artist's business." + +"The artist - the artist! Isn't he a man all the same?" + +St. George had a grand grimace. "I mostly think not. You know as +well as I what he has to do: the concentration, the finish, the +independence he must strive for from the moment he begins to wish +his work really decent. Ah my young friend, his relation to women, +and especially to the one he's most intimately concerned with, is +at the mercy of the damning fact that whereas he can in the nature +of things have but one standard, they have about fifty. That's +what makes them so superior," St. George amusingly added. "Fancy +an artist with a change of standards as you'd have a change of +shirts or of dinner-plates. To DO it - to do it and make it divine +- is the only thing he has to think about. 'Is it done or not?' is +his only question. Not 'Is it done as well as a proper solicitude +for my dear little family will allow?' He has nothing to do with +the relative - he has only to do with the absolute; and a dear +little family may represent a dozen relatives." + +"Then you don't allow him the common passions and affections of +men?" Paul asked. + +"Hasn't he a passion, an affection, which includes all the rest? +Besides, let him have all the passions he likes - if he only keeps +his independence. He must be able to be poor." + +Paul slowly got up. "Why then did you advise me to make up to +her?" + +St. George laid his hand on his shoulder. "Because she'd make a +splendid wife! And I hadn't read you then." + +The young man had a strained smile. "I wish you had left me +alone!" + +"I didn't know that that wasn't good enough for you," his host +returned. + +"What a false position, what a condemnation of the artist, that +he's a mere disfranchised monk and can produce his effect only by +giving up personal happiness. What an arraignment of art!" Paul +went on with a trembling voice. + +"Ah you don't imagine by chance that I'm defending art? +'Arraignment' - I should think so! Happy the societies in which it +hasn't made its appearance, for from the moment it comes they have +a consuming ache, they have an incurable corruption, in their +breast. Most assuredly is the artist in a false position! But I +thought we were taking him for granted. Pardon me," St. George +continued: "'Ginistrella' made me!" + +Paul stood looking at the floor - one o'clock struck, in the +stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. "Do you think she'd +ever look at me?" he put to his friend at last. + +"Miss Fancourt - as a suitor? Why shouldn't I think it? That's +why I've tried to favour you - I've had a little chance or two of +bettering your opportunity." + +"Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away yourself?" +Paul said with a blush. + +"I'm an old idiot - my place isn't there," St. George stated +gravely. + +"I'm nothing yet, I've no fortune; and there must be so many +others," his companion pursued. + +The Master took this considerably in, but made little of it. +"You're a gentleman and a man of genius. I think you might do +something." + +"But if I must give that up - the genius?" + +"Lots of people, you know, think I've kept mine," St. George +wonderfully grinned. + +"You've a genius for mystification!" Paul declared; but grasping +his hand gratefully in attenuation of this judgement. + +"Poor dear boy, I do worry you! But try, try, all the same. I +think your chances are good and you'll win a great prize." + +Paul held fast the other's hand a minute; he looked into the +strange deep face. "No, I AM an artist - I can't help it!" + +"Ah show it then!" St. George pleadingly broke out. "Let me see +before I die the thing I most want, the thing I yearn for: a life +in which the passion - ours - is really intense. If you can be +rare don't fail of it! Think what it is - how it counts - how it +lives!" + +They had moved to the door and he had closed both his hands over +his companion's. Here they paused again and our hero breathed +deep. "I want to live!" + +"In what sense?" + +"In the greatest." + +"Well then stick to it - see it through." + +"With your sympathy - your help?" + +"Count on that - you'll be a great figure to me. Count on my +highest appreciation, my devotion. You'll give me satisfaction - +if that has any weight with you." After which, as Paul appeared +still to waver, his host added: "Do you remember what you said to +me at Summersoft?" + +"Something infatuated, no doubt!" + +"'I'll do anything in the world you tell me.' You said that." + +"And you hold me to it?" + +"Ah what am I?" the Master expressively sighed. + +"Lord, what things I shall have to do!" Paul almost moaned as be +departed. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +"It goes on too much abroad - hang abroad!" These or something +like them had been the Master's remarkable words in relation to the +action of "Ginistrella"; and yet, though they had made a sharp +impression on the author of that work, like almost all spoken words +from the same source, he a week after the conversation I have noted +left England for a long absence and full of brave intentions. It +is not a perversion of the truth to pronounce that encounter the +direct cause of his departure. If the oral utterance of the +eminent writer had the privilege of moving him deeply it was +especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours and days later, +that it appeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibit its +extreme importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland and, having +in September begun a new task, determined not to cross the Alps +till he should have made a good start. To this end he returned to +a quiet corner he knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva and +within sight of the towers of Chillon: a region and a view for +which he had an affection that sprang from old associations and was +capable of mysterious revivals and refreshments. Here he lingered +late, till the snow was on the nearer hills, almost down to the +limit to which he could climb when his stint, on the shortening +afternoons, was performed. The autumn was fine, the lake was blue +and his book took form and direction. These felicities, for the +time, embroidered his life, which he suffered to cover him with its +mantle. At the end of six weeks he felt he had learnt St. George's +lesson by heart, had tested and proved its doctrine. Nevertheless +he did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he +wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this +act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, the reward of a +strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had asked of him no +such favour when, shortly before he left London, three days after +their dinner in Ennismore Gardens, he went to take leave of her. +It was true she had had no ground - he hadn't named his intention +of absence. He had kept his counsel for want of due assurance: it +was that particular visit that was, the next thing, to settle the +matter. He had paid the visit to see how much he really cared for +her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit farewell, +was the sequel to this enquiry, the answer to which had created +within him a deep yearning. When he wrote her from Clarens he +noted that he owed her an explanation (more than three months +after!) for not having told her what he was doing. + +She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave him a striking piece +of news: that of the death, a week before, of Mrs. St. George. +This exemplary woman had succumbed, in the country, to a violent +attack of inflammation of the lungs - he would remember that for a +long time she had been delicate. Miss Fancourt added that she +believed her husband overwhelmed by the blow; he would miss her too +terribly - she had been everything in life to him. Paul Overt, on +this, immediately wrote to St. George. He would from the day of +their parting have been glad to remain in communication with him, +but had hitherto lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy a +man. Their long nocturnal talk came back to him in every detail, +but this was no bar to an expression of proper sympathy with the +head of the profession, for hadn't that very talk made it clear +that the late accomplished lady was the influence that ruled his +life? What catastrophe could be more cruel than the extinction of +such an influence? This was to be exactly the tone taken by St. +George in answering his young friend upwards of a month later. He +made no allusion of course to their important discussion. He spoke +of his wife as frankly and generously as if he had quite forgotten +that occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in +his words. "She took everything off my hands - off my mind. She +carried on our life with the greatest art, the rarest devotion, and +I was free, as few men can have been, to drive my pen, to shut +myself up with my trade. This was a rare service - the highest she +could have rendered me. Would I could have acknowledged it more +fitly!" + +A certain bewilderment, for our hero, disengaged itself from these +remarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a retractation, +strange on the part of a man who hadn't the excuse of witlessness. +He had certainly not expected his correspondent to rejoice in the +death of his wife, and it was perfectly in order that the rupture +of a tie of more than twenty years should have left him sore. But +if she had been so clear a blessing what in the name of consistency +had the dear man meant by turning him upside down that night - by +dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, +with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an +irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advice had been a bad +joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of +rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly +willing to consider it so, and he went so far as to take the +manuscript of the first chapters of his new book out of his table- +drawer, to insert it into a pocket of his portmanteau. This led to +his catching a glimpse of certain pages he hadn't looked at for +months, and that accident, in turn, to his being struck with the +high promise they revealed - a rare result of such retrospections, +which it was his habit to avoid as much as possible: they usually +brought home to him that the glow of composition might be a purely +subjective and misleading emotion. On this occasion a certain +belief in himself disengaged itself whimsically from the serried +erasures of his first draft, making him think it best after all to +pursue his present trial to the end. If he could write as well +under the rigour of privation it might be a mistake to change the +conditions before that spell had spent itself. He would go back to +London of course, but he would go back only when he should have +finished his book. This was the vow he privately made, restoring +his manuscript to the table-drawer. It may be added that it took +him a long time to finish his book, for the subject was as +difficult as it was fine, and he was literally embarrassed by the +fulness of his notes. Something within him warned him that he must +make it supremely good - otherwise he should lack, as regards his +private behaviour, a handsome excuse. He had a horror of this +deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on the question of +the lamp and the file. He crossed the Alps at last and spent the +winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in Italy, where still, at +the end of a twelvemonth, his task was unachieved. "Stick to it - +see it through": this general injunction of St. George's was good +also for the particular case. He applied it to the utmost, with +the result that when in its slow order the summer had come round +again he felt he had given all that was in him. This time he put +his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of his publisher +attached, and took his way northward. + +He had been absent from London for two years - two years which, +seeming to count as more, had made such a difference in his own +life - through the production of a novel far stronger, he believed, +than "Ginistrella" - that he turned out into Piccadilly, the +morning after his arrival, with a vague expectation of changes, of +finding great things had happened. But there were few +transformations in Piccadilly - only three or four big red houses +where there had been low black ones - and the brightness of the end +of June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and +glittered in the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen it +in other, more cursory Junes. It was a greeting he appreciated; it +seemed friendly and pointed, added to the exhilaration of his +finished book, of his having his own country and the huge +oppressive amusing city that suggested everything, that contained +everything, under his hand again. "Stay at home and do things here +- do subjects we can measure," St. George had said; and now it +struck him he should ask nothing better than to stay at home for +ever. Late in the afternoon he took his way to Manchester Square, +looking out for a number he hadn't forgotten. Miss Fancourt, +however, was not at home, so that he turned rather dejectedly from +the door. His movement brought him face to face with a gentleman +just approaching it and recognised on another glance as Miss +Fancourt's father. Paul saluted this personage, and the General +returned the greeting with his customary good manner - a manner so +good, however, that you could never tell whether it meant he placed +you. The disappointed caller felt the impulse to address him; +then, hesitating, became both aware of having no particular remark +to make, and convinced that though the old soldier remembered him +he remembered him wrong. He therefore went his way without +computing the irresistible effect his own evident recognition would +have on the General, who never neglected a chance to gossip. Our +young man's face was expressive, and observation seldom let it +pass. He hadn't taken ten steps before he heard himself called +after with a friendly semi-articulate "Er - I beg your pardon!" He +turned round and the General, smiling at him from the porch, said: +"Won't you come in? I won't leave you the advantage of me!" Paul +declined to come in, and then felt regret, for Miss Fancourt, so +late in the afternoon, might return at any moment. But her father +gave him no second chance; he appeared mainly to wish not to have +struck him as ungracious. A further look at the visitor had +recalled something, enough at least to enable him to say: "You've +come back, you've come back?" Paul was on the point of replying +that he had come back the night before, but he suppressed, the next +instant, this strong light on the immediacy of his visit and, +giving merely a general assent, alluded to the young lady he +deplored not having found. He had come late in the hope she would +be in. "I'll tell her - I'll tell her," said the old man; and then +he added quickly, gallantly: "You'll be giving us something new? +It's a long time, isn't it?" Now he remembered him right. + +"Rather long. I'm very slow." Paul explained. "I met you at +Summersoft a long time ago." + +"Oh yes - with Henry St. George. I remember very well. Before his +poor wife - " General Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little +less. "I dare say you know." + +"About Mrs. St. George's death? Certainly - I heard at the time." + +"Oh no, I mean - I mean he's to be married." + +"Ah I've not heard that!" But just as Paul was about to add "To +whom?" the General crossed his intention. + +"When did you come back? I know you've been away - by my daughter. +She was very sorry. You ought to give her something new." + +"I came back last night," said our young man, to whom something had +occurred which made his speech for the moment a little thick. + +"Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn't you turn up at +dinner?" + +"At dinner?" Paul just mechanically repeated, not liking to ask +whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking only of that. + +"There are several people, I believe. Certainly St. George. Or +afterwards if you like better. I believe my daughter expects - " +He appeared to notice something in the visitor's raised face (on +his steps he stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and +the interruption gave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from +which he sought a quick issue. "Perhaps then you haven't heard +she's to be married." + +Paul gaped again. "To be married?" + +"To Mr. St. George - it has just been settled. Odd marriage, isn't +it?" Our listener uttered no opinion on this point: he only +continued to stare. "But I dare say it will do - she's so awfully +literary!" said the General. + +Paul had turned very red. "Oh it's a surprise - very interesting, +very charming! I'm afraid I can't dine - so many thanks!" + +"Well, you must come to the wedding!" cried the General. "Oh I +remember that day at Summersoft. He's a great man, you know." + +"Charming - charming!" Paul stammered for retreat. He shook hands +with the General and got off. His face was red and he had the +sense of its growing more and more crimson. All the evening at +home - he went straight to his rooms and remained there dinnerless +- his cheek burned at intervals as if it had been smitten. He +didn't understand what had happened to him, what trick had been +played him, what treachery practised. "None, none," he said to +himself. "I've nothing to do with it. I'm out of it - it s none +of my business." But that bewildered murmur was followed again and +again by the incongruous ejaculation: "Was it a plan - was it a +plan?" Sometimes he cried to himself, breathless, "Have I been +duped, sold, swindled?" If at all, he was an absurd, an abject +victim. It was as if he hadn't lost her till now. He had +renounced her, yes; but that was another affair - that was a closed +but not a locked door. Now he seemed to see the door quite slammed +in his face. Did he expect her to wait - was she to give him his +time like that: two years at a stretch? He didn't know what he +had expected - he only knew what he hadn't. It wasn't this - it +wasn't this. Mystification bitterness and wrath rose and boiled in +him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity +with which he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and +the light was long; but even when it had darkened he remained +without a lamp. He had flung himself on the sofa, where he lay +through the hours with his eyes either closed or gazing at the +gloom, in the attitude of a man teaching himself to bear something, +to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easy - that +idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven +o'clock strike, he jumped up, remembering what General Fancourt had +said about his coming after dinner. He'd go - he'd see her at +least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He felt as if some of +the elements of a hard sum had been given him and the others were +wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he had got all his figures. + +He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was at +Manchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the door - +a party was going on; a circumstance which at the last gave him a +slight relief, for now he would rather see her in a crowd. People +passed him on the staircase; they were going away, going "on" with +the hunted herdlike movement of London society at night. But +sundry groups remained in the drawing-room, and it was some +minutes, as she didn't hear him announced, before he discovered and +spoke to her. In this short interval he had seen St. George +talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at once looked away, +feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn't be sure +the author of "Shadowmere" noticed him. At all events he didn't +come over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him - she +almost rushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had +forgotten what her head, what her face offered to the sight; she +was in white, there were gold figures on her dress and her hair was +a casque of gold. He saw in a single moment that she was happy, +happy with an aggressive splendour. But she wouldn't speak to him +of that, she would speak only of himself. + +"I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come!" +She struck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over +her, that he said to himself irresistibly: "Why to him, why not to +youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich +young force, to failure, to abdication to superannuation?" In his +thought at that sharp moment he blasphemed even against all that +had been left of his faith in the peccable Master. "I'm so sorry I +missed you," she went on. "My father told me. How charming of you +to have come so soon!" + +"Does that surprise you?" Paul Overt asked. + +"The first day? No, from you - nothing that's nice." She was +interrupted by a lady who bade her good-night, and he seemed to +read that it cost her nothing to speak to him in that tone; it was +her old liberal lavish way, with a certain added amplitude that +time had brought; and if this manner began to operate on the spot, +at such a juncture in her history, perhaps in the other days too it +had meant just as little or as much - a mere mechanical charity, +with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready to give but +in want of nothing. Oh she was satisfied - and why shouldn't she +be? Why shouldn't she have been surprised at his coming the first +day - for all the good she had ever got from him? As the lady +continued to hold her attention Paul turned from her with a strange +irritation in his complicated artistic soul and a sort of +disinterested disappointment. She was so happy that it was almost +stupid - a disproof of the extraordinary intelligence he had +formerly found in her. Didn't she know how bad St. George could +be, hadn't she recognised the awful thinness -? If she didn't she +was nothing, and if she did why such an insolence of serenity? +This question expired as our young man's eyes settled at last on +the genius who had advised him in a great crisis. St. George was +still before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone - fixed, +waiting, as if he meant to stop after every one - and he met the +clouded gaze of the young friend so troubled as to the degree of +his right (the right his resentment would have enjoyed) to regard +himself as a victim. Somehow the ravage of the question was +checked by the Master's radiance. It was as fine in its way as +Marian Fancourt's, it denoted the happy human being; but also it +represented to Paul Overt that the author of "Shadowmere" had now +definitely ceased to count - ceased to count as a writer. As he +smiled a welcome across the place he was almost banal, was almost +smug. Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make a +movement, as if for all the world he HAD his bad conscience; then +they had already met in the middle of the room and had shaken hands +- expressively, cordially on St. George's part. With which they +had passed back together to where the elder man had been standing, +while St. George said: "I hope you're never going away again. +I've been dining here; the General told me." He was handsome, he +was young, he looked as if he had still a great fund of life. He +bent the friendliest, most unconfessing eyes on his disciple of a +couple of years before; asked him about everything, his health, his +plans, his late occupations, the new book. "When will it be out - +soon, soon, I hope? Splendid, eh? That's right; you're a comfort, +you're a luxury! I've read you all over again these last six +months." Paul waited to see if he would tell him what the General +had told him in the afternoon and what Miss Fancourt, verbally at +least, of course hadn't. But as it didn't come out he at last put +the question. + +"Is it true, the great news I hear - that you're to be married?" + +"Ah you have heard it then?" + +"Didn't the General tell you?" Paul asked. + +The Master's face was wonderful. "Tell me what?" + +"That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?" + +"My dear fellow, I don't remember. We've been in the midst of +people. I'm sorry, in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, +of announcing to you a fact that touches me so nearly. It IS a +fact, strange as it may appear. It has only just become one. +Isn't it ridiculous?" St. George made this speech without +confusion, but on the other hand, so far as our friend could judge, +without latent impudence. It struck his interlocutor that, to talk +so comfortably and coolly, he must simply have forgotten what had +passed between them. His next words, however, showed he hadn't, +and they produced, as an appeal to Paul's own memory, an effect +which would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been cruel. "Do you +recall the talk we had at my house that night, into which Miss +Fancourt's name entered? I've often thought of it since." + +"Yes; no wonder you said what you did" - Paul was careful to meet +his eyes. + +"In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light +then. How could I have foreseen this hour?" + +"Didn't you think it probable?" + +"Upon my honour, no," said Henry St. George. "Certainly I owe you +that assurance. Think how my situation has changed." + +"I see - I see," our young man murmured. + +His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been +broached, he was, as a person of imagination and tact, quite ready +to give every satisfaction - being both by his genius and his +method so able to enter into everything another might feel. "But +it's not only that; for honestly, at my age, I never dreamed - a +widower with big boys and with so little else! It has turned out +differently from anything one could have dreamed, and I'm fortunate +beyond all measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents. +Better than any one else perhaps - for I remember how you liked her +before you went away, and how she liked you - you can intelligently +congratulate me." + +"She has been so free!" Those words made a great impression on +Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to +which it so little mattered whether it was designed or casual. Of +course she had been free, and appreciably perhaps by his own act; +for wasn't the Master's allusion to her having liked him a part of +the irony too? "I thought that by your theory you disapproved of a +writer's marrying." + +"Surely - surely. But you don't call me a writer?" + +"You ought to be ashamed," said Paul. + +"Ashamed of marrying again?" + +"I won't say that - but ashamed of your reasons." + +The elder man beautifully smiled. "You must let me judge of them, +my good friend." + +"Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine." + +The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, to +suggest the unsuspected. He stared as if divining a bitterness. +"Don't you think I've been straight?" + +"You might have told me at the time perhaps." + +"My dear fellow, when I say I couldn't pierce futurity -!" + +"I mean afterwards." + +The Master wondered. "After my wife's death?" + +"When this idea came to you." + +"Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious as you +are." + +Poor Overt looked hard at him. "Are you marrying Miss Fancourt to +save me?" + +"Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure. I shall be the +making of you," St. George smiled. "I was greatly struck, after +our talk, with the brave devoted way you quitted the country, and +still more perhaps with your force of character in remaining +abroad. You're very strong - you're wonderfully strong." + +Paul tried to sound his shining eyes; the strange thing was that he +seemed sincere - not a mocking fiend. He turned away, and as he +did so heard the Master say something about his giving them all the +proof, being the joy of his old age. He faced him again, taking +another look. "Do you mean to say you've stopped writing?" + +"My dear fellow, of course I have. It's too late. Didn't I tell +you?" + +"I can't believe it!" + +"Of course you can't - with your own talent! No, no; for the rest +of my life I shall only read YOU." + +"Does she know that - Miss Fancourt?" + +"She will - she will." Did he mean this, our young man wondered, +as a covert intimation that the assistance he should derive from +that young lady's fortune, moderate as it was, would make the +difference of putting it in his power to cease to work ungratefully +an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his +successful manhood, he didn't suggest that any of his veins were +exhausted. "Don't you remember the moral I offered myself to you +that night as pointing?" St. George continued. "Consider at any +rate the warning I am at present." + +This was too much - he WAS the mocking fiend. Paul turned from him +with a mere nod for goodnight and the sense in a sore heart that he +might come back to him and his easy grace, his fine way of +arranging things, some time in the far future, but couldn't +fraternise with him now. It was necessary to his soreness to +believe for the hour in the intensity of his grievance - all the +more cruel for its not being a legal one. It was doubtless in the +attitude of hugging this wrong that he descended the stairs without +taking leave of Miss Fancourt, who hadn't been in view at the +moment he quitted the room. He was glad to get out into the honest +dusky unsophisticating night, to move fast, to take his way home on +foot. He walked a long time, going astray, paying no attention. +He was thinking of too many other things. His steps recovered +their direction, however, and at the end of an hour he found +himself before his door in the small inexpensive empty street. He +lingered, questioning himself still before going in, with nothing +around and above him but moonless blackness, a bad lamp or two and +a few far-away dim stars. To these last faint features he raised +his eyes; he had been saying to himself that he should have been +"sold" indeed, diabolically sold, if now, on his new foundation, at +the end of a year, St. George were to put forth something of his +prime quality - something of the type of "Shadowmere" and finer +than his finest. Greatly as he admired his talent Paul literally +hoped such an incident wouldn't occur; it seemed to him just then +that he shouldn't be able to bear it. His late adviser's words +were still in his ears - "You're very strong, wonderfully strong." +Was he really? Certainly he would have to be, and it might a +little serve for revenge. IS he? the reader may ask in turn, if +his interest has followed the perplexed young man so far. The best +answer to that perhaps is that he's doing his best, but that it's +too soon to say. When the new book came out in the autumn Mr. and +Mrs. St. George found it really magnificent. The former still has +published nothing but Paul doesn't even yet feel safe. I may say +for him, however, that if this event were to occur he would really +be the very first to appreciate it: which is perhaps a proof that +the Master was essentially right and that Nature had dedicated him +to intellectual, not to personal passion. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Lesson of the Master by James + |