EMBARRASSMENTS

By Henry James

1896

Contents

The Figure in the Carpet

Glasses

The Next Time

The Way it Came

THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET

I

I had done a few things and earned a few pence--I had perhaps evenhad time to begin to think I was finer than was perceived by thepatronising; but when I take the little measure of my course (a fidgetyhabit, for it's none of the longest yet) I count my real start fromthe evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me aservice. He had done more things than I, and earned more pence, thoughthere were chances for cleverness I thought he sometimes missed. I couldonly however that evening declare to him that he never missed one forkindness. There was almost rapture in hearing it proposed to me toprepare for __The Middle__, the organ of our lucubrations, so calledfrom the position in the week of its day of appearance, an article forwhich he had made himself responsible and of which, tied up with astout string, he laid on my table the subject. I pounced upon myopportunity--that is on the first volume of it--and paid scant attentionto my friend's explanation of his appeal. What explanation could be moreto the point than my obvious fitness for the task? I had written on HughVereker, but never a word in _The Middle_, where my dealings were mainlywith the ladies and the minor poets. This was his new novel, an advancecopy, and whatever much or little it should do for his reputation Iwas clear on the spot as to what it should do for mine. Moreover, if Ialways read him as soon as I could get hold of him, I had a particularreason for wishing to read him now: I had accepted an invitation toBridges for the following Sunday, and it had been mentioned in LadyJane's note that Mr. Vereker was to be there. I was young enough to havean emotion about meeting a man of his renown, and innocent enough tobelieve the occasion would demand the display of an acquaintance withhis "last. "

Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time toread it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring--as onprecipitate reflection he judged--that he should catch the night-mail toParis. He had had a telegram from Gwendolen Erme in answer to his letteroffering to fly to her aid. I knew already about Gwendolen Erme; I hadnever seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to the effect thatCorvick would marry her if her mother would only die. That lady seemednow in a fair way to oblige him; after some dreadful mistake about someclimate or some waters, she had suddenly collapsed on the return fromabroad. Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make arush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend'sassistance, and it was my secret belief that at the sight of him Mrs. Erme would pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be calledsecret; it discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed meGwendolen's photograph with the remark that she wasn't pretty but wasawfully interesting; she had published at the age of nineteen a novelin three volumes, "Deep Down, " about which, in _The Middle_, he had beenreally splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and undertook thatthe periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, withhis hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course you'll be all right, you know. " Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: "I mean you won't besilly. "

"Silly--about Vereker! Why, what do I ever find him but awfully clever?"

"Well, what's that but silly? What on earth does 'awfully clever'mean? For God's sake try to get _at_ him. Don't let him suffer by ourarrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as should have spokenof him. "

I wondered an instant. "You mean as far and away the biggest of thelot--that sort of thing?"

Corvick almost groaned. "Oh, you know, I don't put them back to backthat way; it's the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure so rare;the sense of "--he mused a little--"something or other. "

I wondered again. "The sense, pray, of what?"

"My dear man, that's just what I want _you_ to say!"

Even before Corvick had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, toprepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night; Corvickcouldn't have done more than that. He was awfully clever--I stuck tothat, but he wasn't a bit the biggest of the lot. I didn't allude to thelot, however; I flattered myself that I emerged on this occasion fromthe infancy of art. "It's all right, " they declared vividly at theoffice; and when the number appeared I felt there was a basis on whichI could meet the great man; It gave me confidence for a day or two, andthen that confidence dropped. I had fancied him reading it with relish, but if Corvick was not satisfied how could Vereker himself be? Ireflected indeed that the heat of the admirer was sometimes grosser eventhan the appetite of the scribe. Corvick at all events wrote me fromParis a little ill-humouredly. Mrs. Erme was pulling round, and I hadn'tat all said what Vereker gave him the sense of. 

II

The effect of my visit to Bridges was to turn me out for moreprofundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so voidof angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination involved in mysmall precautions. If he was in spirits it was not because he had readmy review; in fact on the Sunday morning I felt sure he hadn't readit, though _The Middle_ had been out three days and bloomed, I assuredmyself, in the stiff garden of periodicals which gave one of the ormolutables the air of a stand at a station. The impression he made on mepersonally was such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected tothis end with a surreptitious hand what might be wanting in the carelessconspicuity of the sheet. I am afraid I even watched the result of mymanouvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain. 

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found myselffor half an hour, not perhaps without another manoeuvre, at the greatman's side, the result of his affability was a still livelier desirethat he should not remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I haddone him. It was not that he seemed to thirst for justice; on thecontrary I had not yet caught in his talk the faintest grunt of agrudge--a note for which my young experience had already given me anear. Of late he had had more recognition, and it was pleasant, as weused to say in _The Middle_, to see that it drew him out. He wasn't ofcourse popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good humour to beprecisely that his success was independent of that. He had none the lessbecome in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurtand caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he was, andhe had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I was stronglytempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how much of thatunveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I probably should havedone so had not one of the ladies of our party, snatching a place athis other elbow, just then appealed to him in a spirit comparativelyselfish. It was very discouraging: I almost felt the liberty had beentaken with myself. 

I had had on my tongue's end, for my own part, a phrase or two aboutthe right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not to havespoken, for when on our return we clustered at tea I perceived LadyJane, who had not been out with us, brandishing _The Middle_ with herlongest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure; she was delighted withwhat she had found, and I saw that, as a mistake in a man may often be afelicity in a woman, she would practically do for me what I hadn'tbeen able to do for myself. "Some sweet little truths that needed to bespoken, " I heard her declare, thrusting the paper at rather a bewilderedcouple by the fireplace. She grabbed it away from them again on thereappearance of Hugh Vereker, who after our walk had been upstairs tochange something. "I know you don't in general look at this kind ofthing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You _haven't_ seen it?Then you must. The man has actually got _at_ you, at what _I_ alwaysfeel, you know. " Lady Jane threw into her eyes a look evidently intendedto give an idea of what she always felt; but she added that she couldn'thave expressed it. The man in the paper expressed it in a strikingmanner. "Just see there, and there, where I've dashed it, how he bringsit out. " She had literally marked for him the brightest patches of myprose, and if I was a little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how much he was when before us all Lady Jane wanted to readsomething aloud. I liked at any rate the way he defeated her purposeby jerking the paper affectionately out of her clutch. He would take itupstairs with him, would look at it on going to dress. He did this halfan hour later--I saw it in his hand when he repaired to his room. Thatwas the moment at which, thinking to give her pleasure, I mentioned toLady Jane that I was the author of the review. I did give her pleasure, I judged, but perhaps not quite so much as I had expected. If the authorwas "only me" the thing didn't seem quite so remarkable. Hadn't I hadthe effect rather of diminishing the lustre of the article than ofadding to my own? Her ladyship was subject to the most extraordinarydrops. It didn't matter; the only effect I cared about was the one itwould have on Vereker up there by his bedroom fire. 

At dinner I watched for the signs of this impression, tried to fancythere was some happier light in his eyes; but to my disappointmentLady Jane gave me no chance to make sure. I had hoped she would calltriumphantly down the table, publicly demand if she hadn't been right. The party was large--there were people from outside as well, but I hadnever seen a table long enough to deprive Lady Jane of a triumph. I wasjust reflecting in truth that this interminable board would deprive_me_ of one, when the guest next me, dear woman--she was Miss Poyle, thevicar's sister, a robust, unmodulated person--had the happy inspirationand the unusual courage to address herself across it to Vereker, whowas opposite, but not directly, so that when he replied they were bothleaning forward. She inquired, artless body, what he thought of LadyJane's "panegyric, " which she had read--not connecting it however withher right-hand neighbour; and while I strained my ear for his reply Iheard him, to my stupefaction, call back gaily, with his mouth full ofbread: "Oh, it's all right--it's the usual twaddle!"

I had caught Vereker's glance as he spoke, but Miss Poyle's surprise wasa fortunate cover for my own. "You mean he doesn't do you justice?" saidthe excellent woman. 

Vereker laughed out, and I was happy to be able to do the same. "It's acharming article, " he tossed us. 

Miss Poyle thrust her chin half across the cloth. 

"Oh you're so deep!" she drove home. 

"As deep as the ocean! All I pretend is, the author doesn't see--"

A dish was at this point passed over his shoulder, and we had to waitwhile he helped himself. 

"Doesn't see what?" my neighbour continued. 

"Doesn't see anything. "

"Dear me--how very stupid!"

"Not a bit, " Vereker laughed again. "Nobody does. "

The lady on his further side appealed to him, and Miss Poyle sank backto me. "Nobody sees anything!" she cheerfully announced; to which Ireplied that I had often thought so too, but had somehow taken thethought for a proof on my own part of a tremendous eye. I didn't tellher the article was mine; and I observed that Lady Jane, occupied at theend of the table, had not caught Vereker's words. 

I rather avoided him after dinner, for I confess he struck me as cruellyconceited, and the revelation was a pain. "The usual twaddle"--my acutelittle study! That one's admiration should have had a reserve or twocould gall him to that point? I had thought him placid, and he wasplacid enough; such a surface was the hard, polished glass that encasedthe bauble of his vanity. I was really ruffled, the only comfort wasthat if nobody saw anything George Corvick was quite as much out ofit as I. This comfort however was not sufficient, after the ladies haddispersed, to carry me in the proper manner--I mean in a spottedjacket and humming an air--into the smoking-room. I took my way in somedejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who hadbeen up once more to change, coming out of his room. _He_ was hummingan air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw me his gaietygave a start. 

"My dear young man, " he exclaimed, "I'm so glad to lay hands on you! I'mafraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words of mine at dinnerto Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from Lady Jane that youwrote the little notice in _The Middle_. "

I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to my owndoor, his hand on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture; and onhearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my thresholdand just tell me in three words what his qualification of my remarks hadrepresented. It was plain he really feared I was hurt, and the sense ofhis solicitude suddenly made all the difference to me. My cheap reviewfluttered off into space, and the best things I had said in it becameflat enough beside the brilliancy of his being there. I can see himthere still, on my rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, hisfine, clear face all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. Idon't know what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight ofmy relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips fromfar within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me somethingthat, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any one. I havealways done justice to the generous impulse that made him speak; it wassimply compunction for a snub unconsciously administered to a man ofletters in a position inferior to his own, a man of letters moreover inthe very act of praising him. To make the thing right he talked to meexactly as an equal and on the ground of what we both loved best. Thehour, the place, the unexpectedness deepened the impression: he couldn'thave done anything more exquisitely successful. 

III. 

"I don't quite know how to explain it to you, " he said, "but it was thevery fact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence, itwas just your exceptional sharpness that produced the feeling--a veryold story with me, I beg you to believe--under the momentary influenceof which I used in speaking to that good lady the words you so naturallyresent. I don't read the things in the newspapers unless they're thrustupon me as that one was--it's always one's best friend that does it!But I used to read them sometimes--ten years ago. I daresay they werein general rather stupider then; at any rate it always seemed to me thatthey missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable whenthey patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Wheneversince I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazingaway--still missing it, I mean, deliciously. _You_ miss it, my dearfellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact of your being awfully cleverand your article's being awfully nice doesn't make a hair's breadthof difference. It's quite with you rising young men, " Vereker laughed, "that I feel most what a failure I am!"

I listened with intense interest; it grew in-tenser as he talked. "_You_a failure--heavens! What then may your 'little point' happen to be?"

"Have I got to _tell_ you, after all these years and labours?" There wassomething in the friendly reproach of this--jocosely exaggerated--thatmade me, as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush to the roots of myhair. I'm as much in the dark as ever, though I've grown used in a senseto my obtuseness; at that moment, however, Vereker's happy accent mademe appear to myself, and probably to him, a rare donkey. I was on thepoint of exclaiming, "Ah, yes, don't tell me: for my honour, for that ofthe craft, don't!" when he went on in a manner that showed he had readmy thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some dayredeeming ourselves. "By my little point I mean--what shall I callit?--the particular thing I've written my books most _for_. Isn't therefor every writer a particular thing of that sort, the thing that mostmakes him apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve whichhe wouldn't write at all, the very passion of his passion, the part ofthe business in which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely?Well, it's _that!_"

I considered a moment. I was fascinated--easily, you'll say; but Iwasn't going after all to be put off my guard. "Your description'scertainly beautiful, but it doesn't make what you describe verydistinct. "

"I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn on you at all. "I saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my companion into anemotion as lively as my own. "At any rate, " he went on, "I can speak formyself: there's an idea in my work without which I wouldn't have given astraw for the whole job. It's the finest, fullest intention of the lot, and the application of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. I ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but thatnobody does say it is precisely what we're talking about. It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, thetexture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiateda complete representation of it. So it's naturally the thing for thecritic to look for. It strikes me, " my visitor added, smiling, "even asthe thing for the critic to find. "

This seemed a responsibility indeed. "You call it a little trick?"

"That's only my little modesty. It's really an exquisite scheme. "

"And you hold that you've carried the scheme out?"

"The way I've carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit well ofmyself for. "

I was silent a moment. "Don't you think you ought--just a trifle--toassist the critic?"

"Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen? I'veshouted my intention in his great blank face!" At this, laughing outagain, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show that the allusionwas not to my personal appearance. 

"But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see, beinitiation. "

"What else in heaven's name is criticism supposed to be?" I'm afraid Icoloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that his account ofhis silver lining was poor in something or other that a plain man knowsthings by. "That's only because you've never had a glimpse of it, " hereplied. "If you had had one the element in question would soon havebecome practically all you'd see. To me it's exactly as palpable as themarble of this chimney. Besides, the critic just _isn't_ a plain man: ifhe were, pray, what would he be doing in his neighbour's garden? You'reanything but a plain man yourself, and the very _raison d'être_ of youall is that you're little demons of subtlety. If my great affair'sa secret, that's only because it's a secret in spite of itself--theamazing event has made it one. I not only never took the smallestprecaution to do so, but never dreamed of any such accident. If I hadI shouldn't in advance have had the heart to go on. As it was I onlybecame aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done my work. "

"And now you quite like it?" I risked. 

"My work?"

"Your secret. It's the same thing. "

"Your guessing that, " Vereker replied, "is a proof that you're as cleveras I say!" I was encouraged by this to remark that he would clearly bepained to part with it, and he confessed that it was indeed with him nowthe great amusement of life. "I live almost to see if it will ever bedetected. " He looked at me for a jesting challenge; something at theback of his eyes seemed to peep out. "But I needn't worry--it won't!"

"You fire me as I've never been fired, " I returned; "you make medetermined to do or die. " Then I asked: "Is it a kind of esotericmessage?"

His countenance fell at this--he put out his hand as if to bid megood-night. "Ah, my dear fellow, it can't be described in cheapjournalese!"

I knew of course he would be awfully fastidious, but our talk had mademe feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied--I kept holdof his hand. "I won't make use of the expression then, " I said, "inthe article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though Idaresay I shall have hard work to do without it. But meanwhile, justto hasten that difficult birth, can't you give a fellow a clue?" I feltmuch more at my ease. 

"My whole lucid effort gives him a clue--every page and line and letter. The thing's as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, apiece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into every volume as yourfoot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses everyword, it dots every i, it places every comma. "

I scratched my head. "Is it something in the style or something in thethought? An element of form or an element of feeling?"

He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions to be crudeand my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear boy--don't botherabout it. After all, you do like a fellow. "

"And a little intelligence might spoil it?" I still detained him. 

He hesitated. "Well, you've got a heart in your body. Is that an elementof form or an element of feeling? What I contend that nobody has evermentioned in my work is the organ of life. "

"I see--it's some idea about life, some sort of philosophy. Unless itbe, " I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, "some kind of game you're up to with your style, something you're afterin the language. Perhaps it's a preference for the letter P!" I venturedprofanely to break out. "Papa, potatoes, prunes--that sort of thing?" Hewas suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn't got the right letter. Buthis amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was neverthelesssomething else I had absolutely to learn. "Should you be able, pen inhand, to state it clearly yourself--to name it, phrase it, formulateit?"

"Oh, " he almost passionately sighed, "if I were only, pen in hand, oneof _you_ chaps!"

"That would be a great chance for you of course. But why should youdespise us chaps for not doing what you can't do yourself?"

"Can't do?" He opened his eyes. "Haven't I done it in twenty volumes? Ido it in my way, " he continued. "You don't do it in yours. "

"Ours is so devilish difficult, " I weakly observed. 

"So is mine. We each choose our own. There's no compulsion. You won'tcome down and smoke?"

"No. I want to think this thing out. "

"You'll tell me then in the morning that you've laid me bare?"

"I'll see what I can do; I'll sleep on it. But just one word more, " Iadded. We had left the room--I walked again with him a few steps alongthe passage. "This extraordinary 'general intention, ' as you callit--for that's the most vivid description I can induce you to make ofit--is then generally a sort of buried treasure?"

His face lighted. "Yes, call it that, though it's perhaps not for me todo so. "

"Nonsense!" I laughed. "You know you're hugely proud of it. "

"Well, I didn't propose to tell you so; but it _is_ the joy of my soul!"

"You mean it's a beauty so rare, so great?"

He hesitated a moment. "The loveliest thing in the world!" We hadstopped, and on these words he left me; but at the end of the corridor, while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned and caught sightof my puzzled face. It made him earnestly, indeed I thought quiteanxiously, shake his head and wave his finger. "Give it up--give it up!"

This wasn't a challenge--it was fatherly advice. If I had had one of hisbooks at hand I would have repeated my recent act of faith--I wouldhave spent half the night with him. At three o'clock in the morning, notsleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he was to Lady Jane, Istole down to the library with a candle. There wasn't, so far as I coulddiscover, a line of his writing in the house. 

IV

Returning to town I feverishly collected them all; I picked out each inits order and held it up to the light. This gave me a maddening month, in the course of which several things took place. One of these, thelast, I may as well immediately mention, was that I acted on Vereker'sadvice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I could really make nothingof the business; it proved a dead loss. After all, before, as he hadhimself observed, I liked him; and what now occurred was simply that mynew intelligence and vain preoccupation damaged my liking. I notonly failed to find his general intention--I found myself missing thesubordinate intentions I had formerly found. His books didn't evenremain the charming things they had been for me; the exasperation of mysearch put me out of conceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure themore they became a resource the less; for from the moment I was unableto follow up the author's hint I of course felt it a point of honournot to make use professionally of my knowledge of them. I _had_ noknowledge--nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it--theyonly annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted for myconfusion--perversely, I confess--by the idea that Vereker had made afool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the general intention amonstrous _pose_. 

The great incident of the time however was that I told George Corvickall about the matter and that my information had an immense effect uponhim. He had at last come back, but so, unfortunately, had Mrs. Erme, and there was as yet, I could see, no question of his nuptials. He wasimmensely stirred up by the anecdote I had brought from Bridges; it fellin so completely with the sense he had had from the first that there wasmore in Vereker than met the eye. When I remarked that the eye seemedwhat the printed page had been expressly invented to meet he immediatelyaccused me of being spiteful because I had been foiled. Our commerce hadalways that pleasant latitude. The thing Vereker had mentioned to me wasexactly the thing he, Corvick, had wanted me to speak of in my review. On my suggesting at last that with the assistance I had now given himhe would doubtless be prepared to speak of it himself he admitted freelythat before doing this there was more he must understand. What he wouldhave said, had he reviewed the new book, was that there was evidently inthe writer's inmost art something to _be_ understood. I hadn't so muchas hinted at that: no wonder the writer hadn't been flattered! I askedCorvick what he really considered he meant by his own supersubtlety, and, unmistakably kindled, he replied: "It isn't for the vulgar--itisn't for the vulgar!" He had hold of the tail of something; he wouldpull hard, pull it right out. He pumped me dry on Vereker's strangeconfidence and, pronouncing me the luckiest of mortals, mentioned half adozen questions he wished to goodness I had had the gumption to put. Yeton the other hand he didn't want to be told too much--it would spoil thefun of seeing what would come. The failure of my fun was at the momentof our meeting not complete, but I saw it ahead, and Corvick saw thatI saw it. I, on my side, saw likewise that one of the first things hewould do would be to rush off with my story to Gwendolen. 

On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by the receiptof a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at Bridges hadbeen recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a magazine, onsome article to which my signature was appended. "I read it with greatpleasure, " he wrote, "and remembered under its influence our livelyconversation by your bedroom fire. The consequence of this has beenthat I begin to measure the temerity of my having saddled you with aknowledge that you may find something of a burden. Now that the fit'sover I can't imagine how I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. Ihad never before related, no matter in what expansion, the history ofmy little secret, and I shall never speak of the business again. I wasaccidentally so much more explicit with you than it had ever enteredinto my game to be, that I find this game--I mean the pleasure ofplaying it--suffers considerably. In short, if you can understand it, I've spoiled a part of my fun. I really don't want to give anybody whatI believe you clever young men call the tip. That's of course a selfishsolicitude, and I name it to you for what it may be worth to you. Ifyou're disposed to humour me, don't repeat my revelation. Think medemented--it's your right; but don't tell anybody why. "

The sequel to this communication was that as early on the morrow as Idared I drove straight to Mr. Vereker's door. He occupied in thoseyears one of the honest old houses in Kensington-square. He received meimmediately, and as soon as I came in I saw I had not lost my power tominister to his mirth. He laughed out at the sight of my face, which doubtless expressed my perturbation. I had been indiscreet--mycompunction was great. "I _have_ told somebody, " I panted, "and I'm surethat, person will by this time have told somebody else! It's a woman, into the bargain. "

"The person you've told?"

"No, the other person. I'm quite sure he must have told her. "

"For all the good it will do her--or do _me!_ A woman will never findout. "

"No, but she'll talk all over the place: she'll do just what you don'twant. "

Vereker thought a moment, but he was not so disconcerted as I hadfeared: he felt that if the harm was done it only served him right. "Itdoesn't matter--don't worry. "

"I'll do my best, I promise you, that your talk with me shall go nofurther. "

"Very good; do what you can. "

"In the meantime, " I pursued, "George Cor-vick's possession of the tipmay, on his part, really lead to something. "

"That will be a brave day. "

I told him about Corvick's cleverness, his admiration, the intensityof his interest in my anecdote; and without making too much of thedivergence of our respective estimates mentioned that my friend wasalready of opinion that he saw much further into a certain affair thanmost people. He was quite as fired as I had been at Bridges. He wasmoreover in love with the young lady: perhaps the two together wouldpuzzle something out. 

Vereker seemed struck with this. "Do you mean they're to be married?"

"I daresay that's what it will come to. "

"That may help them, " he conceded, "but we must give them time!"

I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties;whereupon he repeated his former advice: "Give it up, give it up!" Heevidently didn't think me intellectually equipped for the adventure. Istayed half an hour, and he was most good-natured, but I couldn't helppronouncing him a man of shifting moods. He had been free with me ina mood, he had repented in a mood, and now in a mood he had turnedindifferent. This general levity helped me to believe that, so faras the subject of the tip went, there wasn't much in it. I contrivedhowever to make him answer a few more questions about it, though he didso with visible impatience. For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we wereall so blank about was vividly there. It was something, I guessed, inthe primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when I used it, and he used anotherhimself. "It's the very string, " he said, "that my pearls are strungon!" The reason of his note to me had been that he really didn't want togive us a grain of succour--our destiny was a thing too perfect in itsway to touch. He had formed the habit of depending upon it, and if thespell was to break it must break by some force of its own. He comes backto me from that last occasion--for I was never to speak to him again--asa man with some safe secret for enjoyment. I wondered as I walked awaywhere he had got _his_ tip. 

V

When I spoke to George Corvick of the caution I had received he made mefeel that any doubt of his delicacy would be almost an insult. He hadinstantly told Gwendolen, but Gwendolen's ardent response was in itselfa pledge of discretion. The question would now absorb them, and theywould enjoy their fun too much to wish to share it with the crowd. Theyappeared to have caught instinctively Vereker's peculiar notion offun. Their intellectual pride, however, was not such as to make themindifferent to any further light I might throw on the affair they had inhand. They were indeed of the "artistic temperament, " and I was freshlystruck with my colleague's power to excite himself over a question ofart. He called it letters, he called it life--it was all one thing. In what he said I now seemed to understand that he spoke equally forGwendolen, to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently betterto allow her a little leisure, he made a point of introducing me. Iremember our calling together one Sunday in August at a huddled house inChelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick's possession of a friend whohad some light to mingle with his own. He could say things to her that Icould never say to him. She had indeed no sense of humour and, with herpretty way of holding her head on one side, was one of those personswhom you want, as the phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarianby themselves. She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she hadremarkably little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told methat I had chilled her by my apparent indisposition to oblige her withthe detail of what Vereker had said to me. I admitted that I felt I hadgiven thought enough to this exposure: hadn't I even made up my mindthat it was hollow, wouldn't stand the test? The importance theyattached to it was irritating--it rather envenomed my dissent. 

That statement looks unamiable, and what probably happened was thatI felt humiliated at seeing other persons derive a daily joy from anexperiment which had brought me only chagrin. I was out in the coldwhile, by the evening fire, under the lamp, they followed the chase forwhich I myself had sounded the horn. They did as I had done, onlymore deliberately and sociably--they went over their author from thebeginning. There was no hurry, Corvick said--the future was before themand the fascination could only grow; they would take him page by page, as they would take one of the classics, inhale him in slow draughts andlet him sink deep in. I doubt whether they would have got so wound upif they had not been in love: poor Vereker's secret gave them endlessoccasion to put their young heads together. None the less it representedthe kind of problem for which Corvick had a special aptitude, drew outthe particular pointed patience of which, had he lived, he would havegiven more striking and, it is to be hoped, more fruitful examples. Heat least was, in Vereker's words, a little demon of subtlety. We hadbegun by disputing, but I soon saw that without my stirring a finger hisinfatuation would have its bad hours. He would bound off on false scentsas I had done--he would clap his hands over new lights and see themblown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I toldhim, but the maniacs who embrace some bedlamitical theory of thecryptic character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had hadShakespeare's own word for his being cryptic he would immediately haveaccepted it. The case there was altogether different--we had nothingbut the word of Mr. Snooks. I rejoined that I was stupefied to see himattach such importance even to the word of Mr. Vereker. He inquiredthereupon whether I treated Mr. Vereker's word as a lie. I wasn'tperhaps prepared, in my unhappy rebound, to go as far as that, but Iinsisted that till the contrary was proved I should view it as too fondan imagination. I didn't, I confess, say--I didn't at that time quiteknow--all I felt. Deep down, as Miss Erme would have said, I was uneasy, I was expectant. At the core of my personal confusion--for my curiositylived in its ashes--was the sharpness of a sense that Corvick would atlast probably come out somewhere. He made, in defence of his credulity, a great point of the fact that from of old, in his study of this genius, he had caught whiffs and hints of he didn't know what, faint wanderingnotes of a hidden music. That was just the rarity, that was the charm:it fitted so perfectly into what I reported. 

If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Chelsea Idaresay it was as much for news of Vereker as for news of Miss Erme'smamma. The hours spent there by Corvick were present to my fancy asthose of a chessplayer bent with a silent scowl, all the lamplit winter, over his board and his moves. As my imagination filled it out thepicture held me fast. On the other side of the table was a ghostlierform, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredly but a littlewearily secure--an antagonist who leaned back in his chair with hishands in his pockets and a smile on his fine clear face. Close toCorvick, behind him, was a girl who had begun to strike me as pale andwasted and even, on more familiar view, as rather handsome, and whorested on his shoulder and hung upon his moves. He would take up achessman and hold it poised a while over one of the little squares, and then he would put it back in its place with a long sigh ofdisappointment. The young lady, at this, would slightly but uneasilyshift her position and look across, very hard, very long, verystrangely, at their dim participant. I had asked them at an early stageof the business if it mightn't contribute to their success to have somecloser communication with him. The special circumstances would surelybe held to have given me a right to introduce them. Corvick immediatelyreplied that he had no wish to approach the altar before he had preparedthe sacrifice. He quite agreed with our friend both as to the sport andas to the honour--he would bring down the animal with his own rifle. When I asked him if Miss Erme were as keen a shot he said after anhesitation: "No; I'm ashamed to say she wants to set a trap. She'd giveanything to see him; she says she requires another tip. She's reallyquite morbid about it. But she must play fair--she _shan't_ see him!"he emphatically added. I had a suspicion that they had even quarrelled alittle on the subject--a suspicion not corrected by the way he more thanonce exclaimed to me: "She's quite incredibly literary, you know--quitefantastically!" I remember his saying of her that she felt in italicsand thought in capitals. "Oh, when I've run him to earth, " he alsosaid, "then, you know, I shall knock at his door. Rather--I beg you tobelieve. I'll have it from his own lips: 'Right you are, my boy; you'vedone it this time!' He shall crown me victor--with the critical laurel. "

Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might have given himof meeting the distinguished novelist; a danger however that disappearedwith Vereker's leaving England for an indefinite absence, as thenewspapers announced--going to the south for motives connected with thehealth of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement. A year--morethan a year--had elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had notencountered him again. I think at bottom I was rather ashamed--Ihated to remind him that though I had irremediably missed his point areputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led mea dance; kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, whenin spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make mea sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once saw her with Verekerat a concert and was sure I was seen by them, but I slipped out withoutbeing caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashed along in the rain, that I couldn't have done anything else; and yet I remember saying tomyself that it was hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books, but I had lost the man himself: they and their author had been alikespoiled for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I hadliked the man still better than I had liked the books. 

VI

Six months after Vereker had left England George Corvick, who made hisliving by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which imposed on himan absence of some length and a journey of some difficulty, and hisundertaking of which was much of a surprise to me. His brother-in-lawhad become editor of a great provincial paper, and the great provincialpaper, in a fine flight of fancy, had conceived the idea of sending a"special commissioner" to India. Special commissioners had begun, inthe "metropolitan press, " to be the fashion, and the journal in questionfelt that it had passed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick hadno hand, I knew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that washis brother-in-law's affair, and the fact that a particular task was notin his line was apt to be with himself exactly a reason for acceptingit. He was prepared to out-Herod the metropolitan press; he took solemnprecautions against priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste. Nobodyever knew it--the taste was all his own. In addition to his expenses hewas to be conveniently paid, and I found myself able to help him, for the usual fat book, to a plausible arrangement with the usual fatpublisher. I naturally inferred that his obvious desire to make a littlemoney was not unconnected with the prospect of a union with GwendolenErme. I was aware that her mother's opposition was largely addressed tohis want of means and of lucrative abilities, but it so happened that, on my saying the last time I saw him something that bore on the questionof his separation from our young lady, he exclaimed with an emphasisthat startled me: "Ah, I'm not a bit engaged to her, you know!"

"Not overtly, " I answered, "because her mother doesn't like you. ButI've always taken for granted a private understanding. "

"Well, there _was_ one. But there isn't now. " That was all he said, except something about Mrs. Erme's having got on her feet again in themost extraordinary way--a remark from which I gathered he wished me tothink he meant that private understandings were of little use when thedoctor didn't share them. What I took the liberty of really thinkingwas that the girl might in some way have estranged him. Well, if he hadtaken the turn of jealousy for instance it could scarcely be jealousyof me. In that case (besides the absurdity of it) he wouldn't have goneaway to leave us together. For some time before his departure we hadindulged in no allusion to the buried treasure, and from his silence, of which mine was the consequence, I had drawn a sharp conclusion. Hiscourage had dropped, his ardour had gone the way of mine--this inferenceat least he left me to enjoy. More than that he couldn't do; he couldn'tface the triumph with which I might have greeted an explicit admission. He needn't have been afraid, poor dear, for I had by this time lost allneed to triumph. In fact I considered that I showed magnanimity in notreproaching him with his collapse, for the sense of his having thrown upthe game made me feel more than ever how much I at last depended on him. If Corvick had broken down I should never know; no one would be of anyuse if _he_ wasn't. It wasn't a bit true that I had ceased to care forknowledge; little by little my curiosity had not only begun to acheagain, but had become the familiar torment of my consciousness. Thereare doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardlymore natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't know afterall why I should in this connection so much as mention them. For thefew persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my anecdote isconcerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill meant courage, andcourage meant honour, and honour meant passion, meant life. The stakeon the table was of a different substance, and our roulette was therevolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grimgamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her whiteface and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of the lean ladies one hadmet in the temples of chance. I recognised in Corvick's absence that shemade this analogy vivid. It was extravagant, I admit, the way she livedfor the art of the pen. Her passion visibly preyed upon her, and in herpresence I felt almost tepid. I got hold of "Deep Down" again: it wasa desert in which she had lost herself, but in which too she had dug awonderful hole in the sand--a cavity out of which Corvick had still moreremarkably pulled her. 

Early in March I had a telegram from her, in consequence of which Irepaired immediately to Chelsea, where the first thing she said to mewas: "He has got it, he has got it!"

She was moved, as I could see, to such depths that she must mean thegreat thing. "Vereker's idea?"

"His general intention. George has cabled from Bombay. "

She had the missive open there; it was emphatic, but it was brief. "Eureka. Immense. " That was all--he had saved the money of thesignature. I shared her emotion, but I was disappointed. "He doesn't saywhat it is. "

"How could he--in a telegram? He'll write it. "

"But how does he know?"

"Know it's the real thing? Oh, I'm sure when you see it you do know. _Vera incessu patuit dea!_"

"It's you, Miss Erme, who are a dear for bringing me such news!"--I wentall lengths in my high spirits. "But fancy finding our goddess in thetemple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have been able to go intothe thing again in the midst of such different and such powerfulsolicitations!"

"He hasn't gone into it, I know; it's the thing itself, let severelyalone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him like a tigressout of the jungle. He didn't take a book with him--on purpose; indeedhe wouldn't have needed to--he knows every page, as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some day somewhere, when he wasn'tthinking, they fell, in all their superb intricacy, into the one rightcombination. The figure in the carpet came out. That's the way he knewit would come and the real reason--you didn't in the least understand, but I suppose I may tell you now--why he went and why I consented tohis going. We knew the change would do it, the difference of thought, ofscene, would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had perfectly, we had admirably calculated. The elements were all in his mind, and inthe _secousse_ of a new and intense experience they just struck light. "She positively struck light herself--she was literally, faciallyluminous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, and shecontinued: "He'll come right home--this will bring him. "

"To see Vereker, you mean?"

"To see Vereker--and to see _me_. Think what he'll have to tell me!"

I hesitated. "About India?"

"About fiddlesticks! About Vereker--about the figure in the carpet. "

"But, as you say, we shall surely have that in a letter. "

She thought like one inspired, and I remembered how Corvick had toldme long before that her face was interesting. "Perhaps it won't go in aletter if it's 'immense. '"

"Perhaps not if it's immense bosh. If he has got something that won't goin a letter he hasn't got _the_ thing. Vereker's own statement to me wasexactly that the 'figure' _would_ go in a letter. "

"Well, I cabled to George an hour ago--two words, " said Gwendolen. 

"Is it indiscreet of me to inquire what they were?"

She hung fire, but at last she brought them out. "'Angel, write. '"

"Good!" I exclaimed. "I'll make it sure--I'll send him the same. "

VII

My words however were not absolutely the same--I put something insteadof "angel"; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the more apt, for wheneventually we heard from Corvick it was merely, it was thoroughly tobe tantalised. He was magnificent in his triumph, he described hisdiscovery as stupendous; but his ecstasy only obscured it--there wereto be no particulars till he should have submitted his conception to thesupreme authority. He had thrown up his commission, he had thrown uphis book, he had thrown up everything but the instant need to hurry toRapallo, on the Genoese shore, where Vereker was making a stay. I wrotehim a letter which was to await him at Aden--I besought him to relievemy suspense. That he found my letter was indicated by a telegram which, reaching me after weary days and without my having received an answer tomy laconic dispatch at Bombay, was evidently intended as a reply to bothcommunications. Those few words were in familiar French, the French ofthe day, which Corvick often made use of to show he wasn't a prig. Ithad for some persons the opposite effect, but his message may fairlybe paraphrased. "Have patience; I want to see, as it breaks on you, theface you'll make!" "_Tellement envie de voir ta tête!_"--that was what Ihad to sit down with. I can certainly not be said to have sat down, forI seem to remember myself at this time as rushing constantly betweenthe little house in Chelsea and my own. Our impatience, Gwendolen's andmine, was equal, but I kept hoping her light would be greater. We allspent during this episode, for people of our means, a great deal ofmoney in telegrams, and I counted on the receipt of news from Rapalloimmediately after the junction of the discoverer with the discovered. The interval seemed an age, but late one day I heard a hansom rattle upto my door with a crash engendered by a hint of liberality. I lived withmy heart in my mouth and I bounded to the window--a movement which gaveme a view of a young lady erect on the footboard of the vehicle andeagerly looking up at my house. At sight of me she flourished a paperwith a movement that brought me straight down, the movement with which, in melodramas, handkerchiefs and reprieves are flourished at the foot ofthe scaffold. 

"Just seen Vereker--not a note wrong. Pressed me to bosom--keeps me amonth. " So much I read on her paper while the cabby dropped a grinfrom his perch. In my excitement I paid him profusely and in hers shesuffered it; then as he drove away we started to walk about and talk. Wehad talked, 'heaven knows, enough before, but this was a wondrous lift. We pictured the whole scene at Rapallo, where he would have written, mentioning my name, for permission to call; that is _I_ pictured it, having more material than my companion, whom I felt hang on my lips aswe stopped on purpose before shop-windows we didn't look into. About onething we were clear: if he was staying on for fuller communication weshould at least have a letter from him that would help us through thedregs of delay. We understood his staying on, and yet each of us saw, Ithink, that the other hated it. The letter we were clear about arrived;it was for Gwendolen, and I called upon her in time to save her thetrouble of bringing it to me. She didn't read it out, as was naturalenough; but she repeated to me what it chiefly embodied. This consistedof the remarkable statement that he would tell her when they weremarried exactly what she wanted to know. 

"Only when we're married--not before, " she explained. "It's tantamountto saying--isn't it?--that I must marry him straight off!" She smiledat me while I flushed with disappointment, a vision of fresh delay thatmade me at first unconscious of my surprise. It seemed more than a hintthat on me as well he would impose some tiresome condition. Suddenly, while she reported several more things from his letter, I rememberedwhat he had told me before going away. He found Mr. Vereker deliriouslyinteresting and his own possession of the secret a kind of intoxication. The buried treasure was all gold and gems. Now that it was there itseemed to grow and grow before him; it was in all time, in all tongues, one of the most wonderful flowers of art. Nothing, above all, when onceone was face to face with it, had been more consummately done. Whenonce it came out it came out, was there with a splendour that made youashamed; and there had not been, save in the bottomless vulgarity ofthe age, with every one tasteless and tainted, every sense stopped, thesmallest reason why it should have been overlooked. It was immense, but it was simple--it was simple, but it was immense, and the finalknowledge of it was an experience quite apart. He intimated that thecharm of such an experience, the desire to drain it, in its freshness, to the last drop, was what kept him there close to the source. Gwendolen, frankly radiant as she tossed me these fragments, showed theelation of a prospect more assured than my own. That brought me back tothe question of her marriage, prompted me to ask her if what shemeant by what she had just surprised me with was that she was under anengagement. 

"Of course I am!" she answered. "Didn't you know it?" She appearedastonished; but I was still more so, for Corvick had told me the exactcontrary. I didn't mention this, however; I only reminded her that Ihad not been to that degree in her confidence, or even in Corvick's, and that moreover I was not in ignorance of her mother's interdict. Atbottom I was troubled by the disparity of the two assertions; but aftera moment I felt that Corvick's was the one I least doubted. This simplyreduced me to asking myself if the girl had on the spot improvised anengagement--vamped up an old one or dashed off a new--in order to arriveat the satisfaction she desired. I reflected that she had resources ofwhich I was destitute; but she made her case slightly more intelligibleby rejoining presently: "What the state of things has been is that wefelt of course bound to do nothing in mamma's lifetime. "

"But now you think you'll just dispense with your mother's consent?"

"Ah, it may not come to that!" I wondered what it might come to, and shewent on: "Poor dear, she may swallow the dose. In fact, you know, " sheadded with a laugh, "she really _must!_"--a proposition of which, onbehalf of every one concerned, I fully acknowledged the force. 

VIII

Nothing more annoying had ever happened to me than to become awarebefore Corvick's arrival in England that I should not be there to puthim through. I found myself abruptly called to Germany by the alarmingillness of my younger brother, who, against my advice, had gone toMunich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the art ofportraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an allowance hadthreatened to withdraw it if he should, under specious pretexts, turnfor superior truth to Paris--Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, the abyss. I deplored this prejudice at the time, and the deep injury of it was now visible--first in the fact that ithad not saved the poor boy, who was clever, frail and foolish, fromcongestion of the lungs, and second in the greater remoteness fromLondon to which the event condemned me. I am afraid that what wasuppermost in my mind during several anxious weeks was the sense that ifwe had only been in Paris I might have run over to see Corvick. This wasactually out of the question from every point of view: my brother, whoserecovery gave us both plenty to do, was ill for three months, duringwhich I never left him and at the end of which we had to face theabsolute prohibition of a return to England. The consideration ofclimate imposed itself, and he was in no state to meet it alone. I tookhim to Meran and there spent the summer with him, trying to show him byexample how to get back to work and nursing a rage of another sort thatI tried not to show him. 

The whole business proved the first of a series of phenomena sostrangely combined that, taken together (which was how I had to takethem) they form as good an illustration as I can recall of the manner inwhich, for the good of his soul doubtless, fate sometimes deals with aman's avidity. These incidents certainly had larger bearings than thecomparatively meagre consequence we are here concerned with--though Ifeel that consequence also to be a thing to speak of with some respect. It's mainly in such a light, I confess, at any rate, that at this hourthe ugly fruit of my exile is present to me. Even at first indeed thespirit in which my avidity, as I have called it, made me regard thisterm owed no element of ease to the fact that before coming back fromRapallo George Corvick addressed me in a way I didn't like. His letterhad none of the sedative action that I must to-day profess myselfsure he had wished to give it, and the march of occurrences was not soordered as to make up for what it lacked. He had begun on the spot, forone of the quarterlies, a great last word on Vereker's writings, andthis exhaustive study, the only one that would have counted, haveexisted, was to turn on the new light, to utter--oh, so quietly!--theunimagined truth. It was in other words to trace the figure in thecarpet through every convolution, to reproduce it in every tint. Theresult, said Corvick, was to be the greatest literary portrait everpainted, and what he asked of me was just to be so good as not totrouble him with questions till he should hang up his masterpiece beforeme. He did me the honour to declare that, putting aside the greatsitter himself, all aloft in his indifference, I was individually theconnoisseur he was most working for. I was therefore to be a good boyand not try to peep under the curtain before the show-was ready: Ishould enjoy it all the more if I sat very still. 

I did my best to sit very still, but I couldn't help giving a jumpon seeing in _The Times_ after I had been a week or two in Munich andbefore, as I knew, Corvick had reached London, the announcement ofthe sudden death of poor Mrs. Erme. I instantly wrote to Gwendolenfor particulars, and she replied that her mother had succumbed tolong-threatened failure of the heart. She didn't say, but I took theliberty of reading into her words, that from the point of view of hermarriage and also of her eagerness, which was quite a match for mine, this was a solution more prompt than could have been expected and moreradical than waiting for the old lady to swallow the dose. I candidlyadmit indeed that at the time--for I heard from her repeatedly--Iread some singular things into Gwendolen's words and some still moreextraordinary ones into her silences. Pen in hand, this way, I live thetime over, and it brings back the oddest sense of my having been formonths and in spite of myself a kind of coerced spectator. All my lifehad taken refuge in my eyes, which the procession of events appeared tohave committed itself to keep astare. There were days when I thought ofwriting to Hugh Vereker and simply throwing myself on his charity. But Ifelt more deeply that I hadn't fallen quite so low, besides which, quiteproperly, he would send me about my business. Mrs. Erme's deathbrought Corvick straight home, and within the month he was united "veryquietly"--as quietly I suppose as he meant in his article to bring outhis _trouvaille_--to the young lady he had loved and quitted. I use thislast term, I may parenthetically say, because I subsequently grew surethat at the time he went to India, at the time of his great news fromBombay, there was no engagement whatever. There was none at the momentshe affirmed the opposite. On the other hand he certainly became engagedthe day he returned. The happy pair went down to Torquay for theirhoneymoon, and there, in a reckless hour, it occurred to poor Corvick totake his young bride a drive. He had no command of that business: thishad been brought home to me of old in a little tour we had once madetogether in a dogcart. In a dogcart he perched his companion for arattle over Devonshire hills, on one of the likeliest of which hebrought his horse, who, it was true, had bolted, down with such violencethat the occupants of the cart were hurled forward and that he fellhorribly on his head. He was killed on the spot; Gwendolen escapedunhurt. 

I pass rapidly over the question of this unmitigated tragedy, of whatthe loss of my best friend meant for me, and I complete my littlehistory of my patience and my pain by the frank statement of my having, in a postscript to my very first letter to her after the receipt of thehideous news, asked Mrs. Corvick whether her husband had not at leastfinished the great article on Vereker. Her answer was as prompt asmy inquiry: the article, which had been barely begun, was a mereheartbreaking scrap. She explained that Corvick had just settled down toit when he was interrupted by her mother's death; then, on his return, he had been kept from work by the engrossments into which that calamityplunged them. The opening pages were all that existed; they werestriking, they were promising, but they didn't unveil the idol. Thatgreat intellectual feat was obviously to have formed his climax. Shesaid nothing more, nothing to enlighten me as to the state of her ownknowledge--the knowledge for the acquisition of which I had conceivedher doing prodigious things. This was above all what I wanted to know:had _she_ seen the idol unveiled? Had there been a private ceremony fora palpitating audience of one? For what else but that ceremony hadthe previous ceremony been enacted? I didn't like as yet to press her, though when I thought of what had passed between us on the subject inCorvick's absence her reticence surprised me. It was therefore not tillmuch later, from Meran, that I risked another appeal, risked it in sometrepidation, for she continued to tell me nothing. "Did you hear inthose few days of your blighted bliss, " I wrote, "what we desired so tohear?" I said "we" as a little hint; and she showed me she could take alittle hint. "I heard everything, " she replied, "and I mean to keep itto myself!"

IX

It was impossible not to be moved with the strongest sympathy for her, and on my return to England I showed her every kindness in my power. Hermother's death had made her means sufficient, and she had gone tolive in a more convenient quarter. But her loss had been great and hervisitation cruel; it never would have occurred to me moreover to supposeshe could come to regard the enjoyment of a technical tip, of a pieceof literary experience, as a counterpoise to her grief. Strange to say, none the less, I couldn't help fancying after I had seen her a few timesthat I caught a glimpse of some such oddity. I hasten to add that therehad been other things I couldn't help fancying; and as I never felt Iwas really clear about these, so, as to the point I here touch on, I give her memory the benefit of every doubt. Stricken and solitary, highly accomplished and now, in her deep mourning, her maturer grace, and her uncomplaining sorrow incontestably handsome, she presentedherself as leading a life of singular dignity and beauty. I had at firstfound a way to believe that I should soon get the better of the reserveformulated the week after the catastrophe in her reply to an appeal asto which I was not unconscious that it might strike her as mistimed. Certainly that reserve was something of a shock to me--certainly itpuzzled me the more I thought of it, though I tried to explain it, with moments of success, by the supposition of exalted sentiments, ofsuperstitious scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it addedat the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious asthat mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs. Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that wasto fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession ofwhich I am for ever conscious. But this only helped me the more to beartful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit. There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them wasdeeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friendtill after the removal of the last barriers to their intimacy; then hehad let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea, taking a hintfrom him, to liberate this animal only on the basis of the renewal ofsuch a relation? Was the figure in the carpet traceable or describableonly for husbands and wives--for lovers supremely united? It came backto me in a mystifying manner that in Kensington-square, when I told himthat Corvick would have told the girl he loved, some word had droppedfrom Vereker that gave colour to this possibility. There might be littlein it, but there was enough to make me wonder if I should have to marryMrs. Corvick to get what I wanted. Was I prepared to offer her thisprice for the blessing of her knowledge? Ah! that way madness lay--so Isaid to myself at least in bewildered hours. I could see meanwhile thetorch she refused to pass on flame away in her chamber of memory--pourthrough her eyes a light that made a glow in her lonely house. At theend of six months I was fully sure of what this warm presence made upto her for. We had talked again and again of the man who had brought ustogether, of his talent, his character, his personal charm, his certaincareer, his dreadful doom, and even of his clear purpose in that greatstudy which was to have been a supreme literary portrait, a kind ofcritical Vandyke or Velasquez. She had conveyed to me in abundance thatshe was tongue-tied by her perversity, by her piety, that she wouldnever break the silence it had not been given to the "right person, " asshe said, to break. The hour however finally arrived. One evening when Ihad been sitting with her longer than usual I laid my hand firmly on herarm. 

"Now, at last, what _is_ it?"

She had been expecting me; she was ready. She gave a long, slow, soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercydidn't prevent its hurling at me the largest, finest, coldest "Never!"I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to takefull in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow thetears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked at eachother; after which I slowly rose. I was wondering if some day she wouldaccept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said as I smootheddown my hat: "I know what to think then; it's nothing!"

A remote, disdainful pity for me shone out of her dim smile; then sheexclaimed in a voice that I hear at this moment: "It's my _life!_" As Istood at the door she added: "You've insulted him!"

"Do you mean Vereker?"

"I mean--the Dead!"

I recognised when I reached the street the justice of her charge. Yes, it was her life--I recognised that too; but her life none the less maderoom with the lapse of time for another interest. A year and a halfafter Corvick's death she published in a single volume her second novel, "Overmastered, " which I pounced on in the hope of finding in it sometell-tale echo or some peeping face. All I found was a much better bookthan her younger performance, showing I thought the better company shehad kept. As a tissue tolerably intricate it was a carpet with a figureof its own; but the figure was not the figure I was looking for. Onsending a review of it to _The Middle_ I was surprised to learn from theoffice that a notice was already in type. When the paper came out Ihad no hesitation in attributing this article, which I thought rathervulgarly overdone, to Drayton Deane, who in the old days had beensomething of a friend of Corvick's, yet had only within a few weeks madethe acquaintance of his widow. I had had an early copy of the book, butDeane had evidently had an earlier. He lacked all the same the lighthand with which Corvick had gilded the gingerbread--he laid on thetinsel in splotches. 

X

Six months later appeared "The Right of Way, " the last chance, though wedidn't know it, that we were to have to redeem ourselves. Written whollyduring Vereker's absence, the book had been heralded, in a hundredparagraphs, by the usual ineptitudes. I carried it, as early a copy asany, I this time flattered myself, straightway to Mrs. Corvick. This wasthe only use I had for it; I left the inevitable tribute of _The Middle_to some more ingenious mind and some less irritated temper. "But Ialready have it, " Gwendolen said. "Drayton Deane was so good as to bringit to me yesterday, and I've just finished it. "

"Yesterday? How did he get it so soon?"

"He gets everything soon. He's to review it in _The Middle_. "

"He--Drayton Deane--review Vereker?" I couldn't believe my ears. 

"Why not? One fine ignorance is as good as another. "

I winced, but I presently said: "You ought to review him yourself!"

"I don't 'review, '" she laughed. "I'm reviewed!"

Just then the door was thrown open. "Ah yes, here's your reviewer!"Drayton Deane was there with his long legs and his tall forehead: he hadcome to see what she thought of "The Right of Way, " and to bring newswhich was singularly relevant. The evening papers were just out with atelegram on the author of that work, who, in Rome, had been ill for somedays with an attack of malarial fever. It had at first not been thoughtgrave, but had taken in consequence of complications a turn that mightgive rise to anxiety. Anxiety had indeed at the latest hour begun to befelt. 

I was struck in the presence of these tidings with the fundamentaldetachment that Mrs. Cor-vick's public regret quite failed to conceal:it gave me the measure of her consummate independence. That independencerested on her knowledge, the knowledge which nothing now could destroyand which nothing could make different. The figure in the carpet mighttake on another twist or two, but the sentence had virtually beenwritten. The writer might go down to his grave: she was the person inthe world to whom--as if she had been his favoured heir--his continuedexistence was least of a need. This reminded me how I had observed at aparticular moment--after Corvick's death--the drop of her desire to seehim face to face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had beensure that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained fromthe endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections, more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case hadserved as a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At thethought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled overme a wave of anguish--a poignant sense of how inconsistently I stilldepended on him. A delicacy that it was my one compensation to suffer torule me had left the Alps and the Apennines between us, but the visionof the waning opportunity made me feel as if I might in my despair atlast have gone to him. Of course I would really have done nothing ofthe sort. I remained five minutes, while my companions talked of thenew book, and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it Ireplied, getting up, that I detested Hugh Vereker--simply couldn't readhim. I went away with the moral certainty that as the door closedbehind me Deane would remark that I was awfully superficial. His hostesswouldn't contradict him. 

I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely oddconcatenation. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and beforethe year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen, but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enoughto be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feebleflicker of my petition. Did she know and if she knew would she speak?It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she wouldhave nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I feltthat renouncement was indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up in myobsession for ever--my gaolers had gone off with the key. I find myselfquite as vague as a captive in a dungeon about the time that furtherelapsed before Mrs. Corvick became the wife of Drayton Deane. I hadforeseen, through my bars, this end of the business, though there was noindecent haste and our friendship had rather fallen off. They were bothso "awfully intellectual" that it struck people as a suitable match, butI knew better than any one the wealth of understanding the bridewould contribute to the partnership. Never, for a marriage in literarycircles--so the newspapers described the alliance--had a bride been sohandsomely dowered. I began with due promptness to look for the fruit oftheir union--that fruit, I mean, of which the premonitory symptoms wouldbe peculiarly visible in the husband. Taking for granted the splendourof the lady's nuptial gift, I expected to see him make a showcommensurate with his increase of means. I knew what his means hadbeen--his article on "The Right of Way" had distinctly given one thefigure. As he was now exactly in the position in which still moreexactly I was not I watched from month to month, in the likelyperiodicals, for the heavy message poor Corvick had been unable todeliver and the responsibility of which would have fallen on hissuccessor. The widow and wife would have broken by the rekindled hearththe silence that only a widow and wife might break, and Deane would beas aflame with the knowledge as Cor-vick in his own hour, as Gwendolenin hers had been. Well, he was aflame doubtless, but the fire wasapparently not to become a public blaze. I scanned the periodicals invain: Drayton Deane filled them with exuberant pages, but he withheldthe page I most feverishly sought. He wrote on a thousand subjects, butnever on the subject of Vereker. His special line was to tell truthsthat other people either "funked, " as he said, or overlooked, but henever told the only truth that seemed to me in these days to signify. I met the couple in those literary circles referred to in the papers: Ihave sufficiently intimated that it was only in such circles we were allconstructed to revolve. Gwendolen was more than ever committed to themby the publication of her third novel, and I myself definitely classedby holding the opinion that this work was inferior to its immediatepredecessor. Was it worse because she had been keeping worse company? Ifher secret was, as she had told me, her life--a fact discernible in herincreasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly correctedby pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance--it had yetnot a direct influence on her work. That only made--everything onlymade--one yearn the more for it, rounded it off with a mystery finer andsubtler. 

XI

It was therefore from her husband I could never remove my eyes: Ihovered about him in a manner that might have made him uneasy. I wenteven so far as to engage him in conversation. _Didn't_ he know, hadn'the come into it as a matter of course?--that question hummed in mybrain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn't return my stare soqueerly. His wife had told him what I wanted, and he was amiably amusedat my impotence. He didn't laugh--he was not a laugher: his system wasto present to my irritation, so that I should crudely expose myself, aconversational blank as vast as his big bare brow. It always happenedthat I turned away with a settled conviction from these unpeopledexpanses, which seemed to complete each other geographically and tosymbolise together Drayton Deane's want of voice, want of form. Hesimply hadn't the art to use what he knew; he literally was incompetentto take up the duty where Corvick had left it. I went still further--itwas the only glimpse of happiness I had. I made up my mind that theduty didn't appeal to him. He wasn't interested, he didn't care. Yes, itquite comforted me to believe him too stupid to have joy of the thing Ilacked. He was as stupid after as before, and that deepened for me thegolden glory in which the mystery was wrapped. I had of course howeverto recollect that his wife might have imposed her conditions andexactions. I had above all to recollect that with Vereker's death themajor incentive dropped. He was still there to be honoured by what mightbe done--he was no longer there to give it his sanction. Who, alas, buthe had the authority?

Two children were born to the pair, but the second cost the mother herlife. After this calamity I seemed to see another ghost of a chance. Ijumped at it in thought, but I waited a certain time for manners, andat last my opportunity arrived in a remunerative way. His wife had beendead a year when I met Drayton Deane in the smoking-room of a small clubof which we both were members, but where for months--perhaps becauseI rarely entered it--I had not seen him. The room was empty and theoccasion propitious. I deliberately offered him, to have done withthe matter for ever, that advantage for which I felt he had long beenlooking. 

"As an older acquaintance of your late wife's than even you were, " Ibegan, "you must let me say to you something I have on my mind. I shallbe glad to make any terms with you that you see fit to name for theinformation she had from George Corvick--the information, you know, thathe, poor fellow, in one of the happiest hours of his life, had straightfrom Hugh Vereker. "

He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. "The information----?"

"Vereker's secret, my dear man--the general intention of his books: thestring the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in thecarpet. "

He began to flush--the numbers on his bumps to come out. "Vereker'sbooks had a general intention?"

I stared in my turn. "You don't mean to say you don't know it?" Ithought for a moment he was playing with me. "Mrs. Deane knew it; shehad it, as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinite searchand to Vereker's own delight, found the very mouth of the cave. Where_is_ the mouth? He told after their marriage--and told alone--the personwho, when the circumstances were reproduced, must have told you. HaveI been wrong in taking for granted that she admitted you, as one of thehighest privileges of the relation in which you stood to her, to theknowledge of which she was after Corvick's death the sole depositary?All _I_ know is that that knowledge is infinitely precious, and what Iwant you to understand is that if you will in your turn admit _me_ to ityou will do me a kindness for which I shall be everlastingly grateful. "

He had turned at last very red; I daresay he had begun by thinking I hadlost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my own side I staredwith a livelier surprise. "I don't know what you're talking about, " hesaid. 

He wasn't acting--it was the absurd truth. "She _didn't_ tell you-----"

"Nothing about Hugh Vereker. "

I was stupefied; the room went round. It had been too good even forthat! "Upon your honour?"

"Upon my honour. What the devil's the matter with you?" he demanded. 

"I'm astounded--I'm disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you. "

"It isn't _in_ me!" he awkwardly laughed. "And even if it were----"

"If it were you'd let me have it--oh yes, in common humanity. But Ibelieve you. I see--I see!" I went on, conscious, with the full turnof the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor man'sattitude. What I saw, though I couldn't say it, was that his wife hadn'tthought him worth enlightening. This struck me as strange for a womanwho had thought him worth marrying. At last I explained it by thereflection that she couldn't possibly have married him for hisunderstanding. She had married him for something else. He was tosome extent enlightened now, but he was even more astonished, moredisconcerted: he took a moment to compare my story with his quickenedmemories. The result of his meditation was his presently saying with agood deal of rather feeble form:

"This is the first I hear of what you allude to. I think you must bemistaken as to Mrs. Drayton Deane's having had any unmentioned, andstill less any unmentionable, knowledge about Hugh Vereker. She wouldcertainly have wished it--if it bore on his literary character--to beused. "

"It _was_ used. She used it herself. She told me with her own lips thatshe 'lived' on it. "

I had no sooner spoken than I repented of my words; he grew so pale thatI felt as if I had struck him. "Ah, 'lived'--!" he murmured, turningshort away from me. 

My compunction was real; I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I beg you toforgive me--I've made a mistake. You _don't_ know what I thought youknew. You could, if I had been right, have rendered me a service; and Ihad my reasons for assuming that you would be in a position to meet me. "

"Your reasons?" he asked. "What were your reasons?"

I looked at him well; I hesitated; I considered. "Come and sit down withme here, and I'll tell you. " I drew him to a sofa, I lighted anothercigarette and, beginning with the anecdote of Vereker's one descentfrom the clouds, I gave him an account of the extraordinary chain ofaccidents that had in spite of it kept me till that hour in the dark. I told him in a word just what I've written out here. He listenedwith deepening attention, and I became aware, to my surprise, by hisejaculations, by his questions, that he would have been after all notunworthy to have been trusted by his wife. So abrupt an experienceof her want of trust had an agitating effect on him, but I saw thatimmediate shock throb away little by little and then gather again intowaves of wonder and curiosity--waves that promised, I could perfectlyjudge, to break in the end with the fury of my own highest tides. I maysay that to-day as victims of unappeased desire there isn't a pin tochoose between us. The poor man's state is almost my consolation; thereare indeed moments when I feel it to be almost my revenge. 

Yes indeed, I say to myself, pen in hand, I can keep hold of the threadand let it lead me back to the first impression. The little story is allthere, I can touch it from point to point; for the thread, as I callit, is a row of coloured beads on a string. None of the beads aremissing--at least I think they're not: that's exactly what I shall amusemyself with finding out. 

GLASSES

I

I had been all summer working hard in town and then had gone down toFolkestone for a blow. Art was long, I felt, and my holiday short; mymother was settled at Folkestone, and I paid her a visit when I could. Iremember how on this occasion, after weeks, in my stuffy studio, with mynose on my palette, I sniffed up the clean salt air and cooled my eyeswith the purple sea. The place was full of lodgings, and the lodgingswere at that season full of people, people who had nothing to do butto stare at one another on the great flat down. There were thousands oflittle chairs and almost as many little Jews; and there was music in anopen rotunda, over which the little Jews wagged their big noses. Weall strolled to and fro and took pennyworths of rest; the long, levelcliff-top, edged in places with its iron rail, might have been the deckof a huge crowded ship. There were old folks in Bath chairs, and therewas one dear chair, creeping to its last full stop, by the side of whichI always walked. There was in fine weather the coast of France to lookat, and there were the usual things to say about it; there was alsoin every state of the atmosphere our friend Mrs. Meldrum, a subject ofremark not less inveterate. The widow of an officer in the Engineers, she had settled, like many members of the martial miscellany, wellwithin sight of the hereditary enemy, who however had left her leisureto form in spite of the difference of their years a close alliance withmy mother. She was the heartiest, the keenest, the ugliest of women, the least apologetic, the least morbid in her misfortune. She carried ithigh aloft, with loud sounds and free gestures, made it flutter in thebreeze as if it had been the flag of her country. It consisted mainly ofa big red face, indescribably out of drawing, from which she glared atyou through gold-rimmed aids to vision, optic circles of such diameterand so frequently displaced that some one had vividly spoken of heras flattening her nose against the glass of her spectacles. She wasextraordinarily near-sighted, and whatever they did to other objectsthey magnified immensely the kind eyes behind them. Blessed conveniencesthey were, in their hideous, honest strength--they showed the good ladyeverything in the world but her own queerness. This element was enhancedby wild braveries of dress, reckless charges of colour and stubbornresistances of cut, wonderous encounters in which the art of the toiletseemed to lay down its life. She had the tread of a grenadier and thevoice of an angel. 

In the course of a walk with her the day after my arrival I found myselfgrabbing her arm with sudden and undue familiarity. I had been struckby the beauty of a face that approached us and I was still more affectedwhen I saw the face, at the sight of my companion, open like a windowthrown wide. A smile fluttered out of it as brightly as a draperydropped from a sill--a drapery shaken there in the sun by a young ladyflanked with two young men, a wonderful young lady who, as we drewnearer, rushed up to Mrs. Meldrum with arms flourished for an embrace. My immediate impression of her had been that she was dressed inmourning, but during the few moments she stood talking with our friendI made more discoveries. The figure from the neck down was meagre, thestature insignificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well asthe air of infallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it. Thiswas a little person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chanceto paint. The head, the features, the colour, the whole facial oval andradiance had a wonderful purity; the deep grey eyes--the most agreeable, I thought, that I had ever seen--brushed with a kind of winglike graceevery object they encountered. Their possessor was just back fromBoulogne, where she had spent a week with dear Mrs. Floyd-Taylor: thisaccounted for the effusiveness of her reunion with dear Mrs. Meldrum. Her black garments were of the freshest and daintiest; she suggested apink-and-white wreath at a showy funeral. She confounded us for threeminutes with her presence; she was a beauty of the great conscious, public, responsible order. The young men, her companions, gazed at herand grinned: I could see there were very few moments of the day at whichyoung men, these or others, would not be so occupied. The people whoapproached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to lingerand gape. When she brought her face close to Mrs. Mel-drum's--and sheappeared to be always bringing it close to somebody's--it was a marvelthat objects so dissimilar should express the same general identity, the unmistakable character of the English gentlewoman. Mrs. Meldrumsustained the comparison with her usual courage, but I wondered why shedidn't introduce me: I should have had no objection to the bringing ofsuch a face close to mine. However, when the young lady moved onwith her escort she herself bequeathed me a sense that some such_rapprochement_ might still occur. Was this by reason of the generalfrequency of encounters at Folkestone, or by reason of a subtleacknowledgment that she contrived to make of the rights, on the part ofothers, that such beauty as hers created? I was in a position to answerthat question after Mis. Meldrum had answered a few of mine. 

II

Flora Saunt, the only daughter of an old soldier, had lost both herparents, her mother within a few months. Mrs. Meldrum had known them, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had watched thegirl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora, just twenty, wasextraordinarily alone in the world--so alone that she had no naturalchaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary stranger, Mrs. HammondSynge, the sister-in-law of one of the young men I had just seen. She had lots of friends, but none of them nice: she kept pickingup impossible people. The Floyd-Taylors, with whom she had been atBoulogne, were simply horrid. The Hammond Synges were perhaps not sovulgar, but they had no conscience in their dealings with her. 

"She knows what I think of them, " said Mrs. Meldrum, "and indeed sheknows what I think of most things. "

"She shares that privilege with most of your friends!" I repliedlaughing. 

"No doubt; but possibly to some of my friends it makes a littledifference. That girl doesn't care a button. She knows best of all whatI think of Flora Saunt. "

"And what may your opinion be?"

"Why, that she's not worth talking about--an idiot too abysmal. "

"Doesn't she care for that?"

"Just enough, as you saw, to hug me till I cry out. She's too pleasedwith herself for anything else to matter. "

"Surely, my dear friend, " I rejoined, "she has a good deal to be pleasedwith!"

"So every one tells her, and so you would have told her if I had givenyou a chance. However, that doesn't signify either, for her vanityis beyond all making or mending. She believes in herself, and she'swelcome, after all, poor dear, having only herself to look to. I'veseldom met a young woman more completely at liberty to be silly. She hasa clear course--she'll make a showy finish. "

"Well, " I replied, "as she probably will reduce many persons to the samedegraded state, her partaking of it won't stand out so much. "

"If you mean that the world's full of twaddlers I quite agree with you!"cried Mrs. Meldrum, trumpeting her laugh half across the Channel. 

I had after this to consider a little what she would call my mother'sson, but I didn't let it prevent me from insisting on her making meacquainted with Flora Saunt; indeed I took the bull by the horns, urgingthat she had drawn the portrait of a nature which common charity nowdemanded that she should put into relation with a character really fine. Such a frail creature was just an object of pity. This contention onmy part had at first of course been jocular; but strange to say it wasquite the ground I found myself taking with regard to our young ladyafter I had begun to know her. I couldn't have said what I felt abouther except that she was undefended; from the first of my sitting withher there after dinner, under the stars--that was a week at Folkestoneof balmy nights and muffled tides and crowded chairs--I became awareboth that protection was wholly absent from her life and that she waswholly indifferent to its absence. 

The odd thing was that she was not appealing: she was abjectly, divinelyconceited, absurdly, fantastically happy. Her beauty was as yet all theworld to her, a world she had plenty to do to live in. Mrs. Meldrum toldme more about her, and there was nothing that, as the centre of agroup of giggling, nudging spectators, she was not ready to tell aboutherself. She held her little court in the crowd, upon the grass, playing her light over Jews and Gentiles, completely at ease in allpromiscuities. It was an effect of these things that from the veryfirst, with every one listening, I could mention that my main businesswith her would be just to have a go at her head and to arrange in thatview for an early sitting. It would have been as impossible, I think, to be impertinent to her as it would have been to throw a stone at aplate-glass window; so any talk that went forward on the basis of herloveliness was the most natural thing in the world and immediatelybecame the most general and sociable. It was when I saw all this that Ijudged how, though it was the last thing she asked for, what one wouldever most have at her service was a curious compassion. That sentimentwas coloured by the vision of the dire exposure of a being whom vanityhad put so off her guard. Hers was the only vanity I have ever knownthat made its possessor superlatively soft. Mrs. Meldrum's furtherinformation contributed moreover to these indulgences--her account ofthe girl's neglected childhood and queer continental relegations, withstraying, squabbling, Monte-Carlo-haunting parents; the more invidiouspicture, above all, of her pecuniary arrangement, still in force, with the Hammond Synges, who really, though they never took herout--practically she went out alone--had their hands half the time inher pocket. She had to pay for everything, down to her share of thewine-bills and the horses' fodder, down to Bertie Hammond Synge's farein the "Underground" when he went to the City for her. She had been leftwith just money enough to turn her head; and it hadn't even been put intrust, nothing prudent or proper had been done with it. She could spendher capital, and at the rate she was going, expensive, extravagant andwith a swarm of parasites to help, it certainly wouldn't last very long. 

"Couldn't _you_ perhaps take her, independent, unencumbered as you are?"I asked of Mrs. Meldrum. "You're probably, with one exception, thesanest person she knows, and you at least wouldn't scandalously fleeceher. "

"How do you know what I wouldn't do?" my humorous friend demanded. "Ofcourse I've thought how I can help her--it has kept me awake at night. But I can't help her at all; she'll take nothing from me. You know whatshe does--she hugs me and runs away. She has an instinct about me, shefeels that I've one about her. And then she dislikes me for anotherreason that I'm not quite clear about, but that I'm well aware of andthat I shall find out some day. So far as her settling with me goes itwould be impossible moreover here: she wants naturally enough a muchwider field. She must live in London--her game is there. So she takesthe line of adoring me, of saying she can never forget that I wasdevoted to her mother--which I wouldn't for the world have been--and ofgiving me a wide berth. I think she positively dislikes to look at me. It's all right; there's no obligation; though people in general can'ttake their eyes off me. "

"I see that at this moment, " I replied. "But what does it matter whereor how, for the present, she lives? She'll marry infallibly, marryearly, and everything then will change. "

"Whom will she marry?" my companion gloomily asked. 

"Any one she likes. She's so abnormally pretty she can do anything. She'll fascinate some nabob or some prince. "

"She'll fascinate him first and bore him afterwards. Moreover she's notso pretty as you make her out; she has a scrappy little figure. "

"No doubt; but one doesn't in the least notice it. "

"Not now, " said Mrs. Meldrum, "but one will when she's older. "

"When she's older she'll be a princess, so it won't matter. "

"She has other drawbacks, " my companion went on. "Those wonderful eyesare good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls--which theygreatly resemble--in a child's mouth. She can't use them. "

"Use them? Why, she does nothing else. "

"To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do anysort of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes her notes. You'll say that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Of course I know that if I didn't wear my goggles I shouldn't be goodfor much. "

"Do you mean that Miss Saunt ought to sport such things?" I exclaimedwith more horror than I meant to show. 

"I don't prescribe for her; I don't know that they're what sherequires. "

"What's the matter with her eyes?" I asked after a moment. 

"I don't exactly know; but I heard from her mother years ago that evenas a child they had had for a while to put her into spectacles andthat, though she hated them and had been in a fury of disgust, she wouldalways have to be extremely careful. I'm sure I hope she is!"

I echoed the hope, but I remember well the impression this made uponme--my immediate pang of resentment, a disgust almost equal to Flora'sown. I felt as if a great rare sapphire had split in my hand. 

III

This conversation occurred the night before I went back to town. Isettled on the morrow to take a late train, so that I had still mymorning to spend at Folkestone, where during the greater part of it Iwas out with my mother. Every one in the place was as usual out withsome one else, and even had I been free to go and take leave of her Ishould have been sure that Flora Saunt would not be at home. Just whereshe was I presently discovered: she was at the far end of the cliff, thepoint at which it overhangs the pretty view of Sandgate and Hythe. Herback however was turned to this attraction; it rested with the aidof her elbows, thrust slightly behind her so that her scanty littleshoulders were raised toward her ears, on the high rail that inclosedthe down. Two gentlemen stood before her whose faces we couldn't see butwho even as observed from the rear were visibly absorbed in the charmingfigure-piece submitted to them. I was freshly struck with the fact thatthis meagre and defective little person, with the cock of her hatand the flutter of her crape, with her eternal idleness, hereternal happiness, her absence of moods and mysteries and the prettypresentation of her feet, which especially now in the supported slopeof her posture occupied with their imperceptibility so much of theforeground--I was reminded anew, I say, how our young lady dazzled bysome art that the enumeration of her merits didn't explain and thatthe mention of her lapses didn't affect. Where she was amiss nothingcounted, and where she was right everything did. I say she was wantingin mystery, but that after all was her secret. This happened to be myfirst chance of introducing her to my mother, who had not much left inlife but the quiet look from under the hood of her chair at the thingswhich, when she should have quitted those she loved, she could stilltrust to make the world good for them. I wondered an instant how muchshe might be moved to trust Flora Saunt, and then while the chair stoodstill and she waited I went over and asked the girl to come and speakto her. In this way I saw that if one of Flora's attendants was theinevitable young Hammond Synge, master of ceremonies of her regularcourt, always offering the use of a telescope and accepting that of acigar, the other was a personage I had not yet encountered, a small paleyouth in showy knickerbockers, whose eyebrows and nose and the gluedpoints of whose little moustache were extraordinarily uplifted andsustained. I remember taking him at first for a foreigner and forsomething of a pretender: I scarcely know why, unless because of themotive I felt in the stare he fixed on me when I asked Miss Saunt tocome away. He struck me a little as a young man practising the socialart of "impertinence"; but it didn't matter, for Flora came away withalacrity, bringing all her prettiness and pleasure and gliding over thegrass in that rustle of delicate mourning which made the endless varietyof her garments, as a painter could take heed, strike one always as thesame obscure elegance. She seated herself on the floor of my mother'schair, a little too much on her right instep as I afterwards gathered, caressing her stiff hand, smiling up into her cold face, commendingand approving her without a reserve and without a doubt. She told herimmediately, as if it were something for her to hold on by, that she wassoon to sit to me for a "likeness, " and these words gave me a chance toinquire if it would be the fate of the picture, should I finish it, tobe presented to the young man in the knickerbockers. Her lips, atthis, parted in a stare; her eyes darkened to the purple of one of theshadow-patches on the sea. She showed for the passing instant the faceof some splendid tragic mask, and I remembered for the inconsequence ofit what Mrs. Meldrum had said about her sight. I had derived from thislady a worrying impulse to catechise her, but that didn't seem exactlykind; so I substituted another question, inquired who the pretty youngman in knickerbockers might happen to be. 

"Oh, a gentleman I met at Boulogne. He has come over to see me. " After amoment she added: "He's Lord Iffield. "

I had never heard of Lord Iffield, but her mention of his having beenat Boulogne helped me to give him a niche. Mrs. Meldrum had incidentallythrown a certain light on the manners of Mrs. Floyd-Taylor, Flora'srecent hostess in that charming town, a lady who, it appeared, had aspecial vocation for helping rich young men to find a use for theirleisure. She had always one or other in hand and she had apparently onthis occasion pointed her lesson at the rare creature on the oppositecoast. I had a vague idea that Boulogne was not a resort of thearistocracy; at the same time there might very well have been a strongattraction there even for one of the darlings of fortune. I couldperfectly understand in any case that such a darling should be drawn toFolkestone by Flora Saunt. But it was not in truth of these things I wasthinking; what was uppermost in my mind was a matter which, though ithad no sort of keeping, insisted just then on coming out. 

"Is it true, Miss Saunt, " I suddenly demanded, "that you're sounfortunate as to have had some warning about your beautiful eyes?"

I was startled by the effect of my words; the girl threw back her head, changing colour from brow to chin. "True? Who in the world says so?"I repented of my question in a flash; the way she met it made it seemcruel, and I saw that my mother looked at me in some surprise. I tookcare, in answer to Flora's challenge, not to incriminate Mrs. Meldrum. I answered that the rumour had reached me only in the vaguest form andthat if I had been moved to put it to the test my very real interest inher must be held responsible. Her blush died away, but a pair of stillprettier tears glistened in its track. "If you ever hear such a thingsaid again you can say it's a horrid lie!" I had brought on a commotiondeeper than any I was prepared for; but it was explained in some degreeby the next words she uttered: "I'm happy to say there's nothing thematter with any part of my body; not the least little thing!" She spokewith her habitual complacency, with triumphant assurance; she smiledagain, and I could see that she was already sorry she had shown herselftoo disconcerted. She turned it off with a laugh. "I've good eyes, goodteeth, a good digestion and a good temper. I'm sound of wind and limb!"Nothing could have been more characteristic than her blush and hertears, nothing less acceptable to her than to be thought not perfectin every particular. She couldn't submit to the imputation of a flaw. Iexpressed my delight in what she told me, assuring her I should alwaysdo battle for her; and as if to rejoin her companions she got up fromher place on my mother's toes. The young men presented their backsto us; they were leaning on the rail of the cliff. Our incident hadproduced a certain awkwardness, and while I was thinking of what nextto say she exclaimed irrelevantly: "Don't you know? He'll be LordConsidine. " At that moment the youth marked for this high destiny turnedround, and she went on, to my mother: "I'll introduce him to you--he'sawfully nice. " She beckoned and invited him with her parasol; themovement struck me as taking everything for granted. I had heard ofLord Considine and if I had not been able to place Lord Iffield it wasbecause I didn't know the name of his eldest son. The young man took nonotice of Miss Saunt's appeal; he only stared a moment and then onher repeating it quietly turned his back. She was an odd creature: shedidn't blush at this; she only said to my mother apologetically, butwith the frankest, sweetest amusement: "You don't mind, do you? He's amonster of shyness!" It was as if she were sorry for every one--for LordIffield, the victim of a complaint so painful, and for my mother, theobject of a trifling incivility. "I'm sure I don't want him!" said mymother; but Flora added some remark about the rebuke she would givehim for slighting us. She would clearly never explain anything by anyfailure of her own power. There rolled over me while she took leave ofus and floated back to her friends a wave of tenderness superstitiousand silly. I seemed somehow to see her go forth to her fate; and yetwhat should fill out this orb of a high destiny if not such beauty andsuch joy? I had a dim idea that Lord Considine was a great proprietor, and though there mingled with it a faint impression that I shouldn'tlike his son the result of the two images was a whimsical prayer thatthe girl mightn't miss her possible fortune. 

IV

One day in the course of the following June there was ushered into mystudio a gentleman whom I had not yet seen but with whom I had been verybriefly in correspondence. A letter from him had expressed to me somedays before his regret on learning that my "splendid portrait" of TitrasFlora Louisa Saunt, whose full name figured by her own wish in thecatalogue of the exhibition of the Academy, had found a purchaser beforethe close of the private view. He took the liberty of inquiring whetherI might have at his service some other memorial of the same lovely head, some preliminary sketch, some study for the picture. I had repliedthat I had indeed painted Miss Saunt more than once and that if he wereinterested in my work I should be happy to show him what I had done. Mr. Geoffrey Dawling, the person thus introduced to me, stumbled intomy room with awkward movements and equivocal sounds--a long, lean, confused, confusing young man, with a bad complexion and large, protrusive teeth. He bore in its most indelible pressure the postmark, as it were, of Oxford, and as soon as he opened his mouth I perceived, in addition to a remarkable revelation of gums, that the text of thequeer communication matched the registered envelope. He was full ofrefinements and angles, of dreary and distinguished knowledge. Of hisunconscious drollery his dress freely partook; it seemed, from the goldring into which his red necktie was passed to the square toe-caps of hisboots, to conform with a high sense of modernness to the fashion beforethe last. There were moments when his overdone urbanity, all suggestivestammers and interrogative quavers, made him scarcely intelligible; butI felt him to be a gentleman and I liked the honesty of his errand andthe expression of his good green eyes. 

As a worshipper at the shrine of beauty however he needed explaining, especially when I found he had no acquaintance with my brilliant model;had on the mere evidence of my picture taken, as he said, a tremendousfancy to her face. I ought doubtless to have been humiliated by thesimplicity of his judgment of it, a judgment for which the rendering waslost in the subject, quite leaving out the element of art. He was likethe innocent reader for whom the story is "really true" and the authora negligible quantity. He had come to me only because he wanted topurchase, and I remember being so amused at his attitude, which I hadnever seen equally marked in a person of education, that I asked himwhy, for the sort of enjoyment he desired, it wouldn't be more to thepoint to deal directly with the lady. He stared and blushed at this:it was plain the idea frightened him. He was an extraordinarycase--personally so modest that I could see it had never occurred tohim. He had fallen in love with a painted sign and seemed content justto dream of what it stood for. He was the young prince in the legendor the comedy who loses his heart to the miniature of the out-landprincess. Until I knew him better this puzzled me much--the link wasso missing between his sensibility and his type. He was of coursebewildered by my sketches, which implied in the beholder some sense ofintention and quality; but for one of them, a comparative failure, heended by conceiving a preference so arbitrary and so lively that, takingno second look at the others, he expressed the wish to possess it andfell into the extremity of confusion over the question of the price. I simplified that problem, and he went off without having asked me adirect question about Miss Saunt, yet with his acquisition under hisarm. His delicacy was such that he evidently considered his rights tobe limited; he had acquired none at all in regard to the original of thepicture. There were others--for I was curious about him--that I wantedhim to feel I conceded: I should have been glad of his carrying away asense of ground acquired for coming back. To insure this I had probablyonly to invite him, and I perfectly recall the impulse that made meforbear. It operated suddenly from within while he hung about the doorand in spite of the diffident appeal that blinked in his gentle grin. Ifhe was smitten with Flora's ghost what mightn't be the direct force ofthe luminary that could cast such a shadow? This source of radiance, flooding my poor place, might very well happen to be present the nexttime he should turn up. The idea was sharp within me that there werecomplications it was no mission of mine to bring about. If they were tooccur they might occur by a logic of their own. 

Let me say at once that they did occur and that I perhaps after all hadsomething to do with it. If Mr. Dawling had departed without a freshappointment he was to reappear six months later under protection no lessadequate than that of our young lady herself. I had seen her repeatedlyfor months: she had grown to regard my studio as the tabernacle of herface. This prodigy was frankly there the sole object of interest; inother places there were occasionally other objects. The freedom of hermanners continued to be stupefying; there was nothing so extraordinarysave the absence in connection with it of any catastrophe. She was keptinnocent by her egotism, but she was helped also, though she had now putoff her mourning, by the attitude of the lone orphan who had to be a lawunto herself. It was as a lone orphan that she came and went, as a loneorphan that she was the centre of a crush. The neglect of the HammondSynges gave relief to this character, and she paid them handsomely tobe, as every one said, shocking. Lord Iffield had gone to India to shoottigers, but he returned in time for the private view: it was he who hadsnapped up, as Flora called it, the gem of the exhibition. 

My hope for the girl's future had slipped ignominiously off his back, but after his purchase of the portrait I tried to cultivate a new faith. The girl's own faith was wonderful. It couldn't however be contagious:too great was the limit of her sense of what painters call values. Hercolours were laid on like blankets on a cold night. How indeed could aperson speak the truth who was always posturing and bragging? She wasafter all vulgar enough, and by the time I had mastered her profile andcould almost with my eyes shut do it in a single line I was decidedlytired of her perfection. There grew to be something silly in its eternalsmoothness. One moved with her moreover among phenomena mismated andunrelated; nothing in her talk ever matched with anything out of it. Lord Iffield was dying of love for her, but his family was leading him alife. His mother, horrid woman, had told some one that she would ratherhe should be swallowed by a tiger than marry a girl not absolutely oneof themselves. He had given his young friend unmistakable signs, but hewas lying low, gaining time: it was in his father's power to be, bothin personal and in pecuniary ways, excessively nasty to him. His fatherwouldn't last for ever--quite the contrary; and he knew how thoroughly, in spite of her youth, her beauty and the swarm of her admirers, some ofthem positively threatening in their passion, he could trust her to holdout. There were richer, cleverer men, there were greater personages too, but she liked her "little viscount" just as he was, and liked to thinkthat, bullied and persecuted, he had her there so luxuriously to restupon. She came back to me with tale upon tale, and it all might beor mightn't. I never met my pretty model in the world--she moved, itappeared, in exalted circles--and could only admire, in her wealth ofillustration, the grandeur of her life and the freedom of her hand. 

I had on the first opportunity spoken to her of Geoffrey Dawling, andshe had listened to my story so far as she had the art of such patience, asking me indeed more questions about him than I could answer; then shehad capped my anecdote with others much more striking, revelations ofeffects produced in the most extraordinary quarters: on people who hadfollowed her into railway-carriages; guards and porters even who hadliterally stuck there; others who had spoken to her in shops and hungabout her house-door; cabmen, upon her honour, in London, who, togaze their fill at her, had found excuses to thrust their petrifactionthrough the very glasses of four-wheelers. She lost herself in thesereminiscences, the moral of which was that poor Mr. Dawling was onlyone of a million. When therefore the next autumn she flourished into mystudio with her odd companion at her heels her first care was to makeclear to me that if he was now in servitude it wasn't because she hadrun after him. Dawling hilariously explained that when one wished verymuch to get anything one usually ended by doing so--a proposition whichled me wholly to dissent and our young lady to asseverate that shehadn't in the least wished to get Mr. Dawling. She mightn't have wishedto get him, but she wished to show him, and I seemed to read that ifshe could treat him as a trophy her affairs were rather at the ebb. Truethere always hung from her belt a promiscuous fringe of scalps. Much atany rate would have come and gone since our separation in July. She hadspent four months abroad, where, on Swiss and Italian lakes, in Germancities, in Paris, many accidents might have happened. 

V

I had been again with my mother, but except Mrs. Meldrum and the gleamof France had not found at Folkestone my old resources and pastimes. Mrs. Meldrum, much edified by my report of the performances, as shecalled them, in my studio, had told me that to her knowledge Flora wouldsoon be on the straw: she had cut from her capital such fine fat slicesthat there was almost nothing more left to swallow. Perched on herbreezy cliff the good lady dazzled me as usual by her universal light:she knew so much more about everything and everybody than I could eversqueeze out of my colour-tubes. She knew that Flora was acting on systemand absolutely declined to be interfered with: her precious reasoningwas that her money would last as long as she should need it, that amagnificent marriage would crown her charms before she should be reallypinched. She had a sum put by for a liberal outfit; meanwhile the properuse of the rest was to decorate her for the approaches to the altar, keep her afloat in the society in which she would most naturallymeet her match. Lord Iffield had been seen with her at Lucerne, atCadenabbia; but it was Mrs. Meldrum's conviction that nothing was to beexpected of him but the most futile flirtation. The girl had a certainhold of him, but with a great deal of swagger he hadn't the spirit ofa sheep: he was in fear of his father and would never commit himself inLord Considine's lifetime. The most Flora might achieve would be thathe wouldn't marry some one else. Geoffrey Dawling, to Mrs. Meldrum'sknowledge (I had told her of the young man's visit) had attached himselfon the way back from Italy to the Hammond Synge group. My informantwas in a position to be definite about this dangler; she knew about hispeople: she had heard of him before. Hadn't he been, at Oxford, a friendof one of her nephews? Hadn't he spent the Christmas holidays preciselythree years before at her brother-in-law's in Yorkshire, taking thatoccasion to get himself refused with derision by wilful Betty, thesecond daughter of the house? Her sister, who liked the flounderingyouth, had written to her to complain of Betty, and that the young manshould now turn up as an appendage of Flora's was one of those oft-citedproofs that the world is small and that there are not enough people togo round. His father had been something or other in the Treasury; hisgrandfather, on the mother's side, had been something or other in theChurch. He had come into the paternal estate, two or three thousanda year in Hampshire; but he had let the place advantageously and wasgenerous to four ugly sisters who lived at Bournemouth and adored him. The family was hideous all round, but the salt of the earth. He wassupposed to be unspeakably clever; he was fond of London, fond of books, of intellectual society and of the idea of a political career. That sucha man should be at the same time fond of Flora Saunt attested, asthe phrase in the first volume of Gibbon has it, the variety of hisinclinations. I was soon to learn that he was fonder of her than of allthe other things together. Betty, one of five and with views above herstation, was at any rate felt at home to have dished herself by herperversity. Of course no one had looked at her since and no one wouldever look at her again. It would be eminently desirable that Florashould learn the lesson of Betty's fate. 

I was not struck, I confess, with all this in my mind, by any symptomson our young lady's part of that sort of meditation. The only moralshe saw in anything was that of her incomparable countenance, which Mr. Dawling, smitten even like the railway porters and the cabmen by thedoom-dealing gods, had followed from London to Venice and from Veniceback to London again. I afterwards learned that her version of thisepisode was profusely inexact: his personal acquaintance with her hadbeen determined by an accident remarkable enough, I admit, in connectionwith what had gone before--a coincidence at all events superficiallystriking. At Munich, returning from a tour in the Tyrol with two of hissisters, he had found himself at the _table d'hôte_ of his inn oppositeto the full presentment of that face of which the mere clumsy copyhad made him dream and desire. He had been tossed by it to a height sovertiginous as to involve a retreat from the table; but the next day hehad dropped with a resounding thud at the very feet of his apparition. On the following, with an equal incoherence, a sacrifice even of hisbewildered sisters, whom he left behind, he made an heroic effort toescape by flight from a fate of which he already felt the cold breath. That fate, in London, very little later, drove him straight beforeit--drove him one Sunday afternoon, in the rain, to the door of theHammond Synges. He marched in other words close up to the cannon thatwas to blow him to pieces. But three weeks, when he reappeared to me, had elapsed since then, yet (to vary my metaphor) the burden he was tocarry for the rest of his days was firmly lashed to his back. I don'tmean by this that Flora had been persuaded to contract her scope; I meanthat he had been treated to the unconditional snub which, as the eventwas to show, couldn't have been bettered as a means of securing him. Shehadn't calculated, but she had said "Never!" and that word had made abed big enough for his long-legged patience. He became from this momentto my mind the interesting figure in the piece. 

Now that he had acted without my aid I was free to show him this, andhaving on his own side something to show me he repeatedly knocked at mydoor. What he brought with him on these occasions was a simplicity sohuge that, as I turn my ear to the past, I seem even now to hear itbumping up and down my stairs. That was really what I saw of him in thelight of his behaviour. He had fallen in love as he might have brokenhis leg, and the fracture was of a sort that would make him permanentlylame. It was the whole man who limped and lurched, with nothing of himleft in the same position as before. The tremendous cleverness, theliterary society, the political ambition, the Bournemouth sisters allseemed to flop with his every movement a little nearer to the floor. Ihadn't had an Oxford training and I had never encountered the greatman at whose feet poor Dawling had most submissively sat and who hadaddressed him his most destructive sniffs; but I remember asking myselfif such privileges had been an indispensable preparation to the careeron which my friend appeared now to have embarked. I remember too makingup my mind about the cleverness, which had its uses and I suppose inimpenetrable shades even its critics, but from which the friction ofmere personal intercourse was not the sort of process to extract arevealing spark. He accepted without a question both his fever andhis chill, and the only thing he showed any subtlety about was thisconvenience of my friendship. He doubtless told me his simple story, butthe matter comes back to me in a kind of sense of _my_ being rather themouthpiece, of my having had to thresh it out for him. He took it fromme without a groan, and I gave it to him, as we used to say, pretty hot;he took it again and again, spending his odd half-hours with me as iffor the very purpose of learning how idiotically he was in love. He toldme I made him see things: to begin with, hadn't I first made him seeFlora Saunt? I wanted him to give her up and luminously informed himwhy; on which he never protested nor contradicted, never was evenso alembicated as to declare just for the sake of the drama that hewouldn't. He simply and undramatically didn't, and when at the end ofthree months I asked him what was the use of talking with such a fellowhis nearest approach to a justification was to say that what made himwant to help her was just the deficiencies I dwelt on. I could onlyreply without pointing the moral: "Oh, if you're as sorry for her asthat!" I too was nearly as sorry for her as that, but it only led me tobe sorrier still for other victims of this compassion. With Dawling aswith me the compassion was at first in excess of any visible motive;so that when eventually the motive was supplied each could to a certainextent compliment the other on the fineness of his foresight. 

After he had begun to haunt my studio Miss Saunt quite gave it up, andI finally learned that she accused me of conspiring with him to putpressure on her to marry him. She didn't know I would take it that way;else she wouldn't have brought him to see me. It was in her view a partof the conspiracy; that to show him a kindness I asked him at last tosit to me. I daresay moreover she was disgusted to hear that I had endedby attempting almost as many sketches of his beauty as I had attemptedof hers. What was the value of tributes to beauty by a hand thatluxuriated in ugliness? My relation to poor Dawling's want of modellingwas simple enough. I was really digging in that sandy desert for theburied treasure of his soul. 

VI

It befell at this period, just before Christmas, that on my having goneunder pressure of the season into a great shop to buy a toy or two, my eye, fleeing from superfluity, lighted at a distance on the brightconcretion of Flora Saunt, an exhibitability that held its own evenagainst the most plausible pinkness of the most developed dolls. A hugequarter of the place, the biggest bazaar "on earth, " was peopled withthese and other effigies and fantasies, as well as with purchasers andvendors, haggard alike in the blaze of the gas with hesitations. I wasjust about to appeal to Flora to avert that stage of my errand when Isaw that she was accompanied by a gentleman whose identity, 'though morethan a year had elapsed, came back to me from the Folkestone cliff. ' Ithad been associated in that scene with showy knickerbockers; atpresent it overflowed more splendidly into a fur-trimmed overcoat. LordIffield's presence made me waver an instant before crossing over; andduring that instant Flora, blank and undistinguishing, as if she toowere after all weary of alternatives, looked straight across at me. Iwas on the point of raising my hat to her when I observed that her facegave no sign. I was exactly in the line of her vision, but she eitherdidn't see me or didn't recognise me, or else had a reason to pretendshe didn't. Was her reason that I had displeased her and that she wishedto punish me? I had always thought it one of her merits that she wasn'tvindictive. She at any rate simply looked away; and at this moment oneof the shop-girls, who had apparently gone off in search of it, bustledup to her with a small mechanical toy. It so happened that I followedclosely what then took place, afterwards recognising that I had been ledto do so, led even through the crowd to press nearer for the purpose, byan impression of which in the act I was not fully conscious. 

Flora, with the toy in her hand, looked round at her companion; thenseeing his attention had been solicited in another quarter she movedaway with the shop-girl, who had evidently offered to conduct her intothe presence of more objects of the same sort. When she reached theindicated spot I was in a position still to observe her. She had askedsome question about the working of the toy, and the girl, taking itherself, began to explain the little secret. Flora bent her head overit, but she clearly didn't understand. I saw her, in a manner thatquickened my curiosity, give a glance back at the place from whichshe had come. Lord Iffield was talking with another young person: shesatisfied herself of this by the aid of a question addressed to her ownattendant. She then drew closer to the table near which she stood and, turning her back to me, bent her head lower over the collection of toysand more particularly over the small object the girl had attemptedto explain. She took it back and, after a moment, with her face wellaverted, made an odd motion of her arms and a significant little duck ofher head. These slight signs, singular as it may appear, produced inmy bosom an agitation so great that I failed to notice Lord Iffield'swhereabouts. He had rejoined her; he was close upon her before I knew itor before she knew it herself. I felt at that instant the strangestof all impulses: if it could have operated more rapidly it would havecaused me to dash between them in some such manner as to give Flora awarning. In fact as it was I think I could have done this in time hadI not been checked by a curiosity stronger still than my impulse. Therewere three seconds during which I saw the young man and yet let him comeon. Didn't I make the quick calculation that if he didn't catch whatFlora was doing I too might perhaps not catch it? She at any rateherself took the alarm. On perceiving her companion's nearness she made, still averted, another duck of her head and a shuffle of her hands soprecipitate that a little tin steamboat she had been holding escapedfrom them and rattled down to the floor with a sharpness that I hear atthis hour. Lord Iffield had already seized her arm; with a violent jerkhe brought her round toward him. Then it was that there met my eyes aquite distressing sight: this exquisite creature, blushing, glaring, exposed, with a pair of big black-rimmed eyeglasses, defacing her bytheir position, crookedly astride of her beautiful nose. She made a grabat them with her free hand while I turned confusedly away. 

VII

I don't remember how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling; hissittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time he gaveme one. 

"Has any rumour ever reached you of Miss Saunt's having anything thematter with her eyes?" He stared with a candour that was a sufficientanswer to my question, backing it up with a shocked and mystified"Never!" Then I asked him if he had observed in her any symptom, howeverdisguised, of embarrassed sight: on which, after a moment's thought, heexclaimed "Disguised?" as if my use of that word had vaguely awakened atrain. "She's not a bit myopic, " he said; "she doesn't blink or contracther lids. " I fully recognised this and I mentioned that she altogetherdenied the impeachment; owing it to him moreover to explain the groundof my inquiry, I gave him a sketch of the incident that had taken placebefore me at the shop. He knew all about Lord Iffield: that noblemanhad figured freely in our conversation as his preferred, his injuriousrival. Poor Daw-ling's contention was that if there had been a definiteengagement between his lordship and the young lady, the sort of thingthat was announced in _The Morning Post_, renunciation and retirementwould be comparatively easy to him; but that having waited in vain forany such assurance he was entitled to act as if the door were not reallyclosed or were at any rate not cruelly locked. He was naturally muchstruck with my anecdote and still more with my interpretation of it. 

"There _is_ something, there _is_ something--possibly somethingvery grave, certainly something that requires she should make use ofartificial aids. She won't admit it publicly, because with her idolatryof her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aidsnothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement. She has used them insecret, but that is evidently not enough, for the affection she suffersfrom, apparently some definite ailment, has lately grown much worse. Shelooked straight at me in the shop, which was violently lighted, withoutseeing it was I. At the same distance, at Folkestone, where as you knowI first met her, where I heard this mystery hinted at and where sheindignantly denied the thing, she appeared easily enough to recognisepeople. At present she couldn't really make out anything the shop-girlshowed her. She has successfully concealed from the man I saw her withthat she resorts in private to a pince-nez and that she does so not onlyunder the strictest orders from an oculist, but because literally thepoor thing can't accomplish without such help half the business of life. Iffield however has suspected something, and his suspicions, whetherexpressed or kept to himself, have put him on the watch. I happened tohave a glimpse of the movement at which he pounced on her and caught herin the act. "

I had thought it all out; my idea explained many things, and Dawlingturned pale as he listened to me. 

"Was he rough with her?" he anxiously asked. 

"How can I tell what passed between them? I fled from the place. "

My companion stared at me a moment. "Do you mean to say her eyesight'sgoing?"

"Heaven forbid! In that case how could she take life as she does?"

"How _does_ she take life? That's the question!" He sat therebewilderedly brooding; the tears had come into his eyes; they remindedme of those I had seen in Flora's the day I risked my inquiry. Thequestion he had asked was one that to my own satisfaction I was ready toanswer, but I hesitated to let him hear as yet all that my reflectionshad suggested. I was indeed privately astonished at their ingenuity. For the present I only rejoined that it struck me she was playing aparticular game; at which he went on as if he hadn't heard me, suddenlyhaunted with a fear, lost in the dark possibility I had opened up: "Doyou mean there's a danger of anything very bad?" "My dear fellow, youmust ask her oculist. " "Who in the world _is_ her oculist?" "I haven't aconception. But we mustn't get too excited. My impression would bethat she has only to observe a few ordinary rules, to exercise a littlecommon sense. "

Dawling jumped at this. "I see--to stick to the pince-nez. "

"To follow to the letter her oculist's prescription, whatever it isand at whatever cost to her prettiness. It's not a thing to be trifledwith. "

"Upon my honour it _shan't_ be trifled with!" he roundly declared; andhe adjusted himself to his position again as if we had quite settledthe business. After a considerable interval, while I botched away, hesuddenly said: "Did they make a great difference?"

"A great difference?"

"Those things she had put on. "

"Oh, the glasses--in her beauty? She looked queer of course, but it waspartly because one was unaccustomed. There are women who look charmingin nippers. What, at any rate, if she does look queer? She must be madnot to accept that alternative. "

"She _is_ mad, " said Geoffrey Dawling. 

"Mad to refuse you, I grant. Besides, " I went on, "the pince-nez, whichwas a large and peculiar one, was all awry: she had half pulled it off, but it continued to stick, and she was crimson, she was angry. "

"It must have been horrible!" my companion murmured. 

"It _was_ horrible. But it's still more horrible to defy all warnings;it's still more horrible to be landed in--" Without saying in what Idisgustedly shrugged my shoulders. 

After a glance at me Dawling jerked round. "Then you do believe that shemay be?"

I hesitated. "The thing would be to make _her_ believe it. She onlyneeds a good scare. "

"But if that fellow is shocked at the precautions she does take?"

"Oh, who knows?" I rejoined with small sincerity. "I don't supposeIffield is absolutely a brute. "

"I would take her with leather blinders, like a shying mare!" criedGeoffrey Dawling. 

I had an impression that Iffield wouldn't, but I didn't communicate it, for I wanted to pacify my friend, whom I had discomposed too much forthe purposes of my sitting. I recollect that I did some good work thatmorning, but it also comes back to me that before we separated he hadpractically revealed to me that my anecdote, connecting itself inhis mind with a series of observations at the time unconscious andunregistered, had covered with light the subject of our colloquy. Hehad had a formless perception of some secret that drove Miss Saunt tosubterfuges, and the more he thought of it the more he guessed thissecret to be the practice of making believe she saw when she didn't andof cleverly keeping people from finding out how little she saw. Whenone patched things together it was astonishing what ground they covered. Just as he was going away he asked me from what source, at Folkestone, the horrid tale had proceeded. When I had given him, as I saw no reasonnot to do, the name of Mrs. Meldrum, he exclaimed: "Oh, I know allabout her; she's a friend of some friends of mine!" At this I rememberedwilful Betty and said to myself that I knew some one who would probablyprove more wilful still. 

VIII

A few days later I again heard Dawling on my stairs, and even before hepassed my threshold I knew he had something to tell me. 

"I've been down to Folkestone--it was necessary I should see her!" Iforget whether he had come straight from the station; he was at anyrate out of breath with his news, which it took me however a minute tointerpret. 

"You mean that you've been with Mrs. Mel-drum?"

"Yes; to ask her what she knows and how she comes to know it. It workedupon me awfully--I mean what you told me. " He made a visible effort toseem quieter than he was, and it showed me sufficiently that he hadnot been reassured. I laid, to comfort him and smiling at a venture, afriendly hand on his arm, and he dropped into my eyes, fixing them aninstant, a strange, distended look which might have expressed the coldclearness of all that was to come. "I _know_--now!" he said with anemphasis he rarely used. 

"What then did Mrs. Meldrum tell you?"

"Only one thing that signified, for she has no real knowledge. But thatone thing was everything. "

"What is it then?"

"Why, that she can't bear the sight of her. " His pronouns required somearranging, but after I had successfully dealt with them I replied thatI knew perfectly Miss Saunt had a trick of turning her back on the goodlady of Folkestone. But what did that prove? "Have you never guessed?I guessed as soon as she spoke!" Dawling towered over me in dismaltriumph. It was the first time in our acquaintance that, intellectuallyspeaking, this had occurred; but even so remarkable an incident stillleft me sufficiently at sea to cause him to continue: "Why, the effectof those spectacles!"

I seemed to catch the tail of his idea. "Mrs. Meldrum's?"

"They're so awfully ugly and they increase so the dear woman'sugliness. " This remark began to flash a light, and when he quickly added"She sees herself, she sees her own fate!" my response was so immediatethat I had almost taken the words out of his mouth. While I tried tofix this sudden image of Flora's face glazed in and cross-barred even asMrs. Meldrum's was glazed and barred, he went on to assert that only thehorror of that image, looming out at herself, could be the reason of heravoiding such a monitress. The fact he had encountered made everythinghideously vivid and more vivid than anything else that just such anotherpair of goggles was what would have been prescribed to Flora. 

"I see--I see, " I presently rejoined. "What would become of Lord Iffieldif she were suddenly to come out in them? What indeed would become ofevery one, what would become of _everything?_" This was an inquiry thatDawling was evidently unprepared to meet, and I completed it by sayingat last: "My dear fellow, for that matter, what would become of _you?_"

Once more he turned on me his good green eyes. "Oh, I shouldn't mind!"

The tone of his words somehow made his ugly face beautiful, and I feltthat there dated from this moment in my heart a confirmed affection forhim. None the less, at the same time, perversely and rudely, I becameaware of a certain drollery in our discussion of such alternatives. Itmade me laugh out and say to him while I laughed: "You'd take her evenwith those things of Mrs. Meldrum's?"

He remained mournfully grave; I could see that he was surprised at myrude mirth. But he summoned back a vision of the lady at Folkestone andconscientiously replied: "Even with those things of Mrs. Meldrum's. "I begged him not to think my laughter in bad taste: it was only apractical recognition of the fact that we had built a monstrous castlein the air. Didn't he see on what flimsy ground the structure rested?The evidence was preposterously small. He believed the worst, but wewere utterly ignorant. 

"I shall find out the truth, " he promptly replied. 

"How can you? If you question her you'll simply drive her to perjureherself. Wherein after all does it concern you to know the truth? It'sthe girl's own affair. "

"Then why did you tell me your story?"

I was a trifle embarrassed. "To warn you off, " I returned smiling. Hetook no more notice of these words than presently to remark that LordIffield had no serious intentions. "Very possibly, " I said. "But youmustn't speak as if Lord Iffield and you were her only alternatives. "

Dawling thought a moment. "Wouldn't the people she has consulted givesome information? She must have been to people. How else can she havebeen condemned?"

"Condemned to what? Condemned to perpetual nippers? Of course she hasconsulted some of the big specialists, but she has done it, you may besure, in the most clandestine manner; and even if it were supposablethat they would tell you anything--which I altogether doubt--you wouldhave great difficulty in finding out which men they are. Therefore leaveit alone; never show her what you suspect. "

I even, before he quitted me, asked him to promise me this. "All right, I promise, " he said gloomily enough. He was a lover who could tacitlygrant the proposition that there was no limit to the deceit his lovedone was ready to practise: it made so remarkably little difference. Icould see that from this moment he would be filled with a passionatepity ever so little qualified by a sense of the girl's fatuity andfolly. She was always accessible to him--that I knew; for if she hadtold him he was an idiot to dream she could dream of him, she would haveresented the imputation of having failed to make it clear that shewould always be glad to regard him as a friend. What were most of herfriends--what were all of them--but repudiated idiots? I was perfectlyaware that in her conversations and confidences I myself for instancehad a niche in the gallery. As regards poor Dawling I knew how often hestill called on the Hammond Synges. It was not there but under thewing of the Floyd-Taylors that her intimacy with Lord Iffield mostflourished. At all events when a week after the visit I have justsummarised Flora's name was one morning brought up to me I jumped atthe conclusion that Dawling had been with her and even I fear brieflyentertained the thought that he had broken his word. 

IX

She left me, after she had been introduced, in no suspense about herpresent motive; she was on the contrary in a visible fever to enlightenme; but I promptly learned that for the alarm with which she pitiablypanted our young man was not accountable. She had but one thought inthe world, and that thought was for Lord Iffield. I had the strangest, saddest scene with her, and if it did me no other good it at least mademe at last completely understand why insidiously, from the first, shehad struck me as a creature of tragedy. In showing me the whole of herfolly it lifted the curtain of her misery. I don't know how much shemeant to tell me when she came--I think she had had plans of elaboratemisrepresentation; at any rate she found it at the end of ten minutesthe simplest way to break down and sob, to be wretched and true. Whenshe had once begun to let herself go the movement took her off her feet:the relief of it was like the cessation of a cramp. She shared in a wordher long secret; she shifted her sharp pain. She brought, I confess, tears to my own eyes, tears of helpless tenderness for her helplesspoverty. Her visit however was not quite so memorable in itself as insome of its consequences, the most immediate of which was that I wentthat afternoon to see Geoffrey Dawling, who had in those days roomsin Welbeck Street, where I presented myself at an hour late enough towarrant the supposition that he might have come in. He had not comein, but he was expected, and I was invited to enter and wait for him:a lady, I was informed, was already in his sitting-room. I hesitated, alittle at a loss: it had wildly coursed through my brain that thelady was perhaps Flora Saunt. But when I asked if she were young andremarkably pretty I received so significant a "No, sir!" that I riskedan advance and after a minute in this manner found myself, to myastonishment, face to face with Mrs. Meldrum. "Oh, you dear thing, " sheexclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you: you spare me another compromising_démarche!_ But for this I should have called on you also. Know theworst at once: if you see me here it's at least deliberate--it'splanned, plotted, shameless. I came up on purpose to see him; upon myword, I'm in love with him. Why, if you valued my peace of mind, didyou let him, the other day at Folkestone, dawn upon my delighted eyes?I took there in half an hour the most extraordinary fancy to him. Witha perfect sense of everything that can be urged against him, I findhim none the less the very pearl of men. However, I haven't come up todeclare my passion--I've come to bring him news that will interest himmuch more. Above all I've come to urge upon him to be careful. "

"About Flora Saunt?"

"About what he says and does: he must be as still as a mouse! She's atlast really engaged. "

"But it's a tremendous secret?" I was moved to merriment. 

"Precisely: she telegraphed me this noon, and spent another shilling totell me that not a creature in the world is yet to know it. "

"She had better have spent it to tell you that she had just passed anhour with the creature you see before you. "

"She has just passed an hour with every one in the place!" Mrs. Meldrumcried. "They've vital reasons, she wired, for it's not coming out for amonth. Then it will be formally announced, but meanwhile her happinessis delirious. I daresay Mr. Dawling already knows, and he may, as it'snearly seven o'clock, have jumped off London Bridge; but an effect ofthe talk I had with him the other day was to make me, on receipt of mytelegram, feel it to be my duty to warn him in person against takingaction, as it were, on the horrid certitude which I could see he carriedaway with him. I had added somehow to that certitude. He told me whatyou had told him you had seen in your shop. "

Mrs. Meldrum, I perceived, had come to Welbeck Street on an errandidentical with my own--a circumstance indicating her rare sagacity, inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very different thingfrom what Flora's wonderful visit had made of mine. I remarked to herthat what I had seen in the shop was sufficiently striking, but thatI had seen a great deal more that morning in my studio. "In short, " Isaid, "I've seen everything. "

She was mystified. "Everything?"

"The poor creature is under the darkest of clouds. Oh, she came totriumph, but she remained to talk something approaching to sense! Sheput herself completely in my hands--she does me the honour to intimatethat of all her friends I'm the most disinterested. After she hadannounced to me that Lord Iffield was bound hands and feet and that forthe present I was absolutely the only person in the secret, she arrivedat her real business. She had had a suspicion of me ever since the day, at Folkestone, I asked her for the truth about her eyes. The truth iswhat you and I both guessed. She has no end of a danger hanging overher. "

"But from what cause? I, who by God's mercy have kept mine, knoweverything that can be known about eyes, " said Mrs. Meldrum. 

"She might have kept hers if she had profited by God's mercy, if she haddone in time, done years ago, what was imperatively ordered her; ifshe hadn't in fine been cursed with the loveliness that was to makeher behaviour a thing of fable. She may keep them still if she'llsacrifice--and after all so little--that purely superficial charm. Shemust do as you've done; she must wear, dear lady, what you wear!"

What my companion wore glittered for the moment like a melon-frame inAugust. "Heaven forgive her--now I understand!" She turned pale. 

But I wasn't afraid of the effect on her good nature of her thus seeing, through her great goggles, why it had always been that Flora held herat such a distance. "I can't tell you, " I said, "from what specialaffection, what state of the eye, her danger proceeds: that's theone thing she succeeded this morning in keeping from me. She knows itherself perfectly; she has had the best advice in Europe. 'It's a thingthat's awful, simply awful'--that was the only account she would giveme. Year before last, while she was at Boulogne, she went for three dayswith Mrs. Floyd-Taylor to Paris. She there surreptitiously consultedthe greatest man--even Mrs. Floyd-Taylor doesn't know. Last autumn, inGermany, she did the same. 'First put on certain special spectacleswith a straight bar in the middle: then we'll talk'--that's practicallywhat they say. What _she_ says is that she'll put on anything in naturewhen she's married, but that she must get married first. She has alwaysmeant to do everything as soon as she's married. Then and then onlyshe'll be safe. How will any one ever look at her if she makes herselfa fright? How could she ever have got engaged if she had made herselfa fright from the first? It's no use to insist that with her beauty shecan never _be_ a fright. She said to me this morning, poor girl, themost characteristic, the most harrowing things. 'My face is all Ihave--and _such_ a face! I knew from the first I could do anything withit. But I needed it all--I need it still, every exquisite inch of it. Itisn't as if I had a figure or anything else. Oh, if God had only givenme a figure too, I don't say! Yes, with a figure, a really good one, like Fanny Floyd-Taylor's, who's hideous, I'd have risked plain glasses. _Que voulez-vous?_ No one is perfect. ' She says she still has moneyleft, but I don't believe a word of it. She has been speculating on herimpunity, on the idea that her danger would hold off: she has literallybeen running a race with it. Her theory has been, as you from the firstso clearly saw, that she'd get in ahead. She swears to me that thoughthe 'bar' is too cruel she wears when she's alone what she has beenordered to wear. But when the deuce is she alone? It's herself of coursethat she has swindled worst: she has put herself off, so insanelythat even her vanity but half accounts for it, with little inadequateconcessions, little false measures and preposterous evasions andchildish hopes. Her great terror is now that Iffield, who already hassuspicions, who has found out her pince-nez but whom she has beguiledwith some unblushing hocus-pocus, may discover the dreadful facts; andthe essence of what she wanted this morning was in that interest tosquare me, to get me to deny indignantly and authoritatively (for isn'tshe my 'favourite sitter'?) that she has anything whatever the matterwith any part of her. She sobbed, she 'went on, ' she entreated; after wegot talking her extraordinary nerve left her and she showed me what shehas been through--showed me also all her terror of the harm I could doher. 'Wait till I'm married! wait till I'm married!' She took hold ofme, she almost sank on her knees. It seems to me highly immoral, one'sparticipation in her fraud; but there's no doubt that she _must_ bemarried: I don't know what I don't see behind it! Therefore, " I woundup, "Dawling must keep his hands off. "

Mrs. Meldrum had held her breath; she exhaled a long moan. "Well, that'sexactly what I came here to tell him. "

"Then here he is. " Our unconscious host had just opened the door. Immensely startled at finding us he turned a frightened look from oneto the other, as if to guess what disaster we were there to announce oravert. 

Mrs. Meldrum, on the spot, was all gaiety. "I've come to return yoursweet visit. Ah, " she laughed, "I mean to keep up the acquaintance!"

"Do--do, " he murmured mechanically and absently, continuing to look atus. Then abruptly he broke out: "He's going to marry her. "

I was surprised. "You already know?"

He had had in his hand an evening newspaper; he tossed it down on thetable. "It's in that. "

"Published--already?" I was still more surprised. 

"Oh, Flora can't keep a secret!" Mrs. Meldrum humorously declared. Shewent up to poor Dawling and laid a motherly hand upon him. "It's allright--it's just as it ought to be: don't think about her ever anymore. " Then as he met this adjuration with a dismal stare in which thethought of her was as abnormally vivid as the colour of the pupil, theexcellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on thecheek. 

X

I have spoken of these reminiscences as of a row of coloured beads, andI confess that as I continue to straighten out my chaplet I am ratherproud of the comparison. The beads are all there, as I said--they slipalong the string in their small, smooth roundness. Geoffrey Daw-lingaccepted like a gentleman the event his evening paper had proclaimed;in view of which I snatched a moment to murmur him a hint to offer Mrs. Meldrum his hand. He returned me a heavy head-shake, and I judged thatmarriage would henceforth strike him very much as the traffic of thestreet may strike some poor incurable at the window of an hospital. Circumstances arising at this time promptly led to my making an absencefrom England, and circumstances already existing offered him a solidbasis for similar action. He had after all the usual resource of aBriton--he could take to his boats. 

He started on a journey round the globe, and I was left with nothing butmy inference as to what might have happened. Later observation howeveronly confirmed my belief that if at any time during the couple of monthsthat followed Flora Saunt's brilliant engagement he had made up, asthey say, to the good lady of Folkestone, that good lady would not havepushed him over the cliff. Strange as she was to behold I knew of casesin which she had been obliged to administer that shove. I went to NewYork to paint a couple of portraits; but I found, once on the spot, that I had counted without Chicago, where I was invited to blot out thisharsh discrimination by the production of no less than ten. I spent ayear in America and should probably have spent a second had I not beensummoned back to England by alarming news from my mother. Herstrength had failed, and as soon as I reached London I hurried downto Folkestone, arriving just at the moment to offer a welcome to someslight symptom of a rally. She had been much worse, but she was now alittle better; and though I found nothing but satisfaction in havingcome to her I saw after a few hours that my London studio, where arrearsof work had already met me, would be my place to await whatever mightnext occur. Before returning to town however I had every reason to sallyforth in search of Mrs. Meldrum, from whom, in so many months, I hadnot had a line, and my view of whom, with the adjacent objects, as I hadleft them, had been intercepted by a luxuriant foreground. 

Before I had gained her house I met her, as I supposed, coming toward meacross the down, greeting me from afar with the familiar twinkle of hergreat vitreous badge; and as it was late in the autumn and the esplanadewas a blank I was free to acknowledge this signal by cutting a caperon the grass. My enthusiasm dropped indeed the next moment, for it hadtaken me but a few seconds to perceive that the person thus assaultedhad by no means the figure of my military friend. I felt a shock muchgreater than any I should have thought possible as on this person'sdrawing near I identified her as poor little Flora Saunt. At what momentFlora had recognised me belonged to an order of mysteries over which, itquickly came home to me, one would never linger again: I could intenselyreflect that once we were face to face it chiefly mattered that I shouldsucceed in looking still more intensely unastonished. All I saw at firstwas the big gold bar crossing each of her lenses, over which somethingconvex and grotesque, like the eyes of a large insect, something thatnow represented her whole personality, seemed, as out of the orificeof a prison, to strain forward and press. The face had shrunk away: itlooked smaller, appeared even to look plain; it was at all events, sofar as the effect on a spectator was concerned, wholly sacrificed tothis huge apparatus of sight. There was no smile in it, and she made nomotion to take my offered hand. 

"I had no idea you were down here!" I exclaimed; and I wondered whethershe didn't know me at all or knew me only by my voice. 

"You thought I was Mrs. Meldrum, " she very quietly remarked. 

It was the quietness itself that made me feel the necessity of an answeralmost violently gay. "Oh yes, " I laughed, "you have a tremendous dealin common with Mrs. Meldrum! I've just returned to England after a longabsence and I'm on my way to see her. Won't you come with me?" It struckme that her old reason for keeping clear of our friend was well disposedof now. 

"I've just left her; I'm staying with her. " She stood solemnly fixingme with her goggles. "Would you like to paint me _now?_" she asked. Sheseemed to speak, with intense gravity, from behind a mask or a cage. 

There was nothing to do but to treat the question with the sameexuberance. "It would be a fascinating little artistic problem!" Thatsomething was wrong it was not difficult to perceive; but a good dealmore than met the eye might be presumed to be wrong if Flora was underMrs. Meldrum's roof. I had not for a year had much time to think of her, but my imagination had had sufficient warrant for lodging her in moregilded halls. One of the last things I had heard before leaving Englandwas that in commemoration of the new relationship she had gone to staywith Lady Considine. This had made me take everything else forgranted, and the noisy American world had deafened my ears to possiblecontradictions. Her spectacles were at present a direct contradiction;they seemed a negation not only of new relationships but of every oldone as well. I remember nevertheless that when after a moment she walkedbeside me on the grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldn't asyet at any rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave offthis danger I harried her with questions about Mrs. Meldrum and, withoutwaiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own doings. Mycompanion was completely silent, and I felt both as if she were watchingmy nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as if I were talkingto some different, strange person. Flora plain and obscure and soundlesswas no Flora at all. At Mrs. Meldrum's door she turned off with theobservation that as there was certainly a great deal I should have tosay to our friend she had better not go in with me. I looked at heragain--I had been keeping my eyes away from her--but only to meet hermagnified stare. I greatly desired in truth to see Mrs. Meldrum alone, but there was something so pitiful in the girl's predicament that Ihesitated to fall in with this idea of dropping her. Yet one couldn'texpress a compassion without seeming to take too much wretchedness forgranted. I reflected that I must really figure to her as a fool, whichwas an entertainment I had never expected to give her. It rolled over methere for the first time--it has come back to me since--that there is, strangely, in very deep misfortune a dignity finer even than in the mostinveterate habit of being all right. I couldn't have to her the mannerof treating it as a mere detail that I was face to face with a part ofwhat, at our last meeting, we had had such a scene about; but while Iwas trying to think of some manner that I _could_ have she said quitecolourlessly, yet somehow as if she might never see me again: "Goodbye. I'm going to take my walk. "

"All alone?"

She looked round the great bleak cliff-top. "With whom should I go?Besides, I like to be alone--for the present. "

This gave me the glimmer of a vision that she regarded her disfigurementas temporary, and the confidence came to me that she would never, forher happiness, cease to be a creature of illusions. It enabled me toexclaim, smiling brightly and feeling indeed idiotic: "Oh, I shall seeyou again! But I hope you'll have a very pleasant walk. "

"All my walks are very pleasant, thank you--they do me such a lotof good. " She was as quiet as a mouse, and her words seemed to mestupendous in their wisdom. "I take several a day, " she continued. Shemight have been an ancient woman responding with humility at the churchdoor to the patronage of the parson. "The more I take the better I feel. I'm ordered by the doctors to keep all the while in the air and go infor plenty of exercise. It keeps up my general health, you know, and ifthat goes on improving as it has lately done everything will soon be allright. All that was the matter with me before--and always; it was tooreckless!--was that I neglected my general health. It acts directly onthe state of the particular organ. So I'm going three miles. "

I grinned at her from the doorstep while Mrs. Meldrum's maid stood thereto admit me. "Oh, I'm so glad, " I said, looking at her as she paced awaywith the pretty flutter she had kept and remembering the day when, whileshe rejoined Lord Iffield, I had indulged in the same observation. Herair of assurance was on this occasion not less than it had been on that;but I recalled that she had then struck me as marching off to her doom. Was she really now marching away from it?

XI

As soon as I saw Mrs. Meldrum I broke out to her. "Is there anything init? _Is_ her general health--?"

Mrs. Meldrum interrupted me with her great amused blare. "You've alreadyseen her and she has told you her wondrous tale? What's 'in it' is whathas been in everything she has ever done--the most comical, tragicalbelief in herself. She thinks she's doing a 'cure. '"

"And what does her husband think?"

"Her husband? What husband?"

"Hasn't she then married Lord Iffield?"

"_Vous-en-êtes là?_" cried my hostess. "He behaved like a regularbeast. "

"How should I know? You never wrote to me. "

Mrs. Meldrum hesitated, covering me with what poor Flora called theparticular organ. "No, I didn't write to you; and I abstained onpurpose. If I didn't I thought you mightn't, over there, hear whathad happened. If you should hear I was afraid you would stir up Mr. Dawling. "

"Stir him up?"

"Urge him to fly to the rescue; write out to him that there was anotherchance for him. "

"I wouldn't have done it, " I said. 

"Well, " Mrs. Meldrum replied, "it was not my business to give you anopportunity. "

"In short you were afraid of it. "

Again she hesitated and though it may have been only my fancy I thoughtshe considerably reddened. At all events she laughed out. Then "I wasafraid of it!" she very honestly answered. 

"But doesn't he know? Has he given no sign?"

"Every sign in life--he came straight back to her. He did everything toget her to listen to him; but she hasn't the smallest idea of it. "

"Has he seen her as she is now?" I presently and just a trifle awkwardlyinquired. 

"Indeed he has, and borne it like a hero. He told me all about it. "

"How much you've all been through!" I ventured to ejaculate. "Then whathas become of him?"

"He's at home in Hampshire. He has got back his old place and I believeby this time his old sisters. It's not half a bad little place. "

"Yet its attractions say nothing to Flora?"

"Oh, Flora's by no means on her back!" my interlocutress laughed. 

"She's not on her back because she's on yours. Have you got her for therest of your life?"

Once more my hostess genially glared at me. "Did she tell you how muchthe Hammond Synges have kindly left her to live on? Not quite eightypounds a year. "

"That's a good deal, but it won't pay the oculist. What was it that atlast induced her to submit to him?"

"Her general collapse after that brute of an Iffield's rupture. Shecried her eyes out--she passed through a horror of black darkness. Thencame a gleam of light, and the light appears to have broadened. She wentinto goggles as repentant Magdalens go into the Catholic Church. "

"Yet you don't think she'll be saved?"

"_She_ thinks she will--that's all I can tell you. There's no doubt thatwhen once she brought herself to accept her real remedy, as she callsit, she began to enjoy a relief that she had never known. That feeling, very new and in spite of what she pays for it most refreshing, hasgiven her something to hold on by, begotten in her foolish little minda belief that, as she says, she's on the mend and that in the course oftime, if she leads a tremendously healthy life, she'll be able to takeoff her muzzle and become as dangerous again as ever. It keeps hergoing. "

"And what keeps _you?_ You're good until the parties begin again. "

"Oh, she doesn't object to me now!" smiled Mrs. Meldrum. "I'm goingto take her abroad; we shall be a pretty pair. " I was struck with thisenergy and after a moment I inquired the reason of it. "It's to diverther mind, " my friend replied, reddening again, I thought, a little. "Weshall go next week: I've only waited, to start, to see how your motherwould be. " I expressed to her hereupon my sense of her extraordinarymerit and also that of the inconceivability of Flora's fancying herselfstill in a situation not to jump at the chance of marrying a man likeDawling. "She says he's too ugly; she says he's too dreary; she says infact he's 'nobody, '" Mrs. Meldrum pursued. "She says above all that he'snot 'her own sort. ' She doesn't deny that he's good, but she insists onthe fact that he's grotesque. He's quite the last person she would everdream of. " I was almost disposed on hearing this to protest that if thegirl had so little proper feeling her noble suitor had perhaps servedher right; but after a while my curiosity as to just how her noblesuitor _had_ served her got the better of that emotion, and I askeda question or two which led my companion again to apply to him theinvidious epithet I have already quoted. What had happened was simplythat Flora had at the eleventh hour broken down in the attempt toput him off with an uncandid account of her infirmity and that hislordship's interest in her had not been proof against the discovery ofthe way she had practised on him. Her dissimulation, he was obliged toperceive, had been infernally deep. The future in short assumed a newcomplexion for him when looked at through the grim glasses of a bridewho, as he had said to some one, couldn't really, when you came to findout, see her hand before her face. He had conducted himself like anyother jockeyed customer--he had returned the animal as unsound. He hadbacked out in his own way, giving the business, by some sharp shuffle, such a turn as to make the rupture ostensibly Flora's, but he had nonethe less remorselessly and basely backed out. He had cared for herlovely face, cared for it in the amused and haunted way it had been herpoor little delusive gift to make men care; and her lovely face, damnit, with the monstrous gear she had begun to rig upon it, was just whathad let him in. He had in the judgment of his family done everythingthat could be expected of him; he had made--Mrs. Meldrum had herselfseen the letter--a "handsome" offer of pecuniary compensation. Oh, ifFlora, with her incredible buoyancy, was in a manner on her feet againnow, it was not that she had not for weeks and weeks been prone in thedust. Strange were the humiliations, the prostrations it was given tosome natures to survive. That Flora had survived was perhaps after alla sort of sign that she was reserved for some final mercy. "But she hasbeen in the abysses at any rate, " said Mrs. Meldrum, "and I really don'tthink I can tell you what pulled her through. "

"I think I can tell _you_, " I said. "What in the world but Mrs. Meldrum?"

At the end of an hour Flora had not come in, and I was obliged toannounce that I should have but time to reach the station, where, incharge of my mother's servant, I was to find my luggage. Mrs. Meldrumput before me the question of waiting till a later train, so as notto lose our young lady; but I confess I gave this alternative aconsideration less profound than I pretended. Somehow I didn't care if Idid lose our young lady. Now that I knew the worst that had befallenher it struck me still less as possible to meet her on the ground ofcondolence; and with the melancholy aspect she wore to me what otherground was left? I lost her, but I caught my train. In truth she wasso changed that one hated to see it; and now that she was in charitablehands one didn't feel compelled to make great efforts. I had studiedher face for a particular beauty; I had lived with that beauty andreproduced it; but I knew what belonged to my trade well enough to besure it was gone for ever. 

XII

I was soon called back to Folkestone; but Mrs. Meldrum and her youngfriend had already left England, finding to that end every convenienceon the spot and not having had to come up to town. My thoughts howeverwere so painfully engaged there that I should in any case have hadlittle attention for them: the event occurred that was to bring myseries of visits to a close. When this high tide had ebbed I returned toAmerica and to my interrupted work, which had opened out on such a scalethat, with a deep plunge into a great chance, I was three good years inrising again to the surface. There are nymphs and naiads moreover in theAmerican depths: they may have had something to do with the duration ofmy dive. I mention them to account for a grave misdemeanour--the factthat after the first year I rudely neglected Mrs. Meldrum. She hadwritten to me from Florence after my mother's death and had mentionedin a postscript that in our young lady's calculations the lowest numberswere now Italian counts. This was a good omen, and if in subsequentletters there was no news of a sequel I was content to accept smallthings and to believe that grave tidings, should there be any, wouldcome to me in due course. The gravity of what might happen to afeatherweight became indeed with time and distance less appreciable, and I was not without an impression that Mrs. Meldrum, whose sense ofproportion was not the least of her merits, had no idea of boring theworld with the ups and downs of her pensioner. The poor girl grew duskyand dim, a small fitful memory, a regret tempered by the comfortableconsciousness of how kind Mrs. Meldrum would always be to her. I wasprofessionally more preoccupied than I had ever been, and I had swarmsof pretty faces in my eyes and a chorus of high voices in my ears. Geoffrey Dawling had on his return to England written me two or threeletters: his last information had been that he was going into thefigures of rural illiteracy. I was delighted to receive it and had nodoubt that if he should go into figures they would, as they are said tobe able to prove anything, prove at least that my advice was sound andthat he had wasted time enough. This quickened on my part another hope, a hope suggested by some roundabout rumour--I forget how it reachedme--that he was engaged to a girl down in Hampshire. He turned out notto be, but I felt sure that if only he went into figures deep enoughhe would become, among the girls down in Hampshire or elsewhere, one ofthose numerous prizes of battle whose defences are practically not onthe scale of their provocations. I nursed in short the thought that itwas probably open to him to become one of the types as to which, as theyears go on, frivolous and superficial spectators lose themselves in thewonder that they ever succeeded in winning even the least winsome mates. He never alluded to Flora Saunt; and there was in his silence abouther, quite as in Mrs. Meldrum's, an element of instinctive tact, a briefimplication that if you didn't happen to have been in love with her shewas not an inevitable topic. 

Within a week after my return to London I went to the opera, of which Ihad always been much of a devotee. I arrived too late for the first actof "Lohengrin, " but the second was just beginning, and I gave myselfup to it with no more than a glance at the house. When it was over Itreated myself, with my glass, from my place in the stalls, to a generalsurvey of the boxes, making doubtless on their contents the reflections, pointed by comparison, that are most familiar to the wanderer restoredto London. There was a certain proportion of pretty women, but Isuddenly became aware that one of these was far prettier than theothers. This lady, alone in one of the smaller receptacles of the grandtier and already the aim of fifty tentative glasses, which she sustainedwith admirable serenity--this single exquisite figure, placed in thequarter furthest removed from my stall, was a person, I immediatelyfelt, to cause one's curiosity to linger. Dressed in white, withdiamonds in her hair and pearls on her neck, she had a pale radianceof beauty which even at that distance made her a distinguished presenceand, with the air that easily attaches to lonely loveliness in publicplaces, an agreeable mystery. A mystery however she remained to me onlyfor a minute after I had levelled my glass at her: I feel to this momentthe startled thrill, the shock almost of joy with which I suddenlyencountered in her vague brightness a rich revival of Flora Saunt. I saya revival because, to put it crudely, I had on that last occasion leftpoor Flora for dead. At present perfectly alive again, she was alteredonly, as it were, by resurrection. A little older, a little quieter, a little finer and a good deal fairer, she was simply transfigured byrecovery. Sustained by the reflection that even recovery wouldn't enableher to distinguish me in the crowd, I was free to look at her well. Thenit was it came home to me that my vision of her in her great goggleshad been cruelly final. As her beauty was all there was of her, thatmachinery had extinguished her, and so far as I had thought of herin the interval I had thought of her as buried in the tomb her sternspecialist had built. With the sense that she had escaped from it came alively wish to return to her; and if I didn't straightway leave my placeand rush round the theatre and up to her box it was because I was fixedto the spot some moments longer by the simple inability to cease lookingat her. 

She had been from the first of my seeing her practically motionless, leaning back in her chair with a kind of thoughtful grace and with hereyes vaguely directed, as it seemed to me, to one of the boxes on myside of the house and consequently over my head and out of my sight. Theonly movement she made for some time was to finger with an unglovedhand and as if with the habit of fondness the row of pearls on her neck, which my glass showed me to be large and splendid. Her diamonds andpearls, in her solitude, mystified me, making me, as she had had no suchbrave jewels in the days of the Hammond Synges, wonder what undreamt-ofimprovement had taken place in her fortunes. The ghost of a questionhovered there a moment: could anything so prodigious have happened asthat on her tested and proved amendment Lord Iffield had taken her back?This could not have occurred without my hearing of it; and moreover ifshe had become a person of such fashion where was the little court onewould naturally see at her elbow? Her isolation was puzzling, though itcould easily suggest that she was but momentarily alone. If she had comewith Mrs. Mel-drum that lady would have taken advantage of the intervalto pay a visit to some other box--doubtless the box at which Flora hadjust been looking. Mrs. Meldrum didn't account for the jewels, but therefreshment of Flora's beauty accounted for anything. She presentlymoved her eyes over the house, and I felt them brush me again like thewings of a dove. I don't know what quick pleasure flickered into thehope that she would at last see me. She did see me: she suddenly bentforward to take up the little double-barrelled ivory glass that restedon the edge of the box and, to all appearance, fix me with it. I smiledfrom my place straight up at the searching lenses, and after an instantshe dropped them and smiled as straight back at me. Oh, her smile: itwas her old smile, her young smile, her peculiar smile made perfect! Iinstantly left my stall and hurried off for a nearer view of it; quiteflushed, I remember, as I went, with the annoyance of having happened tothink of the idiotic way I had tried to paint her. Poor Iffield with hissample of that error, and still poorer Dawling in particular with his!I hadn't touched her, I was professionally humiliated, and as theattendant in the lobby opened her box for me I felt that the very firstthing I should have to say to her would be that she must absolutely sitto me again. 

XIII

She gave me the smile once more as over her shoulder, from her chair, she turned her face to me. "Here you are again!" she exclaimed with herdisgloved hand put up a little backward for me to take. I dropped intoa chair just behind her and, having taken it and noted that one of thecurtains of the box would make the demonstration sufficiently private, bent my lips over it and impressed them on its finger-tips. It was givenme however, to my astonishment, to feel next that all the privacy inthe world couldn't have sufficed to mitigate the start with which shegreeted this free application of my moustache: the blood had jumpedto her face, she quickly recovered her hand and jerked at me, twistingherself round, a vacant, challenging stare. During the next few instantsseveral extraordinary things happened, the first of which was that nowI was close to them the eyes of loveliness I had come up to look intodidn't show at all the conscious light I had just been pleased tosee them flash across the house: they showed on the contrary, to myconfusion, a strange, sweet blankness, an expression I failed to give ameaning to until, without delay, I felt on my arm, directed to it as ifinstantly to efface the effect of her start, the grasp of the hand shehad impulsively snatched from me. It was the irrepressible questionin this grasp that stopped on my lips all sound of salutation. She hadmistaken my entrance for that of another person, a pair of lips withouta moustache. She was feeling me to see who I was! With the perception ofthis and of her not seeing me I sat gaping at her and at the wildword that didn't come, the right word to express or to disguise mystupefaction. What was the right word to commemorate one's suddendiscovery, at the very moment too at which one had been most encouragedto count on better things, that one's dear old friend had gone blind?Before the answer to this question dropped upon me--and the movingmoments, though few, seemed many--I heard, with the sound of voices, theclick of the attendant's key on the other side of the door. Poor Floraheard also, and with the hearing, still with her hand on my arm, shebrightened again as I had a minute since seen her brighten across thehouse: she had the sense of the return of the person she had taken mefor--the person with the right pair of lips, as to whom I was for thatmatter much more in the dark than she. I gasped, but my word had come:if she had lost her sight it was in this very loss that she had foundagain her beauty. I managed to speak while we were still alone, beforeher companion had appeared. "You're lovelier at this day than youhave ever been in your life!" At the sound of my voice and that of theopening of the door her excitement broke into audible joy. She sprangup, recognising me, always holding me, and gleefully cried to agentleman who was arrested in the doorway by the sight of me: "He hascome back, he has come back, and you should have heard what he says ofme!" The gentleman was Geoffrey Dawling, and I thought it best tolet him hear on the spot. "How beautiful she is, my dear man--but howextraordinarily beautiful! More beautiful at this hour than ever, everbefore!"

It gave them almost equal pleasure and made Dawling blush up to hiseyes; while this in turn produced, in spite of deepened astonishment, a blessed snap of the strain that I had been under for some moments. Iwanted to embrace them both, and while the opening bars of anotherscene rose from the orchestra I almost did embrace Dawling, whosefirst emotion on beholding me had visibly and ever so oddly been aconsciousness of guilt. I had caught him somehow in the act, though thatwas as yet all I knew; but by the time we had sunk noiselessly intoour chairs again (for the music was supreme, Wagner passed first) mydemonstration ought pretty well to have given him the limit of thecriticism he had to fear. I myself indeed, while the opera blazed, wasonly too afraid he might divine in our silent closeness the very moralof my optimism, which was simply the comfort I had gathered from seeingthat if our companion's beauty lived again her vanity partook of itslife. I had hit on the right note--that was what eased me off: it drewall pain for the next half-hour from the sense of the deep darknessin which the stricken woman sat there. If the music, in that darkness, happily soared and swelled for her, it beat its wings in unison withthose of a gratified passion. A great deal came and went between uswithout profaning the occasion, so that I could feel at the end oftwenty minutes as if I knew almost everything he might in kindness haveto tell me; knew even why Flora, while I stared at her from the stalls, had misled me by the use of ivory and crystal and by appearing torecognise me and smile. She leaned back in her chair in luxurious ease:I had from the first become aware that the way she fingered her pearlswas a sharp image of the wedded state. Nothing of old had seemed wantingto her assurance; but I hadn't then dreamed of the art with which shewould wear that assurance as a married woman. She had taken him wheneverything had failed; he had taken her when she herself had done so. His embarrassed eyes confessed it all, confessed the deep peace he foundin it. They only didn't tell me why he had not written to me, nor clearup as yet a minor obscurity. Flora after a while again lifted the glassfrom the ledge of the box and elegantly swept the house with it. Then, by the mere instinct of her grace, a motion but half conscious, sheinclined her head into the void with the sketch of a salute, producing, I could see, a perfect imitation of a response to some homage. Dawlingand I looked at each other again: the tears came into his eyes. Shewas playing at perfection still, and her misfortune only simplified theprocess. 

I recognised that this was as near as I should ever come, certainly asI should come that night, to pressing on her misfortune. Neither of uswould name it more than we were doing then, and Flora would never nameit at all. Little by little I perceived that what had occurred was, strange as it might appear, the best thing for her happiness. Thequestion was now only of her beauty and her being seen and marvelled at:with Dawling to do for her everything in life her activity was limitedto that. Such an activity was all within her scope: it asked nothingof her that she couldn't splendidly give. As from time to time in ourdelicate communion she turned her face to me with the parody of a lookI lost none of the signs of its strange new glory. The expression ofthe eyes was a bit of pastel put in by a master's thumb; the whole head, stamped with a sort of showy suffering, had gained a fineness from whatshe had passed through. Yes, Flora was settled for life--nothing couldhurt her further. I foresaw the particular praise she would mostlyincur--she would be incomparably "interesting. " She would charm withher pathos more even than she had charmed with her pleasure. For herselfabove all she was fixed for ever, rescued from all change and ransomedfrom all doubt. Her old certainties, her old vanities were justifiedand sanctified, and in the darkness that had closed upon her oneobject remained clear. That object, as unfading as a mosaic mask, wasfortunately the loveliest she could possibly look upon. The greatestblessing of all was of course that Dawling thought so. Her future wasruled with the straightest line, and so for that matter was his. Therewere two facts to which before I left my friends I gave time to sinkinto my spirit. One of them was that he had changed by some process aseffective as Flora's change; had been simplified somehow into service asshe had been simplified into success. He was such a picture of inspiredintervention as I had never yet encountered: he would exist henceforthfor the sole purpose of rendering unnecessary, or rather impossible, any reference even on her own part to his wife's infirmity. Oh yes, howlittle desire he would ever give _me_ to refer to it! He principallyafter a while made me feel--and this was my second lesson--that, good-natured as he was, my being there to see it all oppressed him; sothat by the time the act ended I recognised that I too had filled out myhour. Dawling remembered things; I think he caught in my very face theirony of old judgments: they made him thresh about in his chair. I saidto Flora as I took leave of her that I would come to see her; but I maymention that I never went. I'll go to-morrow if I hear she wants me; butwhat in the world can she ever want? As I quitted them I laid my hand onDawling's arm and drew him for a moment into the lobby. 

"Why did you never write to me of your marriage?"

He smiled uncomfortably, showing his long yellow teeth and somethingmore. "I don't know--the whole thing gave me such a tremendous lot todo. "

This was the first dishonest speech I had heard him make: he reallyhadn't written to me because he had an idea I would think him a stillbigger fool than before. I didn't insist, but I tried there, in thelobby, so far as a pressure of his hand could serve me, to give him anotion of what I thought him. "I can't at any rate make out, " I said, "why I didn't hear from Mrs. Mel-drum. "

"She didn't write to you?"

"Never a word. What has become of her?"

"I think she's at Folkestone, " Dawling returned; "but I'm sorry to saythat practically she has ceased to see us. "

"You haven't quarrelled with her?"

"How _could_ we? Think of all we owe her. At the time of our marriage, and for months before, she did everything for us: I don't know how weshould have managed without her. But since then she has never been nearus and has given us rather markedly little encouragement to try and keepup our relations with her. "

I was struck with this though of course I admit I am struck with allsorts of things. "Well, " I said after a moment, "even if I could imaginea reason for that attitude it wouldn't explain why she shouldn't havetaken account of _my_ natural interest. "

"Just so. " Dawling's face was a windowless wall. He could contributenothing to the mystery, and, quitting him, I carried it away. It was nottill I went down to see Mrs. Meldrum that it was really dispelled. Shedidn't want to hear of them or to talk of them, not a bit, and it wasjust in the same spirit that she hadn't wanted to write of them. She haddone everything in the world for them, but now, thank heaven, the hardbusiness was over. After I had taken this in, which I was quick to do, we quite avoided the subject. She simply couldn't bear it. 

THE NEXT TIME

Mrs. Highmore's errand this morning was odd enough to deservecommemoration: she came to ask me to write a notice of her greatforthcoming work. Her great works have come forth so frequently withoutmy assistance that I was sufficiently entitled on this occasion toopen my eyes; but what really made me stare was the ground on which herrequest reposed, and what leads me to record the incident is the trainof memory lighted by that explanation. Poor Ray Limbert, while wetalked, seemed to sit there between us: she reminded me that myacquaintance with him had begun, eighteen years ago, with her havingcome in precisely as she came in this morning to bespeak my charity forhim. If she didn't know then how little my charity was worth she is atleast enlightened about it to-day, and this is just the circumstancethat makes the drollery of her visit. As I hold up the torch to thedusky years--by which I mean as I cipher up with a pen that stumblesand stops the figured column of my reminiscences--I see that Lim-bert'spublic hour, or at least my small apprehension of it, is rounded bythose two occasions. It was _finis_, with a little moralising flourish, that Mrs. Highmore seemed to trace to-day at the bottom of the page. "One of the most voluminous writers of the time, " she has often repeatedthis sign; but never, I daresay, in spite of her professional commandof appropriate emotion, with an equal sense of that mystery and thatsadness of things which to people of imagination generally hover overthe close of human histories. This romance at any rate is bracketed byher early and her late appeal; and when its melancholy protrusions hadcaught the declining light again from my half-hour's talk with her Itook a private vow to recover while that light still lingers somethingof the delicate flush, to pick out with a brief patience the perplexinglesson. 

It was wonderful to observe how for herself Mrs. Highmore had alreadydone so: she wouldn't have hesitated to announce to me what was thematter with Ralph Limbert, or at all events to give me a glimpse of thehigh admonition she had read in his career. There could have been nobetter proof of the vividness of this parable, which we were really inour pleasant sympathy quite at one about, than that Mrs. Highmore, ofall hardened sinners, should have been converted. This indeed was notnews to me: she impressed upon me that for the last ten years she hadwanted to do something artistic, something as to which she was preparednot to care a rap whether or no it should sell. She brought home to mefurther that it had been mainly seeing what her brother-in-law did andhow he did it that had wedded her to this perversity. As _he_ didn'tsell, dear soul, and as several persons, of whom I was one, thoughthighly of that, the fancy had taken her--taken her even quite earlyin her prolific course--of reaching, if only once, the same heroiceminence. She yearned to be, like Lim-bert, but of course only once, anexquisite failure. There was something a failure was, a failure in themarket, that a success somehow wasn't. A success was as prosaic as agood dinner: there was nothing more to be said about it than that youhad had it. Who but vulgar people, in such a case, made gloating remarksabout the courses? It was often by such vulgar people that a success wasattested. It made if you came to look at it nothing but money; thatis it made so much that any other result showed small in comparison. Afailure now could make--oh, with the aid of immense talent of course, for there were failures and failures--such a reputation! She did methe honour--she had often done it--to intimate that what she meant byreputation was seeing _me_ toss a flower. If it took a failure to catcha failure I was by my own admission well qualified to place the laurel. It was because she had made so much money and Mr. Highmore had takensuch care of it that she could treat herself to an hour of pure glory. She perfectly remembered that as often as I had heard her heave thatsigh I had been prompt with my declaration that a book sold might easilybe as glorious as a book unsold. Of course she knew this, but she knewalso that it was the age of trash triumphant and that she had neverheard me speak of anything that had "done well" exactly as she hadsometimes heard me speak of something that hadn't--with just two orthree words of respect which, when I used them, seemed to convey morethan they commonly stood for, seemed to hush up the discussion a little, as if for the very beauty of the secret. 

I may declare in regard to these allusions that, whatever I then thoughtof myself as a holder of the scales I had never scrupled to laugh outat the humour of Mrs. Highmore's pursuit of quality at any price. It hadnever rescued her even for a day from the hard doom of popularity, andthough I never gave her my word for it there was no reason at all whyit should. The public _would_ have her, as her husband used roguishlyto remark; not indeed that, making her bargains, standing up to herpublishers and even, in his higher flights, to her reviewers, he everhad a glimpse of her attempted conspiracy against her genius, or ratheras I may say against mine. It was not that when she tried to be whatshe called subtle (for wasn't Limbert subtle, and wasn't I?) her fondconsumers, bless them, didn't suspect the trick nor show what theythought of it: they straightway rose on the contrary to the morsel shehad hoped to hold too high, and, making but a big, cheerful bite of it, wagged their great collective tail artlessly for more. It was notgiven to her not to please, nor granted even to her best refinements toaffright. I have always respected the mystery of those humiliations, butI was fully aware this morning that they were practically the reasonwhy she had come to me. Therefore when she said with the flush of abold joke in her kind, coarse face "What I feel is, you know, that _you_could settle me if you only would. " I knew quite well what she meant. Shemeant that of old it had always appeared to be the fine blade, as someone had hyperbolically called it, of my particular opinion that snappedthe silken thread by which Limbert's chance in the market was wont tohang. She meant that my favour was compromising, that my praise indeedwas fatal. I had made myself a little specialty of seeing nothing incertain celebrities, of seeing overmuch in an occasional nobody, and ofjudging from a point of view that, say what I would for it (and I had amonstrous deal to say) remained perverse and obscure. Mine was in shortthe love that killed, for my subtlety, unlike Mrs. Highmore's, producedno tremor of the public tail. She had not forgotten how, toward theend, when his case was worst, Limbert would absolutely come to me witha funny, shy pathos in his eyes and say: "My dear fellow, I think I'vedone it this time, if you'll only keep quiet. " If my keeping quiet inthose days was to help him to appear to have hit the usual taste, forthe want of which he was starving, so now my breaking out was to helpMrs. Highmore to appear to have hit the unusual. 

The moral of all this was that I had frightened the public too much forour late friend, but that as she was not starving this was exactlywhat her grosser reputation required. And then, she good-naturedly anddelicately intimated, there would always be, if further reasons werewanting, the price of my clever little article. I think she gave thathint with a flattering impression--spoiled child of the booksellers asshe is--that the price of my clever little articles is high. Whatever itis, at any rate, she had evidently reflected that poor Limbert'sanxiety for his own profit used to involve my sacrificing mine. Anyinconvenience that my obliging her might entail would not in fine bepecuniary. Her appeal, her motive, her fantastic thirst for quality andher ingenious theory of my influence struck me all as excellent comedy, and when I consented contingently to oblige her she left me the sheetsof her new novel. I could plead no inconvenience and have been lookingthem over; but I am frankly appalled at what she expects of me. Whatis she thinking of, poor dear, and what has put it into her head that"quality" has descended upon her? Why does she suppose that she has been"artistic"? She hasn't been anything whatever, I surmise, that she hasnot inveterately been. What does she imagine she has left out? Whatdoes she conceive she has put in? She has neither left out nor putin anything. I shall have to write her an embarrassed note. The bookdoesn't exist, and there's nothing in life to say about it. How canthere be anything but the same old faithful rush for it?

I

This rush had already begun when, early in the seventies, in theinterest of her prospective brother-in-law, she approached me on thesingular ground of the unencouraged sentiment I had entertained for hersister. Pretty pink Maud had cast me out, but I appear to have passed inthe flurried little circle for a magnanimous youth. Pretty pink Maud, so lovely then, before her troubles, that dusky Jane was gratefullyconscious of all she made up for, Maud Stannace, very literary too, very languishing and extremely bullied by her mother, had yielded, invidiously as it might have struck me, to Ray Limbert's suit, whichMrs. Stannace was not the woman to stomach. Mrs. Stannace was seldom thewoman to do anything: she had been shocked at the way her children, withthe grubby taint of their father's blood (he had published pale Remainsor flat Conversations of _his_ father) breathed the alien air ofauthorship. If not the daughter, nor even the niece, she was, if I amnot mistaken, the second cousin of a hundred earls and a great sticklerfor relationship, so that she had other views for her brilliant child, especially after her quiet one (such had been her original discreetforecast of the producer of eighty volumes) became the second wife of anex-army-surgeon, already the father of four children. Mrs. Stannace hadtoo manifestly dreamed it would be given to pretty pink Maud to detachsome one of the hundred, who wouldn't be missed, from the cluster. Itwas because she cared only for cousins that I unlearnt the way toher house, which she had once reminded me was one of the few paths ofgentility I could hope to tread. Ralph Limbert, who belonged to nobodyand had done nothing--nothing even at Cambridge--had only the uncannyspell he had cast upon her younger daughter to recommend him; but if heryounger daughter had a spark of filial feeling she wouldn't commit theindecency of deserting for his sake a deeply dependent and intenselyaggravated mother. 

These things I learned from Jane Highmore, who, as if her books had beenbabies (they remained her only ones) had waited till after marriageto show what she could do and now bade fair to surround her satisfiedspouse (he took for some mysterious reason, a part of the credit) with alittle family, in sets of triplets, which properly handled would be thesupport of his declining years. The young couple, neither of whom hada penny, were now virtually engaged: the thing was subject to Ralph'sputting his hand on some regular employment. People more enamouredcouldn't be conceived, and Mrs. Highmore, honest woman, who had moreovera professional sense for a love-story, was eager to take them under herwing. What was wanted was a decent opening for Limbert, which it hadoccurred to her I might assist her to find, though indeed I had not yetfound any such matter for myself. But it was well known that I was tooparticular, whereas poor Ralph, with the easy manners of genius, wasready to accept almost anything to which a salary, even a small one, wasattached. If he could only for instance get a place on a newspaper therest of his maintenance would come freely enough. It was true that histwo novels, one of which she had brought to leave with me, had passedunperceived and that to her, Mrs. Highmore personally, they didn'tirresistibly appeal; but she could all the same assure me that I shouldhave only to spend ten minutes with him (and our encounter must speedilytake place) to receive an impression of latent power. 

Our encounter took place soon after I had read the volumes Mrs. Highmorehad left with me, in which I recognised an intention of a sort thatI had then pretty well given up the hope of meeting. I daresay thatwithout knowing it I had been looking out rather hungrily for an altarof sacrifice: however that may be I submitted when I came across RalphLimbert to one of the rarest emotions of my literary life, the senseof an activity in which I could critically rest. The rest was deep andsalutary, and it has not been disturbed to this hour. It has beena long, large surrender, the luxury of dropped discriminations. Hecouldn't trouble me, whatever he did, for I practically enjoyed him asmuch when he was worse as when he was better. It was a case, I suppose, of natural prearrangement, in which, I hasten to add, I keep excellentcompany. We are a numerous band, partakers of the same repose, who sittogether in the shade of the tree, by the plash of the fountain, withthe glare of the desert around us and no great vice that I know of butthe habit perhaps of estimating people a little too much by what theythink of a certain style. If it had been laid upon these few pages, none the less, to be the history of an enthusiasm, I should not haveundertaken them: they are concerned with Ralph Limbert in relations towhich I was a stranger or in which I participated only by sympathy. Iused to talk about his work, but I seldom talk now: the brotherhood ofthe faith have become, like the Trappists, a silent order. If to theday of his death, after mortal disenchantments, the impression he firstproduced always evoked the word "ingenuous, " those to whom his face wasfamiliar can easily imagine what it must have been when it still had thelight of youth. I had never seen a man of genius look so passive, a manof experience so off his guard. At the period I made his acquaintancethis freshness was all un-brushed. His foot had begun to stumble, but hewas full of big intentions and of sweet Maud Stannace. Black-haired andpale, deceptively languid, he had the eyes of a clever child and thevoice of a bronze bell. He saw more even than I had done in the girlhe was engaged to; as time went on I became conscious that we had both, properly enough, seen rather more than there was. Our odd situation, that of the three of us, became perfectly possible from the moment Iobserved that he had more patience with her than I should have had. Iwas happy at not having to supply this quantity, and she, on her side, found pleasure in being able to be impertinent to me without incurringthe reproach of a bad wife. 

Limbert's novels appeared to have brought him no money: they had onlybrought him, so far as I could then make out, tributes that took up histime. These indeed brought him from several quarters some other things, and on my part at the end of three months _The Blackport Beacon_. Idon't to-day remember how I obtained for him the London correspondenceof the great northern organ, unless it was through somebody's havingobtained it for myself. I seem to recall that I got rid of it inLimbert's interest, persuaded the editor that he was much the betterman. The better man was naturally the man who had pledged himselfto support a charming wife. We were neither of us good, as the eventproved, but he had a finer sort of badness. _The BlackportBeacon_ had two London correspondents--one a supposed haunter ofpolitical circles, the other a votary of questions sketchily classifiedas literary. They were both expected to be lively, and what was held outto each was that it was honourably open to him to be livelier than theother. I recollect the political correspondent of that period and howthe problem offered to Ray Limbert was to try to be livelier than PatMoyle. He had not yet seemed to me so candid as when he undertook thisexploit, which brought matters to a head with Mrs. Stannace, inasmuchas her opposition to the marriage now logically fell to the ground. It'sall tears and laughter as I look back upon that admirable time, in whichnothing was so romantic as our intense vision of the real. Nofool's paradise ever rustled such a cradle-song. It was anything butBohemia--it was the very temple of Mrs. Grundy. We knew we were toocritical, and that made us sublimely indulgent; we believed we did ourduty or wanted to, and that made us free to dream. But we dreamed overthe multiplication-table; we were nothing if not practical. Oh, the longsmokes and sudden ideas, the knowing hints and banished scruples! Thegreat thing was for Limbert to bring out his next book, which was justwhat his delightful engagement with the _Beacon_ would give himleisure and liberty to do. The kind of work, all human and elasticand suggestive, was capital experience: in picking up things forhis bi-weekly letter he would pick up life as well, he would pickup literature. The new publications, the new pictures, the newpeople--there would be nothing too novel for us and nobody toosacred. We introduced everything and everybody into Mrs. Stannace'sdrawing-room, of which I again became a familiar. 

Mrs. Stannace, it was true, thought herself in strange company; shedidn't particularly mind the new books, though some of them seemedqueer enough, but to the new people she had decided objections. It wasnotorious however that poor Lady Robeck secretly wrote for one of thepapers, and the thing had certainly, in its glance at the doings of thegreat world, a side that might be made attractive. But we were going tomake every side attractive, and we had everything to say about the sortof thing a paper like the _Beacon_ would want. To give it what it wouldwant and to give it nothing else was not doubtless an inspiring, but itwas a perfectly respectable task, especially for a man with an appealingbride and a contentious mother-in-law. I thought Lambert's first lettersas charming as the type allowed, though I won't deny that in spite of mysense of the importance of concessions I was just a trifle disconcertedat the way he had caught the tone. The tone was of course to be caught, but need it have been caught so in the act? The creature was evencleverer, as Maud Stannace said, than she had ventured to hope. Verilyit was a good thing to have a dose of the wisdom of the serpent. If ithad to be journalism--well, it _was_ journalism. If he had to be "chatty"--well, he _was_ chatty. Now and then he made a hit that--it was stupidof me--brought the blood to my face. I hated him to be so personal; butstill, if it would make his fortune--! It wouldn't of course directly, but the book would, practically and in the sense to which our pure ideasof fortune were confined; and these things were all for the book. The daily balm meanwhile was in what one knew of the book--there wereexquisite things to know; in the quiet monthly cheques from Blackportand in the deeper rose of Maud's little preparations, which were asdainty, on their tiny scale, as if she had been a humming-bird buildinga nest. When at the end of three months her betrothed had fairly settleddown to his correspondence--in which Mrs. Highmore was the only person, so far as we could discover, disappointed, even she moreover being inthis particular tortuous and possibly jealous; when the situationhad assumed such a comfortable shape it was quite time to prepare. I published at that moment my first volume, mere faded ink to-day, alittle collection of literary impressions, odds and ends of criticismcontributed to a journal less remunerative but also less chatty than the_Beacon_, small ironies and ecstasies, great phrases and mistakes;and the very week it came out poor Limbert devoted half of one of hisletters to it, with the happy sense this time of gratifying both himselfand me as well as the Blackport breakfast-tables. I remember his sayingit wasn't literature, the stuff, superficial stuff, he had to writeabout me; but what did that matter if it came back, as we knew, tothe making for literature in the roundabout way? I sold the thing, Iremember, for ten pounds, and with the money I bought in Vigo Streeta quaint piece of old silver for Maud Stannace, which I carried to herwith my own hand as a wedding-gift. In her mother's small drawing-room, a faded bower of photography fenced in and bedimmed by folding screensout of which sallow persons of fashion with dashing signatures looked atyou from retouched eyes and little windows of plush, I was left towait long enough to feel in the air of the house a hushed vibration ofdisaster. When our young lady came in she was very pale and her eyes toohad been retouched. 

"Something horrid has happened, " I immediately said; and having reallyall along but half believed in her mother's meagre permission I riskedwith an unguarded groan the introduction of Mrs. Stannace's name. 

"Yes, she has made a dreadful scene; she insists on our putting it offagain. We're very unhappy: poor Ray has been turned off. " Her tearsbegan to flow again. 

I had such a good conscience that I stared. "Turned off what?"

"Why, his paper of course. The _Beacon_ has given him what he calls thesack. They don't like his letters: they're not the style of thing theywant. "

My blankness could only deepen. "Then what style of thing _do_ theywant?"

"Something more chatty. "

"More?" I cried, aghast. 

"More gossipy, more personal. They want 'journalism. ' They wanttremendous trash. "

"Why, that's just what his letters have _been!_" I broke out. 

This was strong, and I caught myself up, but the girl offered me thepardon of a beautiful wan smile. "So Ray himself declares. He says hehas stooped so low. "

"Very well--he must stoop lower. He _must_ keep the place. "

"He can't!" poor Maud wailed. "He says he has tried all he knows, hasbeen abject, has gone on all fours, and that if they don't like that--"

"He accepts his dismissal?" I interposed in dismay. 

She gave a tragic shrug. "What other course is open to him? He wrote tothem that such work as he has done is the very worst he can do for themoney. "

"Therefore, " I inquired with a flash of hope, "they'll offer him morefor worse?"

"No indeed, " she answered, "they haven't even offered him to go on at areduction. He isn't funny enough. "

I reflected a moment. "But surely such a thing as his notice of mybook--!"

"It was your wretched book that was the last straw! He should havetreated it superficially. "

"Well, if he didn't--!" I began. Then I

checked myself. "_Je vous porte malheur. _"

She didn't deny this; she only went, on: "What on earth is he to do?"

"He's to do better than the monkeys! He's to write!"

"But what on earth are we to marry on?"

I considered once more. "You're to marry on _The Major Key_. "

II

_The Major Key_ was the new novel, and the great thing accordingly wasto finish it; a consummation for which three months of the _Beacon_ hadin some degree prepared the way. The action of that journal was indeed ashock, but I didn't know then the worst, didn't know that in additionto being a shock it was also a symptom. It was the first hint of thedifficulty to which poor Limbert was eventually to succumb. His statewas the happier of a truth for his not immediately seeing all that itmeant. Difficulty was the law of life, but one could thank heaven it wasexceptionally present in that horrid quarter. There was the difficultythat inspired, the difficulty of _The Major Key_ to wit, which it wasafter all base to sacrifice to the turning of somersaults for pennies. These convictions Ray Limbert beguiled his fresh wait by blandlyentertaining: not indeed, I think, that the failure of his attempt tobe chatty didn't leave him slightly humiliated. If it was bad enoughto have grinned through a horse-collar it was very bad indeed to havegrinned in vain. Well, he would try no more grinning or at least no morehorse-collars. The only success worth one's powder was success in theline of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, andwhat was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that onehappened to be? One's things were characteristic or they were nothing. I look back rather fondly on our having exchanged in those days theseadmirable remarks and many others; on our having been very happy too, inspite of postponements and obscurities, in spite also of such occasionalhauntings as could spring from our lurid glimpse of the fact that eventwaddle cunningly calculated was far above people's heads. It was easyto wave away spectres by the reflection that all one had to do was notto write for people; it was certainly not for people that Limbert wrotewhile he hammered at _The Major Key_. The taint of literature was fatalonly in a certain kind of air, which was precisely the kind againstwhich we had now closed our window. Mrs. Stannace rose from her crumpledcushions as soon as she had obtained an adjournment, and Maud lookedpale and proud, quite victorious and superior, at her having obtainednothing more. Maud behaved well, I thought, to her mother, and wellindeed for a girl who had mainly been taught to be flowerlike to everyone. What she gave Ray Limbert her fine, abundant needs made himthen and ever pay for; but the gift was liberal, almost wonderful--anassertion I make even while remembering to how many clever women, earlyand late, his work has been dear. It was not only that the woman he wasto marry was in love with him, but that (this was the strangeness)she had really seen almost better than any one what he could do. Thegreatest strangeness was that she didn't want him to do somethingdifferent. This boundless belief was indeed the main way of herdevotion; and as an act of faith it naturally asked for miracles. Shewas a rare wife for a poet if she was not perhaps the best who couldhave been picked out for a poor man. 

Well, we were to have the miracles at all events and we were in aperfect state of mind to receive them. There were more of us every day, and we thought highly even of our friend's odd jobs and pot-boilers. The_Beacon_ had had no successor, but he found some quiet comers and straychances. Perpetually poking the fire and looking out of the window, hewas certainly not a monster of facility, but he was, thanks perhaps to acertain method in that madness, a monster of certainty. It wasn't everyone however who knew him for this: many editors printed him but once. He was getting a small reputation as a man it was well to have thefirst time; he created obscure apprehensions as to what might happen thesecond. He was good for making an impression, but no one seemed exactlyto know what the impression was good for when made. The reason wassimply that they had not seen yet _The Major Key_ that fiery-heartedrose as to which we watched in private the formation of petal afterpetal and flame after flame. Nothing mattered but this, for it hadalready elicited a splendid bid, much talked about in Mrs. High-more'sdrawing-room, where at this point my reminiscences grow particularlythick. _Her_ roses bloomed all the year and her sociability increasedwith her row of prizes. We had an idea that we "met every one" there--sowe naturally thought when we met each other. Between our hostess and RayLimbert flourished the happiest relation, the only cloud on which wasthat her husband eyed him rather askance. When he was called clever thispersonage wanted to know what he had to "show;" and it was certain thathe showed nothing that could compare with Jane Highmore. Mr. Highmoretook his stand on accomplished work and, turning up his coat-tails, warmed his rear with a good conscience at the neat bookcase in whichthe generations of triplets were chronologically arranged. The harmonybetween his companions rested on the fact that, as I have alreadyhinted, each would have liked so much to be the other. Limbert couldn'tbut have a feeling about a woman who in addition to being the bestcreature and her sister's backer would have made, could she havecondescended, such a success with the _Beacon_. On the other hand Mrs. Highmore used freely to say: "Do you know, he'll do exactly the thingthat _I_ want to do? I shall never do it myself, but he'll do itinstead. Yes, he'll do _my_ thing, and I shall hate him for it--thewretch. " Hating him was her pleasant humour, for the wretch waspersonally to her taste. 

She prevailed on her own publisher to promise to take _The Major Key_and to engage to pay a considerable sum down, as the phrase is, on thepresumption of its attracting attention. This was good news for theevening's end at Mrs. Highmore's when there were only four or five leftand cigarettes ran low; but there was better news to come, and I havenever forgotten how, as it was I who had the good fortune to bring it, Ikept it back on one of those occasions, for the sake of my effect, tillonly the right people remained. The right people were now more andmore numerous, but this was a revelation addressed only to a choiceresiduum--a residuum including of course Limbert himself, with whom Ihaggled for another cigarette before I announced that as a consequenceof an interview I had had with him that afternoon, and of a subtleargument I had brought to bear, Mrs. Highmore's pearl of publishers hadagreed to put forth the new book as a serial. He was to "run" it inhis magazine and he was to pay ever so much more for the privilege. Iproduced a fine gasp which presently found a more articulate relief, but poor Limbert's voice failed him once for all (he knew he was to walkaway with me) and it was some one else who asked me in what my subtleargument had resided. I forget what florid description I then gave ofit: to-day I have no reason not to confess that it had resided in thesimple plea that the book was exquisite. I had said: "Come, my dearfriend, be original; just risk it for that!" My dear friend seemedto rise to the chance, and I followed up my advantage, permittinghim honestly no illusion as to the quality of the work. He clutchedinterrogatively at two or three attenuations, but I dashed them aside, leaving him face to face with the formidable truth. It was just a puregem: was he the man not to flinch? His danger appeared to have actedupon him as the anaconda acts upon the rabbit; fascinated and paralysed, he had been engulfed in the long pink throat. When a week before, at myrequest, Limbert had let me possess for a day the complete manuscript, beautifully copied out by Maud Stannace, I had flushed with indignationat its having to be said of the author of such pages that he hadn't thecommon means to marry. I had taken the field in a great glow to repairthis scandal, and it was therefore quite directly my fault if threemonths later, when _The Major Key_ began to run, Mrs. Stannace wasdriven to the wall. She had made a condition of a fixed income; and atlast a fixed income was achieved. 

She had to recognise it, and after much prostration among thephotographs she recognised it to the extent of accepting some of theconvenience of it in the form of a project for a common household, tothe expenses of which each party should proportionately contribute. Jane Highmore made a great point of her not being left alone, but Mrs. Stannace herself determined the proportion, which on Limbert's side atleast and in spite of many other fluctuations was never altered. Hisincome had been "fixed" with a vengeance: having painfully stooped tothe comprehension of it Mrs. Stannace rested on this effort to the endand asked no further question on the subject. _The Major Key_ in otherwords ran ever so long, and before it was half out Limbert and Maud hadbeen married and the common household set up. These first months wereprobably the happiest in the family annals, with wedding-bells andbudding laurels, the quiet, assured course of the book and the friendly, familiar note, round the corner, of Mrs. Highmore's big guns. They gaveRalph time to block in another picture as well as to let me know aftera while that he had the happy prospect of becoming a father. We hadat times some dispute as to whether _The Major Key_ was making animpression, but our contention could only be futile so long as we werenot agreed as to what an impression consisted of. Several persons wroteto the author and several others asked to be introduced to him: wasn'tthat an impression? One of the lively "weeklies, " snapping at the deadly"monthlies, " said the whole thing was "grossly inartistic"--wasn'tthat? It was somewhere else proclaimed "a wonderfully subtlecharacter-study"--wasn't that too? The strongest effect doubtless wasproduced on the publisher when, in its lemon-coloured volumes, likea little dish of three custards, the book was at last served cold: henever got his money back and so far as I know has never got it back tothis day. _The Major Key_ was rather a great performance than a greatsuccess. It converted readers into friends and friends into lovers; itplaced the author, as the phrase is--placed him all too definitely; butit shrank to obscurity in the account of sales eventually rendered. Itwas in short an exquisite thing, but it was scarcely a thing to havepublished and certainly not a thing to have married on. I heard allabout the matter, for my intervention had much exposed me. Mrs. Highmoresaid the second volume had given her ideas, and the ideas are probablyto be found in some of her works, to the circulation of which they haveeven perhaps contributed. This was not absolutely yet the very thing shewanted to do, but it was on the way to it. So much, she informed me, she particularly perceived in the light of a critical study which I putforth in a little magazine; which the publisher in his advertisementsquoted from profusely; and as to which there sprang up some absurd storythat Limbert himself had written it. I remember that on my asking someone why such an idiotic thing had been said my interlocutor replied:"Oh, because, you know, it's just the way he _would_ have written!" Myspirit sank a little perhaps as I reflected that with such analogies inour manner there might prove to be some in our fate. 

It was during the next four or five years that our eyes were open towhat, unless something could be done, that fate, at least on Limbert'spart, might be. The thing to be done was of course to write the book, the book that would make the difference, really justify the burden hehad accepted and consummately express his power. For the works thatfollowed upon _The Major Key_ he had inevitably to accept conditions thereverse of brilliant, at a time too when the strain upon his resourceshad begun to show sharpness. With three babies in due course, an ailingwife and a complication still greater than these, it became highlyimportant that a man should do only his best. Whatever Limbert did washis best; so at least each time I thought and so I unfailingly saidsomewhere, though it was not my saying it, heaven knows, that made thedesired difference. Every one else indeed said it, and there was amongmultiplied worries always the comfort that his position was quiteassured. The two books that followed _The Major Key_ did more thananything else to assure it, and Jane Highmore was always crying out:"You stand alone, dear Ray; you stand absolutely alone!" Dear Rayused to tell me that he felt the truth of this in feebly attempteddiscussions with his bookseller. His sister-in-law gave him good adviceinto the bargain; she was a repository of knowing hints, of esotericlearning. These things were doubtless not the less valuable to himfor bearing wholly on the question of how a reputation might be witha little gumption, as Mrs. Highmore said, "worked. " Save when sheoccasionally bore testimony to her desire to do, as Limbert did, something some day for her own very self, I never heard her speak of theliterary motive as if it were distinguishable from the pecuniary. Shecocked up his hat, she pricked up his prudence for him, reminding himthat as one seemed to take one's self so the silly world was ready totake one. It was a fatal mistake to be too candid even with those whowere all right--not to look and to talk prosperous, not at least topretend that one had beautiful sales. To listen to her you would havethought the profession of letters a wonderful game of bluff. Whereverone's idea began it ended somehow in inspired paragraphs in thenewspapers. "_I_ pretend, I assure you, that you are going off likewildfire--I can at least do that for you!" she often declared, preventedas she was from doing much else by Mr. Highmore's insurmountableobjection to _their_ taking Mrs. Stannace. 

I couldn't help regarding the presence of this latter lady in Limbert'slife as the major complication: whatever he attempted it appeared givento him to achieve as best he could in the mere margin of the spacein which she swung her petticoats. I may err in the belief that shepractically lived on him, for though it was not in him to followadequately Mrs. Highmore's counsel there were exasperated confessionshe never made, scanty domestic curtains he rattled on their rings. I mayexaggerate in the retrospect his apparent anxieties, for these after allwere the years when his talent was freshest and when as a writer he mostlaid down his line. It wasn't of Mrs. Stannace nor even as time went onof Mrs. Limbert that we mainly talked when I got at longer intervals asmokier hour in the little grey den from which we could step out, as weused to say, to the lawn. The lawn was the back-garden, and Limbert'sstudy was behind the dining-room, with folding doors not impervious tothe clatter of the children's tea. We sometimes took refuge from it inthe depths--a bush and a half deep--of the shrubbery, where was a benchthat gave us a view while we gossiped of Mrs. Stannace's tiara-likeheaddress nodding at an upper window. Within doors and without Limbert'slife was overhung by an awful region that figured in his conversation, comprehensively and with unpremeditated art, as Upstairs. It wasUpstairs that the thunder gathered, that Mrs. Stannace kept her accountsand her state, that Mrs. Limbert had her babies and her headaches, thatthe bells for ever jangled at the maids, that everything imperative inshort took place--everything that he had somehow, pen in hand, to meetand dispose of in the little room on the garden-level. I don't thinkhe liked to go Upstairs, but no special burst of confidence was neededto make me feel that a terrible deal of service went. It was the habitof the ladies of the Stannace family to be extremely waited on, and I'venever been in a house where three maids and a nursery-governessgave such an impression of a retinue. "Oh, they're so deucedly, sohereditarily fine!"--I remember how that dropped from him in someworried hour. Well, it was because Maud was so universally fine thatwe had both been in love with her. It was not an air moreover for theplaintive note: no private inconvenience could long outweigh for him thegreat happiness of these years--the happiness that sat with us when wetalked and that made it always amusing to talk, the sense of his beingon the heels of success, coming closer and closer, touching it at last, knowing that he should touch it again and hold it fast and hold it high. Of course when we said success we didn't mean exactly what Mrs. Highmorefor instance meant. He used to quote at me as a definition somethingfrom a nameless page of my own, some stray dictum to the effect thatthe man of his craft had achieved it when of a beautiful subject hisexpression was complete. Well, wasn't Limbert's in all consciencecomplete?

III

It was bang upon this completeness all the same that the turn arrived, the turn I can't say of his fortune--for what was that?--but of hisconfidence, of his spirits and, what was more to the point, of hissystem. The whole occasion on which the first symptom flared out isbefore me as I write. I had met them both at dinner: they were dinerswho had reached the penultimate stage--the stage which in theory is arigid selection and in practice a wan submission. It was late in theseason and stronger spirits than theirs were broken; the night wasclose and the air of the banquet such as to restrict conversation to therefusal of dishes and consumption to the sniffing of a flower. It struckme all the more that Mrs. Limbert was flying her flag. As vivid as apage of her husband's prose, she had one of those flickers of freshnessthat are the miracle of her sex and one of those expensive dresses thatare the miracle of ours. She had also a neat brougham in which shehad offered to rescue an old lady from the possibilities of a queercab-horse; so that when she had rolled away with her charge I proposed awalk home with her husband, whom I had overtaken on the doorstep. BeforeI had gone far with him he told me he had news for me--he had accepted, of all people and of all things, an "editorial position. " It had come topass that very day, from one hour to another, without time for appealsor ponderations: Mr. Bousefield, the proprietor of a "high-classmonthly, " making, as they said, a sudden change, had dropped on himheavily out of the blue. It was all right--there was a salary and anidea, and both of them, as such things went, rather high. We took ourway slowly through the vacant streets, and in the explanations andrevelations that as we lingered under lamp-posts I drew from him I foundwith an apprehension that I tried to gulp down a foretaste of the bitterend. He told me more than he had ever told me yet. He couldn't balanceaccounts--that was the trouble: his expenses were too rising a tide. Itwas absolutely necessary that he should at last make money, and now hemust work only for that. The need this last year had gathered the forceof a crusher: it had rolled over him and laid him on his back. He hadhis scheme; this time he knew what he was about; on some good occasion, with leisure to talk it over, he would tell me the blessed whole. Hiseditorship would help him, and for the rest he must help himself. If hecouldn't they would have to do something fundamental--change theirlife altogether, give up London, move into the country, take a houseat thirty pounds a year, send their children to the Board-school. I sawthat he was excited, and he admitted that he was: he had waked out of atrance. He had been on the wrong tack; he had piled mistake on mistake. It was the vision of his remedy that now excited him: ineffably, grotesquely simple, it had yet come to him only within a day or two. No, he wouldn't tell me what it was; he would give me the night to guess, and if I shouldn't guess it would be because I was as big an ass ashimself. However, a lone man might be an ass: he had room in his lifefor his ears. Ray had a burden that demanded a back: the back musttherefore now be properly instituted. As to the editorship, it wassimply heaven-sent, being not at all another case of _The BlackportBeacon_ but a case of the very opposite. The proprietor, the great Mr. Bousefield, had approached him precisely because his name, which was tobe on the cover, _didn't_ represent the chatty. The whole thing wasto be--oh, on fiddling little lines of course--a protest againstthe chatty. Bousefield wanted him to be himself; it was for himselfBousefield had picked him out. Wasn't it beautiful and brave ofBousefield? He wanted literature, he saw the great reaction coming, the way the cat was going to jump. "Where will you get literature?" Iwofully asked; to which he replied with a laugh that what he had to getwas not literature but only what Bousefield would take for it. 

In that single phrase without more ado I discovered his famous remedy. What was before him for the future was not to do his work but to do whatsomebody else would take for it. I had the question out with him on thenext opportunity, and of all the lively discussions into which we hadbeen destined to drift it lingers in my mind as the liveliest. Thiswas not, I hasten to add, because I disputed his conclusions: it was aneffect of the very force with which, when I had fathomed his wretchedpremises, I took them to my soul. It was very well to talk with JaneHighmore about his standing alone: the eminent relief of this positionhad brought him to the verge of ruin. Several persons admired hisbooks--nothing was less contestable; but they appeared to have a mortalobjection to acquiring them by subscription or by purchase: they beggedor borrowed or stole, they delegated one of the party perhaps tocommit the volumes to memory and repeat them, like the bards of old, tolistening multitudes. Some ingenious theory was required at any rate toaccount for the inexorable limits of his circulation. It wasn't a thingfor five people to live on; therefore either the objects circulated mustchange their nature or the organisms to be nourished must. The formerchange was perhaps the easier to consider first. Limbert consideredit with extraordinary ingenuity from that time on, and the ingenuity, greater even than any I had yet had occasion to admire in him, made thewhole next stage of his career rich in curiosity and suspense. 

"I have been butting my skull against a wall, " he had said in thosehours of confidence; "and, to be as sublime a blockhead, if you'll allowme the word, you, my dear fellow, have kept sounding the charge. We'vesat prating here of 'success, ' heaven help us, like chanting monks in acloister, hugging the sweet delusion that it lies somewhere in thework itself, in the expression, as you said, of one's subject or theintensification, as somebody else somewhere says, of one's note. One hasbeen going on in short as if the only thing to do were to accept the lawof one's talent and thinking that if certain consequences didn't followit was only because one wasn't logical enough. My disaster has servedme right--I mean for using that ignoble word at all. It's a meredistributor's, a mere hawker's word. What _is_ 'success' anyhow? When abook's right, it's right--shame to it surely if it isn't. When it sellsit sells--it brings money like potatoes or beer. If there's dishonourone way and inconvenience the other, it certainly is comfortable, butit as certainly isn't glorious to have escaped them. People of delicacydon't brag either about their probity or about their luck. Success behanged!--I want to sell. It's a question of life and death. I must studythe way. I've studied too much the other way--I know the other waynow, every inch of it. I must cultivate the market--it's a science likeanother. I must go in for an infernal cunning. It will be very amusing, I foresee that; I shall lead a dashing life and drive a roaring trade. I haven't been obvious--I must _be_ obvious. I haven't been popular--Imust _be_ popular. It's another art--or perhaps it isn't an art atall. It's something else; one must find out what it is. Is it somethingawfully queer?--you blush!--something barely decent? All the greaterincentive to curiosity! Curiosity's an immense motive; we shall havetremendous sport. They all do it; it's only a question of how. Of courseI've everything to unlearn; but what is life, as Jane Highmore says, but a lesson? I must get all I can, all she can give me, from Jane. She can't explain herself much; she's all intuition; her processes areobscure; it's the spirit that swoops down and catches her up. But I muststudy her reverently in her works. Yes, you've defied me before, butnow my loins are girded: I declare I'll read one of them--I really will:I'll put it through if I perish!"

I won't pretend that he made all these remarks at once; but there wasn'tone that he didn't make at one time or another, for suggestion andoccasion were plentiful enough, his life being now given up altogetherto his new necessity. It wasn't a question of his having or not having, as they say, my intellectual sympathy: the brute force of the pressureleft no room for judgment; it made all emotion a mere recourse to thespyglass. I watched him as I should have watched a long race or along chase, irresistibly siding with him but much occupied with thecalculation of odds. I confess indeed that my heart, for the endlessstretch that he covered so fast, was often in my throat. I saw him pegaway over the sun-dappled plain, I saw him double and wind and gain andlose; and all the while I secretly entertained a conviction. I wantedhim to feed his many mouths, but at the bottom of all things was mysense that if he should succeed in doing so in this particular way Ishould think less well of him. Now I had an absolute terror of that. Meanwhile so far as I could I backed him up, I helped him: all the morethat I had warned him immensely at first, smiled with a compassion itwas very good of him not to have found exasperating over the complacencyof his assumption that a man could escape from himself. Ray Limbert atall events would certainly never escape; but one could make believefor him, make believe very hard--an undertaking in which at firstMr. Bousefield was visibly a blessing. Limbert was delightful on thebusiness of this being at last my chance too--my chance, so miraculouslyvouchsafed, to appear with a certain luxuriance. He didn't carehow often he printed me, for wasn't it exactly in my direction Mr. Bousefield held that the cat was going to jump? This was the least hecould do for me. I might write on anything I liked--on anything at leastbut Mr. Limbert's second manner. He didn't wish attention strikinglycalled to his second manner; it was to operate insidiously; people wereto be left to believe they had discovered it long ago. "Ralph Limbert?Why, when did we ever live without him?"--that's what he wanted themto say. Besides, they hated manners--let sleeping dogs lie. Hisunderstanding with Mr. Bousefield--on which he had had not at all toinsist; it was the excellent man who insisted--was that he should runone of his beautiful stories in the magazine. As to the beauty of hisstory however Limbert was going to be less admirably straight than asto the beauty of everything else. That was another reason why I mustn'twrite about his new line: Mr. Bousefield was not to be too definitelywarned that such a periodical was exposed to prostitution. By the timehe should find it out for himself the public--_le gros public_--wouldhave bitten, and then perhaps he would be conciliated and forgive. Everything else would be literary in short, and above all _I_ would be;only Ralph Limbert wouldn't--he'd chuck up the whole thing sooner. He'dbe vulgar, he'd be rudimentary, he'd be atrocious: he'd be elaboratelywhat he hadn't been before. I duly noticed that he had more trouble inmaking "everything else" literary than he had at first allowed for;but this was largely counteracted by the ease with which he was able toobtain that his mark should not be overshot. He had taken well to heartthe old lesson of the _Beacon_; he remembered that he was after allthere to keep his contributors down much rather than to keep them up. Ithought at times that he kept them down a trifle too far, but heassured me that I needn't be nervous: he had his limit--his limit wasinexorable. He would reserve pure vulgarity for his serial, over whichhe was sweating blood and water; elsewhere it should be qualified bythe prime qualification, the mediocrity that attaches, that endears. Bousefield, he allowed, was proud, was difficult: nothing was reallygood enough for him but the middling good; but he himself was preparedfor adverse comment, resolute for his noble course. Hadn't Limbertmoreover in the event of a charge of laxity from headquarters the greatstrength of being able to point to my contributions? Therefore I mustlet myself go, I must abound in my peculiar sense, I must be a resourcein case of accidents. Lim-bert's vision of accidents hovered mainlyover the sudden awakening of Mr. Bousefield to the stuff that in thedepartment of fiction his editor was palming off. He would then have toconfess in all humility that this was not what the good old man wanted, but I should be all the more there as a salutary specimen. I would crossthe scent with something showily impossible, splendidly unpopular--Imust be sure to have something on hand. I always had plenty onhand--poor Limbert needn't have worried: the magazine was forearmedeach month by my care with a retort to any possible accusation oftrifling with Mr. Bousefield's standard. He had admitted to Limbert, after much consideration indeed, that he was prepared to be perfectlyhuman; but he had added that he was not prepared for an abuse of thisadmission. The thing in the world I think I least felt myself was anabuse, even though (as I had never mentioned to my friendly editor) Itoo had my project for a bigger reverberation. I daresay I trusted minemore than I trusted Limbert's; at all events the golden mean in whichin the special case he saw his salvation as an editor was something Ishould be most sure of if I were to exhibit it myself. I exhibited itmonth after month in the form of a monstrous levity, only praying heaventhat my editor might now not tell me, as he had so often told me, thatmy result was awfully good. I knew what that would signify--it wouldsignify, sketchily speaking, disaster. What he did tell me heartily wasthat it was just what his game required: his new line had brought withit an earnest assumption--earnest save when we privately laughed aboutit--of the locutions proper to real bold enterprise. If I tried to keephim in the dark even as he kept Mr. Bousefield there was nothing toshow that I was not tolerably successful: each case therefore presenteda promising analogy for the other. He never noticed my descent, and itwas accordingly possible that Mr. Bousefield would never notice his. 

But would nobody notice it at all?--that was a question that addeda prospective zest to one's possession of a critical sense. So muchdepended upon it that I was rather relieved than otherwise not to knowthe answer too soon. I waited in fact a year--the year for which Limberthad cannily engaged on trial with Mr. Bousefield; the year as to whichthrough the same sharpened shrewdness it had been conveyed in theagreement between them that Mr. Bousefield was not to intermeddle. Ithad been Limbert's general prayer that we would during this period lethim quite alone. His terror of my direct rays was a droll, dreadfulforce that always operated: he explained it by the fact that Iunderstood him too well, expressed too much of his intention, saved himtoo little from himself. The less he was saved the more he didn't sell:I literally interpreted, and that was simply fatal. 

I held my breath accordingly; I did more--I closed my eyes, I guarded mytreacherous ears. He induced several of us to do that (of such devotionswe were capable) so that not even glancing at the thing from month tomonth, and having nothing but his shamed, anxious silence to go by, Iparticipated only vaguely in the little hum that surrounded his actof sacrifice. It was blown about the town that the public would besurprised; it was hinted, it was printed that he was making a desperatebid. His new work was spoken of as "more calculated for generalacceptance. " These tidings produced in some quarters much reprobation, and nowhere more, I think, than on the part of certain persons who hadnever read a word of him, or assuredly had never spent a shilling onhim, and who hung for hours over the other attractions of thenewspaper that announced his abasement. So much asperity cheered me alittle--seemed to signify that he might really be doing something. Onthe other hand I had a distinct alarm; some one sent me for some alienreason an American journal (containing frankly more than that sourceof affliction) in which was quoted a passage from our friend's lastinstalment. The passage--I couldn't for my life help reading it--wassimply superb. Ah, he _would_ have to move to the country if that wasthe worst he could do! It gave me a pang to see how little after all hehad improved since the days of his competition with Pat Moyle. There wasnothing in the passage quoted in the American paper that Pat would for amoment have owned. During the last weeks, as the opportunity of readingthe complete thing drew near, one's suspense was barely endurable, andI shall never forget the July evening on which I put it to rout. Cominghome to dinner I found the two volumes on my table, and I sat up withthem half the night, dazed, bewildered, rubbing my eyes, wondering atthe monstrous joke. _Was_ it a monstrous joke, his second manner--was_this_ the new line, the desperate bid, the scheme for more generalacceptance and the remedy for material failure? Had he made a fool ofall his following, or had he most injuriously made a still bigger foolof himself? Obvious?--where the deuce was it obvious? Popular?--how onearth could it be popular? The thing was charming with all his charmand powerful with all his power: it was an unscrupulous, an unsparing, ashameless, merciless masterpiece. It was, no doubt, like the old lettersto the _Beacon_, the worst he could do; but the perversity of theeffort, even though heroic, had been frustrated by the purity ofthe gift. Under what illusion had he laboured, with what wavering, treacherous compass had he steered? His honour was inviolable, hismeasurements were all wrong. I was thrilled with the whole impressionand with all that came crowding in its train. It was too grand acollapse--it was too hideous a triumph; I exalted almost with tears--Ilamented with a strange delight. Indeed as the short night waned and, threshing about in my emotion, I fidgeted to my high-perched window fora glimpse of the summer dawn, I became at last aware that I was staringat it out of eyes that had compassionately and admiringly filled. Theeastern sky, over the London housetops, had a wonderful tragic crimson. That was the colour of his magnificent mistake. 

IV

If something less had depended on my impression I daresay I should havecommunicated it as soon as I had swallowed my breakfast; but thecase was so embarrassing that I spent the first half of the day inreconsidering it, dipping into the book again, almost feverishly turningits leaves and trying to extract from them, for my friend's benefit, some symptom of reassurance, some ground for felicitation. This rashchallenge had consequences merely dreadful; the wretched volumes, imperturbable and impeccable, with their shyer secrets and their secondline of defence, were like a beautiful woman more denuded or a greatsymphony on a new hearing. There was something quite sinister in the waythey stood up to me. I couldn't however be dumb--that was to give thewrong tinge to my disappointment; so that later in the afternoon, takingmy courage in both hands, I approached with a vain tortuosity poorLimbert's door. A smart victoria waited before it in which from thebottom of the street I saw that a lady who had apparently just issuedfrom the house was settling herself. I recognised Jane Highmore andinstantly paused till she should drive down to me. She presently met mehalf-way and as soon as she saw me stopped her carriage in agitation. This was a relief--it postponed a moment the sight of that pale, fineface of our friend's fronting me for the right verdict. I gathered fromthe flushed eagerness with which Mrs. Highmore asked me if I had heardthe news that a verdict of some sort had already been rendered. 

"What news?--about the book?"

"About that horrid magazine. They're shockingly upset. He has lost hisposition--he has had a fearful flare-up with Mr. Bousefield. "

I stood there blank, but not unaware in my blankness of how historyrepeats itself. There came to me across the years Maud's announcementof their ejection from the _Beacon_, and dimly, confusedly the sameexplanation was in the air. This time however I had been on my guard;I had had my suspicion. "He has made it too flippant?" I found breathafter an instant to inquire. 

Mrs. Highmore's vacuity exceeded my own. "Too 'flippant'? He has made ittoo oracular. Mr. Bousefield says he has killed it. " Then perceiving mystupefaction: "Don't you know what has happened?" she pursued; "isn't itbecause in his trouble, poor love, he has sent for you that you've come?You've heard nothing at all? Then you had better know before you seethem. Get in here with me--I'll take you a turn and tell you. " We wereclose to the Park, the Regent's, and when with extreme alacrity I hadplaced myself beside her and the carriage had begun to enter it she wenton: "It was what I feared, you know. It reeked with culture. He keyed itup too high. "

I felt myself sinking in the general collapse. "What are you talkingabout?"

"Why, about that beastly magazine. They're all on the streets. I shallhave to take mamma. "

I pulled myself together. "What on earth then did Bousefield want? Hesaid he wanted intellectual power. "

"Yes, but Ray overdid it. "

"Why, Bousefield said it was a thing he _couldn't_ overdo. "

"Well, Ray managed: he took Mr. Bousefield too literally. It appearsthe thing has been doing dreadfully, but the proprietor couldn't sayanything, because he had covenanted to leave the editor quite free. Hedescribes himself as having stood there in a fever and seen his ship godown. A day or two ago the year was up, so he could at last break out. Maud says he did break out quite fearfully; he came to the house and letpoor Ray have it. Ray gave it to him back; he reminded him of his ownidea of the way the cat was going to jump. "

I gasped with dismay. "Has Bousefield abandoned that idea? Isn't the catgoing to jump?"

Mrs. Highmore hesitated. "It appears that she doesn't seem in ahurry. Ray at any rate has jumped too far ahead of her. He should havetemporised a little, Mr. Bousefield says; but I'm beginning to think, you know, " said my companion, "that Ray _can't_ temporise. " Freshfrom my emotions of the previous twenty-four hours I was scarcely in aposition to disagree with her. "He published too much pure thought. "

"Pure thought?" I cried. "Why, it struck me so often--certainly in a dueproportion of cases--as pure drivel!"

"Oh, you're more keyed up than he! Mr. Bousefield says that of coursehe wanted things that were suggestive and clever, things that he couldpoint to with pride. But he contends that Ray didn't allow for humanweakness. He gave everything in too stiff doses. "

Sensibly, I fear, to my neighbour I winced at her words; I felt a prickthat made me meditate. Then I said: "Is that, by chance, the way hegave _me?_" Mrs. Highmore remained silent so long that I had somehow thesense of a fresh pang; and after a minute, turning in my seat, I laid myhand on her arm, fixed my eyes upon her face and pursued pressingly:"Do you suppose it to be to my 'Occasional Remarks' that Mr. Bousefieldrefers?"

At last she met my look. "Can you bear to hear it?"

"I think I can bear anything now. "

"Well then, it was really what I wanted to give you an inkling of. It'slargely over you that they've quarrelled. Mr. Bousefield wants him tochuck you. "

I grabbed her arm again. "And Limbert _won't?_"

"He seems to cling to you. Mr. Bousefield says no magazine can affordyou. "

I gave a laugh that agitated the very coachman. "Why, my dear lady, hashe any idea of my price?"

"It isn't your price--he says you're dear at any price; you do so muchto sink the ship. Your 'Remarks' are called 'Occasional, ' but nothingcould be more deadly regular: you're there month after month and you'renever anywhere else. And you supply no public want. "

"I supply the most delicious irony. "

"So Ray appears to have declared. Mr. Bousefield says that's not in theleast a public want. No one can make out what you're talking about andno one would care if he could. I'm only quoting _him_, mind. "

"Quote, quote--if Limbert holds out. I think I must leave you now, please: I must rush back to express to him what I feel. "

"I'll drive you to his door. That isn't all, " said Mrs. Highmore. And onthe way, when the carriage had turned, she communicated the rest. "Mr. Bousefield really arrived with an ultimatum: it had the form ofsomething or other by Minnie Meadows. "

"Minnie Meadows?" I was stupefied. 

"The new lady-humourist every one is talking about. It's the first ofa series of screaming sketches for which poor Ray was to find a place. ""Is _that_ Mr. Bousefield's idea of literature?" "No, but he says it'sthe public's, and you've got to take _some_ account of the public. _Auxgrands maux les grands remèdes_. They had a tremendous lot of ground tomake up, and no one would make it up like Minnie. She would be the bestconcession they could make to human weakness; she would strike at leastthis note of showing that it was not going to be quite all--well, all_you_. Now Ray draws the line at Minnie; he won't stoop to Minnie;he declines to touch, to look at Minnie. When Mr. Bousefield--ratherimperiously, I believe--made Minnie a _sine quâ non_ of his retentionof his post he said something rather violent, told him to go to someunmentionable place and take Minnie with him. That of course put the faton the fire. They had really a considerable scene. "

"So had he with the _Beacon_ man, " I musingly replied. "Poor dear, heseems born for considerable scenes! It's on Minnie, then, that they'vereally split?" Mrs. Highmore exhaled her despair in a sound which Itook for an assent, and when we had rolled a little further I ratherin-consequently and to her visible surprise broke out of my reverie. "Itwill never do in the world--he _must_ stoop to Minnie!"

"It's too late--and what I've told you still isn't all. Mr. Bousefieldraises another objection. "

"What other, pray?"

"Can't you guess?"

I wondered. "No more of Ray's fiction?"

"Not a line. That's something else no magazine can stand. Now that hisnovel has run its course Mr. Bousefield is distinctly disappointed. "

I fairly bounded in my place. "Then it may do?"

Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. "Why so, if he finds it too dull?"

"Dull? Ralph Limbert? He's as fine as a needle!"

"It comes to the same thing--he won't penetrate leather. Mr. Bousefieldhad counted on something that _would_, on something that would have awider acceptance. Ray says he wants iron pegs. " I collapsed again; myflicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort; and after amoment's silence I asked my neighbour if she had herself read the workour friend had just put forth. "No, " she replied, "I gave him my word atthe beginning, on his urgent request, that I wouldn't. "

"Not even as a book?"

"He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying a lowexperiment. Of course I knew what he meant and I entreated him to let mejust for curiosity take a peep. But he was firm, he declared he couldn'tbear the thought that a woman like me should see him in the depths. "

"He's only, thank God, in the depths of distress, " I replied. "Hisexperiment's nothing worse than a failure. "

"Then Bousefield _is_ right--his circulation won't budge?"

"It won't move one, as they say in Fleet Street. The book hasextraordinary beauty. "

"Poor duck--after trying so hard!" Jane Highmore sighed with realtenderness. "What _will_ then become of them?"

I was silent an instant. "You must take your mother. "

She was silent too. "I must speak of it to Cecil!" she presently said. Cecil is Mr. Highmore, who then entertained, I knew, strong views onthe inadjustability of circumstances in general to the idiosyncrasies ofMrs. Stannace. He held it supremely happy that in an important relationshe should have met her match. Her match was Ray Limbert--not much of awriter but a practical man. "The dear things still think, you know, "my companion continued, "that the book will be the beginning of theirfortune. Their illusion, if you're right, will be rudely dispelled. "

"That's what makes me dread to face them. I've just spent with hisvolumes an unforgettable night. His illusion has lasted because so manyof us have been pledged till this moment to turn our faces the otherway. We haven't known the truth and have therefore had nothing to say. Now that we do know it indeed we have practically quite as little. I hang back from the threshold. How can I follow up with a burst ofenthusiasm such a catastrophe as Mr. Bousefield's visit?"

As I turned uneasily about my neighbour more comfortably snuggled. "Well, I'm glad then I haven't read him and have nothing unpleasant tosay!" We had come back to Limbert's door, and I made the coachman stopshort of it. "But he'll try again, with that determination of his: he'llbuild his hopes on the next time. "

"On what else has he built them from the very first? It's never thepresent for him that bears the fruit; that's always postponed and forsomebody else: there has always to be another try. I admit that hisidea of a 'new line' has made him try harder than ever. It makes nodifference, " I brooded, still timorously lingering; "his achievement ofhis necessity, his hope of a market will continue to attach themselvesto the future. But the next time will disappoint him as each last timehas done--and then the next and the next and the next!"

I found myself seeing it all with a clearness almost inspired: itevidently cast a chill on Mrs. Highmore. "Then what on earth will becomeof him?" she plaintively asked. 

"I don't think I particularly care what may become of _him_, " I returnedwith a conscious, reckless increase of my exaltation; "I feel it almostenough to be concerned with what may become of one's enjoyment of him. Idon't know in short what will become of his circulation; I am only quiteat my ease as to what will become of his work. It will simply keep allits quality. He'll try again for the common with what he'll believe tobe a still more infernal cunning, and again the common will fatallyelude him, for his infernal cunning will have been only his genius in anineffectual disguise. " We sat drawn up by the pavement, facing poorLimbert's future as I saw it. It relieved me in a manner to know theworst, and I prophesied with an assurance which as I look back upon itstrikes me as rather remarkable. "_Que voulez-vous?_" I went on; "youcan't make a sow's ear of a silk purse! It's grievous indeed if youlike--there are people who can't be vulgar for trying. _He_ can't--itwouldn't come off, I promise you, even once. It takes more thantrying--it comes by grace. It happens not to be given to Limbert tofall. He belongs to the heights--he breathes there, he lives there, andit's accordingly to the heights I must ascend, " I said as I took leaveof my conductress, "to carry him this wretched news from where _we_move!"

V

A few months were sufficient to show how right I had been about hiscirculation. It didn't move one, as I had said; it stopped short in thesame place, fell off in a sheer descent, like some precipice gaped up atby tourists. The public in other words drew the line for him as sharplyas he had drawn it for Minnie Meadows. Minnie has skipped with aflouncing caper over his line, however; whereas the mark traced by alustier cudgel has been a barrier insurmountable to Limbert. Thosenext times I had spoken of to Jane Highmore, I see them simplified byretrocession. Again and again he made his desperate bid--again and againhe tried to. His rupture with Mr. Bousefield caused him, I fear, inprofessional circles to be thought impracticable, and I am perfectlyaware, to speak candidly, that no sordid advantage ever accrued to himfrom such public patronage of my performances as he had occasionallybeen in a position to offer. I reflect for my comfort that any injury Imay have done him by untimely application of a faculty of analysis whichcould point to no converts gained by honourable exercise was at leastequalled by the injury he did himself. More than once, as I have hinted, I held my tongue at his request, but my frequent plea that such favoursweren't politic never found him, when in other connections there was anopportunity to give me a lift, anything but indifferent to the dangerof the association. He let them have me in a word whenever he could;sometimes in periodicals in which he had credit, sometimes only atdinner. He talked about me when he couldn't get me in, but it wasalways part of the bargain that I shouldn't make him a topic. "How canI successfully serve you if you do?" he used to ask: he was more afraidthan I thought he ought to have been of the charge of tit for tat. Ididn't care, for I never could distinguish tat from tit; but as I haveintimated I dropped into silence really more than anything else becausethere was a certain fascinated observation of his course which wasquite testimony enough and to which in this huddled conclusion of it hepractically reduced me. 

I see it all foreshortened, his wonderful remainder--see it from the endbackward, with the direction widening toward me as if on a level withthe eye. The migration to the country promised him at first greatthings--smaller expenses, larger leisure, conditions eminently conduciveon each occasion to the possible triumph of the next time. Mrs. Stannace, who altogether disapproved of it, gave as one of her reasonsthat her son-in-law, living mainly in a village on the edge of agoose-green, would be deprived of that contact with the great worldwhich was indispensable to the painter of manners. She had the showiestarguments for keeping him in touch, as she called it, with good society;wishing to know with some force where, from the moment he ceased torepresent it from observation, the novelist could be said to be. InLondon fortunately a clever man was just a clever man; there werecharming houses in which a person of Ray's undoubted ability, eventhough without the knack of making the best use of it, could always besure of a quiet corner for watching decorously the social kaleidoscope. But the kaleidoscope of the goose-green, what in the world was that, and what such delusive thrift as drives about the land (with a fearfulaccount for flys from the inn) to leave cards on the country magnates?This solicitude for Limbert's subject-matter was the specious colourwith which, deeply determined not to affront mere tolerance in acottage, Mrs. Stannace overlaid her indisposition to place herself underthe heel of Cecil Highmore. She knew that he ruled Upstairs as well asdown, and she clung to the fable of the association of interests in thenorth of London. The Highmores had a better address--they lived now inStanhope Gardens; but Cecil was fearfully artful--he wouldn't hear ofan association of interests nor treat with his mother-in-law save asa visitor. She didn't like false positions; but on the other hand shedidn't like the sacrifice of everything she was accustomed to. Heruniverse at all events was a universe full of card-leavings and charminghouses, and it was fortunate that she couldn't Upstairs catch the soundof the doom to which, in his little grey den, describing to me hisdiplomacy, Limbert consigned alike the country magnates and theopportunities of London. Despoiled of every guarantee she went toStanhope Gardens like a mere maidservant, with restrictions on her veryluggage, while during the year that followed this upheaval Limbert, strolling with me on the goose-green, to which I often ran down, playedextravagantly over the theme that with what he was now going in forit was a positive comfort not to have the social kaleidoscope. With acold-blooded trick in view what had life or manners or the best societyor flys from the inn to say to the question? It was as good a place asanother to play his new game. He had found a quieter corner than anycorner of the great world, and a damp old house at sixpence a year, which, beside leaving him all his margin to educate his children, wouldallow of the supreme luxury of his frankly presenting himself as a poorman. This was a convenience that _ces dames_, as he called them, hadnever yet fully permitted him. 

It rankled in me at first to see his reward so meagre, his conquest somean; but the simplification effected had a charm that I finally felt;it was a forcing-house for the three or four other fine miscarriagesto which his scheme was evidently condemned. I limited him to three orfour, having had my sharp impression, in spite of the perpetual broadjoke of the thing, that a spring had really snapped in him on theoccasion of that deeply disconcerting sequel to the episode of hiseditorship. He never lost his sense of the grotesque want, in thedifference made, of adequate relation to the effort that had been theintensest of his life. He had from that moment a charge of shot in him, and it slowly worked its way to a vital part. As he met his embarrassmentseach year with his punctual false remedy I wondered periodicallywhere he found the energy to return to the attack. He did it every timewith a rage more blanched, but it was clear to me that the tension mustfinally snap the cord. We got again and again the irrepressible work ofart, but what did _he_ get, poor man, who wanted something so different?There were likewise odder questions than this in the matter, phenomenamore curious and mysteries more puzzling, which often for sympathy ifnot for illumination I intimately discussed with Mrs. Limbert. She hadher burdens, dear lady: after the removal from London and a considerableinterval she twice again became a mother. Mrs. Stannace too, in a morerestricted sense, exhibited afresh, in relation to the home she hadabandoned, the same exemplary character. In her poverty of guaranteesat Stanhope Gardens there had been least of all, it appeared, a provisothat she shouldn't resentfully revert again from Goneril to Regan. Shecame down to the goose-green like Lear himself, with fewer knights, orat least baronets, and the joint household was at last patched up. Itfell to pieces and was put together on various occasions before RayLimbert died. He was ridden to the end by the superstition that he hadbroken up Mrs. Stannace's original home on pretences that had provedhollow and that if he hadn't given Maud what she might have had he couldat least give her back her mother. I was always sure that a sense of thecompensations he owed was half the motive of the dogged pride with whichhe tried to wake up the libraries. I believed Mrs. Stan-nace still hadmoney, though she pretended that, called upon at every turn to retrievedeficits, she had long since poured it into the general fund. Thisconviction haunted me; I suspected her of secret hoards, and I said tomyself that she couldn't be so infamous as not some day on her deathbedto leave everything to her less opulent daughter. My compassion for theLimberts led me to hover perhaps indiscreetly round that closing scene, to dream of some happy time when such an accession of means would makeup a little for their present penury. 

This however was crude comfort, as in the first place I had nothingdefinite to go by and in the second I held it for more and moreindicated that Ray wouldn't outlive her. I never ventured to sound himas to what in this particular he hoped or feared, for after the crisismarked by his leaving London I had new scruples about suffering himto be reminded of where he fell short. The poor man was in truthhumiliated, and there were things as to which that kept us both silent. In proportion as he tried more fiercely for the market the old plaintiffarithmetic, fertile in jokes, dropped from our conversation. We jokedimmensely still about the process, but our treatment of the resultsbecame sparing and superficial. He talked as much as ever, withmonstrous arts and borrowed hints, of the traps he kept setting, but weall agreed to take merely for granted that the animal was caught. Thispropriety had really dawned upon me the day that after Mr. Bousefield'svisit Mrs. Highmore put me down at his door. Mr. Bousefield in thatjuncture had been served up to me anew, but after we had disposed of himwe came to the book, which I was obliged to confess I had alreadyrushed through. It was from this moment--the moment at which my terribleimpression of it had blinked out at his anxious query--that the image ofhis scared face was to abide with me. I couldn't attenuate then--thecat was out of the bag; but later, each of the next times, I did, Iacknowledge, attenuate. We all did religiously, so far as was possible;we cast ingenious ambiguities over the strong places, the beauties thatbetrayed him most, and found ourselves in the queer position of admirersbanded to mislead a confiding artist. If we stifled our cheers howeverand dissimulated our joy our fond hypocrisy accomplished little, forLimbert's finger was on a pulse that told a plainer story. It was asatisfaction to have secured a greater freedom with his wife, who atlast, much to her honour, entered into the conspiracy and whose senseof responsibility was flattered by the frequency of our united appeal toher for some answer to the marvellous riddle. We had all turned it overtill we were tired of it, threshing out the question why the note hestrained every chord to pitch for common ears should invariably insiston addressing itself to the angels. Being, as it were, ourselves theangels we had only a limited quarrel in each case with the event;but its inconsequent character, given the forces set in motion, waspeculiarly baffling. It was like an interminable sum that wouldn'tcome straight; nobody had the time to handle so many figures. Limbertgathered, to make his pudding, dry bones and dead husks; how then wasone to formulate the law that made the dish prove a feast? What was thecerebral treachery that defied his own vigilance? There was some obscureinterference of taste, some obsession of the exquisite. All one couldsay was that genius was a fatal disturber or that the unhappy man hadno effectual _flair_. When he went abroad to gather garlic he came homewith heliotrope. 

I hasten to add that if Mrs. Limbert was not directly illuminatingshe was yet rich in anecdote and example, having found a refuge frommystification exactly where the rest of us had found it, in a moredevoted embrace and the sense of a finer glory. Her disappointments andeventually her privations had been many, her discipline severe; but shehad ended by accepting the long grind of life and was now quite willingto take her turn at the mill. She was essentially one of us--shealways understood. Touching and admirable at the last, when through theunmistakable change in Limbert's health her troubles were thickest, wasthe spectacle of the particular pride that she wouldn't have exchangedfor prosperity. She had said to me once--only once, in a gloomy hour inLondon days when things were not going at all--that one really had tothink him a very great man because if one didn't one would be ratherashamed of him. She had distinctly felt it at first--and in a verytender place--that almost every one passed him on the road; but Ibelieve that in these final years she would almost have been ashamed ofhim if he had suddenly gone into editions. It is certain indeed that hercomplacency was not subjected to that shock. She would have liked themoney immensely, but she would have missed something she had taughtherself to regard as rather rare. There is another remark I remember hermaking, a remark to the effect that of course if she could have chosenshe would have liked him to be Shakespeare or Scott, but that failingthis she was very glad he wasn't--well, she named the two gentlemen, butI won't. I daresay she sometimes laughed out to escape an alternative. She contributed passionately to the capture of the second manner, foraging for him further afield than he could conveniently go, gleaningin the barest stubble, picking up shreds to build the nest and inparticular in the study of the great secret of how, as we always said, they all did it laying waste the circulating libraries. If Limbert hada weakness he rather broke down in his reading. It was fortunately nottill after the appearance of _The Hidden Heart_ that he broke down ineverything else. He had had rheumatic fever in the spring, when the bookwas but half finished, and this ordeal in addition to interrupting hiswork had enfeebled his powers of resistance and greatly reduced hisvitality. He recovered from the fever and was able to take up the bookagain, but the organ of life was pronounced ominously weak and it wasenjoined upon him with some sharpness that he should lend himself to noworries. It might have struck me as on the cards that his worries wouldnow be surmountable, for when he began to mend he expressed to me aconviction almost contagious that he had never yet made so adroit a bidas in the idea of _The Hidden Heart_. It is grimly droll to reflect thatthis superb little composition, the shortest of his novels but perhapsthe loveliest, was planned from the first as an "adventure-story" onapproved lines. It was the way they all did the adventure-story thathe tried most dauntlessly to emulate. I wonder how many readers everdivined to which of their book-shelves _The Hidden Heart_ was soexclusively addressed. High medical advice early in the summer had beenquite viciously clear as to the inconvenience that might ensue to himshould he neglect to spend the winter in Egypt. He was not a man toneglect anything; but Egypt seemed to us all then as unattainable asa second edition. He finished _The Hidden Heart_ with the energy ofapprehension and desire, for if the book should happen to do what "booksof that class, " as the publisher said, sometimes did he might well havea fund to draw on. As soon as I read the deep and delicate thing I knew, as I had known in each case before, exactly how well it would do. PoorLimbert in this long business always figured to me an undiscourageableparent to whom only girls kept being born. A bouncing boy, a son andheir was devoutly prayed for and almanacks and old wives consulted; butthe spell was inveterate, incurable, and _The Hidden Heart_ proved, soto speak, but another female child. When the winter arrived accordinglyEgypt was out of the question. Jane Highmore, to my knowledge, wanted tolend him money, and there were even greater devotees who did their bestto induce him to lean on them. There was so marked a "movement"among his friends that a very considerable sum would have been at hisdisposal; but his stiffness was invincible: it had its root, I think, in his sense, on his own side, of sacrifices already made. He hadsacrificed honour and pride, and he had sacrificed them precisely to thequestion of money. He would evidently, should he be able to go on, haveto continue to sacrifice them, but it must be all in the way to whichhe had now, as he considered, hardened himself. He had spent years inplotting for favour, and since on favour he must live it could only beas a bargain and a price. 

He got through the early part of the season better than we feared, and Iwent down in great elation to spend Christmas on the goose-green. 

He told me late on Christmas eve, after our simple domestic revels hadsunk to rest and we sat together by the fire, that he had been visitedthe night before in wakeful hours by the finest fancy for a really goodthing that he had ever felt descend in the darkness. "It's just thevision of a situation that contains, upon my honour, everything, " hesaid, "and I wonder that I've never thought of it before. " He didn'tdescribe it further, contrary to his common practice, and I only knewlater, by Mrs. Limbert, that he had begun _Derogation_ and that he wascompletely full of his subject. It was a subject however that he wasnot to live to treat. The work went on for a couple of months in happymystery, without revelations even to his wife. He had not invited her tohelp him to get up his case--she had not taken the field with him as onhis previous campaigns. We only knew he was at it again but that lesseven than ever had been said about the impression to be made on themarket. I saw him in February and thought him sufficiently at ease. Thegreat thing was that he was immensely interested and was pleased withthe omens. I got a strange, stirring sense that he had not consultedthe usual ones and indeed that he had floated away into a grandindifference, into a reckless consciousness of art. The voice of themarket had suddenly grown faint and far: he had come back at the last, as people so often do, to one of the moods, the sincerities of hisprime. Was he really with a blurred sense of the urgent doing somethingnow only for himself? We wondered and waited--we felt that he was alittle confused. What had happened, I was afterwards satisfied, was thathe had quite forgotten whether he generally sold or not. He had merelywaked up one morning again in the country of the blue and had stayedthere with a good conscience and a great idea. He stayed till deathknocked at the gate, for the pen dropped from his hand only at themoment when from sudden failure of the heart his eyes, as he sank backin his chair, closed for ever. _Derogation_ is a splendid fragment; itevidently would have been one of his high successes. I am not preparedto say it would have waked up the libraries. 

THE WAY IT CAME

I find, as you prophesied, much that's interesting, but little thathelps the delicate question--the possibility of publication. Her diariesare less systematic than I hoped; she only had a blessed habit of notingand narrating. She summarised, she saved; she appears seldom indeed tohave let a good story pass without catching it on the wing. I allude ofcourse not so much to things she heard as to things she saw and felt. She writes sometimes of herself, sometimes of others, sometimes of thecombination. It's under this last rubric that she's usually most vivid. But it's not, you will understand, when she's most vivid that she'salways most publish-able. To tell the truth she's fearfully indiscreet, or has at least all the material for making me so. Take as an instancethe fragment I send you, after dividing it for your convenience intoseveral small chapters. It is the contents of a thin blank-book whichI have had copied out and which has the merit of being nearly enough arounded thing, an intelligible whole. These pages evidently date fromyears ago. I've read with the liveliest wonder the statement they socircumstantially make and done my best to swallow the prodigy they leaveto be inferred. These things would be striking, wouldn't they? to anyreader; but can you imagine for a moment my placing such a documentbefore the world, even though, as if she herself had desired the worldshould have the benefit of it, she has given her friends neither namenor initials? Have you any sort of clue to their identity? I leave herthe floor. 

I

I know perfectly of course that I brought it upon myself; but thatdoesn't make it any better. I was the first to speak of her to him--hehad never even heard her mentioned. Even if I had happened not to speaksome one else would have made up for it: I tried afterwards to findcomfort in that reflection. But the comfort of reflections is thin: theonly comfort that counts in life is not to have been a fool. That's abeatitude I shall doubtless never enjoy. "Why, you ought to meet herand talk it over, " is what I immediately said. "Birds of a feather flocktogether. " I told him who she was and that they were birds of a featherbecause if he had had in youth a strange adventure she had had aboutthe same time just such another. It was well known to her friends--anincident she was constantly called on to describe. She was charming, clever, pretty, unhappy; but it was none the less the thing to which shehad originally owed her reputation. 

Being at the age of eighteen somewhere abroad with an aunt she had hada vision of one of her parents at the moment of death. The parent was inEngland, hundreds of miles away and so far as she knew neither dying nordead. It was by day, in the museum of some great foreign town. She hadpassed alone, in advance of her companions, into a small room containingsome famous work of art and occupied at that moment by two otherpersons. One of these was an old custodian; the second, before observinghim, she took for a stranger, a tourist. She was merely conscious thathe was bareheaded and seated on a bench. The instant her eyes rested onhim however she beheld to her amazement her father, who, as if hehad long waited for her, looked at her in singular distress, withan impatience that was akin to reproach. She rushed to him with abewildered cry, "Papa, what _is_ it?" but this was followed by anexhibition of still livelier feeling when on her movement he simplyvanished, leaving the custodian and her relations, who were at herheels, to gather round her in dismay. These persons, the official, theaunt, the cousins were therefore in a manner witnesses of the fact--thefact at least of the impression made on her; and there was the furthertestimony of a doctor who was attending one of the party and to whomit was immediately afterwards communicated. He gave her a remedy forhysterics but said to the aunt privately: "Wait and see if somethingdoesn't happen at home. " Something _had_ happened--the poor father, suddenly and violently seized, had died that morning. The aunt, themother's sister, received before the day was out a telegram announcingthe event and requesting her to prepare her niece for it. Her niece wasalready prepared, and the girl's sense of this visitation remained ofcourse indelible. We had all as her friends had it conveyed to us andhad conveyed it creepily to each other. Twelve years had elapsed andas a woman who had made an unhappy marriage and lived apart from herhusband she had become interesting from other sources; but since thename she now bore was a name frequently borne, and since moreover herjudicial separation, as things were going, could hardly count as adistinction, it was usual to qualify her as "the one, you know, who sawher father's ghost. "

As for him, dear man, he had seen his mother's. I had never heard ofthat till this occasion on which our closer, our pleasanter acquaintanceled him, through some turn of the subject of our talk, to mention it andto inspire me in so doing with the impulse to let him know that he had arival in the field--a person with whom he could compare notes. Lateron his story became for him, perhaps because of my unduly repeating it, likewise a convenient wordly label; but it had not a year before beenthe ground on which he was introduced to me. He had other merits, justas she, poor thing! had others. I can honestly say that I was quiteaware of them from the first--I discovered them sooner than hediscovered mine. I remember how it struck me even at the time that hissense of mine was quickened by my having been able to match, though notindeed straight from my own experience, his curious anecdote. It dated, this anecdote, as hers did, from some dozen years before--a year inwhich, at Oxford, he had for some reason of his own been staying on intothe "Long. " He had been in the August afternoon on the river. Comingback into his room while it was still distinct daylight he found hismother standing there as if her eyes had been fixed on the door. He hadhad a letter from her that morning out of Wales, where she was stayingwith her father. At the sight of him she smiled with extraordinaryradiance and extended her arms to him, and then as he sprang forwardand joyfully opened his own she vanished from the place. He wrote to herthat night, telling her what had happened; the letter had been carefullypreserved. The next morning he heard of her death. He was through thischance of our talk extremely struck with the little prodigy I was ableto produce for him. He had never encountered another case. Certainlythey ought to meet, my friend and he; certainly they would havesomething in common. I would arrange this, wouldn't I?--if _she_ didn'tmind; for himself he didn't mind in the least. I had promised to speakto her of the matter as soon as possible, and within the week I was ableto do so. She "minded" as little as he; she was perfectly willing tosee him. And yet no meeting was to occur--as meetings are commonlyunderstood. 

II

That's just half my tale--the extraordinary way it was hindered. Thiswas the fault of a series of accidents; but the accidents continuedfor years and became, for me and for others, a subject of hilarity witheither party. They were droll enough at first; then they grew rathera bore. The odd thing was that both parties were amenable: it wasn't acase of their being indifferent, much less of their being indisposed. Itwas one of the caprices of chance, aided I suppose by some opposition oftheir interests and habits. His were centred in his office, his eternalinspectorship, which left him small leisure, constantly calling himaway and making him break engagements. He liked society, but he found iteverywhere and took it at a run. I never knew at a given moment where hewas, and there were times when for months together I never saw him. Shewas on her side practically suburban: she lived at Richmond and neverwent "out. " She was a woman of distinction, but not of fashion, and felt, as people said, her situation. Decidedly proud and ratherwhimsical she lived her life as she had planned it. There were thingsone could do with her, but one couldn't make her come to one's parties. One went indeed a little more than seemed quite convenient to hers, which consisted of her cousin, a cup of tea and the view. The tea wasgood; but the view was familiar, though perhaps not, like the cousin--adisagreeable old maid who had been of the group at the museum and withwhom she now lived--offensively so. This connection with an inferiorrelative, which had partly an economical motive--she proclaimed hercompanion a marvellous manager--was one of the little perversities wehad to forgive her. Another was her estimate of the proprieties createdby her rupture with her husband. That was extreme--many persons calledit even morbid. She made no advances; she cultivated scruples; shesuspected, or I should perhaps rather say she remembered slights: shewas one of the few women I have known whom that particular predicamenthad rendered modest rather than bold. Dear thing! she had some delicacy. Especially marked were the limits she had set to possible attentionsfrom men: it was always her thought that her husband was waiting topounce on her. She discouraged if she didn't forbid the visits of malepersons not senile: she said she could never be too careful. 

When I first mentioned to her that I had a friend whom fate haddistinguished in the same weird way as herself I put her quite atliberty to say "Oh, bring him out to see me!" I should probably havebeen able to bring him, and a situation perfectly innocent or at anyrate comparatively simple would have been created. But she uttered nosuch word; she only said: "I must meet him certainly; yes, I shall lookout for him!" That caused the first delay, and meanwhile various thingshappened. One of them was that as time went on she made, charming asshe was, more and more friends, and that it regularly befell thatthese friends were sufficiently also friends of his to bring him up inconversation. It was odd that without belonging, as it were, to the sameworld or, according to the horrid term, the same set, my baffled pairshould have happened in so many cases to fall in with the same peopleand make them join in the funny chorus. She had friends who didn't knoweach other but who inevitably and punctually recommended _him_. She hadalso the sort of originality, the intrinsic interest that led her to bekept by each of us as a kind of private resource, cultivated jealously, more or less in secret, as a person whom one didn't meet in society, whom it was not for every one--whom it was not for the vulgar--toapproach, and with whom therefore acquaintance was particularlydifficult and particularly precious. We saw her separately, withappointments and conditions, and found it made on the whole for harmonynot to tell each other. Somebody had always had a note from her stilllater than somebody else. There was some silly woman who for a longtime, among the unprivileged, owed to three simple visits to Richmonda reputation for being intimate with "lots of awfully cleverout-of-the-way people. "

Every one has had friends it has seemed a happy thought to bringtogether, and every one remembers that his happiest thoughts have notbeen his greatest successes; but I doubt if there was ever a case inwhich the failure was in such direct proportion to the quantity ofinfluence set in motion. It is really perhaps here the quantity ofinfluence that was most remarkable. My lady and gentleman each declaredto me and others that it was like the subject of a roaring farce. Thereason first given had with time dropped-out of sight and fifty betterones flourished on top of it. They were so awfully alike: they had thesame ideas and tricks and tastes, the same prejudices and superstitionsand heresies; they said the same things and sometimes did them; theyliked and disliked the same persons and places, the same books, authorsand styles; any one could see a certain identity even in their looksand their features. It established much of a propriety that they werein common parlance equally "nice" and almost equally handsome. But thegreat sameness, for wonder and chatter, was their rare perversity inregard to being photographed. They were the only persons ever heard ofwho had never been "taken" and who had a passionate objection to it. They just _wouldn't_ be, for anything any one could say. I had loudlycomplained of this; him in particular I had so vainly desired to be ableto show on my drawing-room chimney-piece in a Bond Street frame. It wasat any rate the very liveliest of all the reasons why they ought to knoweach other--all the lively reasons reduced to naught by the strange lawthat had made them bang so many doors in each other's face, made themthe buckets in the well, the two ends of the see-saw, the two parties inthe state, so that when one was up the other was down, when one was outthe other was in; neither by any possibility entering a house till theother had left it, or leaving it, all unawares, till the other was athand. They only arrived when they had been given up, which was preciselyalso when they departed. They were in a word alternate and incompatible;they missed each other with an inveteracy that could be explained onlyby its being preconcerted. It was however so far from preconcertedthat it had ended--literally after several years--by disappointing andannoying them. I don't think their curiosity was lively till it had beenproved utterly vain. A great deal was of course done to help them, butit merely laid wires for them to trip. To give examples I should haveto have taken notes; but I happen to remember that neither had ever beenable to dine on the right occasion. The right occasion for each was theoccasion that would be wrong for the other. On the wrong one theywere most punctual, and there were never any but wrong ones. The veryelements conspired and the constitution of man reinforced them. A cold, a headache, a bereavement, a storm, a fog, an earthquake, a cataclysminfallibly intervened. The whole business was beyond a joke. 

Yet as a joke it had still to be taken, though one couldn't help feelingthat the joke had made the situation serious, had produced on the partof each a consciousness, an awkwardness, a positive dread of the lastaccident of all, the only one with any freshness left, the accident thatwould bring them face to face. The final effect of its predecessors hadbeen to kindle this instinct. They were quite ashamed--perhaps even alittle of each other. So much preparation, so much frustration: whatindeed could be good enough for it all to lead up to? A mere meetingwould be mere flatness. Did I see them at the end of years, they oftenasked, just stupidly confronted? If they were bored by the joke theymight be worse bored by something else. They made exactly the samereflections, and each in some manner was sure to hear of the other's. 

I really think it was this peculiar diffidence that finally controlledthe situation. I mean that if they had failed for the first year ortwo because they couldn't help it they kept up the habit because theyhad--what shall I call it?--grown nervous. It really took some lurkingvolition to account for anything so absurd. 

III

When to crown our long acquaintance I accepted his renewed offer ofmarriage it was humorously said, I know, that I had made the gift of hisphotograph a condition. This was so far true that I had refused togive him mine without it. At any rate I had him at last, in hishigh distinction, on the chimney-piece, where the day she called tocongratulate me she came nearer than she had ever done to seeing him. Hehad set her in being taken an example which I invited her to follow; hehad sacrificed his perversity--wouldn't she sacrifice hers? She toomust give me something on my engagement--wouldn't she give me thecompanion-piece? She laughed and shook her head; she had headshakeswhose impulse seemed to come from as far away as the breeze that stirs aflower. The companion-piece to the portrait of my future husband was theportrait of his future wife. She had taken her stand--she could departfrom it as little as she could explain it. It was a prejudice, an_entêtement_, a vow--she would live and die unphotographed. Now too shewas alone in that state: this was what she liked; it made her so muchmore original. She rejoiced in the fall of her late associate and lookeda long time at his picture, about which she made no memorable remark, though she even turned it over to see the back. About our engagement shewas charming--full of cordiality and sympathy. "You've known him evenlonger than I've _not?_" she said, "and that seems a very long time. "She understood how we had jogged together over hill and dale and howinevitable it was that we should now rest together. I'm definite aboutall this because what followed is so strange that it's a kind of reliefto me to mark the point up to which our relations were as natural asever. It was I myself who in a sudden madness altered and destroyedthem. I see now that she gave me no pretext and that I only found one inthe way she looked at the fine face in the Bond Street frame. How thenwould I have had her look at it? What I had wanted from the first wasto make her care for him. Well, that was what I still wanted--up to themoment of her having promised me that he would on this occasion reallyaid me to break the silly spell that had kept them asunder. I hadarranged with him to do his part if she would as triumphantly do hers. Iwas on a different footing now--I was on a footing to answer for him. Iwould positively engage that at five on the following Saturday he wouldbe on that spot. He was out of town on pressing business; but pledgedto keep his promise to the letter he would return on purpose and inabundant time. "Are you perfectly sure?" I remember she asked, lookinggrave and considering: I thought she had turned a little pale. She wastired, she was indisposed: it was a pity he was to see her after all atso poor a moment. If he only _could_ have seen her five years before!However, I replied that this time I was sure and that success thereforedepended simply on herself. At five o'clock on the Saturday she wouldfind him in a particular chair I pointed out, the one in which heusually sat and in which--though this I didn't mention--he had beensitting when, the week before, he put the question of our future to mein the way that had brought me round. She looked at it in silence, justas she had looked at the photograph, while I repeated for the twentiethtime that it was too preposterous it shouldn't somehow be feasible tointroduce to one's dearest friend one's second self. "_Am_ I your dearestfriend?" she asked with a smile that for a moment brought back herbeauty. I replied by pressing her to my bosom; after which she said:"Well, I'll come. I'm extraordinarily afraid, but you may count on me. "

When she had left me I began to wonder what she was afraid of, forshe had spoken as if she fully meant it. The next day, late in theafternoon, I had three lines from her: she had found on getting homethe announcement of her husband's death. She had not seen him for sevenyears, but she wished me to know it in this way before I should hear ofit in another. It made however in her life, strange and sad to say, solittle difference that she would scrupulously keep her appointment. Irejoiced for her--I supposed it would make at least the difference ofher having more money; but even in this diversion, far from forgettingthat she had said she was afraid, I seemed to catch sight of a reasonfor her being so. Her fear as the evening went on became contagious, andthe contagion took in my breast the form of a sudden panic. It wasn'tjealousy--it was the dread of jealousy. I called myself a fool for nothaving been quiet till we were man and wife. After that I should somehowfeel secure. It was only a question of waiting another month--a triflesurely for people who had waited so long. It had been plain enough shewas nervous, and now that she was free she naturally wouldn't be lessso. What was her nervousness therefore but a presentiment? She had beenhitherto the victim of interference, but it was quite possible she wouldhenceforth be the source of it. The victim in that case would be mysimple self. What had the interference been but the finger of providencepointing out a danger? The danger was of course for poor _me_. It hadbeen kept at bay by a series of accidents unexampled in their frequency;but the reign of accident was now visibly at an end. I had an intimateconviction that both parties would keep the tryst. It was more and moreimpressed upon me that they were approaching, converging. We had talkedabout breaking the spell; well, it would be effectually broken--unlessindeed it should merely take another form and overdo their encounters asit had overdone their escapes. 

This was something I couldn't sit still for thinking of; it kept meawake--at midnight I was full of unrest. At last I felt there was onlyone way of laying the ghost. If the reign of accident was over I mustjust take up the succession. I sat down and wrote a hurried note whichwould meet him on his return and which as the servants had gone to bedI sallied forth bareheaded into the empty, gusty street to drop into thenearest pillar-box. It was to tell him that I shouldn't be able to be athome in the afternoon as I had hoped and that he must postpone his visittill dinner-time. This was an implication that he would find me alone. 

IV

When accordingly at five she presented herself I naturally felt falseand base. My act had been a momentary madness, but I had at least to beconsistent. She remained an hour; he of course never came; and I couldonly persist in my perfidy. I had thought it best to let her come;singular as this now seems to me I thought it diminished my guilt. Yetas she sat there so visibly white and weary, stricken with a senseof everything her husband's death had opened up, I felt an almostintolerable pang of pity and remorse. If I didn't tell her on thespot what I had done it was because I was too ashamed. I feignedastonishment--I feigned it to the end; I protested that if ever I hadhad confidence I had had it that day. I blush as I tell my story--I takeit as my penance. There was nothing indignant I didn't say about him; Iinvented suppositions, attenuations; I admitted in stupefaction, as thehands of the clock travelled, that their luck hadn't turned. She smiledat this vision of their "luck, " but she looked anxious--she lookedunusual: the only thing that kept me up was the fact that, oddly enough, she wore mourning--no great depths of crape, but simple and scrupulousblack. She had in her bonnet three small black feathers. She carrieda little muff of astrachan. This put me by the aid of some acutereflection a little in the right, She had written to me that thesudden event made no difference for her, but apparently it made as muchdifference as that. If she was inclined to the usual forms why didn'tshe observe that of not going the first day or two out to tea? Therewas some one she wanted so much to see that she couldn't wait till herhusband was buried. Such a betrayal of eagerness made me hard and cruelenough to practise my odious deceit, though at the same time, as thehour waxed and waned, I suspected in her something deeper still thandisappointment and somewhat less successfully concealed. I mean astrange underlying relief, the soft, low emission of the breath thatcomes when a danger is past. What happened as she spent her barren hourwith me was that at last she gave him up. She let him go for ever. Shemade the most graceful joke of it that I've ever seen made of anything;but it was for all that a great date in her life. She spoke with hermild gaiety of all the other vain times, the long game of hide-and-seek, the unprecedented queerness of such a relation. For it was, or had been, a relation, wasn't it, hadn't it? That was just the absurd part of it. When she got up to go I said to her that it was more a relation thanever, but that I hadn't the face after what had occurred to proposeto her for the present another opportunity. It was plain that the onlyvalid opportunity would be my accomplished marriage. Of course she wouldbe at my wedding? It was even to be hoped that _he_ would. 

"If _I_ am, he won't be!" she declared with a laugh. I admitted theremight be something in that. The thing was therefore to get us safelymarried first. "That won't help us. Nothing will help us!" she saidas she kissed me farewell. "I shall never, never see him!" It was withthose words she left me. 

I could bear her disappointment as I've called it; but when a couple ofhours later I received him at dinner I found that I couldn't bear his. The way my manoeuvre might have affected him had not been particularlypresent to me; but the result of it was the first word of reproach thathad ever yet dropped from him. I say "reproach" because that expressionis scarcely too strong for the terms in which he conveyed to me hissurprise that under the extraordinary circumstances I should not havefound some means not to deprive him of such an occasion. I might reallyhave managed either not to be obliged to go out or to let theirmeeting take place all the same. They would probably have got on inmy drawing-room without me. At this I quite broke down--I confessed myiniquity and the miserable reason of it. I had not put her off and I hadnot gone out; she had been there and after waiting for him an hour haddeparted in the belief that he had been absent by his own fault. 

"She must think me a precious brute!" he exclaimed. "Did she say ofme--what she had a right to say?"

"I assure you she said nothing that showed the least feeling. She lookedat your photograph, she even turned round the back of it, on whichyour address happens to be inscribed. Yet it provoked her to nodemonstration. She doesn't care so much as all that. "

"Then why are you afraid of her?"

"It was not of her I was afraid. It was of you. "

"Did you think I would fall in love with her? You never alluded tosuch a possibility before, " he went on as I remained silent. "Admirableperson as you pronounced her, that wasn't the light in which you showedher to me. "

"Do you mean that if it _had_ been you would have managed by this timeto catch a glimpse of her? I didn't fear things then, " I added. "Ihadn't the same reason. "

He kissed me at this, and when I remembered that she had done so an houror two before I felt for an instant as if he were taking from my lipsthe very pressure of hers. In spite of kisses the incident had shed acertain chill, and I suffered horribly from the sense that he had seenme guilty of a fraud. He had seen it only through my frank avowal, butI was as unhappy as if I had a stain to efface. I couldn't get over themanner of his looking at me when I spoke of her apparent indifference tohis not having come. 

For the first time since I had known him he seemed to have expresseda doubt of my word. Before we parted I told him that I would undeceiveher, start the first thing in the morning for Richmond and there lether know that he had been blameless. At this he kissed me again. Iwould expiate my sin, I said; I would humble myself in the dust; I wouldconfess and ask to be forgiven. At this he kissed me once more. 

V

In the train the next day this struck me as a good deal for him to haveconsented to; but my purpose was firm enough to carry me on. I mountedthe long hill to where the view begins, and then I knocked at her door. I was a trifle mystified by the fact that her blinds were still drawn, reflecting that if in the stress of my compunction I had come early Ihad certainly yet allowed people time to get up. 

"At home, mum? She has left home for ever. "

I was extraordinarily startled by this announcement of the elderlyparlour-maid. "She has gone away?"

"She's dead, mum, please. " Then as I gasped at the horrible word: "Shedied last night. "

The loud cry that escaped me sounded even in my own ears like some harshviolation of the hour. I felt for the moment as if I had killed her; Iturned faint and saw through a vagueness the woman hold out her arms tome. Of what next happened I have no recollection, nor of anything but myfriend's poor stupid cousin, in a darkened room, after an interval thatI suppose very brief, sobbing at me in a smothered accusatory way. Ican't say how long it took me to understand, to believe and then topress back with an immense effort that pang of responsibility which, superstitiously, insanely had been at first almost all I was consciousof. The doctor, after the fact, had been superlatively wise and clear:he was satisfied of a long-latent weakness of the heart, determinedprobably years before by the agitations and terrors to which hermarriage had introduced her. She had had in those days cruel scenes withher husband, she had been in fear of her life. All emotion, everythingin the nature of anxiety and suspense had been after that to be stronglydeprecated, as in her marked cultivation of a quiet life she wasevidently well aware; but who could say that any one, especially a "reallady, " could be successfully protected from every little rub? She hadhad one a day or two before in the news of her husband's death; forthere were shocks of all kinds, not only those of grief and surprise. For that matter she had never dreamed of so near a release; it hadlooked uncommonly as if he would live as long as herself. Then in theevening, in town, she had manifestly had another: something must havehappened there which it would be indispensable to clear up. She had comeback very late--it was past eleven o'clock, and on being met in the hallby her cousin, who was extremely anxious, had said that she was tiredand must rest a moment before mounting the stairs. They had passedtogether into the dining-room, her companion proposing a glass of wineand bustling to the sideboard to pour it out. This took but a moment, and when my informant turned round our poor friend had not had time toseat herself. Suddenly, with a little moan that was barely audible, shedropped upon the sofa. She was dead. What unknown "little rub" had dealther the blow? What shock, in the name of wonder, _had_ she had in town?I mentioned immediately the only one I could imagine--her having failedto meet at my house, to which by invitation for the purpose she hadcome at five o'clock, the gentleman I was to be married to, who had beenaccidentally kept away and with whom she had no acquaintance whatever. This obviously counted for little; but something else might easilyhave occurred; nothing in the London streets was more possible than anaccident, especially an accident in those desperate cabs. What had shedone, where had she gone on leaving my house? I had taken for grantedshe had gone straight home. We both presently remembered that in herexcursions to town she sometimes, for convenience, for refreshment, spent an hour or two at the "Gentlewomen, " the quiet little ladies'club, and I promised that it should be my first care to make at thatestablishment thorough inquiry. Then we entered the dim and dreadfulchamber where she lay locked up in death and where, asking after alittle to be left alone with her, I remained for half an hour. Death hadmade her, had kept her beautiful; but I felt above all, as I kneeled ather bed, that it had made her, had kept her silent. It had turned thekey on something I was concerned to know. 

On my return from Richmond and after another duty had been performed Idrove to his chambers. It was the first time, but I had often wanted tosee them. On the staircase, which, as the house contained twenty sets ofrooms, was unrestrictedly public, I met his servant, who went back withme and ushered me in. At the sound of my entrance he appeared in thedoorway of a further room, and the instant we were alone I produced mynews: "She's dead!"

"Dead?"

He was tremendously struck, and I observed that he had no need to askwhom, in this abruptness, I meant. 

"She died last evening--just after leaving me. "

He stared with the strangest expression, his eyes searching mine asif they were looking for a trap. "Last evening--after leaving you?" Herepeated my words in stupefaction. Then he brought out so that it was instupefaction I heard: "Impossible! I saw her. "

"You 'saw' her?"

"On that spot--where you stand. "

This brought back to me after an instant, as if to help me to take itin, the memory of the strange warning of his youth. "In the hour ofdeath--I understand: as you so beautifully saw your mother. "

"Ah! _not_ as I saw my mother--not that way, not that way!" He wasdeeply moved by my news--far more moved, I perceived, than he would havebeen the day before: it gave me a vivid sense that, as I had then saidto myself, there was indeed a relation between them and that he hadactually been face to face with her. Such an idea, by its reassertionof his extraordinary privilege, would have suddenly presented him aspainfully abnormal had he not so vehemently insisted on the difference. "I saw her living--I saw her to speak to her--I saw her as I see younow!"

It is remarkable that for a moment, though only for a moment, I foundrelief in the more personal, as it were, but also the more natural ofthe two phenomena. The next, as I embraced this image of her having cometo him on leaving me and of just what it accounted for in the disposalof her time, I demanded with a shade of harshness of which I wasaware--"What on earth did she come for?" He had now had a minute tothink--to recover himself and judge of effects, so that if it was stillwith excited eyes he spoke he showed a conscious redness and made aninconsequent attempt to smile away the gravity of his words. 

"She came just to see me. She came--after what had passed at yourhouse--so that we _should_, after all, at last meet. The impulse seemedto me exquisite, and that was the way I took it. "

I looked round the room where she had been--where she had been and Inever had been. 

"And was the way you took it the way she expressed it?"

"She only expressed it by being here and by letting me look at her. Thatwas enough!" he exclaimed with a singular laugh. 

I wondered more and more. "You mean she didn't speak to you?"

"She said nothing. She only looked at me as I looked at her. "

"And _you_ didn't speak either?"

He gave me again his painful smile. "I thought of _you_. The situationwas every way delicate. I used the finest tact. But she saw she hadpleased me. " He even repeated his dissonant laugh. 

"She evidently pleased you!" Then I thought a moment. "How long did shestay?"

"How can I say? It seemed twenty minutes, but it was probably a gooddeal less. "

"Twenty minutes of silence!" I began to have my definite view and nowin fact quite to clutch at it. "Do you know you're telling me a storypositively monstrous?"

He had been standing with his back to the fire; at this, with a pleadinglook, he came to me. "I beseech you, dearest, to take it kindly. "

I could take it kindly, and I signified as much; but I couldn't somehow, as he rather awkwardly opened his arms, let him draw me to him. Sothere fell between us for an appreciable time the discomfort of a greatsilence. 

VI

He broke it presently by saying: "There's absolutely no doubt of herdeath?"

"Unfortunately none. I've just risen from my knees by the bed wherethey've laid her out. "

He fixed his eyes hard on the floor; then he raised them to mine. "Howdoes she look?"

"She looks--at peace. "

He turned away again, while I watched him; but after a moment he began:"At what hour, then----?"

"It must have been near midnight. She dropped as she reached herhouse--from an affection of the heart which she knew herself and herphysician knew her to have, but of which, patiently, bravely she hadnever spoken to me. "

He listened intently and for a minute he was unable to speak. At lasthe broke out with an accent of which the almost boyish confidence, the really sublime simplicity rings in my ears as I write: "Wasn't she_wonderful_!" Even at the time I was able to do it justice enough toremark in reply that I had always told him so; but the next minute, asif after speaking he had caught a glimpse of what he might have mademe feel, he went on quickly: "You see that if she didn't get home tillmidnight--"

I instantly took him up. "There was plenty of time for you to have seenher? How so, " I inquired, "when you didn't leave my house till late?I don't remember the very moment--I was preoccupied. But you know thatthough you said you had lots to do you sat for some time after dinner. She, on her side, was all the evening at the 'Gentlewomen. ' I've justcome from there--I've ascertained. She had tea there; she remained along, long time. "

"What was she doing all the long, long time?" I saw that he was eager tochallenge at every step my account of the matter; and the more he showedthis the more I found myself disposed to insist on that account, toprefer, with apparent perversity, an explanation which only deepened themarvel and the mystery, but which, of the two prodigies it had to choosefrom, my reviving jealousy found easiest to accept. He stood therepleading with a candour that now seems to me beautiful for the privilegeof having in spite of supreme defeat known the living woman; while I, with a passion I wonder at to-day, though it still smoulders in a mannerin its ashes, could only reply that, through a strange gift shared byher with his mother and on her own side likewise hereditary, the miracleof his youth had been renewed for him, the miracle of hers for her. Shehad been to him--yes, and by an impulse as charming as he liked; but oh!she had not been in the body. It was a simple question of evidence. Ihad had, I assured him, a definite statement of what she had done--mostof the time--at the little club. The place was almost empty, but theservants had noticed her. She had sat motionless in a deep chair bythe drawing-room fire; she had leaned back her head, she had closed hereyes, she had seemed softly to sleep. 

"I see. But till what o'clock?"

"There, " I was obliged to answer, "the servants fail me a little. Theportress in particular is unfortunately a fool, though even she too issupposed to be a Gentlewoman. She was evidently at that period of theevening, without a substitute and, against regulations, absent forsome little time from the cage in which it's her business to watch thecomings and goings. She's muddled, she palpably prevaricates; so I can'tpositively, from her observation, give you an hour. But it was remarkedtoward half-past ten that our poor friend was no longer in the club. "

"She came straight here; and from here she went straight to the train. "

"She couldn't have run it so close, " I declared. "That was a thing sheparticularly never did. "

"There was no need of running it close, my dear--she had plenty of time. Your memory is at fault about my having left you late: I left you, as ithappens, unusually early. I'm sorry my stay with you seemed long; for Iwas back here by ten. "

"To put yourself into your slippers, " I rejoined, "and fall asleep inyour chair. You slept till morning--you saw her in a dream!" He lookedat me in silence and with sombre eyes--eyes that showed me he had someirritation to repress. Presently I went on: "You had a visit, at anextraordinary hour, from a lady--_soit_: nothing in the world is moreprobable. But there are ladies and ladies. How in the name of goodness, if she was unannounced and dumb and you had into the bargain neverseen the least portrait of her--how could you identify the person we'retalking of?"

"Haven't I to absolute satiety heard her described? I'll describe herfor you in every particular. "

"Don't!" I exclaimed with a promptness that made him laugh once more. Icoloured at this, but I continued: "Did your servant introduce her?"

"He wasn't here--he's always away when he's wanted. One of the featuresof this big house is that from the street-door the different floors areaccessible practically without challenge. My servant makes love to ayoung person employed in the rooms above these, and he had a long boutof it last evening. When he's out on that job he leaves my outer door, on the staircase, so much ajar as to enable him to slip back without asound. The door then only requires a push. She pushed it--that simplytook a little courage. "

"A little? It took tons! And it took all sorts of impossiblecalculations. "

"Well, she had them--she made them. Mind you, I don't deny for amoment, " he added, "that it was very, very wonderful!"

Something in his tone prevented me for a while from trusting myself tospeak. At last I said: "How did she come to know where you live?"

"By remembering the address on the little label the shop-people happilyleft sticking to the frame I had had made for my photograph. "

"And how was she dressed?"

"In mourning, my own dear. No great depths of crape, but simple andscrupulous black. She had in her bonnet three small black feathers. She carried a little muff of astrachan. She has near the left eye, " hecontinued, "a tiny vertical scar--"

I stopped him short. "The mark of a caress from her husband. " Then Iadded: "How close you must have been to her!" He made no answer to this, and I thought he blushed, observing which I broke straight off. "Well, goodbye. "

"You won't stay a little?" He came to me again tenderly, and this timeI suffered him. "Her visit had its beauty, " he murmured as he held me, "but yours has a greater one. "

I let him kiss me, but I remembered, as I had remembered the day before, that the last kiss she had given, as I supposed, in this world had beenfor the lips he touched. 

"I'm life, you see, " I answered. "What you saw last night was death. "

"It was life--it was life!"

He spoke with a kind of soft stubbornness, and I disengaged myself. Westood looking at each other hard. 

"You describe the scene--so far as you describe it at all--in terms thatare incomprehensible. She was in the room before you knew it?"

"I looked up from my letter-writing--at that table under the lamp, I hadbeen wholly absorbed in it--and she stood before me. "

"Then what did you do?"

"I sprang up with an ejaculation, and she, with a smile, laid herfinger, ever so warningly, yet with a sort of delicate dignity, to herlips. I knew it meant silence, but the strange thing was that it seemedimmediately to explain and to justify her. We, at any rate, stood fora time that, as I've told you, I can't calculate, face to face. It wasjust as you and I stand now. "

"Simply staring?"

He impatiently protested. "Ah! _we're_ not staring!"

"Yes, but we're talking. "

"Well, _we_ were--after a fashion. " He lost himself in the memory of it. "It was as friendly as this. " I had it on my tongue's end to ask ifthat were saying much for it, but I remarked instead that what they hadevidently done was to gaze in mutual admiration. Then I inquired whetherhis recognition of her had been immediate. "Not quite, " he replied, "for, of course, I didn't expect her; but it came to me long before shewent who she was--who she could only be. "

I thought a little. "And how did she at last go?"

"Just as she arrived. The door was open behind her, and she passed out. "

"Was she rapid--slow?"

"Rather quick. But looking behind her, " he added, with a smile. "I lether go, for I perfectly understood that I was to take it as she wished. "

I was conscious of exhaling a long, vague sigh. "Well, you must take itnow as _I_ wish--you must let _me_ go. "

At this he drew near me again, detaining and persuading me, declaringwith all due gallantry that I was a very different matter. I would havegiven anything to have been able to ask him if he had touched her, butthe words refused to form themselves: I knew well enough how horrid andvulgar they would sound. I said something else--I forget exactly what;it was feebly tortuous, and intended to make him tell me without myputting the question. But he didn't tell me; he only repeated, as iffrom a glimpse of the propriety of soothing and consoling me, the senseof his declaration of some minutes before--the assurance that she wasindeed exquisite, as I had always insisted, but that I was his "real"friend and his very own for ever. This led me to reassert, in the spiritof my previous rejoinder, that I had at least the merit of being alive;which in turn drew from him again the flash of contradiction I dreaded. "Oh, _she_ was alive! she was, she was!"

"She was dead! she was dead!" I asseverated with an energy, adetermination that it should be so, which comes back to me now almost asgrotesque. But the sound of the word, as it rang out, filled me suddenlywith horror, and all the natural emotion the meaning of it might haveevoked in other conditions gathered and broke in a flood. It rolled overme that here was a great affection quenched, and how much I had lovedand trusted her. I had a vision at the same time of the lonely beauty ofher end. "She's gone--she's lost to us for ever!" I burst into sobs. 

"That's exactly what I feel, " he exclaimed, speaking with extremekindness and pressing me to him for comfort. "She's gone; she's lost tous for ever: so what does it matter now?" He bent over me, and when hisface had touched mine I scarcely knew if it were wet with my tears orwith his own. 

VII

It was my theory, my conviction, it became, as I may say, my attitude, that they had still never "met;" and it was just on this ground that Isaid to myself it would be generous to ask him to stand with me besideher grave. He did so, very modestly and tenderly, and I assumed, thoughhe himself clearly cared nothing for the danger, that the solemnity ofthe occasion, largely made up of persons who had known them both and hada sense of the long joke, would sufficiently deprive his presence of alllight association. On the question of what had happened the eveningof her death little more passed between us; I had been overtaken by ahorror of the element of evidence. It seemed gross and prying on eitherhypothesis. He, on his side, had none to produce, none at least but astatement of his house-porter--on his own admission a most casualand intermittent personage--that between the hours of ten o'clock andmidnight no less than three ladies in deep black had flitted in and outof the place. This proved far too much; we had neither of us any use forthree. He knew that I considered I had accounted for every fragmentof her time, and we dropped the matter as settled; we abstained fromfurther discussion. What I knew however was that he abstained to pleaseme rather than because he yielded to my reasons. He didn't yield--hewas only indulgent; he clung to his interpretation because he liked itbetter. He liked it better, I held, because it had more to say to hisvanity. That, in a similar position, would not have been its effecton me, though I had doubtless quite as much; but these are things ofindividual humour, as to which no person can judge for another. I shouldhave supposed it more gratifying to be the subject of one of thoseinexplicable occurrences that are chronicled in thrilling books anddisputed about at learned meetings; I could conceive, on the part ofa being just engulfed in the infinite and still vibrating with humanemotion, of nothing more fine and pure, more high and august than suchan impulse of reparation, of admonition or even of curiosity. _That_ wasbeautiful, if one would, and I should in his place have thought more ofmyself for being so distinguished. It was public that he had already, that he had long been distinguished, and what was this in itself butalmost a proof? Each of the strange visitations contributed to establishthe other. He had a different feeling; but he had also, I hasten to add, an unmistakable desire not to make a stand or, as they say, a fuss aboutit. I might believe what I liked--the more so that the whole thing wasin a manner a mystery of my producing. It was an event of my history, apuzzle of my consciousness, not of his; therefore he would take about itany tone that struck me as convenient. We had both at all events otherbusiness on hand; we were pressed with preparations for our marriage. 

Mine were assuredly urgent, but I found as the days went on thatto believe what I "liked" was to believe what I was more and moreintimately convinced of. I found also that I didn't like it so much asthat came to, or that the pleasure at all events was far from being thecause of my conviction. My obsession, as I may really call it and asI began to perceive, refused to be elbowed away, as I had hoped, by mysense of paramount duties. If I had a great deal to do I had still moreto think about, and the moment came when my occupations were gravelymenaced by my thoughts. I see it all now, I feel it, I live itover. It's terribly void of joy, it's full indeed to overflowing ofbitterness; and yet I must do myself justice--I couldn't possibly beother than I was. The same strange impressions, had I to meet themagain, 'would produce the same deep anguish, the same sharp doubts, thesame still sharper certainties. Oh, it's all easier to remember than towrite, but even if I could retrace the business hour by hour, could findterms for the inexpressible, the ugliness and the pain would quicklystay my hand. Let me then note very simply and briefly that a weekbefore our wedding-day, three weeks after her death, I became fullyaware that I had something very serious to look in the face, and that ifI was to make this effort I must make it on the spot and beforeanother hour should elapse. My unextinguished jealousy--_that_ was theMedusa-mask. It hadn't died with her death, it had lividly survived, and it was fed by suspicions unspeakable. They _would_ be unspeakableto-day, that is, if I hadn't felt the sharp need of uttering them at thetime. 

This need took possession of me--to save me, as it appeared, from myfate. When once it had done so I saw--in the urgency of the case, the diminishing hours and shrinking interval--only one issue, that ofabsolute promptness and frankness. I could at least not do him the wrongof delaying another day, I could at least treat my difficulty astoo fine for a subterfuge. Therefore very quietly, but none the lessabruptly and hideously, I put it before him on a certain evening thatwe must reconsider our situation and recognise that it had completelyaltered. 

He stared bravely. "How has it altered?" "Another person has comebetween us. " He hesitated a moment. "I won't pretend not to know whomyou mean. " He smiled in pity for my aberration, but he meant to be kind. "A woman dead and buried!"

"She's buried, but she's not dead. She's dead for the world--she's deadfor me. But she's not dead for _you. _"

"You hark back to the different construction we put on her appearancethat evening?"

"No, " I answered, "I hark back to nothing. I've no need of it. I've morethan enough with what's before me. "

"And pray, darling, what is that?"

"You're completely changed. "

"By that absurdity?" he laughed. 

"Not so much by that one as by other absurdities that have followed it. "

"And what may they have been?"

We had faced each other fairly, with eyes that didn't flinch; but hishad a dim, strange light, and my certitude triumphed in his perceptiblepaleness. "Do you really pretend, " I asked, "not to know what they are?"

"My dear child, " he replied, "you describe them too sketchily!"

I considered a moment. "One may well be embarrassed to finish thepicture! But from that point of view--and from the beginning--what wasever more embarrassing than your idiosyncrasy?"

He was extremely vague. "My idiosyncrasy?"

"Your notorious, your peculiar power. "

He gave a great shrug of impatience, a groan of overdone disdain. "Oh, my peculiar power!"

"Your accessibility to forms of life, " I coldly went on, "your commandof impressions, appearances, contacts closed--for our gain or ourloss--to the rest of us. That was originally a part of the deep interestwith which you inspired me--one of the reasons I was amused, I wasindeed positively proud to know you. It was a magnificent distinction;it's a magnificent distinction still. But of course I had no previsionthen of the way it would operate now; and even had that been the case Ishould have had none of the extraordinary way in which its action wouldaffect me. "

"To what in the name of goodness, " he pleadingly inquired, "are youfantastically alluding?" Then as I remained silent, gathering a tone formy charge, "How in the world _does_ it operate?" he went on; "and how inthe world are you affected?"

"She missed you for five years, " I said, "but she never misses you now. You're making it up!"

"Making it up?" He had begun to turn from white to red. 

"You see her--you see her: you see her every night!" He gave a loudsound of derision, but it was not a genuine one. "She comes to you asshe came that evening, " I declared; "having tried it she found she likedit!" I was able, with God's help, to speak without blind passion orvulgar violence; but those were the exact words--and far from "sketchy"they then appeared to me--that I uttered. He had turned away in hislaughter, clapping his hands at my folly, but in an instant he facedme again, with a change of expression that struck me. "Do you dare todeny, " I asked, "that you habitually see her?"

He had taken the line of indulgence, of meeting me halfway and kindlyhumouring me. At all events, to my astonishment, he suddenly said:"Well, my dear, what if I do?"

"It's your natural right; it belongs to your constitution and to yourwonderful, if not perhaps quite enviable fortune. But you will easilyunderstand that it separates us. I unconditionally release you. "

"Release me?"

"You must choose between me and her. "

He looked at me hard. "I see. " Then he walked away a little, as ifgrasping what I had said and thinking how he had best treat it. At lasthe turned upon me afresh. "How on earth do you know such an awfullyprivate thing?"

"You mean because you've tried so hard to hide it? It _is_ awfullyprivate, and you may believe I shall never betray you. You've done yourbest, you've acted your part, you've behaved, poor dear! loyally andadmirably. Therefore I've watched you in silence, playing my part too;I've noted every drop in your voice, every absence in your eyes, everyeffort in your indifferent hand: I've waited till I was utterly sure andmiserably unhappy. How _can_ you hide it when you're abjectly in lovewith her, when you're sick almost to death with the joy of what shegives you?" I checked his quick protest with a quicker gesture. "Youlove her as you've _never_ loved, and, passion for passion, she gives itstraight back! She rules you, she holds you, she has you all! A woman, in such a case as mine, divines and feels and sees; she's not anidiot who has to be credibly informed. You come to me mechanically, compunctiously, with the dregs of your tenderness and the remnant ofyour life. I can renounce you, but I can't share you; the best of you ishers; I know what it is and I freely give you up to her for ever!"

He made a gallant fight, but it couldn't be patched up; he repeated hisdenial, he retracted his admission, he ridiculed my charge, of whichI freely granted him moreover the indefensible extravagance. I didn'tpretend for a moment that we were talking of common things; I didn'tpretend for a moment that he and she were common people. Pray, if they_had_ been, how should I ever have cared for them? They had enjoyed arare extension of being and they had caught me up in their flight; onlyI couldn't breathe in such an air and I promptly asked to be setdown. Everything in the facts was monstrous, and most of all my lucidperception of them; the only thing allied to nature and truth was myhaving to act on that perception. I felt after I had spoken in thissense that my assurance was complete; nothing had been wanting to it butthe sight of my effect on him. He disguised indeed the effect in a cloudof chaff, a diversion that gained him time and covered his retreat. He challenged my sincerity, my sanity, almost my humanity, and that ofcourse widened our breach and confirmed our rupture. He did everythingin short but convince me either that I was wrong or that he was unhappy;we separated, and I left him to his inconceivable communion. 

He never married, any more than I've done. When six years later, insolitude and silence, I heard of his death I hailed it as a directcontribution to my theory. It was sudden, it was never properlyaccounted for, it was surrounded by circumstances in which--for oh, Itook them to pieces!--I distinctly read an intention, the mark ofhis own hidden hand. It was the result of a long necessity, of anunquenchable desire. To say exactly what I mean, it was a response to anirresistible call. 

THE END