THE LESSON OF THE MASTERby Henry James

CHAPTER I

He had been told the ladies were at church, but this was corrected bywhat he saw from the top of the steps--they descended from a great heightin two arms, with a circular sweep of the most charming effect--at thethreshold of the door which, from the long bright gallery, overlooked theimmense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the grass, at a distance, sat underthe great trees, while the fourth figure showed a crimson dress that toldas a "bit of colour" amid the fresh rich green. The servant had so faraccompanied Paul Overt as to introduce him to this view, after asking himif he wished first to go to his room. The young man declined thatprivilege, conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a journey andalways liking to take at once a general perceptive possession of a newscene. He stood there a little with his eyes on the group and on theadmirable picture, the wide grounds of an old country-house nearLondon--that only made it better--on a splendid Sunday in June. "Butthat lady, who's _she_?" he said to the servant before the man left him. 

"I think she's Mrs. St. George, sir. "

"Mrs. St. George, the wife of the distinguished--" Then Paul Overtchecked himself, doubting if a footman would know. 

"Yes, sir--probably, sir, " said his guide, who appeared to wish tointimate that a person staying at Summersoft would naturally be, if onlyby alliance, distinguished. His tone, however, made poor Overt himselffeel for the moment scantly so. 

"And the gentlemen?" Overt went on. 

"Well, sir, one of them's General Fancourt. "

"Ah yes, I know; thank you. " General Fancourt was distinguished, therewas no doubt of that, for something he had done, or perhaps even hadn'tdone--the young man couldn't remember which--some years before in India. The servant went away, leaving the glass doors open into the gallery, andPaul Overt remained at the head of the wide double staircase, saying tohimself that the place was sweet and promised a pleasant visit, while heleaned on the balustrade of fine old ironwork which, like all the otherdetails, was of the same period as the house. It all went together andspoke in one voice--a rich English voice of the early part of theeighteenth century. It might have been church-time on a summer's day inthe reign of Queen Anne; the stillness was too perfect to be modern, thenearness counted so as distance, and there was something so fresh andsound in the originality of the large smooth house, the expanse ofbeautiful brickwork that showed for pink rather than red and that hadbeen kept clear of messy creepers by the law under which a woman with arare complexion disdains a veil. When Paul Overt became aware that thepeople under the trees had noticed him he turned back through the opendoors into the great gallery which was the pride of the place. Itmarched across from end to end and seemed--with its bright colours, itshigh panelled windows, its faded flowered chintzes, itsquickly-recognised portraits and pictures, the blue-and-white china ofits cabinets and the attenuated festoons and rosettes of its ceiling--acheerful upholstered avenue into the other century. 

Our friend was slightly nervous; that went with his character as astudent of fine prose, went with the artist's general disposition tovibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that Henry St. George might be a member of the party. For the young aspirant he hadremained a high literary figure, in spite of the lower range ofproduction to which he had fallen after his first three great successes, the comparative absence of quality in his later work. There had beenmoments when Paul Overt almost shed tears for this; but now that he wasnear him--he had never met him--he was conscious only of the fineoriginal source and of his own immense debt. After he had taken a turnor two up and down the gallery he came out again and descended the steps. He was but slenderly supplied with a certain social boldness--it wasreally a weakness in him--so that, conscious of a want of acquaintancewith the four persons in the distance, he gave way to motions recommendedby their not committing him to a positive approach. There was a fineEnglish awkwardness in this--he felt that too as he sauntered vaguely andobliquely across the lawn, taking an independent line. Fortunately therewas an equally fine English directness in the way one of the gentlemenpresently rose and made as if to "stalk" him, though with an air ofconciliation and reassurance. To this demonstration Paul Overt instantlyresponded, even if the gentleman were not his host. He was tall, straight and elderly and had, like the great house itself, a pink smilingface, and into the bargain a white moustache. Our young man met himhalfway while he laughed and said: "Er--Lady Watermouth told us you werecoming; she asked me just to look after you. " Paul Overt thanked him, liking him on the spot, and turned round with him to walk toward theothers. "They've all gone to church--all except us, " the strangercontinued as they went; "we're just sitting here--it's so jolly. " Overtpronounced it jolly indeed: it was such a lovely place. He mentionedthat he was having the charming impression for the first time. 

"Ah you've not been here before?" said his companion. "It's a nicelittle place--not much to _do_, you know". Overt wondered what he wantedto "do"--he felt that he himself was doing so much. By the time theycame to where the others sat he had recognised his initiator for amilitary man and--such was the turn of Overt's imagination--had found himthus still more sympathetic. He would naturally have a need for action, for deeds at variance with the pacific pastoral scene. He was evidentlyso good-natured, however, that he accepted the inglorious hour for whatit was worth. Paul Overt shared it with him and with his companions forthe next twenty minutes; the latter looked at him and he looked at themwithout knowing much who they were, while the talk went on without muchtelling him even what it meant. It seemed indeed to mean nothing inparticular; it wandered, with casual pointless pauses and shortterrestrial flights, amid names of persons and places--names which, forour friend, had no great power of evocation. It was all sociable andslow, as was right and natural of a warm Sunday morning. 

His first attention was given to the question, privately considered, ofwhether one of the two younger men would be Henry St. George. He knewmany of his distinguished contemporaries by their photographs, but hadnever, as happened, seen a portrait of the great misguided novelist. Oneof the gentlemen was unimaginable--he was too young; and the otherscarcely looked clever enough, with such mild undiscriminating eyes. Ifthose eyes were St. George's the problem, presented by the ill-matchedparts of his genius would be still more difficult of solution. Besides, the deportment of their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in thered dress, such as could be natural, toward the wife of his bosom, evento a writer accused by several critics of sacrificing too much to manner. Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if the gentleman with theexpressionless eyes bore the name that had set his heart beating faster(he also had contradictory conventional whiskers--the young admirer ofthe celebrity had never in a mental vision seen _his_ face in so vulgar aframe) he would have given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, would have heard of him a little, would know something about"Ginistrella, " would have an impression of how that fresh fiction hadcaught the eye of real criticism. Paul Overt had a dread of beinggrossly proud, but even morbid modesty might view the authorship of"Ginistrella" as constituting a degree of identity. His soldierly friendbecame clear enough: he was "Fancourt, " but was also "the General"; andhe mentioned to the new visitor in the course of a few moments that hehad but lately returned from twenty years service abroad. 

"And now you remain in England?" the young man asked. 

"Oh yes; I've bought a small house in London. "

"And I hope you like it, " said Overt, looking at Mrs. St. George. 

"Well, a little house in Manchester Square--there's a limit to theenthusiasm _that_ inspires. "

"Oh I meant being at home again--being back in Piccadilly. "

"My daughter likes Piccadilly--that's the main thing. She's very fond ofart and music and literature and all that kind of thing. She missed itin India and she finds it in London, or she hopes she'll find it. Mr. St. George has promised to help her--he has been awfully kind to her. Shehas gone to church--she's fond of that too--but they'll all be back in aquarter of an hour. You must let me introduce you to her--she'll be soglad to know you. I dare say she has read every blest word you'vewritten. "

"I shall be delighted--I haven't written so very many, " Overt pleaded, feeling, and without resentment, that the General at least was vaguenessitself about that. But he wondered a little why, expressing thisfriendly disposition, it didn't occur to the doubtless eminent soldier topronounce the word that would put him in relation with Mrs. St. George. If it was a question of introductions Miss Fancourt--apparently as yetunmarried--was far away, while the wife of his illustrious confrere wasalmost between them. This lady struck Paul Overt as altogether pretty, with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of aspect, somethingthat--he could scarcely have said why--served for mystification. St. George certainly had every right to a charming wife, but he himself wouldnever have imagined the important little woman in the aggressivelyParisian dress the partner for life, the alter ego, of a man of letters. That partner in general, he knew, that second self, was far frompresenting herself in a single type: observation had taught him that shewas not inveterately, not necessarily plain. But he had never beforeseen her look so much as if her prosperity had deeper foundations than anink-spotted study-table littered with proof-sheets. Mrs. St. Georgemight have been the wife of a gentleman who "kept" books rather thanwrote them, who carried on great affairs in the City and made betterbargains than those that poets mostly make with publishers. With thisshe hinted at a success more personal--a success peculiarly stamping theage in which society, the world of conversation, is a great drawing-roomwith the City for its antechamber. Overt numbered her years at first assome thirty, and then ended by believing that she might approach herfiftieth. But she somehow in this case juggled away the excess and thedifference--you only saw them in a rare glimpse, like the rabbit in theconjurer's sleeve. She was extraordinarily white, and her every elementand item was pretty; her eyes, her ears, her hair, her voice, her hands, her feet--to which her relaxed attitude in her wicker chair gave a greatpublicity--and the numerous ribbons and trinkets with which she wasbedecked. She looked as if she had put on her best clothes to go tochurch and then had decided they were too good for that and had stayed athome. She told a story of some length about the shabby way Lady Jane hadtreated the Duchess, as well as an anecdote in relation to a purchase shehad made in Paris--on her way back from Cannes; made for Lady Egbert, whohad never refunded the money. Paul Overt suspected her of a tendency tofigure great people as larger than life, until he noticed the manner inwhich she handled Lady Egbert, which was so sharply mutinous that itreassured him. He felt he should have understood her better if he mighthave met her eye; but she scarcely so much as glanced at him. "Ah herethey come--all the good ones!" she said at last; and Paul Overt admiredat his distance the return of the church-goers--several persons, incouples and threes, advancing in a flicker of sun and shade at the end ofa large green vista formed by the level grass and the overarching boughs. 

"If you mean to imply that _we're_ bad, I protest, " said one of thegentlemen--"after making one's self agreeable all the morning!"

"Ah if they've found you agreeable--!" Mrs. St. George gaily cried. "Butif we're good the others are better. "

"They must be angels then, " said the amused General. 

"Your husband was an angel, the way he went off at your bidding, " thegentleman who had first spoken declared to Mrs. St. George. 

"At my bidding?"

"Didn't you make him go to church?"

"I never made him do anything in my life but once--when I made him burnup a bad book. That's all!" At her "That's all!" our young friend brokeinto an irrepressible laugh; it lasted only a second, but it drew hereyes to him. His own met them, though not long enough to help him tounderstand her; unless it were a step towards this that he saw on theinstant how the burnt book--the way she alluded to it!--would have beenone of her husband's finest things. 

"A bad book?" her interlocutor repeated. 

"I didn't like it. He went to church because your daughter went, " shecontinued to General Fancourt. "I think it my duty to call yourattention to his extraordinary demonstrations to your daughter. "

"Well, if you don't mind them I don't, " the General laughed. 

"Il s'attache a ses pas. But I don't wonder--she's so charming. "

"I hope she won't make him burn any books!" Paul Overt ventured toexclaim. 

"If she'd make him write a few it would be more to the purpose, " saidMrs. St. George. "He has been of a laziness of late--!"

Our young man stared--he was so struck with the lady's phraseology. Her"Write a few" seemed to him almost as good as her "That's all. " Didn'tshe, as the wife of a rare artist, know what it was to produce oneperfect work of art? How in the world did she think they were turned off?His private conviction was that, admirably as Henry St. George wrote, hehad written for the last ten years, and especially for the last five, only too much, and there was an instant during which he felt inwardlysolicited to make this public. But before he had spoken a diversion waseffected by the return of the absentees. They strolled updispersedly--there were eight or ten of them--and the circle under thetrees rearranged itself as they took their place in it. They made itmuch larger, so that Paul Overt could feel--he was always feeling thatsort of thing, as he said to himself--that if the company had alreadybeen interesting to watch the interest would now become intense. Heshook hands with his hostess, who welcomed him without many words, in themanner of a woman able to trust him to understand and conscious that sopleasant an occasion would in every way speak for itself. She offeredhim no particular facility for sitting by her, and when they had allsubsided again he found himself still next General Fancourt, with anunknown lady on his other flank. 

"That's my daughter--that one opposite, " the General said to him withoutlose of time. Overt saw a tall girl, with magnificent red hair, in adress of a pretty grey-green tint and of a limp silken texture, a garmentthat clearly shirked every modern effect. It had therefore somehow thestamp of the latest thing, so that our beholder quickly took her fornothing if not contemporaneous. 

"She's very handsome--very handsome, " he repeated while he consideredher. There was something noble in her head, and she appeared fresh andstrong. 

Her good father surveyed her with complacency, remarking soon: "She lookstoo hot--that's her walk. But she'll be all right presently. Then I'llmake her come over and speak to you. "

"I should be sorry to give you that trouble. If you were to take me over_there_--!" the young man murmured. 

"My dear sir, do you suppose I put myself out that way? I don't mean foryou, but for Marian, " the General added. 

"_I_ would put myself out for her soon enough, " Overt replied; afterwhich he went on: "Will you be so good as to tell me which of thosegentlemen is Henry St. George?"

"The fellow talking to my girl. By Jove, he _is_ making up toher--they're going off for another walk. "

"Ah is that he--really?" Our friend felt a certain surprise, for thepersonage before him seemed to trouble a vision which had been vague onlywhile not confronted with the reality. As soon as the reality dawned themental image, retiring with a sigh, became substantial enough to suffer aslight wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable part of his short lifein foreign lands, made now, but not for the first time, the reflexionthat whereas in those countries he had almost always recognised theartist and the man of letters by his personal "type, " the mould of hisface, the character of his head, the expression of his figure and eventhe indications of his dress, so in England this identification was aslittle as possible a matter of course, thanks to the greater conformity, the habit of sinking the profession instead of advertising it, thegeneral diffusion of the air of the gentleman--the gentleman committed tono particular set of ideas. More than once, on returning to his owncountry, he had said to himself about people met in society: "One seesthem in this place and that, and one even talks with them; but to findout what they _do_ one would really have to be a detective. " In respectto several individuals whose work he was the opposite of "drawnto"--perhaps he was wrong--he found himself adding "No wonder theyconceal it--when it's so bad!" He noted that oftener than in France andin Germany his artist looked like a gentleman--that is like an Englishone--while, certainly outside a few exceptions, his gentlemen didn't looklike an artist. St. George was not one of the exceptions; thatcircumstance he definitely apprehended before the great man had turnedhis back to walk off with Miss Fancourt. He certainly looked betterbehind than any foreign man of letters--showed for beautifully correct inhis tall black hat and his superior frock coat. Somehow, all the same, these very garments--he wouldn't have minded them so much on aweekday--were disconcerting to Paul Overt, who forgot for the moment thatthe head of the profession was not a bit better dressed than himself. Hehad caught a glimpse of a regular face, a fresh colour, a brown moustacheand a pair of eyes surely never visited by a fine frenzy, and he promisedhimself to study these denotements on the first occasion. Hissuperficial sense was that their owner might have passed for a luckystockbroker--a gentleman driving eastward every morning from a sanitarysuburb in a smart dog-cart. That carried out the impression alreadyderived from his wife. Paul's glance, after a moment, travelled back tothis lady, and he saw how her own had followed her husband as he movedoff with Miss Fancourt. Overt permitted himself to wonder a little ifshe were jealous when another woman took him away. Then he made out thatMrs. St. George wasn't glaring at the indifferent maiden. Her eyesrested but on her husband, and with unmistakeable serenity. That was theway she wanted him to be--she liked his conventional uniform. Overtlonged to hear more about the book she had induced him to destroy. 

CHAPTER II

As they all came out from luncheon General Fancourt took hold of him withan "I say, I want you to know my girl!" as if the idea had just occurredto him and he hadn't spoken of it before. With the other hand hepossessed himself all paternally of the young lady. "You know all abouthim. I've seen you with his books. She reads everything--everything!"he went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at herfather. The General turned away and his daughter spoke--"Isn't papadelightful?"

"He is indeed, Miss Fancourt. "

"As if I read you because I read 'everything'!"

"Oh I don't mean for saying that, " said Paul Overt. "I liked him fromthe moment he began to be kind to me. Then he promised me thisprivilege. "

"It isn't for you he means it--it's for me. If you flatter yourself thathe thinks of anything in life but me you'll find you're mistaken. Heintroduces every one. He thinks me insatiable. "

"You speak just like him, " laughed our youth. 

"Ah but sometimes I want to"--and the girl coloured. "I don't readeverything--I read very little. But I _have_ read you. "

"Suppose we go into the gallery, " said Paul Overt. She pleased himgreatly, not so much because of this last remark--though that of coursewas not too disconcerting--as because, seated opposite to him atluncheon, she had given him for half an hour the impression of herbeautiful face. Something else had come with it--a sense of generosity, of an enthusiasm which, unlike many enthusiasms, was not all manner. Thatwas not spoiled for him by his seeing that the repast had placed heragain in familiar contact with Henry St. George. Sitting next her thiscelebrity was also opposite our young man, who had been able to note thathe multiplied the attentions lately brought by his wife to the General'snotice. Paul Overt had gathered as well that this lady was not in theleast discomposed by these fond excesses and that she gave every sign ofan unclouded spirit. She had Lord Masham on one side of her and on theother the accomplished Mr. Mulliner, editor of the new high-class livelyevening paper which was expected to meet a want felt in circlesincreasingly conscious that Conservatism must be made amusing, andunconvinced when assured by those of another political colour that it wasalready amusing enough. At the end of an hour spent in her company PaulOvert thought her still prettier than at the first radiation, and if herprofane allusions to her husband's work had not still rung in his ears heshould have liked her--so far as it could be a question of that inconnexion with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probablyhe should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clearneed to this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who suppliedthe want. If Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion wasnow of the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man asimportant. He saw more in St. George's face, which he liked the betterfor its not having told its whole story in the first three minutes. Thatstory came out as one read, in short instalments--it was excusable thatone's analogies should be somewhat professional--and the text was a styleconsiderably involved, a language not easy to translate at sight. Therewere shades of meaning in it and a vague perspective of history whichreceded as you advanced. Two facts Paul had particularly heeded. Thefirst of these was that he liked the measured mask much better atinscrutable rest than in social agitation; its almost convulsive smileabove all displeased him (as much as any impression from that sourcecould), whereas the quiet face had a charm that grew in proportion asstillness settled again. The change to the expression of gaiety excited, he made out, very much the private protest of a person sitting gratefullyin the twilight when the lamp is brought in too soon. His secondreflexion was that, though generally averse to the flagrant use ofingratiating arts by a man of age "making up" to a pretty girl, he wasnot in this case too painfully affected: which seemed to prove eitherthat St. George had a light hand or the air of being younger than he was, or else that Miss Fancourt's own manner somehow made everything right. 

Overt walked with her into the gallery, and they strolled to the end ofit, looking at the pictures, the cabinets, the charming vista, whichharmonised with the prospect of the summer afternoon, resembling it by along brightness, with great divans and old chairs that figured hours ofrest. Such a place as that had the added merit of giving those who cameinto it plenty to talk about. Miss Fancourt sat down with her newacquaintance on a flowered sofa, the cushions of which, very numerous, were tight ancient cubes of many sizes, and presently said: "I'm so gladto have a chance to thank you. "

"To thank me--?" He had to wonder. 

"I liked your book so much. I think it splendid. "

She sat there smiling at him, and he never asked himself which book shemeant; for after all he had written three or four. That seemed a vulgardetail, and he wasn't even gratified by the idea of the pleasure she toldhim--her handsome bright face told him--he had given her. The feelingshe appealed to, or at any rate the feeling she excited, was somethinglarger, something that had little to do with any quickened pulsation ofhis own vanity. It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that realsuccess was to resemble _that_, to live, to bloom, to present theperfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies witha bent back at an ink-stained table. While her grey eyes rested onhim--there was a wideish space between these, and the division of herrich-coloured hair, so thick that it ventured to be smooth, made a freearch above them--he was almost ashamed of that exercise of the pen whichit was her present inclination to commend. He was conscious he shouldhave liked better to please her in some other way. The lines of her facewere those of a woman grown, but the child lingered on in her complexionand in the sweetness of her mouth. Above all she was natural--that wasindubitable now; more natural than he had supposed at first, perhaps onaccount of her aesthetic toggery, which was conventionallyunconventional, suggesting what he might have called a tortuousspontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in other cases, and hisfears had been justified; for, though he was an artist to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the woodland caught inher folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with her hair, made himshrink not as a man of starch and patent leather, but as a manpotentially himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really morecandid than her costume, and the best proof of it was her supposing herliberal character suited by any uniform. This was a fallacy, since ifshe was draped as a pessimist he was sure she liked the taste of life. Hethanked her for her appreciation--aware at the same time that he didn'tappear to thank her enough and that she might think him ungracious. Hewas afraid she would ask him to explain something he had written, and healways winced at that--perhaps too timidly--for to his own ear theexplanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he liked her so muchas to feel a confidence that in the long run he should be able to showher he wasn't rudely evasive. Moreover she surely wasn't quick to takeoffence, wasn't irritable; she could be trusted to wait. So when he saidto her, "Ah don't talk of anything I've done, don't talk of it _here_;there's another man in the house who's the actuality!"--when he utteredthis short sincere protest it was with the sense that she would see inthe words neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful manbored with praise. 

"You mean Mr. St. George--isn't he delightful?"

Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would havehalf-broken his heart if he hadn't been so young. "Alas I don't knowhim. I only admire him at a distance. "

"Oh you must know him--he wants so to talk to you, " returned MissFancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by herquick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how she wouldalways calculate on everything's being simple between others. 

"I shouldn't have supposed he knew anything about me, " he professed. 

"He does then--everything. And if he didn't I should be able to tellhim. "

"To tell him everything?" our friend smiled. 

"You talk just like the people in your book!" she answered. 

"Then they must all talk alike. "

She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. "Well, it must be sodifficult. Mr. St. George tells me it _is_--terribly. I've triedtoo--and I find it so. I've tried to write a novel. "

"Mr. St. George oughtn't to discourage you, " Paul went so far as to say. 

"You do much more--when you wear that expression. "

"Well, after all, why try to be an artist?" the young man pursued. "It'sso poor--so poor!"

"I don't know what you mean, " said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave. 

"I mean as compared with being a person of action--as living your works. "

"But what's art but an intense life--if it be real?" she asked. "I thinkit's the only one--everything else is so clumsy!" Her companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her. "It's so interesting to meet so many celebrated people. "

"So I should think--but surely it isn't new to you. "

"Why I've never seen any one--any one: living always in Asia. "

The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. "But doesn't thatcontinent swarm with great figures? Haven't you administered provincesin India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained to yourcar?"

It was as if she didn't care even _should_ he amuse himself at her cost. "I was with my father, after I left school to go out there. It wasdelightful being with him--we're alone together in the world, he andI--but there was none of the society I like best. One never heard of apicture--never of a book, except bad ones. "

"Never of a picture? Why, wasn't all life a picture?"

She looked over the delightful place where they sat. "Nothing to compareto this. I adore England!" she cried. 

It fairly stirred in him the sacred chord. "Ah of course I don't denythat we must do something with her, poor old dear, yet. "

"She hasn't been touched, really, " said the girl. 

"Did Mr. St. George say that?"

There was a small and, as he felt, harmless spark of irony in hisquestion; which, however, she answered very simply, not noticing theinsinuation. "Yes, he says England hasn't been touched--not consideringall there is, " she went on eagerly. "He's so interesting about ourcountry. To listen to him makes one want so to do something. "

"It would make _me_ want to, " said Paul Overt, feeling strongly, on theinstant, the suggestion of what she said and that of the emotion withwhich she said it, and well aware of what an incentive, on St. George'slips, such a speech might be. 

"Oh you--as if you hadn't! I should like so to hear you talk together, "she added ardently. 

"That's very genial of you; but he'd have it all his own way. I'mprostrate before him. "

She had an air of earnestness. "Do you think then he's so perfect?"

"Far from it. Some of his later books seem to me of a queerness--!"

"Yes, yes--he knows that. "

Paul Overt stared. "That they seem to me of a queerness--!"

"Well yes, or at any rate that they're not what they should be. He toldme he didn't esteem them. He has told me such wonderful things--he's sointeresting. "

There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the finegenius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confessionand had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though MissFancourt was charming what was she after all but an immature girlencountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this was part of thesentiment he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely forthe poor peccable great man not because he didn't read him clear, butaltogether because he did. His consideration was half composed oftenderness for superficialities which he was sure their perpetratorjudged privately, judged more ferociously than any one, and whichrepresented some tragic intellectual secret. He would have his reasonsfor his psychology a fleur de peau, and these reasons could only be cruelones, such as would make him dearer to those who already were fond ofhim. "You excite my envy. I have my reserves, I discriminate--but Ilove him, " Paul said in a moment. "And seeing him for the first timethis way is a great event for me. "

"How momentous--how magnificent!" cried the girl. "How delicious tobring you together!"

"Your doing it--that makes it perfect, " our friend returned. 

"He's as eager as you, " she went on. "But it's so odd you shouldn't havemet. "

"It's not really so odd as it strikes you. I've been out of England somuch--made repeated absences all these last years. "

She took this in with interest. "And yet you write of it as well as ifyou were always here. "

"It's just the being away perhaps. At any rate the best bits, I suspect, are those that were done in dreary places abroad. "

"And why were they dreary?"

"Because they were health-resorts--where my poor mother was dying. "

"Your poor mother?"--she was all sweet wonder. 

"We went from place to place to help her to get better. But she neverdid. To the deadly Riviera (I hate it!) to the high Alps, to Algiers, and far away--a hideous journey--to Colorado. "

"And she isn't better?" Miss Fancourt went on. 

"She died a year ago. "

"Really?--like mine! Only that's years since. Some day you must tell meabout your mother, " she added. 

He could at first, on this, only gaze at her. "What right things yousay! If you say them to St. George I don't wonder he's in bondage. "

It pulled her up for a moment. "I don't know what you mean. He doesn'tmake speeches and professions at all--he isn't ridiculous. "

"I'm afraid you consider then that I am. "

"No, I don't"--she spoke it rather shortly. And then she added: "Heunderstands--understands everything. "

The young man was on the point of saying jocosely: "And I don't--is thatit?" But these words, in time, changed themselves to others slightlyless trivial: "Do you suppose he understands his wife?"

Miss Fancourt made no direct answer, but after a moment's hesitation putit: "Isn't she charming?"

"Not in the least!"

"Here he comes. Now you must know him, " she went on. A small group ofvisitors had gathered at the other end of the gallery and had been thereovertaken by Henry St. George, who strolled in from a neighbouring room. He stood near them a moment, not falling into the talk but taking up anold miniature from a table and vaguely regarding it. At the end of aminute he became aware of Miss Fancourt and her companion in thedistance; whereupon, laying down his miniature, he approached them withthe same procrastinating air, his hands in his pockets and his eyesturned, right and left, to the pictures. The gallery was so long thatthis transit took some little time, especially as there was a moment whenhe stopped to admire the fine Gainsborough. "He says Mrs. St. George hasbeen the making of him, " the girl continued in a voice slightly lowered. 

"Ah he's often obscure!" Paul laughed. 

"Obscure?" she repeated as if she heard it for the first time. Her eyesrested on her other friend, and it wasn't lost upon Paul that theyappeared to send out great shafts of softness. "He's going to speak tous!" she fondly breathed. There was a sort of rapture in her voice, andour friend was startled. "Bless my soul, does she care for him like_that_?--is she in love with him?" he mentally enquired. "Didn't I tellyou he was eager?" she had meanwhile asked of him. 

"It's eagerness dissimulated, " the young man returned as the subject oftheir observation lingered before his Gainsborough. "He edges toward usshyly. Does he mean that she saved him by burning that book?"

"That book? what book did she burn?" The girl quickly turned her face tohim. 

"Hasn't he told you then?"

"Not a word. "

"Then he doesn't tell you everything!" Paul had guessed that she prettymuch supposed he did. The great man had now resumed his course and comenearer; in spite of which his more qualified admirer risked a profaneobservation: "St. George and the Dragon is what the anecdote suggests!"

His companion, however, didn't hear it; she smiled at the dragon'sadversary. "He _is_ eager--he is!" she insisted. 

"Eager for you--yes. "

But meanwhile she had called out: "I'm sure you want to know Mr. Overt. You'll be great friends, and it will always be delightful to me toremember I was here when you first met and that I had something to dowith it. "

There was a freshness of intention in the words that carried them off;nevertheless our young man was sorry for Henry St. George, as he wassorry at any time for any person publicly invited to be responsive anddelightful. He would have been so touched to believe that a man hedeeply admired should care a straw for him that he wouldn't play withsuch a presumption if it were possibly vain. In a single glance of theeye of the pardonable Master he read--having the sort of divination thatbelonged to his talent--that this personage had ever a store of friendlypatience, which was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printedpage of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could onehave liked him any more for a perception which must at the best have beenvague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the sameinstant he found himself encompassed by St. George's happy personal art--amanner of which it was the essence to conjure away false positions. Itall took place in a moment. Paul was conscious that he knew him now, conscious of his handshake and of the very quality of his hand; of hisface, seen nearer and consequently seen better, of a general fraternisingassurance, and in particular of the circumstance that St. George didn'tdislike him (as yet at least) for being imposed by a charming but toogushing girl, attractive enough without such danglers. No irritation atany rate was reflected in the voice with which he questioned MissFancourt as to some project of a walk--a general walk of the companyround the park. He had soon said something to Paul about a talk--"Wemust have a tremendous lot of talk; there are so many things, aren'tthere?"--but our friend could see this idea wouldn't in the present casetake very immediate effect. All the same he was extremely happy, evenafter the matter of the walk had been settled--the three presently passedback to the other part of the gallery, where it was discussed withseveral members of the party; even when, after they had all gone outtogether, he found himself for half an hour conjoined with Mrs. St. George. Her husband had taken the advance with Miss Fancourt, and thispair were quite out of sight. It was the prettiest of rambles for asummer afternoon--a grassy circuit, of immense extent, skirting the limitof the park within. The park was completely surrounded by its oldmottled but perfect red wall, which, all the way on their left, constituted in itself an object of interest. Mrs. St. George mentionedto him the surprising number of acres thus enclosed, together withnumerous other facts relating to the property and the family, and thefamily's other properties: she couldn't too strongly urge on him theimportance of seeing their other houses. She ran over the names of theseand rang the changes on them with the facility of practice, making themappear an almost endless list. She had received Paul Overt very amiablyon his breaking ground with her by the mention of his joy in having justmade her husband's acquaintance, and struck him as so alert and soaccommodating a little woman that he was rather ashamed of his _mot_about her to Miss Fancourt; though he reflected that a hundred otherpeople, on a hundred occasions, would have been sure to make it. He goton with Ms. St. George, in short, better than he expected; but thisdidn't prevent her suddenly becoming aware that she was faint withfatigue and must take her way back to the house by the shortest cut. Sheprofessed that she hadn't the strength of a kitten and was a miserablewreck; a character he had been too preoccupied to discern in her while hewondered in what sense she could be held to have been the making of herhusband. He had arrived at a glimmering of the answer when she announcedthat she must leave him, though this perception was of courseprovisional. While he was in the very act of placing himself at herdisposal for the return the situation underwent a change; Lord Masham hadsuddenly turned up, coming back to them, overtaking them, emerging fromthe shrubbery--Overt could scarcely have said how he appeared--and Mrs. St. George had protested that she wanted to be left alone and not tobreak up the party. A moment later she was walking off with Lord Masham. Our friend fell back and joined Lady Watermouth, to whom he presentlymentioned that Mrs. St. George had been obliged to renounce the attemptto go further. 

"She oughtn't to have come out at all, " her ladyship rather grumpilyremarked. 

"Is she so very much of an invalid?"

"Very bad indeed. " And his hostess added with still greater austerity:"She oughtn't really to come to one!" He wondered what was implied bythis, and presently gathered that it was not a reflexion on the lady'sconduct or her moral nature: it only represented that her strength wasnot equal to her aspirations. 

CHAPTER III

The smoking-room at Summersoft was on the scale of the rest of the place;high light commodious and decorated with such refined old carvings andmouldings that it seemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit at workat fading crewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strong cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in considerable force on the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front of one of the cool fair fireplacesof white marble, the entablature of which was adorned with a delicatelittle Italian "subject. " There was another in the wall that faced it, and, thanks to the mild summer night, a fire in neither; but a nucleusfor aggregation was furnished on one side by a table in thechimney-corner laden with bottles, decanters and tall tumblers. PaulOvert was a faithless smoker; he would puff a cigarette for reasons withwhich tobacco had nothing to do. This was particularly the case on theoccasion of which I speak; his motive was the vision of a little directtalk with Henry St. George. The "tremendous" communion of which thegreat man had held out hopes to him earlier in the day had not yet comeoff, and this saddened him considerably, for the party was to go itsseveral ways immediately after breakfast on the morrow. He had, however, the disappointment of finding that apparently the author of "Shadowmere"was not disposed to prolong his vigil. He wasn't among the gentlemenassembled when Paul entered, nor was he one of those who turned up, inbright habiliments, during the next ten minutes. The young man waited alittle, wondering if he had only gone to put on something extraordinary;this would account for his delay as well as contribute further to Overt'simpression of his tendency to do the approved superficial thing. But hedidn't arrive--he must have been putting on something more extraordinarythan was probable. Our hero gave him up, feeling a little injured, alittle wounded, at this loss of twenty coveted words. He wasn't angry, but he puffed his cigarette sighingly, with the sense of something rarepossibly missed. He wandered away with his regret and moved slowly roundthe room, looking at the old prints on the walls. In this attitude hepresently felt a hand on his shoulder and a friendly voice in his ear"This is good. I hoped I should find you. I came down on purpose. " St. George was there without a change of dress and with a fine face--hisgraver one--to which our young man all in a flutter responded. Heexplained that it was only for the Master--the idea of a little talk--thathe had sat up, and that, not finding him, he had been on the point ofgoing to bed. 

"Well, you know, I don't smoke--my wife doesn't let me, " said St. George, looking for a place to sit down. "It's very good for me--very good forme. Let us take that sofa. "

"Do you mean smoking's good for you?"

"No no--her not letting me. It's a great thing to have a wife who's sosure of all the things one can do without. One might never find them outone's self. She doesn't allow me to touch a cigarette. " They tookpossession of a sofa at a distance from the group of smokers, and St. George went on: "Have you got one yourself?"

"Do you mean a cigarette?"

"Dear no--a wife. "

"No; and yet I'd give up my cigarette for one. "

"You'd give up a good deal more than that, " St. George returned. "However, you'd get a great deal in return. There's a something to besaid for wives, " he added, folding his arms and crossing his outstretchedlegs. He declined tobacco altogether and sat there without returningfire. His companion stopped smoking, touched by his courtesy; and afterall they were out of the fumes, their sofa was in a far-away corner. Itwould have been a mistake, St. George went on, a great mistake for themto have separated without a little chat; "for I know all about you, " hesaid, "I know you're very remarkable. You've written a verydistinguished book. "

"And how do you know it?" Paul asked. 

"Why, my dear fellow, it's in the air, it's in the papers, it'severywhere. " St. George spoke with the immediate familiarity of aconfrere--a tone that seemed to his neighbour the very rustle of thelaurel. "You're on all men's lips and, what's better, on all women's. And I've just been reading your book. "

"Just? You hadn't read it this afternoon, " said Overt. 

"How do you know that?"

"I think you should know how I know it, " the young man laughed. 

"I suppose Miss Fancourt told you. "

"No indeed--she led me rather to suppose you had. "

"Yes--that's much more what she'd do. Doesn't she shed a rosy glow overlife? But you didn't believe her?" asked St. George. 

"No, not when you came to us there. "

"Did I pretend? did I pretend badly?" But without waiting for an answerto this St. George went on: "You ought always to believe such a girl asthat--always, always. Some women are meant to be taken with allowancesand reserves; but you must take _her_ just as she is. "

"I like her very much, " said Paul Overt. 

Something in his tone appeared to excite on his companion's part amomentary sense of the absurd; perhaps it was the air of deliberationattending this judgement. St. George broke into a laugh to reply. "It'sthe best thing you can do with her. She's a rare young lady! In pointof fact, however, I confess I hadn't read you this afternoon. "

"Then you see how right I was in this particular case not to believe MissFancourt. "

"How right? how can I agree to that when I lost credit by it?"

"Do you wish to pass exactly for what she represents you? Certainly youneedn't be afraid, " Paul said. 

"Ah, my dear young man, don't talk about passing--for the likes of me!I'm passing away--nothing else than that. She has a better use for heryoung imagination (isn't it fine?) than in 'representing' in any way sucha weary wasted used-up animal!" The Master spoke with a sudden sadnessthat produced a protest on Paul's part; but before the protest could beuttered he went on, reverting to the latter's striking novel: "I had noidea you were so good--one hears of so many things. But you'resurprisingly good. "

"I'm going to be surprisingly better, " Overt made bold to reply. 

"I see that, and it's what fetches me. I don't see so much else--as onelooks about--that's going to be surprisingly better. They're going to beconsistently worse--most of the things. It's so much easier to beworse--heaven knows I've found it so. I'm not in a great glow, you know, about what's breaking out all over the place. But you _must_ bebetter--you really must keep it up. I haven't of course. It's verydifficult--that's the devil of the whole thing, keeping it up. But I seeyou'll be able to. It will be a great disgrace if you don't. "

"It's very interesting to hear you speak of yourself; but I don't knowwhat you mean by your allusions to your having fallen off, " Paul Overtobserved with pardonable hypocrisy. He liked his companion so much nowthat the fact of any decline of talent or of care had ceased for themoment to be vivid to him. 

"Don't say that--don't say that, " St. George returned gravely, his headresting on the top of the sofa-back and his eyes on the ceiling. "Youknow perfectly what I mean. I haven't read twenty pages of your bookwithout seeing that you can't help it. "

"You make me very miserable, " Paul ecstatically breathed. 

"I'm glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of warning. Shockingenough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of faith--thespectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my age in suchdishonour. " St. George, in the same contemplative attitude, spoke softlybut deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone indeedsuggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically cruel--cruel tohimself--and made his young friend lay an argumentative hand on his arm. But he went on while his eyes seemed to follow the graces of theeighteenth-century ceiling: "Look at me well, take my lesson to heart--forit _is_ a lesson. Let that good come of it at least that you shudderwith your pitiful impression, and that this may help to keep you straightin the future. Don't become in your old age what I have in mine--thedepressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of false gods!"

"What do you mean by your old age?" the young man asked. 

"It has made me old. But I like your youth. "

Paul answered nothing--they sat for a minute in silence. They heard theothers going on about the governmental majority. Then "What do you meanby false gods?" he enquired. 

His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, "The idols of themarket; money and luxury and 'the world;' placing one's children anddressing one's wife; everything that drives one to the short and easyway. Ah the vile things they make one do!"

"But surely one's right to want to place one's children. "

"One has no business to have any children, " St. George placidly declared. "I mean of course if one wants to do anything good. "

"But aren't they an inspiration--an incentive?"

"An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking. "

"You touch on very deep things--things I should like to discuss withyou, " Paul said. "I should like you to tell me volumes about yourself. This is a great feast for _me_!"

"Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you I'm still not incapable, degraded as I am, of an act of faith, I'll tie my vanity to the stake foryou and burn it to ashes. You must come and see me--you must come andsee us, " the Master quickly substituted. "Mrs. St. George is charming; Idon't know whether you've had any opportunity to talk with her. She'llbe delighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whether incipientor predominant. You must come and dine--my wife will write to you. Whereare you to be found?"

"This is my little address"--and Overt drew out his pocketbook andextracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, however, he kept it back, remarking that he wouldn't trouble his friend to take charge of it butwould come and see him straightway in London and leave it at his door ifhe should fail to obtain entrance. 

"Ah you'll probably fail; my wife's always out--or when she isn't out isknocked up from having been out. You must come and dine--though thatwon't do much good either, for my wife insists on big dinners. " St. George turned it over further, but then went on: "You must come down andsee us in the country, that's the best way; we've plenty of room, and itisn't bad. "

"You've a house in the country?" Paul asked enviously. 

"Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go to--an hour fromEuston. That's one of the reasons. "

"One of the reasons?"

"Why my books are so bad. "

"You must tell me all the others!" Paul longingly laughed. 

His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again abruptly. "Why have I never seen you before?"

The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our hero, who feltit to imply the great man's now perceiving he had for years missedsomething. "Partly, I suppose, because there has been no particularreason why you should see me. I haven't lived in the world--in yourworld. I've spent many years out of England, in different placesabroad. "

"Well, please don't do it any more. You must do England--there's such alot of it. "

"Do you mean I must write about it?" and Paul struck the note of thelistening candour of a child. 

"Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you mind? That takes offa little of my esteem for this thing of yours--that it goes on abroad. Hang 'abroad!' Stay at home and do things here--do subjects we canmeasure. "

"I'll do whatever you tell me, " Overt said, deeply attentive. "Butpardon me if I say I don't understand how you've been reading my book, "he added. "I've had you before me all the afternoon, first in that longwalk, then at tea on the lawn, till we went to dress for dinner, and allthe evening at dinner and in this place. "

St. George turned his face about with a smile. "I gave it but a quarterof an hour. "

"A quarter of an hour's immense, but I don't understand where you put itin. In the drawing-room after dinner you weren't reading--you weretalking to Miss Fancourt. "

"It comes to the same thing, because we talked about 'Ginistrella. ' Shedescribed it to me--she lent me her copy. "

"Lent it to you?"

"She travels with it. "

"It's incredible, " Paul blushed. 

"It's glorious for you, but it also turned out very well for me. Whenthe ladies went off to bed she kindly offered to send the book down tome. Her maid brought it to me in the hall and I went to my room with it. I hadn't thought of coming here, I do that so little. But I don't sleepearly, I always have to read an hour or two. I sat down to your novel onthe spot, without undressing, without taking off anything but my coat. Ithink that's a sign my curiosity had been strongly roused about it. Iread a quarter of an hour, as I tell you, and even in a quarter of anhour I was greatly struck. "

"Ah the beginning isn't very good--it's the whole thing!" said Overt, whohad listened to this recital with extreme interest. "And you laid downthe book and came after me?" he asked. 

"That's the way it moved me. I said to myself 'I see it's off his ownbat, and he's there, by the way, and the day's over and I haven't saidtwenty words to him. ' It occurred to me that you'd probably be in thesmoking-room and that it wouldn't be too late to repair my omission. Iwanted to do something civil to you, so I put on my coat and came down. Ishall read your book again when I go up. "

Our friend faced round in his place--he was touched as he had scarce everbeen by the picture of such a demonstration in his favour. "You'rereally the kindest of men. Cela s'est passe comme ca?--and I've beensitting here with you all this time and never apprehended it and neverthanked you!"

"Thank Miss Fancourt--it was she who wound me up. She has made me feelas if I had read your novel. "

"She's an angel from heaven!" Paul declared. 

"She is indeed. I've never seen any one like her. Her interest inliterature's touching--something quite peculiar to herself; she takes itall so seriously. She feels the arts and she wants to feel them more. Tothose who practise them it's almost humiliating--her curiosity, hersympathy, her good faith. How can anything be as fine as she supposesit?"

"She's a rare organisation, " the younger man sighed. 

"The richest I've ever seen--an artistic intelligence really of the firstorder. And lodged in such a form!" St. George exclaimed. 

"One would like to represent such a girl as that, " Paul continued. 

"Ah there it is--there's nothing like life!" said his companion. "Whenyou're finished, squeezed dry and used up and you think the sack's empty, you're still appealed to, you still get touches and thrills, the ideasprings up--out of the lap of the actual--and shows you there's alwayssomething to be done. But I shan't do it--she's not for me!"

"How do you mean, not for you?"

"Oh it's all over--she's for you, if you like. "

"Ah much less!" said Paul. "She's not for a dingy little man of letters;she's for the world, the bright rich world of bribes and rewards. Andthe world will take hold of her--it will carry her away. "

"It will try--but it's just a case in which there may be a fight. Itwould be worth fighting, for a man who had it in him, with youth andtalent on his side. "

These words rang not a little in Paul Overt's consciousness--they heldhim briefly silent. "It's a wonder she has remained as she is; givingherself away so--with so much to give away. "

"Remaining, you mean, so ingenuous--so natural? Oh she doesn't care astraw--she gives away because she overflows. She has her own feelings, her own standards; she doesn't keep remembering that she must be proud. And then she hasn't been here long enough to be spoiled; she has pickedup a fashion or two, but only the amusing ones. She's a provincial--aprovincial of genius, " St. George went on; "her very blunders arecharming, her mistakes are interesting. She has come back from Asia withall sorts of excited curiosities and unappeased appetities. She's first-rate herself and she expends herself on the second-rate. She's lifeherself and she takes a rare interest in imitations. She mixes allthings up, but there are none in regard to which she hasn't perceptions. She sees things in a perspective--as if from the top of the Himalayas--andshe enlarges everything she touches. Above all she exaggerates--toherself, I mean. She exaggerates you and me!"

There was nothing in that description to allay the agitation caused inour younger friend by such a sketch of a fine subject. It seemed to himto show the art of St. George's admired hand, and he lost himself ingazing at the vision--this hovered there before him--of a woman's figurewhich should be part of the glory of a novel. But at the end of a momentthe thing had turned into smoke, and out of the smoke--the last puff of abig cigar--proceeded the voice of General Fancourt, who had left theothers and come and planted himself before the gentlemen on the sofa. "Isuppose that when you fellows get talking you sit up half the night. "

"Half the night?--jamais de la vie! I follow a hygiene"--and St. Georgerose to his feet. 

"I see--you're hothouse plants, " laughed the General. "That's the wayyou produce your flowers. "

"I produce mine between ten and one every morning--I bloom with aregularity!" St. George went on. 

"And with a splendour!" added the polite General, while Paul noted howlittle the author of "Shadowmere" minded, as he phrased it to himself, when addressed as a celebrated story-teller. The young man had an idea_he_ should never get used to that; it would always make himuncomfortable--from the suspicion that people would think they had to--andhe would want to prevent it. Evidently his great colleague had toughenedand hardened--had made himself a surface. The group of men had finishedtheir cigars and taken up their bedroom candlesticks; but before they allpassed out Lord Watermouth invited the pair of guests who had been soabsorbed together to "have" something. It happened that they bothdeclined; upon which General Fancourt said: "Is that the hygiene? Youdon't water the flowers?"

"Oh I should drown them!" St. George replied; but, leaving the room stillat his young friend's side, he added whimsically, for the latter'sbenefit, in a lower tone: "My wife doesn't let me. "

"Well I'm glad I'm not one of you fellows!" the General richly concluded. 

The nearness of Summersoft to London had this consequence, chilling to aperson who had had a vision of sociability in a railway-carriage, thatmost of the company, after breakfast, drove back to town, entering theirown vehicles, which had come out to fetch them, while their servantsreturned by train with their luggage. Three or four young men, amongwhom was Paul Overt, also availed themselves of the common convenience;but they stood in the portico of the house and saw the others roll away. Miss Fancourt got into a victoria with her father after she had shakenhands with our hero and said, smiling in the frankest way in the world, "I _must_ see you more. Mrs. St. George is so nice: she has promised toask us both to dinner together. " This lady and her husband took theirplaces in a perfectly-appointed brougham--she required a closedcarriage--and as our young man waved his hat to them in response to theirnods and flourishes he reflected that, taken together, they were anhonourable image of success, of the material rewards and the socialcredit of literature. Such things were not the full measure, but henevertheless felt a little proud for literature. 

CHAPTER IV

Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, at aprivate view of the works of a young artist in "black-and-white" who hadbeen so good as to invite him to the stuffy scene. The drawings wereadmirable, but the crowd in the one little room was so dense that he felthimself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A fringe of people at theouter edge endeavoured by curving forward their backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface of resistance to the pressure ofthe mass, to preserve an interval between their noses and the glazedmounts of the pictures; while the central body, in the comparative gloomprojected by a wide horizontal screen hung under the skylight andallowing only a margin for the day, remained upright dense and vague, lost in the contemplation of its own ingredients. This contemplation satespecially in the sad eyes of certain female heads, surmounted with hatsof strange convolution and plumage, which rose on long necks above theothers. One of the heads Paul perceived, was much the so most beautifulof the collection, and his next discovery was that it belonged to MissFancourt. Its beauty was enhanced by the glad smile she sent him acrosssurrounding obstructions, a smile that drew him to her as fast as hecould make his way. He had seen for himself at Summersoft that the lastthing her nature contained was an affectation of indifference; yet evenwith this circumspection he took a fresh satisfaction in her not havingpretended to await his arrival with composure. She smiled as radiantlyas if she wished to make him hurry, and as soon as he came within earshotshe broke out in her voice of joy: "He's here--he's here--he's comingback in a moment!"

"Ah your father?" Paul returned as she offered him her hand. 

"Oh dear no, this isn't in my poor father's line. I mean Mr. St. George. He has just left me to speak to some one--he's coming back. It's he whobrought me--wasn't it charming?"

"Ah that gives him a pull over me--I couldn't have 'brought' you, couldI?"

"If you had been so kind as to propose it--why not you as well as he?"the girl returned with a face that, expressing no cheap coquetry, simplyaffirmed a happy fact. 

"Why he's a pere de famille. They've privileges, " Paul explained. Andthen quickly: "Will you go to see places with _me_?" he asked. 

"Anything you like!" she smiled. "I know what you mean, that girls haveto have a lot of people--" Then she broke off: "I don't know; I'm free. I've always been like that--I can go about with any one. I'm so glad tomeet you, " she added with a sweet distinctness that made those near herturn round. 

"Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this squash, " herfriend said. "Surely people aren't happy here!"

"No, they're awfully mornes, aren't they? But I'm very happy indeed andI promised Mr. St. George to remain in this spot till he comes back. He'sgoing to take me away. They send him invitations for things of thissort--more than he wants. It was so kind of him to think of me. "

"They also send me invitations of this kind--more than _I_ want. And ifthinking of _you_ will do it--!" Paul went on. 

"Oh I delight in them--everything that's life--everything that's London!"

"They don't have private views in Asia, I suppose, " he laughed. "Butwhat a pity that for this year, even in this gorged city, they're prettywell over. "

"Well, next year will do, for I hope you believe we're going to befriends always. Here he comes!" Miss Fancourt continued before Paul hadtime to respond. 

He made out St. George in the gaps of the crowd, and this perhaps led tohis hurrying a little to say: "I hope that doesn't mean I'm to wait tillnext year to see you. "

"No, no--aren't we to meet at dinner on the twenty-fifth?" she pantedwith an eagerness as happy as his own. 

"That's almost next year. Is there no means of seeing you before?"

She stared with all her brightness. "Do you mean you'd _come_?"

"Like a shot, if you'll be so good as to ask me!"

"On Sunday then--this next Sunday?"

"What have I done that you should doubt it?" the young man asked withdelight. 

Miss Fancourt turned instantly to St. George, who had now joined them, and announced triumphantly: "He's coming on Sunday--this next Sunday!"

"Ah my day--my day too!" said the famous novelist, laughing, to theircompanion. 

"Yes, but not yours only. You shall meet in Manchester Square; you shalltalk--you shall be wonderful!"

"We don't meet often enough, " St. George allowed, shaking hands with hisdisciple. "Too many things--ah too many things! But we must make it upin the country in September. You won't forget you've promised me that?"

"Why he's coming on the twenty-fifth--you'll see him then, " said thegirl. 

"On the twenty-fifth?" St. George asked vaguely. 

"We dine with you; I hope you haven't forgotten. He's dining out thatday, " she added gaily to Paul. 

"Oh bless me, yes--that's charming! And you're coming? My wife didn'ttell me, " St. George said to him. "Too many things--too many things!" herepeated. 

"Too many people--too many people!" Paul exclaimed, giving ground beforethe penetration of an elbow. 

"You oughtn't to say that. They all read you. "

"Me? I should like to see them! Only two or three at most, " the youngman returned. 

"Did you ever hear anything like that? He knows, haughtily, how good heis!" St. George declared, laughing to Miss Fancourt. "They read _me_, but that doesn't make me like them any better. Come away from them, comeaway!" And he led the way out of the exhibition. 

"He's going to take me to the Park, " Miss Fancourt observed to Overt withelation as they passed along the corridor that led to the street. 

"Ah does he go there?" Paul asked, taking the fact for a somewhatunexpected illustration of St. George's moeurs. 

"It's a beautiful day--there'll be a great crowd. We're going to look atthe people, to look at types, " the girl went on. "We shall sit under thetrees; we shall walk by the Row. "

"I go once a year--on business, " said St. George, who had overheardPaul's question. 

"Or with a country cousin, didn't you tell me? I'm the country cousin!"she continued over her shoulder to Paul as their friend drew her toward ahansom to which he had signalled. The young man watched them get in; hereturned, as he stood there, the friendly wave of the hand with which, ensconced in the vehicle beside her, St. George took leave of him. Heeven lingered to see the vehicle start away and lose itself in theconfusion of Bond Street. He followed it with his eyes; it put to himembarrassing things. "She's not for _me_!" the great novelist had saidemphatically at Summersoft; but his manner of conducting himself towardher appeared not quite in harmony with such a conviction. How could hehave behaved differently if she _had_ been for him? An indefinite envyrose in Paul Overt's heart as he took his way on foot alone; a feelingaddressed alike strangely enough, to each of the occupants of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle about London with such a girl! Howmuch he should like to go and look at "types" with St. George!

The next Sunday at four o'clock he called in Manchester Square, where hissecret wish was gratified by his finding Miss Fancourt alone. She was ina large bright friendly occupied room, which was painted red all over, draped with the quaint cheap florid stuffs that are represented as comingfrom southern and eastern countries, where they are fabled to serve asthe counterpanes of the peasantry, and bedecked with pottery of vividhues, ranged on casual shelves, and with many water-colour drawings fromthe hand (as the visitor learned) of the young lady herself, commemorating with a brave breadth the sunsets, the mountains, thetemples and palaces of India. He sat an hour--more than an hour, twohours--and all the while no one came in. His hostess was so good as toremark, with her liberal humanity, that it was delightful they weren'tinterrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that season, thatpeople got a good talk. But luckily now, of a fine Sunday, half theworld went out of town, and that made it better for those who didn't go, when these others were in sympathy. It was the defect of London--one oftwo or three, the very short list of those she recognised in the teemingworld-city she adored--that there were too few good chances for talk; younever had time to carry anything far. 

"Too many things--too many things!" Paul said, quoting St. George'sexclamation of a few days before. 

"Ah yes, for him there are too many--his life's too complicated. "

"Have you seen it _near_? That's what I should like to do; it mightexplain some mysteries, " her visitor went on. She asked him whatmysteries he meant, and he said: "Oh peculiarities of his work, inequalities, superficialities. For one who looks at it from theartistic point of view it contains a bottomless ambiguity. "

She became at this, on the spot, all intensity. "Ah do describe thatmore--it's so interesting. There are no such suggestive questions. I'mso fond of them. He thinks he's a failure--fancy!" she beautifullywailed. 

"That depends on what his ideal may have been. With his gifts it oughtto have been high. But till one knows what he really proposed tohimself--? Do _you_ know by chance?" the young man broke off. 

"Oh he doesn't talk to me about himself. I can't make him. It's tooprovoking. "

Paul was on the point of asking what then he did talk about, butdiscretion checked it and he said instead: "Do you think he's unhappy athome?"

She seemed to wonder. "At home?"

"I mean in his relations with his wife. He has a mystifying little wayof alluding to her. "

"Not to me, " said Marian Fancourt with her clear eyes. "That wouldn't beright, would it?" she asked gravely. 

"Not particularly; so I'm glad he doesn't mention her to you. To praiseher might bore you, and he has no business to do anything else. Yet heknows you better than me. "

"Ah but he respects _you_!" the girl cried as with envy. 

Her visitor stared a moment, then broke into a laugh. "Doesn't herespect you?"

"Of course, but not in the same way. He respects what you've done--hetold me so, the other day. "

Paul drank it in, but retained his faculties. "When you went to look attypes?"

"Yes--we found so many: he has such an observation of them! He talked agreat deal about your book. He says it's really important. "

"Important! Ah the grand creature!"--and the author of the work inquestion groaned for joy. 

"He was wonderfully amusing, he was inexpressibly droll, while we walkedabout. He sees everything; he has so many comparisons and images, andthey're always exactly right. C'est d'un trouve, as they say. "

"Yes, with his gifts, such things as he ought to have done!" Paul sighed. 

"And don't you think he _has_ done them?"

Ah it was just the point. "A part of them, and of course even thatpart's immense. But he might have been one of the greatest. However, let us not make this an hour of qualifications. Even as they stand, " ourfriend earnestly concluded, "his writings are a mine of gold. "

To this proposition she ardently responded, and for half an hour the pairtalked over the Master's principal productions. She knew them well--sheknew them even better than her visitor, who was struck with her criticalintelligence and with something large and bold in the movement in hermind. She said things that startled him and that evidently had come toher directly; they weren't picked-up phrases--she placed them too well. St. George had been right about her being first-rate, about her not beingafraid to gush, not remembering that she must be proud. Suddenlysomething came back to her, and she said: "I recollect that he did speakof Mrs. St. George to me once. He said, apropos of something or other, that she didn't care for perfection. "

"That's a great crime in an artist's wife, " Paul returned. 

"Yes, poor thing!" and the girl sighed with a suggestion of manyreflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently added: "Ahperfection, perfection--how one ought to go in for it! I wish _I_could. "

"Every one can in his way, " her companion opined. 

"In _his_ way, yes--but not in hers. Women are so hampered--socondemned! Yet it's a kind of dishonour if you don't, when you want to_do_ something, isn't it?" Miss Fancourt pursued, dropping one train inher quickness to take up another, an accident that was common with her. So these two young persons sat discussing high themes in their eclecticdrawing-room, in their London "season"--discussing, with extremeseriousness, the high theme of perfection. It must be said inextenuation of this eccentricity that they were interested in thebusiness. Their tone had truth and their emotion beauty; they weren'tposturing for each other or for some one else. 

The subject was so wide that they found themselves reducing it; theperfection to which for the moment they agreed to confine theirspeculations was that of the valid, the exemplary work of art. Our youngwoman's imagination, it appeared, had wandered far in that direction, andher guest had the rare delight of feeling in their conversation a fullinterchange. This episode will have lived for years in his memory andeven in his wonder; it had the quality that fortune distils in a singledrop at a time--the quality that lubricates many ensuing frictions. Hestill, whenever he likes, has a vision of the room, the bright redsociable talkative room with the curtains that, by a stroke of successfulaudacity, had the note of vivid blue. He remembers where certain thingsstood, the particular book open on the table and the almost intense odourof the flowers placed, at the left, somewhere behind him. These factswere the fringe, as it were, of a fine special agitation which had itsbirth in those two hours and of which perhaps the main sign was in itsleading him inwardly and repeatedly to breathe "I had no idea there wasany one like this--I had no idea there was any one like this!" Herfreedom amazed him and charmed him--it seemed so to simplify thepractical question. She was on the footing of an independent personage--amotherless girl who had passed out of her teens and had a position andresponsibilities, who wasn't held down to the limitations of a littlemiss. She came and went with no dragged duenna, she received peoplealone, and, though she was totally without hardness, the question ofprotection or patronage had no relevancy in regard to her. She gave suchan impression of the clear and the noble combined with the easy and thenatural that in spite of her eminent modern situation she suggested nosort of sister-hood with the "fast" girl. Modern she was indeed, andmade Paul Overt, who loved old colour, the golden glaze of time, thinkwith some alarm of the muddled palette of the future. He couldn't getused to her interest in the arts he cared for; it seemed too good to bereal--it was so unlikely an adventure to tumble into such a well ofsympathy. One might stray into the desert easily--that was on the cardsand that was the law of life; but it was too rare an accident to stumbleon a crystal well. Yet if her aspirations seemed at one moment tooextravagant to be real they struck him at the next as too intelligent tobe false. They were both high and lame, and, whims for whims, hepreferred them to any he had met in a like relation. It was probableenough she would leave them behind--exchange them for politics or"smartness" or mere prolific maternity, as was the custom of scribblingdaubing educated flattered girls in an age of luxury and a society ofleisure. He noted that the water-colours on the walls of the room shesat in had mainly the quality of being naives, and reflected that naivetein art is like a zero in a number: its importance depends on the figureit is united with. Meanwhile, however, he had fallen in love with her. Before he went away, at any rate, he said to her: "I thought St. Georgewas coming to see you to-day, but he doesn't turn up. "

For a moment he supposed she was going to cry "Comment donc? Did youcome here only to meet him?" But the next he became aware of how littlesuch a speech would have fallen in with any note of flirtation he had asyet perceived in her. She only replied: "Ah yes, but I don't think he'llcome. He recommended me not to expect him. " Then she gaily but allgently added: "He said it wasn't fair to you. But I think I could managetwo. "

"So could I, " Paul Overt returned, stretching the point a little to meether. In reality his appreciation of the occasion was so completely anappreciation of the woman before him that another figure in the scene, even so esteemed a one as St. George, might for the hour have appealed tohim vainly. He left the house wondering what the great man had meant byits not being fair to him; and, still more than that, whether he hadactually stayed away from the force of that idea. As he took his coursethrough the Sunday solitude of Manchester Square, swinging his stick andwith a good deal of emotion fermenting in his soul, it appeared to him hewas living in a world strangely magnanimous. Miss Fancourt had told himit was possible she should be away, and that her father should be, on thefollowing Sunday, but that she had the hope of a visit from him in theother event. She promised to let him know should their absence fail, andthen he might act accordingly. After he had passed into one of thestreets that open from the Square he stopped, without definiteintentions, looking sceptically for a cab. In a moment he saw a hansomroll through the place from the other side and come a part of the waytoward him. He was on the point of hailing the driver when he noticed a"fare" within; then he waited, seeing the man prepare to deposit hispassenger by pulling up at one of the houses. The house was apparentlythe one he himself had just quitted; at least he drew that inference ashe recognised Henry St. George in the person who stepped out of thehansom. Paul turned off as quickly as if he had been caught in the actof spying. He gave up his cab--he preferred to walk; he would go nowhereelse. He was glad St. George hadn't renounced his visit altogether--thatwould have been too absurd. Yes, the world was magnanimous, and even hehimself felt so as, on looking at his watch, he noted but six o'clock, sothat he could mentally congratulate his successor on having an hour stillto sit in Miss Fancourt's drawing-room. He himself might use that hourfor another visit, but by the time he reached the Marble Arch the idea ofsuch a course had become incongruous to him. He passed beneath thatarchitectural effort and walked into the Park till he got upon thespreading grass. Here he continued to walk; he took his way across theelastic turf and came out by the Serpentine. He watched with a friendlyeye the diversions of the London people, he bent a glance almostencouraging on the young ladies paddling their sweethearts about the lakeand the guardsmen tickling tenderly with their bearskins the artificialflowers in the Sunday hats of their partners. He prolonged hismeditative walk; he went into Kensington Gardens, he sat upon the pennychairs, he looked at the little sail-boats launched upon the round pondand was glad he had no engagement to dine. He repaired for this purpose, very late, to his club, where he found himself unable to order a repastand told the waiter to bring whatever there was. He didn't even observewhat he was served with, and he spent the evening in the library of theestablishment, pretending to read an article in an American magazine. Hefailed to discover what it was about; it appeared in a dim way to beabout Marian Fancourt. 

Quite late in the week she wrote to him that she was not to go into thecountry--it had only just been settled. Her father, she added, wouldnever settle anything, but put it all on her. She felt herresponsibility--she had to--and since she was forced this was the way shehad decided. She mentioned no reasons, which gave our friend all theclearer field for bold conjecture about them. In Manchester Square onthis second Sunday he esteemed his fortune less good, for she had threeor four other visitors. But there were three or four compensations;perhaps the greatest of which was that, learning how her father had afterall, at the last hour, gone out of town alone, the bold conjecture I justnow spoke of found itself becoming a shade more bold. And then herpresence was her presence, and the personal red room was there and wasfull of it, whatever phantoms passed and vanished, emittingincomprehensible sounds. Lastly, he had the resource of staying tillevery one had come and gone and of believing this grateful to her, thoughshe gave no particular sign. When they were alone together he came tohis point. "But St. George did come--last Sunday. I saw him as I lookedback. "

"Yes; but it was the last time. "

"The last time?"

"He said he would never come again. "

Paul Overt stared. "Does he mean he wishes to cease to see you?"

"I don't know what he means, " the girl bravely smiled. "He won't at anyrate see me here. "

"And pray why not?"

"I haven't the least idea, " said Marian Fancourt, whose visitor found hermore perversely sublime than ever yet as she professed this clearhelplessness. 

CHAPTER V

"Oh I say, I want you to stop a little, " Henry St. George said to him ateleven o'clock the night he dined with the head of the profession. Thecompany--none of it indeed _of_ the profession--had been numerous and wastaking its leave; our young man, after bidding good-night to his hostess, had put out his hand in farewell to the master of the house. Besidesdrawing from the latter the protest I have cited this movement provoked afurther priceless word about their chance now to have a talk, their goinginto his room, his having still everything to say. Paul Overt was alldelight at this kindness; nevertheless he mentioned in weak jocosequalification the bare fact that he had promised to go to another placewhich was at a considerable distance. 

"Well then you'll break your promise, that's all. You quite awfulhumbug!" St. George added in a tone that confirmed our young man's ease. 

"Certainly I'll break it--but it was a real promise. "

"Do you mean to Miss Fancourt? You're following her?" his friend asked. 

He answered by a question. "Oh is _she_ going?"

"Base impostor!" his ironic host went on. "I've treated you handsomelyon the article of that young lady: I won't make another concession. Waitthree minutes--I'll be with you. " He gave himself to his departingguests, accompanied the long-trained ladies to the door. It was a hotnight, the windows were open, the sound of the quick carriages and of thelinkmen's call came into the house. The affair had rather glittered; asense of festal things was in the heavy air: not only the influence ofthat particular entertainment, but the suggestion of the wide hurry ofpleasure which in London on summer nights fills so many of the happierquarters of the complicated town. Gradually Mrs. St. George's drawing-room emptied itself; Paul was left alone with his hostess, to whom heexplained the motive of his waiting. "Ah yes, some intellectual, some_professional_, talk, " she leered; "at this season doesn't one miss it?Poor dear Henry, I'm so glad!" The young man looked out of the window amoment, at the called hansoms that lurched up, at the smooth broughamsthat rolled away. When he turned round Mrs. St. George had disappeared;her husband's voice rose to him from below--he was laughing and talking, in the portico, with some lady who awaited her carriage. Paul hadsolitary possession, for some minutes, of the warm deserted rooms wherethe covered tinted lamplight was soft, the seats had been pushed aboutand the odour of flowers lingered. They were large, they were pretty, they contained objects of value; everything in the picture told of a"good house. " At the end of five minutes a servant came in with arequest from the Master that he would join him downstairs; upon which, descending, he followed his conductor through a long passage to anapartment thrown out, in the rear of the habitation, for the specialrequirements, as he guessed, of a busy man of letters. 

St. George was in his shirt-sleeves in the middle of a large high room--aroom without windows, but with a wide skylight at the top, that of aplace of exhibition. It was furnished as a library, and the serriedbookshelves rose to the ceiling, a surface of incomparable tone producedby dimly-gilt "backs" interrupted here and there by the suspension of oldprints and drawings. At the end furthest from the door of admission wasa tall desk, of great extent, at which the person using it could writeonly in the erect posture of a clerk in a counting-house; and stretchedfrom the entrance to this structure was a wide plain band of crimsoncloth, as straight as a garden-path and almost as long, where, in hismind's eye, Paul at once beheld the Master pace to and fro during vexedhours--hours, that is, of admirable composition. The servant gave him acoat, an old jacket with a hang of experience, from a cupboard in thewall, retiring afterwards with the garment he had taken off. Paul Overtwelcomed the coat; it was a coat for talk, it promised confidences--havingvisibly received so many--and had tragic literary elbows. "Ah we'repractical--we're practical!" St. George said as he saw his visitor lookthe place over. "Isn't it a good big cage for going round and round? Mywife invented it and she locks me up here every morning. "

Our young man breathed--by way of tribute--with a certain oppression. "You don't miss a window--a place to look out?"

"I did at first awfully; but her calculation was just. It saves time, ithas saved me many months in these ten years. Here I stand, under the eyeof day--in London of course, very often, it's rather a bleared oldeye--walled in to my trade. I can't get away--so the room's a finelesson in concentration. I've learnt the lesson, I think; look at thatbig bundle of proof and acknowledge it. " He pointed to a fat roll ofpapers, on one of the tables, which had not been undone. 

"Are you bringing out another--?" Paul asked in a tone the fonddeficiencies of which he didn't recognise till his companion burst outlaughing, and indeed scarce even then. 

"You humbug, you humbug!"--St. George appeared to enjoy caressing him, asit were, with that opprobrium. "Don't I know what you think of them?" heasked, standing there with his hands in his pockets and with a new kindof smile. It was as if he were going to let his young votary see him allnow. 

"Upon my word in that case you know more than I do!" the latter venturedto respond, revealing a part of the torment of being able neither clearlyto esteem nor distinctly to renounce him. 

"My dear fellow, " said the more and more interesting Master, "don'timagine I talk about my books specifically; they're not a decentsubject--il ne manquerait plus que ca! I'm not so bad as you mayapprehend! About myself, yes, a little, if you like; though it wasn'tfor that I brought you down here. I want to ask you something--very muchindeed; I value this chance. Therefore sit down. We're practical, butthere _is_ a sofa, you see--for she does humour my poor bones so far. Like all really great administrators and disciplinarians she knows whenwisely to relax. " Paul sank into the corner of a deep leathern couch, but his friend remained standing and explanatory. "If you don't mind, inthis room, this is my habit. From the door to the desk and from the deskto the door. That shakes up my imagination gently; and don't you seewhat a good thing it is that there's no window for her to fly out of? Theeternal standing as I write (I stop at that bureau and put it down, whenanything comes, and so we go on) was rather wearisome at first, but weadopted it with an eye to the long run; you're in better order--if yourlegs don't break down!--and you can keep it up for more years. Oh we'repractical--we're practical!" St. George repeated, going to the table andtaking up all mechanically the bundle of proofs. But, pulling off thewrapper, he had a change of attention that appealed afresh to our hero. He lost himself a moment, examining the sheets of his new book, while theyounger man's eyes wandered over the room again. 

"Lord, what good things I should do if I had such a charming place asthis to do them in!" Paul reflected. The outer world, the world ofaccident and ugliness, was so successfully excluded, and within the richprotecting square, beneath the patronising sky, the dream-figures, thesummoned company, could hold their particular revel. It was a fondprevision of Overt's rather than an observation on actual data, for whichoccasions had been too few, that the Master thus more closely viewedwould have the quality, the charming gift, of flashing out, allsurprisingly, in personal intercourse and at moments of suspended orperhaps even of diminished expectation. A happy relation with him wouldbe a thing proceeding by jumps, not by traceable stages. 

"Do you read them--really?" he asked, laying down the proofs on Paul'senquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And when theyoung man answered "Oh yes, always, " he was moved to mirth again bysomething he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go to see yourgrandmother on her birthday--and very proper it is, especially as shewon't last for ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; sheneither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties and kindlyhabits are respectable. Only you're strong if you _do_ read 'em! _I_couldn't, my dear fellow. You are strong, I know; and that's just a partof what I wanted to say to you. You're very strong indeed. I've beengoing into your other things--they've interested me immensely. Some oneought to have told me about them before--some one I could believe. Butwhom can one believe? You're wonderfully on the right road--it's awfullydecent work. Now do you mean to keep it up?--that's what I want to askyou. "

"Do I mean to do others?" Paul asked, looking up from his sofa at hiserect inquisitor and feeling partly like a happy little boy when theschool-master is gay, and partly like some pilgrim of old who might haveconsulted a world-famous oracle. St. George's own performance had beeninfirm, but as an adviser he would be infallible. 

"Others--others? Ah the number won't matter; one other would do, if itwere really a further step--a throb of the same effort. What I mean ishave you it in your heart to go in for some sort of decent perfection?"

"Ah decency, ah perfection--!" the young man sincerely sighed. "I talkedof them the other Sunday with Miss Fancourt. "

It produced on the Master's part a laugh of odd acrimony. "Yes, they'll'talk' of them as much as you like! But they'll do little to help one tothem. There's no obligation of course; only you strike me as capable, "he went on. "You must have thought it all over. I can't believe you'rewithout a plan. That's the sensation you give me, and it's so rare thatit really stirs one up--it makes you remarkable. If you haven't a plan, if you _don't_ mean to keep it up, surely you're within your rights; it'snobody's business, no one can force you, and not more than two or threepeople will notice you don't go straight. The others--_all_ the rest, every blest soul in England, will think you do--will think you arekeeping it up: upon my honour they will! I shall be one of the two orthree who know better. Now the question is whether you can do it for twoor three. Is that the stuff you're made of?"

It locked his guest a minute as in closed throbbing arms. "I could do itfor one, if you were the one. "

"Don't say that; I don't deserve it; it scorches me, " he protested witheyes suddenly grave and glowing. "The 'one' is of course one's self, one's conscience, one's idea, the singleness of one's aim. I think ofthat pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hourof his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I've married formoney. " Paul stared and even blushed a little, confounded by thisavowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of his face, droppeda quick laugh and pursued: "You don't follow my figure. I'm not speakingof my dear wife, who had a small fortune--which, however, was not mybribe. I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. I referto the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. Don't, myboy, put your nose into _that_ yoke. The awful jade will lead you alife!"

Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. "Haven't you beenhappy!"

"Happy? It's a kind of hell. "

"There are things I should like to ask you, " Paul said after a pause. 

"Ask me anything in all the world. I'd turn myself inside out to saveyou. "

"To 'save' me?" he quavered. 

"To make you stick to it--to make you see it through. As I said to youthe other night at Summersoft, let my example be vivid to you. "

"Why your books are not so bad as that, " said Paul, fairly laughing andfeeling that if ever a fellow had breathed the air of art--!

"So bad as what?"

"Your talent's so great that it's in everything you do, in what's lessgood as well as in what's best. You've some forty volumes to show forit--forty volumes of wonderful life, of rare observation, of magnificentability. "

"I'm very clever, of course I know that"--but it was a thing, in fine, this author made nothing of. "Lord, what rot they'd all be if I hadn'tbeen I'm a successful charlatan, " he went on--"I've been able to pass offmy system. But do you know what it is? It's cartonpierre. "

"Carton-pierre?" Paul was struck, and gaped. 

"Lincrusta-Walton!"

"Ah don't say such things--you make me bleed!" the younger man protested. "I see you in a beautiful fortunate home, living in comfort and honour. "

"Do you call it honour?"--his host took him up with an intonation thatoften comes back to him. "That's what I want _you_ to go in for. I meanthe real thing. This is brummagem. "

"Brummagem?" Paul ejaculated while his eyes wandered, by a movementnatural at the moment, over the luxurious room. 

"Ah they make it so well to-day--it's wonderfully deceptive!"

Our friend thrilled with the interest and perhaps even more with the pityof it. Yet he wasn't afraid to seem to patronise when he could still sofar envy. "Is it deceptive that I find you living with every appearanceof domestic felicity--blest with a devoted, accomplished wife, withchildren whose acquaintance I haven't yet had the pleasure of making, butwho _must_ be delightful young people, from what I know of theirparents?"

St. George smiled as for the candour of his question. "It's allexcellent, my dear fellow--heaven forbid I should deny it. I've made agreat deal of money; my wife has known how to take care of it, to use itwithout wasting it, to put a good bit of it by, to make it fructify. I'vegot a loaf on the shelf; I've got everything in fact but the greatthing. "

"The great thing?" Paul kept echoing. 

"The sense of having done the best--the sense which is the real life ofthe artist and the absence of which is his death, of having drawn fromhis intellectual instrument the finest music that nature had hidden init, of having played it as it should be played. He either does that orhe doesn't--and if he doesn't he isn't worth speaking of. Therefore, precisely, those who really know _don't_ speak of him. He may still heara great chatter, but what he hears most is the incorruptible silence ofFame. I've squared her, you may say, for my little hour--but what's mylittle hour? Don't imagine for a moment, " the Master pursued, "that I'msuch a cad as to have brought you down here to abuse or to complain of mywife to you. She's a woman of distinguished qualities, to whom myobligations are immense; so that, if you please, we'll say nothing abouther. My boys--my children are all boys--are straight and strong, thankGod, and have no poverty of growth about them, no penury of needs. Ireceive periodically the most satisfactory attestation from Harrow, fromOxford, from Sandhurst--oh we've done the best for them!--of theireminence as living thriving consuming organisms. "

"It must be delightful to feel that the son of one's loins is atSandhurst, " Paul remarked enthusiastically. 

"It is--it's charming. Oh I'm a patriot!"

The young man then could but have the greater tribute of questions topay. "Then what did you mean--the other night at Summersoft--by sayingthat children are a curse?"

"My dear youth, on what basis are we talking?" and St. George droppedupon the sofa at a short distance from him. Sitting a little sideways heleaned back against the opposite arm with his hands raised andinterlocked behind his head. "On the supposition that a certainperfection's possible and even desirable--isn't it so? Well, all I sayis that one's children interfere with perfection. One's wife interferes. Marriage interferes. "

"You think then the artist shouldn't marry?"

"He does so at his peril--he does so at his cost. "

"Not even when his wife's in sympathy with his work?"

"She never is--she can't be! Women haven't a conception of such things. "

"Surely they on occasion work themselves, " Paul objected. 

"Yes, very badly indeed. Oh of course, often, they think theyunderstand, they think they sympathise. Then it is they're mostdangerous. Their idea is that you shall do a great lot and get a greatlot of money. Their great nobleness and virtue, their exemplaryconscientiousness as British females, is in keeping you up to that. Mywife makes all my bargains with my publishers for me, and has done so fortwenty years. She does it consummately well--that's why I'm reallypretty well off. Aren't you the father of their innocent babes, and willyou withhold from them their natural sustenance? You asked me the othernight if they're not an immense incentive. Of course they are--there'sno doubt of that!"

Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt open so wide, so much looking at. "For myself I've an idea I need incentives. "

"Ah well then, n'en parlons plus!" his companion handsomely smiled. 

"_You_ are an incentive, I maintain, " the young man went on. "You don'taffect me in the way you'd apparently like to. Your great success iswhat I see--the pomp of Ennismore Gardens!"

"Success?"--St. George's eyes had a cold fine light. "Do you call itsuccess to be spoken of as you'd speak of me if you were sitting herewith another artist--a young man intelligent and sincere like yourself?Do you call it success to make you blush--as you would blush!--if someforeign critic (some fellow, of course I mean, who should know what hewas talking about and should have shown you he did, as foreign criticslike to show it) were to say to you: 'He's the one, in this country, whomthey consider the most perfect, isn't he?' Is it success to be theoccasion of a young Englishman's having to stammer as you would have tostammer at such a moment for old England? No, no; success is to havemade people wriggle to another tune. Do try it!"

Paul continued all gravely to glow. "Try what?"

"Try to do some really good work. "

"Oh I want to, heaven knows!"

"Well, you can't do it without sacrifices--don't believe that for amoment, " the Master said. "I've made none. I've had everything. Inother words I've missed everything. "

"You've had the full rich masculine human general life, with all theresponsibilities and duties and burdens and sorrows and joys--all thedomestic and social initiations and complications. They must beimmensely suggestive, immensely amusing, " Paul anxiously submitted. 

"Amusing?"

"For a strong man--yes. "

"They've given me subjects without number, if that's what you mean; butthey've taken away at the same time the power to use them. I've toucheda thousand things, but which one of them have I turned into gold? Theartist has to do only with that--he knows nothing of any baser metal. I've led the life of the world, with my wife and my progeny; the clumsyconventional expensive materialised vulgarised brutalised life of London. We've got everything handsome, even a carriage--we're perfect Philistinesand prosperous hospitable eminent people. But, my dear fellow, don't tryto stultify yourself and pretend you don't know what we _haven't_ got. It's bigger than all the rest. Between artists--come!" the Master woundup. "You know as well as you sit there that you'd put a pistol-ball intoyour brain if you had written my books!"

It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised by him atSummersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, a fulness, withwhich the latter's young imagination had scarcely reckoned. Hisimpression fairly shook him and he throbbed with the excitement of suchdeep soundings and such strange confidences. He throbbed indeed with theconflict of his feelings--bewilderment and recognition and alarm, enjoyment and protest and assent, all commingled with tenderness (and akind of shame in the participation) for the sores and bruises exhibitedby so fine a creature, and with a sense of the tragic secret nursed underhis trappings. The idea of _his_, Paul Overt's, becoming the occasion ofsuch an act of humility made him flush and pant, at the same time thathis consciousness was in certain directions too much alive not toswallow--and not intensely to taste--every offered spoonful of therevelation. It had been his odd fortune to blow upon the deep waters, tomake them surge and break in waves of strange eloquence. But howcouldn't he give out a passionate contradiction of his host's lastextravagance, how couldn't he enumerate to him the parts of his work heloved, the splendid things he had found in it, beyond the compass of anyother writer of the day? St. George listened a while, courteously; thenhe said, laying his hand on his visitor's: "That's all very well; and ifyour idea's to do nothing better there's no reason you shouldn't have asmany good things as I--as many human and material appendages, as manysons or daughters, a wife with as many gowns, a house with as manyservants, a stable with as many horses, a heart with as many aches. " TheMaster got up when he had spoken thus--he stood a moment--near the sofalooking down on his agitated pupil. "Are you possessed of any property?"it occurred to him to ask. 

"None to speak of. "

"Oh well then there's no reason why you shouldn't make a goodishincome--if you set about it the right way. Study _me_ for that--study mewell. You may really have horses. "

Paul sat there some minutes without speaking. He looked straight beforehim--he turned over many things. His friend had wandered away, taking upa parcel of letters from the table where the roll of proofs had lain. "What was the book Mrs. St. George made you burn--the one she didn'tlike?" our young man brought out. 

"The book she made me burn--how did you know that?" The Master looked upfrom his letters quite without the facial convulsion the pupil hadfeared. 

"I heard her speak of it at Summersoft. "

"Ah yes--she's proud of it. I don't know--it was rather good. "

"What was it about?"

"Let me see. " And he seemed to make an effort to remember. "Oh yes--itwas about myself. " Paul gave an irrepressible groan for thedisappearance of such a production, and the elder man went on: "Oh but_you_ should write it--_you_ should do me. " And he pulled up--from therestless motion that had come upon him; his fine smile a generous glare. "There's a subject, my boy: no end of stuff in it!"

Again Paul was silent, but it was all tormenting. "Are there no womenwho really understand--who can take part in a sacrifice?"

"How can they take part? They themselves are the sacrifice. They're theidol and the altar and the flame. "

"Isn't there even _one_ who sees further?" Paul continued. 

For a moment St. George made no answer; after which, having torn up hisletters, he came back to the point all ironic. "Of course I know the oneyou mean. But not even Miss Fancourt. "

"I thought you admired her so much. "

"It's impossible to admire her more. Are you in love with her?" St. George asked. 

"Yes, " Paul Overt presently said. 

"Well then give it up. "

Paul stared. "Give up my 'love'?"

"Bless me, no. Your idea. " And then as our hero but still gazed: "Theone you talked with her about. The idea of a decent perfection. "

"She'd help it--she'd help it!" the young man cried. 

"For about a year--the first year, yes. After that she'd be as amillstone round its neck. "

Paul frankly wondered. "Why she has a passion for the real thing, forgood work--for everything you and I care for most. "

"'You and I' is charming, my dear fellow!" his friend laughed. "She hasit indeed, but she'd have a still greater passion for her children--andvery proper too. She'd insist on everything's being made comfortable, advantageous, propitious for them. That isn't the artist's business. "

"The artist--the artist! Isn't he a man all the same?"

St. George had a grand grimace. "I mostly think not. You know as wellas I what he has to do: the concentration, the finish, the independencehe must strive for from the moment he begins to wish his work reallydecent. Ah my young friend, his relation to women, and especially to theone he's most intimately concerned with, is at the mercy of the damningfact that whereas he can in the nature of things have but one standard, they have about fifty. That's what makes them so superior, " St. Georgeamusingly added. "Fancy an artist with a change of standards as you'dhave a change of shirts or of dinner-plates. To _do_ it--to do it andmake it divine--is the only thing he has to think about. 'Is it done ornot?' is his only question. Not 'Is it done as well as a propersolicitude for my dear little family will allow?' He has nothing to dowith the relative--he has only to do with the absolute; and a dear littlefamily may represent a dozen relatives. "

"Then you don't allow him the common passions and affections of men?"Paul asked. 

"Hasn't he a passion, an affection, which includes all the rest? Besides, let him have all the passions he likes--if he only keeps hisindependence. He must be able to be poor. "

Paul slowly got up. "Why then did you advise me to make up to her?"

St. George laid his hand on his shoulder. "Because she'd make a splendidwife! And I hadn't read you then. "

The young man had a strained smile. "I wish you had left me alone!"

"I didn't know that that wasn't good enough for you, " his host returned. 

"What a false position, what a condemnation of the artist, that he's amere disfranchised monk and can produce his effect only by giving uppersonal happiness. What an arraignment of art!" Paul went on with atrembling voice. 

"Ah you don't imagine by chance that I'm defending art? 'Arraignment'--Ishould think so! Happy the societies in which it hasn't made itsappearance, for from the moment it comes they have a consuming ache, theyhave an incurable corruption, in their breast. Most assuredly is theartist in a false position! But I thought we were taking him forgranted. Pardon me, " St. George continued: "'Ginistrella' made me!"

Paul stood looking at the floor--one o'clock struck, in the stillness, from a neighbouring church-tower. "Do you think she'd ever look at me?"he put to his friend at last. 

"Miss Fancourt--as a suitor? Why shouldn't I think it? That's why I'vetried to favour you--I've had a little chance or two of bettering youropportunity. "

"Forgive my asking you, but do you mean by keeping away yourself?" Paulsaid with a blush. 

"I'm an old idiot--my place isn't there, " St. George stated gravely. 

"I'm nothing yet, I've no fortune; and there must be so many others, " hiscompanion pursued. 

The Master took this considerably in, but made little of it. "You're agentleman and a man of genius. I think you might do something. "

"But if I must give that up--the genius?"

"Lots of people, you know, think I've kept mine, " St. George wonderfullygrinned. 

"You've a genius for mystification!" Paul declared; but grasping his handgratefully in attenuation of this judgement. 

"Poor dear boy, I do worry you! But try, try, all the same. I thinkyour chances are good and you'll win a great prize. "

Paul held fast the other's hand a minute; he looked into the strange deepface. "No, I _am_ an artist--I can't help it!"

"Ah show it then!" St. George pleadingly broke out. "Let me see before Idie the thing I most want, the thing I yearn for: a life in which thepassion--ours--is really intense. If you can be rare don't fail of it!Think what it is--how it counts--how it lives!"

They had moved to the door and he had closed both his hands over hiscompanion's. Here they paused again and our hero breathed deep. "I wantto live!"

"In what sense?"

"In the greatest. "

"Well then stick to it--see it through. "

"With your sympathy--your help?"

"Count on that--you'll be a great figure to me. Count on my highestappreciation, my devotion. You'll give me satisfaction--if that has anyweight with you. " After which, as Paul appeared still to waver, his hostadded: "Do you remember what you said to me at Summersoft?"

"Something infatuated, no doubt!"

"'I'll do anything in the world you tell me. ' You said that. "

"And you hold me to it?"

"Ah what am I?" the Master expressively sighed. 

"Lord, what things I shall have to do!" Paul almost moaned as bedeparted. 

CHAPTER VI

"It goes on too much abroad--hang abroad!" These or something like themhad been the Master's remarkable words in relation to the action of"Ginistrella"; and yet, though they had made a sharp impression on theauthor of that work, like almost all spoken words from the same source, he a week after the conversation I have noted left England for a longabsence and full of brave intentions. It is not a perversion of thetruth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of his departure. Ifthe oral utterance of the eminent writer had the privilege of moving himdeeply it was especially on his turning it over at leisure, hours anddays later, that it appeared to yield him its full meaning and exhibitits extreme importance. He spent the summer in Switzerland and, havingin September begun a new task, determined not to cross the Alps till heshould have made a good start. To this end he returned to a quiet cornerhe knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva and within sight of thetowers of Chillon: a region and a view for which he had an affection thatsprang from old associations and was capable of mysterious revivals andrefreshments. Here he lingered late, till the snow was on the nearerhills, almost down to the limit to which he could climb when his stint, on the shortening afternoons, was performed. The autumn was fine, thelake was blue and his book took form and direction. These felicities, for the time, embroidered his life, which he suffered to cover him withits mantle. At the end of six weeks he felt he had learnt St. George'slesson by heart, had tested and proved its doctrine. Nevertheless he dida very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he wrote to MarianFancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only asa luxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that hejustified it. She had asked of him no such favour when, shortly beforehe left London, three days after their dinner in Ennismore Gardens, hewent to take leave of her. It was true she had had no ground--he hadn'tnamed his intention of absence. He had kept his counsel for want of dueassurance: it was that particular visit that was, the next thing, tosettle the matter. He had paid the visit to see how much he really caredfor her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit farewell, was the sequel to this enquiry, the answer to which had created withinhim a deep yearning. When he wrote her from Clarens he noted that heowed her an explanation (more than three months after!) for not havingtold her what he was doing. 

She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave him a striking piece ofnews: that of the death, a week before, of Mrs. St. George. Thisexemplary woman had succumbed, in the country, to a violent attack ofinflammation of the lungs--he would remember that for a long time she hadbeen delicate. Miss Fancourt added that she believed her husbandoverwhelmed by the blow; he would miss her too terribly--she had beeneverything in life to him. Paul Overt, on this, immediately wrote to St. George. He would from the day of their parting have been glad to remainin communication with him, but had hitherto lacked the right excuse fortroubling so busy a man. Their long nocturnal talk came back to him inevery detail, but this was no bar to an expression of proper sympathywith the head of the profession, for hadn't that very talk made it clearthat the late accomplished lady was the influence that ruled his life?What catastrophe could be more cruel than the extinction of such aninfluence? This was to be exactly the tone taken by St. George inanswering his young friend upwards of a month later. He made no allusionof course to their important discussion. He spoke of his wife as franklyand generously as if he had quite forgotten that occasion, and thefeeling of deep bereavement was visible in his words. "She tookeverything off my hands--off my mind. She carried on our life with thegreatest art, the rarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can havebeen, to drive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade. This was a rareservice--the highest she could have rendered me. Would I could haveacknowledged it more fitly!"

A certain bewilderment, for our hero, disengaged itself from theseremarks: they struck him as a contradiction, a retractation, strange onthe part of a man who hadn't the excuse of witlessness. He had certainlynot expected his correspondent to rejoice in the death of his wife, andit was perfectly in order that the rupture of a tie of more than twentyyears should have left him sore. But if she had been so clear a blessingwhat in the name of consistency had the dear man meant by turning himupside down that night--by dosing him to that degree, at the mostsensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advicehad been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on thepoint of rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he wasperfectly willing to consider it so, and he went so far as to take themanuscript of the first chapters of his new book out of his table-drawer, to insert it into a pocket of his portmanteau. This led to his catchinga glimpse of certain pages he hadn't looked at for months, and thataccident, in turn, to his being struck with the high promise theyrevealed--a rare result of such retrospections, which it was his habit toavoid as much as possible: they usually brought home to him that the glowof composition might be a purely subjective and misleading emotion. Onthis occasion a certain belief in himself disengaged itself whimsicallyfrom the serried erasures of his first draft, making him think it bestafter all to pursue his present trial to the end. If he could write aswell under the rigour of privation it might be a mistake to change theconditions before that spell had spent itself. He would go back toLondon of course, but he would go back only when he should have finishedhis book. This was the vow he privately made, restoring his manuscriptto the table-drawer. It may be added that it took him a long time tofinish his book, for the subject was as difficult as it was fine, and hewas literally embarrassed by the fulness of his notes. Something withinhim warned him that he must make it supremely good--otherwise he shouldlack, as regards his private behaviour, a handsome excuse. He had ahorror of this deficiency and found himself as firm as need be on thequestion of the lamp and the file. He crossed the Alps at last and spentthe winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in Italy, where still, at theend of a twelvemonth, his task was unachieved. "Stick to it--see itthrough": this general injunction of St. George's was good also for theparticular case. He applied it to the utmost, with the result that whenin its slow order the summer had come round again he felt he had givenall that was in him. This time he put his papers into his portmanteau, with the address of his publisher attached, and took his way northward. 

He had been absent from London for two years--two years which, seeming tocount as more, had made such a difference in his own life--through theproduction of a novel far stronger, he believed, than "Ginistrella"--thathe turned out into Piccadilly, the morning after his arrival, with avague expectation of changes, of finding great things had happened. Butthere were few transformations in Piccadilly--only three or four big redhouses where there had been low black ones--and the brightness of the endof June peeped through the rusty railings of the Green Park and glitteredin the varnish of the rolling carriages as he had seen it in other, morecursory Junes. It was a greeting he appreciated; it seemed friendly andpointed, added to the exhilaration of his finished book, of his havinghis own country and the huge oppressive amusing city that suggestedeverything, that contained everything, under his hand again. "Stay athome and do things here--do subjects we can measure, " St. George hadsaid; and now it struck him he should ask nothing better than to stay athome for ever. Late in the afternoon he took his way to ManchesterSquare, looking out for a number he hadn't forgotten. Miss Fancourt, however, was not at home, so that he turned rather dejectedly from thedoor. His movement brought him face to face with a gentleman justapproaching it and recognised on another glance as Miss Fancourt'sfather. Paul saluted this personage, and the General returned thegreeting with his customary good manner--a manner so good, however, thatyou could never tell whether it meant he placed you. The disappointedcaller felt the impulse to address him; then, hesitating, became bothaware of having no particular remark to make, and convinced that thoughthe old soldier remembered him he remembered him wrong. He thereforewent his way without computing the irresistible effect his own evidentrecognition would have on the General, who never neglected a chance togossip. Our young man's face was expressive, and observation seldom letit pass. He hadn't taken ten steps before he heard himself called afterwith a friendly semi-articulate "Er--I beg your pardon!" He turned roundand the General, smiling at him from the porch, said: "Won't you come in?I won't leave you the advantage of me!" Paul declined to come in, andthen felt regret, for Miss Fancourt, so late in the afternoon, mightreturn at any moment. But her father gave him no second chance; heappeared mainly to wish not to have struck him as ungracious. A furtherlook at the visitor had recalled something, enough at least to enable himto say: "You've come back, you've come back?" Paul was on the point ofreplying that he had come back the night before, but he suppressed, thenext instant, this strong light on the immediacy of his visit and, givingmerely a general assent, alluded to the young lady he deplored not havingfound. He had come late in the hope she would be in. "I'll tellher--I'll tell her, " said the old man; and then he added quickly, gallantly: "You'll be giving us something new? It's a long time, isn'tit?" Now he remembered him right. 

"Rather long. I'm very slow. " Paul explained. "I met you at Summersofta long time ago. "

"Oh yes--with Henry St. George. I remember very well. Before his poorwife--" General Fancourt paused a moment, smiling a little less. "I daresay you know. "

"About Mrs. St. George's death? Certainly--I heard at the time. "

"Oh no, I mean--I mean he's to be married. "

"Ah I've not heard that!" But just as Paul was about to add "To whom?"the General crossed his intention. 

"When did you come back? I know you've been away--by my daughter. Shewas very sorry. You ought to give her something new. "

"I came back last night, " said our young man, to whom something hadoccurred which made his speech for the moment a little thick. 

"Ah most kind of you to come so soon. Couldn't you turn up at dinner?"

"At dinner?" Paul just mechanically repeated, not liking to ask whom St. George was going to marry, but thinking only of that. 

"There are several people, I believe. Certainly St. George. Orafterwards if you like better. I believe my daughter expects--" Heappeared to notice something in the visitor's raised face (on his stepshe stood higher) which led him to interrupt himself, and the interruptiongave him a momentary sense of awkwardness, from which he sought a quickissue. "Perhaps then you haven't heard she's to be married. "

Paul gaped again. "To be married?"

"To Mr. St. George--it has just been settled. Odd marriage, isn't it?"Our listener uttered no opinion on this point: he only continued tostare. "But I dare say it will do--she's so awfully literary!" said theGeneral. 

Paul had turned very red. "Oh it's a surprise--very interesting, verycharming! I'm afraid I can't dine--so many thanks!"

"Well, you must come to the wedding!" cried the General. "Oh I rememberthat day at Summersoft. He's a great man, you know. "

"Charming--charming!" Paul stammered for retreat. He shook hands withthe General and got off. His face was red and he had the sense of itsgrowing more and more crimson. All the evening at home--he went straightto his rooms and remained there dinnerless--his cheek burned at intervalsas if it had been smitten. He didn't understand what had happened tohim, what trick had been played him, what treachery practised. "None, none, " he said to himself. "I've nothing to do with it. I'm out ofit--it's none of my business. " But that bewildered murmur was followedagain and again by the incongruous ejaculation: "Was it a plan--was it aplan?" Sometimes he cried to himself, breathless, "Have I been duped, sold, swindled?" If at all, he was an absurd, an abject victim. It wasas if he hadn't lost her till now. He had renounced her, yes; but thatwas another affair--that was a closed but not a locked door. Now heseemed to see the door quite slammed in his face. Did he expect her towait--was she to give him his time like that: two years at a stretch? Hedidn't know what he had expected--he only knew what he hadn't. It wasn'tthis--it wasn't this. Mystification bitterness and wrath rose and boiledin him when he thought of the deference, the devotion, the credulity withwhich he had listened to St. George. The evening wore on and the lightwas long; but even when it had darkened he remained without a lamp. Hehad flung himself on the sofa, where he lay through the hours with hiseyes either closed or gazing at the gloom, in the attitude of a manteaching himself to bear something, to bear having been made a fool of. He had made it too easy--that idea passed over him like a hot wave. Suddenly, as he heard eleven o'clock strike, he jumped up, rememberingwhat General Fancourt had said about his coming after dinner. He'dgo--he'd see her at least; perhaps he should see what it meant. He feltas if some of the elements of a hard sum had been given him and theothers were wanting: he couldn't do his sum till he had got all hisfigures. 

He dressed and drove quickly, so that by half-past eleven he was atManchester Square. There were a good many carriages at the door--a partywas going on; a circumstance which at the last gave him a slight relief, for now he would rather see her in a crowd. People passed him on thestaircase; they were going away, going "on" with the hunted herdlikemovement of London society at night. But sundry groups remained in thedrawing-room, and it was some minutes, as she didn't hear him announced, before he discovered and spoke to her. In this short interval he hadseen St. George talking to a lady before the fireplace; but he at oncelooked away, feeling unready for an encounter, and therefore couldn't besure the author of "Shadowmere" noticed him. At all events he didn'tcome over though Miss Fancourt did as soon as she saw him--she almostrushed at him, smiling rustling radiant beautiful. He had forgotten whather head, what her face offered to the sight; she was in white, therewere gold figures on her dress and her hair was a casque of gold. He sawin a single moment that she was happy, happy with an aggressivesplendour. But she wouldn't speak to him of that, she would speak onlyof himself. 

"I'm so delighted; my father told me. How kind of you to come!" Shestruck him as so fresh and brave, while his eyes moved over her, that hesaid to himself irresistibly: "Why to him, why not to youth, to strength, to ambition, to a future? Why, in her rich young force, to failure, toabdication to superannuation?" In his thought at that sharp moment heblasphemed even against all that had been left of his faith in thepeccable Master. "I'm so sorry I missed you, " she went on. "My fathertold me. How charming of you to have come so soon!"

"Does that surprise you?" Paul Overt asked. 

"The first day? No, from you--nothing that's nice. " She was interruptedby a lady who bade her good-night, and he seemed to read that it cost hernothing to speak to him in that tone; it was her old liberal lavish way, with a certain added amplitude that time had brought; and if this mannerbegan to operate on the spot, at such a juncture in her history, perhapsin the other days too it had meant just as little or as much--a meremechanical charity, with the difference now that she was satisfied, readyto give but in want of nothing. Oh she was satisfied--and why shouldn'tshe be? Why shouldn't she have been surprised at his coming the firstday--for all the good she had ever got from him? As the lady continuedto hold her attention Paul turned from her with a strange irritation inhis complicated artistic soul and a sort of disinterested disappointment. She was so happy that it was almost stupid--a disproof of theextraordinary intelligence he had formerly found in her. Didn't she knowhow bad St. George could be, hadn't she recognised the awful thinness--?If she didn't she was nothing, and if she did why such an insolence ofserenity? This question expired as our young man's eyes settled at laston the genius who had advised him in a great crisis. St. George wasstill before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone--fixed, waiting, asif he meant to stop after every one--and he met the clouded gaze of theyoung friend so troubled as to the degree of his right (the right hisresentment would have enjoyed) to regard himself as a victim. Somehowthe ravage of the question was checked by the Master's radiance. It wasas fine in its way as Marian Fancourt's, it denoted the happy humanbeing; but also it represented to Paul Overt that the author of"Shadowmere" had now definitely ceased to count--ceased to count as awriter. As he smiled a welcome across the place he was almost banal, wasalmost smug. Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make amovement, as if for all the world he _had_ his bad conscience; then theyhad already met in the middle of the room and had shakenhands--expressively, cordially on St. George's part. With which they hadpassed back together to where the elder man had been standing, while St. George said: "I hope you're never going away again. I've been dininghere; the General told me. " He was handsome, he was young, he looked asif he had still a great fund of life. He bent the friendliest, mostunconfessing eyes on his disciple of a couple of years before; asked himabout everything, his health, his plans, his late occupations, the newbook. "When will it be out--soon, soon, I hope? Splendid, eh? That'sright; you're a comfort, you're a luxury! I've read you all over againthese last six months. " Paul waited to see if he would tell him what theGeneral had told him in the afternoon and what Miss Fancourt, verbally atleast, of course hadn't. But as it didn't come out he at last put thequestion. 

"Is it true, the great news I hear--that you're to be married?"

"Ah you have heard it then?"

"Didn't the General tell you?" Paul asked. 

The Master's face was wonderful. "Tell me what?"

"That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?"

"My dear fellow, I don't remember. We've been in the midst of people. I'm sorry, in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcingto you a fact that touches me so nearly. It _is_ a fact, strange as itmay appear. It has only just become one. Isn't it ridiculous?" St. George made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so faras our friend could judge, without latent impudence. It struck hisinterlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, he must simply haveforgotten what had passed between them. His next words, however, showedhe hadn't, and they produced, as an appeal to Paul's own memory, aneffect which would have been ludicrous if it hadn't been cruel. "Do yourecall the talk we had at my house that night, into which Miss Fancourt'sname entered? I've often thought of it since. "

"Yes; no wonder you said what you did"--Paul was careful to meet hiseyes. 

"In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light then. How could I have foreseen this hour?"

"Didn't you think it probable?"

"Upon my honour, no, " said Henry St. George. "Certainly I owe you thatassurance. Think how my situation has changed. "

"I see--I see, " our young man murmured. 

His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been broached, hewas, as a person of imagination and tact, quite ready to give everysatisfaction--being both by his genius and his method so able to enterinto everything another might feel. "But it's not only that; forhonestly, at my age, I never dreamed--a widower with big boys and with solittle else! It has turned out differently from anything one could havedreamed, and I'm fortunate beyond all measure. She has been so free, andyet she consents. Better than any one else perhaps--for I remember howyou liked her before you went away, and how she liked you--you canintelligently congratulate me. "

"She has been so free!" Those words made a great impression on PaulOvert, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to which it solittle mattered whether it was designed or casual. Of course she hadbeen free, and appreciably perhaps by his own act; for wasn't theMaster's allusion to her having liked him a part of the irony too? "Ithought that by your theory you disapproved of a writer's marrying. "

"Surely--surely. But you don't call me a writer?"

"You ought to be ashamed, " said Paul. 

"Ashamed of marrying again?"

"I won't say that--but ashamed of your reasons. "

The elder man beautifully smiled. "You must let me judge of them, mygood friend. "

"Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine. "

The tone of these words appeared suddenly, for St. George, to suggest theunsuspected. He stared as if divining a bitterness. "Don't you thinkI've been straight?"

"You might have told me at the time perhaps. "

"My dear fellow, when I say I couldn't pierce futurity--!"

"I mean afterwards. "

The Master wondered. "After my wife's death?"

"When this idea came to you. "

"Ah never, never! I wanted to save you, rare and precious as you are. "

Poor Overt looked hard at him. "Are you marrying Miss Fancourt to saveme?"

"Not absolutely, but it adds to the pleasure. I shall be the making ofyou, " St. George smiled. "I was greatly struck, after our talk, with thebrave devoted way you quitted the country, and still more perhaps withyour force of character in remaining abroad. You're very strong--you'rewonderfully strong. "

Paul tried to sound his shining eyes; the strange thing was that heseemed sincere--not a mocking fiend. He turned away, and as he did soheard the Master say something about his giving them all the proof, beingthe joy of his old age. He faced him again, taking another look. "Doyou mean to say you've stopped writing?"

"My dear fellow, of course I have. It's too late. Didn't I tell you?"

"I can't believe it!"

"Of course you can't--with your own talent! No, no; for the rest of mylife I shall only read _you_. "

"Does she know that--Miss Fancourt?"

"She will--she will. " Did he mean this, our young man wondered, as acovert intimation that the assistance he should derive from that younglady's fortune, moderate as it was, would make the difference of puttingit in his power to cease to work ungratefully an exhausted vein? Somehow, standing there in the ripeness of his successful manhood, he didn'tsuggest that any of his veins were exhausted. "Don't you remember themoral I offered myself to you that night as pointing?" St. Georgecontinued. "Consider at any rate the warning I am at present. "

This was too much--he _was_ the mocking fiend. Paul turned from him witha mere nod for good-night and the sense in a sore heart that he mightcome back to him and his easy grace, his fine way of arranging things, some time in the far future, but couldn't fraternise with him now. Itwas necessary to his soreness to believe for the hour in the intensity ofhis grievance--all the more cruel for its not being a legal one. It wasdoubtless in the attitude of hugging this wrong that he descended thestairs without taking leave of Miss Fancourt, who hadn't been in view atthe moment he quitted the room. He was glad to get out into the honestdusky unsophisticating night, to move fast, to take his way home on foot. He walked a long time, going astray, paying no attention. He wasthinking of too many other things. His steps recovered their direction, however, and at the end of an hour he found himself before his door inthe small inexpensive empty street. He lingered, questioning himselfstill before going in, with nothing around and above him but moonlessblackness, a bad lamp or two and a few far-away dim stars. To these lastfaint features he raised his eyes; he had been saying to himself that heshould have been "sold" indeed, diabolically sold, if now, on his newfoundation, at the end of a year, St. George were to put forth somethingof his prime quality--something of the type of "Shadowmere" and finerthan his finest. Greatly as he admired his talent Paul literally hopedsuch an incident wouldn't occur; it seemed to him just then that heshouldn't be able to bear it. His late adviser's words were still in hisears--"You're very strong, wonderfully strong. " Was he really? Certainlyhe would have to be, and it might a little serve for revenge. _Is_ he?the reader may ask in turn, if his interest has followed the perplexedyoung man so far. The best answer to that perhaps is that he's doing hisbest, but that it's too soon to say. When the new book came out in theautumn Mr. And Mrs. St. George found it really magnificent. The formerstill has published nothing but Paul doesn't even yet feel safe. I maysay for him, however, that if this event were to occur he would really bethe very first to appreciate it: which is perhaps a proof that the Masterwas essentially right and that Nature had dedicated him to intellectual, not to personal passion.